Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="WhosDaDungeonMaster" data-source="post: 7554620">I don't recall if I mentioned this before but for my group, I also have the players declare their actions/intentions before rolling for initiative. Because we re-roll every round it does result in some characters using the Ready action because they might end up having to wait for another character to act. Once actions are declared, they can only change them to Dash, Disengage, Dodge, or not act at all if they change their mind when their turn arrives. I let players coordinate a bit, through a short phrase, such as "I'm fireballing the ledge!" if a caster plans to cast fireball on enemies by the ledge and doesn't want to risk catching a party member. A fighter might decide to Ready his attack for after the fireball has been cast.But with cyclical initiative, I could easily see too many options for tactical abuse by the players. If I always know my fighter is going before the other player's raging barbarian, you better believe I am going to try to shove the target and knock it prone! That raging barbarian then gets advantage to attacks. Oh, and did I mention he is benefiting from the Extra attack feature, has GWM, and three levels of Rogue so 2d6 Sneak attack damage? So, it makes even more sense for me to act in a utility role and let the barbarian optimize his hits. That is huge!How about this one? The wizard is always going before said barbarian due to rolling higher on the initiative roll. The wizard's player snickers, casts Sleep using his highest level slot, and puts three targets to sleep (so they are unconscious). That player then fist-bumps the barbarian's player and they both have a nice laugh. The barbarian, already in his rage from a previous round, moves to the three targets (which are adjacent), has advantage on his rolls using his GWM and sneak attack and hits all three for automatic crits (one hit on each with due to Extra Attack and GWM bonus action to attack a creature reduced to 0 hp).Those are only two instances of how cyclical initiative can be completely abused by the characters (and, heck, even by me as DM if I want to be a complete... you know...). By making characters declare and then roll each turn, it greatly reduces such abuse.But hey, many of you might not see this as abusive, so no worries. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification