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

[Rystil Arden]

But can't a PC delay or ready to go after the cleric in any given round? That way, his turn will always come between the cleric's turns in sequential rounds...

-Hyp.

Not if the Cleric has a higher mod and was also delaying to go last of all in the round.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Not if the Cleric has a higher mod and was also delaying to go last of all in the round.

If the PCs outnumber the cleric, it's to their advantage to get him to Delay; each time he does it, under the DMG variant rule, he takes a cumulative -2 penalty to future initiative rolls inthe same combat. The PCs can spread this penalty around more by having different people Delay each round.

-Hyp.

 

[Rystil Arden]

If the PCs outnumber the cleric, it's to their advantage to get him to Delay; each time he does it, under the DMG variant rule, he takes a cumulative -2 penalty to future initiative rolls inthe same combat. The PCs can spread this penalty around more by having different people Delay each round.

-Hyp.

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.

 

[Hussar]

So? Harder to Plan + More Deadly does not equal Bad Rule.

Actually, it does.

Any rule which increases the lethality of combat is automatically bad for the PC's. It doesn't matter what the rule is. Sure, rerolling every round might help the PC's 80% of the time. They take the right feats, jack up their initiative. Go for it.

However, in the long run, the DM always wins. Any probability automatically favours the DM because he will roll more times. Far more times than any given player and likely more than the entire party.

This variant increases the lethality of combat. I think we can all agree on that. The chance (however remote) of getting two actions in a row increases lethality. A PC that is on the receiving end of two full attacks from a creature without any chance of withdrawing or otherwise saving himself is going to be seriously hurt, if not dead.

Yes, even if it helps the PC's 9 out of 10 times, it still favours the DM. Because that 1 in 10 chance comes up FAR MORE for the DM than for the PC's.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

Yes, even if it helps the PC's 9 out of 10 times, it still favours the DM. Because that 1 in 10 chance comes up FAR MORE for the DM than for the PC's.

Furthermore, Hussar, in most campaigns it is not the end of the world for the BBEGs to die in combat. The DM usually sets it up so that as long as the PCs don't use bad tactics or find a string of bad luck on roles the PCs will likely win and move along in the campaign. So BBEG death is not considered a bad thing.

But even if the DM only wins 1 out of 10, that still means that the PCs lost. And PCs losing typically is not a good thing. There are some vindictive DMs who are honestly trying to beat the PCs into submission in their world. After all, someone created the Terrasque! But most of the time a PC death - or multiple PC deaths is far more substantial than the BBEG losing.

I agree with Hussar completely. The odds are that somewhere along the DM will win. The DM throws so many more opponents against the players than they throw at the DM. So the odds favor the DM substantially enough already!

 

[DonTadow]

I am completely loss at the logic that rolling anything every round speeds up combat. D and d is arole playing game, not a tactical combat game. Everytime you roll the dice, you are wasting time that can be used on somethng else. Heck, I prefer to roll dice at the beginning of session and never change the initiative for that session again.

How is "rolling every round" more realistic? The only truly realistic way to go is to use initiative as what it is a way to determine who goes first. Else the only way you'll squeeze out realism is if you can figure out how to make everything happen at one time (which is when it all happens technically).

I'd show your DM the DMG, make sure he understands the purpose of the game. To have fun. Shoot I wouldnt be suprirsed if after a while some people just started fudging their initiative to move on with combat.

 

[shilsen]

D and d is arole playing game, not a tactical combat game.

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.

 

[Raven Crowking]

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.

It could also be using the d10 instead of the d20, which reduces the amount of variability in the system. As I said earlier, I'm not sure it would work the same with standard d20 Init.

 

[Raven Crowking]

You missed this comment by KD: "All because of the init system, not because of anything else."

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.

Karen's Dad: Yes, I am the DM in the group, by an overwhelming margin. Not only do I let them encounter much more powerful foes, but also foes they can wipe the floor with. There is a large spread of ELs vs APL that they encounter. Now, because of work, I've been unable to DM now for a little over a month, and guess what? No one else stepped in. For that matter, when I suggest someone else DM, all I get is, "But we want your game" so I must be doing something right. Either that or they're all lazy gits.

As mentioned earlier, I use d10, rolled each round, for initiative, largely as a means to keep the players involved when it is not their turn. Because the variable is only 10 pips, bonuses largely determine initiative order. The group is fairly large -- between 7 and 11 players, depending. This may also be an ameleorating factor in preventing the sorts of problems that would be prevelant according to your math.

Your math does suggest that, were you to fight your clone alone, you would have a roughly 50% chance of defeating him quickly. I would imagine that using standard initiative rules would take longer, but the result would be the same.

RC

 

[KarinsDad]

It could also be using the d10 instead of the d20, which reduces the amount of variability in the system. As I said earlier, I'm not sure it would work the same with standard d20 Init.

It is not just the variability that affects the math with this. It is also the initiative mods.

I suspect that your players tend to have good Dex modifiers and some may have taken Improved Initiative.

The difference in your game could be that the PCs tend to win initiative and the NPCs tend to lose it.

For example, if PC1 and NPC1 both have the same init mod, then there is a 25% chance that NPC1 will lose init on round x and win init on round x+1 (i.e. 50% * 50%).

If PC1, on the other hand, has the same Dex as NPC1 but also has Improved Initiative using a D20 init system, he instead wins init 70% of the time. So there is a 21% chance that NPC1 will lose init on round x and win init on round x+1 (i.e. 70% * 30%). But, doing this same thing with a D10 init system, PC1 wins initiative 85% of the time. So there is only a 12.75% chance that NPC1 will lose init on round x and win init on round x+1 (i.e. 85% * 15%).

This is a more significant difference than using a D20. Plus, even though NPC1 beats PC1 on round x+1, chances are that some or even most of PC1s allies will still beat NPC1 on round x+1 and so there is the chance that an ally can prevent a disaster.

So using a D10 does not do much if the PCs and NPCs have similar init modifiers. But, using a D10 if the PCs tend to have considerably higher inits would tend to decrease the chance of back to back actions by a considerable amount depending on how different the init modifiers between PCs and NPCs are.