D&D 5E Thief's Reflexes: When Is Initiative Minus 10?

[Hriston]

[h=6]Thief’s Reflexes[/h]When you reach 17th level, you have become adept at laying ambushes and quickly escaping danger. You can take two turns during the first round of any combat. You take your first turn at your normal initiative and your second turn at your initiative minus 10. You can’t use this feature when you are surprised.

Is there a standard way to handle this when a thief rolls 10 or less on initiative? I can see two possibilities.

One is that the thief just goes last, essentially acting on a zero or negative initiative count, something that doesn't normally exist in my games, because after initiative count 1 comes initiative count 20 of the next round.

The other is that the thief can't use the feature when rolling a 10 or less because, as above, negative initiative counts don't exist.

Another possibility is to roll it into the next round, so if you roll an 8, you get your second turn on count 18 of the next round, although technically that's no longer the first round then.

Anyways, I'd personally just go with the first option despite my misgivings. I just wanted to know if there's a consensus on this, or if someone has a different way of looking at it that makes more sense.

 

[delericho]

One is that the thief just goes last, essentially acting on a zero or negative initiative count, something that doesn't normally exist in my games, because after initiative count 1 comes initiative count 20 of the next round.

Surely it's possible to score an initiative higher than 20 or less than 1 anyway - it's essentially a Dex check, so could have as much as a +/-5 modifier applied to the d20 roll. What do you do if a Dex 6 character happens to roll a '1'?

I would just have the Thief go last. It's something that's only likely to come up once or twice in the full campaign anyway, and only in the first round of any combat, so it's probably not worth worrying about to any great extent.

 

[Hriston]

Surely it's possible to score an initiative higher than 20 or less than 1 anyway - it's essentially a Dex check, so could have as much as a +/-5 modifier applied to the d20 roll. What do you do if a Dex 6 character happens to roll a '1'?

I would just have the Thief go last. It's something that's only likely to come up once or twice in the full campaign anyway, and only in the first round of any combat, so it's probably not worth worrying about to any great extent.

Oh right... I forgot about the dex mod.

Thanks.

 

[Paraxis]

You subtract 10 from the initiative roll, this can be a negative number just like if a low dexterity creature rolls a low number.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Yup -- thief goes last, when he goes the second time.

 

[Hriston]

Thanks. I was having a fuzzy thinking moment when I posted this.

A related question I was wondering about is if any other class features or game elements key off initiative minus ten?

 

[Li Shenron]

I never thought there could be any doubt about this... -10 just means 10 points lower. If your init result is 10 then your "second turn" is at 0. If your init result is 5 then your "second turn" is at -5.

I don't think it makes any sense to discuss if initiative should have a lower bound. The whole point of initiative is the relative values between combatants, not the absolute values.

 

[Aoirorentsu]

Yeah, as others have said, a general summary: initiative 0 does not by definition indicate the end of a round. The round is over when all combatants have taken (or delayed, or whatever) all their turns.