D&D 5E The Gloves Are Off?

[Vaalingrade]

I've been trying to put forward the idea that better design for this string-of-reactions scenario would be FIFO.

There would be no reactions then.

First In First Out means not one can parry, counter, block or dodge. Things just happen with absolutely no recourse.

 

[Lanefan]

I agree that would be interesting, and it would be fun to work on designing such a system. (Personally I'm fascinated by games where you secretly commit to a move, and all moves are revealed at once and resolved simultaneously. Like Diplomacy, or Ace of Aces.)

Diplomacy is a blast!

I'm not so interested in a system where everyone secretly declares ahead of time; though I can see some clear merits to such I can also see a lot of potential headaches, all of which came out real back in the day when we tried using such a system.

I'm more looking for a system where things - particularly movement and spell-casting - happen over time within in a round rather than starting and finishing all at once; and one's positioning at any given point during the move determines whether you're in reach of someone attacking on that initiative (as opposed to AoO) and-or whether you're in the area of effect of something damaging as per the flaming sphere in the passage example from a bit upthread.

More broadly, for pretty much anything other than straight melee attacks I've always interpreted initiative as the point in time at which you start doing something, largely to avoid potential retcons such as "Oh, you were moving before your init 12? Then you might not have got there as the lightning bolt went through your path on init 15" as those can (and IME do, often) get messy.

Thus, if your init is 12 and when 12 comes around you declare your action is to move and attack, that's when you start moving. 5e (and 4e and 3e) have it that your move and attack all happens on that 12 init, but that forces the fiction to assume that you were in fact moving before your 12 came up such that you could be in place to make that attack on a 12.

 

[Lanefan]

There would be no reactions then.

First In First Out means not one can parry, counter, block or dodge. Things just happen with absolutely no recourse.

Sure there would. Reactions don't change in themselves, they'd still exist and still happen on the same initiative as the triggering action and be resolved before that action.

There (functionally) wouldn't be reactions to reactions, though; and multiple independent reactions to the same trigger would resolve FIFO.

So, if someone declares their action is to cast a lightning bolt and someone declares their reaction is to uncanny dodge (or similar) and then someone else declares their reaction is to counterspell, the uncanny dodge happens first (and that character's reaction for the round is used up) even though the triggering spell is then countered and there's nothing left to dodge.

And yes, this very intentionally means that sometimes reactions will be wasted. I'm fine with that as part of the fog of war model, where not all decisions are the most optimal.

 

[Vaalingrade]

That... wouldn't be FIFO through. FIFO means the triggering action would happen before the reactions.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Not present, or handwaved away? If your players approach it as a game and just accept the rules as being what they are, that kinda handwaves away any problems or issues. But if you've got players who want to dig deeper into the rules and-or realism of it all (which is what I'm used to), then issues like this will inevitably rear their heads.

I said not present.

Here you are doing it again. You're assuming that my players and I are either mistaken about what's happening in our game and/or how we feel about it, or that these problems exist and we just ignore them. That we don't take the game as serious or are less concerned about realism than you and your players.

That is nonsense. Stop doing that.

I'll try another way to explain.

None of my players think that "initiative order" is a very "realistic" thing. They accept it as a need for the game to work, and so that's where it matters. But in the fiction... in the make-believe stuff that's happening in the game... my players and I realize that initiative order means jack, and we accept that there's a lot blurring of things... there's a lot of action happening that's not specifically noted or tracked. For the fiction, initiative is much less rigid, and just a rough approximation of the major events of the fiction.

For instance, no one I game with thinks that a trained combatant will only make one attack on his opponent every six seconds. It would be silly to think that. Six seconds is a very long time in situations like combat. Instead, they accept that the single attack and damage roll is meant to represent the ongoing battle. They understand that when a character has taken 40 points of damage of their 90 HP, they're not ripped to shreds with multiple wounds... because hit points are representative.

It's the same for initiative order. Reactions and readied actions can disrupt the standard order of initiative because that's what they're designed to do... to emulate the parry or counter, the response to an action in an attempt to thwart it.

This ability to separate the order of operations of the game from the order of events in play is what makes the fiction more realistic for them. It is not "hand waving" anything away or "twisting the fiction"... it is a different way of looking at it.

Frankly, I'm surprised you're so resistant to it since you said you'd like for the game to have as little impact on the fiction as possible.

 

[Voadam]

Sure there would. Reactions don't change in themselves, they'd still exist and still happen on the same initiative as the triggering action and be resolved before that action.

There (functionally) wouldn't be reactions to reactions, though; and multiple independent reactions to the same trigger would resolve FIFO.

So, if someone declares their action is to cast a lightning bolt and someone declares their reaction is to uncanny dodge (or similar) and then someone else declares their reaction is to counterspell, the uncanny dodge happens first (and that character's reaction for the round is used up) even though the triggering spell is then countered and there's nothing left to dodge.

First in and last out is lightning bolt in your example.

You seem to mean FILO for action followed by reaction, but FIFO for sequential reactions.

 

[Bill Zebub]

This ability to separate the order of operations of the game from the order of events in play is what makes the fiction more realistic for them. It is not "hand waving" anything away or "twisting the fiction"... it is a different way of looking at it.

Anybody who rolls a d20 and can visualize graphic combat is already generating fiction from highly abstracted mechanics.

Maybe we should go around saying that anybody who doesn't have their immersion broken dice rolls clearly isn't digging deep enough into the fiction.

 

[Lanefan]

That... wouldn't be FIFO through. FIFO means the triggering action would happen before the reactions.

I'm speaking only of the reactions themselves! The triggering action always starts first and resolves last, with reactions happening between. It's the sequencing of (only!) those reactions that I suggest should be FIFO rather than LIFO.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'm speaking only of the reactions themselves! The triggering action always starts first and resolves last, with reactions happening between. It's the sequencing of (only!) those reactions that I suggest should be FIFO rather than LIFO.

But inside the sequence, a reaction to a reaction is still LIFO. There's not really any place in sequence where FIFO would apply.

 

[Irlo]

I'm more looking for a system where things - particularly movement and spell-casting - happen over time within in a round rather than starting and finishing all at once; and one's positioning at any given point during the move determines whether you're in reach of someone attacking on that initiative (as opposed to AoO) and-or whether you're in the area of effect of something damaging as per the flaming sphere in the passage example from a bit upthread.

That's appealing for some games. It would only work for me though with solid computer assistance to free players (and DM) to focus on what their characters do more broadly without considering tactical costs and benefits for every 0.3 second pulse on the Initiative Track. That's not the way I want to play D&D.

I played Car Wars back in the day. That system had a detailed incremental action sequence (second by second, I think) that worked well for that game. I played (briefly) a superhero RPG with a phase-by-phase combat resolution system that sucked away anything that was actually interesting about a superhero RPG.