Are initiative rolls necessary?

5e has some cool stuff for boss-like single monsters. Legendary actions are great. Lair stuff can be as well. If you don't have that stuff in your system, throw it in. Make it better and cooler. Most players accept that the GM can invent stuff.
If you don't want to toss on a bunch of mooks to a fight (and you might not if your players are the kind to whine about CR), environmental stresses like time limits, terrain features, light/dark levels, homemade or expensive magical effects/areas, changing terrain, flying orbs, flowing liquids, etc can all give a fight more depth and often prevent 0-1 round combat for the big fights. Of course it's all taxing on the GM, try not to do more than your group actually appreciates.

I prefer the way GURPS does it where you have a static speed attribute, and you take turns in order of highest to lowest speed. However, there are other systems of initiative that I like. Savage Worlds has you draw cards for initiative every round, for instance, and with certain edges you can draw more cards per round and keep whichever you want. Nechronica has an AP/Count system where you start at the highest AP and take actions, each costing an amount of AP, and go down the count tracker until you reach 0, then go to the next round.

I'm pretty much guaranteed to hate an initiative system if it's roll once. That's just bad design.

Initiative based on flat stats is also my preferred way of determining turn order.

I'm also not against out of turn actions in exchange for some kind of cost.

In most games and tables, rolled initiative is needed.

So use it. But here's a suggestion: make a system where you can do additional actions or even turns if you burn your initiative.

If it's turn-based initiative, minuses to next initiative roll, if it's permanent initiative, just give an appropriate minus as the extra action would be worth.

Nechronica has this in the form of Rapid maneuvers. You can use them in response to an action, and it takes before that action does. It usually costs AP, or sometimes damage or madness (sanity points). It's really fun, lends itself well to counter-counter-counter-counterplays.

Reign/ORE in general does it well, you declare based on you sense/perception/that sort of stat, then everyone does a single roll which determines when you actually went, either damage or how good your defence/defending another went, and where you hit.
Sounds odd and complex but works surprisingly well and quickly.

Rolling/picking cards every round is a waste of time.

>Are initiative rolls necessary?

Crooooooooooooow

What do you think of the mst3k remake in 2017?

I personally don't mind taking an extra second every turn to roll or draw when it means I won't be stuck with a crappy initiative for the rest of combat, but tastes differ. It's why there are so many different tabletop games available.

Give the single monster additional initiative counts, duh.

I prefer when things occur simultaneously. It's more fun, more fluid, and makes more sense. In combat you don't each take turns attacking - you attack and defend at the same time. A parry becomes a counter - a thrust becomes a parry - as needed. Flexibility, not commitment, is the name of the game.

So Veeky Forums what's the best way to balance a boss encounters vs 5 players when each character can attack somewhere between 3-7 times an action? should I give the boss extra initiative counts?

make each attack reflect damage equal to the number of attacks taken that round

make the boss able to attack 7 times, with a shitload of hitpoints

make 5 soldiers, each able to attack 4 times per round

play a game where you don't get 7 attacks per round 'cause that's stupid as fuck

>the best way to balance a boss encounters vs 5 players
DR equal to party's average damage per attack, multiple turns equal to PCs +1, boosted defenses that can take penalties for multiple defenses, attacks that hit multiple people, and a better system that doesn't give players five attacks a turn. Jesus christ, man.

How does this work with area effects in any way what so ever?

Different user, I think it's pretty fucking funny.

Well to be fair, every character (NPCs included) have at least 2 attacks per round minimum, even the most untrained shitter as the game works on action points instead of your normal move/attack action like in D&D. I remember reading a thread some time ago where I should just give the boss essentially infinite health points until I figure he's ready to die, is that a fair way of handling it?

You resolve it all simultaneously.

I don't get what you don't understand.

>I don't get what you don't understand.
Anything at all.

Okay, so you are making this mistake where you assume features you don't like are faults, and also discard any workarounds that had been done over the years.

>Can't perform actions out of turn, such as someone throwing themselves in the way of an enemy's attack to save an ally.

This is a feature of turn based games in general, so things don't become a shouting match. It doesn't make sense in any turn structure to be able to just go "I jump in front of him!" at any time.

That said, there's a bunch of ways to deal with this, such as the reverse initiative stuff above, or prepared action.

>Interrupt actions (such as shooting a charging opponent) usually doesn't exist and if it does, it's usually a special ability that can only be used sparingly.

