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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 8557730" data-attributes="member: 6777737">For the life of me, I think I will never understand wanting initiative to be more complicated than it currently is or involve more die rolls. The primary purpose of initiative is to establish sequential order to an event that -- at least conceptually -- is simultaneous. My least favorite is the action-based modifiers. I've intensely disliked the so-called "Greyhawk" initiative or weapon based initiative. Simply put, any justification you can imagine for why a bow might be fast or a dagger might slow or a spell might be slow or a polearm might be fast, and I can imagine another justification for why the opposite is true. If, for example, a dagger is faster than a pike, why did armies ever use pikes? They'd have lost to a horde of knifezerkers! The truth is that if there were any real difference that were not down to the relative position or situation that would determine how quickly a weapon might be used, that implement would simply not be useful as a weapon at all. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill" target="_blank">Tueller Drill</a> makes it pretty clear that what we think of as deadly range in the game isn't how reality works.Frankly, it would make more sense if, regardless of the events of the round, any creature not incapacitated or dead at the start of the round got to take a turn that round even if they "die" before their turn. After all, how dramatic is it to have one last action before dropping? Once you allow that to be your framework, the majority of the benefits of going first collapse. They're not gone, but they're significantly mitigated. At that point you might as well use popcorn initiative, since going early in the turn order is now mostly a point of current positioning and who determines the information that the rest of the party needs. Now going first is both beneficial and kind of risky. Now it's a real choice.What people are really trying to do with initiative is game the action economy. Trying to find a way for them to have a turn and others not to. To get ahead of the damage curve. To get the effects of surprise without all that mucking about with surprise rules. And to do all that under some guise of fairness. In any case, I don't think this really adds much to the game. It's not a strategic or tactical choice. Going first is all but universally the best option, and delay was so uncommon a move that it was removed entirely with very little grumbling (and subsumed in the very inferior "ready"). So it's a false choice. It's also overvalued so players already think it's better than it actually is. So why encourage more systems that make the false choice more false if anything?Just feels like throwing good design after bad.Otherwise, you can still just use OD&D missile/melee/magic sections of the round.</blockquote>

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