My players suggested it and like it. It would be too time consuming with dice. There is no pacing impact with a VTT or combat tracker.
We find the balance averages out over time, but it can be very swingy, as mentioned. That’s how it goes, though. Sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes you’re the bug.
It fits our style. We allow minimal tactical discussion once combat has begun (it is “combat,” of course) and it lends to the chaos that we imagine for combat. Some awesome moments come out of this.
We play fairly “narratively” and don’t have any “rules lawyers” at the table. If you’re not willing to put your finger on the scale as a DM occasionally, it’s probably not for you.
Have you tried the other variants to initiative in the DM guide? These are probably better options then rolling at the start of each round.
But out of interest how are you managing those spells that last a round, of a wizard casts a spell that is then wasted are you finding that those spells just are not being used?
I've played with groups that did this and it sucked every time. It's like critical fumble rules: it technically affects both sides equally but the consequences for the PCs are far more serious than for NPCs who will disappear after this encounter either way.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
anything that lasts "until your next round" becomes either much much stronger, or much much weaker. If you roll really well for initiative round 1 and then really poorly round 2 you effectively take twice as much damage before you get to do anything about it.
Yeah, I realize that - but I’m fine with not knowing the exact duration of a skill or spell necessarily. Again, it’s random but it’s definitely not a guaranteed balance disruption - there’s equal chance of longer and shorter effects for good guys and bad guys - the biggest difference being making effect durations unpredictable. I’m not sure if that’s an edge though...
Also, I don’t ever roll group intitiative.
You may not mind it as the DM, but spells and abilities and a party work together best if they can coordinate strategy. Many experienced players in combat will organize around initiative, some even determine marching order and standard operating procedures based on where folks usually fall in an initiative stack. By imposing this variant you're turning the possibility of finely tuned unit into a greased pig chase. It just sounds like you're doing this for yourself rather than the benefit of your table. I mean practically speaking, the one guaranteed thing you're doing is forcing the players to reorient their order of action foundation every single turn. That's tedious, not innovative. Maybe you as the DM get to an improvisational buzz off of narrating the action to the rhythm of actual tavern brawl realism. I hope your players find that entertaining but I just don't see player benefit to it and it's totally in the "mmm, interesting" mode of DM using their table as lab rats.
Do a meta session. Build a mock encounter that gives the players even odds. Play it RAW and in your initiative mode. See what the players think beyond the added time crunch.
Lots of assumptions here.
If your marching order is initiative based then it won’t change the first round anyways, and if someone with great initiative rolls poorly it ruins that marching order anyways. I can’t find an example where your scenario is necessarily worse off of initiative is rolled each round.
Spells and abilities work on their own, and regardless of initiative order you can strategize in different ways. In fact, the strategy is likely even deeper - for example:
- Your high initiative monk rolled a 1 for initiative in round 1 - then abilities such as stunning strike have a lower chance of working for longer if you roll a 20 next round. Vice versa if you rolled a 20 in round 1, your abilities have a potentially longer effectiveness.
This idea that all strategy goes out the window because of this change is not true.
And as for lab rats - we used to play dnd this way back in the day, if you think it’s too complicated or “experimental” for your table that’s fine but it’s definitely not difficult to implement at my table and my PCs are fully capable.
My players suggested it and like it. It would be too time consuming with dice. There is no pacing impact with a VTT or combat tracker.
We find the balance averages out over time, but it can be very swingy, as mentioned. That’s how it goes, though. Sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes you’re the bug.
It fits our style. We allow minimal tactical discussion once combat has begun (it is “combat,” of course) and it lends to the chaos that we imagine for combat. Some awesome moments come out of this.
We play fairly “narratively” and don’t have any “rules lawyers” at the table. If you’re not willing to put your finger on the scale as a DM occasionally, it’s probably not for you.
Have you tried the other variants to initiative in the DM guide? These are probably better options then rolling at the start of each round.
But out of interest how are you managing those spells that last a round, of a wizard casts a spell that is then wasted are you finding that those spells just are not being used?
This idea that all spells end early is fallacious - if you roll 20 on 1 round, the spell you cast will last longer than normal 19 times out of 20. If you go last, then you can take the risk that it won’t work effectively or you change strategy for that round.
I've played with groups that did this and it sucked every time. It's like critical fumble rules: it technically affects both sides equally but the consequences for the PCs are far more serious than for NPCs who will disappear after this encounter either way.