Prepared actions and opportunities had been in the most popular RPG series for almost 20 years now, as abilities that everyone can access.

>People who get shit initiative are more likely to "tune out" since they have no reason to pay attention until it's their turn.

This makes no sense. There's the same number of people between your turns. If there's 10 initiatives there'll be always 9 initiatives before you (with maybe the exception of the first and last turn of combat).

>Fights against single targets lose their edge because the party will inevitably get more actions.

Bosses can have more than one initiative or actions; also, this is a problem with systems that have numbers advantages in general.

>Fights against groups become tedious; either the GM rolls a single initiative for the group (leading to swarms) or individual rolls for each person (increasing the wait time)

Use swarm rules, or group based initiative rules as an acceptable middle ground.

>interrupts game flow as the GM has to record each initiative score while rolling for enemies.

Use static initiatives.

Possibly check out Shadow of the Demon Lord's slow/fast turns.

Not that user.

Let's say
character A throws a fireball at a spot
character B makes a move that ends with him outside of its AoE

Both resolve at the same time. Does B get hit or not?

How you do that in practice? Do the players state what they're doing and then resolving the actions at the same time, or what?

I go around the table, and we assume things happen simultaniously. No need to get bogged down

Instead of using the obvious "don't use the DnD initiative system", here's some counterpoints:

>>Can't perform actions out of turn, such as someone throwing themselves in the way of an enemy's attack to save an ally.
>>Interrupt actions (such as shooting a charging opponent) usually doesn't exist and if it does, it's usually a special ability that can only be used sparingly.
DnD 4e had a ton of off-turn actions/reaction powers, a good few of which were at-will. Reaction attacks are one of the better ways of "tanking" as martial in 3.pf. 5e hands out a number of reaction abilities as well, though they fall into the "special ability" category.

>>People who get shit initiative are more likely to "tune out" since they have no reason to pay attention until it's their turn.
Shit players aren't the system's fault. Also, they aren't getting attacked or dealing with the terrain or bantering at all between turns?

>>Fights against single targets lose their edge because the party will inevitably get more actions.
That's sort of a common factor in almost all turn-based games ever made. That said, both 4e and 5e solved this issue. (multiple initiative/lair-legendary action)

>>Fights against groups become tedious; either the GM rolls a single initiative for the group (leading to swarms) or individual rolls for each person (increasing the wait time)
>>interrupts game flow as the GM has to record each initiative score while rolling for enemies.
4e's minion rules cut the bookkeeping there, and 5e's got rules for quickly resolving hordes of enemies, though that ends up as swarms.

Trying another system is probably what you should do, but even DnD has tried to address this question.

>Hell even original DnD had rules for variant initiative, action costs, weapon speed moodiers and spell casting time.
where? that's amazing.

Tuning out isn't really avoidable, people aren't going to be paying close attention off turn until they've figured out their next few steps, doesn't matter where they are in the turn order after they've gone once. If anything, I personally tune out more the faster my turn comes.

Oh, well in a circumstance like that you'd make a stat check to see if B is faster than a fireball.

>Do the players state what they're doing and then resolving the actions at the same time
Yep. The only thing that's not simultaneous is the players stating the actions they take. It usually doesn't matter but in PVP for example it does, so players "declare" their actions in order of initiative. Highest initiative declares first but he can pass if he wants, so he can choose to wait for the next player to declare their action if he wants to wait and make a decision based off of that. If there's more than 2 players then the same applies. Player 1 can go or pass. If he passes, player 2 can go or pass. Player 2 also passes. Player 3 is last in God's great chain, so has to go. Then it passes back to player 1, who decides to go now that he has heard player 3's action. But he could pass if he wanted, forcing player 2 to go.

The higher initiative the more control you have over deciding when everyone else gets to know what you plan to do, and the more you can react. If you want to.

Forgot to add that actions are only resolved once they've all been declared.

So everyone says what they want to do, and then it all happens at once.

Make it a flat bonus that doesnt get rolled. ie, dex 2, and surprise which adds 5.

7. Good, but the rogue has 8 from 3 dex and the alertness feat. His reflexes are enough to avoid suprise.

Its a way for the DM to pre-record the numbers and run off that. I use dnd as Its easy to digest, but it applies to most games that use rolled initiative.

For larger granularity, add 10 to the number and allow for more modifiers.

Its easier to say that +3 to your static init due to snorting illithid brain lets you take the lead, instead of rolling it all up for all at the table.

