I allow it sometimes. For example, one of my players had her bow ready and was getting ready to fire at the group of 5-6 goblins heading towards them. Since they weren't in melee range, she asked if she could delay after the wizard cast a spell. Seemed legit as the enemies were a ways off. Wizard cast spell, a few goblins died, she picked off one remaining.
I do different initiative every round, so I am a little lenient on when they can do something because they are all new players.
You do realize that if you allow someone to make an attack before calling for initiative, you are doing the same thing you argued against in your first post here. You are letting someone get "Benefit X" for a whole round while everyone one else gets nada. The reason the benefit happens is different but, the outcome is the same. Why bend a certain set of rules(Initiative and Surprise) and be completely inflexible on the other(Initiative Re-ordering)?
Because you can't roll initiative when somebody that you have never seen, and you don't know exists, shoots a silent crossbow at you from across the street, or while you are sleeping and the creature creeping up on you has made a successful Stealth check that you don't even know about. The creatures don't know that they are in combat.
If you don't follow this for inciting incidents, then you get the following type of situation:
DM: You are standing with Toby, the friendly elf, and the rest of the party in the Cheery Happy Tavern. Everybody roll initiative.
Players: Initiative? Why?
DM: You have to roll it.
(players roll)
DM: Ok, up first is Jenny the Barbarian. What do you do?
Jenny: I am drinking my drink. I don't see any enemies. I don't believe I'm in combat.
DM: Ok great. Harry the Wizard, your turn.
Harry: I cast Mirror Image.
DM looks at his notes. Toby the not-so-friendly elf was intending to stab Harry the Wizard. But now, he's not going to. Toby continues to drink.
The turn finishes, and the players are no longer in combat. Toby the elf waits until the Mirror Image spell wears off.
DM: Ok. Roll initiative again.
Any creature can make attacks outside of initiative. The DM decides when initiative is rolled, and when you move from out of combat, to in combat.
The best option is for the inciting incident occur, then roll for surprise, then roll initiative. Surprised players miss their turn on the first turn of combat, and work down from the top.
But again, the system already covers this.
Roll initiative. Why? Because the not-so-friendly elf wants to stab the wizard. As they don't expect it to be combat, they are surprised.
Jenny - surprised, basically skips a go
Harry - surprised, basically skips a go
Toby - does that surprising attack that triggered the combat
other players - surprised, skips a go
Jenny - your go, Toby just stabbed Harry, what do you do?
Essentially, in your example, the wizard wouldn't have had the chance to cast mirror image.
It's fundamentally the same as saying "Toby stabs Harry, now everyone roll for initiative", so it's probably easier to just do it that way. Alternatively, you can have them roll a load of initiatives at the start of the game and use them throughout so that they can drop into initiative without needing to roll in these sorts of situations!
DM: You are standing with Toby, the friendly elf, and the rest of the party in the Cheery Happy Tavern. Everybody roll initiative.
Players: Initiative? Why? It's unlikely that they all say this. Which one?
DM: You have to roll it.
(players roll)
DM: Ok, up first is Jenny the Barbarian. What do you do?
Jenny: I am drinking my drink. I don't see any enemies. I don't believe I'm in combat.
DM: Ok great. Harry the Wizard, your turn.
Harry: I cast Mirror Image.
Harry is meta-gaming. Is Harry the one who objected to rolling in the first place? Harry should be told no.
The session goes on from there. Everyone knows that meta-gaming is a bad habit and should be discouraged. Sometimes Toby the Not So Friendly Elf should go first, but only if initiative is checked first, and Toby won the Initiative. Nobody should play like Harry, on either side of the DM screen.
I allow it sometimes. For example, one of my players had her bow ready and was getting ready to fire at the group of 5-6 goblins heading towards them. Since they weren't in melee range, she asked if she could delay after the wizard cast a spell. Seemed legit as the enemies were a ways off. Wizard cast spell, a few goblins died, she picked off one remaining.
This is the character using the Ready action - specifying a trigger (the wizard casts a spell) and the thing you will do (shoot your bow at one of the survivors of the spell).
I do different initiative every round, so I am a little lenient on when they can do something because they are all new players.
I was in a game once that did this. It slowed down the fight massively with rerolling and reorganising Initiative every round - and it sometimes meant a player was waiting for their turn for a VERY LONG time (got top in initiative one round, got bottom of initiative in the next round).
It also meant tactical thinking had to be rethought at the start of each round since everybody was (most likely) acting in a different order.
