D&D 5E Old School Initiative

[Jefe Bergenstein]

So, a terrible reply matches nicely?

Announce-then-resolve has its benefits, but there are some hazards:
- Can make combat feel choppy (announce, resolve, announce, resolve, etc)
- Order of announcing becomes important
- Players could be resentful if the DM doesn't announce as well
- Honor-challenged players could modify their announcements if you're not writing them all down

It's an accurate rejection of an awkward un-fun rule to counter a problem that doesnt exist.

It slows down play. This does nothing to remove action paralysis. You thought indecisive people were bad before? Wait until now they can lose their action. And screw up someone else's action! It encourages tabletalk and will result in people getting bossed around by the most tactical player at the table. It creates a bunch more mental work for the DM. It's not even good simulation, which is the normal excuse the "muh v-tude" crowd has for overcomplicating something simple that works well enough.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's an accurate rejection of an awkward un-fun rule to counter a problem that doesnt exist.

It slows down play. This does nothing to remove action paralysis. You thought indecisive people were bad before? Wait until now they can lose their action. And screw up someone else's action! It encourages tabletalk and will result in people getting bossed around by the most tactical player at the table. It creates a bunch more mental work for the DM. It's not even good simulation, which is the normal excuse the "muh v-tude" crowd has for overcomplicating something simple that works well enough.

Have you actually tried it? Because I have, and this was not my experience at all. In my experience, overall speed of play was about the same, but the flow of play was much smoother. Players actually did make decisions much faster, and it was very, very rare that a player’s declared action became impossible. It was more frequent that by the time a player’s turn came up they would want to do something other than what they had originally declared, but generally they knew exactly what the thing they wanted to do instead was, which is why I decided to allow players to either take their declared action or Ready a different action. Similation or versimillitude or whatever has nothing to do with my initial reason for wanting to try it and nothing to do with why I’ll still use it with experienced groups of players. The primary benefit is that players don’t sit there thinking out their whole turn. They just say “I’m going to make an attack with my axe” or “I’m going to cast magic missile” or “I’m going to attempt to hide behind that cover there.” It doesn’t take terribly long for everyone to do that in turn, roll a d20, and make note of the number. And then the actual turns go by much faster, so the players are paying much closer attention to the action instead of checking out until it’s their turn, which means they usually know exactly how they want to execute the action they declared or what they want to Ready instead.

 

[ad_hoc]

Have you actually tried it? Because I have, and this was not my experience at all. In my experience, overall speed of play was about the same, but the flow of play was much smoother. Players actually did make decisions much faster, and it was very, very rare that a player’s declared action became impossible. It was more frequent that by the time a player’s turn came up they would want to do something other than what they had originally declared, but generally they knew exactly what the thing they wanted to do instead was, which is why I decided to allow players to either take their declared action or Ready a different action. Similation or versimillitude or whatever has nothing to do with my initial reason for wanting to try it and nothing to do with why I’ll still use it with experienced groups of players. The primary benefit is that players don’t sit there thinking out their whole turn. They just say “I’m going to make an attack with my axe” or “I’m going to cast magic missile” or “I’m going to attempt to hide behind that cover there.” It doesn’t take terribly long for everyone to do that in turn, roll a d20, and make note of the number. And then the actual turns go by much faster, so the players are paying much closer attention to the action instead of checking out until it’s their turn, which means they usually know exactly how they want to execute the action they declared or what they want to Ready instead.

I'm glad it's a variant instead of the default rule as it won't be right for all groups.

Our group loves it.

It speeds up play for us.

We find combat more exciting and scenes are more cinematic. It's not about simulation, it's about pacing.

It allows combat to have the same flow as exploration. For every scene I ask the players what they want to do. Everyone gets a chance to say what they're doing. There is no stopping to roll initiative to denote that combat is happening. Instead everyone declares and if that results in combat then everyone involved rolls initiative to resolve who gets to go first.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Have you actually tried it?

No Sam I Am, I'm not going to eat broken glass to prove I don't like it.

Because I have, and this was not my experience at all. In my experience, overall speed of play was about the same, but the flow of play was much smoother. Players actually did make decisions much faster, and it was very, very rare that a player’s declared action became impossible.

That's quite different from the OP's statement of "if the specific orc you were going to hit dies, you don't get to do anything, but still bad. I also cannot see how it makes indecisive players ANY faster. They have even less info to make choose their action, risk ruining not just their turn, but someone else's. So what will happen is the bossiest player in the room just tells everyone what to do. The order you yell out your action matters, or the place that you sit. Just terrible all around. You may as well be telling me that your players work better when everyone has to talk backwards.

 

[ad_hoc]

No Sam I Am, I'm not going to eat broken glass to prove I don't like it.

We aren't asking you to try it. We're just informing you that you are wrong in your assessment. Your claims are untrue, that doesn't mean you must try it, it just means that you are ignorant about it.

That's quite different from the OP's statement of "if the specific orc you were going to hit dies, you don't get to do anything, but still bad.

Well what the OP described is different from the Greyhawk Initiative that I think we're talking about.

I also cannot see how it makes indecisive players ANY faster. They have even less info to make choose their action, risk ruining not just their turn, but someone else's.

Players at our table suffer from severe analysis paralysis which, along with it being more cinematic, why it works so well at our table. 4 players each taking 1-2 minutes to decide on their turn is 1-2 minutes under this system or 4-8 minutes under regular initiative.

So what will happen is the bossiest player in the room just tells everyone what to do. The order you yell out your action matters, or the place that you sit.

No system is going to fix playing with jerks. I'm sorry that is your experience with the game. I wouldn't play with anyone you have described.

Just terrible all around. You may as well be telling me that your players work better when everyone has to talk backwards.

