I told you why. 1) Because Delay slows up the game.
In the first round when you're assigning Init to begin with? How? Player X gets a 12, player Y gets a 6, player X says I want to go after player Y, done and done.
2) Because Delay mixed with the new rules on "move attack move" make those rules even stronger
As it should be - you're reacting FASTER, why would you not gain advantage from that? Why would happening to roll poorly logically be a benefit for some characters that they should seek to dump their initiative as a tactic? This seems like a feature not a bug - having people with high initiative scores who naturally want to go later because their class abilities benefit from going later SHOULD be able to choose that as a benefit of having a high initiative count.
3) Because Delay mixed with the stronger surprise round (all actions instead of just one) makes the surprise round even stronger.
This is just the same argument as #2 re-worded.
And, it is not a disadvantage to have a high initiative. It's part of the current situation.
Of course it is, for some characters. If their abilities work best only after people have moved, then it's a disadvantage to go first. I even had a player say "I want a feat to decrease my initiative". It's that bad. This is obviously not the intention of the initiative rules.
On the other hand, do you put in special rules for the wizard so that he can get the perfect positioning from his fireball? No
Yes, it's called boosting his initiative bonus. The rogue can do nothing to LOWER his initiative bonus, but the Wizard can. Besides, the wizard who is of the evocation school ALSO wants to go later, to wait for enemies to clump around an ally and then blast them while protecting the ally from the blast. That was in my first post, remember?
Things sometimes do not work out the best way for a given PC. I play a wizard and the battlefield is rarely exactly how I want it to be. I don't get frustrated about it (frustrated being the word you used to describe your players), I just deal with the situation as is.
Tell me how often rolling high is a harm to you, in your experience? The entire point of the d20 system, which 5e adheres to, is that universally a player rolling a d20 high is good and low is bad. This is the only exception I can think of.
So if I were the DM of your group, I would tell the players who want to Delay in 5E to either Ready, or deal with it. So what if the first attack of the rogue does not have sneak attack damage in round one. The current situation does not allow for that. Just like many other rounds for many other PCs. It happens all of the time.
Now think about that - it's called sneak attack, you have surprise, but you're punished if you're the fastest to react to surprise and being sneaky...and if you could have been slower, you would have gotten into a better position (every time) and had a better chance at killing your target (every time). That's just dumb. There is nothing surprising or sneaky about that character - it's purely a rule about ease of use, only the ease of use is about later rounds and not that first round.
From a "It's my turn next, I will fireball those guys, opps, the delaying PC now ran in front of me" POV, it's weird. If one considers actions to be simultaneous like in the real world (which many people do, it's just artificially segregated into a game term called turns), then the delaying PC did not know when to move up and attack, but I was going to fireball with or without another foe in the area. In other words, I start my fireball, I'm casting it, another foe moves in, AT THAT POINT my fellow PC now knows to move, and he gets to move and act before I do, even though in a simultaneous world (i.e. real world), I would have cast my spell before he even took a single step because he had to wait for the new foe to show up before he decided to move and attack.
In the real world, military groups establish tactics, even tactics which function in split seconds, just like what you're describing. Everyone can always hold a second, or half-second, until they can take the better shot or run to the right position or both. There is no sense in saying that people who are fastest to react are worse off. They are never worse off.
