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<blockquote data-quote="Altissimus" data-source="post: 5340173" data-attributes="member: 96125">Hey folks,I recently ran an arena-style encounter in my campaign, where the good guys came up against a group under arena rules (enclosed space; a crowd baying for blood; predefined combat starting positions; and a ready, steady, go! start).This posed some minor problems for me, in that all involved knew exactly when things would start.&nbsp; Therefore, initiative was either a) the finer milliseconds of highly-tuned god-like reflexes, or b) simultaneous.I ran a couple of these encounters with option a, playing initiative as per the rules.&nbsp; If their mage won, the PCs were screwed.&nbsp; If the PCs won, the other group was screwed.&nbsp; This seemed most unlikely, given that 3 seconds (give or take) after the start, the fireballs would go off, and even if they passed in mid-air they should both still impact.&nbsp; However, quite often the opposing mage was the target of that fireball, and was dead before he had a turn.I then tried it playing a simultaneous initiative, with everything happening in &quot;real time&quot; and players needing to state their actions before seeing the result.&nbsp; This was absolute chaos and gave me a headache, but was good fun for all and seemed more &quot;realistic&quot;.Has anyone found similar drawbacks of the turn-based combat that initiative prescribes?&nbsp; Any useful and innovative ways of mitigating this that you'd care to share please?Many thanks,A.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Altissimus, post: 5340173, member: 96125"] Hey folks, I recently ran an arena-style encounter in my campaign, where the good guys came up against a group under arena rules (enclosed space; a crowd baying for blood; predefined combat starting positions; and a ready, steady, go! start). This posed some minor problems for me, in that all involved knew exactly when things would start. Therefore, initiative was either a) the finer milliseconds of highly-tuned god-like reflexes, or b) simultaneous. I ran a couple of these encounters with option a, playing initiative as per the rules. If their mage won, the PCs were screwed. If the PCs won, the other group was screwed. This seemed most unlikely, given that 3 seconds (give or take) after the start, the fireballs would go off, and even if they passed in mid-air they should both still impact. However, quite often the opposing mage was the target of that fireball, and was dead before he had a turn. I then tried it playing a simultaneous initiative, with everything happening in "real time" and players needing to state their actions before seeing the result. This was absolute chaos and gave me a headache, but was good fun for all and seemed more "realistic". Has anyone found similar drawbacks of the turn-based combat that initiative prescribes? Any useful and innovative ways of mitigating this that you'd care to share please? Many thanks, A. [/QUOTE]

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