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

[Goldmoon]

My DM for some reason makes us roll for initiative every round. I am trying to get him to see that he is penalizing us by taking away valuable options in combat. Besides refocus, defensive refocus and ready an action, what other things can I present to him to see the light?

 

[afata5]

Well, you can also present him that fact that it dramatically slows down game play and it also breaks up the aspect of team work (planning attacks/combinations to use each others forces). This is not a real time game, it is turn based. The end result of DND is that is it supposed to be fun for the players and DM... to nitpick at something like this only aids it getting frustrating..

Just my 2 cents...

Alex

 

[Paraxis]

It will speed up gameplay during combat and allow you to move on to more of the role playing. See if he is willing to try it for one game session and give it a chance.

 

[Infiniti2000]

My DM for some reason makes us roll for initiative every round. I am trying to get him to see that he is penalizing us by taking away valuable options in combat. Besides refocus, defensive refocus and ready an action, what other things can I present to him to see the light?

Rerolling initiative each round takes too much time and makes combat suck for the players. How are spell effects handled? Does the DM track each spell effect on its own initiative? If not, how does he respond to the fact that it can severely nerf several spells or make other ones significantly more powerful?

Also, note that there is no refocus action in 3.5.

 

[KarinsDad]

Also, note that there is no refocus action in 3.5.

Precisely. They yanked it because it was a terrible illogical rule.

Goldmoon, using refocus to convince your DM to stop rolling every round probably will not help.

PS. What is Defensive Refocus?


What might help, though, is to illustrate to the DM that he is practically forced to group NPCs into group inits. Rolling once at the beginning more easily allows for individual NPC inits.

Finally, you could always talk to the other players and get them to vote this silly init rule away. DMs tend to (but not always) listen if all of their players want a specific change.

 

[Goldmoon]

Rerolling initiative each round takes too much time and makes combat suck for the players. How are spell effects handled? Does the DM track each spell effect on its own initiative? If not, how does he respond to the fact that it can severely nerf several spells or make other ones significantly more powerful?

Also, note that there is no refocus action in 3.5.

Unfortunately, if a spell effect begins on its casters initiative and lasts for 5 rounds, it ends on his initiative 5 rounds later on whatever initiative count he rolled for that round. This changes spell effects by as much as an entire round almost.

 

[Goldmoon]

Precisely. They yanked it because it was a terrible illogical rule.

Goldmoon, using refocus to convince your DM to stop rolling every round probably will not help.

PS. What is Defensive Refocus?

What was wrong with refocus?

Defensive refocus is making your initiative 10 + modifiers but you are allowed to go total defense the round you declare it instead of just standing there.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Unfortunately, if a spell effect begins on its casters initiative and lasts for 5 rounds, it ends on his initiative 5 rounds later on whatever initiative count he rolled for that round. This changes spell effects by as much as an entire round almost.

That's a terrible way to run it. This is so terrible, in fact, that I would quit the game over it if the DM didn't change his mind.

 

[Goldmoon]

Dont think I havent considered it but unfortunately I have no other game at the moment.

An example from a previous session: My Knight was fighting in an Acid Fog spell and took damage on the casters initiative:7. The next round he took damage on the casters new initiative: 19. Two rounds of damage in a row. I dropped before the healer could get to me...

 

[KarinsDad]

What was wrong with refocus?

Refocus is a poor man's Delay.

The start of a round is not much of a concept in DND. So, who cares if you go first in any given round? There are no effects that occur at or until the end or beginning of a round. With a circular initiative system (i.e. not rolling every single round), beginning and end of rounds in DND no longer matter.

For example:

If A delays, he can go:

BACDE or BCADE or BCDAE or BCDEA

If A refocuses and C has the first init (and assuming A beats C on the refocus), his only option is:

ACDEB


Delay does everything that Refocus does and more. Even if you roll init every round (or not). So, why have a silly Refocus rule?


PS. I have never heard of Defensive Refocus. When used with rerolling init every round, this is a silly rule too. You get to do more than just fight Total Defensive, you also tend to win init the next round. This totally blows away the Total Defensive rule when rerolling init every round like your DM does since nobody would ever take the Total Defensive action. They would always take the Defensive Refocus action. In fact, they would take the Defensive Refocus action instead of the Total Defensive action every time even if they did not reroll init every round. This sounds like a house rule and a bad one at that.