Greyhawk Initiative and Speed Factor

[Marcloure]

I don't quite get why doing the Greyhawk Initiative system when we already got the Speed Factor in the DMG (page 270/271), which is fairly similar. Both are basically 1) decide what actions will be taken at planning phase, 2) roll initiative based on the action planned, 3) execute the actions in the initiative order, 4) repeat for the next turn.
What is the big deal with the new idea? Is it a further development of the DMG's Speed Factor or did I just overlook it so hard that they seemed similar?

[Foxhound438]

I don't quite get why doing the Greyhawk Initiative system when we already got the Speed Factor in the DMG (page 270/271), which is fairly similar. Both are basically 1) decide what actions will be taken at planning phase, 2) roll initiative based on the action planned, 3) execute the actions in the initiative order, 4) repeat for the next turn.
What is the big deal with the new idea? Is it a further development of the DMG's Speed Factor or did I just overlook it so hard that they seemed similar?

nothing missed. It's just a way of making it 3 times more convoluted and difficult, with the only big change being that you probably roll smaller dice, meaning less variance and more ties.

[mephnick]

I'm still not sure why everyone is so obsessed with messing around with initiative. Like, before I looked on the internet I never spared a thought about it because it works fine?

[Waterdeep Merch]

I remember when I was a young, stupid DM, trying out all kinds of weird permutations in unsound attempts at realism and balance. I remember my first attempt at a 'dynamic' initiative system, and how confused everyone was. And I also remember the sighs of relief when I gave up on it.

Dynamic initiative is for video games, because only a computer could keep track of moving initiatives without annoying everyone involved. So the moment someone creates an application that can track all of this crap ahead of time... it's still a terrible system because determining all of your moves before your turn is stupid and takes flexibility out of the hands of the players in exchange for arguing about what's best to do.

Though this does make me want to develop a nice, lightweight program to handle speed factor-style initiative. Maybe with some cool extra bells and whistles, a simple graphical UI, and touchscreen support so that I can port it to phones.

And I'll bet the time I spend doing all this is still less than I'd spend tracking Greyhawk Initiative in a single session.

[MadGrady]

I'm still not sure why everyone is so obsessed with messing around with initiative. Like, before I looked on the internet I never spared a thought about it because it works fine?

I, personally in my own humble opinion, greatly dislike the general base initiative rule. I think what Mike did was provide a sounding board for others who feel similar, but perhaps didn't really have anything better to use maybe?

My personal opinion is I don't like the flow regular initiative:

Story....story....story.....ok everyone stop while I get everyone in order.....story combat etc.

Now, that being said, I think Mike's method made this even worse lol.

For me, I want something that takes a fraction of time so that the story/mood/feel doesn't get lost while we all role.

[coolAlias]

Agreed - it seems like a lot of unnecessary work for little to no benefit, depending on the table.

At my table, we wanted to make combat a little more chaotic, so we adopted a simple system of rerolling standard initiative each round after declaring actions. It's not a 'planning' phase - NPCs and players simply declare what they are going to do (e.g. 'charge in and attack with my sword', 'cast magic missile', etc.), and then we roll initiative to see how it all pans out.

If someone decides they want to take a different action during the course of the round, they can but they go after everything else is decided. We're considering limiting such actions to e.g. one of a single attack, a cantrip, a move, etc.

It's been a lot of fun and doesn't take substantially more time than waiting for people to decide what to do on their turns, though it does take some work on the DM's part to coordinate each round. Still, I like what it has done for our combats.

[Cl0001]

I don't like it because it just doesn't seem logical to me. This can purposely limit characters to the point where whoever makes a ranged attack will almost always go before the tanks who usually have to move and attack. In my opinion moving should be made as a free option that way characters aren't forced to act at a much lower initiative. Because with the example that was given in the UA, the fighter rolls a die for movement, then doesn't roll one and gets stuck standing there. Not to mention it gives dms a lot of power because they know the actions of the player before the round starts and the player has almost no leeway in changing that.

