Initiative - once/battle or every round?

[Zandy]

Just wondering - my group has always done init each round. We tried once/battle when we started 3e, but quickly went back. We found it makes the fight more interesting and variable.

Comments?

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

Rolling initiative every round makes the fight longer, and makes ready, delay and refocus pretty pointless actions, IMO.

AR

 

[IceBear]

Rolling initiative every round makes the fight longer, and makes ready, delay and refocus pretty pointless actions, IMO.

AR

Agreed. My old players HATED one initiatve roll per battle. Now, when two of my players DM they use one roll per battle too as they like it much more than the old style.

You also get some weirdness with the rules. Monk stuns someone on Initiative count 1 in round 1, the next round that person is still stunned until the monk's next initiative. If you roll dice, the monk could be first the next round and the guy is unstunned. Sure - you could keep track of when in round 2 the stun (should have) worn off, but that's just one more thing to track.

 

[mikebr99]

Agreed.

Yeah... what they said.

Mike

 

[the Jester]

I'm with Altamont here.

Rolling every round just slows combat down too much for my tastes.

 

[StalkingBlue]

Once a battle.

Pretty unanimous vote, eh?

 

[Pax]

Yep, definitely unanimous. ^_^

 

[JDJarvis]

Rerolling at pivotal moments in the fight might make things a little more interesting and not slow the gamedown as much as rolling every round and might make dramatic momments in a fight even more dramatic.

 

[IceBear]

Rerolling at pivotal moments in the fight might make things a little more interesting and not slow the gamedown as much as rolling every round and might make dramatic momments in a fight even more dramatic.

It might, but it seems too arbitrary. The big bad evil is nearly dead and goes after all the PCs. You say, "OK, this is a pivitol moment in the campaign, roll for Initiative". The BBE wins initiative and on his action teleports away. I think the players might be annoyed with that. Yes, it was more dramatic, but it wasn't fair to the PCs. Besides that, you still have issues with some of the rules not working well with Initiative count changes.

 

[kigmatzomat]

As the lone dissenter, I'm chiming in here.

First off, I like the fog of war aspect the per-round initiative adds. You can't *count* on outrunning somebody. You don't know for sure if you can take out BBEG before his initiative comes up. That alone means I'm sticking with per-round initiative in any game system I run that has it as a viable option.

You also get some weirdness with the rules. Monk stuns someone on Initiative count 1 in round 1, the next round that person is still stunned until the monk's next initiative. If you roll dice, the monk could be first the next round and the guy is unstunned. Sure - you could keep track of when in round 2 the stun (should have) worn off, but that's just one more thing to track.

Not so many problems in 3.0, but there could be some in 3.5 since I've only recently started playing it. There's some wobble for duration of stuns but I *like* that.

I'm a very sequence-natured person and given the flat predictability of per-encounter initiative I feel it's too easy to manipulate. Maybe not for everyone, but when I play in those games I tend to plan 3 rounds into the future, which loses the immediacy.