Improved Initiative and the wizard

[pressedcat]

Whoops, someone went and opened a can of worms there...
I hadn't really had a thorough think about the comparative stats of taking or not taking II initiative before, so its been interesting to see.
I still think II is useful, maybe more so for gaming groups who don't roll all their monsters' initiatives seperately (including my own group). It might only make a difference 1 time in five or whatever, but that time could really count. Last game i was stomping along with one other player down a forest path when we got ambushed. I managed to pass my listen check and so got to act in the surprise round. I got to go first (due to II) and was able to cast invisibility. The DM then went on to roll high on the 6 javelins that got thrown by the concealed goblins, doing enough damage that if i had received a fair share of the damage, i would have been taken to 0 hp, leaving only a flat footed and seriously injured bard to defend both of us.
A slighlty unusual situation true, but as someone already pointed out, you usually don't die from average dicerolls, you die from being unlucky. Anything that can give you an edge is useful.
Also, if you intend to counterspell an opposing spellcaster, getting a good initiative really counts.

 

[Pickaxe]

But, quite frankly, it is all about organization. DMs who have good organizational skills will not think this is any big deal and ones who do not, will.

Can I suggest putting this in a slightly different way that isn't quite as insulting?

It's actually all about time. The DMs in my games are both organized and intelligent, but you probably spend more time creating posts for these boards than they have time to prepare for our sessions. We do use cards, but, regardless of how you break it up, it's making up the cards that takes the time. Yes, we have a player going through the cards, but the DM has his own cards that he goes through in initiative order, which have more information concerning tactics, etc. We generally break opponents into groups that have different tactics, but eight random orcs are likely to be treated as one group with one initiative. Yes, the DM has to go through each creature anyway, but it's often simpler to determine what action each creature takes if their initiatives aren't interspersed among those of the PCs.

--Axe

 

[Jack Simth]

Ahh, exhaustive testing.....

Ran up a quick Excel spreadsheet; all else being equal, with improved initiative, if you roll a 1, there are five cases where you'll go first where you might not have, have, otherwise (opponent rolls a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5). On a tie with equal modifiers, my analysis assumes you re-roll, so the 1/1, 2/2, 3/3, et cetera scenarios mean that you go first half a time when you wouldn't have, otherwise. With improved initiative, then, when you roll a 1, there are 4.5 cases where your opponent would have gone before you had you not had improved initiative. Ditto for when you roll a 2, 3, 4, or so on, up to you rolling an 17 (where a possibility gets clipped - in the scenario, your opponent can't roll a 21, so Improved Initiative doesn't grant you it's full benefit).

[sblock]
Top row is your opponent's roll, left column is your roll, table gives:
0 if Improved Initiative made no difference for that pair of rolls.
1 if Improved Initiative changes a loss to a win.
0.5 if Improved Initiative changes a tie to a win.
The bottom, partial row gives, in order: Total of the body of the table, total number of entries, proportion where Improved Initiative made the difference.

Rolls	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
1.00000	0.5	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2.00000	0	0.5	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
3.00000	0	0	0.5	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
4.00000	0	0	0	0.5	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
5.00000	0	0	0	0	0.5	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
6.00000	0	0	0	0	0	0.5	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
7.00000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.5	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
8.00000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.5	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
9.00000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.5	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
10.0000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.5	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
11.0000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.5	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0
12.0000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.5	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0
13.0000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.5	1	1	1	1	0	0	0
14.0000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.5	1	1	1	1	0	0
15.0000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.5	1	1	1	1	0
16.0000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.5	1	1	1	1
17.0000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.5	1	1	1
18.0000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.5	1	1
19.0000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.5	1
20.0000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.5
																		80	400	20%

[/sblock]

 

[KarinsDad]

We do use cards, but, regardless of how you break it up, it's making up the cards that takes the time. Yes, we have a player going through the cards, but the DM has his own cards that he goes through in initiative order, which have more information concerning tactics, etc.

Making up the DM cards takes the same time regardless. Making up the init cards takes the same time regardless (ours were made up years ago). You do not have to make up a "DM tactics card" for each opponent. Are you assuming here that you need a "DM tactics card" for each opponent? No, you do not. You need one per group of opponents, just like in your current game. So, there is no extra time for making up cards.

