Reverse initiative systems for D20?

[Kahuna Burger]

Has anyone seen or used a reverse initiative system for D&D/D20? By reverse intiative, I mean a system where the combatants who are going last have their actions declared first, then the combatants who are going first can interupt or remove their oppertunities.

I've played under a system like this in an old star wars game, but haven't seen one recently.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

In a cyclic round, doing the reverse init is a bit screwy. Readied Actions and Delay messes with it.

If you use non-cylcic intiatives, doing away with the above actions and handling actions simultaneously.. then you can run the initiative backwards

I do this in Paranoia, altho with a bit more enteratainment as players cannot change what they planned on doing when the situation disolves, sometimes literally, around them.

For DnD, I prefer the intiative rules as written and tend to use Initiative cards to track combat. It makes it smoother and faster in play.

 

[genshou]

Many thanks to you, Primitive Screwhead, for explaining the dilemma with delayed and readied actions. I would NEVER use reverse initiative in D&D, because I played under it once and my low-Dex cleric never got to act. I was a combat-focused warpriest, and my only use to the party was turning undead and patching axe slices. It works well in some games, but from what I've seen of D&D using reverse initiative, it just cuts down on the fun. And anything that makes the game less fun is bad. 'Cause it's a game.

Of course, YMMV.

 

[Stalker0]

A hybrid you might try is Iron Heroes reading system. You can ready a standard, move, or free action...and it costs the same.

So I can use a move action to ready a move action later. That allows a little more control by the people at the top of the initative chain, without completely retweaking the system.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

If you use non-cylcic intiatives, doing away with the above actions and handling actions simultaneously.. then you can run the initiative backwards

well, that is why I asked about a reverse initiative system. You would also need to tweak certain spellcasting rules since otherwise you'd never get a spell off except on the rounds you won initiative. I was just wondering if anyone had played under a reverse initiative system specificly designed for d20/D&D before I went to the bother of working on one.

 

[SteveC]

Every once and a while I see a system like this, either as a GM's house rule or as a core mechanism for a non-D20 game. I always cringe, because I played with a GM who used these rules for over a year, and hated every minute of it.

The effect on combat was to sloooooow everything waaaay down. Each round you'd declare initiative, then you'd have to go through initiative declarations, and then resolve things. Way too often you'd run into situations where you would lose your actions in a round because what you initially decided to do was rendered moot by other characters' actions. I think this is one of those ideas that sounds great in theory, but in practice it is awful.

To give you an idea, in a moderate sized combat with a group of 5 players, it ended up taking us over an hour sometimes to go through a single turn of combat. That's a turn of combat in D&D, not Hero or other high crunch game!

We would also have the problem of how precise you have to be when you declare attacks. Can you simply say "I'm going to attack the nearest opponent," or do you have to specify? And what happens then when the wizard fireballs all of your targets in range? You end up missing rounds in order to change weapons and tactics. It's especially bad when you have an action every 30 minutes or so and you lose it because the battle didn't go the way you thought it would. Now to a certain extent this might be realistic, but man did it make for some bad gaming.

--Steve

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Actually there would be very little tweaking to do..


The players would roll init each round, then declare actions from lowest init to highest.

Declarations are like 'Move over to the Orc and bash him', not a detailed 'move 4 squares left then 3 squares up and attack the Orc'.

Cut the round into 2 phases to simulate simultanousness:
Phase 1: all characters take 1 standard action, Move Action, or start full round action.
On a full attack, you only use the first attack
Phase 2: again, 1 standard, Move , or finish full round action
A declared full attack can change to use a move action instead of finishing the attack routine.

A character can 5' step in either phase as long as they do not otherwise move in the round.

Resolve the action in init order from the top down. Spell casting is only interupted with AoO's or the declaration of 'I bash the caster when he casts a spell' by someone of higher init.


In some cases, this can make for a better game.. and in others it can get complicated.
Backwards init systems like this are more difficult for PC's vs BBEG + minions as the DM has to plan ahead for the tactics of numerous NPC's.
It also slows down combat.. which 3E is notorious for.

Anyway.. if you find a system that works, bring it back to the board as I am always interested in different ways to run the game!

 

[helium3]

Has anyone seen or used a reverse initiative system for D&D/D20? By reverse intiative, I mean a system where the combatants who are going last have their actions declared first, then the combatants who are going first can interupt or remove their oppertunities.

I've played under a system like this in an old star wars game, but haven't seen one recently.

I played in a game where they used this system, with the add-on that once you declared and action you were very limited in how you could change it once your turn actually came around. I thought it wasn't a terribly bad thing and was good in the sense that it forced everyone to pay attention to what was going on in combat. One HUGE problem that I did notice right away was that it effectively doubled the length of every combat round. At low levels (and we were all 2nd level characters) that wasn't such a big deal, but I would NOT want to play a high level game with this particular initiative style.

In my next game, I'd like to try a reverse initiative system where the initiative goes from lowest to highest, but anyone with a higher initiative can interrupt anyone with a lower initiative. I would include all the "declare" your actions stuff, though. That just seems silly.