Don't make me roll for initiative.........again

[el-remmen]

For me, the cyclical intiative of 3e is the best feature of the new ruleset.

Not only does it speed up play, but delaying and readying actions are the bomb and allow for enough "movement" in the initiative order to keep all the players involved in what is going on each round - my players delay a lot and ready a good deal.

 

[KarinsDad]

Nah; it is something that you could set up in other ways in the game system quite easily. It is something, in fact, that comes up with multiple combatants all the time. NPC 1 delays action to go right after NPC 2, who casts Hold Person. Same outcome.

1) You are focusing on one of the problems that could be done with one person using your system, but requires two people using normal initiative. If two NPCs are concentrating on one PC, regardless of whether they delay or not, that merely means that some other PC has one fewer opponent.

2) The Grapple the Wizard scenario, on the other hand, cannot be done using normal initiative. It requires one person to do it, hence, it requires two rounds. It can be done with your system.

3) Since your group uses D10, as shown above, if they have much better initiatives, the NPCs cannot often take advantage of the back to back situations. The chances of the NPCs winning initiative is so low that grappling the wizard just means grappling the wizard most of the time. There is rarely a 50% chance of the grapple/pin the wizard before the wizard can react.


So, it is obvious that the D10 system you use minimizes the problems quite a bit if your PCs tend to have better init mods than their opposition. Course, if this the case, then rolling init each round is mostly an exercise in dice rolling because it is rare that the NPCs win.

If the PCs have similar init mods to the NPCs, then the D10 system doesn't do much of anything. The same back to back init problems exist as with using a D20, regardless of you as DM not taking advantage of them with your NPCs.

 

[DonTadow]

Actually, it's both, since they're not exclusive categories. In most campaigns, players roleplay PCs who happen to get into a lot of tactical combat.

That being said, I agree with you and everyone else who said rolling initiative every round is a really bad idea.

My apologies. My phrase should say its not a game primarily about tactical combat. It has tactical combat elements.

 

[werk]

My apologies. My phrase should say its not a game primarily about tactical combat. It has tactical combat elements.

"It's part acting, part storytelling, part social interaction, part war game, and part dice rolling." PHB-pg4

...so about half and half.

 

[KarinsDad]

My apologies. My phrase should say its not a game primarily about tactical combat. It has tactical combat elements.

It depends on the group. Getting my current group to roleplay is sometimes like pulling teeth.

Player: "I'm going to ask the barkeep if he saw anything unusual."
DM: "Then do so."
Player: "Ok, FINE. Fred walks up to the barkeep." "Have you seen anything unusual good sir."
DM (as barkeep): "Who's wanting to know and what's in it for me, ehh?"

Getting them to fight is a piece of cake (course, their tactics could use some polishing at times as well ).

 

[Goldmoon]

It depends on the group. Getting my current group to roleplay is sometimes like pulling teeth.

Player: "I'm going to ask the barkeep if he saw anything unusual."
DM: "Then do so."
Player: "Ok, FINE. Fred walks up to the barkeep." "Have you seen anything unusual good sir."
DM (as barkeep): "Who's wanting to know and what's in it for me, ehh?"

Getting them to fight is a piece of cake (course, their tactics could use some polishing at times as well ).

I know that feeling. I seem to have to carry the roleplaying all the time. One of our players is too shy but she does try, two of them play the same character everytime regardless of class or race and the third is just....there sitting and rolling.

 

[3catcircus]

If the Cleric has a friend who acts after the Cleric, you could still have a PC delay or ready to go in between when they see the way initiative is set out. With the random rolling, it will just happen, a decent percentage of the time, it cannot be stopped by any roll, plan, or thinking. If you haven't seen it, then that's because either you and your players actively chose to ignore standard options to artificially make the system work, or just nobody realised the holes in the system, which while admittedly very possible, seems hard to believe considering the people here have noted them very quickly. Then again, it could be the same effect as the puzzle that stumps the group and everyone on the forum solves immediately. I'm guessing that's what it is.

That is my *whole* point - initiative *should* be random because combat is *supposed* to be chaotic and random.

