Delaying Turns Discussion

[Segev]

This came up in the Tasha's mind whip thread: turn order is very important and can ironically make going faster than the enemy disadvantageous if the enemy goes before the rest of your party under a number of circumstances. This wouldn't be a problem if there were a rule permitting you to "reset" your initiative to happen later in the turn order. Max Wilson brought up a couple cases where the existing rules are a problem, and one possible issue with simply permitting people to change their place in initiative:


That same issue occurs constantly in RAW 5E, whether it's knocking enemies prone or trying to heal damage or trying to damage a paralyzed target before it gets a fresh save--there are far too many cases where a high initiative roll actually penalizes you by separating your turn from the test of the party's turns, or making it matter too much which PC goes before the other even though from a diegetic/narrative standpoint they're cooperating. RAW initiative is downright awful, the worst thing in 5E.

Allowing PCs to delay their turns somehow would introduce some edge cases for e.g. spell durations, but it's better than the mess that vanilla RAW creates. Details not present in the narrative should not be so tactically important!

I think this is best handled by having a special action that you can only take if you've taken no other actions, bonus actions, or movement on your turn. Call this action "delay." What this action does is allow you to state where in the turn order you want to have your next turn happen, and then immediately end your turn. All the effects like spell durations would be not adversely impacted because your turn still ends at the same place it would have before you delayed, but you have now changed your turn order.

Does this introduce any other weirdness or corner cases where you could abuse this for duration-advantages you shouldn't be able to get? Note that the point of this is to improve future duration-advantages on things that last, for example, "until the end of the target's next turn," so you can position yourself in the turn order such that that will cover a full round.

[quindraco]

What I do at my table is take care of this when initiative is rolled: I let anyone set their initiative to any value less than or equal to what they actually rolled. This avoids punishing players for having excellent initiative. One of the primary use-cases is letting the PCs organize themselves into a sequential initiative block with no turns between them, and it doesn't crash and burn into any other rules because they can't manipulate order in any way post-roll.

[Segev]

What I do at my table is take care of this when initiative is rolled: I let anyone set their initiative to any value less than or equal to what they actually rolled. This avoids punishing players for having excellent initiative. One of the primary use-cases is letting the PCs organize themselves into a sequential initiative block with no turns between them, and it doesn't crash and burn into any other rules because they can't manipulate order in any way post-roll.

That's not a bad idea, but is there any particular reason why you wouldn't let them later adjust this if they started off wanting to take advantage of their initiative (in every sense of the word) - say, because they're an Assassin - but later wanted to align themselves differently in the turn order?

It does seem weird that you can't simply "bide your time for the right moment" and reset; Readying is all well and good for something trying to be a reaction, but timing in combat is either a real thing or it isn't, and if it is a real thing, then creatures should be able to wait just a moment to get themselves into the right rhythm, and if it isn't, then it shouldn't matter what a creature's initiative is as long as they're not somehow abusing it to get more actions than they should.

[Unoriginal]

This came up in the Tasha's mind whip thread: turn order is very important and can ironically make going faster than the enemy disadvantageous if the enemy goes before the rest of your party under a number of circumstances. This wouldn't be a problem if there were a rule permitting you to "reset" your initiative to happen later in the turn order. Max Wilson brought up a couple cases where the existing rules are a problem, and one possible issue with simply permitting people to change their place in initiative:



I think this is best handled by having a special action that you can only take if you've taken no other actions, bonus actions, or movement on your turn. Call this action "delay." What this action does is allow you to state where in the turn order you want to have your next turn happen, and then immediately end your turn. All the effects like spell durations would be not adversely impacted because your turn still ends at the same place it would have before you delayed, but you have now changed your turn order.

The Ready action is how it's handled by the rules. Yes, it costs you, but I personally have no issue to it.

I think that it's ok to not have perfect turns, and missed opportunities. It had spices to the situation.



Does this introduce any other weirdness or corner cases where you could abuse this for duration-advantages you shouldn't be able to get? Note that the point of this is to improve future duration-advantages on things that last, for example, "until the end of the target's next turn," so you can position yourself in the turn order such that that will cover a full round.

So for example, a Monk on top of the initiative order Stunning Striking the enemy on the first turn, then using your proposed Delay action to get at the bottom of the initiative order?

[CheddarChampion]

Just to keep things simple, how about not allowing a Delay if the creature who wants to delay is affected by something that applies each round or each turn?

If you take recurring damage while an opponent is concentrating, for example, delaying would either allow you to not take the damage for a while (and maybe your allies can break the effect) or it would cause you to take damage extra times.

If you are concentrating on Spirit Guardians and there are some enemies within 15' of you, but you want to move away so you're in range to heal a 0 HP ally, delaying would allow you to damage your enemies on their turn and heal your ally this round.

I also think it should just change your initiative. Otherwise you can do things like Delay, cast Hold Person, then smite your paralyzed foe. Normally that takes two failed saves or an ally casting Hold Person just to help you.

[Segev]

The Ready action is how it's handled by the rules. Yes, it costs you, but I personally have no issue to it.

I think that it's ok to not have perfect turns, and missed opportunities. It had spices to the situation. The reason this is insufficient is brought up in the Tasha's mind whip thread: readying a spell requires your Concentration, which means that you are adding a cost to a spell you Ready other than the delayed turn. If you're going to want to go after Bob in the initiative order every turn anyway, why should it take repeated concentration to cast the spell and ready it for release if you rolled "too well" but not if you rolled "poorly?" "Why can't my Dexterity score be 4 points lower?" should never be a lament a player is making about his character.

The proposed Delay action would permit you to decide that you are permanently going after Bob, so after delaying once, you act normally rather than having a weird hiccup of constantly having to act then hold off until Bob goes to do your thing.


So for example, a Monk on top of the initiative order Stunning Striking the enemy on the first turn, then using your proposed Delay action to get at the bottom of the initiative order?I am assuming - so please correct me if I'm wrong - that you're saying there's a potential abuse here. So I am going to walk through how this plays out if you do this or not.

The monk uses Stunning Strike at the start of combat, as he rolled really high on initiative in this example. The creature he stunned essentially loses its first turn (we'll assume it wasn't Surprised, or stunning it is actually a waste). The monk cannot Delay, because he did something other than Delay on his turn (he attacked and used Stunning Strike). At the top of the initiative order in the second round, the monk uses Delay to place himself at the end of the initiative order.. His turn immediately ends, and the Stunned creature is no longer Stunned, because it only lasted until the end of the monk's next turn, which has passed. The formerly-Stunned creature (and all other creatures in the combat) get their turns, and then, at the bottom of the initiative order, the monk takes his own turn, having changed his position in the order.

If the monk did not use Delay, he could have used Stunning Strike again at the top of the round. For whatever reason, he felt it was better to delay, though; I'm sure there are circumstances that would make ongoing timing of other things better that way, though I am not thinking of any right now. Maybe to repeatedly Shove somebody prone or use Open Hand to knock somebody prone and ensure that the rest of the party gets to act before they can get up, without having to spend ki on stunning them every time.

Is there an exploit or abuse here that I'm missing? This seems fine to me. If it does not seem fine to you, could you be more specific about what the problem you're seeing is?


Just to keep things simple, how about not allowing a Delay if the creature who wants to delay is affected by something that applies each round or each turn?

If you take recurring damage while an opponent is concentrating, for example, delaying would either allow you to not take the damage for a while (and maybe your allies can break the effect) or it would cause you to take damage extra times.Since, as written, Delay causes you to still have the turn you did nothing but Delay on, it would only cause you to take the damage extra times. I think the only exploit here would be healing spirit, which admittedly is an issue in that you could delay your turn to the position after the next guy's, gain healing spirit's benefits, and then delay your turn ... etc. It would still cause the caster to have to choose to give you the healing each turn, and it would still use up healing charges from the spirit, but that is still faster healing than it's meant to grant.

Good catch.

Maybe "you can only delay once per round?" This still would allow doubling up on healing spirit, which is an exploit, but prevents chaining it. Or maybe: "Effects which trigger once per turn consider both the turn on which you delayed and the turn taken at your new position in initiative order to be one turn."


If you are concentrating on Spirit Guardians and there are some enemies within 15' of you, but you want to move away so you're in range to heal a 0 HP ally, delaying would allow you to damage your enemies on their turn and heal your ally this round.If you had always been going in the initiative position to which you're delaying, would the results be any different? Serious question; I don't think they would be, but I may be missing some nuance here.


I also think it should just change your initiative. Otherwise you can do things like Delay, cast Hold Person, then smite your paralyzed foe. Normally that takes two failed saves or an ally casting Hold Person just to help you.I don't understand. How did what I wrote not cause it to change your initiative? How do you Delay, cast hold person, and then smite, with what I've written?

If you are going before your target, and you Delay until after them, they get to go. Then you go, casting hold person in your new spot in the initiative order. Then their turn comes up again, and they get to make their save. THEN it's your turn again.

[MaxWilson]

Does this introduce any other weirdness or corner cases where you could abuse this for duration-advantages you shouldn't be able to get? Note that the point of this is to improve future duration-advantages on things that last, for example, "until the end of the target's next turn," so you can position yourself in the turn order such that that will cover a full round.

Yes, it introduces a few anomalies, for repeated saves, damage over time effects, etc. It's better than the status quo, but DMs should still be encouraged to not grant another saving throw against Slow on the extra turn, not cause double damage from being inside a Sickening Radiance, etc.

It's a step on the road towards abolishing RAW sequential-turns cyclic initiative.

[DevilMcam]

The issue would be :
If i am affected by a disabling but not incapacitating spell like effect (like dragon frightefull presence for example) with a emd of turn save effect i could abuse it.

At my initiative 16 i can delay, to lets say 14 and at the end of my turn save for the fear then have my full turn withour the frightened effect.

[Unoriginal]

I am assuming - so please correct me if I'm wrong - that you're saying there's a potential abuse here. So I am going to walk through how this plays out if you do this or not.

The monk uses Stunning Strike at the start of combat, as he rolled really high on initiative in this example. The creature he stunned essentially loses its first turn (we'll assume it wasn't Surprised, or stunning it is actually a waste). The monk cannot Delay, because he did something other than Delay on his turn (he attacked and used Stunning Strike). At the top of the initiative order in the second round, the monk uses Delay to place himself at the end of the initiative order.. His turn immediately ends, and the Stunned creature is no longer Stunned, because it only lasted until the end of the monk's next turn, which has passed. The formerly-Stunned creature (and all other creatures in the combat) get their turns, and then, at the bottom of the initiative order, the monk takes his own turn, having changed his position in the order.

If the monk did not use Delay, he could have used Stunning Strike again at the top of the round. For whatever reason, he felt it was better to delay, though; I'm sure there are circumstances that would make ongoing timing of other things better that way, though I am not thinking of any right now. Maybe to repeatedly Shove somebody prone or use Open Hand to knock somebody prone and ensure that the rest of the party gets to act before they can get up, without having to spend ki on stunning them every time.

Is there an exploit or abuse here that I'm missing? This seems fine to me. If it does not seem fine to you, could you be more specific about what the problem you're seeing is?

I was just trying to understand what kind of situations would be impacted by the Delay you're proposing.

So just to be clear: the Delaying gets two turns in the same round, it's just that one is spent Delaying. Am I correct?

How does it interact with abilities that happens once per turn without actions, bonus actions, etc from the person with the ability?

[MoiMagnus]

After toying a lot with it in homebrew, the conclusion was the following: you need a "dark rule" that says that "when you delay your turn, effects are extended or not depending on what is the worst for you".

So if you have a bonus to AC until the end of your next turn, you can't make it last longer by delaying your turn.
But if you have a curse until the end of your next turn, you can't avoid suffering from it by delaying your turn.

Alternatively, if your problem is just that ready use concentration, just remove that part, and replace it by "if you suffer damage while readying a spell (or anything that would require you to make a concentration check if you were concentrating a spell), you have to make a concentration check (DC 10 or half of the damage, the higher of the two). If you fail, you lose your readied action."
You could even add this to non-spells too (if you suffer damage while readying an arrow shot, you might lose your shot if you fail your concentration check).

[Segev]

The issue would be :
If i am affected by a disabling but not incapacitating spell like effect (like dragon frightefull presence for example) with a emd of turn save effect i could abuse it.

At my initiative 16 i can delay, to lets say 14 and at the end of my turn save for the fear then have my full turn withour the frightened effect.


I was just trying to understand what kind of situations would be impacted by the Delay you're proposing.