[Spectre9000]

My biggest issue with this system is that you can decide to move to get away from something, but it moves away first. Normally you could then heal or something else, but now you can't. You said you were going to move, so now you have to move. This will create a lot of needless wasted turns and players unhappy about not being able to play their characters how they want in response to a changing field of play. Say you're going to take the Attack action and someone puts up a wall. You now have no targets, so turn wasted. There are also many things that can, for example, make your opponent move away from you, or force them away, and normally you'd be able to move and close that gap again. Now you can't. An example of this would be a fighter using a shove to move a creature away from his injured ally, then closing distance to make his remaining attacks, or even more shoves.

This is a terrible system. You can only take actions in accordance with the dice you rolled. Movement is a d6, attacking is a d8. Also, apparently it takes half the time to draw an arrow, nock, aim, draw, and fire, than it does to simply swing a weapon (even a dagger, or other light weapon!), or to even move at all. However, perhaps the most broken aspect is the fact that it doesn't specify how many dice you can roll (at least that I can see, which seems like a major oversight, so it might be there somewhere). The best thing to do is get a hand full of dice and roll them. I really feel like this is a troll UA. It doesn't make things more realistic, fun, exciting, less complicated, or anything good that I can see.


I really want another good UA that provides something new and useful to the game instead of tweaked old UA's, survey's, and convoluted rule-sets that won't get used. Even making them once a month seems to be too much for them. Too busy with D&D beyond. Now they want me to have a twitch account to play D&D? Really?


/rant

[mAc Chaos]

I always liked the idea of an initiative system like this, but I never liked how something super fast like a dagger became super slow. I like the idea of rolling your damage dice as your initiative die.

That makes me wonder what you roll for something like a greatsword though. d6? Or 2d6? d6 doesn't make sense but rolling 2 die seems strange. But I guess it fits it being slower and more consistent.

I see lots of people panning this system -- but so far all the DM personalities that tried it with their groups liked it. (Mearls, Matt Coleville, etc) I think that means something. I am curious to try it myself.

[DanyBallon]

My biggest issue with this system is that you can decide to move to get away from something, but it moves away first. Normally you could then heal or something else, but now you can't. You said you were going to move, so now you have to move. This will create a lot of needless wasted turns and players unhappy about not being able to play their characters how they want in response to a changing field of play. Say you're going to take the Attack action and someone puts up a wall. You now have no targets, so turn wasted. There are also many things that can, for example, make your opponent move away from you, or force them away, and normally you'd be able to move and close that gap again. Now you can't. An example of this would be a fighter using a shove to move a creature away from his injured ally, then closing distance to make his remaining attacks, or even more shoves.

This is a terrible system. You can only take actions in accordance with the dice you rolled. Movement is a d6, attacking is a d8. Also, apparently it takes half the time to draw an arrow, nock, aim, draw, and fire, than it does to simply swing a weapon (even a dagger, or other light weapon!), or to even move at all. However, perhaps the most broken aspect is the fact that it doesn't specify how many dice you can roll (at least that I can see, which seems like a major oversight, so it might be there somewhere). The best thing to do is get a hand full of dice and roll them. I really feel like this is a troll UA. It doesn't make things more realistic, fun, exciting, less complicated, or anything good that I can see.


I really want another good UA that provides something new and useful to the game instead of tweaked old UA's, survey's, and convoluted rule-sets that won't get used. Even making them once a month seems to be too much for them. Too busy with D&D beyond. Now they want me to have a twitch account to play D&D? Really?


/rant

You are not constrained to use what you said you were doing, in your first example, you move away and heal, if the creatures is dropped dead or move away, then you can just forgo moving, and simply healing yourself. If you planned to attack, but a wall of force is casted between you and your target, you still can decide to move instead of attacking, which you couldn't do anyway whether the system you use.

The system is not perfect, but is a neat idea to try if you are looking for a different take on how initiative works.

Like I previously said in the other thread, I'd remove the additional dice for moving and rolled it up with your action you decide to take. Also, I'd use the weapon speed variant instead, so ranged weapons won't always be faster than anything else.

I think it's worth having a few one shots to tried it out. It's UA material after all, it's meant to be tried and tempered with. :smallwink:

[LtPowers]

For me, I want something that takes a fraction of time so that the story/mood/feel doesn't get lost while we all role.

