D&D 5E Old School Initiative

[iserith]

I am thinking about bringing back an old school Initiative (from 1st edition) to my game and curious what you all think.
Basically players (and monsters) have to declare their actions (both move and standard) before rolling Initiative.
The reason behind this is twofold;
First it brings a little bit of unpredictability. Say, I am going to attack Orc #1, Orc #1 dies by fellow player character first. The attack is wasted.
Second it brings back the idea that everything is 6 seconds is happening simultaneously. Giving it a better feel for fluid combat.

A few exceptions to this rule is bonus actions can be declared during your turn (if you have any). Reactions act the same. Readied actions act the same.

I also think this might spread out combat more as you don't know if your fellow player is going to kill CreatureX this round. So maybe you attack CreatureY instead banking on that hit.
Monsters will do likewise of course.

I am going to play test it next time with my players, but curious what your thoughts or of some imbalance I might miss that might occur from using this method.

With regard to your reasons for implementation, I would suggest that involving a d20 in combat resolution is already sufficient for unpredictability given its swing. And I'm not sure the prospect of not being able to do anything because of a fellow player's success is going to increase the fun at the table. If anything, it may increase the amount of time players talk tactics at the table instead of acting as they try to avoid such scenarios. I don't particularly care when players do that, but I know it's a common enough complaint from DMs on the forums.

As for "bringing back the idea that everything is 6 seconds is happening simultaneously" that idea never went anywhere. It's still a thing. Rather than "give a better feel for fluid combat," I predict it being a lot more clunky than the default initiative and action declaration system which would seemingly defeat the purpose.

I would suggest examining your other reasons for wanting to implement such a system. Is something lacking in your combat challenges that encourages you to want to do this? Maybe there's something else you can do to improve the play experience that doesn't come with these potential drawbacks.

I remember dealing with such a system in AD&D 2e. I don't miss it. But, hey, give it a try. Worst case scenario you find it sucks and you don't use it in subsequent games.

 

[Charlaquin]

Any system with a possible outcome of "you lose your turn because the thing you said you wanted to do 5 minutes ago can't happen now" is a terrible system.

It happens much less often than you’d think (note, you’re declaring, “I Attack with my longsword,” not, “I Attack that orc right there.” Or, “I cast Fireball,” not, “I cast Fireball centered on this space here.” And if this is still a concern, there’s an easy workaround: pick one specific action that players can take instead of their declared action if the declared action is no longer possible, or if the changing circumstances make it no longer desirable. Dash is a common choice for this, as is Disengage. Personally, I like using Ready for this. That way if you said, “I Attack with my longsword,” but on your turn there’s no enemies within the range of your movement to attack, you can say “Well, I’ll move here abs Ready to Attack the first hostile creature to come within 5 feet of me.” Technically this is abusable by declaring an action with the fastest speed modifier so you can go first and then Readying a slower action that you actually wanted to take, but you’re basically giving up your Reaction to do so, which is a fair trade in my book.

 

[Charlaquin]

I’ve wanted for a while to try a variant of Speed Factor or Greyhawk Initiative where instead of everyone declaring an action at the top of the round and taking that action on their turn from fastest to slowest, everyone Readies an action at the top of the round, and takes their turns from slowest to fastest. That way faster characters have more opportunities to potentially use their Readied action as a Reaction, and more information about the state of the battlefield on their turn than slower characters do.

 

[Roadkill101]

I use a six second combat round with declared action before initiative. No one loses out their turn because character a and b both declared attacking the same monster and the character who goes first hits and does enough damage to drop the monster. The six second round just means that both characters may hit (where all actions are assumed to happening simultaneously due to the short time span) and the combined damage drops the monster, it's not like the characters how many HP a monster has, at least not at my table anyway.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Any system with a possible outcome of "you lose your turn because the thing you said you wanted to do 5 minutes ago can't happen now" is a terrible system.

This. It's poor simulation, not-narrative, and un-fun from a gamist perspective. It slows down play for no benefit that I can determine. Basically the worst of all worlds lol.

Oh right, don't forget it disproportionately hoses melee.

 

[JonnyP71]

I thought 1e had each side taking initiative and weapon speed and Dex adjusting it. Once it is set it remained the same. If the PCs roll a 7 on a d10 and the monsters a 5, the PCs go first. However, my fighter with low Dex wants to swing his greatsword which has a speed of 7 and now he goes on a 0. The monsters may be using daggers with a speed of 2 and have a +1 Dex modifier from having a 17 Dex, so they go on a 4. It generally flows once you figure it out. Make sure you check Dex bonus out since older editions did not give bonuses the same way.

D10 modified by dex bonus and weapon speed was 2nd edition.

