Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 9055103" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Nice!Personally, I’ve taken to using a slightly tweaked version of “Grayhawk Initiative” from that UA a while back.At the top of each round, the DM declares the monsters’ actions and players declare their characters’ actions (as well as the actions of any creatures under their characters’ control) in ascending order of Wisdom scores. You don’t have to declare the targets of attacks or spells, but you do have to declare what weapon you plan to attack with or spell you plan to cast.Your declared action determines what die or dice you roll for initiative. If you declare an attack with a weapon, you roll that weapon’s damage die. If you declare an unarmed strike, you roll 1d4. If you declare casting a spell, you roll 1d4 for each of that spell’s components. If you declare any other action, you roll a die determined by your Size (1d4 for Tiny, 1d6 for Small, 1d8 for Medium, 1d10 for Large, 1d12 for Huge, 1d20 for Gargantuan).Creatures take turns in ascending order of Initiative (so lower rolls act first), with ties going to the creature with the higher Dexterity score. (If there’s still a tie between a player and a monster, it goes to the player; if there’s still a tie between players I let them decide; if there’s still a tie between monsters, I go alphabetically). On your turn, you can move up to your speed, take up to one bonus action, and take the action you declared or the Ready action.Effects that normally occur at the start or end of a creature’s turn (including death saving throws) instead occur at the start or end of the round where that turn takes place. Creatures that are incapacitated or otherwise unable to take actions don’t declare actions or roll initiative.I really like how this variant keeps the action in combat more dynamic, and contrary to what one might expect, I have found it to speed up combat, because players don’t spend ages agonizing over their turn. 90% of the time they just say “I’ll attack with my [weapon]” or “I’ll cast [spell]” since they don’t have to declare targets at the top of the round, then on their turn they already know what they’re going to do and are just focused on executing it.I could probably streamline this even more by cutting the element where different weapons and spells use different initiative dice, but I like that it gives players a reason to choose weapons that might otherwise be “suboptimal.” At the very least, it’s good to keep a dagger on hand for those times when when any amount of damage will kill your target and you just want the best chances of going before it does. Spells’ initiative dice being based on components is mostly just for flavor, but it could make Subtle Spell more useful.</blockquote>

Verification