It is one thing to say that you don't think it would be fun to play; it is the height of arrogance to tell others who are enjoying the variant that they're not actually having fun and instead are playing terrible D&D.

 

[Charlaquin]

No Sam I Am, I'm not going to eat broken glass to prove I don't like it.

I mean, the moral of that story is don’t knock it till you try it. And the fact that everyone in this thread who has actually tried it has either said they like it or that it wasn’t as bad as they thought it would be but just wasn’t right for them should be an indication that this is more of a green eggs and ham situation than a Gorey alphabet situation.

That's quite different from the OP's statement of "if the specific orc you were going to hit dies, you don't get to do anything,

Well then the OP’s statement is inconsistent with the rules for Greyhawk Initiative and Speed Factor Initiative.

but still bad. I also cannot see how it makes indecisive players ANY faster.

Which is why you should try it, because it does, and if you can’t see it just from imagining it, you’ll need to actually see it from looking at it.

They have even less info to make choose their action, risk ruining not just their turn, but someone else's.

Less info to inform their choice is actually part of what makes it faster. You don’t have a ton of variables to try and account for, so you just have to pick something. And again, if you tried it, you’d see that players losing their actions is a much rarer occurrence than you think it’s going to be. Just have the players declare what action they’re going to take (Attack, Cast a Spell, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Hide, Ready, Search, or Use an Object, or Improvise an Action). 95% of the time, what they declared will still be possible on their turn. If you’re still worried about turns being lost, do what I do and allow the players to Ready a different action instead of taking the action they declared.

So what will happen is the bossiest player in the room just tells everyone what to do.

I have never seen that happen, and even if I did, it would be very easy to put a stop to. Just put your foot down as DM. “Clara is declaring her action right now, I don’t want anyone else telling her what to do.”

The order you yell out your action matters, or the place that you sit.

Not really. Imagine you’re in the seat right of the DM. DM says, “the goblins are going to attack. Steve, what do you do?”
“I’ll attack with my longsword.”
“Ok. Clara, what do you do?”
“I’m going to cast Magic Missile.”
“Got it. Dave?”
“I’m pretty hurt, so I’m going to chug a healing potion.”
Then the DM turns to you and asks what you’re going to do. Does what everyone else declared really impact your decision all that much? I guess maybe if you’re a healer you might decide not to cast Cure Wounds on Dave after he said he’d take a potion. On the other hand, you could interject and briefly say, “Hey Dave, I can Cure Wounds you if you want to save that potion.” It’s really not all that different from discussing tactics in the standard Initiative rules, it’s just that that discussion is being held with less detailed information and isn’t interrupting the action.

Just terrible all around. You may as well be telling me that your players work better when everyone has to talk backwards.

If everyone who had actually tried having their players talk backwards either loved it or said, “it has its pros and cons, but wasn’t right for me and my group,” I’d give it a try.

 

[Blue]

Thanks for explicitly including your goals - I think will do a good job of fulfilling them.

Back in AD&D when we did this, we allowed people to abort (without replacement) casting and other limited-resource so as not to waste a spell/magic item charge/etc. Would you consider this?

Mechanically, this should work as long as you also go back to old school Durations as well. A lot of features and spells in 5e work until "the start of your next action" or "the end of your next turn" which now will vary a lot. The intention is that it affects a creature once. Having that it can affect a creature twice, or never at all, makes a big change. And since PCs as a whole will have more features it affects them disproportionately more than the average opponent.

This will have a similar but smaller impact of spells with concentration.

It will add a little more time to a round in combat, both in additional planning time and rolling/sorting initiative, and may make combat last a little bit longer.

Will you have foe actions also pre-planned so that they can also waste actions, miss dropping (or overkill) a PC, etc?

 

[Blue]

A small thing I use from the older editions is randomizing who a given creature hits. My players are pretty whiny and feel targeted when a monster hits them instead of an adjacent player. I solved this by just randomizing who a monster hits unless the monster has good reason (or high enough intelligence) to hit a specific enemy.

I have beast and other low-intelligence creatures either randomly choose targets, or attack whomever hurt the the most. But usually once attacking someone they continue on that target unless given a reason to change. (Which could include lots of plate armor that's not fun to bite, or someone else hurting them, or whatever.)

That's more of trying to play creatures as intelligent as they are, but no smarter.

On the other hand, hobgoblin archers will focus fire, drop PCs, and target casters first. Gotta watch out for those intelligent warlike races.

 

[Blue]

I'm also very much not a fan of weapon speed modifiers, and they would be unlikely to fly in my group. D&D just isn't granular enough in terms of weapon reach and suchlike for them to be workably realistic for us.

We used them in AD&D 2nd, but with a good amount of house rules. It's interesting just for the level of simulation we were going for back then, while now I want quick mechanics that get out of my way.

Let's see if I can remember them.
Roll d10, modify by Dex. I think it was lowest to highest. Add in weapon speed or casting time in segments for spells. Weapon spell was reduced (zero minimum) by the plus of your weapon which everyone had pre-calculated. Any damage during the initiative segments you were casting would interrupt the spell. (So if you rolled a 6 and dex made it a 4, and you were casting a 3 segment spell, then damage on initiative 4, 5, and 6 would interrupt it.)

And I think that if you had weapon expertise or weapon specialization that gave multiple attacks per round, the additional attacks were a +10 initiative each. So you might attack on 4 and 14 if you had two attacks.

Loved it back then, that would drive me crazy now unless I was playing a pure wargame like battletech.

 

[Blue]

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.”

The original post explicitly says the opposite. "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."

Having players declare specific targets and waste actions if they are dead is the first objective of his change.

Please be careful before spreading disinformation. What your assumptions are may not match what the OP is actually saying.