What’s the fundamental issue with the permanence of a character vs an NPC with initiatives each round? mind elaborating?
It’s all fun and games until a player gets paralysed for almost two rounds with no chance to save and 2x the number of attacks in the meantime too...
Yeah, PCs have to change strategy likely - more of my PCs have switched to help maledicted PCs MUCH sooner because they won’t know how long the spell lasts until the next initiative. So they tend to be more cautious and cast Restorations and Heals much faster.
My advice is don't, just don't it generally swings combat to your players advantage far too much. My friends and I trialled it on a table once, as in for one session, and hated it.
there are a number of reasons why.
Spells or abilities that last until the end of your next round, if you are last in initiative order on round 1, and then roll really well and go first, then all your spells end before anyone else has had a go. If that spell is something like Shield then you are in a much weaker position. Alternatively, if your wizard has rolled a 20 initiative in round 1 and then there usual low roll in round 2 then they effectively double the length of time that spell lasts. Patient Defence for a monk for instance becomes a far riskier use of a Ki point as it might actually end before the enemies attack.
Enemy becomes stunned for a round, again as above, in theory they could be attacked twice before they can recover.
It makes combat more metagamey, players start to act based on the odds that the initiative order will change next round.
It makes it much harder to be tactical and makes the combat far less interesting because of it.
It can be devastating to the party, monsters of a single type roll initiative as a group, if you as a DM roll poorly and then well it means your 8 goblins suddenly get 2 attacks effectively that can decimate a low level party, and isn't great at high levels. imagine your dragon, it moves into position to use it's breath weapon to cover the maximum of characters. the initiative order changes and it gets another go before the players have had a chance to react to the danger, recovers its breath weapon, and then TPK, all because of an initiative roll.
Alternately and more likely the players will get multiple attacks against that single roll initiative group, meaning that you need to then scale up your combats to account for that. This is what we found the result was, combat became far easier.
All these negatives far outweigh the only real pro, it makes combat feel slightly more realistic.
Only in your scenarios where the rolls are not favorable to the players. Those rolls could turn out to be favorable to the players. Wizard rolls 20 on round 1 and gets off a spell, then 1 on round 2 when the spell ends, which gives effectively 2 complete rounds of effects.
To me, combat isn't as lockstep. You are swinging, thrusting, dodging, moving, etc throughout the whole round, but your initiative is when you get a chance to make an effective attack. Why should that stay the same every turn? Your quickest, most agile characters rolls low and is constantly at the end of initiative for all of combat? I like the randomness of it, and how things can suddenly go great, or not so great, for one side or the other.
Because initiative order is sometimes difficult to maintain as is, that's why that should stay the same every turn. There's a side industry to TTRPG coming up with aids and accessories specifically to keep tabs on initiative order for a reason. Even with a white board with every combatant name written down in turn order, every DM knows the "shucks shame" that goes when they inadvertently pass on a players turn and the rest of the table lost the track too. And some folks want to roll that out every round?
Sure, real life violence is more often than not a messy slog; but the entirety of combat in D&D is written in broad strokes. Do you think rolling for initiative at the start of an encounter and leaving it that way for the duration of the encounter is not just a D&D but a TTRPG standard for the life of the hobby? Again all advocates should really try this out in a danger room session that doesn't effect their actual campaign. Design an "even match" for the PCs, and play it under both systems, pay attention to time, and player feedback. This again seems more for DM amusement than player enrichment, and there's spaces for DMs to amuse themselves solely, away from the table.
Like I said above, VTTs make this simple and completely seamless - there is no time spent. This was done as a PC and DM request, so I don’t know why you keep talking about this like it’s “DM amusement”. Maybe find ways to discuss the Pros and Cons instead of making assumptions about my table, or that I somehow will miss turns (again impossibly rare in the age of VTTs), or that somehow because there’s a market for physical turn trackers that I should keep it as is to support them despite running my game on a VTT?
Im open to pros and cons - but this seems more like a personal rant to me.
I've played with groups that did this and it sucked every time. It's like critical fumble rules: it technically affects both sides equally but the consequences for the PCs are far more serious than for NPCs who will disappear after this encounter either way.
What’s the fundamental issue with the permanence of a character vs an NPC with initiatives each round? mind elaborating?