And, you do not need the "the DM tactics cards" to be in "initiative order" either. This is not much of an argument. You might save a few seconds here and there not having to pick up the "card you need" at a specific point in time, but we waste more time than that with a single joke in our game than you would save in an entire battle.


The problem with your solution is that it either allows the game to become very predictable and deterministic (e.g. the Wizard goes before all of the Orcs, so he fireballs them most combats; or the Orcs go before the Wizard, so they gang grapple him most combats), or the DM is forced to use sub-optimal tactics per opponent to not take advantage of a group of opponents all going at the same time.

We once played in a GURPS campaign where initiative was determined by the order of the players sitting around the room. So, with players A, B, C, D and DM E, initiative went A, B, C, D, and all of the NPCs of E. Every round. It sucked. No PC in the group could ever react to the actions of any given NPC (except ones late in the NPC order) until much later in the round.

This is not much different than putting 6 or 8 NPC similar opponents in a single initiative in DND. The latter situation is not quite as predictable and boring as the GURPS campaign I was in, but it nearly as bad.

If you have 8 Orcs and #1 trips the PC Fighter in round one, then Orcs #2 through #8 can then run up 30 feet (or 20 feet armor depending) and get the +4 prone bonus EVERY time (either that, or the DM has to use sub-optimal tactics). There is no chance of the two PCs within 5 feet of the Fighter stepping up to protect him before the Orcs get to him. There is no real chance of those two PCs "saving the day" by stepping up and protecting their fallen ally. There is no chance that the Fighter gets back up before the other 7 Orcs get to him.

None of the players can be a hero because by the time any of the PC can react, the situation is already resolved.

Sorry, but that's too deterministic and it changes the entire NPC tactics and balance of the game to one of "he who goes first, wins with his allies". Either that, or the DM is forced to metagame NPC decisions. Yikes!

 

[Pickaxe]

Making up the DM cards takes the same time regardless. Making up the init cards takes the same time regardless (ours were made up years ago). You do not have to make up a "DM tactics card" for each opponent. Are you assuming here that you need a "DM tactics card" for each opponent? No, you do not. You need one per group of opponents, just like in your current game. So, there is no extra time for making up cards.

And, you do not need the "the DM tactics cards" to be in "initiative order" either. This is not much of an argument. You might save a few seconds here and there not having to pick up the "card you need" at a specific point in time, but we waste more time than that with a single joke in our game than you would save in an entire battle.

You misunderstand. The DM is also keeping track of initiative; in fact, he really has to. If an NPC readies or delays or does anything else to change his initiative position, the DM needs to keep track of it without necessarily tipping off the players. So, the DM has a stack of cards that he uses to keep track of initiative; the players could also have one (especially if any are playing more than one character). (This is the system that was recommended by Monte Cook somewhere, I believe). If tactics (or just basic combat info) are recorded on the cards, it's that much easier to find the info. Since we often play during lunch breaks or under other time constraints, not having to rummage through an additional set of "tactics cards" is desireable.

The problem with your solution is that it either allows the game to become very predictable and deterministic (e.g. the Wizard goes before all of the Orcs, so he fireballs them most combats; or the Orcs go before the Wizard, so they gang grapple him most combats), or the DM is forced to use sub-optimal tactics per opponent to not take advantage of a group of opponents all going at the same time.

Don't get me wrong; I definitely agree that it's more optimal to have every individual with their own initiative; group initiative can lead to more "binary" (not actually "deterministic") situations, as you describe, and I think your own system probably works quite well. What I was taking issue with was the implication that DMs don't do it your way because they are mental inferiors. Not all DMs have the time to develop these systems, much less the work of making up the cards. Add in that, at least IME, D&D (at least 0E and 1E) really didn't promote the concept of individual initiative over group initiative, and I'm not surprised that all DMs I've dealt with since 3E came out use "group" initiative for the baddies.

--Axe

 

[KarinsDad]

You misunderstand. The DM is also keeping track of initiative; in fact, he really has to. If an NPC readies or delays or does anything else to change his initiative position, the DM needs to keep track of it without necessarily tipping off the players.

