I'm going to change how I do things Initiative-Wise. It rarely makes a difference what order people go in, but when it does, it makes a big difference. I've been thinking about initiative a lot lately (probably due to Mearl's UA article) and here.
There are a lot of problems with all the possible ways of running initiative, and no great solution.
Here's my most recent issue: Argyle had a surprise round, and the BGs rolled in the middle for Init. Half the party rolled worse than them, so they had to wait (because I've been resolving rounds on the BG's turns, see?) So I did that turn, and let everyone go. The first bunch of people to post had some good hits and a powerful spell, and would kill everyone. Which is cool, but eayres33 has yet to post for Drako. He missed the surprise round, rolled bad for init, missed that round, and hasn't posted yet, and... it doesn't matter. This small-ish fight (before the storm) is OVER.
Drako's gonna feel like he didn't do anything. (Because he didn't do anything). I could wait for eayres to post, and pretend it matters, or I can resolve the fight and we can move on.
This kind of thing doesn't happen too often, but it can happen. And here's the thing: Through some confusion, Pyrus got posted out-of-turn, so I included HIS actions in the second round (where it would fall in init) so HIS gets to count. If eayres had posted for Drako, and I held it, he'd have at least gotten to go.
So for the future, I'm going to just let everyone post, and resolve the round in the order of Initiative. WHEN there is conflicts, I will fudge them by first switching people's targets (to avoid too much overkill), shuffling people about as necessary. If that doesn't work, I will let the player(s) know what the conflict is, and we will figure out a quick way to resolve it.
Sound good?