Your argument doesn't work for every case anyway. If Cleric goes and holds PC1 and PC2 is next in initiative and decides to ready or delay, then Cleric's friend can simply attack PC2 instead of the held PC1...

You are arguing using a "what-if" that is too remote to hold true for the majority of the possibilities of "something bad" happening to a PC. Most of the time, a TPK will never occur.

This is the main problem I have with cyclical initiative: it allows (mostly) players to turn 6 seconds of violent, rapid, chaotic activity into a 1-minute sand-table session. Keeping things random prevents players from developing elaborate maneuver tactics on-the-fly - tactics that should have been discussed prior to engaging in combat, if said combat was anticipated.

As an example, If you and a friend are walking down the street and get randomly mugged by two hoodlums, are you going to be able to "delay" or "ready" your actions? No - you are going to react. If, however, you were planning on walking down a street *known* for people getting mugged, you'd probably formulate plans to address that possibility *before* you walked down the street.

 

[3catcircus]

Ah, that is actually a good point--I am guessing, however, that none of the people who had been advocating rerolled initiative uses that rule, or they would have mentioned it earlier themselves.

Nope - I think most of the players who use delay or ready actions alot would quickly tire of continually adding another -2 - to the point that eventually you would hit an initiative of 1 - what happens at that point? Do you stop at 1, or are you no longer allowed to take delay or ready actions? A simple freezing of the initiative for the next round works just as well without any excess bookkeeping.

 

[DonTadow]

That is my *whole* point - initiative *should* be random because combat is *supposed* to be chaotic and random.

Your argument doesn't work for every case anyway. If Cleric goes and holds PC1 and PC2 is next in initiative and decides to ready or delay, then Cleric's friend can simply attack PC2 instead of the held PC1...

You are arguing using a "what-if" that is too remote to hold true for the majority of the possibilities of "something bad" happening to a PC. Most of the time, a TPK will never occur.

This is the main problem I have with cyclical initiative: it allows (mostly) players to turn 6 seconds of violent, rapid, chaotic activity into a 1-minute sand-table session. Keeping things random prevents players from developing elaborate maneuver tactics on-the-fly - tactics that should have been discussed prior to engaging in combat, if said combat was anticipated.

As an example, If you and a friend are walking down the street and get randomly mugged by two hoodlums, are you going to be able to "delay" or "ready" your actions? No - you are going to react. If, however, you were planning on walking down a street *known* for people getting mugged, you'd probably formulate plans to address that possibility *before* you walked down the street.

This is all about risk and reward. Is it worth the risk to reroll initiative every round, waste game time, and turn the game into a heavy tactical game for the low chance that combat looks "chaotic and random" (when there are SO many other elements in the game that deter from this). My group loves a good fight like any other, but whow wants to waste half the time rolling dice to get off the DM's failed attempt to recreate reallife combat.

And thats what this is, the DMs attempt to put the PCs in more danger. Instead of throwing a more complex opponent at situation, create house rules that seem challenging but only waste the time of the players. What about the most important part of real life combat, combat is suppose to be swift and fast. AGain, I've ran games where initative is rolled at the beginning of combat and thats it, or even better, initiative is randomly rolled on the computer. Like monsters go on the same initiative. Its common knowledge that the fewer the dice rolls the faster the combat. I'd rather have 3 or 4 good rounds of swift and fun combat than one tedious and prolonged dice rolling contest per session.

This example fails for a couple reasons. First, the hoodlums surprise roun=d the pcs walking down the street. Also, people can walk down the street readying for muggers. My brother, a marine, would walk 5 miles to our house every night a few years ago. He talkd about how he walked and how he readied himself for an attack at any moment.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Don, IME rolling each round hasn't wasted game time...it has increased it. Players now pay attention when it isn't their turn. This is a good thing. From the comments I have gotten, the players are having more fun. This is also a good thing.

Would I force players to roll initiative each turn if they didn't want to? Of course not. One of them can DM. I'd enjoy the change.

OTOH, if fewer die rolls = better combat, why not just assume average damage with each hit? That way you never have to roll more than one die per round......