Adjusting Initiative: Blitz! - Could this be fun?

[CrazyCrab]

Hi everyone,
I was trying to rework initiative for a large (8+ players) group and, as a part of a series of new game mechanics to adjust the game for said group, I came up with this one. While it seems fine on paper, I would love to hear what you think.

1. Make a card for each player and a bunch of cards for enemy squads. Standard issue playing cards, with new fronts that just say 'Name, Class, Ini Bonus'. (Let everyone customize cards etc. to keep them busy while waiting and not just go on their phone :smallwink: )
2. Whenever combat begins, make a deck. Add each (conscious and willing) player's card to it, then add one for each enemy squad. If there is a surprise round, with multiple sides, remove the surprised side from the deck for the round. If its only two sides, let the unsurprised side move freely.
3. Shuffle the deck instead of rolling for initiative. Place it face-down.
4. Draw one card. Whoever is drawn moves right now. Then the card is put aside. Repeat until you run out of cards - this means the round has ended.
5. Reshuffle the deck. Repeat until one side is wiped out.

But what about the initiative?

Well, here we introduce a new mechanic, Blitz.

Each creature has X Blitz uses, where X is the initiative bonus. X cannot be smaller than one (so even the players who dumped DEX can have fun with the new mechanic). Whenever a creature ends their turn, before another card is drawn and your card is not in the discard pile, you may Blitz. By expending one use, your card is immediately move to the top of the deck and the rest of the deck is reshuffled (only the cards left, not all cards). You regain all your Blitz'es whenever you finish a long rest.

Whenever someone uses Blitz, someone on the other side may use their reaction to stop it from happening. The other creature loses one Blitz charge and the creature hoping to use it must pass a DC 8+prof+(Ini Bonus) Athletics/Acrobatics check. If successful, the creature's card is moved on top of the deck as usual. If unsuccessful, the deck remains as it is. Both creatures lose one Blitz charge, no matter the result.

(Turn =/= round)

Only one creature may Blitz each turn. One a character has finished their turn someone else may blitz. If multiple creatures want to Blitz at the same time (not contest) the one with the highest movement speed has the priority. If it's the same, the one with the higher DEX has the priority. If it's the same, roll a D20, whoever rolls higher has the priority. The other creature must wait till the next turn. The other creature may not contest when it sees the result.



What do you think? I needed a system where players need to constantly be on their toes, as otherwise with 8+ players it often becomes 'oh I just moved and I rolled the lowest ini, I have 5 mins to play Angry Birds now'. I feel like this way people will need to be more thoughtful about their actions (you don't know when your friend is going to roll these death saves after all) and plan ahead a bit more (you don't know if the druid moves before you to buff you).

I feel like this way players will watch the deck a bit more, as everyone wants to move next instead of watching their phone... I also think that Blitz could be a lot of fun, giving the game some more tension and another layer of tactics.

Naturally I will need to rework some feats and abilities, but that shouldn't be too much of a hassle.

So, any thoughts?

[Giant2005]

I don't really like the blitz aspect.
Giving everyone a minimum of 1 blitz just incentivizes dumping dex and conversely, it promotes strength builds over dex builds. Dex should also absolutely be the first priority to resolve a conflict if multiple parties want to blitz (rather than movement speed as you have it) for the same reason.
I also don't like the aspect of it potentially using your reaction. That effectively empowers classes that don't already consistently use their reaction for anything.

Rather than blitzing at all, I think everyone should just have a number of cards equal to their initiative bonus. Once one of their cards is drawn from the deck, all of their cards are removed. Having an initiative bonus of 0 or negative values is kind of problematic however. The easiest solution is simply not to give them a card - once all of the cards are drawn, anyone who still has yet to take their turn can now take it in order of the highest initiative bonus to the lowest. That course of action however has the opposite effect of the one I was complaining about - it encourages people to have a dex score of at least 12 regardless of anything else.

[JohanOfKitten]

Rather than blitzing at all, I think everyone should just have a number of cards equal to their initiative bonus. Once one of their cards is drawn from the deck, all of their cards are removed. Having an initiative bonus of 0 or negative values is kind of problematic however. The easiest solution is simply not to give them a card - once all of the cards are drawn, anyone who still has yet to take their turn can now take it in order of the highest initiative bonus to the lowest. That course of action however has the opposite effect of the one I was complaining about - it encourages people to have a dex score of at least 12 regardless of anything else.

Maybe you can give 1 card per character +1 / positive Dex mod.
It scales more smoothly.

And about negative dex mod, you can say that if the card of the walking can dwarf warrior in plates is drawn once, it is reshuffled in the deck and you draw another card.
So he's not necessarily the last player to play for the round, but it's more likely.