Roll in advance, then. Or don't roll at all and just go in order of initiative modifier.


Powers &8^]

[Theodoxus]

I was thinking about this this morning while rubbing sleep from my eyes. As a DM, I'd only want to use this system with only a couple players. I think more than 3, and I'd forget what the action plan was and what everyone was doing, which would quickly lead to cheating - either purposeful or accidental - on the players part.

Especially if i'm dealing with a host of mobs for everyone to kill...

I do think one way to remove the movement issue for tanks vs ranged (though I'm firmly in the camp that ranged getting a d4 for initiative is ridiculous), is to remove the movement die and simply use the Hackmaster initiative format for movement. Each segment (to steal from 1st Ed), you can decide to move 5', up until your first initiative action. wherein that segment you can't move, but you can attack with whatever you called out with. If your action is forfeit for whatever reason, and you have movement left, you can move another 5' instead and can continue doing so until you either run out of movement, or can complete the action you announced.

For example, Party is a fighter and a bard. Enemies are 3 goblins (gob 1, gob 2 and gob 3)

Both groups know of the others presence and happen upon each other as they're turning a corridor in a maze. The groups are 40' apart (there's a 40'x 10' corridor they're at the opposite ends of).

The fighter decides to draw his bow and shoot gob 1, picking a d4. The bard decides to cast Viscous Mockery at gob 2, picking a d10. Gob 1 draws a bow and shoots fighter (d4), gob 2 draws a bow and shoots fighter (d4) and gob 3 is going to dash to bard (d8)

So, rolls occur, fighter gets 3, bard gets 7, gob 1 gets 2, gob 2 gets 4 and gob 3 gets 5.

Segment 1, gob 3 moves 5'
Segment 2, gob 3 moves 5' and gob 1 shoots fighter, missing.
Segment 3, gob 3 moves 5', gob 1 frustrated with the miss decides to close on fighter and moves 5', fighter shoots gob 1, hitting and knocking him out.
Segment 4, gob 3 moves 5' and gob 2 shoots fighter, hitting for 5.
Segment 5, gob 3 begins dash and moves 5'
Segment 6, gob 3 moves 5'
Segment 7, gob 3 moves 5' and bard casts VM on gob 2, dealing 3 points of damage.
Segment 8, gob 3 moves 5' and makes it to the bard, but has no additional action so stops.

No one else decides to move, so the round is over and new initiatives are initiated...

Because 5E has no "move action" as prior editions did, I don't think it makes sense to have a "move initiative" but it also doesn't work well if everyone can just move willy-nilly through the round. Incorporating a 5' move per segment still allows speedy characters to maintain their superiority without becoming an 'all or nothing' approach the Greyhawk Initiative creates. Since the round is segmented, and 5E has a "spring attack" built into the movement, actors don't even need to move each round. They could move 5' on segments 1, 3 and 6 and pause between, seeing if others are moving - perhaps allowing for opportunity attacks or ambushes around walls...

I'm not sure any of this is worth the work it would take, but if I were in a game where the DM was going to use GI, i'd certainly ask for this mod.

[obryn]

I always liked the idea of an initiative system like this, but I never liked how something super fast like a dagger became super slow. I like the idea of rolling your damage dice as your initiative die.
Simply put, because a dagger isn't really super fast compared to a bigger weapon. If I have a sword and you have a dagger, I will get the first swing in because you would need to enter my reach. And even then, the point of a longer sword can move faster than the point of a dagger.

If you're not doing big baseball swings, a longer weapon is going to be advantageous. This is one reason why spears have been so popular throughout history. (Another being "pointy thing on a stick" isn't exactly expensive or high tech, but still - there's a reason you put that pointy thing on the end of a long stick in the first place, you know?)

"Dagger = Fast" is one of those 2e D&Disms that has always been dumb.

[Lombra]

Greyhawk initiative is more complex and has as a target those who don't mind more numbers to keep or more strategy in the game, plus, it pictures initiative in a different way: it's no longer how quick your reflexes are, instead it depends on how much you want to accomplish, it "simulates" the decision making and the time that one character puts in analyzing the situation.

