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<blockquote data-quote="Harzel" data-source="post: 7015893" data-attributes="member: 6857506">[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION], I hope you are ok with me resurrecting this thread and summoning you.&nbsp; I wanted to experiment with using simultaneous initiative, so yesterday I used the last few minutes of a session to talk with my players about it.&nbsp; They were amenable to trying it, so to try to see how it would work, we decided to redo a small combat encounter from earlier in the session using simultaneous initiative instead of PHB initiative.&nbsp; Basically, we got stuck immediately.&nbsp; My players did not understand how to phrase their action declarations, and even though I knew in broad terms what they wanted to accomplish, I didn’t know how they should describe the “how” either.&nbsp; I think this may be because our heads are stuck in Cyclic Initiative Land. Originally, I was going to describe the scenario and generally what the various participants wanted to do.&nbsp; However, as I started writing that out it became clear that there was one thing that would make a large difference in what questions even made sense to ask.&nbsp; In your initial example, the PCs generally did not know the goblins action declarations, apparently because the goblins were hiding.&nbsp; But if all participants are pretty much out in the open, then do you let the opposing sides know each other’s action declarations, subject to INT-based declaration order?&nbsp; For example, if the goblins in the example had failed to hide, and assuming that all the PC’s INT was higher than the goblins, would the PCs have known what the goblins were going to attempt before having to declare their (the PCs’) actions?&nbsp; Or if the PCs were fighting a more intelligent opponent, is it possible that some PCs would have to declare first, and then a more intelligent opponent get to declare, knowing what those PCs are going to do, and then higher INT PCs get to declare knowing what the opponent is going to do?Thanks in advance for your help.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Harzel, post: 7015893, member: 6857506"] [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION], I hope you are ok with me resurrecting this thread and summoning you. I wanted to experiment with using simultaneous initiative, so yesterday I used the last few minutes of a session to talk with my players about it. They were amenable to trying it, so to try to see how it would work, we decided to redo a small combat encounter from earlier in the session using simultaneous initiative instead of PHB initiative. Basically, we got stuck immediately. My players did not understand how to phrase their action declarations, and even though I knew in broad terms what they wanted to accomplish, I didn’t know how they should describe the “how” either. I think this may be because our heads are stuck in Cyclic Initiative Land. Originally, I was going to describe the scenario and generally what the various participants wanted to do. However, as I started writing that out it became clear that there was one thing that would make a large difference in what questions even made sense to ask. In your initial example, the PCs generally did not know the goblins action declarations, apparently because the goblins were hiding. But if all participants are pretty much out in the open, then do you let the opposing sides know each other’s action declarations, subject to INT-based declaration order? For example, if the goblins in the example had failed to hide, and assuming that all the PC’s INT was higher than the goblins, would the PCs have known what the goblins were going to attempt before having to declare their (the PCs’) actions? Or if the PCs were fighting a more intelligent opponent, is it possible that some PCs would have to declare first, and then a more intelligent opponent get to declare, knowing what those PCs are going to do, and then higher INT PCs get to declare knowing what the opponent is going to do? Thanks in advance for your help. [/QUOTE]

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