I would probably still do initiative. Maybe the dragon runs before the attack goes off.
D&D 5E When to Roll Initiative
- Thread starter Hriston
- Start date
GMforPowergamers
Legend
I always let the person declaring the attack go, then react to it... what would be the point of rolling initiative then having the dragon run before the swing? That doesn't seem to me to be a fun way to run the game. PC says "I attack," if I don't plan on it being a big fight I might even just say "Ok, you hit how much damage" with no d20 rolls at all...
SteveC
Doing the best imitation of myself
About the only thing I do that's different from the standard rules is to give the character who starts a fight the initiative automatically.
So if everyone is just talking and you say "I punch the other guy in the face" I start initiative, but put you at the top. I did this at the request of the players who were unhappy at the character who started the fight sometimes going last and even having their action become irrelevant.
I also let the group use delay, since all of them have been playing so long with that rule they didn't even realize it was gone.
I guess that's two changes.
So if everyone is just talking and you say "I punch the other guy in the face" I start initiative, but put you at the top. I did this at the request of the players who were unhappy at the character who started the fight sometimes going last and even having their action become irrelevant.
I also let the group use delay, since all of them have been playing so long with that rule they didn't even realize it was gone.
I guess that's two changes.
I would roll before the attack. That's what initiative is for, in my estimation--to see how fast combatants react.
Two people are sitting at a bar. They start to have words. One hauls off and swings at the other. Roll nish just before the attack is made. If the target fails, then he didn't see it coming. He couldn't react in time.
If the target makes the nish roll, then he's up on things. A twitch of the other guy's shoulder, and the intended target moves like lightning and swings first. Or, maybe he gets up from the chair and walks to a table.
For the guy that was going to hit, he can still move to the table and then take the swing, if he wants. But, it's on his turn.
With a dragon, of course, the thing can fly and move a long distance. If the assassin wasn't stealthy, then roll nish before the assassin's attack. If the dragon wins and decides to move, too bad for the assassin.
If the dragon didn't know about the assassin (the assassin was stealthy), then the assassin attacks in a Surprise round.
Two people are sitting at a bar. They start to have words. One hauls off and swings at the other. Roll nish just before the attack is made. If the target fails, then he didn't see it coming. He couldn't react in time.
If the target makes the nish roll, then he's up on things. A twitch of the other guy's shoulder, and the intended target moves like lightning and swings first. Or, maybe he gets up from the chair and walks to a table.
For the guy that was going to hit, he can still move to the table and then take the swing, if he wants. But, it's on his turn.
With a dragon, of course, the thing can fly and move a long distance. If the assassin wasn't stealthy, then roll nish before the assassin's attack. If the dragon wins and decides to move, too bad for the assassin.
If the dragon didn't know about the assassin (the assassin was stealthy), then the assassin attacks in a Surprise round.
We used to do this back in the AD&D days, but we stopped and went with initiative being rolled at the start of combat only once, keeping the order for the entire combat, but allowing characters to lower their nish if they want (if everybody wants to go at the same count, then they go at the slowest nish rolled).
Here's why we don't re-roll every round any more (not counting the speed of the game picking up with the fewer dice throws):
Able wants to fire at Zarl. Zarl is 30 feet from Able when Able decides to shoot at him. The GM says that Able must take a round to ready his bow (pull it off his back, quickly string it, and ready an arrow).
Zarl says he's going to run back to his tribe and get help.
Roll initiaive. Able wins.
Round 1.
Able readies bow.
Zarl increases range from 30 feet to 150 feet.
Roll initiative. Zarl wins.
Zarl increases range from 150 to 270 feet.
Able fires at his target, now at range 270!
See the problem here? Zarl moves 240 feet in the time it takes Able to ready his bow and fire.
redrick
First Post
Zarl is very fast to have moved 120 feet in one round!
If you rule that a character needs a full action to ready their bow (because they need to string it — makes sense, but most tables allow drawing a bow much like drawing a sword, which is to say, free object interaction) — and Zarl is not equipped with a well above average speed of 60' per turn, you get:
Round 1.
Able goes first, draws and readies his bow.
Zarl dashes 60', increasing range to 90'.
Round 2.
Zarl goes first, manages another 60', increasing range to 150'.
Able gets a shot off. Zarl is still within normal range of a longbow.
