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

[Rystil Arden]

I guarantee if the situation were that re-rolling initiative allowed the party to act first in round 2 of a combat to take out a particularly tough NPC after suffering severe damage in round 1 of that combat where the NPC got to go first, there wouldn't be complaints.

I disagree. I have had players who would have gained advantage in crazy rules changes openly engage and support a weakened version because they thought it was right and they care about the health of the group. I'd like to think most players are like this and not as petty as the situation you describe.

Exactly. But, if you can come up with a suitable, guaranteed one-two punch, then it's worth it. Your opponent will only get a one-punch. It's only a possibility of being a good tactic, I'm not saying it definitely is.

Exactly! Here's a good one: Have your high-Initiative Cleric delay until the very end of a round and fire off a Hold Person from 5 feet away. If the opponent fails the save and you win Initiative, the opponent suffers an immediate coup de grace with no chance to do anything in between.

 

[3catcircus]

I disagree. I have had players who would have gained advantage in crazy rules changes openly engage and support a weakened version because they thought it was right and they care about the health of the group. I'd like to think most players are like this and not as petty as the situation you describe.



Exactly! Here's a good one: Have your high-Initiative Cleric delay until the very end of a round and fire off a Hold Person from 5 feet away. If the opponent fails the save and you win Initiative, the opponent suffers an immediate coup de grace with no chance to do anything in between.

Huh? Since when did being held automatically mean he suffers an immediaate coupe de grace? Unless it is 1-on-1, there *are* other combatants, some of which might take out the cleric, pull the held person to safety, etc.

Actually, this reinforces my point - what if the cleric is the PC, and the opponent is the NPC? Would you *not* take advantage of this possibility? The fact that you thought about this example leads me to believe that you *would* use it to your advantage.

 

[PallidPatience]

Actually, rerolling initiative every round can only turn out bad for players, simply because it adds another die-roll to the game. It's MUCH worse for PCs than NPCs simply because PCs are involved in every combat. Each NPC is involved in only a limited number of them. Therefore, the PCs have the potential for many more fatally poor rolls than do the NPCs. Randomization can only harm PCs, unless you don't challenge them. If they all have Imp. Init. and your NPCs don't, then the PCs run every combat because they choose when and how the fight is fought.

Honestly, it just seems that whoever has the highest Dex and Imp. Init. controls this style of determining initiative. While that might capture the truth of a situation, as in real life, and would fit for a really gritty campaign, it doesn't fit with the abstract, simplified nature of the core rules.

At the same time, 3catcircus, the point that the guy who started this thread was attempting to make was that his DM was using this rule WITHOUT keeping track of when spells were cast. They used the caster's initiative, which meant that some spells could get in an extra round of damage, or that other spells could effectively cease to function a round early. That makes spellcasting really unpredictable, which, as I stated before, will kill PCs more often than NPCs, simply because NPCs will cast many more spells than the PCs will, and with no consequences to the population of NPCs as a whole, whereas the PCs suffer the consequences of every horrible thing that happens.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Exactly! Here's a good one: Have your high-Initiative Cleric delay until the very end of a round and fire off a Hold Person from 5 feet away. If the opponent fails the save and you win Initiative, the opponent suffers an immediate coup de grace with no chance to do anything in between.

CDG! Good call! Why didn't I think of that one.

That's proof right there that this is a terrible houserule.

QED as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Huh? Since when did being held automatically mean he suffers an immediaate coupe de grace? Unless it is 1-on-1, there *are* other combatants, some of which might take out the cleric, pull the held person to safety, etc.

Actually, this reinforces my point - what if the cleric is the PC, and the opponent is the NPC? Would you *not* take advantage of this possibility? The fact that you thought about this example leads me to believe that you *would* use it to your advantage.

There won't be anyone in between because the cleric waited until the absolute end of the round and then the initiative reroll let him go first in the next round.

And no, it doesn't prove your point--if I were the cleric, I would mention this to the GM as a reason why he shouldn't use his rule. If he refused to take the rule away and says this combo is okay, I would do exactly this to an important NPC, having warned him already about this manoeuvre. I would categorically not just pull things like this out without fair warning with the intent of breaking encounters. That's just not being respectful to the rest of the group.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Here's another consequence of this system--everyone who wants to cast a "1 full round" casting time spell will delay until the very end of the round every time because they have absolutely no reason not to delay--going early just means more chances to be smacked, and delaying means a halfway-decent chance to finish the spell at the beginning of the next round before any enemy gets to act.

 

[KarinsDad]

As a DM, handling summoned monsters is easy enough - you know what "time" they were summoned in the initiative order, just keep track of it, and x rounds later, on that same "time" in the initiative order, regardless of the PC's actual initiative, "poof" the summoned creature goes away.

This forces the DM (or players) to write down actual initiatives, either ahead of time or when the player declares Summon Monster.

With the core system, the order is what is important. The actual initiative numbers are totally irrelevant except for determining that first order. Once the order is determined, then the numbers have no more meaning, then or in future rounds.

Yet another bookkeeping exercise for the variant system.

As to playtest - I don't think either of us is qualified to say whether or not it is playtested.

We both know that since there are a lot of game rules that need tweaking with this variant rule, that it was not seriously (or probably at all) playtested. There are at least a half dozen screwy things mentioned in this thread alone that this variant messes up or forces extra work on: CDG, True Strike, Delays, even Grappling. For example, I delay and then grapple you at the end of round one and pin you at the beginning of round two. This would totally prevent any arcane spell caster from getting off any spell because once he is pinned, he cannot cast at all. Period. End of story. Dead Wizard.