Single bosses were a mistake.

There was an user who posted a very short, and ultimately generic system that included an initiative system I liked and was kinda similar.
Basically there were two or maybe three tiers of initiative.
Those with boosts to their initiative got bumped into Tier 1 and everyone on that tier got to go simultaneously before Tier 2.
Tier 2 was for everyone that had normal initiative to simultaneously resolve their actions.
Tier 3 was for slow enemies, debuffed characters, and everything else like that to go at once.
Most combats would just all happen at Tier 2.

It allows simultaneous action, elimination of turn order, and retention of any initiative effects players might enjoy.

>What do you think of the mst3k remake in 2017?
I think it's pretty okay. But the new bot voices bug me, and it's super dated a lot of the time in its style. Feels more like an alternate fifth season where Joel stayed around, without the changes in humor and personality of the bots that you had in the SciFi years, which were my favorite seasons. I would probably have liked it a lot more if it had come out ten years ago. Or if RiffTrax didn't exist.

Completely depends on the game and what it sets out to do.

2nd edition AD&D has the best initiative:
>Everyone does their thing, not knowing when they get to go
>Initiative is rolled
>DM describes things in the order they happen, occasionally someone disrupting someone else by being faster, like botching the wizard's spell

It's fast, it's organic, it's chaotic, and it's fun as hell.

We've just started experimenting with popcorn initiative. So far so good.

angrydm.com/2013/09/popcorn-initiative-a-great-way-to-adjust-dd-and-pathfinder-initiative-with-a-stupid-name/

Oh yeah. Look up anything made during the TSR years.

It's hard to keep track of what's official or optional over the years various edition on editions. But ADND had every player roll a *d10* every round and act lowest to highest.

Heavy weapons and *every* spells had a speed penalty and casting time of some sort.

It was clunky in fiddly as all hell but I liked it. casting in mid battle was a allways an interesting tactical decision.

It meant not just risking going last this round but opening yourself to being interrupted by quicker opponents.

Battletech Phased Initiative, Winner goes second gaining them the Tactical Advantage

d15yciz5bluc83.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/BattleTechQuick-Start-Rules.pdf

A BattleTech game consists of a series of turns. During each
turn, all units on the map have an opportunity to move and fire
their weapons. Each turn consists of several smaller segments of
time, called phases. During each phase, players may take one type
of action, such as movement or combat. Remember that the word
unit is used to denote any type of unit: ’Mech, vehicle or infantry.
Each turn includes the following phases, performed in the
following order:

Initiative Phase
Movement Phase
Weapon Attack Phase
End Phase

INITIATIVE PHASE
One player from each side rolls 2D6 and adds the results
together to determine his team’s Initiative. The team with the
higher result has Initiative throughout the turn. Re-roll all ties

MOVEMENT PHASE
The team that lost Initiative chooses one unit and moves it
first
The team that won Initiative then moves one unit.
Movement alternates between sides until all units have been
moved. Each time a player must move a unit, he may designate
movement for any unit that has not been destroyed, even if the
move is to simply stand still

WEAPON ATTACK PHASE
The team that lost Initiative chooses a unit to declare fire first.
The controlling player must declare any attacks he plans to make
using his unit’s weapons, specifying which weapons he will fire
and at what targets.
The team that won Initiative then chooses a unit to declare fire.
The player controlling the firing unit declares any attacks he plans
to make using that unit’s weapons, as described above.
The act of declaring attacks alternates between players until all
fire has been declared. Each time a player must declare an attack,
he may do so for any unit that has not been destroyed, even if the
declaration is to make no attack.
Resolving Weapons Fire
Players resolve weapons fire one unit at a time. The order in
which each unit’s attacks are resolved is up to that unit’s controlling
player. All weapon attacks by one unit should be resolved before
those of the next unit in order for the players to more easily track
which weapons have fired.
Determining Damage
Damage from weapon attacks takes effect next. Players record
damage as attacks are resolved, but this damage does not affect
the unit’s ability to attack during this phase. This means a unit may
make its declared attacks in the same phase even if that unit or its
weapons are destroyed. At the end of the phase, all damage takes
effect immediately.