So just to be clear: the Delaying gets two turns in the same round, it's just that one is spent Delaying. Am I correct?

How does it interact with abilities that happens once per turn without actions, bonus actions, etc from the person with the ability?

These, and Max's point I forgot to quote, are good points.

Yes, as written, you get two turns, one of which you do nothing on. The two things that it looks like still need handling are "once per turn" effects (which are an issue because you're manufacturing an extra turn and it is "your" turn) and the ability to use Delay to "save" a turn that is designed to be lost to an end-of-turn saving throw.

The best solution to the second one I can think of is to say that you can't even make saving throws on a turn in which you Delay. This probably should actually mean that, if you're required to make a Save on your turn, you CANNOT Delay, since delaying requires some sort of voluntary, conscious choice about timing your activities.

The first one is harder to word a good solution to. I want to make it count both turns as a single turn for this purpose, without having it allow you to say "end of your turn" only happens after the delayed turn or something.

[Narsham01]

I can see why they eliminated the rule, because it introduces a lot of potential complication to ongoing effects beyond what you've identified:

Scenario 1: Area effect trigger already in place. Our hypothetical PC starts her turn in the AoE of a Hobgoblin cleric's Spirit Guardians spell and has to make a save immediately, then chooses to Delay. If the Hobgoblin and the spell effect remain, either the PC takes the damage again, or we have to remember that effect was already triggered.

Scenario 2: Multiple AoE triggers already in place. Same situation, but on top of the Spirit Guardians spell, the PC is also in a Cloud of Daggers. Now you have to remember that there's two spell effects already "counted" for the PC.

Scenario 3: Multiple triggers appearing or being removed at different times over the turn. Our PC is in the Spirit Guardians and takes damage before choosing to Delay. Then the Goblin transmuter casts Cloud of Daggers on the PC's square. If the delayed PC already had "start and end of turn" then no damage will be dealt by the subsequent effect, but if there's a double-count we have to either track which spell effects were in place at what times, or apply them all twice.

Things get even more complex if you consider that concentration effects might be in place and then gone.

There's also an interaction (perhaps desirable) with effects that restrain or otherwise restrict movement, or with blindness and other spell effects that don't prohibit taking the Delay action. If my wizard is blinded, I Delay. Maybe I don't get the EoT save to remove the effect and then stop the delay, but I can wait until the cleric runs over to remove the blindness effect and then take my full turn. Or I can wait until someone else kills or shoves the monster restraining me before moving away and taking my full turn.

The worst instance is when a monster does something to a PC on a hit that lasts until the MONSTER'S next SoT or EoT. Because the monster doesn't change place in the init order, the PC can effectively ignore certain effects through delay, OR someone has to remember that the "blinded until monster's next EoT" effect actually lasts until the PC's next EoT instead, but just because of the delay.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Dealing with initiative and remembering (even tool-assisted) whose turn it is, while responding to combat events and trying to keep up banter and decide what the monsters will do next is already a significant tax on the DM (well, at least on me). Adding within-round variation to order and figuring out all the edge cases (which will inevitably arise) would increase that load significantly. I, for one, am very glad they removed Delay as a thing you can do.

Thinking at the fiction level, it also doesn't make much sense. It's a purely meta-game action, taken by non-meta actors--in-universe, all the people are acting at once with tiny differences based on reaction speed. I can conceptualize what the other Actions are in terms of what the characters are doing. I can't do the same for Delay. This isn't an insuperable bar, but it is a concern.

[CheddarChampion]

Another thing - the durations of spells you cast should probably end on your pre-Delay turn so you can't get an extra round out of them.
For example, if your enemies are in an AoE like Moonbeam and you delay your turn so that Moonbeam stays on and they start their turn in it, that's like getting 11 rounds of damage out of the spell.
A rare case that doesn't make a big difference, sure, but there are other spells that might make more of a difference.


If you had always been going in the initiative position to which you're delaying, would the results be any different? Serious question; I don't think they would be, but I may be missing some nuance here.

The idea is that normally (without Delay) if you move and heal then your enemies would start their next turn(s) outside of the Spirit Guardians spell - thus not taking damage at the start of their turns. You could also stay where you are but not heal your ally.
But if you Delay until after your enemies take their turns, Spirit Guardians still does damage to them and you can still heal your ally.
Simplified, without Delay there could be situations where you have to choose A or B. With Delay, you could choose A, B, or both A & B by delaying your turn.

I'm on board with the idea of adding Delay so party members can use teamwork more often.
I'm not fond of adding Delay so a player can make their turns more effective.
That's just an opinion though. Maybe you think it's a feature instead of a bug.


I don't understand. How did what I wrote not cause it to change your initiative? How do you Delay, cast hold person, and then smite, with what I've written?

If you are going before your target, and you Delay until after them, they get to go. Then you go, casting hold person in your new spot in the initiative order. Then their turn comes up again, and they get to make their save. THEN it's your turn again.

I looked at others' replies and it seemed like I missed something in the wording that would suggest you just delay the one turn rather than delaying your initiative. I should have looked again, my bad.

[Segev]

I can see why they eliminated the rule, because it introduces a lot of potential complication to ongoing effects beyond what you've identified:

Scenario 1: Area effect trigger already in place. Our hypothetical PC starts her turn in the AoE of a Hobgoblin cleric's Spirit Guardians spell and has to make a save immediately, then chooses to Delay. If the Hobgoblin and the spell effect remain, either the PC takes the damage again, or we have to remember that effect was already triggered.

Scenario 2: Multiple AoE triggers already in place. Same situation, but on top of the Spirit Guardians spell, the PC is also in a Cloud of Daggers. Now you have to remember that there's two spell effects already "counted" for the PC.

Scenario 3: Multiple triggers appearing or being removed at different times over the turn. Our PC is in the Spirit Guardians and takes damage before choosing to Delay. Then the Goblin transmuter casts Cloud of Daggers on the PC's square. If the delayed PC already had "start and end of turn" then no damage will be dealt by the subsequent effect, but if there's a double-count we have to either track which spell effects were in place at what times, or apply them all twice.

Things get even more complex if you consider that concentration effects might be in place and then gone.

There's also an interaction (perhaps desirable) with effects that restrain or otherwise restrict movement, or with blindness and other spell effects that don't prohibit taking the Delay action. If my wizard is blinded, I Delay. Maybe I don't get the EoT save to remove the effect and then stop the delay, but I can wait until the cleric runs over to remove the blindness effect and then take my full turn. Or I can wait until someone else kills or shoves the monster restraining me before moving away and taking my full turn.

The worst instance is when a monster does something to a PC on a hit that lasts until the MONSTER'S next SoT or EoT. Because the monster doesn't change place in the init order, the PC can effectively ignore certain effects through delay, OR someone has to remember that the "blinded until monster's next EoT" effect actually lasts until the PC's next EoT instead, but just because of the delay.

All good points.

I wonder if making Delaying more punitive - not intentionally so, but as a consequence in general - by making it cost your turn for the round entirely would work. Heck, at that point, you could make it take only an Action. Something like:

Delay
Sometimes, you find yourself out of rhythm with a combat, and want to change when you act. You may spend an action reassessing your combat timing. When you do, you may choose a new position in the initiative order. The next round, and all subsequent rounds, you act in your new position.


This doesn't change your position in the initiative order for the round in which you do it, so any ongoing timing effects take hold then. It could still extend or shorten durations, but it doesn't change the number of turns involved. It may need to also consume bonus actions, though, if there's a way you could use a bonus action along with the Delay action to trigger an effect that you want to last for two enemy turns when it should only last one. Are there any such bonus actions anybody can think of? Or am I just "future-proofing" with this concern? It also may have bad interaction with Action Surge.


More costly:

Delay
Sometimes, you find yourself out of rhythm with a combat, and want to change when you act. You may choose to Delay on your turn. If you do, you may take no actions nor bonus actions, and choose a new position in the initiative order. On the next round (and every round thereafter), your turn comes at the new position in the initiative order you have chosen.

[ff7hero]

Regeneration (Regenerate spell, Champion high level ability or Heroism off the top of my head) would be another potential "double dip" with this rule. I'm also not sure how it would work with summons that act "on your initiative right after your turn" like the Tasha's summons.

Would it be too meta to allow the players to choose to delay before their turn starts? That seems like an "elegant" way to solve most of these issues.

[Segev]

Regeneration (Regenerate spell, Champion high level ability or Heroism off the top of my head) would be another potential "double dip" with this rule. I'm also not sure how it would work with summons that act "on your initiative right after your turn" like the Tasha's summons.

Would it be too meta to allow the players to choose to delay before their turn starts? That seems like an "elegant" way to solve most of these issues.

My post right before yours proposes two ways to do Delay that make it more costly (you actually give up significant portions of your turn for the round, rather than just acting later in the round) to try to avoid the "double dip" elements.

I am not sure how choosing to delay before the turn starts is going to avoid the issues of trying to extend durations longer than they're meant to last. The monk with Stunning Strike who went before his stunned target last round choosing to not take his turn this round until after his stunned target's turn passes again would be getting two rounds of stunning from delaying, which is an issue.

[heavyfuel]

I'm yet to play 5e with a DM that doesn't just allow you to delay.

You cannot act during a creature's turn - that's what the Ready action is for - but you can delay to act after another creature. Once you delay, your initiative is in that spot for the rest of the combat (unless you delay again).

This isn't perfect, others have pointed potential "double-dips", but - at the end of the day - you're going to have to pick your poison. No simple system is going to be perfect, and adding a bunch of "if"s just complicates things too much IMO.

Is the occasional double dip that you forgot had already happened worse than the countless situations where the lack of a delay action causes effects to be useless? I don't personally think so.

Let people delay and handle the double dips when - or if - they ever arise.

[Segev]

I'm yet to play 5e with a DM that doesn't just allow you to delay.

You cannot act during a creature's turn - that's what the Ready action is for - but you can delay to act after another creature. Once you delay, your initiative is in that spot for the rest of the combat (unless you delay again).

Have you had to deal with any of the weird timing cases mentioned in this thread? IF so, how were they dealt with?

[Corsair14]

While I have never had players do it, I will occasionally hold action on my NPCs as a DM. For example I had a BBEG staying well away from the fight and not taking part and he sat on a hill overlooking the battle. For some reason the PCs decided to go charging after him instead of the wargs and goblins ripping up their caravan. I kept him on permanent hold action so he could withdraw when they do things like this. He was more or less there just so the PCs would know this was a controlled attack fluffwise and I don't think I had even statted him at this point in the campaign. Granted, a hold action from 100+ yards away is a bit different than a hold action in melee. Regardless of how fast PCs move in an action, an NPC would have time to retreat or do something at 100 yards. In my case the players were mad I used a hold action(I honestly didn't know it wasn't a thing anymore from prior editions) and retreated out of their grasp, but oh well he would have slaughtered them if they actually made into combat.

[heavyfuel]

Have you had to deal with any of the weird timing cases mentioned in this thread? IF so, how were they dealt with?

You ninja'd my edit :smalltongue:

To answer this question, exactly once we had a player delay while inside a Sickening Radiance. I was DMing this time, so I said he had to make the save before delaying. When it was his turn "again", we just remembered that he had already saved and he acted as usual

[Bloodcloud]

I think the premise is entirely flawed. It is NEVER disadvantageous to go first. It always gives you more actions than the enemy, no matter what you intend to do. The very worst case I can come up with has you dodging on your turn, which does not do much but at least gets you better defense until next turn.

The one scenario I see this often mentionned is when the enemy is out of reach but will be once they move. You are not disadvantaged by going first here, you will have precisely the same amount of action to attack within reach than if you went after them. You just have an action before hand, either to try a thrown weapon attack at disadvantage (not great, but it is basically free), Dodge (if they got some ranged attack you didn't know about or move faster than you thought, you stand better chance of avoiding damage, Ready a blow, or watever useful dithering you can think of. There is never ever a scenarion where going first is disadvantageous, at worst it's "meh".

[quindraco]

I think the premise is entirely flawed. It is NEVER disadvantageous to go first. It always gives you more actions than the enemy, no matter what you intend to do. The very worst case I can come up with has you dodging on your turn, which does not do much but at least gets you better defense until next turn.

The one scenario I see this often mentionned is when the enemy is out of reach but will be once they move. You are not disadvantaged by going first here, you will have precisely the same amount of action to attack within reach than if you went after them. You just have an action before hand, either to try a thrown weapon attack at disadvantage (not great, but it is basically free), Dodge (if they got some ranged attack you didn't know about or move faster than you thought, you stand better chance of avoiding damage, Ready a blow, or watever useful dithering you can think of. There is never ever a scenarion where going first is disadvantageous, at worst it's "meh".

