Excel Sheet for pre-rolling Initiative

[Splarticus]

My gaming group has been working on speeding up 5e battles, and one of the ideas was pre-rolling initiative. Generally, initiative modifiers for the players are the same from battle to battle, with only the initiative mods for the monsters changing. Also, rolling initiative doesn't feel as engaging as rolling to hit or saving throws and slows down the start of battle, as everyone has to roll one die, report back the result with mods, and then there's a sorting exercise to figure out the correct order.

More fun to draw a pre-rolled initiative order, mods included, in order, roll the monster init, add it to the order, and the fight begins!

I print a bunch of sheets of pre-rolled initiatives from these sheets for my party before our gaming sessions. The sheets are inverted so they can be folded and laid over the DM screens, so both DM and players can see them. Have to add the monster inits to both sides, of course.

Oops. I would include a link to the URL, but I can't because this is my first post. Please post if you'd like a link to the excel sheets or have questions. ;)

[ShadowImmor]

That could work, or to massively cut down on bookkeeping for you, just have everyone use 10+the Initiative Mod. Even monsters. It means you can get into combat faster, don't have to roll dice or pre-roll dice, and means your players don't have to worry about high or low rolls they can't see.

Then you would only need to roll Initiative if you were seeing if two creatures (either players or monsters or a mix) need to react to the same thing and you want to see who reacts first.

[SiCK_Boy]

I preroll for my monsters for initiative (and any other check I may want to have "active" at the time of the encounter, such as the Stealth check for a group of monsters hiding in ambush).

I'm not sure it's worth doing it for the PCs; usually, they roll initiative as I bring out the battlemap and/or place monster tokens on the battlefield, so we're not really "wasting" time.

Also, if players know the initiative result in advance, and depending on your rules for changing place in the initiative order (5th edition has no such rule, but many groups still use a form of delay my initiative similar to what existed in previous editions), it may influence their tactics. Not sure how bad that would be...

[BBQ Pork]

Can if you want. I wouldn't.

We keep a white-board on the wall in our gaming room with the PCs' AC, initiative, and HP on it. The roll doesn't take long and the sorting the Initiative rolls doesn't either.

Especially since we keep the same initiative rolls from round to round within a combat nowadays.


Give the pre-rolled initiative a try and let us know how much time you feel it saved.

[Grod_The_Giant]

You can also just use "clockwise around the table starting at the GM" or some such and not worry about exact results. Maybe have the PC and the monster with highest modifiers roll to see if the players act before or after the monsters that first round.

[Splarticus]

Thanks for the comments. I do like having a different initiative order for each combat. There are several order effects that would be less interesting if they were the same each time. For example, if Bard is followed by Cleric, then never need to worry about loosing a round from unconsciousness, since Bard can revive Cleric with Healing Word. If the monster is between them in the initiative order, might need to pre-heal the Cleric to make sure she's standing when her turn comes around.

If the initiative were the same every time, I'd probably game that and change the seating order to get the right order. :smalltongue:

We have the mat out, and a separate person is in charge of setting up figurines and stuff. I feel it does give a faster battle start. Will see next session if accepted as the new standard for our gaming group!

[Splarticus]

Yup, the pre-rolled initiative for party was definitely faster, and has been adopted by my gaming group for about half a year!

[Splarticus]

I think I have enough posts now to share this. Here's the link for the pre-generated initiatives!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AWuOy4mJkUu90SWjg8Trj0WeDI4sprngr9WJPKawiiI/edit?usp=sharing

[Pelle]

Cool. I have used side initiative for a while now, thinking it would solve a lot of problems, but I'm considering switching to pre-rolled initiative instead.

How I have been doing side initiative:
1. Determine monster Initative as 10+average Dex.
2. Players roll initiative
3. Everyone who beats the monsters, get's a turn first, in any order.
4. Monsters act, in any order.
5. PCs act, in any order
6. Repeat 4., monster etc

The intent with this was to speed up the combat, by not requiring to keep track of initiative order, and not having to wait for indecisive players. The problem I have found is that players are hesitant to take the initiative when it's their side's turn, and it usually turns into the same order every round. Otherwise it's confusing who has taken their action or not yet. Another issue is that I found it harder to narrate the combat. It was easier to make the descriptions of each PC/monster turn flow into each other with a fixed order.

I like the prerolled option. I'm thinking about printing 20 cards, so that I can have each number 1-20 appearing once for every character (kind of latin-hypercube sampling). Then apply dex mods and sort in order. And have some space between the entries to leave space for monsters and npcs.