Initiative house rule.

[EvanNave55]

I've been thinking of adding a house rule to the game which gives initiative a bit more oomph while still keeping it fairly simple.

Essentially initiative would now be a track from 1-20 with particularly high or low scores 'rolling over' for example if someone's invested some resources into there initiative and roll really well such that they would get a 27 they essentially get a bonus round of actions for reacting so fast and afterwards act on initiative count 7

Or conversely if someone rolls poorly and has a penalty to initiative such that they'd get a -2 they would instead act on initiative count 18 on the next round.

All this really does is give particularly high initiative scores a bonus round over particularly low scores. If you rolled above a 7 then you get the same effective number of rounds as the initiative 27 guy it's only if one person rolled really high and another low it would make any sort of difference.

So yeah this would reward/penalize this who spend resources on/ignore initiative. What do you think?

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[The Crimson Binome]

Games where you can mess with the action economy tend to become unbalanced. Dexterity is already the most important stat in the game, and this would make it even more so.

 

[Illithidbix]

I don't think there is very much that you *can* choose to ignore/put into initiative as an active character choice.

 

[ad_hoc]

All this is doing is buffing high Dex characters, Bards, and the Alert feat.

Initiative bonuses are strong enough as is.

 

[Blue]

Right now DEX adds to so much, and Init is figured off DEX (with some other optional adds). DEX is already too important, I wouldn't do this.

Now, if you wanted to also modify that order of acting was based on ability to assess a situation and move initiative to INT based, that eliminates the issue while giving one of the weaker ability scores a boost.

 

[Caliban]

I tried introducing an initiative house rule of 'My monsters always go first you overpowered cheese weasels."

For some reason, it was never very popular.

 

[FrogReaver]

Winning initiative can already be viewed as giving you a free round which is very strong. Your proposal changes that to a chance of 2 free rounds when applied to that viewpoint and 3 rounds of actions before a surprised enemy acts.

I think the issue is that your players will find it cool till it happens to them. Once it happens to them they will hate your system. I.e. They roll low and monster rolls very high and surprises them. Say hello to 3 rounds of monster actions before that player gets to act. NOT fun IMO.

I've been thinking of adding a house rule to the game which gives initiative a bit more oomph while still keeping it fairly simple.

Essentially initiative would now be a track from 1-20 with particularly high or low scores 'rolling over' for example if someone's invested some resources into there initiative and roll really well such that they would get a 27 they essentially get a bonus round of actions for reacting so fast and afterwards act on initiative count 7

Or conversely if someone rolls poorly and has a penalty to initiative such that they'd get a -2 they would instead act on initiative count 18 on the next round.

All this really does is give particularly high initiative scores a bonus round over particularly low scores. If you rolled above a 7 then you get the same effective number of rounds as the initiative 27 guy it's only if one person rolled really high and another low it would make any sort of difference.

So yeah this would reward/penalize this who spend resources on/ignore initiative. What do you think?

Sent from my XT1080 using EN World mobile app

 

[ccs]

I think alot of people are going to tell you not to do this....

I'm not one of them.
I think that you should add it to your game for a bit & actually try it out. See if it works for you & your group.
If it works, keep it. If the group decides meh (ex: some years ago we came up with a pretty good crit system. After a while the players decided they liked the 3x system we were trying to replace better. So....)? Scrap it & try something else/go back to the basics.
Afterall, there's alot of people playing with some really different house rules that - although I'd never use them (or even think of some of them) - seem to please the people concerned.

 

[Wepwawet]

I actually like your idea! Very simple houserule to reward very high initiatives.

The others are right, Dex already is too important...

However, you could remove the very low initiative (bottoms out at zero) and maybe make it roll over 24, to make it an exceptional occurrence. In my game initiative rolls over 20 are pretty common, but to get a 25 you need to have 20 Dex and roll a 20, or be a Bard or have the Alert feat.

Try it out and see how it goes

 

[Blue]

I'm wondering about how this works with the various abilities that happen during the first round of combat or before a foe has had their initiative come up, plus a few sanity checks.

Just to set the bar, there is no "surprise round", it's just that if you are surprised during the first round of combat when your initiative comes up you may not take any actions. (PHB pg 189.)

Let's say we've got these:
Alice rolls 27
Bob rolls 19
Charlotte rolls 4
DM Denise rolls -2 for the foe

Using | for round breaks, it sounds like you will have:
A|BAC|BDAC|...

1. Say Bob is a Rogue (Assassin) 3 who thanks to the Assassinate feature gets advantage against anyone who has not yet taken a turn. Would he get two turns of advantage against Denise?

2. Charlotte is a Rogue (Thief) 17 who thanks to the Thief's Reflexes feature gets two turns during the first round of combat, one at your initiative and one at initiative -10.
2a. Charlotte doesn't go during the first round of combat, so does she not get to take advantage of this feature or is it delayed to HER first round of combat instead? (Note that if surprised normally she'd lose out.)
2b. Assuming it does work, initiative -10 would be -6, so does that push that second action back to the second round of combat at initiative 14 after both Bob and Denise have had actions? Normally it would be after Denise's (the lower init) action but before Bob's (the higher init) action.

3. Alice is playing a Barbarian 2. Is seems she can use Reckless Attack with impunity that first round because she's going to have another action before Denise's monster goes so she won't be granting advantage anymore. Is this what you want? (This would be true even if Charlotte was the DM.)

4. Say Denise is actually surprised. Surprise currently happens during the first round of combat.
4a. Does surprise not affect her since they don't go during the first round of combat, or is it instead during her first rounds of combat?
4b. Bob's Assassinate ability allows hits to turn into crits against a surprise opponent. Normally this means first round when both you and them get an action (regardless of initiative) because surprise is first round of combat. Does this mean he gets 2 rounds of assassinate (2nd & 3rd round) because Denise is losing a round due to negative initiative? Or does his first attack in round two NOT get it, but when Denise's first action comes up in round 3 she's surprised so he only gets it then?
4c. If it is her first round, that means Denise's first action taken will be in the FOURTH round of combat. Is this also working as you intended?

(Also, how twinky is Charlotte for playing a 17th level character alongside 2nd and 3rd level characters. But that's outside the scope.)