Easy peasy lemon squeezy example: you're an arcane trickster with an owl familiar, and you rolled higher initiative than your owl did. You have nothing to hide behind. Going first means you don't get to Sneak Attack.

Situations where a very high initiative bones you are common and typical. I'm stunned you've yet to encounter them yourself.

[ff7hero]

Easy peasy lemon squeezy example: you're an arcane trickster with an owl familiar, and you rolled higher initiative than your owl did. You have nothing to hide behind. Going first means you don't get to Sneak Attack.

Situations where a very high initiative bones you are common and typical. I'm stunned you've yet to encounter them yourself.

Edit to add: I realized after posting this that I had been confused about how Help works. I don't know how to strike-through on mobile, but ignore the following bits about the Help getting "used up."

Ready an action to attack the target of their Familiar's Help immediately after the Familiar's turn? This has an added benefit of guaranteeing that you benefit from the Help action, since no one can act between you and your familiar and "use up" "your" advantage. Or just use Steady Aim, actually (yeah it's "optional" but if an optional rule solves the problem there's no need for a house rule).

A better example would be if the initiative went Familiar->Ranged Fighter->Rogue, so the Fighter is all but guaranteed to "use up" the familiar's advantage. Steady Aim still solves this, but Readying for after Help makes you lose out on your Turn 1 Sneak Attack in this case.

I'm honestly not convinced the juice is worth the squeeze on this one. Occasionally (or frequently to hear people on this thread tell it) initiative order doesn't work out the most optimal way for you. That's ok. Roll with the punches and make a game plan with the world (turn order) as it is, not as you'd like it to be. I think with a delay rule like this, combat would just become even more samey and non-interactive as players just line up their turns and unload their sweet combos.

[Segev]

I think the premise is entirely flawed. It is NEVER disadvantageous to go first. It always gives you more actions than the enemy, no matter what you intend to do. The very worst case I can come up with has you dodging on your turn, which does not do much but at least gets you better defense until next turn.

The one scenario I see this often mentionned is when the enemy is out of reach but will be once they move. You are not disadvantaged by going first here, you will have precisely the same amount of action to attack within reach than if you went after them. You just have an action before hand, either to try a thrown weapon attack at disadvantage (not great, but it is basically free), Dodge (if they got some ranged attack you didn't know about or move faster than you thought, you stand better chance of avoiding damage, Ready a blow, or watever useful dithering you can think of. There is never ever a scenarion where going first is disadvantageous, at worst it's "meh".

The very specific example that spawned this thread is Tasha's mind whip being cast by Alice on Bob, when Alice's melee-skirmisher ally is Charlie, and the turn order is Alice, Bob, Charlie. Alice would vastly prefer to go after Bob in this case. If she casts Tasha's mind whip on Bob, the spell effect is over after Bob's turn, meaning Bob can still take reactions on Charlie's turn. If Alice went after Bob, Bob still has to pick between moving or acting on his turn after Charlie, but he can't take Reactions on Charlie's turn, so Charlie could run in and stab him then run out again, and Bob couldn't take an OA, and would have to choose between moving or attacking (so would have to have a ranged attack of some sort to be able to do anything to Charlie or Alice at all).

While you can argue that letting Bob have a complete turn by Alice not going before him is bad, but even with Tasha's mind whip landing, Bob can move or attack. If the fight lasts more than one round, denying Bob the ability to make attacks and OAs is superior to denying him the ability to make attacks.

[quindraco]

Ready an action to attack the target of their Familiar's Help immediately after the Familiar's turn? This has an added benefit of guaranteeing that you benefit from the Help action, since no one can act between you and your familiar and "use up" "your" advantage. Or just use Steady Aim, actually (yeah it's "optional" but if an optional rule solves the problem there's no need for a house rule).

A better example would be if the initiative went Familiar->Ranged Fighter->Rogue, so the Fighter is all but guaranteed to "use up" the familiar's advantage. Steady Aim still solves this, but Readying for after Help makes you lose out on your Turn 1 Sneak Attack in this case.

I'm honestly not convinced the juice is worth the squeeze on this one. Occasionally (or frequently to hear people on this thread tell it) initiative order doesn't work out the most optimal way for you. That's ok. Roll with the punches and make a game plan with the world (turn order) as it is, not as you'd like it to be. I think with a delay rule like this, combat would just become even more samey and non-interactive as players just line up their turns and unload their sweet combos.

I'm not following what you think the juice or the squeeze is here; Bloodcloud was denying that rolling high on initiative could bone the roller, and you clearly agree with me that it can, and further you agreed with my example. What juice and what squeeze are you referring to?

[ff7hero]

I'm not following what you think the juice or the squeeze is here; Bloodcloud was denying that rolling high on initiative could bone the roller, and you clearly agree with me that it can, and further you agreed with my example. What juice and what squeeze are you referring to?

The juice is the Delay command/action/option. The squeeze would be both the rules massaging needed to get it to work and the effect it would have on combats.

Also I'm not sure how your takeaway was that I agreed with your example when said example hinged on the AT losing their SA for the turn and I offered 2 means available for them to still get their SA for the turn.

I agree with the broad premise that occasionally initiative order can be suboptimal, but I'd say this is more of a feature than a bug. Even in the TMW scenario, I'd say the spell is still perfectly fine if it isn't firing on all cylinders in every fight. Hold Person has a much lower floor (100% useless), and probably more fights where it's at that floor compared to TMW. I still usually happily take it and just use a different option when it doesn't apply.

[Segev]

I agree with the broad premise that occasionally initiative order can be suboptimal, but I'd say this is more of a feature than a bug.

I strongly disagree that this is a feature. "I wish I had rolled lower" or "I wish my Dexterity were lower" are things that you should never have reason to say in D&D, barring extremely rare cases where you actively WANT your PC to fail at something. "I wish I rolled initiative that placed me after the guy I beat in initiative, because it would make me better able to succeed at combat" is not such a case.

[ff7hero]

I strongly disagree that this is a feature. "I wish I had rolled lower" or "I wish my Dexterity were lower" are things that you should never have reason to say in D&D, barring extremely rare cases where you actively WANT your PC to fail at something. "I wish I rolled initiative that placed me after the guy I beat in initiative, because it would make me better able to succeed at combat" is not such a case.

If it were truly as devastating or as frequent as this thread makes it seem, I might agree. However I think it's an occasional annoyance rather than a frequent major handicap. I've played characters with very high initiative (like 22 Dex, Alert and Sentinel's Shield high) and I can't think of one time where I truly thought "I wish I rolled lower initiative. This might be because I tend to build very flexible characters. If I can't enact Plan A on Turn 1 because I was too fast then I can fall back on Plans B, C or D depending on the context of the encounter. If I always had the chance to delay and enact Plan A, optimal play gets a lot more boring. Even worse if I know that the party can always act as a block in the most advantageous order in every encounter.

[Segev]

If it were truly as devastating or as frequent as this thread makes it seem, I might agree. However I think it's an occasional annoyance rather than a frequent major handicap. I've played characters with very high initiative (like 22 Dex, Alert and Sentinel's Shield high) and I can't think of one time where I truly thought "I wish I rolled lower initiative. This might be because I tend to build very flexible characters. If I can't enact Plan A on Turn 1 because I was too fast then I can fall back on Plans B, C or D depending on the context of the encounter. If I always had the chance to delay and enact Plan A, optimal play gets a lot more boring. Even worse if I know that the party can always act as a block in the most advantageous order in every encounter.

I do not think initiative order should dictate optimal play, or worse, ruin a tactic, except in the case where it's doing so because the bad guys go before you.

I suspect, from what you've said, you rarely play characters who debuff on a round-by-round basis. I could be wrong, but those are the major cases where this comes up. I've seen it happen frequently with martials, in particular, where knocking somebody prone was far less effective because the target goes immediately after the martial who did it.

[LudicSavant]

This came up in the Tasha's mind whip thread: turn order is very important and can ironically make going faster than the enemy disadvantageous if the enemy goes before the rest of your party under a number of circumstances.

There are cases where it's advantageous to go after your ally, but what are the cases where it's advantageous to go after your enemy? Worst case you could pass your turn and do nothing.

[Segev]

There are cases where it's advantageous to go after your ally, but what are the cases where it's advantageous to go after your enemy? Worst case you could pass your turn and do nothing.

When you are doing something that will make it easier for your ally to attack, either directly or by avoiding retaliation, but which ends on your enemy's turn.

A debuffs B until B's turn, B takes his turn, then C can't take advantage of the debuff. If B goes, then A debuffs B until the end of B's turn, then C goes, C can take advantage of the debuff.

[MaxWilson]

There are cases where it's advantageous to go after your ally, but what are the cases where it's advantageous to go after your enemy? Worst case you could pass your turn and do nothing.

Easy example: you're a PAM GWM Fighter, knocking enemies prone and then attacking with advantage and melee kiting away, and if you go before your enemy, they get to stand up every turn before your allies can attack them with advantage, and your allies have to eat a separate opportunity attack that's not at disadvantage. If you were a bit slower, the enemy would take its turn first and then you'd all beat on them with advantage, instead of only you individually, and the monster's opportunity attack is disadvantaged because it's still prone.

If playing with pop-up healing, that's another example: you want to heal your ally AFTER the enemy uses up their action, so that your ally can stand up and act before the enemy has a chance to knock them back down to zero HP again (with advantage for a prone target).

Also, Hold Person/Monster: going after the monster = more auto-crits from your buddies before the monster can attempt another save.

[Tanarii]

If you want flawless timing, use the Ready action. It has some costs, but that's fine, it's the price to pay for exact timing you want.

Edit: if it really bothers you, just switch to IGOUGO sides initiative or something.

[ff7hero]

I do not think initiative order should dictate optimal play, or worse, ruin a tactic, except in the case where it's doing so because the bad guys go before you.

I suspect, from what you've said, you rarely play characters who debuff on a round-by-round basis. I could be wrong, but those are the major cases where this comes up. I've seen it happen frequently with martials, in particular, where knocking somebody prone was far less effective because the target goes immediately after the martial who did it.

Everything should affect optimal play. Environment, allies and enemies all do, but you have a degree of ability to learn those things before hostilities commerce. You know who your party is and you can usually (imx) scout enemies and locations. Initiative is similar, but by its nature it's the one element you can never fully know in advance. It's the secret sauce, the truly random element, the shuffling of the deck before the game.

I've played enough debuffers to have accepted that that's the cost of doing business. Including Athletics machines who loved pushing prone. Luckily if you're good at pushing, you're good at grappling too. You'll have more problems with Huge+ critters than the initiative order if you have no options when Shoving isn't optimal.


Easy example: you're a PAM GWM Fighter, knocking enemies prone and then attacking with advantage and melee kiting away, and if you go before your enemy, they get to stand up every turn before your allies can attack them with advantage, and your allies have to eat a separate opportunity attack that's not at disadvantage. If you were a bit slower, the enemy would take its turn first and then you'd all beat on them with advantage, instead of only you individually, and the monster's opportunity attack is disadvantaged because it's still prone.

If playing with pop-up healing, that's another example: you want to heal your ally AFTER the enemy uses up their action, so that your ally can stand up and act before the enemy has a chance to knock them back down to zero HP again (with advantage for a prone target).

Also, Hold Person/Monster: going after the monster = more auto-crits from your buddies before the monster can attempt another save.

The PAM/GWM example already requires so much setup to be truly good (all melee/XBE party for starters) and even then against like the easiest encounter type in the game (single melee brute size Large or smaller (can work against Huge with some more resources)). Turn order is not going to be a primary reason that build fails to perform. Also, see above about grappling. One of your apparently many melee friends should be able to handle it. Then the baddy on the ground has to choose between getting its multiattack with disadvantage against the party's preferred target or using its action to try to escape.

I don't think we need to make pop up healing better. Readying can help here, although it has some costs, which I consider acceptable for the potential tactically advantage (maybe a smidge too expensive, but reactions and concentration aren't very precise knobs).

I also don't think Hold Person/Monster need any help being better. This is a scenario where Readying will help though. You lose your reaction, but you shouldn't need to worry about concentrating on another spell.

This is, of course, all just my opinion, if you have more fun with a Delay option, more power to you. I'm honestly just happy to have talked this through. I hadn't thought about it before, but I've realized that the uncertainty of initiative is (for me) an important part of what makes combat exciting in DnD. If every fight began with the party delaying so the Mind Sliver->Hold Monster combo always went off right before the Rogue and Paladin got a turn that would be boring for me.

