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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="5ekyu" data-source="post: 7539061" data-attributes="member: 6919838">Well, yes, to their concerns that is what happens when you have a declare-work-resolve system.your "response" to things that happen *this round* have to be done *next round* making all reactivity a "turn behind" the normal system way.Also, yes, with any random vary round by round init, you get into the double-tap problem where one side or foe gets two "goes" between another character not getting any - yup - nature of the beast. Thats what random gets you - sometimes screwed - sometimes gold - usually just wobbly.Variety, unpredictability, uncertainty etc etc all come with a price and that price may well be "random overpowers choice"The question comes down to "what game do we want" as opposed to "lets do it this way but try and nerf every bad result"i ran a 5e game for 18 months with no random init at all.System was simple.Start of combat players chose "first or last"if they chose first, a PC had to go first. then it was a foe, then a pc, then a foe etc with one foe left to go last.*After that first turn, the init order was set for the combat.this left timing and tactics around that completely as choice for both sides - no random - just two-way choices.If they chose Last - an NPC has to start and they alternated but one PC went last every turn.** This could result in a pile-up of "next to last" if the sides were uneven.Worked like a charm and was intened to do several things...Remove randomness from init order and make it choice driven - allowing coordination and planning to be easier - less kludgyKeep focus on meaningful choices.reduce to a degree the number of "unanswered" actions - either way.speed things up - no init rolls to make or track  - just chosen order. "Who's next" and marking dow the turn 1 order.Wasn't a perfect system, but we rolled with it and it served us well - did exactly what we wanted - choice over random - decision over dice - planning (ready actions) over unpredictability (random re-roll) etc.had we started griping every time this resulted in a bad tactical outcome  - enemy uses the "last" to stun your "first" letting the big bad at the end and the number two second worst gang up on the first - yeah that happens - benefit of last - well thats just how "choices work" - both sides get them and use them and nope we dont need to rework the rules for choices being what they are.No more than a decision of "we want random init rerolled by round and by action" needs to be one where you start adding in more and more rules to avoid and mitigate all those "these dice sorta screwed us over" occurances. if you choose with intent to add more "random" then "what it was like before we did that" is no longer a valid comparison - this is what you asked for.i mean, the 5e d20 init roll is just one way - not "they way" that all must be balanced against. heck there is a huge difference in gameplay 5e depending on whether you roll init once or once per round.i mean, wasn't "generate tension, drama, and unpredictability " one of the core parts? Well, the cleric not getting to do things as reliably as quickly in reaction as they once did does all that. I mean, unpredictability hits directly at "efficiency".The bad dice results and the good dice results cut both ways so when you give the dice more power cuz thats more dramatic to you, roll with it and enjoy.</blockquote>

Verification