I kinda like this system, it can had much fun to the fights.
Thoses days, I DMed a campaign for two players and the initiative has a really poor importance, it changes very few things and the player that went shawbuckler don't see much difference with the +1 initiative she gained last level...
I will try that next time, to see what it do to the game.

[smcmike]

I love the idea of the deck, but agree that the blitz mechanic is clunky. The deck is cool because it doesn't really create a lengthy meta game, but blitzing does, and it's not clear to me how balanced it would be in different encounters. I like the idea of getting multiple cards if you have higher initiative, but everyone needs a card in the deck, even with a negative modifier. The good thing about this idea is player engagement and hidden information, and everyone needs to be in for that to work.

I particularly like the idea that this may cut down on out of character planning, since you don't know who is up next. I also like reshuffling every round, but only because the whole card dealing thing takes so little time - blitz messes that up.

The other thing you could do to give players a bit of agency is give each player one trump card to hold, similar to an inspiration die. They can spend it (with no challenges) to go whenever they want, but they only get one per long rest (or you could just hand them out like inspiration).

[DanyBallon]

Why not tie Blitz to inspiration? A character would be able to spend an inspiration point to blitz and this woulduse it's reaction as you proposed. It won't impact much characters that rely more on reaction as you don't have much inspiration point to begin with, and also would prevent character to rely to much on the blizt for the exact same reason.
In addition, by splitting initiative from Dex, helps every non-dex build without being a major set back for dex build.

Adding cards equals to initiative bonus will requires you to have a large deck to account for different creatures initiative bonus in a same encounter. Not that it is complicate or a big issue, but you may end up drawing a serie of cards related to characters and monsters that already act this round.

[Giant2005]

And about negative dex mod, you can say that if the card of the walking can dwarf warrior in plates is drawn once, it is reshuffled in the deck and you draw another card.
So he's not necessarily the last player to play for the round, but it's more likely.

That is a much better idea!

[Naanomi]

How would you handle Advantage to initiative?

[Mith]

How would this compare to Speed Factor Initiative? That variant also gets rid of the meta-game aspect of combat.

[PotatoGolem]

I'm going to buck the trend and say that I quite like blitz in specifically the group you've mentioned in the OP. If you're trying to keep the group engaged, giving them something to think about/do while they wait for their turn is a great idea. Otherwise they're just passively waiting for their card and will disengage with the game same as with the current system. Even more so if they're guaranteed to go last every round.

I also think it's funny that this forum always talks about how Dex is miles better than strength, and then when a system is proposed that makes it somewhat less important to initiative people immediately jump to "this makes str OP and there's no reason to ever play dex." Initiative is probably the least powerful thing tied to dex.

[smcmike]

Yeah, everyone has to have a chance to be the next card, and I like the idea of giving them a jump-in blitz card too. I just don't like the idea of the DM saying "no, goblin #5 uses his blitz to stop your blitz so roll...." This just seems like it adds bookeeping to an otherwise very streamlined process.

Even if you've used your blitz card, waiting for your card to come up when you're surrounded by enemies should be a more engaging experience than pre-calculating exactly how many of them will get to go before you - charging into battle on an early initiative is scary if the other side might get two turns before you go again.

[JohanOfKitten]

How would you handle Advantage to initiative?

One can have advantage on initiative ?
Well, I'm not aware of all spells and capacities yet, so I thought it wasn't something possible.

An advantage must give you a big opportunity to be at the beginning of the turn.
Giving more cards could be an easy way to do it (and a bit redondant with dex mod :smallconfused:), but how much ?
It's hard to stat about it as the number of opponent and theirs dex could make it vary a lot.

I would take the X first cards of the deck (X being the number of people in this fight) and add 2 cards for the character with the advantage and reshuffle this top of deck.

It's a bit random, I confess :smallsigh:

[PIELIKEI]

Whenever someone uses Blitz, someone on the other side may use their reaction to stop it from happening. The other creature loses one Blitz charge and the creature hoping to use it must pass a DC 8+prof+(Ini Bonus) Athletics/Acrobatics check. If successful, the creature's card is moved on top of the deck as usual. If unsuccessful, the deck remains as it is. Both creatures lose one Blitz charge, no matter the result.

(Turn =/= round)

Only one creature may Blitz each turn. One a character has finished their turn someone else may blitz. If multiple creatures want to Blitz at the same time (not contest) the one with the highest movement speed has the priority. If it's the same, the one with the higher DEX has the priority. If it's the same, roll a D20, whoever rolls higher has the priority. The other creature must wait till the next turn. The other creature may not contest when it sees the result.


That seems a bit harsh, there is no reason a melee dwarf 50 feet away from me should be able to stop me from blitzing. Plus, conjure woodland being gives you 12 inturrupt blitzes for some general imbalance.

If they need to be in melee range to stop your blitz, this still puts a lot of power in the hands on casters whose entire goal is to stay away from the melee fighting. The ability to chain spells is very powerful.

