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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5816627" data-attributes="member: 54877">Quick report on how this went: Unfortunately (for evaluation purposes), we didn't end up with much fighting. The players spent most of their time in &quot;investigate and recon&quot; mode, got incredibly lucky with skill checks, and thus managed to systematically avoid several fights entirely and bluff their way out of a couple more. (Not that this was bad. We had a blast. We just didn't give the initiative house rules much of a work out.)&nbsp;Also, only having 4 characters this sessions, instead of our normal 6 or 7, took a lot of wind out of the process. The idea behind side by side initiative is that it scales better than cyclic initiative, as you add players. But with 4, it makes very little difference.&nbsp;Those large caveats aside, what little impression we got was positive enough to keep trying it. One guy wasn't familiar with the old way well enough to compare, but liked the flow well enough. One was neutral so far, while the wizard and rogue players thought it gave a little more interesting flow. They both felt like it was a more natural way for them to realize when their turn was about to happen, than trying to remember when they would come up in the cyclic order.&nbsp;Changing everything to &quot;save ends&quot; definitely hurt the party a couple of times, but sped up play noticably. It was just so much easier to jot down every condition, forget about duration, and roll to see what went away at a given moment. Will be interesting to see how they feel about this when the monsters are dishing out more conditions than they are (which certainly wasn't true this fight).&nbsp;There were three or four times when the &quot;everyone in a bracket moves together&quot; caused significant decisions--either to consider delay, order of actions, or the action chosen. But only once did it lead to the player feeling a bit constrained. &nbsp;Unfortunately, also found out that we have to cancel our session next month due to a bunch of scheduling conflicts. So it appears it will be awhile before we can try again.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5816627, member: 54877"] Quick report on how this went: Unfortunately (for evaluation purposes), we didn't end up with much fighting. The players spent most of their time in "investigate and recon" mode, got incredibly lucky with skill checks, and thus managed to systematically avoid several fights entirely and bluff their way out of a couple more. (Not that this was bad. We had a blast. We just didn't give the initiative house rules much of a work out.) Also, only having 4 characters this sessions, instead of our normal 6 or 7, took a lot of wind out of the process. The idea behind side by side initiative is that it scales better than cyclic initiative, as you add players. But with 4, it makes very little difference. Those large caveats aside, what little impression we got was positive enough to keep trying it. One guy wasn't familiar with the old way well enough to compare, but liked the flow well enough. One was neutral so far, while the wizard and rogue players thought it gave a little more interesting flow. They both felt like it was a more natural way for them to realize when their turn was about to happen, than trying to remember when they would come up in the cyclic order. Changing everything to "save ends" definitely hurt the party a couple of times, but sped up play noticably. It was just so much easier to jot down every condition, forget about duration, and roll to see what went away at a given moment. Will be interesting to see how they feel about this when the monsters are dishing out more conditions than they are (which certainly wasn't true this fight). There were three or four times when the "everyone in a bracket moves together" caused significant decisions--either to consider delay, order of actions, or the action chosen. But only once did it lead to the player feeling a bit constrained. Unfortunately, also found out that we have to cancel our session next month due to a bunch of scheduling conflicts. So it appears it will be awhile before we can try again. [/QUOTE]

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