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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 6793348" data-attributes="member: 32740">I grew to really dislike cyclic initiative from 3E because of it's predictability in that regard - in fact it often just got tedious.I went the other way and use a d12.  Tied actions are tied but many issues with 1E initiative arose out of it's obsession with going to complicated lengths to resolve ties.  Best approach then seemed to be to reduce the number of ties with a larger die.This, I think, is a big one.  Simply giving the DM leeway to have events proceed according to what makes sense or just makes for a better game is preferable to pages and pages of intricate and subtle rules for initiative.  A bit ironic given how I see LindyBeige's perspective.I've split the difference so far with PC's rolling individually but rolling for monsters as a group simply to save myself the hassle, but I reserved the right to change that whenever it suits me and roll individually for monsters.  I've been running a game with a bunch of players who were completely inexperienced with 1E so up to now I've let a number of things go unenforced so as to let them get their feet under them, but this reminds me that I need to start being a bit more of a stickler about some things.  "Burdening" myself with individual initiative for monsters might be worth the added effort for how combat plays out.And the simple counterpoint that occurs to me is, yes, it has.  He wanted the spell to end the combat: "I've thrown my enemies away from me!  Victory is mine!"  However, the power of the spell was not what he wanted it to be and he should have understood and expected that it was only going to be a temporary effect.  They would get up, charge back at him, and the fight would continue.Initiative gave him the advantage of acting in that round before his enemies which was all it was meant to do, designed to do, and what he should have then expected from it.  That he failed to secure victory with one spell doesn't mean initiative didn't work.  At best it means initiative doesn't do what he seems to think it's supposed to do in coordination with the spell - that ALSO didn't do what he seemed to think it was supposed to do.  It sounds to me like it worked perfectly according to the game system he was using. It just was not the game system he wanted it to be.  Rather than adjust his thinking and his tactics to suit the game he was playing (say, perhaps by attempting to coordinate actions with others to divide and conquer with his spell as the opening move, or simply realizing that his spell was at best a very temporary reprieve), he simply pronounced it a broken failure.  Shouldn't he have read and understood the game rules and realized the spell did not incapacitate enemies - it simply inconvenienced them while inflicting some damage?  And that doesn't really address how initiative was then a failure even if it was "unrealistic".He wants D&D to be Runequest, and for initiative to be... free-flowing according to a negotiable narrative, and therefore doesn't want to accept or work within its constraints.  That doesn't make it broken.</blockquote>

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