Why?

The players are already tipped off when the NPC who acted immediately before the PC Wizard now does nothing. In our game, the player handling the init cards merely turns the card sideways 90 degrees for NPCs when they either delay or ready (hence, they do not know if he is readying, or delaying). For PCs, readying is turning the card 90 degrees and delaying is pulling the card out of the deck completely (as a reminder to the player of the PC that he is no longer in inititiave).

There really is no need for a DM to keep track of initiative separately, that appears to just be a preference for your group. The stack of init cards (in order) is totally sufficient for that.

Your system seems unnecessarily complex. Why have both the DM and the players keep track of initiative? It seems a waste of effort. Very strange.

So, the DM has a stack of cards that he uses to keep track of initiative; the players could also have one (especially if any are playing more than one character). (This is the system that was recommended by Monte Cook somewhere, I believe). If tactics (or just basic combat info) are recorded on the cards, it's that much easier to find the info. Since we often play during lunch breaks or under other time constraints, not having to rummage through an additional set of "tactics cards" is desireable.

How many tactics cards do you have if you have to rummage through them? I thought the point of having the tactics cards is so that you could have one card per group of similar opponents, but now you are implying that it is one card per opponent or that you have many groups of similar opponents simultaneously.

Don't get me wrong; I definitely agree that it's more optimal to have every individual with their own initiative; group initiative can lead to more "binary" (not actually "deterministic") situations, as you describe, and I think your own system probably works quite well.

Agreed. I think that resistance to having individual initiatives has more to do with how people have played for a long time than it does in actual speed of play. The only problem with individual initiatives is if you roll all of them and there are a lot of opponents. Outside of that, it is really just as fast and playable and a grouped initiative system and does not have the "binary problem".

Btw, the problem is deterministic in the sense that a given player of a PC knows in round two that 5 Orcs go immediately after him, so he consciously or subconsciously changes his tactics accordingly. This does not happen with individual initiatives. With individual initiatives, there is often at least a few other PCs getting an action before all 5 of the Orcs do, so any given PC does not worry as much about being swarmed by the opposition, just because he cast a spell and got everyone's attention, etc.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the point is made that while it may be suboptimal for dms to run monsters in groups, many do. And there certainly not going to change it to make the stastistics for init work better So this fact should be taken into account.

 

[KarinsDad]

Would you mind calculating the chance of our Wiz 1 (Dex 12) winning init over all 4 orcs? Use the 2 cases of "With Improved Initiative" and "Without Improved Initiative". I'd like to compare answers.

Sure. Assuming I have no bugs in my program (Orcs have Dex 10), it comes out (truncated to 1/10th of one percent) with Improved Initiative being the right hand column:

Beat 4: 27.5 47.5
Beat 3: 19.9 19.4
Beat 2: 19.9 17.3
Beat 1: 19.0 11.6
Beat 0: 13.5 03.9

I also calculated for this case how many extra Orcs the Wizard would beat using Improved Initiative over not using Improved Initiative on average given the exact same rolls:

Beat 4: 00.1
Beat 3: 01.9
Beat 2: 12.3
Beat 1: 34.8
Beat 0: 50.6

This is more telling than the previous data here. Half of the combats, you do not beat a single extra Orc. In other words, half of combats like this, the initiative order is exactly the same (with respect to the PC and the NPCs, not the PC and other PCs). This is why I state that Improved Initiative is overrated. Half of the time with this example, it does not really help at all (except maybe by beating another PCs init).

A third of the time, you beat one extra Orc. And an eighth of the time, you beat two extra Orcs. You beat three extra Orcs one combat in 50+. You almost never beat all four Orcs (when you would not have beaten any of them without Improved Init).

And, most of the data above in the "Beat 4 Improved Init" case comes from the "Beat 3 no Improved Init" case. Ditto for most of Beat 3 II coming from Beat 2 no II, etc. In other words, the data often tends to shift up one extra Orc.


So, like I mentioned earlier in this thread, you tend to beat (less than) a single extra opponent. In this case, the average works out to 0.652 extra opponents that you beat (i.e. not even one on average).

