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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 2939661" data-attributes="member: 2011">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.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.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.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.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.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. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" /> 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.</blockquote>

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