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Message: <blockquote data-quote="camilaacolide" data-source="post: 6644116" data-attributes="member: 6777516">Another followup to this amazing initiative system!In the game last night I decided to push it to its ultimate limits!Disclaimer: During Episode 4 of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen, I decided to make some of the Road Events happen during the trip to Baldur's Gate in the River Chionthar, to better distribute some of them and make the river trip a little less "uneventful" as the adventure puts it. As such, you can see the cards for Arietta and Zelina below (Event: Roadside Hospitality)!As everybody knows, no ship-based adventure is complete without a giant Kraken Fight, so the players faced a combat with a tuned down Giant Octopus. There were 14 cards in total, ALL of them performing interesting actions, with no need to track their order at all, and with this order changing every round:- One card for each of the 4 PCs.- One card for each of the 4 tentacles (melee, ranged and grapple attacks).- One card for the Giant Octopus (it would shake the whole ship, DEX Save required).- One card for the Ship itself (which meant that a cannon/harpoon was ready to be fired by a PC for major damage).- One card for each of the 4 PC's sidekicks (which granted the PCs an extra action with some strings attached. For example: Arietta and Zelina were the Thiefling's sidekicks, and they would be grappled by the tentacles when their card showed up, granting an extra attack for the Thiefling in order to save them. Also, the Ship's Captain Kelsia was the Dragonborn sidekick, and when her card showed up she would have done preparing a Pirate's Arquebus with powder, and would throw it to the Dragonborn granting him an extra Ranged Arquebus Attack, etc...)The Giant Octopus completely lifted the ship from the water using 4 of its tentacles, and was attacking it with the other 4 tentacles, while it remained hidden below the ship, out of the line of fire (which the players quickly found a way around by swinging from ropes outside of the ship's deck)... the idea was to defeat/weaken the 4 attacking tentacles, so that the Giant Octopus would lower the ship back into the water, and then the players would be able to fight the creature itself.There was so much dynamic back and forth between PCs, NPCs and monsters, that it would be IMPOSSIBLE to be properly done with the normal dice system. The whole combat flowed great, all the massive overhead I would have had in order to track this mess were used instead to give interesting options to the PCs and to do a lot of talking/shouting from the NPCs during the combat...This combat was insanely crazy, and due to the sheer grandiose of it, it lasted for almost 2 hours with no slow down whatsoever, round after round, and a constant thrill throughout the whole event, alternating between all the participants of the battle. Everybody was literally EXHAUSTED after it from non-stop action, roleplaying and laughter, that we were forced to wrap up the game: The Thiefling was so into his sidekick girls after saving them and being congratulated with kisses during the combat, that he took them directly to the ship's bedrooms, only to discover that their lipstick was infused with a muscle-freezing poison and they were ready to cut him open in bed while he was still conscious. A cliffhanger scene for the next game.The combat was played without miniatures, and just a hastily-drawn ship's deck sketch.The session (90% of which was the combat) was really praised by the players after the game!I say it again: this system is great and changed my game!Thanks once more Fabio!Some extra cards made for the last session (some weren't even used):[ATTACH]68899[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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