1st edition was based around a d6, essentially whoever went 1st was whoever rolled highest, but other things muddied the water somewhat - spell casting times, charging, magic item usage, and combatants with multiple attack routines... It was muddled, was explained badly, and very few DMs ever run/ran it totally by the book - because it was impossible to as there were so many interpretations!

Those who simply use 'd6 highest wins' are actually following Basic D&D initiative rules more closely than 1E.

 

[Charlaquin]

This. It's poor simulation, not-narrative, and un-fun from a gamist perspective. It slows down play for no benefit that I can determine. Basically the worst of all worlds lol.

Have you tried it? In my experience it actually speeds up play because there’s no stopping to work out and record the Initiative order at the beginning of combat, and no stalls on players’ turns as they sit there and analyze their options. And even at the beginning of the round, decisions are made faster because players are just picking something to do that will benefit their side, instead of trying to figure out the best option to use in their current circumstance. Plus with everyone declaring actions at the top of the round, there’s more pressure to make a decision quickly because it’s a shared decision making time instead of your turn. Also, as long as you only require the players to declare what action they’ll take (“I will move and Attack with my Rapier” instead of “I will move to this space and attack this orc with my Rapier), it’s actually pretty rare that anyone loses their action. And if you’re still worried about wasted turns, let the player Dash, Dodge, or Disengage instead of their declared action. I agree that it’s lousy as a simulation, but I think the potential for unfun outcomes tends to be vastly overestimated. The primary benefit, in my experience, is vastly improving the flow of gameplay (and by extension the speed) at the cost of more complexity.

Oh right, don't forget it disproportionately hoses melee.

Now that’s fair. This can be somewhat mitigated by putting ranged attacks into a slower attack speed category than melee attacks. If you’re the sort to whom “simulation” is important to justify gameplay mechanics, you can say that ranged attacks take longer because they have to be carefully aimed, not to mention the time it takes to draw ammunition and load the weapon.

 

[5ekyu]

I am thinking about bringing back an old school Initiative (from 1st edition) to my game and curious what you all think.
Basically players (and monsters) have to declare their actions (both move and standard) before rolling Initiative.
The reason behind this is twofold;
First it brings a little bit of unpredictability. Say, I am going to attack Orc #1, Orc #1 dies by fellow player character first. The attack is wasted.
Second it brings back the idea that everything is 6 seconds is happening simultaneously. Giving it a better feel for fluid combat.

A few exceptions to this rule is bonus actions can be declared during your turn (if you have any). Reactions act the same. Readied actions act the same.

I also think this might spread out combat more as you don't know if your fellow player is going to kill CreatureX this round. So maybe you attack CreatureY instead banking on that hit.
Monsters will do likewise of course.

I am going to play test it next time with my players, but curious what your thoughts or of some imbalance I might miss that might occur from using this method.

i have played with secret declarations before in some wargames and for them it was fun - ironclads i think was one - where you had to map your moves and such. You could run into your own allies.

That kind of thing works fun for some one-off wargames but IMO it does not foster a lot of things i enjoy seeing in RPGs - teamwork. it also really makes things get odd as far as any sort of planning and "sense" to the combat.

Mechanically the first question is how does this even work - hidden notes?

NOW that said, a few games i considered used different initittive frameworks altogether.

Lets Call DND a PBI system - player based initiative - where there is a sequence determined and that sequence lets a PLAYER direct his character thru his entire set of actions. 99% of the time the actions themselves **what you are doing** do not matter. While some may want to imagine this as simultaneous it is really everywhere it counts as sequential system.

But other games have used an ABI - Action based initiative - where 99% of the time **what you are doing** is the main determining factor in the resolution order. So as an example it would work like this...

1- Everybody rolls initiative.
2a - the **LOWEST** or **WORST** inti declares his action for the turn in front of everybody.
2b-y Every other character in ascending order declares their actions until everyone has declared.
2z - Editorial in this case init is "seeing what is happening and getting to make more informed decisions" and so making it perception based makes a lot of sense. Even a WIS(tactics) would make sense.
3-The resolution of actions takes place based on a strict "actions take time" stages layout. That layout can vary by setting - Dr Who put talking ahead of fixing broken stuff ahead of fleeing and only let any attack actions take place at the very end, a low magic may put any spell casting after move and melee while a high magic may put them first or at the same stage.
3a - All actions at the same stage happen - so if "strike with weapons in hand and ready" is at the same stage as "activate magic item" then even if the attack kills the magic item guy, they got the item activated before/as they were killed.
3b if stage 1 is "fire or attack once with weapons in hand and ready" and stage 2 is "activate magic items" then an attack resolved in stage one can kill someone before they activate an item.

The big key then becomes the STAGES and setting them up to work right to match the flavor of the setting.