I do different initiative every round, so I am a little lenient on when they can do something because they are all new players.
I was in a game once that did this. It slowed down the fight massively with rerolling and reorganising Initiative every round - and it sometimes meant a player was waiting for their turn for a VERY LONG time (got top in initiative one round, got bottom of initiative in the next round).
It also meant tactical thinking had to be rethought at the start of each round since everybody was (most likely) acting in a different order.
I hear you about the game play, but to me this is a more realistic process to how a fight would work. A melee is full of ducking, parrying, etc, and your initiative is when you get a chance to make a (hopefully) effective attack. That doesn't come at the same time every round.. And while sometimes you wait for a long time, sometimes you wait for a short time - late initiative one round, early the next. If you have a high DEX, you have less chance of being hosed for a whole fight by a bad roll. Either way is good, I just prefer the "every round" approach. And NPCs also can get hosed with bad rolls every round. I don't find it takes much time because the party is 3 PCs. In a larger party, that could be a lot longer..
I do different initiative every round, so I am a little lenient on when they can do something because they are all new players.
I was in a game once that did this. It slowed down the fight massively with rerolling and reorganising Initiative every round - and it sometimes meant a player was waiting for their turn for a VERY LONG time (got top in initiative one round, got bottom of initiative in the next round).
It also meant tactical thinking had to be rethought at the start of each round since everybody was (most likely) acting in a different order.
I hear you about the game play, but to me this is a more realistic process to how a fight would work.
True, but this is a game, and sometimes realism messes with game features.
For example, a monk player goes last in this round, and on their turn stuns a creature, then rolls top initiative next round. Now the party got no benefit from the stunning strike.
I do different initiative every round, so I am a little lenient on when they can do something because they are all new players.
I was in a game once that did this. It slowed down the fight massively with rerolling and reorganising Initiative every round - and it sometimes meant a player was waiting for their turn for a VERY LONG time (got top in initiative one round, got bottom of initiative in the next round).
It also meant tactical thinking had to be rethought at the start of each round since everybody was (most likely) acting in a different order.
I hear you about the game play, but to me this is a more realistic process to how a fight would work.
True, but this is a game, and sometimes realism messes with game features.
For example, a monk player goes last in this round, and on their turn stuns a creature, then rolls top initiative next round. Now the party got no benefit from the stunning strike.
or that same monk goes first on this round and stuns a creature, then goes last on the initiative next round.. Now the party got two full rounds on benefits. Or he goes the same on every round with the other method and gets one round. Seems to me it would average out about the same.
I think rerolling initiative every turn would work well if you tied all "until your next turn" spells to work on the initiative they were cast. It would mean more bookkeeping, but in the digital age that can easily be automated, as can the dice rolls, meaning that all the bookkeeping can be easily turned into one click of a button that says "new round"!
saying it'll average out is not going to work well when combats tend to last a few rounds. To "average out" you would need a sample set of about 60 rounds (should get roughly 3 of each number on a balanced D20), which means by the time it "averages out", it could have caused a lot of issues!
I wouldn't want to roll initiative every turn without some sort of computing to make it quicker! Plus in larger groups, people might end up waiting even longer for their turns, which would suck out the fun for them, and that's universally bad!
My main issue is that it slowed down the game tremendously, having to collect initiative rolls every round and adjust the order accordingly.
Combat is already slow enough, why add something that will make it even slower?
As said earlier, tracking a one-turn ability to last until a certain initiative on the following turn adds more book-keeping - which likely will slow things down again. Also some abilities last until the start of end of YOUR turn on the following round, and you might be sharing an initiative score with other creatures, so lasting until just the start/end of the overall initiative score might affect this order.
The pros of changing initiative (from a character/player perspective) would be to exploit the duration mechanics and interactions with other characters.
1) A player making death saves delays their initiative until after the healer has a turn so they can bring them back up. There is nothing special about your initiative number - it is book keeping to resolve actions that are more or less happening simultaneously in a six second time window.
2) A character causes an effect lasting to the end or beginning of their next turn (e.g. shield for wizard, stun for monk) - delaying their initiative could allow the wizard to defend against additional attacks without casting shield again. In the case of the monk, other characters might be able to attack the stunned target before the monk's turn comes around again.
3) The party rearranges their initiative to more efficiently use their abilities to eliminate opponents (eg shield master shove etc).
