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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6988955" data-attributes="member: 6787650">[From <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?513889-Low-CRs-and-quot-Boring-quot-Monsters-Ogre/page18#ixzz4V0rg465a" target="_blank">another thread</a>, a little bit more on the motivation behind this alternative to PHB initiative. -Max]My deeper objection is to the way vanilla PHB "cyclic" initiative tries to simplify combats by unifying decision-making and action resolution into an instantaneous event, and then progresses time by simply ensuring that there's a full cycle in which everyone gets to do their instantaneous action. It's a highly artificial way of interacting with the game world, and if you ever try to do something which doesn't fit neatly into the predefined set of things that can be done in one instant by one person, you're back to dealing with the messiness of actions with durations anyway, which means that you now have to re-invent techniques on the fly for the dealing with the thing you invented cyclic initiative to get away from. So you'll naturally steer yourself away from certain kinds of actions that don't fit within the neatly predefined hierarchy of actions, even if they're perfectly plausible from a roleplaying perspective.If I've got a new role-player, and he's playing a human fighter named Bob, and the party is fighting a T-Rex inside of a castle, and Bob sees a lever 100' away that he could pull to drop a portcullis between the T-Rex and the party, there is no physical reason why Bob shouldn't be able to shout, "Hang on guys! I'm going to drop the portcullis!" and then run 100' and pull that lever. And if combat and cyclic initiative weren't involved (e.g. the T-Rex is insulting the PCs instead of fighting with them), he could declare exactly that and the DM would be fine with it. He might say, "The T-Rex is going to get in a couple more insults before you pull the lever," but he's not going to say, "You can't declare that action." In the initiative system presented in the 5E PHB, however, the DM is likely to say, "No, you can't. Your move is only 30', and you can Dash for 30' more, but you can only run to here this turn. Next turn you can Dash again to the lever and pull it." And Bob will learn that there are only certain things you can do during combat, and Dash is one of them, and next time he'll declare his action in terms of Attack/Dash/Item Interaction, and the game will get a little less organic.Contrast that with a WEGO system in which the DM is used to having multiple outstanding declarations at once which get resolved at a later point in time. In this case, Bob can say, "I'll yell, 'hang on guys!' and run over to pull the lever." And the DM will say, "Okay, that will take you two turns," and the other PCs might okay, "Okay, if he's going to drop the portcullis then I might as well just Dodge instead of trying to kill this thing with my tiny stick", and everything will play out more organically and interactively. There's no reason you couldn't get the exact same outcome even with PHB cyclic initiative--but I believe that you wouldn't. And if you did it would be much more hassle for the players:"I Dodge.""I Dash 60'.""I Dodge.""I Dodge.""I Dodge.""The T-Rex attacks.""I Dodge.""I Dash 40' and pull the lever."If you make it hard for people to do stuff, they're less likely to do that kind of stuff.Ceterum autem censeo cyclic initiative esse delendam.</blockquote>

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