Basically, NPCs don't suffer long-term consequences. A lich won't budget its spell use on the assumption that it's going to be fighting three more adventuring parties that day, it can freely expend all its resources taking the PCs down. Screwing with initiative order gives it a chance to blast more stuff at the party without them being able to do anything about it. If the average fight only lasts 2 rounds and it rolled low, it's plausibly not going to get a second turn (not counting all its Legendary Actions). Rerolling init gives it a chance to act again before it can be destroyed, potentially taking out one or more party members with a high level spell or escaping to attack again at its convenience.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I've played with groups that did this and it sucked every time. It's like critical fumble rules: it technically affects both sides equally but the consequences for the PCs are far more serious than for NPCs who will disappear after this encounter either way.
What’s the fundamental issue with the permanence of a character vs an NPC with initiatives each round? mind elaborating?
Basically, NPCs don't suffer long-term consequences. A lich won't budget its spell use on the assumption that it's going to be fighting three more adventuring parties that day, it can freely expend all its resources taking the PCs down. Screwing with initiative order gives it a chance to blast more stuff at the party without them being able to do anything about it. If the average fight only lasts 2 rounds and it rolled low, it's plausibly not going to get a second turn (not counting all its Legendary Actions). Rerolling init gives it a chance to act again before it can be destroyed, potentially taking out one or more party members with a high level spell or escaping to attack again at its convenience.
Can you describe more? Like if it rolls low on round 1 and high in round 2? Why do average fights last 2 rounds? And why does modified turn order have any impact on spell budgets?
Thinking about it the biggest thing as a DM that this seems to impact is the difficulty of balancing the difficulty of encounters. Ignoring for a second the countless abilities that players have that could become obsolete (sentinel, stunning strike, all those spells) let’s look at balance a second.
The key concept of the mechanics of DnD more so then other types of roleplay systems is action economy. It is why DnD came up with the concept of legendary actions, a big monster that hits like a freight train will still always come out worse against multiple attackers because it only gets one action to the parties 4-5+
and it is why the difficulty calculator in the dm guide has you multiplying the difficulty of the encounter based on the number of enemies, of there are 7 or more then it triples. This is why crowd control spells, or defensive spells that last until the next round are important. It allows the party to deal with a number of enemies with a single action and takes away some of the advantage the enemy have in being able to complete more actions to the parties.
So the biggest issue with rerolling initiative is that it will make fights really hard to balance, all it takes are 2 rounds where lucky dice rolls allow one side to take all its actions twice and you have either a normal encounter become trivial or deadly just on the roll of a dice. In fact in the DMG there are a list of situations that can make an encounter harder or easier, the first one in the list, one side gets a surprise round in the other, results in an entire raising or lowering of the difficulty depending on the side. If the Monsters get it then that extra round of combat before the players get to act results in a hard becoming deadly.
Now on average you will probably find things shake out normally, you are not going to get monsters taking double turns every combat, in fact it is far more likely with the number of dice rolled (one per player one for the monsters) that statistically one or more of your players will get to go twice each combat round. This therefore means every encounter you plan will become easier to complete then you intended.
But the law of averages says that now and again your monsters will get the advantage and this is the main issue with your approach, for a TPK you only need the initiative dice to roll the wrong way once or twice and you then have the party dead not because of tactics, or decisions made, but because your random encounter that was meant to merely be a bit challenging turned deadly on the result of an initiative roll.
If as a table you are willing to take this risk, if you as a DM are willing to fudge dice rolls or have enemies take silly actions just to keep the party alive then go for it but be aware that what seems a fun mechanic to the players will make your task of making balanced competitive encounters much much harder.
My final point, suddenly held actions become pointless, especially if I am in the bottom half of the initiative order. And anything that lets you roll initiative with advantage suddenly becomes so much more powerful because as a player you might decide to take the lower number in order to get a better chance of hitting twice before the enemy next round.
My advice is don't, just don't it generally swings combat to your players advantage far too much. My friends and I trialled it on a table once, as in for one session, and hated it.
there are a number of reasons why.
Spells or abilities that last until the end of your next round, if you are last in initiative order on round 1, and then roll really well and go first, then all your spells end before anyone else has had a go. If that spell is something like Shield then you are in a much weaker position. Alternatively, if your wizard has rolled a 20 initiative in round 1 and then there usual low roll in round 2 then they effectively double the length of time that spell lasts. Patient Defence for a monk for instance becomes a far riskier use of a Ki point as it might actually end before the enemies attack.