Granted, the more opponents you have, the more Improved Initiative will average closer to one opponent or even more. With 4 Orcs in this case, it was 2/3rds of an opponent on average. With 20 Orcs, it would be closer to 3 or 4 extra Orcs on average.


Btw, you can see how rolling the Orcs in a group totally increases how worthwhile Improved Initiative is by this data. You will often (1 time in 5, 70% versus 50%) beat all 4 orcs with II over not beating them with no II if you roll all 4 Orcs in a group. This happens less than 2 times in 1000 if you roll individual initiatives.

 

[pressedcat]

Can i just point out that a lot of this maths seems based on "what does it matter if one extra enemy out of the five enemies i'm facing beats my initiative" as an argument. This is less relevant if the one monster that beats you has the potential of doing serious, possibly lethal damage if they get to go first. If a mage or cleric gets the jump on you and manages to disable you or cast their uber spell of doom(tm) at you, it could drastically change the ability of the rest of your party to deal with that threat. A smart enemy that knows that their most immediate threat is going to be from the party's wizard is likely to take out or incapacitate that pc first so that they can deal with those pcs less capable of dealing with them, so if and when you do reenter the fight, you find your backup out of action. Also, these scarier oponents may not have a initiative mod of 0, and so again, any edge you can gain through II is important.

 

[KarinsDad]

Can i just point out that a lot of this maths seems based on "what does it matter if one extra enemy out of the five enemies i'm facing beats my initiative" as an argument. This is less relevant if the one monster that beats you has the potential of doing serious, possibly lethal damage if they get to go first. If a mage or cleric gets the jump on you and manages to disable you or cast their uber spell of doom(tm) at you, it could drastically change the ability of the rest of your party to deal with that threat. A smart enemy that knows that their most immediate threat is going to be from the party's wizard is likely to take out or incapacitate that pc first so that they can deal with those pcs less capable of dealing with them, so if and when you do reenter the fight, you find your backup out of action. Also, these scarier oponents may not have a initiative mod of 0, and so again, any edge you can gain through II is important.

Again, what you say here is true for a few given scenarios.

However, it is not true the majority of the time. For example, how does the BBEG enemy divine or arcane caster KNOW that your PC is a Wizard, hence, he should be attacked first?

There are a lot of situations where:

1) Dungeon situations where the PC Wizard is not even in the room yet, so the NPC spell caster cannot target him even if he beats his initiative.

2) Normal situations where the PC Wizard does not look like a wizard. I know a lot of players who purposely dress their wizards up to look like normal joes, for example, hirelings. DMs should not, by default, target the PC arcane caster every time.

3) Situations where Orc #1 is the Shaman, but Orcs #2 thorugh #4 are normal Orcs. So, if you get lucky and beat the Shaman, great. But 75% of the time, even if you beat an Orc that you would not have beaten otherwise (50%) from the example above, it will typically not be the Shaman. So, your odds of beating the one NPC that you have to beat are fairly low (e.g. 34.8% * 25% + 12.3% * 50% + 1.9% * 75% + 0.1% = 16.3% or one combat in 6 in the example above). 5 combats in 6 against 1 Orc Shaman and 3 Orc Mooks, it doesn't really matter that you have Improved Initiative.

4) Even if you beat a given opponent, there are also times when the PC Wizard will Delay. In this case, beating a given opponent does not help a lot.

5) Even if you beat a given opponent, there is a chance that a fellow PC will take him out or distract him sufficiently before your initiative comes up. So, beating his initiative might not do anything.


The point is, Improved Initiative can be helpful. No doubt about it. It is just not as helpful as many people believe unless you roll groups of monsters with the same initiative and even then, it is not as helpful as many people believe.

Weapon Focus, on the other hand, helps on 5% of the time (1 swing in 20) plus typically 5% of criticals (i.e. 1 in 20 times threat range chance). So, it tends to help once every 3 or 4 combats at low level (including Attacks of Opportunity), and as much as nearly every combat at high level. The same cannot be said of Improved Initiative. It still tends to significantly help out one combat in 3 at best, regardless of low level or high level.