END PHASE
Players repeat all the steps given above until one team meets its
victory conditions for the scenario. Under normal circumstances,
the team with the last surviving unit(s) left on the map wins. If
the last units from each team are destroyed simultaneously in the
same turn, the game is a draw

----------------
This simplifies it a bunch, missing a bunch of phases and further rules to clarify turn orders of asymmetric sides but captures the idea

>Lone creatures will still get swamped by the action economy
I'd say that's a feature, not a bug. Of course being massively outnumbered will be a disadvantage. That makes perfect sense. It's basically tactics 101: Strength in numbers. Even non-sapient understand this.

*non-sapient animals

I accidentally a word there.

But then what's the point of having creatures that can only be fought as a singular entity when they're just going to be eating so many attacks that they die by the end of the third turn?

GM Fiat initiative doesn't solve these issues, it just passes the buck for them to the GM. These issues have actual solutions.

well, either
>increase their health so they last longer
>give them area/combo attacks so that they can target more people
>give them special effects
>give them more actions

High DR so most of those attacks do no damage

Mobile so most of those attacks never get even made.

Large pool of HP and good regeneration.

>increase their health so they last longer
>Large pool of HP and good regeneration.
Making enemies damage sponges is by far the worst way to handle it, they don't become harder to beat, it just takes twice as long to end combat.

Well, I also gave three other ways
Increasing their HP should not be their only thing, but it should be a thing

At the end of the day, unless you're dealing with more of a puzzle boss (where defeating him is less a matter of overpowering him by ordinary combat rules, but rather figuring out how to exploit a particular weakness that will shortcut the usual combat mechanics), making a fight challenging is going to boil down to one of two things. Either it will be a war of attrition, where the boss is tanky as fuck and you need to grind him down before he grinds you down, or it's rocket tag, where the boss goes down quick but hits hard enough to take you down quick as well.

At least for combat where the victory condition is depleting the enemy's hit points, anyway. Different kinds of combat mechanics, like injury systems, might open up other possibilities.

>the angry dm

Serious question, have you thought about suicide? If not, time to start.

He's nowhere near as bad as Veeky Forums says.
Well, that's not quite right. About 3/4 or his articles are absolute shit but the other quarter range from serviceable to great.

Dude can be a bit retarded on occasion, but there are far worse advice blogs out there.

Some guy taking the time to actually explain shit that's not in the books (like how to do action resolution) and trying to fill the blanks of missing mechanics isn't so bad. Keep your anger for all this horseshit about how to make your game ~deep~ or what pointless house rule you should use.

(I was struck by his recent line about time systems: D&D movement is in squares of 5 feet, and spells are measured in minutes, but where's the grid for time? Why isn't that fucking question asked and answered more often?)

I had a very complex initiative system for Cyberpunk 2020 where characters would have between 1 to 6 actions per round. Active defense would count as one action. Made combat over in maximum 2 or 3 rounds. Worked pretty good for me because I had designed the system.

The action economy issue is fixed by giving the single target multiple actions at different initiative counts. 5e boss monsters are a great example of this. They act on their initiative, the environment acts in initiative 20, and the boss monster has a few off-init. Partial actions they can use. Swarms can be handled in the same way.

You mean measuring things in rounds?

I second One Roll Engine.

Everyone declares what they want do, rolls their dice and looks for a matching number sets similar to poker dice.

The wider the set is (number of dice with same matching numbers) the faster you acted in initiative.

The *higher* your set is (the actual face number on the matching dice) the greater the margin of success.

It sounds odd but it's easy to get your head around in play.

For a dicepool system that makes initiative attributes very valuable:
>All actors roll their initiative pools
>The number of hits determines the number of actions.
These actions can be attacks or defences or any movement that would require a diceroll. Multiple actions may be required for complex tasks.
>The actors with the most hits may go last, the actors with the least hits must go first.
>Actors with more actions may always interrupt actors with less actions.
If an interrupt action directly opposes the original characters action (such as an attack or trying to get to the door first) then a roll is required.
Once an action is spent the characters remaining actions determine when they may act.

In this system it is advisable that character should have some way of boosting or decreasing their initiative dice before they roll since it can be such a large effect combat. Possibly spending stamina or action points or taking penalties to rolls to get bonuses to initiative.
It's also possible in this system for character to roll 0hits and not act at all in a turn. If this isn't your jam you can always add an automatic 1 action to everyone's results.

>With this in mind, would you say that it'd be easier if initiative was something decided through GM fiat?
Works fine.