Enemy becomes stunned for a round, again as above, in theory they could be attacked twice before they can recover.
It makes combat more metagamey, players start to act based on the odds that the initiative order will change next round.
It makes it much harder to be tactical and makes the combat far less interesting because of it.
It can be devastating to the party, monsters of a single type roll initiative as a group, if you as a DM roll poorly and then well it means your 8 goblins suddenly get 2 attacks effectively that can decimate a low level party, and isn't great at high levels. imagine your dragon, it moves into position to use it's breath weapon to cover the maximum of characters. the initiative order changes and it gets another go before the players have had a chance to react to the danger, recovers its breath weapon, and then TPK, all because of an initiative roll.
Alternately and more likely the players will get multiple attacks against that single roll initiative group, meaning that you need to then scale up your combats to account for that. This is what we found the result was, combat became far easier.
All these negatives far outweigh the only real pro, it makes combat feel slightly more realistic.
Only in your scenarios where the rolls are not favorable to the players. Those rolls could turn out to be favorable to the players. Wizard rolls 20 on round 1 and gets off a spell, then 1 on round 2 when the spell ends, which gives effectively 2 complete rounds of effects.
To me, combat isn't as lockstep. You are swinging, thrusting, dodging, moving, etc throughout the whole round, but your initiative is when you get a chance to make an effective attack. Why should that stay the same every turn? Your quickest, most agile characters rolls low and is constantly at the end of initiative for all of combat? I like the randomness of it, and how things can suddenly go great, or not so great, for one side or the other.
Because initiative order is sometimes difficult to maintain as is, that's why that should stay the same every turn. There's a side industry to TTRPG coming up with aids and accessories specifically to keep tabs on initiative order for a reason. Even with a white board with every combatant name written down in turn order, every DM knows the "shucks shame" that goes when they inadvertently pass on a players turn and the rest of the table lost the track too. And some folks want to roll that out every round?
Sure, real life violence is more often than not a messy slog; but the entirety of combat in D&D is written in broad strokes. Do you think rolling for initiative at the start of an encounter and leaving it that way for the duration of the encounter is not just a D&D but a TTRPG standard for the life of the hobby? Again all advocates should really try this out in a danger room session that doesn't effect their actual campaign. Design an "even match" for the PCs, and play it under both systems, pay attention to time, and player feedback. This again seems more for DM amusement than player enrichment, and there's spaces for DMs to amuse themselves solely, away from the table.
Like I said above, VTTs make this simple and completely seamless - there is no time spent. This was done as a PC and DM request, so I don’t know why you keep talking about this like it’s “DM amusement”. Maybe find ways to discuss the Pros and Cons instead of making assumptions about my table, or that I somehow will miss turns (again impossibly rare in the age of VTTs), or that somehow because there’s a market for physical turn trackers that I should keep it as is to support them despite running my game on a VTT?
Im open to pros and cons - but this seems more like a personal rant to me.
I agree with Brewsky on this. There are definitely pros and cons to either side, and neither is better than the other or the "correct" way to do it, so Scarloc - play your game how you like and if you and the players enjoy it, more power to you. However, making your assumptions that other DMs do it for their own amusement is presumptuous at best.
It is almost never a good idea to tinker with the foundations of the combat system, and Initiative is one of them. What you end up doing is pretty much forcing the warrior types to do nothing but Hit Stuff in combat. If there is any other complaint more common from the warrior sorts, than I don't know what it would be other than having noting else to do but Hit Stuff.
If you want to make an already swingy combat system even more so, slow down the game, complicate the rules, and make any attempt at planning nearly impossible, this would be the way to do it. All you have to do is rewrite all the rules that involve Initiative. The signature ability of the Assassin, to get an automatic crit when they Ambush? It's already pretty difficult, since not only do they have to get surprise, they also must win Initiative, and changing those rules makes it the next step from impossible. That carefully planned ambush the enemies have, where they had hours to prepare every little detail? A single bad roll can turn what you meant to be trivial into a TPK.
I'm sure there's more problems, but that's all I could think of off the top of my head. The list is likely to go on and on. If it works out for you, that's awesome.
My advice is don't, just don't it generally swings combat to your players advantage far too much. My friends and I trialled it on a table once, as in for one session, and hated it.
there are a number of reasons why.
