[PBP D&D 3.5] GM Dilemma: Freeform Initiative?

[INoKnowNames]

I put the rule set up there just in case the system it is might have a bearing on the advice given, even though I don't suspect it will.

I'm running my first play by post game (and really, one of my first games ever) right here on the forums. And we've found that initiative rules are slightly clunky, forcing some players that are more frequent posters to wait on other players who occasionally forget or miss checking in.

Not that I mind waiting, since I hold the group up quite a bit myself, but we've actually since tried just letting one act on one's will. Only one turn per round, but turn order to be determined mostly by who posts next, with some enemies acting every number of times the players act, and the rest acting later.

Anyone do anything like this? Anyone have any better ideas?

Also, how would you decide to treat Improved Initiative if a player took it before learning that initiative was mostly going to be decided arbitrarily?

[valadil]

I've never done PbP but here's how I'd do it.

Set a time. Tell the players to get their next action in by a specific hour. When that time hits, the actions that are in get resolved. You could do it by post order, rolling, or something else entirely.

But! I'd also let players set up noncomplicated standing orders. "Hit the nearest enemy", "Fireball the biggest group of enemies", "Heal the weakest ally", etc. When someone doens't get an action in, I'd do one of these.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Here's how I'd do try it: Let players go in whatever order they want and as often as they want, with the exception that you can't go twice in a row. If you post "late" in that multiple players get more turns before you do, you get extra actions.

Keep track of how many turns worth of actions each player has taken in the current combat, and what the highest number held by a player is: Call this latter number the "action ceiling." When you make your post, if your number of actions is equal to the current action ceiling, you can only take one turn worth of actions (this raises the ceiling by 1, naturally). If your number of actions is less than the ceiling, however, you can "cash in" and take as many rounds of actions at once until you've hit the ceiling.

Let's say you have three players, A, B, and C. Combat starts. A goes first, then B goes, then A goes again. The current action ceiling is 2. A has gone twice, B has gone once, and C hasn't gone yet.

A can't go because they just went.

B can go, and they get 1 turn of actions if they go.

C can go, but they get 2 turns worth of actions if they go, because A went twice before they did.

If the turn order goes A -> B -> A -> C -> A, then both B and C can go twice in a row because A has gone three times and B and C have only gone once.

I'm not sure how this would interact with actions that take longer than a full-round action, such as spells with a casting time of 1 round or greater. I'd tentatively rule it that the spell continues being cast until everyone else has gone a number of turns equal to the casting time of the spell in rounds, and you don't get to act at all until the casting is done (unless you want to cancel the spell). This isn't the cleanest solution though: Probably the best one would be to rewrite these spells to reduce the casting time to one full-round action or less, and rebalance them based around this. If you're doing something that's gonna take several minutes or more, you're just not participating in the current combat in a meaningful way (though you can still talk in-character with the other characters).

This also probably makes summoning abuse outshine melee-based characters even worse, assuming you use those spells unmodified. Allow at your own risk.


As for Improved Initiative: I'd try this "Once per combat, you can take two rounds worth of actions even if you've reached the action ceiling." Either that or just let the player take another feat instead.


EDIT: On monsters: Forgot to mention this, but for the monsters/NPCs you could break them down into "initiative groups" just like you'd do with normal initiative rolls. Let all the monsters in a group go at once, and keep track of their actions taken and the action ceiling just like the other players. Unlike PCs though, you shouldn't allow them to raise the ceiling: If they're at the ceiling then wait until enough PCs go to raise it before you have the monsters do anything else.

Also, don't be mean: Don't abuse these rules to let a monster get multiple attacks on a PC who isn't acting. Have the monsters focus on the more active character instead.

[Weltall_BR]

I have faced the same problem before and decided to use party initiative. I calculate the mean initiative modifier of the PC's party and the mean initiative modifier of their foes and add this mean modifier to the roll. Whatever party gets the higher results, acts first, in a block. This makes the order of posting by players irrelevant. Improved initiative is a little downplayed by this rule but still useful.

Edit: as pointed by Craft (Cheese), you can have as many parties as you want, like one for the big bad boss and one for his minions.

[Kalirren]

I've been experimenting in a Kingmaker game I've been running on these boards with an initiative system in which all actions are declared simultaneously and initiative is rolled every round to determine the resolution order and narrative priority of actions.

This way it doesn't matter when you post in relation to anyone else. As GM I post antagonists' actions when half the party has posted. Effects requiring saves are rolled by attacker as a "spell attack roll", not defender, to save extra time. In a game where the initiative modifiers for characters match up poorly with their players' distributions over real-world time zones, it cuts the average round resolution time from two or two and a half days down to one, and that's huge for maintaining pace.

The general rule is that it should always be better to have a higher initiative result. Generally, things like cover, flanking, and other emergent properties of interaction in combat are determined by status as of end of last round, but people who win by margins of 5 or more on initiative are considered at special advantage over their targets, or those who are targeting them.

So for example, if a fighter is facing a caster at melee range, and the caster declares 5' step and cast defensively, and fighter declares a 5' step to maintain contact and an attack action, (possibly continuing to full attack,)

If fighter's wins the opposed init. by 5, the caster's spell is interrupted by the first attack, and they have to make a concentration check against the damage dealt (+ 15 or whatever it is).
If neither wins opposed init by more than 5, the actions simply occur in order of initiative.
If the caster wins opposed init by 5, the fighter doesn't get an AoO even if the caster misses their Concentration check to cast defensively.

Upsides that I've noticed:

1) When "it's your turn" in a traditional initiative system, people feel entitled to take "their" time, leading to bog-down. But in this system, if you're last to post, you know that you're the one holding up resolution of the round. People post because they don't feel entitled to make everyone else wait.

2) It's easier for casters to be interrupted. No need for anyone to declare a readied action to get in their face.

3) No metagaming the initiative order (say I'm a cleric. There's no incentive for me to roll low so that I can declare last. If I roll high initiative and declare an action that fits best after someone else's, it just happens after.)

Downsides that I've noticed:

1) "Rounds" are more important. This may bother you more or less.

2) It's easier for casters to be interrupted. I think of this is a good thing, but you may disagree.

3) Possibly more initiative-metagaming at higher levels, haven't gotten there yet.

4) Doing resolution for the entire round at once poses a larger quantum of work for the GM. This one is undoubtedly true. You can't just acknowledge an action when it's declared, you have to process them all and see which conditions apply to each at the point of resolution.

[Erock]

I have faced the same problem before and decided to use party initiative. I calculate the mean initiative modifier of the PC's party and the mean initiative modifier of their foes and add this mean modifier to the roll. Whatever party gets the higher results, acts first, in a block. This makes the order of posting by players irrelevant. Improved initiative is a little downplayed by this rule but still useful.

Edit: as pointed by Craft (Cheese), you can have as many parties as you want, like one for the big bad boss and one for his minions.

Couldn't you change the Improved Init rule to add +4 for each party member? Or +4 to the average? It would maintain the power level, or even slightly up it.

[Ailowynn]

FFG's Star Wars game has an initiative system that could work: everyone rolls normally, but instead of everyone having his or her own slot, there are PC and NPC slots, and any PC can go during any PC slot.

[Tengu_temp]

Each PC has its own initiative. All enemies act on one initiative, which you calculate by using an average or something. The order goes like this:

1. All PCs who beat the enemy initiative
2. All enemies
3. All PCs
4. All enemies
5. All PCs
...

And so on. I use it in every PbP game I'm running, and it works perfectly. I have no idea why people always come up with byzantine, overly complicated and/or restrictive systems for handling initiative in PbP when something this simple suffices and works almost exactly like a live game.