Dropping initiative was amazing. I got the idea from reading a post from The Angry GM and the concept sounded great. I started to over think it some and thats it. I was hooked. Now over thinking it led me to this so far. Characters or the baddies can attack at anytime or in any order. A character or enemy can intervene an attack if they wish but will have to make a VS. skill check. The better roll wins. So if the monster was attacking a party member and another party member wanted to advert that attack and was successful on his roll against the monster, they could in turn act/attack. Now this would be the same for the bad guys. On a failed roll the enemy would get to continue but the player who failed the skill check would have to go right after the attacking creature. I consider this an act in motion. Also there are still rounds and keeping track of who went is really all you need before moving on to the next round. I also make a skill check for the monsters before players make there turn to determine if the enemy will act first providing that the enemy has not acted. I just base this off of a difficulty rating that I will assign for the encounter.
You know what. It worked extremely well. Combat encounters went much faster. In fact there was a point where all the players all attacked a mass of corpses that was rolling around the city. They were all on a rooftop and waited until it was in range, then went for it. Also when another player would be going through figuring out what they were going to do another player went ahead and acted. It felt much more natural and was definitely much faster paced.
I'm intrested in this but I'm having a hard time interrupting what you are saying hear. Could you explain a little more? I'm not clear how you decide who starts things off and who finishes.
I can see the confusion and ran into it with my game but once we played through it it worked out. Ill try to paint it in a game session in a way. The idea is to have combat feel more natural.
So the players are going about and they see a beholder just wondering about. Now as far as the players know the creature has not seen them. Now the parties ranger is within range so they go ahead and attack as well as the warlock (both players would be free to act at the same time). At this point you could consider this a combat encounter. The beholder can now see the party attacking it so it attacks back. You can make a skill check for the creature to decide if it acts right away or not. Or just have it use its turn (up to the DM). Then the players may continue to do as they wish. Now if the creature has not acted it can attempt to react to a players attack by means of a skill check. So say you use the players dex vs. the beholders intel for example. If the player wins then the player can act first but the beholder must continue with its intended action directly after the player has made their turn. That is where the concept of a player/monster/npc in motion comes in. Now there will be times where the players can just all attack or move and there will be times where it simply will need to be one by one. Really its up to the DM. With a situation where 2 players want to act before each other then solve it by means of a skill check. Usually DEX to see who can react faster. Again, this would be up to the DM.
Another example. A player sees a monster about to attack a fellow player that is near death. So providing that that player has not acted then they can attempt to stop or delay the attack. They would have to make a skill check against the attacking creature. Again it could be DEX vs. DEX, or even DEX vs. INT. Again this would be up to the DM depending on the situation. Say the player wins the skill check. Now he/she could attack/grapple potentially saving the other player in harms way. On the other hand if the player fails the skill check then once the creature has acted then they must continue with their intended action.
I know it sounds chaotic. It is. It is also fast paced and very entertaining. The DM just has to keep track of who went within the round and make sure that everyone has had their turn before moving on to the next round.
You can look at it like this. In a real situation everyone will be doing something at the same time in most cases instead of standing there and waiting for their turn twitting their thumbs. Its fast and chaotic. The DM has to pay close attention to the encounter and make judgement calls to pace things when needed. There may also be times where players want to hold back with their turn wanting to see how things unfold before making their move within the round.
I hope this helps. There really is no who has to start or who will finish. Its very random.
I really like this, but I sometimes forget NPCs even with the traditional initiative rules lol. Maybe I'll try implementing this when me and my players have more experience. Thanks for detailing it out for me.
I like this, and I feel like this could be made smoother by using tokens for players as group size increase, if need be (with one side for "took their turn" and one side for "hasn't acted yet").
Sadly, I have a player who's a beginner, and player a sorcerer, and joining at lv3, so I feel like this free-form initiative might just result in more confusion for her, but I'm definitely keeping this in mind, because I think it should work wonder with 5e's theatre of the mind.
I saw a YouTube video where a guy got pretty grumpy about initiative because he felt it was a sort of 'boardgame rule' for a freeform game - well that's my interpretation because I like the YouTuber and his stuff usually but he pretty much gave up on D&D because he decided initiative was annoying.
Anyway, one thing he said that I was interested by was in his view Initiative should be a Perception based activity, e.g. Wisdom not Dex. So if you're implementing this idea it's good in that it allows you to pit one person's perception against another's acrobatics, say, to represent the knowledge of the situation vs the ability to react.