Sometimes the dice are with you and it happens and that's exciting, but part of the excitement is tied to the fact that it doesn't happen all the time. If you always crit, you'll do more damage, but you won't get that endorphin kick from the die coming up "20."

Sometimes it doesn't happen. The enemy goes right after your Hold Monster caster, but that's ok because your character can (should) do more than one thing. Maybe your Holder casts Faerie Fire (no save to shake it off) or Bless (or...or...or).

I think this a long winded way of saying that if your character struggles to perform because of turn order, there are probably going to be situations where initiative does go your way and you still struggle to perform. Like the Proner against Gargantuan Creatures or Hoverers or regular fliers with ranged attacks.

[Segev]

Everything should affect optimal play.

Quirks of game mechanics that do not represent something that is genuinely a limitation in the fiction layer should not. Or, if they do, it should be minimal, and not something you seek to protect.

[ff7hero]

Quirks of game mechanics that do not represent something that is genuinely a limitation in the fiction layer should not. Or, if they do, it should be minimal, and not something you seek to protect.

It's not a quirk of the game mechanic. It's the entire point of the game mechanic.

[MaxWilson]

It's not a quirk of the game mechanic. It's the entire point of the game mechanic.

Okay, so you roll an initiative higher than the monster but lower than your buddies. Every round, you shove the monster prone. Every round, it gets back to its feet before your buddies can attack it. If you had a Dex 4 points lower the opposite would be happening and they'd be doing 50% to 70% more damage.

The entire point of this game mechanic is to [fill in the blank here], and this scenario where high Dex is bad achieves that by [fill in the blank here].

Don't say "increase unpredictability" because the fact that this negative quirk is happening the same way every single round of this combat means it is the opposite of unpredictable. You'll have to switch your tactics, but in-character you can't explain why because the reason is entirely in the metagame: "my initiative is too high to knock it prone for you guys, have to do something else." That's bad for a TTRPG.

[ff7hero]

Okay, so you roll an initiative higher than the monster but lower than your buddies. Every round, you shove the monster prone. Every round, it gets back to its feet before your buddies can attack it. If you had a Dex 4 points lower the opposite would be happening and they'd be doing 50% to 70% more damage.

The entire point of this game mechanic is to [fill in the blank here], and this scenario where high Dex is bad achieves that by [fill in the blank here].

Don't say "increase unpredictability" because the fact that this negative quirk is happening the same way every single round of this combat means it is the opposite of unpredictable. You'll have to switch your tactics, but in-character you can't explain why because the reason is entirely in the metagame: "my initiative is too high to knock it prone for you guys, have to do something else." That's bad for a TTRPG.

First of all, this is a scenario where that Ready action I keep mentioning would be a solution. "This guy is ready to pop right back on his feet if I trip him now, but if I wait until he commits to something else he'll probably stay down long enough for all my friends to beat on him." I can explain it, thank you very much xP. I honestly have more trouble discussing Spell Slots in character than turn order.

I can't answer your question because you won't accept my answer. If my play group could keep up with it I'd be all for rolling initiative every round, but that's a slow down that most groups just can't handle. I also want to go back to the pre-Roll20 days when you only had a rough idea of when monsters/NPCs were acting, but that's a bit of a tangent. The point of randomizing turn order is to make encounters less predictable. If your Proner (and his party of melee/XBow Experts who can't Grapple) isn't sure how the fight against the single melee brute is going to go before it starts, I'd say that the mechanic is working as intended.

[Segev]

First of all, this is a scenario where that Ready action I keep mentioning would be a solution. "This guy is ready to pop right back on his feet if I trip him now, but if I wait until he commits to something else he'll probably stay down long enough for all my friends to beat on him." I can explain it, thank you very much xP. I honestly have more trouble discussing Spell Slots in character than turn order.

Okay, but why, if you'd rolled 4 lower on your Dexterity check, would you not have to break up your movement and your tripping of him, instead being able to move in, trip him, and move back out, but instead, you have to move in, then wait a bit, then trip him? Why can't you wait until he's acted, then move in and trip him? Why can't you move away after tripping him, then wait for him to get up and move in to trip him and move back out again?

[Kane0]

I do like fhe first response idea of when rolling initiative you can choose a lower number than what you rolled.

Beyond that I think its too niche a thing to bother messing with the flow of play

[ff7hero]

Okay, but why, if you'd rolled 4 lower on your Dexterity check, would you not have to break up your movement and your tripping of him, instead being able to move in, trip him, and move back out, but instead, you have to move in, then wait a bit, then trip him? Why can't you wait until he's acted, then move in and trip him? Why can't you move away after tripping him, then wait for him to get up and move in to trip him and move back out again?

Idk, maybe if you rolled lower he would have been overconfident and over extended himself, leaving an opening you can easily exploit. When the rules are doing their job and there's a small hiccup with portraying that on the narrative level, I recommend paraphrasinging the MST3K mantra and moving on. "It's just a game, I should really just relax."

It occurs to me that there's nothing stopping this enemy from just delaying as you'd need some sort of rule to avoid infinite staring contests. Fine for a House Rule, but I'm glad it isn't how the game was presented.

[Segev]

Idk, maybe if you rolled lower he would have been overconfident and over extended himself, leaving an opening you can easily exploit. When the rules are doing their job and there's a small hiccup with portraying that on the narrative level, I recommend paraphrasinging the MST3K mantra and moving on. "It's just a game, I should really just relax."

It occurs to me that there's nothing stopping this enemy from just delaying as you'd need some sort of rule to avoid infinite staring contests. Fine for a House Rule, but I'm glad it isn't how the game was presented.

Oh, that's easy. If the enemy delays, he's still giving the other PCs shots at him while he's prone. Or, if he delays to avoid whatever you're planning (e.g. knocking him prone after he acts), you can keep him from acting at all and the other PCs get to hit him while he doesn't fight back.

[MaxWilson]

First of all, this is a scenario where that Ready action I keep mentioning would be a solution. "This guy is ready to pop right back on his feet if I trip him now, but if I wait until he commits to something else he'll probably stay down long enough for all my friends to beat on him." I can explain it, thank you very much xP. I honestly have more trouble discussing Spell Slots in character than turn order.

That solution is terrible because Extra Attack doesn't work with ready, nor does PAM bonus action attack, and neither does your extra move. You're losing 2-4 attacks and taking 3 or 4 times as much damage because you're Readying a shove instead of using one on your turn. I can explain in more detail if necessary.


I can't answer your question because you won't accept my answer. If my play group could keep up with it I'd be all for rolling initiative every round, but that's a slow down that most groups just can't handle. I also want to go back to the pre-Roll20 days when you only had a rough idea of when monsters/NPCs were acting, but that's a bit of a tangent. The point of randomizing turn order is to make encounters less predictable. If your Proner (and his party of melee/XBow Experts who can't Grapple) isn't sure how the fight against the single melee brute is going to go before it starts, I'd say that the mechanic is working as intended.

Unfortunately this has nothing to do with "If your Proner (and his party of melee/XBow Experts who can't Grapple) isn't sure how the fight against the single melee brute is going to go before it starts". That's not the issue. The issue is "it's bad when a key factor in the combat, one which shapes combat strategies, is something which doesn't exist in the diegesis/narrative and which none of the characters even know exists, in-character."

Segev's solution is a patch on top of RAW initiative which probably fixes this particular issue satisfactorily. I on the other hand think that RAW initiative is bad in so many ways, including this one, that it's better to jettison it entirely and use TSR-ish rounds where the DM just makes sure that everybody gets a chance to act each round, while keeping monster actions mostly secret until players have declared their own actions.

[ff7hero]

Oh, that's easy. If the enemy delays, he's still giving the other PCs shots at him while he's prone. Or, if he delays to avoid whatever you're planning (e.g. knocking him prone after he acts), you can keep him from acting at all and the other PCs get to hit him while he doesn't fight back.

I'm not saying this wouldn't work, but I feel like it would stall out combat too much for no real gain. In this example, if it's really worth it to the enemy to not be attacked while prone and really worth it to the proner that the enemy act before they shove then every one else attacks without advantage anyway. And then the proner goes and then the monster and now the issue is the same. The monster's turn still comes right after the proner's. Plus, while those two characters are delaying, before every player goes, the DM asks the Proner if they want to act, and then reassesses whether the monster still delays. Everyone else got a whole free round of wracking this one monster, but since when is a fight against a single melee the norm? When is it at all challenging?

To be clear, I'm not saying don't do this at your table. I'm just playing Devil's Advocate so when you do enact this house rule you have multiple ideas about what to look out for. Whatever choice results in the most fun for your table is the right choice, of course.




Unfortunately this has nothing to do with "If your Proner (and his party of melee/XBow Experts who can't Grapple) isn't sure how the fight against the single melee brute is going to go before it starts". That's not the issue. The issue is "it's bad when a key factor in the combat, one which shapes combat strategies, is something which doesn't exist in the diegesis/narrative and which none of the characters even know exists, in-character."


First of all, I think this illustrates the disconnect we're going to face while discussing this. I play Role-playing Games for the game. The story is a happy little accident. If there's a game element that's putting in good work[1], but it creates a small amount of narrative dissonance, I'm usually in favor of keeping the mechanic and just reciting the MST3K Mantra. But if you want a diegetic/narrative explanation, combat is hectic and chaotic. Plans don't survive first contact with the enemy. The first ogre you faced was aggressive (high initiative) and you exploited that, the second one was more cautious (low initiative) and didn't present you with quite the same opening. Your characters should know that combat is hectic and unpredictable. If they don't, they should learn it quickly ;).

[1]Randomizing the turn order when combat starts both creates information the players can't plan for ahead of time and prevents the players from always setting off their I Win combos every combat.



Segev's solution is a patch on top of RAW initiative which probably fixes this particular issue satisfactorily. I on the other hand think that RAW initiative is bad in so many ways, including this one, that it's better to jettison it entirely and use TSR-ish rounds where the DM just makes sure that everybody gets a chance to act each round, while keeping monster actions mostly secret until players have declared their own actions.

Sure. That sounds like wonderful fun. I think if my DM tried that smoke would leak out his ears. I love him to pieces, he runs a fun game, but he struggles with running by the books combat with by the books initiative. I also suspect our Paladin would miss half their turns, but that's another kettle of fish entirely. I've seen your House Rules, your games sound like they would be a blast to play in, but it's clear from reading that and seeing your posts here that you're an exceptional DM.

I also think Segev seems to be an exceptional DM, so I'm sure none of the points I've made will be game stopping problems for him. I do see any extra work for the DM (even just adjusting his House Rule as corner cases come up) as extra straw on the proverbial camel's back, and any piece could be the back breaking one if enough accumulate.

[quindraco]

First of all, I think this illustrates the disconnect we're going to face while discussing this. I play Role-playing Games for the game. The story is a happy little accident. If there's a game element that's putting in good work[1], but it creates a small amount of narrative dissonance, I'm usually in favor of keeping the mechanic and just reciting the MST3K Mantra. But if you want a diegetic/narrative explanation, combat is hectic and chaotic. Plans don't survive first contact with the enemy. The first ogre you faced was aggressive (high initiative) and you exploited that, the second one was more cautious (low initiative) and didn't present you with quite the same opening. Your characters should know that combat is hectic and unpredictable. If they don't, they should learn it quickly ;).

Putting aside why anyone is playing a storytelling game for the game instead of the story, it's bad game design to make characters worse as they improve, which is how RAW initiative works in this context: higher Dexterity and other static initiative buffs (like adding proficiency bonus to Initiative) forces your initiative higher, which for the current context, is worse for you. That's why my house rule exists: you shouldn't get worse at combat just because you spent an ASI on Dexterity. At worst, you should fail to improve.

[MaxWilson]

I'm not saying this wouldn't work, but I feel like it would stall out combat too much for no real gain. In this example, if it's really worth it to the enemy to not be attacked while prone and really worth it to the proner that the enemy act before they shove then every one else attacks without advantage anyway. And then the proner goes and then the monster and now the issue is the same. The monster's turn still comes right after the proner's. Plus, while those two characters are delaying, before every player goes, the DM asks the Proner if they want to act, and then reassesses whether the monster still delays. Everyone else got a whole free round of wracking this one monster, but since when is a fight against a single melee the norm? When is it at all challenging?

...

