Improved Initiative and the wizard

[pressedcat]

Can't offer an awful lot of advice as i'm currently playing my first wizard at lvl 3, but i took improved initiative as my human 1st level feat, and haven't regretted it at all. Going first in combats means you don't get caught flat-footed too often, and coupled with invisibility has allowed me to escape from ambush situations where my puny 12hp would have seen me get nerfed pretty early on.

 

[KarinsDad]

Can't offer an awful lot of advice as i'm currently playing my first wizard at lvl 3, but i took improved initiative as my human 1st level feat, and haven't regretted it at all. Going first in combats means you don't get caught flat-footed too often, and coupled with invisibility has allowed me to escape from ambush situations where my puny 12hp would have seen me get nerfed pretty early on.

Improved Initiative is vastly overrated. On average, it allows you to beat the initiative of one opponent who you would not have beat anyway when you are facing a reasonable number (i.e. 8 or less) multiple opponents. For example, beating 5 opponents out of 8 instead of 4 opponents out of 8. The fewer the number of opponents, the less it helps. For one opponent, it gives you a 24% more chance of beating his initiative if he has the same Dex modifier. For any given combat, this may or may not help at all (since II allows you to win ties, 50% vs. 73.75%). For single opponent combats, 75+% of the time this does not change the situation at all.

 

[Nail]

Going first in combats means you don't get caught flat-footed too often, and coupled with invisibility has allowed me to escape from ambush situations where my puny 12hp would have seen me get nerfed pretty early on.

I think you meant "killed" here....or are the orcs resorting to Nerf(tm) greataxes now-a-days?

 

[Nail]

Improved Initiative is vastly overrated. On average, it allows you to beat the initiative of one opponent who you would not have beat anyway when you are facing a reasonable number (i.e. 8 or less) multiple opponents. For example, beating 5 opponents out of 8 instead of 4 opponents out of 8. The fewer the number of opponents, the less it helps.

Interesting.

Let's say your Wiz has Improved Init. With a moderate Dex, that's an Init +5. And let's say he's in a party that's attacked by 4 orcs (Init +0).

The Wiz's chance of beating any one orc in initiative is 74%.

The Wiz's chance of beating all four orcs (assuming they all roll initiative individually -- and how many DM's really do that?) is 30%.

..........Now, let's remove the feat Improved Initiative. The chances go down to 57% (for any 1 orc) and 11% (to beat all the orcs). Is the feat worth it?

And: How does your analysis change if the DM regularly rolls initiative for groups of opponents?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Improved Initiative is indeed overrated, but for high-offense-low-defense PCs it is still a good choice. A well-played Wizard or Rogue is not likely to die...unless they lose initiative.

Depending on your degree of party teamwork, there can be a lot to be said for winning initiative then Delaying in order to coordinate with your ally.

IMO Improved Initiative is a must have for Wizards in smaller parties of 3-4 PCs, but is optional in larger parties. Keep in mind that sometimes the best thing for a Wizard to do is Delay.

 

[Nail]

Depending on your degree of party teamwork, there can be a lot to be said for winning initiative then Delaying in order to coordinate with your ally.

Agreed. I don't know how many times I did this with my cleric, especially in later levels.

.....
I've only just realized I didn't cover KarinsDad's point:

...On average, it allows you to beat the initiative of one opponent who you would not have beat anyway when you are facing a reasonable number (i.e. 8 or less) multiple opponents. ...

Comparing a Wiz (Dex 12), both with and without Improved Initiative. Let's look at how many orcs, on average, each wizard will beat given the same chance:

• 2 orcs, versus 1 orc without II
• 4 orcs, versus 2 orcs without II
• 6 orcs, versus 3 orcs without II
• 7 orcs, versus 4 orcs without II

That is to say: "With Improved initiative, you can beat roughly twice as many opponents in initiative as you normally could."

How's that?

 

[KarinsDad]

Interesting.

Let's say your Wiz has Improved Init. With a moderate Dex, that's an Init +5. And let's say he's in a party that's attacked by 4 orcs (Init +0).

The Wiz's chance of beating any one orc in initiative is 74%.

The Wiz's chance of beating all four orcs (assuming they all roll initiative individually -- and how many DM's really do that?) is 30%.

..........Now, let's remove the feat Improved Initiative. The chances go down to 57% (for any 1 orc) and 11% (to beat all the orcs). Is the feat worth it?

Well, I'm glad you fixed your math. I had written a correction post earlier, but while at a meeting, my PC rebooted for updates and lost the post.

Course, your math is still incorrect. Even though it is 57.25% chance to beat one orc, it is not that to the fourth power (10.74%) to beat all 4.

In fact, you have a 10% chance to beat all 4 just by rolling a 19 or a 20 (you win ties with +1 init over +0 init).

If you roll an 18 (5% chance), the odds of none of them beating you is .95^4 (all of them rolling 19 or lower) * 5% ~= 4%.

So, this is a 14% chance to beat all of them just with rolling 18 through 20.

The chance to beat them with a 17 is 5% * .9^4 = 3.3%, etc.

The overall chance to beat all of them is actually 27.58% chance without Improved Initiative. I'll do the odds later with Improved Initiative.

And: How does your analysis change if the DM regularly rolls initiative for groups of opponents?

Ok, I have to go see Superman Returns. So, I'll just note that this is typically a poor idea (with one basic exception). If you have 4 opponents, you should roll all 4. If you have 20 opponents, you should roll them either individually, or in groups of say 3 to 5, depending. The basic problem is that DND balance and tactics go out the window if all opponents consistently go on the same init. I'll explain more later.

 

[airwalkrr]

It is a major DM headache to track separate initiatives for a group of monsters. I always roll the initiatives of like monsters together. For unique monsters I keep separate initiative, mostly because they have different init mods. For example, I would have one initiative for the 10 orcs and another for their cleric leader. To be fair to my players, I never resort to pure swarm tactics to take advantage of this fact. The monsters shouldn't metagame their initiative any more than the PCs do. However, I commonly see PCs readying to hit the bad guys with a double whammy so they can't react in time, so I see no reason why monsters couldn't think of the same thing. For instance, the necromancer orders the orcs to charge and readies an action to fireball the PCs (and his orcs) as soon as the orcs have all made their attacks. It should be up to the PCs to create a reasonable response to this kind of tactic. It is not unusual for several PCs to go early in the initiative order and given that PCs have more resources at their disposal than almost any given monster or NPC, that usually ends up being deadly for the bad guys. For this reason more than any other, the PCs should have contingency plans for how to deal with situations when they lose initiative.

 

[KarinsDad]

It is a major DM headache to track separate initiatives for a group of monsters.

Use 3x5 cards. Give them to a player. Have a Bad Guy 1 card, a Bad Guy 2 card, a Good Guy 1 card, a Neutral 1 card, a card for each PC, etc. Roll init for the 4 bad guys just like the players. It takes all of 20 seconds or so at the start of combat. Let the player flip through the 3x5 cards.

Not a headache for the DM at all.

 

[KarinsDad]

To be fair to my players, I never resort to pure swarm tactics to take advantage of this fact.

A metagame decision due to a metagame decision.

I roll initiative for every opponent and if the opponents get the chance, you bet they try to swarm individual PCs. The smart ones might delay in order to do it, but even the stupid ones do this if that is the initiative order because even they would understand the concept. Even when it is not the init order, they still might try to swarm individual PCs when applicable. Why metagame your NPC decisions?