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Dropping initiative was amazing. I got the idea from reading a post from The Angry GM and the concept sounded great. I started to over think it some and thats it. I was hooked. Now over thinking it led me to this so far. Characters or the baddies can attack at anytime or in any order. A character or enemy can intervene an attack if they wish but will have to make a VS. skill check. The better roll wins. So if the monster was attacking a party member and another party member wanted to advert that attack and was successful on his roll against the monster, they could in turn act/attack. Now this would be the same for the bad guys. On a failed roll the enemy would get to continue but the player who failed the skill check would have to go right after the attacking creature. I consider this an act in motion. Also there are still rounds and keeping track of who went is really all you need before moving on to the next round. I also make a skill check for the monsters before players make there turn to determine if the enemy will act first providing that the enemy has not acted. I just base this off of a difficulty rating that I will assign for the encounter.
You know what. It worked extremely well. Combat encounters went much faster. In fact there was a point where all the players all attacked a mass of corpses that was rolling around the city. They were all on a rooftop and waited until it was in range, then went for it. Also when another player would be going through figuring out what they were going to do another player went ahead and acted. It felt much more natural and was definitely much faster paced.
I'm intrested in this but I'm having a hard time interrupting what you are saying hear. Could you explain a little more? I'm not clear how you decide who starts things off and who finishes.
I can see the confusion and ran into it with my game but once we played through it it worked out. Ill try to paint it in a game session in a way. The idea is to have combat feel more natural.
So the players are going about and they see a beholder just wondering about. Now as far as the players know the creature has not seen them. Now the parties ranger is within range so they go ahead and attack as well as the warlock (both players would be free to act at the same time). At this point you could consider this a combat encounter. The beholder can now see the party attacking it so it attacks back. You can make a skill check for the creature to decide if it acts right away or not. Or just have it use its turn (up to the DM). Then the players may continue to do as they wish. Now if the creature has not acted it can attempt to react to a players attack by means of a skill check. So say you use the players dex vs. the beholders intel for example. If the player wins then the player can act first but the beholder must continue with its intended action directly after the player has made their turn. That is where the concept of a player/monster/npc in motion comes in. Now there will be times where the players can just all attack or move and there will be times where it simply will need to be one by one. Really its up to the DM. With a situation where 2 players want to act before each other then solve it by means of a skill check. Usually DEX to see who can react faster. Again, this would be up to the DM.
Another example. A player sees a monster about to attack a fellow player that is near death. So providing that that player has not acted then they can attempt to stop or delay the attack. They would have to make a skill check against the attacking creature. Again it could be DEX vs. DEX, or even DEX vs. INT. Again this would be up to the DM depending on the situation. Say the player wins the skill check. Now he/she could attack/grapple potentially saving the other player in harms way. On the other hand if the player fails the skill check then once the creature has acted then they must continue with their intended action.
I know it sounds chaotic. It is. It is also fast paced and very entertaining. The DM just has to keep track of who went within the round and make sure that everyone has had their turn before moving on to the next round.
You can look at it like this. In a real situation everyone will be doing something at the same time in most cases instead of standing there and waiting for their turn twitting their thumbs. Its fast and chaotic. The DM has to pay close attention to the encounter and make judgement calls to pace things when needed. There may also be times where players want to hold back with their turn wanting to see how things unfold before making their move within the round.
I hope this helps. There really is no who has to start or who will finish. Its very random.
I really like this, but I sometimes forget NPCs even with the traditional initiative rules lol. Maybe I'll try implementing this when me and my players have more experience. Thanks for detailing it out for me.
I like this, and I feel like this could be made smoother by using tokens for players as group size increase, if need be (with one side for "took their turn" and one side for "hasn't acted yet").
Sadly, I have a player who's a beginner, and player a sorcerer, and joining at lv3, so I feel like this free-form initiative might just result in more confusion for her, but I'm definitely keeping this in mind, because I think it should work wonder with 5e's theatre of the mind.
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Interesting idea.
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Interesting idea.
I saw a YouTube video where a guy got pretty grumpy about initiative because he felt it was a sort of 'boardgame rule' for a freeform game - well that's my interpretation because I like the YouTuber and his stuff usually but he pretty much gave up on D&D because he decided initiative was annoying.
Anyway, one thing he said that I was interested by was in his view Initiative should be a Perception based activity, e.g. Wisdom not Dex. So if you're implementing this idea it's good in that it allows you to pit one person's perception against another's acrobatics, say, to represent the knowledge of the situation vs the ability to react.