Spells or abilities that last until the end of your next round, if you are last in initiative order on round 1, and then roll really well and go first, then all your spells end before anyone else has had a go. If that spell is something like Shield then you are in a much weaker position. Alternatively, if your wizard has rolled a 20 initiative in round 1 and then there usual low roll in round 2 then they effectively double the length of time that spell lasts. Patient Defence for a monk for instance becomes a far riskier use of a Ki point as it might actually end before the enemies attack.
Enemy becomes stunned for a round, again as above, in theory they could be attacked twice before they can recover.
It makes combat more metagamey, players start to act based on the odds that the initiative order will change next round.
It makes it much harder to be tactical and makes the combat far less interesting because of it.
It can be devastating to the party, monsters of a single type roll initiative as a group, if you as a DM roll poorly and then well it means your 8 goblins suddenly get 2 attacks effectively that can decimate a low level party, and isn't great at high levels. imagine your dragon, it moves into position to use it's breath weapon to cover the maximum of characters. the initiative order changes and it gets another go before the players have had a chance to react to the danger, recovers its breath weapon, and then TPK, all because of an initiative roll.
Alternately and more likely the players will get multiple attacks against that single roll initiative group, meaning that you need to then scale up your combats to account for that. This is what we found the result was, combat became far easier.
All these negatives far outweigh the only real pro, it makes combat feel slightly more realistic.
Only in your scenarios where the rolls are not favorable to the players. Those rolls could turn out to be favorable to the players. Wizard rolls 20 on round 1 and gets off a spell, then 1 on round 2 when the spell ends, which gives effectively 2 complete rounds of effects.
To me, combat isn't as lockstep. You are swinging, thrusting, dodging, moving, etc throughout the whole round, but your initiative is when you get a chance to make an effective attack. Why should that stay the same every turn? Your quickest, most agile characters rolls low and is constantly at the end of initiative for all of combat? I like the randomness of it, and how things can suddenly go great, or not so great, for one side or the other.
Because initiative order is sometimes difficult to maintain as is, that's why that should stay the same every turn. There's a side industry to TTRPG coming up with aids and accessories specifically to keep tabs on initiative order for a reason. Even with a white board with every combatant name written down in turn order, every DM knows the "shucks shame" that goes when they inadvertently pass on a players turn and the rest of the table lost the track too. And some folks want to roll that out every round?
Sure, real life violence is more often than not a messy slog; but the entirety of combat in D&D is written in broad strokes. Do you think rolling for initiative at the start of an encounter and leaving it that way for the duration of the encounter is not just a D&D but a TTRPG standard for the life of the hobby? Again all advocates should really try this out in a danger room session that doesn't effect their actual campaign. Design an "even match" for the PCs, and play it under both systems, pay attention to time, and player feedback. This again seems more for DM amusement than player enrichment, and there's spaces for DMs to amuse themselves solely, away from the table.
Like I said above, VTTs make this simple and completely seamless - there is no time spent. This was done as a PC and DM request, so I don’t know why you keep talking about this like it’s “DM amusement”. Maybe find ways to discuss the Pros and Cons instead of making assumptions about my table, or that I somehow will miss turns (again impossibly rare in the age of VTTs), or that somehow because there’s a market for physical turn trackers that I should keep it as is to support them despite running my game on a VTT?
Im open to pros and cons - but this seems more like a personal rant to me.
I agree with Brewsky on this. There are definitely pros and cons to either side, and neither is better than the other or the "correct" way to do it, so Scarloc - play your game how you like and if you and the players enjoy it, more power to you. However, making your assumptions that other DMs do it for their own amusement is presumptuous at best.
I think you mis quoted me above I said nothing about doing it for amusement I simply stated the mechanical issues. Another person stated the amusement comment. I have however posted a more practical answer as to why this idea really does cause issues at the table based on the way DnD is structured as a game and the importance action economy has on combat.
Late to this topic but here are my two cents. My D&D campaigns were plagued by predictable combat my first campaign was 200+ sessions bringing a party of 6 from Lvl 1-20. Players zoned out during turns, and even death saves felt like a formality with the static initiative order. Combat became a routine, lacking tension and tactical depth.
Seeking a solution, I implemented a dynamic initiative system. Now, after a year of testing, I can confidently share my observations:
Engagement Boost: Players are on their toes! The shifting turn order keeps them actively involved, strategizing and adapting on the fly.
