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Message: <blockquote data-quote="redrick" data-source="post: 6607278" data-attributes="member: 6777696">Yes, we tend to use a "perpetual initiative" style system outside of combat, where players generally cycle around the table describing their actions. (Instead of the "rising up from the chaos" system that we used to use, where players debate amongst themselves and occasionally call out coherent actions to be adjudicated.) It ultimately makes transitioning into combat fairly seamless. Of course, now that we're using action declaration in combat, I might also start using action declaration out of combat in a similar fashion. (Currently, players "take their turns" in table order, with me cutting them off if their turn goes onto long. But now that we're declaring all combat actions before adjudication, I might carry that over to non-combat actions.)Awesome, yeah, that is sort of what I was curious about. I'm going to run with the speed factor for a few more sessions, in the hope that some of the complexity smooths out as everybody familiarizes themselves with the system. I've given everybody a printed index card with the relevant bonuses and penalties, so they don't have to memorize all of that. I also might add and remove various bonuses over time.This article I found while googling the topic proposed a few mods that I'm using: <a href="http://angrydm.com/2015/02/fine-i-wrote-about-speed-factor-initiative-in-dd-5e/" target="_blank">http://angrydm.com/2015/02/fine-i-wrote-about-speed-factor-initiative-in-dd-5e/</a>Namely, just use the slowest action for your penalty/bonus, and adding penalties for swapping equipment, which might help a bit with the balance when it comes to penalizing heavy weapon fighters. (Dex fighters tend to a lot of equipment swapping as they throw daggers, draw daggers, switch to short bows, etc. So the rogue with two drawn light weapons can slip in quickly, but they'll balance it out with penalties on turns where they drop the swords and switch to the short bow, or whatever. Instead of just, hey Str fighter with -1 init bonus, now you have a -5 init bonus! Have fun always going last!)Thinking a bit more about the speed factor in particular, I see it as a bit of a concession to the strategizers. Rerolling initiative after action declarations adds a lot of uncertainty. Which is cool! But some players like a little more strategy than that allows, so the speed factor gives them a little room to exert control in where they might come up in the initiative.Finally, this week, I'll be adding dodge, dash, disengage and aid another to the list as having +2 bonuses. (But, again, we just use the slowest action, so this doesn't let rogues get an additional bonus for using disengage with their cunning action.) So there's a little perk for folks who decide to declare a non-offensive action, and I think folks wanting to assist another character should have a decent chance of beating that character in the initiative! (The aided character could always choose to ready their action for after their helper has a chance to distract the opponent, of course.)</blockquote>

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