Or you could just do group initiative. If you want to make it a bit fairer (so that everybody in group A doesn't get to act before everybody in group B), everybody on whichever team goes first must roll to see if they can act on the first turn, at a 50/50 chance to succeed. Team B does not need to roll (everybody gets to go), and everybody on Team A gets to go on successive turns. The end result of this will be, on average, that at the end of either team going, it will be ahead in actions by half of its members.

So, for instance, let's say that both teams have 6 people. Everybody on Team A rolls to see if they can act on their first turn, and on average, 3 succeed. So at the end of it's first turn, Team A is up by 3 people acting. All 6 people on Team B now get to act, making up the deficit of 3 people acting, and now putting it up by 3. Then everybody on Team A acts, making up the deficit of 3, then putting it up by 3. Then Team B acts, and the same thing happens. Then Team A, and so on.

This reduces the swinginess of battle based on a single roll for team initiative. If everybody on one team gets to go before anybody on the other team, that's pretty brutal.

I've found that "whole party goes in whatever order, then the other party" is a big improvement. The player side is more chatty like a co-op board game, the GM has a lot less to track, and there are fewer "oh, it's my turn?" moments. It does result in a large first-turn advantage though; I use a surprise round (expected to allow roughly half of each party to act) to soften that a bit.

Like any fixed turn order, interrupts help a lot to make the game feel dynamic, and trying to use the flexible turn order to game them is extra fun. However they're just as slow here as they are anywhere else. I don't have a good fix for that one.

This doesn't fix solo encounters, but it does make the problem more obvious. The solo needs to do as much damage per turn as the entire party, but assigning it to one character is usually instadeath. So you need to find excuses to spread that damage out, through AOE or multiple attack routines. And you need to prevent stunlocking somehow, of course.

>>Can't perform actions out of turn, such as someone throwing themselves in the way of an enemy's attack to save an ally.
You having shitty initiative probably means you were too slow to do this.

Also, this being possible would cause things like meaty Fighters throwing themselves in front of as many attacks as he can.
>>Interrupt actions (such as shooting a charging opponent) usually doesn't exist and if it does, it's usually a special ability that can only be used sparingly.
Prepared action.
>>People who get shit initiative are more likely to "tune out" since they have no reason to pay attention until it's their turn.
After the first round, everyone has to wait the same amount of turns. If your players cant keep thier attention on something for turn, initiative isnt the problem here.
>>Fights against single targets lose their edge because the party will inevitably get more actions.
If its 1vMany, make it a creature with a bunch of attacks, so it can properly fight the whole party. Just design encounters appropriately.
>>Fights against groups become tedious; either the GM rolls a single initiative for the group (leading to swarms) or individual rolls for each person (increasing the wait time)
What do you want here? For the GM to arbitrarily decide who attacks whem?
>>interrupts game flow as the GM has to record each initiative score while rolling for enemies.
Just have a good system for it. Shit shouldnt take more than like 10 seconds.

One thing you can do is to put all the monsters at a certain initiative, then roll individually to see who goes before the monsters.

That way it's varied who gets to go first, but by the end of the first round it's blocked together into all the monsters and all the PCs.

For example, say PCs 1 and 2 beat the monsters' initiative. PCs 1 and 2 get a turn, then the monsters all go, then PCs 3, 4, and 5 plus 1 and 2 (since they'd "go next" at the start of the next round anyway you might as well just block them together). Then you've got PC and monsters blocked together the way you already have it, but there's less of a problem with whoever goes first having a big advantage.

Are you playing pretend WOW? why doesn't the boss prepare the terrain and recruit/summom/enslave some minions to help him out?
Boss encounters like those always feel boring and artificial.

bump

Yes, but outside battle? Right between encounters, what's the consequence for obsessive trap searching, taking long rests in the middle of the dungeon, setting up long magic rituals, trying over and over until you can pick the lock?
"Random encounters", you may say, but they're a shit example because they're not codified at all. They happen through GM fiat, 5e has no real rules for them AFAIK. In normal circumstances, the GM isn't killing off enemies "when it's most dramatic", he's tracking their HP. There needs to be a system to handle random encounters and time wasting which isn't based on "GM feels like it".

But user 1st edition has had rules for this for 4 decades.

I never said otherwise (although I'll still criticize them, I wonder if anyone in this thread actually bothers with them), I'm talking about 5e specifically.

He's wonderful mechanically, even if his social skills are that of a five year old with a temper problem.

>I use CHAINMAIL for fucks sake
Holy shit, someone still actually unironically plays Chainmail? That's some fucking old shit right there. Good on ya, user.