D&D General Rerolling Initiative each Round

[AnotherGuy]

Hi everybody!

I've been reading some OSR stuff, really enamored by the turn structure for exploration and gearing up to do a hexcrawl and dungeon crawl game. But it's got me thinking about other old rules.

Who has played with rerolling Initiative each round and weapon speeds? It seems like it will drastically slow down games, but it may also feel more tactical. How does it end up changing the way the game is played? How do the players change their play?

We have incorporated a system of that sort in 5e and it works for our table, making combat FAR more exciting. I personally would not go back to static initiative.

We do not use weapons speeds, but the action declared determines the initiative die rolled.
It is unmodified by Dex and INT determines winners on ties.
Players are forced to declare their action before initiative is rolled.
And it's the order from Lowest to Highest.

Large creatures double the die rolled i.e. 2dx
Huge creatures triple the die rolled i.e. 3dx
etc...

Hasted creatures and certain monsters gain Advantage on the initiative die.

EDIT: I should add, combat is supposed to be chaotic so our table embraces that with the duration of spell effects by not changing the wording of the spells and letting the chips fall where they may.

 

[Lanefan]

We have incorporated a system of that sort in 5e and it works for our table, making combat FAR more exciting. I personally would not go back to static initiative.

We do not use weapons speeds, but the action declared determines the initiative die rolled.
It is unmodified by Dex and INT determines winners on ties.
Players are forced to declare their action before initiative is rolled.
And it's the order from Lowest to Highest.

Large creatures double the die rolled i.e. 2dx
Huge creatures triple the die rolled i.e. 3dx
etc...

Hasted creatures and certain monsters gain Advantage on the initiative die.

EDIT: I should add, combat is supposed to be chaotic so our table embraces that with the duration of spell effects by not changing the wording of the spells and letting the chips fall where they may.

This all sounds great, but one question: why do you bother breaking ties rather than - if the dice so dictate - allow multiple things to happen at the same time?

 

[AnotherGuy]

This all sounds great, but one question: why do you bother breaking ties rather than - if the dice so dictate - allow multiple things to happen at the same time?

Excellent point! That could easily be incorporated.
Will suggest it to the group and see how they like it - knowing them, they will probably go with it.

As an aside: After our post the other day, I opened up the possibility for the players to refine our initiative system, I have enough planning to do for our next session and didn't have the energy.
One of them came up with a decent proposal for amendments so we are just waiting to see if the others have any issues or suggestions otherwise we will adopt his recommended changes.

 

[CreamCloud0]

This all sounds great, but one question: why do you bother breaking ties rather than - if the dice so dictate - allow multiple things to happen at the same time?

i'd assume for the same reason DnD inherently has a turn system, some actions are inherently mutually exclusive effects and you simply need to know who acted first, did the enemy attack and tick your ally's final death save or did the cleric cast healing word in time?

 

[Demetrios1453]

The other big difference with 1e-2e and now is the older editions only had 6 segments in a round, making things much easier to track by segment than the 20-segment* rounds in current use and also making rerolling initiative much simpler.

And it becomes simpler yet if you scrap the most common initiative modifiers, Dexterity being the biggest offender here. Pleasant side effect is that this de-powers Dex a bit as a stat, which it needs.

* - yes, semantics-lovers, I know 5e doesn't use "segments" as such, but let's face it - for these purposes each pip on the d20 represents a 1/20 segment of a round.

2e had 10 segments per round, not 6. They were 6 seconds each, though.

 

[Gorck]

I have to admit, I'm completely surprised at the number of people's groups that reroll initiative each round. I figured some groups did it, but, before reading this thread, I never would have predicted just how many do it.

 

[ezo]

I have to admit, I'm completely surprised at the number of people's groups that reroll initiative each round. I figured some groups did it, but, before reading this thread, I never would have predicted just how many do it.

It's a hold over IMO from prior editions and the groups more likely to embrace it will be older players.

It was easier in AD&D with declarations because when you asked a player to declare, you noted their initiative at the same time. It was simply enough then to just go in order.

When I first started 5E I didn't reroll, and thanks to Excel it is a just a click of a button. If I was doing it by hand now, I doubt I would reroll each round frankly speaking.

 

[Lanefan]

i'd assume for the same reason DnD inherently has a turn system, some actions are inherently mutually exclusive effects and you simply need to know who acted first, did the enemy attack and tick your ally's final death save or did the cleric cast healing word in time?

When it comes down to really needing to know which happened first, a sub-roll will do. We have ties on almost every segment in our initiative system and I'd guess it's maybe once per session on average that I need to call for sub-initiatives.

In this specific example, even if after a roll-off the Cleric acted first I'd still rule the target is down and defenseless against the simultaneous attack by the enemy.

 

[Lanefan]

2e had 10 segments per round, not 6. They were 6 seconds each, though.

1e was weird that way - it had 6-segment rounds except for spellcasting, which for some god-unknown reason used 10 segments.

We tweaked casting times such that everything works on a 6-segment round...and then shortened the round length to 30 seconds, meaning the segments are still 6 seconds each.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Maybe it's the platform we use, but readding initiative takes up time, and I'm against removing the tactical advantage of knowing what you can spare in terms of knowing when the enemy will act.

It's not just your platform.

Constantly having to re-adjust "who is next" sequences absolutely slow down the game as compared to having a fixed initiative order. That is, in fact, one of the major reasons 5E went with there being basically no way to change your initiative score, whereas in 4E, there were loads, and they absolutely put a significant brake on the game as you had to keep track of an ever-changing order.

Further, it doesn't just mess up tactics, it makes players take longer turns, period, because they can't get into a fixed mindset about when they're acting in the round, nor anticipate what will happen, they have to continually re-adjust their thinking, and work on a basis of having absolutely no idea what the initiative will be next turn. That also makes players play far more reactively and less tactically and thoughtfully. It will help to amplify player bad judgement if that's something you want, because impulsive and less thoughtful players will make more and larger mistakes when they have a continually shifting initiative, and less focused players will often get confused by the constantly changing turn order.

And as Gorck says, depending on the specific system used, this may also mean a lot of abilities have weird-ass timing on them, and be vastly more or less effective than expected, which pushes people away from buffs and CC spells, and towards direct damage, which may be good, bad or neutral depending on what you want from a game.

I run initiative every round. But I also run it as side initiative so I’m not having to slow things down by figuring out what order everyone goes in. Basically a player rolls a D6 and so do I as the DM. If the player ties or beats my roll, the players go before the enemies.

Yeah I think if you're going to do every-round initiative a system like this is obviously better.