Plus with blitzing how long is each round? You could have a round where everyone blitzes and a round where no one blitzes. Would both rounds be 6 seconds?

What does move speed have to do with how fast I can make two actions in a row? Can I blitz at the end of my own turns? If blitz's are turns, can I blitz at the end of my own blitzes?

I do like the idea of inspiration based blitzes, or having a max of 1 blitz per fight on top of a certain amount of blitzes per long rest.

Now what you could do, is you could blitz only as an interruption reaction. This forces people to think about how to use their blitzes more, rather than to just chain spells. For example, if a wizard casts fireball at your location, you can interrupt that action with your blitz: you can take cover, you can attempt to stop him, you can move away. If someone is attacking you, you can take the dodge action, you can grapple them. It functions like a held action, but you do not have to call it, in addition, it doesn't hold your concetration so you can blitz and use a held action. Because it is a blitz which implies that it is very fast and a surprising move, and you are allowed only one per fight and a limited time per short rest, Blitzes cannot be interrupted, which means things like held actions, opportunity attacks and other blitzes cannot resolve during a blitz.

Now about the deck:

Maybe you can give 1 card per character +1 / positive Dex mod.
It scales more smoothly.

And about negative dex mod, you can say that if the card of the walking can dwarf warrior in plates is drawn once, it is reshuffled in the deck and you draw another card.
So he's not necessarily the last player to play for the round, but it's more likely.


I kinda like this system, it can had much fun to the fights.
Thoses days, I DMed a campaign for two players and the initiative has a really poor importance, it changes very few things and the player that went shawbuckler don't see much difference with the +1 initiative she gained last level...
I will try that next time, to see what it do to the game.

This is pretty interesting plus it deals with changing dex during the fight. What you could do, to normalize a bit to it is to have each player start with 5 cards, modified by their dex mod. Any creature with a 1 in dex will go last (although this is such a rare case).

[Segev]

Going with the multiple cards for positive init modifiers idea, what if you have one card, plus one for each +1, and plus one for each -1 you have?

If you have a negative modifier, instead of the FIRST time your card comes up, you have to have ALL of your cards come up.

So if Rouge the rogue has a +4 initiative modifier, she gets 5 cards in the deck. Calvin the cleric, on the other hand, has a -2 initiative modifier, so he has 3 cards in the deck.

The first time Rouge's card comes up, she goes. Further drawings of her cards are discarded. Calvin doesn't go until he has "collected" all three of his cards.

[JeffreyGator]

Going with the multiple cards for positive init modifiers idea, what if you have one card, plus one for each +1, and plus one for each -1 you have?

If you have a negative modifier, instead of the FIRST time your card comes up, you have to have ALL of your cards come up.

So if Rouge the rogue has a +4 initiative modifier, she gets 5 cards in the deck. Calvin the cleric, on the other hand, has a -2 initiative modifier, so he has 3 cards in the deck.

The first time Rouge's card comes up, she goes. Further drawings of her cards are discarded. Calvin doesn't go until he has "collected" all three of his cards.

This is a great idea and avoids some confusion of figuring out the blitz system. However, the OP may still end up with people playing Angry Birds or whatever. Perhaps the OPs group has too many players that are overly rude and would rather play with their phones than participate in a group activity.

Any initiative system with big groups could lead to that problem however. Once people have gone in the round, apart from reactions they don't have much to do but watch.

[Segev]

If you really want everybody engaged, you could try something I've been toying with for a long while: bidding for initiative.

Roll initiative as normal, and that becomes your pool from which to bid. Have everybody decide on an action they want to take, then bid for "priority." Highest bidder pays out his bid initiative, and goes. Then have everybody bid again. When everybody has gone at least once, roll for initiative again. Add it to their bidding pool.

It's not all that well fleshed out, I'm afraid, and I ran into trouble with at least one experiment with it where nobody wanted to bid, for some reason. They just would sit there, waiting for me to use a tie-breaker (with the tie bid of "0") to determine who goes next.

[EvilAnagram]

I think this is a fun idea, but I don't know how much more engaged players will be. Perhaps having to pay attention to everything happening because your turn can happen at any time would help, but I don't know if that's necessarily the case. It couldn't hurt though.

[Tanarii]

2. Whenever combat begins, make a deck. Add each (conscious and willing) player's card to it, then add one for each enemy squad. If there is a surprise round, with multiple sides, remove the surprised side from the deck for the round. If its only two sides, let the unsurprised side move freely.
You're aware that there is no such thing as a surprise round, right? People who are surprised should be in the deck. They just can't take an action when their card is drawn. And they get to start using their reactions after their card is drawn.

You'll have to decide if surprised creatures can Blitz or prevent a Blitz. But I'm assuming not.