A beauty of this system is it separates the randomness from the action itself as far as order - and lets the random elements play a role in the "decisions" and how much you have to base the info on. it provides for as much nuance and discrimination between "simultaneous" and "sequential" as you like.

So just drawing in from say a somewhat standard fantasy trope stages could include:
STAGE 1 - Ready - attacks/activations/casts (1 action or less)) with items already in hand with no move or interactions needed or taken. (Might limit this to one attack only if you want to make multi-attack a "longer thing" that you sometimes give up for speed.)
STAGE-2 Almost Quick - as in 1 but ONE little bit extra like pulling ammo or drawing material components. Might add in all multi-attacks which were ready. maybe also a ready bonus action like say thief dash or hide or use object or second weapon fighting.
STAGE-3 NORMAL - Pretty much the normal compelxity of actions including move with attack(s) (before or after), the usual interactions, bonus actions etc. Typical spells might be here.
STAGE-4 - COMPLEX - Actions you deem as suitable to be called complex. Any long term effort that wont be solved in one turn and maybe even casting spells that require concentration.
etc
etc

(before folks start yelling about this unbalancing blah this blah that... yes i know... this is just a suggested set of stages for illustrative purposes. One system i saw for urban arcane put spells as after all other physical actions AND allowed for any damage in the turn to work against succeeding at casting - because it wanted to represent spellcasters and witches as vulnerable and needing cover in actual combat. Then again their spell could just teleport the big bad into not quite orbit 100 miles away and let them plummet to earth - so there was a need for balance.)

The net underpinning of this is that IMO - if you want to produce a more "simultaneous" feeling then separating decision/declaration and resolution can work, having random apply to decision/declaration order can work - but IMO you open a huge can of very difficult to manage worms if you separate decision/declare and resolution with a random sequence between them. That randomize order after decision/declaration**does not** accomplish representing "simultaneous" any better than the current system does, it just applies a lack of logic at all to the order and create more oddities between decision/declare and resolutions.


FWIW, in my current 5e-based game, first turn i let the players choose first or last for their group. (if they do not decide quick, it becomes last by default and by quick i mean consensus in 15s or less.)
if FIRST, a PC goes then an NPC goes then a PC/ally then an NPC then... but one NPC will get to go last.
if LAST, an NPC goers first, a PC/ally goes next, then another NPC, then another PC/ally but a PC will always go last.
The order or their characters is up to them. The order of the NPCs is up to me. After turn 1 that order is set and will remain. new character entering the fray get added in just above the DESIGNATED last, folded into the bottom of the sequence.

this lets the actual sequence of moves be a matter of choice and decision, not random and i like that better.

But i have played with a lot of different systems.

 

[Sunseeker]

It happens much less often than you’d think (note, you’re declaring, “I Attack with my longsword,” not, “I Attack that orc right there.” Or, “I cast Fireball,” not, “I cast Fireball centered on this space here.” And if this is still a concern, there’s an easy workaround: pick one specific action that players can take instead of their declared action if the declared action is no longer possible, or if the changing circumstances make it no longer desirable. Dash is a common choice for this, as is Disengage. Personally, I like using Ready for this. That way if you said, “I Attack with my longsword,” but on your turn there’s no enemies within the range of your movement to attack, you can say “Well, I’ll move here abs Ready to Attack the first hostile creature to come within 5 feet of me.” Technically this is abusable by declaring an action with the fastest speed modifier so you can go first and then Readying a slower action that you actually wanted to take, but you’re basically giving up your Reaction to do so, which is a fair trade in my book.

Okay, I was expecting the action declaration to be required to be much more specific.

Still, I don't see how it's a substantial gain. Now you've got players having to think about their actions in potentially 2 places (when the roll and when their turn comes) instead of just 1 place (when their turn comes).

 

[Charlaquin]

Okay, I was expecting the action declaration to be required to be much more specific.

Still, I don't see how it's a substantial gain. Now you've got players having to think about their actions in potentially 2 places (when the roll and when their turn comes) instead of just 1 place (when their turn comes).

True, but now you’re making the decision of what to do during a shared decision making time, which creates pressure to decide quickly that doesn’t exist when it’s “your turn,” and you’re making the decision with incomplete information, which encourages you to just pick something and make it work instead of trying to weigh all your options and figure out the perfect thing to do in this particular situation. And when it’s your turn you’re just executing how to do the thing you already decided to do. Ultimately it probably doesn’t have a big impact on the amount of time spent in combat, by in my experience it does dramatically improve the flow. There’s very little decision paralysis, which kills pacing for me. It does come at the cost of more complexity and cognitive load though, which may not be a worthwhile trade off for everyone. I wouldn’t use it with a group that wasn’t all pretty experienced with D&D and familiar with their own character’s abilities.