Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Same goes if you're using two weapons, in my view: each gets its own initiative; and if you want to attack with both at once the faster one has to wait for the slower one's initiative.Yeah, side initiative seems like it would be kinda swingy. I've never tried it myself. I guess it's a holdover from the wargame roots.
I'm planning on trying out rolling initiative each round to mix things up. It sounds fun.
My house rule for Action Surge is the second action happens at initiative minus 10 in imitation of the 17th level thief ability. It hasn't come up yet though because the fighter I'm DMing is still level 1.
Reading over the relevant bits of the 1e DMG shows me we might just have misinterpreted it right from day 1. We always assumed that because the initiative die was d6 that each round logically had 6 segments (except spellcasting had ten). It never occurred to us that the d6 represented only the first 6 segments of each ten-segment round! (it's of no matter now; we long ago went the other way and converted all the casting times to fit 6-segment rounds).Yeah, I just noticed that ranged attacks add a dex bonus to initiative while melee does not. It looks like it could get pretty messy. It's funny that Gygax warned against moving away from side initiative, considering all the other complications he built into the system. I haven't been able to find the six segment round, though. Presumably the other four segments are for resolving actions (like casting spells) that were started on the first six initiative counts?
Lan-"while looking this up I also found yet another Gygax description of what hit points represent"-efan