This would be the ultimate anti-arcane caster tactic and would result in new feats, items, and spells to counter it.

And, the NPCs do not even have to Delay to do this. Sooner or later, the luck of the initiative dice will allow the NPCs to do this.

I get the sense that a lot of your problems with this rule are with how to arbitrate things like delayed actions and AoOs - that is the DM's job if the rules don't specify. If he can't or won't arbitrate, then, yes, using the core initiative rules makes more sense.

That is not the big problem. The big problem is back to back actions. Just like 3E Haste was broken and later fixed in 3.5 because of the extra action it gave, this too is broke. And, for the exact same reason.

There is a very important reason WotC fixed 3E Haste.

That having been said, I don't see what the big deal is about AoOs - it makes no difference what initiative rules you use. As to delayed actions - you are "picking" when to act in the initiative order, so if you are delaying for the next round there is no need to re-roll initiative for you on that next round (since your initiative rises but lose your action that round), but after that, it should be back to re-rolling.

We are not talking about delaying into the next round. We are talking about delaying late into the current round and then rolling init next round and going early the next round.

Likewise, a readied action allows you to prepare to take an action after your turn is over but before your next one has begun. Regardless of what "time" in the next round your turn is, you still have a readied action waiting to be triggered.

Again, only if it rolls into the next round. This scenario is non-sequitor to the discussion. The problem case is when the opponent's Readying resolves later in the current round and then the opponent re-rolls an early init in the next round.

I simply fail to see how each of these things is really a big problem when you re-roll initiative each round. Sure, the DM has more book-keeping, but that is about it.

What you quoted was not big problems. What I stated was.

The True Strike problem, the Coup De Grace problem, the anti-wizard Grappling problem, these are all real problems because they totally change how the game is played.

This also will result in more PC deaths and TPKs. Why? Because the PCs will be in nearly every battle in the game. Most NPCs will tend to be in only one or two per NPC. So, it matters not how many times NPCs get screwed by the initiative dice Gods, the PCs only have to get screwed once in order to die.

Low init enemy moves up and gets one swing on the PC Wizard on round one. On round two, he rolls lucky and gets a high init. He then gets a full round attack on the Wizard and manages to crit once or twice. Dead PC Wizard and the PC Wizard did not get any actions in between round one and round two.

Opps.

In the current initiative system, the only way for the PC Wizard to not get a chance to react to that situation is if the opponent somehow manages to incapacitate the Wizard in some manner. But even then, the PC Wizard's allies typically get a chance to react (unless all of them are incapacitated).

This type of thing can happen every few rounds when rolling init each round. It's all a matter of how the Init Dice Gods are smiling or frowning, but sooner or later, a PC is screwed.


Quite frankly, these very set of problems are some of the reasons (along with the time and bookkeeping rolling every round takes) why the 3E designers changed the system from random rolling init each round to a circular initiative system. And I suspect the only reason they put in the variant rule was to win over 2E players who did not want to give up their 2E initiative system.

 

[Seeten]

By the by, I almost never agree with Karinsdad about anything, and since I am in full and wholehearted agreement with him on this, you can be sure the variant rule is bad, bad, bad.

 

[3catcircus]

There won't be anyone in between because the cleric waited until the absolute end of the round and then the initiative reroll let him go first in the next round.

And no, it doesn't prove your point--if I were the cleric, I would mention this to the GM as a reason why he shouldn't use his rule. If he refused to take the rule away and says this combo is okay, I would do exactly this to an important NPC, having warned him already about this manoeuvre. I would categorically not just pull things like this out without fair warning with the intent of breaking encounters. That's just not being respectful to the rest of the group.

You obviously didn't read a previous post of mine regarding this - if the DM is using this initiative system, then you simply wouldn't reroll initiative for the round immediately following the one in which you delayed...

Additionally, the rules are very clear on the delay action: "When you delay, you voluntarily reduce your own initiative result for the rest of the combat." (emphasis mine)

Under the basic initiative rules, this is enough to go on. Using initiative re-rolled every round, then the DM *has* to arbitrate how you would go on that lower initiative as a result of the delay action. *I* would arbitrate it for one round following the delay action, some might arbitrate that it affects the entire combat just like under the basic initiative rules.

 

[Rystil Arden]

You obviously didn't read a previous post of mine regarding this - if the DM is using this initiative system, then you simply wouldn't reroll initiative for the round immediately following the one in which you delayed...

Additionally, the rules are very clear on the delay action: "When you delay, you voluntarily reduce your own initiative result for the rest of the combat." (emphasis mine)

Under the basic initiative rules, this is enough to go on. Using initiative re-rolled every round, then the DM *has* to arbitrate how you would go on that lower initiative as a result of the delay action. *I* would arbitrate it for one round following the delay action, some might arbitrate that it affects the entire combat just like under the basic initiative rules.

That's actually pretty ridiculous too--so what you're saying is that if I get a really lucky roll and roll, say, a modified 25 Initiative (I have 12 Dex and I took Improved Init because of this crazy houserule), then next round I have to reroll init and I might get as low as 5, allowing the foe to go twice. But never fear! If I delay to 24 Initiative, I get to keep my initiative of 24 on the next round!?

Suddenly, everyone with good Init delays by 1 each round to avoid the crazy houserule, and those with bad init probably roll again and hope for the jackpot. This leads to a rather chimerical fight where just about everyone is hovering around their maximum init for most of the fight, so every last point in maximum init is *absolutely crucial*. That Improved Initiative isn't just a chance for a higher initiative--it means when you get a 20, you can spend 4 full rounds at the top of the initiative order delaying by 1 each time until anyone else could possibly even tie you, so you can wait much longer to reroll.