Sure. That sounds like wonderful fun. I think if my DM tried that smoke would leak out his ears. I love him to pieces, he runs a fun game, but he struggles with running by the books combat with by the books initiative. I also suspect our Paladin would miss half their turns, but that's another kettle of fish entirely. I've seen your House Rules, your games sound like they would be a blast to play in, but it's clear from reading that and seeing your posts here that you're an exceptional DM.

Thank you. It's hard to tell though--I don't think I'm doing anything another DM wouldn't be capable of.

Apropos of single-monster melee brutes, there's an online game I'm running now (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?631153-Recruiting-3-4-players-for-MaxWilson-s-first-Internet-DMing&p=25038044#post25038044) (on scene #4 of adventure #1 after three weeks of PBP play--it's my first online game so I'm probably missing a bunch of opportunities to make the game faster and smoother) and they're about to face a single apparently-melee brute, but I think it's going to be pretty challenging. The players sure don't seem overconfident. You're welcome to join the adventure BTW on a short-term or long-term basis--there was a Rogue originally planned but they never got around to posting anything so they sort of vanished from existence. You could take over or replace that Rogue if you want to join in. Even if not, commentary on what is good / bad so far is welcome. I'm still very new to Internet DMing.

[ff7hero]

Putting aside why anyone is playing a storytelling game for the game instead of the story, it's bad game design to make characters worse as they improve, which is how RAW initiative works in this context: higher Dexterity and other static initiative buffs (like adding proficiency bonus to Initiative) forces your initiative higher, which for the current context, is worse for you. That's why my house rule exists: you shouldn't get worse at combat just because you spent an ASI on Dexterity. At worst, you should fail to improve.

Before you put that aside, I'd like to point out that there are lots of different people that enjoy things for lots of different reasons. It baffles me that people play Role-Playing Games[1] for the story, but I don't snidely question their choices while acting magnanimous for "not actually questioning it."

To your main point, I'd say it's bad game design to have a rule in place that encourages your players to build around a specific combo and block their turns out to pull it off every combat. But like I told Max and Segev, if your table enjoys it, more power to you. I'd also like to point out that we're dealing with niche cases here. I haven't done any real legwork to support this statistic, but I'd say it's better to go first the vast majority of the time.


[1]This is what DnD is. A game where you Play a Role. You pretend to be someone else in some situation and you try to determine how they would act. There's a story, because not even I want a series of completely unrelated encounters, and context in a consistent world helps you inhabit your character and make appropriate decisions. But the story serves the game, not the other way around.




Thank you. It's hard to tell though--I don't think I'm doing anything another DM wouldn't be capable of.


I like to call this the Anti-Dunning-Kruger effect, although maybe it's just a flavor of Imposter Syndrome I'm not familiar with. Highly skilled people often don't realize the difficulty most people would face doing things they find easy.



Apropos of single-monster melee brutes, there's an online game I'm running now (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?631153-Recruiting-3-4-players-for-MaxWilson-s-first-Internet-DMing&p=25038044#post25038044) (on scene #4 of adventure #1 after three weeks of PBP play--it's my first online game so I'm probably missing a bunch of opportunities to make the game faster and smoother) and they're about to face a single apparently-melee brute, but I think it's going to be pretty challenging. The players sure don't seem overconfident. You're welcome to join the adventure BTW on a short-term or long-term basis--there was a Rogue originally planned but they never got around to posting anything so they sort of vanished from existence. You could take over or replace that Rogue if you want to join in. Even if not, commentary on what is good / bad so far is welcome. I'm still very new to Internet DMing.

Oh man, now I'm flattered. I'll check it out, but I warn you that I'm liable to repeat your Rogue's vanishing act. Just based on my limited experience with PbP.

[MaxWilson]

Oh man, now I'm flattered. I'll check it out, but I warn you that I'm liable to repeat your Rogue's vanishing act. Just based on my limited experience with PbP.

No worries if you do. It's a Rogue after all, they probably wandered off alone.



[1]This is what DnD is. A game where you Play a Role. You pretend to be someone else in some situation and you try to determine how they would act. There's a story, because not even I want a series of completely unrelated encounters, and context in a consistent world helps you inhabit your character and make appropriate decisions. But the story serves the game, not the other way around.


That's the problem with important tactical details that don't exist in-character though, like the initiative order: you want to ask "what would my character do in this situation" but "this situation" is "I rolled a 17 initiative and the monster rolled 15, while everyone else in the party rolled 8-14." Instead of thinking in character, the details of initiative pull you out of character in order to make good tactical decisions. Your character might think of casting Hold Monster, but as a player you know the monster will get two chances to save before anyone can take advantage and get even a single auto-crit.

RAW initiative is terrible for roleplaying.

[ff7hero]

That's the problem with important tactical details that don't exist in-character though, like the initiative order: you want to ask "what would my character do in this situation" but "this situation" is "I rolled a 17 initiative and the monster rolled 15, while everyone else in the party rolled 8-14." Instead of thinking in character, the details of initiative pull you out of character in order to make good tactical decisions. Your character might think of casting Hold Monster, but as a player you know the monster will get two chances to save before anyone can take advantage and get even a single auto-crit.

RAW initiative is terrible for roleplaying.

"I'm getting the drop on this ogre, but these other doofuses aren't ready to wail on him. Maybe I should give them a moment (ready) before I cast Hold Person."

The mechanics are the narrative. Everything that influences your decisions exists in character. IMO tracking hit points or measuring spell range/AoE pulls people out of character more than rationalizing turn order, but I accepted a long time ago that even the lowest Int PC is a tactical genius (at least compared to me). The information they take in and process...maybe it's just me, but I don't think I could handle it.

I hope asking this won't offend you, but how much time did you spend playing with RAW initiative before declaring it "terrible for roleplaying"? IIRC, you started playing in TSR era where I believe Player Turn/Enemy Turn was the norm? My knowledge of pre-3.X DnD peaks at "I know what 'To Hit Armor Class 0' is."

[EggKookoo]

Regarding keeping your PCs together, I let my players use their initiative score -- essentially as if they had all rolled a 10 -- but I roll individual enemy initiatives (during pre-session encounter design if I can). Players can roll init if they want, but they like using the score, I think mainly because it's faster. But also it makes their turn order more predictable. Since most of the PCs are within 1 or 2 Dex mod points of each other, this tends to keep their turns clustered, usually in the middle of the round. Once in a while their cluster is interrupted by an enemy, but it's not that common. This makes it much easier to plan team tactics without resorting to readying actions.

It hasn't come up yet but I would consider even letting the PCs reshuffle themselves within their cluster as they see fit on a round-by-round basis, with the understanding that their true turn still kinda happens when it's supposed to based on init.

Anyway, not sure if this helps the original issue.

[LudicSavant]

When you are doing something that will make it easier for your ally to attack, either directly or by avoiding retaliation, but which ends on your enemy's turn.

A debuffs B until B's turn, B takes his turn, then C can't take advantage of the debuff. If B goes, then A debuffs B until the end of B's turn, then C goes, C can take advantage of the debuff.

Oh I see, I was overlooking the "if the enemy goes before the rest of your party" line.

[MaxWilson]

"I'm getting the drop on this ogre, but these other doofuses aren't ready to wail on him. Maybe I should give them a moment (ready) before I cast Hold Person."

"These other doofuses aren't ready to wail on him" really doesn't work for me as a rationale, especially if it's not the first round of combat.


The mechanics are the narrative. Everything that influences your decisions exists in character. IMO tracking hit points or measuring spell range/AoE pulls people out of character more than rationalizing turn order, but I accepted a long time ago that even the lowest Int PC is a tactical genius (at least compared to me). The information they take in and process...maybe it's just me, but I don't think I could handle it.

HP and spell points have in-character equivalents though. IMO "I've only got one HP left!" works as an in-character statement even if the PC would use different words.


I hope asking this won't offend you, but how much time did you spend playing with RAW initiative before declaring it "terrible for roleplaying"? IIRC, you started playing in TSR era where I believe Player Turn/Enemy Turn was the norm? My knowledge of pre-3.X DnD peaks at "I know what 'To Hit Armor Class 0' is."

I'm not offended. I know I abandoned RAW initiative as a DM essentially as soon as I started DMing 5E, so... maybe five sessions as a player beforehand**, and ten sessions at most total since then, plus forum discussions. I see sooo many forum discussions where people present problems that I've just never seen happen in play, and it turns out that the root cause is using RAW initiative. This thread is one of many. (Also stuff like "can you Dodge/Blade Ward/ready actions outside of combat?" and "what happens if a Skulker ambusher loses initiative and misses on round 1 of the fight?")

** And when I say "maybe" I mean "I don't even remember if my first 5E DM used 5E RAW initiative or TSR-ish initiative." I remember some of the uber-deadly fights but not what initiative system the players were using.

[Segev]

"I'm getting the drop on this ogre, but these other doofuses aren't ready to wail on him. Maybe I should give them a moment (ready) before I cast Hold Person."

The mechanics are the narrative. Everything that influences your decisions exists in character. IMO tracking hit points or measuring spell range/AoE pulls people out of character more than rationalizing turn order, but I accepted a long time ago that even the lowest Int PC is a tactical genius (at least compared to me). The information they take in and process...maybe it's just me, but I don't think I could handle it.

For casting hold person, this isn't quite as big of a deal, because it's a ranged effect and it's going to take your Concentration anyway. But for "I want to run by him and knock him prone so my allies can beat him up more easily," the Ready action explicitly will not work. You can't Ready a whole turn, only an action, so you'd have to run in, hope the guy doesn't move away on his turn, then take your readied action to shove him down after his turn is over, and you're still next to him. So you've given him his turn to attack you...because you had better initiative than he did? Or you have to shove him prone and let him get back up before any of your buddies can do anything about it, while if he'd been quicker on the draw than you, for some reason, you could run in and shove him prone and run out and he'd be stuck on the ground during your buddies' turns.

If you're instead planning a one-round debuff while maintaining Concentration on something else - which Tasha's mind whip could let you do, since it lacks Concentration - you can't Ready to cast it without losing Concentration. This could be handled by a DIFFERENT, less fraught house rule, removing the requirement to Concentrate on a holding a spell Ready to cast, but that doesn't address the issue of run-by knockdowns being somehow less effective because you rolled too well on intiative.

[ff7hero]

"These other doofuses aren't ready to wail on him" really doesn't work for me as a rationale, especially if it's not the first round of combat.


Yeah, like I said earlier. Fundamental disconnect. I have a theory, but I'll elaborate on it later. I will agree that it works better on the first round, but in a real game situation (with more context) I could probably come up with something better.



HP and spell points have in-character equivalents though. IMO "I've only got one HP left!" works as an in-character statement even if the PC would use different words.


I'm curious what you mean by the first sentence here. I'm guessing you mean that HP/SP can be rationalized on an individual character level, whereas the initiative flow requires a rationalization on the narrative level.

I still find the precision with which a caster can place, for example, a Fireball more immersion breaking than rationalizing turn order.



I'm not offended. I know I abandoned RAW initiative as a DM essentially as soon as I started DMing 5E, so... maybe five sessions as a player beforehand**, and ten sessions at most total since then, plus forum discussions. I see sooo many forum discussions where people present problems that I've just never seen happen in play, and it turns out that the root cause is using RAW initiative. This thread is one of many. (Also stuff like "can you Dodge/Blade Ward/ready actions outside of combat?" and "what happens if a Skulker ambusher loses initiative and misses on round 1 of the fight?")

** And when I say "maybe" I mean "I don't even remember if my first 5E DM used 5E RAW initiative or TSR-ish initiative." I remember some of the uber-deadly fights but not what initiative system the players were using.

Whereas learning IGO-UGO initiative (in 3.0, but it's essentially the same as 5E) went hand in hand with learning to play RPGs for me. I learned to narrate within the restrictions of IGO-UGO, so it's only natural that we would have different views about what "works" as a rationale.

"Ah you think initiative is your ally? You merely adopted IGO-UGO. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see WE-GO until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!" :)

(PS: I e-mailed you about your PbP game, wasn't sure if you'd seen it.)

[MaxWilson]

Yeah, like I said earlier. Fundamental disconnect. I have a theory, but I'll elaborate on it later. I will agree that it works better on the first round, but in a real game situation (with more context) I could probably come up with something better.

Oh yeah, I get what you're saying. It's certainly not impossible to devise a convenient rationale sometimes, and to shrug and try not to worry about it other times.


I'm curious what you mean by the first sentence here. I'm guessing you mean that HP/SP can be rationalized on an individual character level, whereas the initiative flow requires a rationalization on the narrative level.