Here's for example why 1d4 for ranged attacks is legitimate: it takes less time for an archer to draw and shoot someone 30 feet away than a warrior with a greataxe sprinting and hitting the target.

I would still use the weapon damage die variant rule tho. Spells work thematically well, they could be much more complicated adding materials and level factors, but a d10 works fine.

You should not forget that the monsters have to do the same, and many monsters fill actions and bonus actions every turn.

It's not meant to be siple and efficient, it's meant to be fun for those who look for a more dynamic system and that are fairly experienced with the current system.

The DMG variant is much more fiddly, this sounds like an attempt to polish and expand that idea.

[Vaz]

I'm still not sure why everyone is so obsessed with messing around with initiative. Like, before I looked on the internet I never spared a thought about it because it works fine?

Because it ain't gritty man. It aint so gritty it's like chewing on concrete so initiative sucks, man.

[Terra Reveene]

I, personally in my own humble opinion, greatly dislike the general base initiative rule. I think what Mike did was provide a sounding board for others who feel similar, but perhaps didn't really have anything better to use maybe?

My personal opinion is I don't like the flow regular initiative:

Story....story....story.....ok everyone stop while I get everyone in order.....story combat etc.

Now, that being said, I think Mike's method made this even worse lol.

For me, I want something that takes a fraction of time so that the story/mood/feel doesn't get lost while we all role.

If you want a functioning system that is a lot easier to keep track of than whateverthehell mearls is trying to do, you can try my system:

http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/By-1gQpMrZ

It's taken directly from my own version of 5e D&D (it's been extremely heavily modified, though this initiative system still works really well with standard 5e D&D)

One of my goals with the initiative system is to give classes more choice in terms of their weapons. For example, versatile weapons now have an upside compared to two-handed heavy weapons. You trade 1-1,5 average damage per hit to not be last in each round (suck it munchkin GWFers!).



Just to note, so no confusion is made: You add the bonus for weapons with the finesse/thrown property even if you don't intend to use the property. Therefore, a dagger would get a +4 bonus even if you decide to stab someone in melee using strength (just as an example). If you take the attack action, you always declare what weapon you're attacking with. Same with spells. You have to declare which cantrip/leveled spell you are planning on casting (it's not mentioned here atm, because I've forgotten to write it down, oops.)

Also, yes, you can totally lose actions this way (sort of. I allow a reaction to use one of a few actions instead of your declared one, as stated in the rules). If that's something someone finds frustrating, then this system will never be for them.

Also also, the "Very Fast Action..." etc. is for when a PC does something that this system does not predict. If your PC tries to do something that the initiative system has no obvious dice for, you as the DM decide what speed that action is performed at.


As for how you handle monsters that use claw attack and the like, just figure out what the natural weapon is supposed to have in terms of properties (is it a gorilla slam that uses both its hands? two-handed + heavy (heavy because of mouscle mass compared to body size (seriously, have you seen a gorillas arms? like holy ****)) is it a tiger's claw attack? finesse (+ possibly light. A cat definitely gets light. A really big tiger though? Probably not.), is it a monkey throwing poo? thrown + light (poo doesn't weight that much) etc etc. It's pretty easy to figure out on the fly, you have to think for like 2 seconds. And it's not like the PCs will know what their bonuses are anyways.


I know my system's not gonna be perfect for everyone. It's inspired by the angry GMs initiative system, but mix and matched with mearls. Feel free to take what you'd like from it, and leave what you don't like with it.

EDIT: Had to post this without the link, because apparently you need to comment 10 times before being able to post links... Who came up with that crap? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard a forum require someone to do. At any rate, features like the thief's extra turn and the fighter's action surge lets you do whatever you want with the extra turn/action. No need to declare those. Just thought I'd mention that.
EDIT2: Also, this is not the only initiative system I use. I use different systems depending on what is most useful for the moment. I'd never use this for combat involving hoards of enemies for example. For that I have special hoard combat rules and its own initiative system. This system is meant to be used in the situation described.