---
In addition, MOST of the times when delaying an action is desirable can be addressed using the Ready action. You don't need to change the initiative order just decide your action and a required trigger and it can happen any time. Someone used an example of a wizard casting a spell and a martial character wanting to delay their attack until after the spell is resolved - this is a perfect example of a Ready action situation rather than delaying initiative.
(A DM could house rule that a Ready action allows the readying of an Attack action rather than just one attack to get around the issue that readied attacks are intrinsically weaker than readied spells).
Ready doesn't cover all of the situations but it does cover many.
I don't get why so many people are saying they'd only allow moving down in initiative and not up. If you move up in initiative you don't get to go earlier, you just move farther down than 0.
I tend to go into way too much detail, but I've said in the past, there has to be a sacrifice involved somewhere, or you've overstepped your boundaries, no matter which side of the DM screens you're on. I believe I did say it could go back up, in the next round, right back to the original initiative. You may easily have missed that comment, it was a while back.
I don't get why so many people are saying they'd only allow moving down in initiative and not up. If you move up in initiative you don't get to go earlier, you just move farther down than 0.
I don't think people are meaning you move your turn until the next round (that is moving down the initiative order because first in round 2 is after last in round 1).
I think not allowing moving up the initiative order is when for example the cleric is first on initiate and he says he wants to swap his position in initiative with the assassin rogue (he moves down the ordrer and the rogue moves up)
I don't allow changes to initiative, while the hold an action doesn't allow you to do a full turn (you can't say if the bad guy gets within 30 ft of me I will run up to him, attack him with my action and make an off hnd attack with my bonus action) it does allow you to delay your action without losing balance. The fact that you lose something my delaying your action speeds up the game because otherwise the players would be likely to have a debate about what order they should play, or they would be able to use the same tactics every battle (eg the cleric casts guiding bolt immediately before the rogues turn so they have advantage to get sneak attack).
I have had players ask if they can ready a move instead of an action and have pointed out that readying a dash action has the same effect.
By the way 0 isn't necessarily the bottom of the initiative order of a round, I've had zombies role a natural one for -1 on initiative..
If I allowed it (and that's a big if), I'd put the following rules on it:
You can only change it once per combat, when we are rolling initiative, and before anyone takes a turn.
You can only move down in the order, never up
You don't get to know where enemies are in the order when you do this
You don't get to pick a number, you pick an ally, and your number becomes one less than theirs ("I'm taking my turn after [PC name]")
You don't get to do this if you are surprised.
Your new number is your permanent number for this combat
IMO this would be the least disruptive way of introducing this mechanic without also creating shenanigans with turn order and effect durations
This is basically how I handle it, minus "You don't get to do this if you are surprised." Really curious what the purpose of that rule is, since they're already limited to moving downwards in the order. That'd cause them to be surprised and reaction-less longer.
In my experience this tends to come up because the players are trying to coordinate with each other at the beginning of combat, and initiative assumes everyone's scrambling to act as quickly as possible, so it's quite reasonable to let someone go slower on purpose in the first round. I could say a case where two players are surprised but still want to act together on their second turn.
I don't get why so many people are saying they'd only allow moving down in initiative and not up. If you move up in initiative you don't get to go earlier, you just move farther down than 0.
I don't think people are meaning you move your turn until the next round (that is moving down the initiative order because first in round 2 is after last in round 1).
I think not allowing moving up the initiative order is when for example the cleric is first on initiate and he says he wants to swap his position in initiative with the assassin rogue (he moves down the ordrer and the rogue moves up)
In that case I don't get why they bother saying it at all.
Your turn comes up at initiative 10 and you want to change your initiative to 25, fine it's 25. The initiative tracker is currently at 10 and you don't act until 25 comes around.
If I allowed it (and that's a big if), I'd put the following rules on it:
You can only change it once per combat, when we are rolling initiative, and before anyone takes a turn.
You can only move down in the order, never up
You don't get to know where enemies are in the order when you do this
You don't get to pick a number, you pick an ally, and your number becomes one less than theirs ("I'm taking my turn after [PC name]")
You don't get to do this if you are surprised.
Your new number is your permanent number for this combat
IMO this would be the least disruptive way of introducing this mechanic without also creating shenanigans with turn order and effect durations
This is basically how I handle it, minus "You don't get to do this if you are surprised." Really curious what the purpose of that rule is, since they're already limited to moving downwards in the order. That'd cause them to be surprised and reaction-less longer.
In my experience this tends to come up because the players are trying to coordinate with each other at the beginning of combat, and initiative assumes everyone's scrambling to act as quickly as possible, so it's quite reasonable to let someone go slower on purpose in the first round. I could say a case where two players are surprised but still want to act together on their second turn.