Yep. If it's part of observable reality, it's part of observable reality. Harry Dresden may not ever say the words "spell points" in the books but he knows when he's tapped out. PCs may not use the word "hit points" but they know when they're close to unconsciousness, etc.


I still find the precision with which a caster can place, for example, a Fireball more immersion breaking than rationalizing turn order.

I can think of rationales that would let casters direct Fireballs with arbitrary precision, but I think you're talking about the precision with which some DMs let casters judge the 20' radous AoE boundary, and I agree that that's a little silly too, and one reason why I like using TotM + some uncertainty for AoEs instead. (E.g. "it looks like you can hit 3 ogres safely, or hit 5 ogres with about a 50% chance of hitting Bob. Which do you pick?")




Whereas learning IGO-UGO initiative (in 3.0, but it's essentially the same as 5E) went hand in hand with learning to play RPGs for me. I learned to narrate within the restrictions of IGO-UGO, so it's only natural that we would have different views about what "works" as a rationale.

Interesting, and that makes sense. I think you'll find it easier than you expect though. It's easy enough that plenty of twelve-year-olds picked it up quickly, back in the 1970's and 80's, and started DMing for their friends.


(PS: I e-mailed you about your PbP game, wasn't sure if you'd seen it.)

I didn't before but now I do. Thanks!

[ff7hero]

Interesting, and that makes sense. I think you'll find it easier than you expect though. It's easy enough that plenty of twelve-year-olds picked it up quickly, back in the 1970's and 80's, and started DMing for their friends.


Oh, I've no doubt about that. I've picked up enough games to know I'll find a way to thrive in whatever system. I'm looking forward to trying this "new" style out.

[MoiMagnus]

I just though about it, but something we tend to use at our table is the following:
(1) Synchronising with trusted allies [i.e allies that you fight with for enough time to know exactly how they fight and react, so usually the other PCs of your team] is penalty-less:
+ You can mess up your initiative essentially as much as you want to synchronise your action with them as long as it makes narrative sense, and without spending a reaction (so delaying your turn to after an ally is usually fine, but exceptions might apply).
+ You can communicate with them (through OOC conversation) without the enemies really understanding what you mean
(2) Synchronising with temporary allies or enemies is complex, and will require a reaction and/or a skill check [possibly an initiative check in some situation].

Bonus: the campaign might start without (1) available, and unlocking "teamwork" can be an early milestone for the group.

[greenstone]

…but what are the cases where it's advantageous to go after your enemy?

And, assuming there are such cases, what stops the enemy from just going "Delay"?

I played in a game (4E I think) where every player chose "Delay". The GM's response was , "OK, then all the monsters choose delay, and now we are back where we started, only we've wasted 5 minutes of table time. Just have your damn turn already."

[Lord Vukodlak]

For example of how important turn order can be, in a recent adventure we have a group of level five adventurers ambushed by a black dragon.(CR 7) The surprsie breath weapon pretty much wrecked the party and the lay out of the dungeon form the published adventure meant or only means of escape was climbing up a rope.... so no escape.

We had a bladeslinger, a life cleric, a valor bard, a swashbuckler and a druid.(not moon)

The Bard acted right before the dragon, so when he cast hideous laughter and the dragon failed, it knocked him prone and kept him from attacking. By the time the Bard's turn came up again the Dragon had made his save against Hideous Laughter only to fail again. If the bard didn't cast the spell directly before the dragon had his turn. The creature would have had more then a couple turns where it got to act.


I can think of rationales that would let casters direct Fireballs with arbitrary precision, but I think you're talking about the precision with which some DMs let casters judge the 20' radous AoE boundary, and I agree that that's a little silly too, and one reason why I like using TotM + some uncertainty for AoEs instead. (E.g. "it looks like you can hit 3 ogres safely, or hit 5 ogres with about a 50% chance of hitting Bob. Which do you pick?")
I actually disagree, with practice you should be able to tell exactly where your fireball is going to hit. I can actually say this is absolutely true as back in the day I played hundreds of hours of Baldur's Gate II and could time fireballs perfectly to not hit my allies. The game didn't give me some outline telling me the area it just gave be a cursor and directed me to pick and area.

If I PERSONALLY can do it there is little reason that my wizard couldn't.

Now some guy who just picked up a necklace or wand of fireballs and can't practice targeting in his downtime..... that's another matter.

[Selion]

I play in PBF, it's easer there allowing minor shifts between turns, because otherwise we should wait every person posting in order in every turn of combat.
So that, my DM has no problems switching contiguous actions, without changing initiative, as long as there is not an enemy between them, so if Alice is a Fighter , Bob Wizard, and Charlie is a goblin, if the initiative order is
Alice
Bob
Charlie

It's fine (in my group) for bob saying "i cast fireball, then you charge the goblin", which simulates coordination.

If the order is
Alice
Charlie
Bob
This coordination would not be possible, which is even realistic, because your actions are disrupted by an enemy acting faster.
I find this method more linear with narrative and makes players working on synergies, without letting them reassign entirely the turn order. And i find that rolling a high initiative should be an advantage in most situations.

Furthermore, the issue of prolonging 1-round actions is not completely addressed even following RAW, in a recent fight the enemy fighter readied an action to strike whoever came in range, then i used the dodge action to reach him.
It means that my dodge action would have worked with his readied reaction and his subsequent attack in his turn. If he, in his turn, would have readied again his action to strike me, he would have denied me of the dodge advantage.

[Reynaert]

Furthermore, the issue of prolonging 1-round actions is not completely addressed even following RAW, in a recent fight the enemy fighter readied an action to strike whoever came in range, then i used the dodge action to reach him.
It means that my dodge action would have worked with his readied reaction and his subsequent attack in his turn. If he, in his turn, would have readied again his action to strike me, he would have denied me of the dodge advantage.

So, even if someone is taking the Dodge action every single turn, you can still hit them without disadvantage, by Readying an attack triggering 'at the start of their turn'

[Amnestic]

How is the party going to feel if (intelligent) enemies start deploying the same delay tactics?

[Segev]

How is the party going to feel if (intelligent) enemies start deploying the same delay tactics?

Like the enemy is not arbitrarily restricted to acting in awkward ways that make little sense?

[Pex]

How is the party going to feel if (intelligent) enemies start deploying the same delay tactics?

I'm always bothered by this response to anything clever players might do. It feels like a threat to players. "Don't get smart with me, players, I'm the DM!" Let players enjoy the moment of their cleverness. If as DM you find a proposed idea to be too powerful, too complex to be worth the effort, or whatever objectional thing, then say so, use your power of No, and move on. Don't be snide passive aggressive and say "Ok, but be warned, the monsters can do it too."

[EggKookoo]

I'm always bothered by this response to anything clever players might do. It feels like a threat to players. "Don't get smart with me, players, I'm the DM!" Let players enjoy the moment of their cleverness. If as DM you find a proposed idea to be too powerful, too complex to be worth the effort, or whatever objectional thing, then say so, use your power of No, and move on. Don't be snide passive aggressive and say "Ok, but be warned, the monsters can do it too."

Funny, I don't see that as passive-aggressive at all. It's being straight with the players. We're introducing this new mechanic. Before we pull the trigger here, are you prepared for the NPCs to gain access to it? This is one (of a few) reasons why I never implement a hit chart or called shot mechanic. I don't want to be amputating PC limbs left and right.

Snide is when you implement the feature and don't warn the players, and then gotcha them with it.

[Amnestic]

I'm always bothered by this response to anything clever players might do.

Thankfully this isn't that, this is an explicit rules change in order to give the players an advantage they otherwise wouldn't have (because it's directly superior to Ready Action, which already exists). Asking them if they're okay with enemies delaying their turns to coordinate effects in the same way is a fair question to pose - it runs the risk of making events more swingy and without giving either side a chance to react to something happening.

[LudicSavant]

Not sure if it has been mentioned, but if not:

The developers very intentionally excluded Delay from the game... there are some dev commentaries on it in somewhere. For example here's one from WotC in 2015:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/841980415115919381/850752283397586964/unknown.png

Mind, it's fine to disagree with the devs, but the undecided might find it useful to understand the devs' reasoning for their choice before making up their mind on the best course of action for their tables.

[Telok]

Mind, it's fine to disagree with the devs, but the undecided might find it useful to understand the devs' reasoning for their choice before making up their mind on the best course of action for their tables.

I've been seriously unimpressed with "devs" and those sorts of decisions in this edition. Delaying your turn didn't break previous editions or other games and hasn't led to problems elsewhere, so why is it too hard a problem to solve now?

What could easily be done is to append an option to the Ready action that allows you to make the initative count of the triggering action into your next initative, with the caveat that you can't use it to go before the actor that triggered your Ready action.

I ran across this in 4e & 5e when playing support characters. Any time an enemy had a turn between my character and my allies any powers or abilities that relied on my allies affecting the enemy became largely useless if they had a save. 4e: the DM used leader type enemies a lot that could grant other enemies an off-turn save as a minor action. I got screamed at for saying I found eont abilities better than save-ends abilities. 5e: had a support/melee lore bard with the shield master feat. That worked OK as at least I could get attack advantage even when allies didn't. Then the DM changed it to only shoving after all attacks were done and literally nobody got an attack on a prone enemy after that (two months later the game broke down anyways).

[EggKookoo]

I've been seriously unimpressed with "devs" and those sorts of decisions in this edition. Delaying your turn didn't break previous editions or other games and hasn't led to problems elsewhere, so why is it too hard a problem to solve now?

The existence of a "current edition" implies all previous editions are broken.

[ff7hero]

Not sure if it has been mentioned, but if not:

The developers very intentionally excluded Delay from the game... there are some dev commentaries on it in somewhere. For example here's one from WotC in 2015:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/841980415115919381/850752283397586964/unknown.png

Mind, it's fine to disagree with the devs, but the undecided might find it useful to understand the devs' reasoning for their choice before making up their mind on the best course of action for their tables.

Thanks for posting that. It was very insightful. And even though I'm not the biggest fan of 5E's devs, it was nice to see my arguments against delay being mirrored in theirs.

[MaxWilson]

I actually disagree, with practice you should be able to tell exactly where your fireball is going to hit. I can actually say this is absolutely true as back in the day I played hundreds of hours of Baldur's Gate II and could time fireballs perfectly to not hit my allies. The game didn't give me some outline telling me the area it just gave be a cursor and directed me to pick and area.

If I PERSONALLY can do it there is little reason that my wizard couldn't.

I disagree actually, because when you did it you had a fixed reference point (your computer monitor, graphics always at the same scale too), and a wizard doesn't have that. On the other hand, if you can walk around with a laser rangefinder outside and correctly guess the distance between any two trees to within 5% tolerance (e.g. if they're 27 feet apart, 26' is acceptable but 25' is not) then I'll concede the point. Maybe it is not difficult at all, but I suspect it is.

[Lord Vukodlak]

I disagree actually, because when you did it you had a fixed reference point (your computer monitor, graphics always at the same scale too), and a wizard doesn't have that. On the other hand, if you can walk around with a laser rangefinder outside and correctly guess the distance between any two trees to within 5% tolerance (e.g. if they're 27 feet apart, 26' is acceptable but 25' is not) then I'll concede the point. Maybe it is not difficult at all, but I suspect it is.

The wizard has a reference point too, his eyes and I don’t then the scale is going to change from his perspective to much. All it takes is practice.

If we assume adventurers practice in their downtime. He picks a point has a buddy plant a flag attached to a 20ft rope. He can then tell where everything from that point would have been hit. Or practice with fog cloud as they have the same area 20ft radius.

You underestimate what a person can do. With practice you absolutely could to that thing with the trees.

[Tanarii]

Speaking of speedy combat, I'm curious how the long combat turns generally are for pro-delay vs anti-delay folks ...

[Mellack]

I disagree actually, because when you did it you had a fixed reference point (your computer monitor, graphics always at the same scale too), and a wizard doesn't have that. On the other hand, if you can walk around with a laser rangefinder outside and correctly guess the distance between any two trees to within 5% tolerance (e.g. if they're 27 feet apart, 26' is acceptable but 25' is not) then I'll concede the point. Maybe it is not difficult at all, but I suspect it is.

Going to add another personal anecdote. My brother-in-law has been a construction worker for years. During that time he has learned how to determine distances up to about 20 feet with great accuracy. Hold up a board and he will tell you the length to within a 1/4 inch every time. Just lots of practice.

