[poll] should initiative bonuses from seperate feats stack?

[Wee Jas]

IME it's not overpowered. After all, it costs several feats.

I agree. If thats what they want to spend their feats on let them. I can think of worse than being the "quickest mage in the west"

People get really bent when players specialize their character and make them REALLY good at 1 thing. How many times have we seen someone complain about the mage that takes greater spell focus and buffs his Int/Cha to make his saves really hard to beat? Going first, making your saves hard to beat, casting the right spells... there is nothing wrong with being effective!

 

[Tyrrell]

Slightly off topic but still relevant is this;

Another initiative booster for a character with a familiar is to change the familiar into an air elemental by use of the elemental familiar spell from the WotC website.

 

[Artoomis]

What you are noticing is the problem of unnamed bonuses. They are fine as long as you are restricted to core rules only. When you srart allowing all sorts of other books, you cn get some rather high bonuses from unnamed bonuses stacking.

I think the whole concept of named bonuses and stacking rules is one of the best improvements in 3e, and, on the flip side, unnamed bonuses stacking is one of the worst rules - no bonuses should be unnamed. Or, at the very least, unnamed bonuses from various sources should not stack with each other.

 

[Roland Delacroix]

Jeez the guy just spent 3 feats man! Thats almost half the feats for most of the available classes! Whoop-do, he goes first half the time, SO WHAT? Much better than Spring Attack? Great Cleave? Or even Deep Impact? I don't think so.

 

[Fenes 2]

A high initiative is not that powerful if you don't have the "standard" kill-any-opponent-in-1.5-rounds party in a high-level game.

 

[DiFier]

having a high init is more powerful for rogues. if you go first your opponent is flat footed so you get your sneak attack damage.

 

[KnowTheToe]

I have to follow the herd, not a big deal. It may be effective and even deadly at high levels, but it was mostly for flavor for all of the low and mid levels. Seems to me an even trade off.

A also agree you have to really look at bonuses when people jump from book to book. Adding a few askewed bonuses can make life difficult for a DM, but hey your the DM, you have 20 different MM to choose from to figure out how to kick the PCs ass any time you want.

 

[kkoie]

the reason I think they shouldn't stack is after a while, it can get unbalancing when the same people, time after time, are always going first. I have one PC with a +10 init bonus, and he is ALWAYS 1st or 2nd in combat. This can get annoying as a DM, because the fact that his initiative is always first, it makes challenging them more difficult. What would normally be a standard encounter, turns out to be too easy because the players get the drop on the monsters before the monsters can even flintch. Which means I gotta start suping them up, if I want them to be slightly more challenging.

Some encounters are not supposed to be easy, but not one of those 'we gotta pull out all the stops' encounters either. Yet with such an unbalancing init bonus among the party (only one character seems to have a normal initiative mod.) it can get annoying.

Not that things are difficult, this is really just a small matter. But I was wondering what others opinions are. (that and my second post was 50% just an excuse to post to see if I still can, since the moderators have made changes to the boards).

 

[phillcalle]

I understand that FRCS is high-powered, but Thug and Blooded are not. Don't forget that those two feats are regional--to take them you've got to be from some particular place or have spent time there and (IIRC) have spent some skill points on Knowledge (Local). Still, even if you relax the feat requirements or use other similar feats from other sources or even certain magic items, some characters are going to have a really high initiative.

Let them.

At low levels, they will kick ass since many of the opponents they face will be flesh and blood and quite vulnerable to sneak attacks. At high levels, the sneak attack won't be so important.

Furthermore ...

a lot of people play initiative wrong. I discovered that I did at a Living City RPGA game (thanks Jim!) in which the following happened:

The PCs and the enemy spotted each other from a distance.
We approached each other, warily.
We rolled for initiative.
I won.
I did not catch them flat-footed.

At first I was angry, but in retrospect, the DM's ruling made sense. Initiative really occured when we spotted each other and said to ourselves, "Potential enemies." Since asking for an nitiative roll is often a trigger for combat, the DM did not ask for such a roll until it was clear that we would fight.

So how are you handling initiative? If you allow PCs to catch opponents flat-footed (or vice-versa) even after they are aware of each as threats, you might want to consider rolling for initiative at that first instance of awareness, or you might want to apply a logical standard to flat-footedness--if the opponent is aware of you as a threat, he is not caught flat-footed.

And as for the annoyance of a PC always going first...use monsters with improved initiative. Sure, the PC has a +10, but a few specters with +7 have more rolls to make-- one of them might manage to go first. The other thing you can do for such a fast character is to introduce a similarly fast rival-enemy-nemesis. Make sure that he's good at running away too.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

the reason I think they shouldn't stack is after a while, it can get unbalancing when the same people, time after time, are always going first. I have one PC with a +10 init bonus, and he is ALWAYS 1st or 2nd in combat.

Then he has luck as well as high init.

I play a ninja with +10 init, with the rest having only "normal" bonuses. Sure, I'm first very often, but there are times when I come last (and we roll initiative anew every round there.)

And it's not that good to be first. I often even lower my initiative so I can get into flanking positions.