To me the reason for the surprise rule is more roleplay based than mechanics. in character, I see this option as being a deliberate "I will time my actions to follow ally [x]" which is basically a more powerful "ready", but which IMO would be thrown out the window if the group is surprised and that sort of planning is scrambled by ambush. i suppose could amend the rule to say that if a PC is surprised, they can't pick an ally for this option that isn't surprised.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I allow it sometimes. For example, one of my players had her bow ready and was getting ready to fire at the group of 5-6 goblins heading towards them. Since they weren't in melee range, she asked if she could delay after the wizard cast a spell. Seemed legit as the enemies were a ways off. Wizard cast spell, a few goblins died, she picked off one remaining.
I do different initiative every round, so I am a little lenient on when they can do something because they are all new players.
But again, the system already covers this.
Roll initiative. Why? Because the not-so-friendly elf wants to stab the wizard. As they don't expect it to be combat, they are surprised.
Jenny - surprised, basically skips a go
Harry - surprised, basically skips a go
Toby - does that surprising attack that triggered the combat
other players - surprised, skips a go
Jenny - your go, Toby just stabbed Harry, what do you do?
Essentially, in your example, the wizard wouldn't have had the chance to cast mirror image.
It's fundamentally the same as saying "Toby stabs Harry, now everyone roll for initiative", so it's probably easier to just do it that way. Alternatively, you can have them roll a load of initiatives at the start of the game and use them throughout so that they can drop into initiative without needing to roll in these sorts of situations!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
DM: You are standing with Toby, the friendly elf, and the rest of the party in the Cheery Happy Tavern. Everybody roll initiative.
Players: Initiative? Why?
It's unlikely that they all say this. Which one?
DM: You have to roll it.
(players roll)
DM: Ok, up first is Jenny the Barbarian. What do you do?
Jenny: I am drinking my drink. I don't see any enemies. I don't believe I'm in combat.
DM: Ok great. Harry the Wizard, your turn.
Harry: I cast Mirror Image.
Harry is meta-gaming. Is Harry the one who objected to rolling in the first place? Harry should be told no.
The session goes on from there. Everyone knows that meta-gaming is a bad habit and should be discouraged. Sometimes Toby the Not So Friendly Elf should go first, but only if initiative is checked first, and Toby won the Initiative. Nobody should play like Harry, on either side of the DM screen.
<Insert clever signature here>
This is the character using the Ready action - specifying a trigger (the wizard casts a spell) and the thing you will do (shoot your bow at one of the survivors of the spell).
I was in a game once that did this. It slowed down the fight massively with rerolling and reorganising Initiative every round - and it sometimes meant a player was waiting for their turn for a VERY LONG time (got top in initiative one round, got bottom of initiative in the next round).
It also meant tactical thinking had to be rethought at the start of each round since everybody was (most likely) acting in a different order.
I hear you about the game play, but to me this is a more realistic process to how a fight would work. A melee is full of ducking, parrying, etc, and your initiative is when you get a chance to make a (hopefully) effective attack. That doesn't come at the same time every round.. And while sometimes you wait for a long time, sometimes you wait for a short time - late initiative one round, early the next. If you have a high DEX, you have less chance of being hosed for a whole fight by a bad roll. Either way is good, I just prefer the "every round" approach. And NPCs also can get hosed with bad rolls every round. I don't find it takes much time because the party is 3 PCs. In a larger party, that could be a lot longer..
True, but this is a game, and sometimes realism messes with game features.
For example, a monk player goes last in this round, and on their turn stuns a creature, then rolls top initiative next round. Now the party got no benefit from the stunning strike.
or that same monk goes first on this round and stuns a creature, then goes last on the initiative next round.. Now the party got two full rounds on benefits. Or he goes the same on every round with the other method and gets one round. Seems to me it would average out about the same.
I think rerolling initiative every turn would work well if you tied all "until your next turn" spells to work on the initiative they were cast. It would mean more bookkeeping, but in the digital age that can easily be automated, as can the dice rolls, meaning that all the bookkeeping can be easily turned into one click of a button that says "new round"!
saying it'll average out is not going to work well when combats tend to last a few rounds. To "average out" you would need a sample set of about 60 rounds (should get roughly 3 of each number on a balanced D20), which means by the time it "averages out", it could have caused a lot of issues!
