Initiative - once/battle or every round?

[IceBear]

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.

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.

That's cool. I will admit it does add some variance to combat which can be nice (just in my case it's more work than it's worth).

Besides stun attacks, the only other real weirdness are spells that take a full round to cast. In one case it might be almost instantaneous (Last initiative in round 1 and then First Initiative in round 2) and in the other almost two rounds long, which makes it more likely to be disrupted (First Initiative in round 1 and Last Initiative in Round 2).

Again, these are variances that you probably like, but in my mind it makes full round spells even more risky to cast.

 

[dcollins]

Now that we have a dissenter, I'll say this:

- Initiative once at the start of combat, for each individual (per 3rd Ed.) works very well: it speeds things up, I can keep an order list and just call the next name on it.

- Alternatively, initiative in each round, for each party (per 1st Ed.) is a pretty good alternative, too. Just one opposed die roll per round. One group gets to act in whatever order they decide or call -- and there's very little effective difference (within a round), since monsters usually have one init roll anyway, so the PCs are all in a batch between monster actions even in 3rd Ed. And it reduces the full predictability of once-ever initiative.

No way would I want initiative for each individual rolled every round, though.


Also, I'm on board with the occasional re-rolls at dramatic moments. However, it can't be arbitrary, there needs to be some important surprise or timing event to spawn it. Ex.: a trap door opens, a new attacker appears, competing ready actions create a race condition, etc.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

Maybe not for everyone, but when I play in those games I tend to plan 3 rounds into the future, which loses the immediacy.

Even with "static" initiative, I can't plan 3 rounds ahead. Everything changes so much every round, whatever the plan I make will be obsolete by the time I get to execute it.

 

[The Souljourner]

Not only does it allow for weird randomness, but it totally removes the penalty for delaying. How's this - the wizard delays until the end of the round to cast his full round spell, so no one can attack him this round, then next round he rolls and with a decent initiative, is likely to be one of the first ones to go. All of a sudden, full round spells are almost no drawback.

Same goes for almost anything that benefits from preventing people from acting between your two actions. Trip a guy one round, and get a full attack on him on the next round, before he gets to stand up. Etc etc. I can't think of all the permutations, but I sense a big potential for abuse.

It makes refocus even more useless than it already is. I guess you'd say you just get to roll a 20 for the next round... but then the round after, you'd go back to rolling.

While I like the fact that you can't plan so much around who gets to go when, I find that there's not much of that going on in my games. At best, it's "I'll wait for you to attack so you can get out of my way". Very rarely is it "I know he doesn't go until after all of us, so I can do X and get away with it".

The benefit seems quite small for the amount of effort. It takes long enough just doing initiative at the beginning of combat. Doing it every round would seriously nearly double the amount of time it takes to do a battle.

-The Souljourner

 

[Majere]

Inititatives every round give the NPCs too much of an advantage

PCs are nearly always out numbered and to win fights they must co-ordinate their actions. Random initiatives deny the party the ability to act cohesively and work together.
You will be pretty sick when your 5th level party dies to a kobold with a war pick that rolls a crit at the bottom of the round, and then wins initiative and kill the mage with a second crit because noone got an action in between to heal the mage or for the mage to move.
They meticulously nerfed anything in 3.5 that give people double actions as its just to damn powerful. Random initiatives give alot of nps double actions to screw the party.

Majere

 

[kigmatzomat]

Not only does it allow for weird randomness, but it totally removes the penalty for delaying. How's this - the wizard delays until the end of the round to cast his full round spell, so no one can attack him this round, then next round he rolls and with a decent initiative, is likely to be one of the first ones to go. All of a sudden, full round spells are almost no drawback.

I don't have that problem since casters historically go slower than the combat characters. IMC (ran with these rules 1st-15th level over 2-3 years), if the mage or cleric rolls a 20 he's got maybe a 23 while the fighters and rogues only need 14s to match that.

So by the odds a caster *might* be able to delay 'til the end of the round and then get initiative the following round but it's *very* hard.

Same goes for almost anything that benefits from preventing people from acting between your two actions. Trip a guy one round, and get a full attack on him on the next round, before he gets to stand up. Etc etc. I can't think of all the permutations, but I sense a big potential for abuse.

There's possibilities, no doubt, but no *certainties* which is my preference. The dice have to be in your favor to pull that off. And it jibes with my fencing and martial arts experience more.

The benefit seems quite small for the amount of effort. It takes long enough just doing initiative at the beginning of combat. Doing it every round would seriously nearly double the amount of time it takes to do a battle.

Not in my game. I started running 2e for a group of 12 so I'm *very* good at managing time. Initiatives are quick and people get little time to dawdle. I start counting backwards from 30 and wait for someone to say "me!" Though with all the buffs in full effect I have to start at 40.

 

['o Skoteinos]

In a Demon campaign I played the standard rule was 1/round, but this didn't really make the combat variable because the people with good init were always first and the ones with bad init always last. And because it just took way too long to recalculate init every round, we switched to the 3e method of initiative: once per combat.

 

[pjurgens]

Same goes for almost anything that benefits from preventing people from acting between your two actions. Trip a guy one round, and get a full attack on him on the next round, before he gets to stand up. Etc etc. I can't think of all the permutations, but I sense a big potential for abuse.
-The Souljourner

But I guess this is the thing I like most about rolling initiative every round. It is very realistic. Anyone who has every been in a playground shuffle can relate. You get pushed down and your foot slips before you rise and you quickly feel another punch land. Or in fantasy terms, the grip on your sword is loose and you have to delay your next swing to get a better grip or risk dropping your sword. You get the idea. I can come up with a million ideas of why it makes sense to get back-to-back initiatives.

It is the unpredictability of a fight. One inititative roll removes all of the unpredictability. It makes combat a choreographed dance. And if it were a dance I would suggest a Perform: Combat roll (DC 20)

 

[Eye Tyrant]

Every round would just bog things down in my game...

 

[Scion]

I have played in board games where the initiative order changes each 'turn', a very viable, and very powerful, strategy is to go last one round and first the next. Generally, if someone can do this a couple of times that person won, hands down.

In a d&d sense rolling initiative each round is interesting, but the possibility of someone (good guy or bad) going twice in a row is just too much. In an extreme sense it could be that one side gets good rolls one round and the other side bad, and then the next round the reverse, so an entire side gets to go twice in a row, that spells near automatic death for someone.

Because of some very bad variences like that I definately think that one roll per battle is best. Having a fighter type get two full round of attacks in a row, ouch. Two big spells dropped before the group can react properly, incredibly bad. On and on.

So, while round by round definately holds some interest, I definately feel that the once is by far the better way to go. Flavor is all well and good, but even though the deck of many things is very flavorful it can also kill games (as a corolary)