Rolling initiative every round

[darkbard]

Back when there was such a thing as a vibrant 4E Charop community, was there a consensus, or even a conversation, about how rolling initiative anew at the beginning of each round impacted optimized play? Is there even a difference between how such a rule might impact non-optimized play versus optimized games?

 

[Yunru]

Really the only difference it makes is when the monsters go. Otherwise characters can just choose their own initiative via Delay.

 

[Arikabeth]

One of the arguments against it is that it'd take too much more time to reroll everything every turn. There are already enough things to keep track of in combat in 4E in my experience, especially in paragon and epic levels.
It'd mean that some effects which have durations like "until the end of your next turn" could either last longer or shorter, which I assume would just up the RNG aspect of combat.


The turns would be could be trickier to plan out and battles could probably get more swingy depending on who ends up when in initiative, but as Yunru said characters can still delay to take actions in the order they prefer (though they'd likely be more prone to missing out on buffs and such).

I imagine that initiative would be even more valuable if inititative was rolled every round, and thus a shift builds more towards getting initiative boosts... but that's just an uneducated guess.

 

[cmad1977]

Extra layer or die rolls/complexity without a commensurate return of fun.


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[MwaO]

There's very little incentive to do this.

The reason Mearls is describing gains from his 5e system don't have to do with initiative - it has to do with creating an incentive to avoid complexity. i.e. if you want to consistently move around, you're going to go last. If you want to spend a bonus action, you're again, likely going last.

What he's probably not saying is just how many people are playing spell casters then archers and then finally on the bottom of the totem pole, melee PCs...

 

[darkbard]

The reason Mearls is describing gains from his 5e system don't have to do with initiative - it has to do with creating an incentive to avoid complexity.

That's a fascinating take on Mearls's latest blatherings! Almost counterintuitive but I see what you mean. My thinking was along the opposite lines: adding another level of tactical complexity to a system that already does it so well (or, rather, adding an element of randomness that complicates tactical plans). But the repurcussions for things with EoNT benefits and similar probably do become too complex.

 

[MwaO]

That's a fascinating take on Mearls's latest blatherings! Almost counterintuitive but I see what you mean. My thinking was along the opposite lines: adding another level of tactical complexity to a system that already does it so well (or, rather, adding an element of randomness that complicates tactical plans). But the repurcussions for things with EoNT benefits and similar probably do become too complex.

In general, it is helpful to understand that Mearls is someone who loves to add meaningless complexity to games. Also helpful to understand that the player base of 5e dislikes transparency.

So him saying, "Hey, we've decided to reward low complexity PCs by giving them an initiative bonus." wouldn't go over well. "Hey, we decided to play around with rerolling initiative every round and this system we came up with actually (nonsensically) speeds up combat!" would.

Also, rerolling means you can't necessarily plan out what you're doing ahead of time to react to what someone else is doing. So again, complexity drops.