Strategic Thinking: Gone are the days of autopilot tactics. Players are utilizing items and terrain creatively to gain an edge in the dynamic flow of combat.
Increased Stakes: Death's grip feels tighter. With the unpredictable turn order, even a downed PC isn't guaranteed immediate aid, heightening the tension.
Variety and Uniqueness: Each combat encounter offers a fresh experience. The dynamic nature prevents players from relying on the same old tricks, fostering a sense of novelty.
Now before we go onto the age-old "Oh you just looking to sap the fun out of the game DM" I talk with my players about how they are feeling about the game constantly. The whole idea of dynamic initiative came up after we played a few games of Savage Worlds and they all said that combat in that game was the most fun they had ever had. I recommend people try it especially if you have a table of Veteran players, it completely changes how combat feels and breathes a bit of life into the system.
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It’s all fun and games until a player gets paralysed for almost two rounds with no chance to save and 2x the number of attacks in the meantime too...
Have you tried the other variants to initiative in the DM guide? These are probably better options then rolling at the start of each round.
But out of interest how are you managing those spells that last a round, of a wizard casts a spell that is then wasted are you finding that those spells just are not being used?
I've played with groups that did this and it sucked every time. It's like critical fumble rules: it technically affects both sides equally but the consequences for the PCs are far more serious than for NPCs who will disappear after this encounter either way.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Lots of assumptions here.
If your marching order is initiative based then it won’t change the first round anyways, and if someone with great initiative rolls poorly it ruins that marching order anyways. I can’t find an example where your scenario is necessarily worse off of initiative is rolled each round.
Spells and abilities work on their own, and regardless of initiative order you can strategize in different ways. In fact, the strategy is likely even deeper - for example:
- Your high initiative monk rolled a 1 for initiative in round 1 - then abilities such as stunning strike have a lower chance of working for longer if you roll a 20 next round. Vice versa if you rolled a 20 in round 1, your abilities have a potentially longer effectiveness.
This idea that all strategy goes out the window because of this change is not true.
And as for lab rats - we used to play dnd this way back in the day, if you think it’s too complicated or “experimental” for your table that’s fine but it’s definitely not difficult to implement at my table and my PCs are fully capable.
This idea that all spells end early is fallacious - if you roll 20 on 1 round, the spell you cast will last longer than normal 19 times out of 20. If you go last, then you can take the risk that it won’t work effectively or you change strategy for that round.
What’s the fundamental issue with the permanence of a character vs an NPC with initiatives each round? mind elaborating?
Yeah, PCs have to change strategy likely - more of my PCs have switched to help maledicted PCs MUCH sooner because they won’t know how long the spell lasts until the next initiative. So they tend to be more cautious and cast Restorations and Heals much faster.
Like I said above, VTTs make this simple and completely seamless - there is no time spent. This was done as a PC and DM request, so I don’t know why you keep talking about this like it’s “DM amusement”. Maybe find ways to discuss the Pros and Cons instead of making assumptions about my table, or that I somehow will miss turns (again impossibly rare in the age of VTTs), or that somehow because there’s a market for physical turn trackers that I should keep it as is to support them despite running my game on a VTT?
Im open to pros and cons - but this seems more like a personal rant to me.
Basically, NPCs don't suffer long-term consequences. A lich won't budget its spell use on the assumption that it's going to be fighting three more adventuring parties that day, it can freely expend all its resources taking the PCs down. Screwing with initiative order gives it a chance to blast more stuff at the party without them being able to do anything about it. If the average fight only lasts 2 rounds and it rolled low, it's plausibly not going to get a second turn (not counting all its Legendary Actions). Rerolling init gives it a chance to act again before it can be destroyed, potentially taking out one or more party members with a high level spell or escaping to attack again at its convenience.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Can you describe more? Like if it rolls low on round 1 and high in round 2? Why do average fights last 2 rounds? And why does modified turn order have any impact on spell budgets?
Thinking about it the biggest thing as a DM that this seems to impact is the difficulty of balancing the difficulty of encounters. Ignoring for a second the countless abilities that players have that could become obsolete (sentinel, stunning strike, all those spells) let’s look at balance a second.