[MaxWilson]

Going to add another personal anecdote. My brother-in-law has been a construction worker for years. During that time he has learned how to determine distances up to about 20 feet with great accuracy. Hold up a board and he will tell you the length to within a 1/4 inch every time. Just lots of practice.

Interesting. Does it matter what angle you hold the board at? If you've got a 23.75-inch board pointing sort of toward him and sort of to his right, can he still tell you it's 23.75 inches long from 6 feet away? That's basically what a Fireballer will have to do.

If so that's really impressive.

[Deathtongue]

Speaking of speedy combat, I'm curious how the long combat turns generally are for pro-delay vs anti-delay folks ...Been my experience that TTRPGs that allow delaying tend to have shorter combats in terms of actual Real Life Time Expended than ones that don't -- how many times have you seen indecisive players in such systems go 'uh, uh, I delay until Charlie Acts?'. In 5E D&D, you're forced to make a decision then or lose the turn entirely. Not to mention how auto-delaying someone's turn is an option for situations in which someone wants to get something to drink or use the bathroom. Never been able to do that in 5E D&D, we always end up waiting if the person doesn't end their turn before doing whatever.

It's one of those occasions where adding complexity to the game actually makes it run more smoothly, because human beings are not perfect decision-making machines that don't have off-game distractions. I'm actually kind of baffled why they took Delay out. Gameplay and metafictional reasons aside, it's just a poor decision that gives nothing in return from an speed-of-use standpoint.

[Reynaert]

because it's directly superior to Ready Action, which already exists

It's not *directly* superior because with the Ready Action, you can do something during another character's turn, which you can't do with Delay.

(I would even argue that the value of being able to act on another's turn is comparable with the value of being able to coordinate timing to higher detail with your allies.)

[Selion]

Thanks for posting that. It was very insightful. And even though I'm not the biggest fan of 5E's devs, it was nice to see my arguments against delay being mirrored in theirs.

The grid somewhat substitutes muscle memory in real life.
BTW delaying "Turns" happens a lot IRL, if you are a soccer player you advance waiting for an incursion of a comrade the other side of the field, then you cross.
Same example, i'm sure a wizard has the same experience in aiming their spells than a soccer player aiming a cross to a moving comrade at 30 m of distance, saving throws, save difficult, and spell attack are there to represent the eventual fallacy in their strike, i don't see anything unnatural about it.

[Telok]

Speaking of speedy combat, I'm curious how the long combat turns generally are for pro-delay vs anti-delay folks ...

45 minutes to an hour for anything more than a 3 mook fake-random encounter, over an hour for anything that involves more than mooks and "i walk up to it and stab until one of us runs out of hp" tactics in flat open terrain. Never less than half an hour, even for a 2 round fling. One DM, five players, I and two other playres spend about 1 minute each of every 10-15 on our turns. No ambushes or group tactics as half the table can't.s

[ZZTRaider]

I'm not saying this wouldn't work, but I feel like it would stall out combat too much for no real gain. In this example, if it's really worth it to the enemy to not be attacked while prone and really worth it to the proner that the enemy act before they shove then every one else attacks without advantage anyway. And then the proner goes and then the monster and now the issue is the same. The monster's turn still comes right after the proner's. Plus, while those two characters are delaying, before every player goes, the DM asks the Proner if they want to act, and then reassesses whether the monster still delays. Everyone else got a whole free round of wracking this one monster, but since when is a fight against a single melee the norm? When is it at all challenging?

To be clear, I'm not saying don't do this at your table. I'm just playing Devil's Advocate so when you do enact this house rule you have multiple ideas about what to look out for. Whatever choice results in the most fun for your table is the right choice, of course.

For what it's worth, my experience from years of playing 3.5/Pathfinder, which had a Delay mechanic, it was a complete non-issue that didn't slow down play at all. For most combats on most character concepts, it just never came up at all -- the value of acting earlier in the round was worth more than waiting for after someone's turn. Since Delaying permanently changed your initiative, overusing it led to you having fewer overall turns over the same number of rounds, so players tended not to use it more than once in a combat unless the perceived value was very high. That said, we always ran it where either you specifically stated when you delayed when you wanted to act, or you had to make sure to interject between turns when you want to act. If you failed to take your turn before your original initiative came back around, you'd just wasted your previous turn, and now have a new one to do something with.

[MaxWilson]

For what it's worth, my experience from years of playing 3.5/Pathfinder, which had a Delay mechanic, it was a complete non-issue that didn't slow down play at all. For most combats on most character concepts, it just never came up at all -- the value of acting earlier in the round was worth more than waiting for after someone's turn. Since Delaying permanently changed your initiative, overusing it led to you having fewer overall turns over the same number of rounds, so players tended not to use it more than once in a combat unless the perceived value was very high. That said, we always ran it where either you specifically stated when you delayed when you wanted to act, or you had to make sure to interject between turns when you want to act. If you failed to take your turn before your original initiative came back around, you'd just wasted your previous turn, and now have a new one to do something with.

That's about what I would expect. FWIW the sense I get from the WotC guys' statement on Delay (Mearls? Crawford? I forget who said it) is more "We don't know how to explain it so clearly that it won't be hard to understand" and not "We have specific concerns about issues it causes in actual play."

It's not conceptually complicated but it requires a bit of DM trust and some ad hoc rulings to make things like Stunning Strike durations work plausibly. It's not easy to write down codified rules for which durations should end early after a Delay and which should be unaffected and end at their original time.

[Lord Vukodlak]

That's about what I would expect. FWIW the sense I get from the WotC guys' statement on Delay (Mearls? Crawford? I forget who said it) is more "We don't know how to explain it so clearly that it won't be hard to understand" and not "We have specific concerns about issues it causes in actual play."

It's not conceptually complicated but it requires a bit of DM trust and some ad hoc rulings to make things like Stunning Strike durations work plausibly. It's not easy to write down codified rules for which durations should end early after a Delay and which should be unaffected and end at their original time.

Oh there is, once you delay that is permanently your new initiative. It’s readied actions that get complicated.

[Tawmis]

I think this is best handled by having a special action that you can only take if you've taken no other actions, bonus actions, or movement on your turn. Call this action "delay." What this action does is allow you to state where in the turn order you want to have your next turn happen, and then immediately end your turn. All the effects like spell durations would be not adversely impacted because your turn still ends at the same place it would have before you delayed, but you have now changed your turn order.


I could be misunderstanding - but isn't this essentially the "Ready Action."

Where essentially if you roll 23 on the Initiative - and are going first - you could essentially say, "I ready my action for Fizban the Wizard to cast fireball, before I rush into battle."

And Fizban goes on 20.

https://5thsrd.org/combat/actions_in_combat/



Ready
Sometimes you want to get the jump on a foe or wait for a particular circumstance before you act. To do so, you can take the Ready action on your turn, which lets you act using your reaction before the start of your next turn.

First, you decide what perceivable circumstance will trigger your reaction. Then, you choose the action you will take in response to that trigger, or you choose to move up to your speed in response to it. Examples include "If the cultist steps on the trapdoor, I'll pull the lever that opens it," and "If the goblin steps next to me, I move away."

When the trigger occurs, you can either take your reaction right after the trigger finishes or ignore the trigger. Remember that you can take only one reaction per round.

When you ready a spell, you cast it as normal but hold its energy, which you release with your reaction when the trigger occurs. To be readied, a spell must have a casting time of 1 action, and holding onto the spell's magic requires concentration. If your concentration is broken, the spell dissipates without taking effect. For example, if you are concentrating on the web spell and ready magic missile, your web spell ends, and if you take damage before you release magic missile with your reaction, your concentration might be broken.


I could be misreading this, however?

[ZZTRaider]

I could be misunderstanding - but isn't this essentially the "Ready Action."

Where essentially if you roll 23 on the Initiative - and are going first - you could essentially say, "I ready my action for Fizban the Wizard to cast fireball, before I rush into battle."

And Fizban goes on 20.

https://5thsrd.org/combat/actions_in_combat/


I could be misreading this, however?

There's a few differences.

Readying allows a single action to happen just after some trigger, which means it can interrupt someone else's turn. It requires your reaction to actually use, and does not actually modify turn order. If your initiative was 18, but then you used your readied action in the middle of someone's turn that was acting at initiative 1, your next turn still occurs at initiative 18 in the next round.

I'm pretty sure Segev is going for something similar to the 3.5/PF Delay. In this case, there is no trigger, you simply decide where in the initiative order to act, but this can't be in the middle of someone else's turn. At that point, you take your full turn, including movement, action, and bonus action. Afterwards, the turn order is permanently changed, so you will continue to act at that point in subsequent rounds. So, if your initiative was 18 but you delay until after someone with initiative 1, next round you do not act at initiative 18, but instead just after the person with initiative 1.

Basically, they serve two different purposes. Readying lets you react to something, like the example of pulling a lever when someone steps on a trap door. Delaying lets you adjust the overall turn order so you can take your entire turn at a more advantageous time. In my experience, circumstances where Delaying is useful come up less often than Readying (outside of specific character concepts, like someone trying to repeatedly knock an enemy prone so the party can attack them with advantage), but when they come up, simply Readying doesn't really work as a substitute because you give up a lot by not being able to use your full turn.

[EggKookoo]

The only thing I've run into that 5e readying doesn't feel well-equipped to handle is a coordinated strike or action between two or more allies. But really you can still do that, as long as the DM allows "when my ally is ready to go" as a trigger.

I do think 5e readying should be broader, like allowing you change your movement along with your action, and I houserule that you can use things like Extra Attack when you ready an attack. But I don't mind that readying will eat a spell slot even if you don't get to cast it. It's a bit steep but not ridiculous price to pay for timing the spell exactly as you want.

[MaxWilson]

I could be misunderstanding - but isn't this essentially the "Ready Action."


Ready has additional restrictions, such as disrupting concentration if you ready a spell, not allowing Extra Attack, and arguably not getting to move as part of your readied action. For this reason is very awkward to use Ready to model cooperation with allies, including even very basic stuff like "you knock him down and then I'll hit him very hard!" Why should you have to lose 3 of your 4 attacks just to wait for your buddy to knock someone prone before attacking?

[Reynaert]

... Readying (outside of specific character concepts, like someone trying to repeatedly knock an enemy prone so the party can attack them with advantage), ...

I'm not sure how viable those concepts are when the enemy can just nullify it by Delaying to go just after the concept character.

[DwarfFighter]

The underlying issue here isn't that "high initiative is punished": If you roll a high initiative you're early out of the gates, and that's fine. However, as the rounds progress there isn't (usually*) any Start-of-Round and End-of-Round events that makes your initiative score significant. It's all about the sequence:


Rogue - Fighter - Bandit 1 - Bandit 2 - Cleric - Bandit 3

is essentially the same as


Cleric - Bandit 3 - Rogue - Fighter - Bandit 1 - Bandit 2

It means the Cleric can't reliably knock down Bandit 3 so Rogue and Fighter can attack him while down.

Now, is this a Bad Thing (TM)? On one hand, this is is how the game is intended to play: It's built into the core mechanics - the d20 roll for Initiative allows for a huge spread and unpredictable turn sequence, and the only core mechanic for modifying this is the Ready action, which doesn't alter the turn sequence. This is the third edition that uses a d20 initiative roll for setting the turn sequence, but the first to remove the Delay option - this is clearly intentional. On the other hand... Well, obviously some players don't like it, and that's why we have these discussions.

Personally I don't like the idea of having the players optimize the turn sequence "for free". I fear it will make combat an exercise in procedure rather than creative tactics, but then again that's a matter of personal preference: Some players want the party to operate as a highly efficient unit instead of individual specialists.

I kinda feel that the Ready action covers most of what players want to achieve with modifying the turn sequence anyway. It's less effective and there is a risk that the readied actions fail to trigger, but surely that is realistic too? "No plan survives contact with the enemy," as the old adage goes.

Final point: I think there is room to expand the scope of 5e rules to not only detail characters but also the party. Imagine if there was a set of rules for party abilities that span all the members. For example:


Small unit tactics
If the party leader is not surprised or incapacitated, each other party member that is not surprised or incapacitated and that are within 60 ft. of the party leader and can see and hear him may elect not to make their own initiative check but instead use the result of the party leader's check. On each turn, if he is not incapacitated, the party leader decides the order in which party members that use his initiative result will act, otherwise the GM decides order.


-DF

*) Lair actions, which at Initiative 20, losing ties, is kind of a Start-of-Round event...