I wouldn't want to roll initiative every turn without some sort of computing to make it quicker! Plus in larger groups, people might end up waiting even longer for their turns, which would suck out the fun for them, and that's universally bad!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
My main issue is that it slowed down the game tremendously, having to collect initiative rolls every round and adjust the order accordingly.
Combat is already slow enough, why add something that will make it even slower?
As said earlier, tracking a one-turn ability to last until a certain initiative on the following turn adds more book-keeping - which likely will slow things down again. Also some abilities last until the start of end of YOUR turn on the following round, and you might be sharing an initiative score with other creatures, so lasting until just the start/end of the overall initiative score might affect this order.
If I allowed it (and that's a big if), I'd put the following rules on it:
IMO this would be the least disruptive way of introducing this mechanic without also creating shenanigans with turn order and effect durations
The pros of changing initiative (from a character/player perspective) would be to exploit the duration mechanics and interactions with other characters.
1) A player making death saves delays their initiative until after the healer has a turn so they can bring them back up. There is nothing special about your initiative number - it is book keeping to resolve actions that are more or less happening simultaneously in a six second time window.
2) A character causes an effect lasting to the end or beginning of their next turn (e.g. shield for wizard, stun for monk) - delaying their initiative could allow the wizard to defend against additional attacks without casting shield again. In the case of the monk, other characters might be able to attack the stunned target before the monk's turn comes around again.
3) The party rearranges their initiative to more efficiently use their abilities to eliminate opponents (eg shield master shove etc).
---
In addition, MOST of the times when delaying an action is desirable can be addressed using the Ready action. You don't need to change the initiative order just decide your action and a required trigger and it can happen any time. Someone used an example of a wizard casting a spell and a martial character wanting to delay their attack until after the spell is resolved - this is a perfect example of a Ready action situation rather than delaying initiative.
(A DM could house rule that a Ready action allows the readying of an Attack action rather than just one attack to get around the issue that readied attacks are intrinsically weaker than readied spells).
Ready doesn't cover all of the situations but it does cover many.
I don't get why so many people are saying they'd only allow moving down in initiative and not up. If you move up in initiative you don't get to go earlier, you just move farther down than 0.
I tend to go into way too much detail, but I've said in the past, there has to be a sacrifice involved somewhere, or you've overstepped your boundaries, no matter which side of the DM screens you're on. I believe I did say it could go back up, in the next round, right back to the original initiative. You may easily have missed that comment, it was a while back.
<Insert clever signature here>
I don't think people are meaning you move your turn until the next round (that is moving down the initiative order because first in round 2 is after last in round 1).
I think not allowing moving up the initiative order is when for example the cleric is first on initiate and he says he wants to swap his position in initiative with the assassin rogue (he moves down the ordrer and the rogue moves up)
I don't allow changes to initiative, while the hold an action doesn't allow you to do a full turn (you can't say if the bad guy gets within 30 ft of me I will run up to him, attack him with my action and make an off hnd attack with my bonus action) it does allow you to delay your action without losing balance. The fact that you lose something my delaying your action speeds up the game because otherwise the players would be likely to have a debate about what order they should play, or they would be able to use the same tactics every battle (eg the cleric casts guiding bolt immediately before the rogues turn so they have advantage to get sneak attack).
I have had players ask if they can ready a move instead of an action and have pointed out that readying a dash action has the same effect.
By the way 0 isn't necessarily the bottom of the initiative order of a round, I've had zombies role a natural one for -1 on initiative..
This is basically how I handle it, minus "You don't get to do this if you are surprised." Really curious what the purpose of that rule is, since they're already limited to moving downwards in the order. That'd cause them to be surprised and reaction-less longer.
In my experience this tends to come up because the players are trying to coordinate with each other at the beginning of combat, and initiative assumes everyone's scrambling to act as quickly as possible, so it's quite reasonable to let someone go slower on purpose in the first round. I could say a case where two players are surprised but still want to act together on their second turn.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
In that case I don't get why they bother saying it at all.
Your turn comes up at initiative 10 and you want to change your initiative to 25, fine it's 25. The initiative tracker is currently at 10 and you don't act until 25 comes around.
To me the reason for the surprise rule is more roleplay based than mechanics. in character, I see this option as being a deliberate "I will time my actions to follow ally [x]" which is basically a more powerful "ready", but which IMO would be thrown out the window if the group is surprised and that sort of planning is scrambled by ambush. i suppose could amend the rule to say that if a PC is surprised, they can't pick an ally for this option that isn't surprised.