That seems reasonable enough. One can certainly manage 120' in 12 seconds — that's 40 yards — and, if Able needs 6 seconds to string his bow, he might need another few seconds to take aim. Meanwhile, Zarl is still running as the arrow takes flight, so Able needs to lead Zarl a little bit. By the time the arrow hits Zarl (or misses), he has made 120'.
Meanwhile, a decent high school track athlete has covered 100 yards, or 300 feet.
Initiative every round definitely adds die rolls. But I don't think it challenges verisimilitude any more than locking all characters into a fixed action order.
--EDITED TO ADD--
Never mind the fact that, in the above case, if we just have two characters and Zarl is definitely just stringing his bow for a round, I wouldn't even bother to roll initiative on the first round. The order of resolution is irrelevant.
The fiction, even in your case, where Zarl is dashing at 120' per turn, is quite easy to imagine.
Able and Zarl see each other. Able draws his bow and quickly begins to string it. Zarl takes a second to react, but turns to sprint. (If there were any other characters for whom Zarl's low initiative roll mattered, his late reaction might allow them to get a shot in at closer range — say a javelin.) Zarl is a trained runner, wearing only light clothing and on a good, firm surface. As Able finally raises his bow, Zarl is in a full-on sprint. Able hesitates, trying to gauge the speed of his opponent to properly lead the arrow, before letting an arrow loose.
As I've said earlier in the thread, I view initiative as being intrinsically related to the resolution of simultaneous actions. It's not Action A.1, Action Z.1, Action Z.2, Action A.2. These actions are occurring simultaneously, as well as other, minor actions that we don't bother to model exactly. The initiative just allows us to determine which outcomes get resolved first, in cases where the outcome of one intended action would override the outcome of another intended action. (So, again, in the case of Zarl and Able, the first round need not bother with initiative, because the timing of the outcomes have no bearing on each other. Able can string a bow in 6 seconds. Zarl can sprint 120' in 6 seconds.)
You can, of course, use the Speed Factor rules to apply some more fiddly verisimilitude onto these rolls. Different actions get bonuses or penalties to their initiative. For instance, we give an initiative penalty to any characters who are drawing a weapon or otherwise shifting equipment. The problem with the Speed Factor is that this definitely slows down the initiative rolls until your players start to memorize the fiddly bonuses. I don't DM every week, so we haven't used it recently.
Anyway, as Hemlock said in his post, the reason I like the declare and then act approach is that it allows me to create a seamless approach to actions both in and out of combat. Out of combat, it encourages players to think of their characters as individual actors within a room, while also making sure some of the more shy players get spotlight time. It has a natural way of shifting the attention from one PC to the next. It also makes things like aid another or guidance more meaningful. And it really helps to preserve that sense of, "meanwhile, where Player B is standing, something else is happening at the exact same time."
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But what do *you* want?
If you honestly don't care either way and will follow whatever Sage Advise says because it's the easiest way to do it, then so be it. All the best to you and your table. But what I got from your post was that you didn't like this particular rule, in which case I'd wonder why on earth would you follow it? Who gives a rat's ass what Mearls or Crawford says? Who gives a rat's ass what the book says. If you think your game would be better if it was run a different way, then follow your heart. You and your table will have a much more enjoyable game.
RAW is nowhere near that important.
Because the rule only has a material effect on one subclass of the rogue. Otherwise it provides a negligible, barely noticeable advantage not worth writing a house rule over. I'm not the only DM. I don't feel like writing a house rule, ensuring I get the ok of the other DM, and making sure the players understand the difference. If someone else wants to run it, then I have to ensure they understand the difference. A major reason I switched to 5E was to toss out my overly large and growing Pathfinder house rule document. I want to keep my 5E document tiny. At the moment my 5E house rule document is one, uncrowded page. I want to keep it that way for the core books. If the Assassin becomes an underused archetype because of the clarification, so be it. I can live with that, even if I don't like it. If someone asks me about the rogue I tell them to play the Arcane Trickster if they want to optimize and anything they want if they prefer the flavor of another archetype. The Assassin can still be fun, but it isn't optimal.
Okay, having to work alongside a second DM makes more sense that you'd want to keep things small and consistent. Fair 'nuff!
No faster than anybody else, at a run. In d20 3.5, base human speed is 30 feet per round. Run is x4 Speed.
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