GM Question/Tip: Initiative

[joca4christ]

Having played with a couple of GM who's styles varied, I thought I'd get a consensus from you Playgrounders.

When rolling initiative, do you roll once for all NPCs/Monsters if multiple, or do you roll each individually? Why?

I'm not just talking if you have multiple types of enemies, but if you have like three thugs...Their stats are identical, one roll, or three?

[Sylthia]

Having played with a couple of GM who's styles varied, I thought I'd get a consensus from you Playgrounders.

When rolling initiative, do you roll once for all NPCs/Monsters if multiple, or do you roll each individually? Why?

I'm not just talking if you have multiple types of enemies, but if you have like three thugs...Their stats are identical, one roll, or three?

If the 3 thugs are the only enemies the party is facing, I'd roll them separately, but if you have 3 thugs, 2 ruffians, and 1 crook as the enemy total, I'd lump each group together for initiative.

[Flickerdart]

I find that rolling separately is better - when enemies are together in initiative, it's very difficult for either side to respond adequately to the actions of the other, because once their turn rolls around, the entire enemy side got to act unopposed. When enemies are more interleaved with the PCs, you get things like the wizard casting Energy Resistance on the fighter once he sees that one of the enemies can breathe fire, instead of watching as they all roast the poor guy before getting a chance to do anything.

[joca4christ]

Both suggestions smack of good sense.

Thank you!

[Sylthia]

I keep the initiative on a dry-erase board and always like to be able to fit everything in one column. I like to break up the enemy initiative a little, but I've found in the bigger encounters that it goes faster when I do some grouping.

In my current campaign, it may look like this:

SorcPC
PaladinPC
Thug 1
ClericPC
Thug 2
CavalierPC
OtherClericPC
Thug 3
DruidPC

Whereas a bigger encounter may look like this:

ClericPC
Thugs
Vampire
SorcPC
Wights
PaladinPC
OtherClericPC
DruidPC
Cult Leader
CavalierPC
Antipaladin
VampireSpawn

In the bigger fights, there's a lot to keep track of, and it helps to keep the carbon-copy enemies together.

[WhatBigTeeth]

I usually roll them individually or by subgroups. Rolling the monsters and the party as only two entities makes a focused-fire insta-gibs way too likely.

[Gwendol]

Individually is better. Also, don't forget to enforce the rule that before you get to act in combat you are flatfooted. I see that being ignored far too often, and yet it has far-reaching consequences.

[SciChronic]

i'm pretty much in agreement with everyone here. When it comes down to smaller encounters, individual rolls is best, but when it comes to larger scale fights, rolling the enemies as subgroups or squads helps keep things from getting really complicated and easily confused.

when i do groups its for there are a lot of 1 type (an encounter involving 9 zombies would be split into 2-3 groups of 2-4 zombies)

[prufock]

Like others have said, it depends on the number of enemies the party is facing, to be honest. Normally, if they're facing a small number of high-ish CR enemies, I'll roll each individually. However, if there are a lot of minion-type enemies, I'll group them and roll together.

Example: I recently ran a pirate encounter. I rolled initiative for the following - Captain, First Mate, sailors on deck (there were about 10), gunners (about 10 more).

[KillianHawkeye]

For simplicity's sake, I always roll initiative for individual sub-groupings of enemies. Unique creatures get their own rolls, but all of the "generic orc warrrior" enemies act together.

Of course, I try not to have every enemy in any particular combat be identical. There should always be multiple groupings.

[Essence_of_War]

If it's only 3 thugs I might roll separately just to make the combat feel less like battlecruisers lining up and broadsiding each other.

For larger encounters, I try to break them up into subgroups. For example, in a recent game:

There was a fight with a group of hobgoblins. I had:

1) Archers
2) Spearmen
3) Swordsmen
4) 1x Cleric
5) 1x Duskblade

So even though there were a few hobgoblins in groups 1-3, the whole "hobgoblin team" felt like it was actually interacting a little bit with each other, and their initiatives were interwoven with the PCs.

[Zombimode]

A question to those who, in some occasions, lump several enemies together in one initiative count: what do you do if one enemy in such a group readies an action (or delays, or benefits from White Raven Tactics, etc.)?

Personally, I use individual initiative whenever possible.

[Amphetryon]

In some cases where I have a fairly large number of NPCs to handle, I'll roll once for Initiative, but the application of the individual DEX scores and Initiative modifiers can still lead to spreading out their turns. So, the Archers with Improved Initiative go earlier in the round than the Barbarian shocktroopers, who go earlier than the Crusader battlefield controllers.

[Drelua]

I always use Combat Manager (http://combatmanager.com/) to keep track of initiative. It has every Pathfinder monster and NPC cataloged so it can roll for their initiative and HP if you want it to, and you can save your party's initiative mods too. My group tends to be really bad with getting distracted and... rules, so it makes our fights go by a lot faster.

[SciChronic]

A question to those who, in some occasions, lump several enemies together in one initiative count: what do you do if one enemy in such a group readies an action (or delays, or benefits from White Raven Tactics, etc.)?

Personally, I use individual initiative whenever possible.

personally, when a creature's initiative changes from that of the group he's in, i keep him separated as his own grouping.

[Sylthia]

Somewhat of an aside, but sometimes instead of rolling for the enemies, I will just take 10+their initiative modifier.

[AmberVael]

Generally I would recommend using individual initiative. However, I typically use and recommend group initiative for PbP games, simply because it speeds things up at least a little (and combat in PbP is typically very slow- it can use all the help it can get).

[Sylthia]

I've found a good rule of thumb is to have at least 3-4 enemy "turns" in the initiative. That is a good cut-off for deciding whether to group enemies or not.

[Verte]

If there are five or fewer enemies, I do individual initiative. If there are more than that, I split them up into groups that get group initiative. If there are say, an NPC cleric, three ghouls, and six zombies, I would have four initiative rolls -one for the cleric, one for the ghouls, and two for three zombies apiece.

[Eldonauran]

As a DM that has 7 players, I tend to use subgroup initiative (monsters A get to act, then monsters B, etc). Should one of the players 'volunteer' to keep track of initiative for me, we do individual initiatives. I reward volunteers that make my job easier, more enjoyable/fun or both.

Clarification: Players are not characters, there is no in game reward. I usually reward them with a drink, a set of new and shiny dice or random other things that help them play the game. One decided to be a volunteer for a game and stuck with it the entire campaign. I rewarded him with a shiny, laminated character sheet that I framed and custom dice detailed after his character. Best $20 i ever spent.