The key concept of the mechanics of DnD more so then other types of roleplay systems is action economy. It is why DnD came up with the concept of legendary actions, a big monster that hits like a freight train will still always come out worse against multiple attackers because it only gets one action to the parties 4-5+
and it is why the difficulty calculator in the dm guide has you multiplying the difficulty of the encounter based on the number of enemies, of there are 7 or more then it triples. This is why crowd control spells, or defensive spells that last until the next round are important. It allows the party to deal with a number of enemies with a single action and takes away some of the advantage the enemy have in being able to complete more actions to the parties.
So the biggest issue with rerolling initiative is that it will make fights really hard to balance, all it takes are 2 rounds where lucky dice rolls allow one side to take all its actions twice and you have either a normal encounter become trivial or deadly just on the roll of a dice. In fact in the DMG there are a list of situations that can make an encounter harder or easier, the first one in the list, one side gets a surprise round in the other, results in an entire raising or lowering of the difficulty depending on the side. If the Monsters get it then that extra round of combat before the players get to act results in a hard becoming deadly.
Now on average you will probably find things shake out normally, you are not going to get monsters taking double turns every combat, in fact it is far more likely with the number of dice rolled (one per player one for the monsters) that statistically one or more of your players will get to go twice each combat round. This therefore means every encounter you plan will become easier to complete then you intended.
But the law of averages says that now and again your monsters will get the advantage and this is the main issue with your approach, for a TPK you only need the initiative dice to roll the wrong way once or twice and you then have the party dead not because of tactics, or decisions made, but because your random encounter that was meant to merely be a bit challenging turned deadly on the result of an initiative roll.
If as a table you are willing to take this risk, if you as a DM are willing to fudge dice rolls or have enemies take silly actions just to keep the party alive then go for it but be aware that what seems a fun mechanic to the players will make your task of making balanced competitive encounters much much harder.
My final point, suddenly held actions become pointless, especially if I am in the bottom half of the initiative order. And anything that lets you roll initiative with advantage suddenly becomes so much more powerful because as a player you might decide to take the lower number in order to get a better chance of hitting twice before the enemy next round.
I agree with Brewsky on this. There are definitely pros and cons to either side, and neither is better than the other or the "correct" way to do it, so Scarloc - play your game how you like and if you and the players enjoy it, more power to you. However, making your assumptions that other DMs do it for their own amusement is presumptuous at best.
It is almost never a good idea to tinker with the foundations of the combat system, and Initiative is one of them. What you end up doing is pretty much forcing the warrior types to do nothing but Hit Stuff in combat. If there is any other complaint more common from the warrior sorts, than I don't know what it would be other than having noting else to do but Hit Stuff.
If you want to make an already swingy combat system even more so, slow down the game, complicate the rules, and make any attempt at planning nearly impossible, this would be the way to do it. All you have to do is rewrite all the rules that involve Initiative. The signature ability of the Assassin, to get an automatic crit when they Ambush? It's already pretty difficult, since not only do they have to get surprise, they also must win Initiative, and changing those rules makes it the next step from impossible. That carefully planned ambush the enemies have, where they had hours to prepare every little detail? A single bad roll can turn what you meant to be trivial into a TPK.
I'm sure there's more problems, but that's all I could think of off the top of my head. The list is likely to go on and on. If it works out for you, that's awesome.
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I think you mis quoted me above I said nothing about doing it for amusement I simply stated the mechanical issues. Another person stated the amusement comment. I have however posted a more practical answer as to why this idea really does cause issues at the table based on the way DnD is structured as a game and the importance action economy has on combat.
Looking back, it was another poster who made the "DM amusement" comment. Sorry Scarloc!
Late to this topic but here are my two cents. My D&D campaigns were plagued by predictable combat my first campaign was 200+ sessions bringing a party of 6 from Lvl 1-20. Players zoned out during turns, and even death saves felt like a formality with the static initiative order. Combat became a routine, lacking tension and tactical depth.
Seeking a solution, I implemented a dynamic initiative system. Now, after a year of testing, I can confidently share my observations:
Now before we go onto the age-old "Oh you just looking to sap the fun out of the game DM" I talk with my players about how they are feeling about the game constantly. The whole idea of dynamic initiative came up after we played a few games of Savage Worlds and they all said that combat in that game was the most fun they had ever had. I recommend people try it especially if you have a table of Veteran players, it completely changes how combat feels and breathes a bit of life into the system.