Is a round roughly six seconds or ten seconds?

[Katana_Geldar]

I tried to explain how initiative works these days to a guy who still runs 2nd ed and he was rather shocked at each of us taking a turn in a certain order. But he has been gaming for longer than I have been alive...

 

[Dragon Sin-Camealot]

Conversely there are people who don't even know about the game and/or don't plan on playing it at all.

The low-down it's good at trying to improve your improvised acting skills and somewhat of a math test with the die-rolling numbers.

 

[nerfherder]

Initiative and round duration has become contentious in my group since one of the players became a cop. He knows it's a game, but he doesn't see why he has to let a screaming orc charge him from 60 ft. away while he stands there with his crossbow/longbow/pistol, unable to shoot the chump.

Show him the rules for Phoenix Command, and ask if he'd rather have accuracy or playability

 

[Joshua Randall]

Show him the rules for Phoenix Command

*twitch*

I'm having flashbacks....

And not the good kind of flashbacks, either.

 

[Scribble]

I loved the 2e initiative system - d10 every round, add spell casting time (in segments) or weapon speed factor, low goes first. I was sure when we playtested 3e that the 3e initiative system was the worst thing about the game. I said so to Monte Cook and Kim Mohan, quite vociferously. They told me (politely) to shut the hell up and try it.

I had to eat my words. We loved it once we got used to it. I was just being stubborn.

Yeah- when we first started 3e, I changed it to roll every round... When I actually tried the real rule, I quickly switched over.

 

[Ainamacar]

A few years after 3.5 was released the group I played with experimented with several different initiative systems within the general 3.5 framework. (I think most of that group cut their tooth with 2e, but 3.5 was my first pnp RPG.) Eventually I wrote a small software tool that handled initiative, creature, and condition tracking, but its main utility for our group was that it would optionally reroll initiative every round. We ended up doing that for the rest of our 3.5 games, and never really thought about changing back. The part of that group still playing together have changed systems, though one who moved is using it with his current 3.5 group.

For us, at least, the dynamic feeling it brought to combat with so little effort was well worth the loss of "roll for initiative!" Though I suppose automating that first roll wasn't strictly necessary, merely convenient.

 

[Rune]

For us, at least, the dynamic feeling it brought to combat with so little effort was well worth the loss of "roll for initiative!" Though I suppose automating that first roll wasn't strictly necessary, merely convenient.

Ah, but in the 2e days, in order to factor in action speeds, you had to declare your action(s) before anyone started rolling (and hope you still got to do it when your turn came up). This led to more chaos on the battlefield (which was fun), but was less dynamic than 3e's system allowing players to make their decisions on the fly.

 

[RHGreen]

They should replace 6 seconds, 10 seconds or 1 minute with "A little while."

It doesn't really matter.

 

[Piratecat]

It does to me. I never consider it exact, of course, but it helps me narrate what could reasonably occur around the PCs during the fight.

 

[renau1g]

nevermind