[Tanarii]

Rogue - Fighter - Bandit 1 - Bandit 2 - Cleric - Bandit 3

is essentially the same as


Cleric - Bandit 3 - Rogue - Fighter - Bandit 1 - Bandit 2


Neither of these should be the case. It should be Rogue, Fighter, Cleric, Bandit1/2/3.

Worst case you might be up against several different types of monsters, and it may stop being PCs Go, Monsters Go.

[Segev]

Neither of these should be the case. It should be Rogue, Fighter, Cleric, Bandit1/2/3.

Worst case you might be up against several different types of monsters, and it may stop being PCs Go, Monsters Go.

And, regardless, the issue is when the cleric wants to do something to one or more of the bandits to set them up for the rogue and fighter to capitalize on, but because the bandits go right after the cleric, they get to save or otherwise negate whatever he did, leaving the cleric's turn far less effective than if the cleric went after the bandits, or the rogue and fighter went after the cleric.

[ZZTRaider]

I'm not sure how viable those concepts are when the enemy can just nullify it by Delaying to go just after the concept character.

That doesn't really nullify anything, though? If a delay standoff starts, the party gets to continually take turns without the enemy responding at all, which is just better.

Even if it did nullify it, though, the enemy has no reason to delay until after it's happened once. (In character, how would the enemy distinguish between someone rolling low initiative versus someone rolling high initiative and choosing to delay or ready?) Allowing the concept to work at least once in a combat, even if you rolled slightly too high on initiative, helps make the concept viable.

[Reynaert]

That doesn't really nullify anything, though? If a delay standoff starts, the party gets to continually take turns without the enemy responding at all, which is just better.

I don't see how the party gets to take turns.

Suppose the order is: Player A -> Enemy 1 -> Player B -> Player C

Player A wants to shove Enemy prone, so uses the Delay thingy to go right after Enemy 1.
Order is now: Enemy 1 -> Player A -> Player B -> Player C

Enemy 1 (knowing the player tactics for whatever in-game reason) wants to be able to get up right after Player A shoves them, so uses the Delay thingy to go right after Player A.
Order is now: Player A -> Enemy 1 -> Player B -> Player C

And we're right back where we started.

Now, in real life, all this takes time, but with the delay action as proposed in the OP, both can keep this up indefinitely.


Even if it did nullify it, though, the enemy has no reason to delay until after it's happened once. (In character, how would the enemy distinguish between someone rolling low initiative versus someone rolling high initiative and choosing to delay or ready?) Allowing the concept to work at least once in a combat, even if you rolled slightly too high on initiative, helps make the concept viable.

You're an intelligent enemy. The player gets the drop on you. For some reason they don't take the opportunity they clearly had, to strike first, but they seem to wait you out. They must think it is advantageous for them if you strike first. That's enough reason not to.

[Segev]

You're an intelligent enemy. The player gets the drop on you. For some reason they don't take the opportunity they clearly had, to strike first, but they seem to wait you out. They must think it is advantageous for them if you strike first. That's enough reason not to.

Great! We have a good reason for the samurai / western staredown-to-the-draw.

Also, if you have allies, if he keeps waiting for you, they'll just go ahead of him entirely.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think that I'd not be averse to saying:

Either side can, at the beginning of combat, but before the first person takes their turn, choose to rearrange the order of combatants on their side, as long as
* No two creatures on different sides change relative ordering[1]
* The creatures can plan this ahead of time within the fictional constraints[2]

Any such changes affect the remainder of the combat.

This allows opening bursts, but leaves the round-by-round things fixed. This adds only a small bit of delay to the starting of combat, not overhead to each round (figuring out "how has the initiative order changed since last turn?") Basically a hybrid of side initiative and individual initiative. I like that you can't "optimize" your turns--combat is chaotic and you can't guarantee that you can always do your "perfect thing." Even more so since being able to optimize your turn leads to degenerate strategies, where there's almost always a fixed order of operations (Alice shoves prone, then Bob, Charlie, and Daniela smack them while they're down). I want people to have to adapt and figure things out on the fly.

[1] So if Alice -> Bob -> Enemy -> Charlie -> Enemy 2 originally, Charlie can't move. Alice and Bob can switch places. The enemies can't shuffle.
[2] So if the party was separated and out of ear-shot (or was unwilling/unable to communicate ahead of time for whatever reason), they can't do this. No hive minds here. This is entirely a fiction-based constraint, not a mechanical one. I already dislike when players act like a hive mind/multi-headed hydra, where they make decisions for the party as a whole instead of for their individual characters.

[ZZTRaider]

I don't see how the party gets to take turns.

Suppose the order is: Player A -> Enemy 1 -> Player B -> Player C

Player A wants to shove Enemy prone, so uses the Delay thingy to go right after Enemy 1.
Order is now: Enemy 1 -> Player A -> Player B -> Player C

Enemy 1 (knowing the player tactics for whatever in-game reason) wants to be able to get up right after Player A shoves them, so uses the Delay thingy to go right after Player A.
Order is now: Player A -> Enemy 1 -> Player B -> Player C

And we're right back where we started.

Now, in real life, all this takes time, but with the delay action as proposed in the OP, both can keep this up indefinitely.



You're an intelligent enemy. The player gets the drop on you. For some reason they don't take the opportunity they clearly had, to strike first, but they seem to wait you out. They must think it is advantageous for them if you strike first. That's enough reason not to.

If the entire party decides to wait for some reason, you're right. But if the whole party wants a very specific order relative to an enemy, that seems like it's extremely fragile anyway. With the strategy of trying to chain trip an enemy, the only party member whose initiative order actually matters is the one doing the tripping. If another player acts before the enemy and the tripper, that's fine -- their first turn doesn't have advantage from a prone enemy, but subsequent turns will. If they delay their first turn to wait for advantage, they're just losing a turn for no gain.

So, in your example, let's say Player A is the tripper. They delay for Enemy 1, who somehow recognizes this and also delays to see what Player A is plotting. Players B and C go ahead and take their turns as normal. If Enemy 1 delays indefinitely waiting for Player A, they're trivially beaten to death by Players B and C without ever responding. If Enemy 1 stops delaying to deal with Players B and C (since they are the active threats at this point), Player A then stops delaying as soon as Enemy 1 has acted and trips them. From there, combat proceeds as normal, with Player B and C getting the benefits of a prone enemy.

[DwarfFighter]

Now, in real life, all this takes time, but with the delay action as proposed in the OP, both can keep this up indefinitely.


And since both parties want to go after the other, but before the next PC, so it is an infinite delay within the fixed time-span of round. A fair approximation of Zeno's paradox (which I just now found out has a name!).


You're an intelligent enemy. The player gets the drop on you. For some reason they don't take the opportunity they clearly had, to strike first, but they seem to wait you out. They must think it is advantageous for them if you strike first. That's enough reason not to.

If the PCs can act based on the player meta-knowledge of the turn sequence, the NPCs can too.

I'm thinking 5e's design decision to have a fixed turn sequence is a good call.

-DF

[Reynaert]

So, in your example, let's say Player A is the tripper. They delay for Enemy 1, who somehow recognizes this and also delays to see what Player A is plotting. Players B and C go ahead and take their turns as normal. If Enemy 1 delays indefinitely waiting for Player A, they're trivially beaten to death by Players B and C without ever responding. If Enemy 1 stops delaying to deal with Players B and C (since they are the active threats at this point), Player A then stops delaying as soon as Enemy 1 has acted and trips them. From there, combat proceeds as normal, with Player B and C getting the benefits of a prone enemy.

How do players B and C get to go ahead and take their turns?

[DwarfFighter]

Indeed

Player A: delays until after enemy
Enemy : delays until after Player A
Player A: delays until after enemy
Enemy : delays until after Player A
Player A: delays until after enemy
Enemy : delays until after Player A
Player A: breaks the pattern, delays until after Player C
Enemy: acts
Player B: acts
Player C: acts
Player A: acts

There is no way the enemy is going to skip his turn.

[da newt]

IMO there would be nothing game breaking if you decided to create a homebrew rule that allowed PCs to lower their initiative, but I would ensure that there was a cost for the benefit, and it didn't slow game play.

My preferred delay rule would be something like:
During the first round of combat only, on your turn you can take the "DELAY" action which will allow you to change your initiative order to immediately follow one of your allies for the rest of this combat. Your next turn will occur during round 2 after your chosen ally.

I believe wording it this way would keep it from being exploited, serve the poster's intention, and follow the KISS principal.

Is this rule needed? Nah, but if it makes you happy in your games - go for it.

[ZZTRaider]

How do players B and C get to go ahead and take their turns?

Either of these scenarios based on my experience with 3.5/PF's delay mechanics would do fine.

Scenario 1
DM: Alright, Player A, you're up.
Player A: Hmm. If I do my thing now, it won't help anyone. I'm going to delay.
DM: Great, let me know when you want to go. Enemy 1 is next up, but they seem to have noticed you're not immediately acting and are waiting to see what you do.
Player A: Guess they're going to keep waiting, then.
DM: Hah. Alright, that brings it to Player B. What are you doing?
Player B: Great, I'm going to move up to the enemy and attack.

Scenario 2
DM: Alright, Player A, you're up.
Player A: I'm going to delay until after the first enemy's turn.
DM: Okay. Remember, unlike a readied action, you don't have to declare what you're waiting for. Just let me know if you want to act before that.
Player A: Sure thing.
DM: Enemy 1 is next up, but they seem to have noticed you're not immediately acting and are waiting to see what you do. Do you want to keep waiting?
Player A: Yep, let's see how patient they are.
DM: Alright. As both of you dare the other to move, it's Player B's turn. What are you doing?
Player B: Great, I'm going to move up to the enemy and attack.


Importantly, just because two participants in the battle have chosen to delay, that doesn't mean that anyone else has. You continue resolving combat order as normal until the delaying party chooses to stop delaying.

[Amnestic]

Either of these scenarios based on my experience with 3.5/PF's delay mechanics would do fine.

Scenario 1
DM: Alright, Player A, you're up.
Player A: Hmm. If I do my thing now, it won't help anyone. I'm going to delay.
DM: Great, let me know when you want to go. Enemy 1 is next up, but they seem to have noticed you're not immediately acting and are waiting to see what you do.
Player A: Guess they're going to keep waiting, then.
DM: Hah. Alright, that brings it to Player B. What are you doing?
Player B: Great, I'm going to move up to the enemy and attack.

Scenario 2
DM: Alright, Player A, you're up.
Player A: I'm going to delay until after the first enemy's turn.
DM: Okay. Remember, unlike a readied action, you don't have to declare what you're waiting for. Just let me know if you want to act before that.
Player A: Sure thing.
DM: Enemy 1 is next up, but they seem to have noticed you're not immediately acting and are waiting to see what you do. Do you want to keep waiting?
Player A: Yep, let's see how patient they are.
DM: Alright. As both of you dare the other to move, it's Player B's turn. What are you doing?
Player B: Great, I'm going to move up to the enemy and attack.


Importantly, just because two participants in the battle have chosen to delay, that doesn't mean that anyone else has. You continue resolving combat order as normal until the delaying party chooses to stop delaying.

So in these scenarios, Player A doesn't shove Enemy A prone, so B+C don't get to attack with advantage, which was the whole point of delaying in the first place?

[MaxWilson]

If the entire party decides to wait for some reason, you're right. But if the whole party wants a very specific order relative to an enemy, that seems like it's extremely fragile anyway. With the strategy of trying to chain trip an enemy, the only party member whose initiative order actually matters is the one doing the tripping. If another player acts before the enemy and the tripper, that's fine -- their first turn doesn't have advantage from a prone enemy, but subsequent turns will. If they delay their first turn to wait for advantage, they're just losing a turn for no gain.

So, in your example, let's say Player A is the tripper. They delay for Enemy 1, who somehow recognizes this and also delays to see what Player A is plotting. Players B and C go ahead and take their turns as normal. If Enemy 1 delays indefinitely waiting for Player A, they're trivially beaten to death by Players B and C without ever responding. If Enemy 1 stops delaying to deal with Players B and C (since they are the active threats at this point), Player A then stops delaying as soon as Enemy 1 has acted and trips them. From there, combat proceeds as normal, with Player B and C getting the benefits of a prone enemy.


So in these scenarios, Player A doesn't shove Enemy A prone, so B+C don't get to attack with advantage, which was the whole point of delaying in the first place?

As ZZTRaider said already, the point is that A will trip Enemy 1 after B and C make their attacks, which lets B and C have advantage from round 2 onward.

[ZZTRaider]

So in these scenarios, Player A doesn't shove Enemy A prone, so B+C don't get to attack with advantage, which was the whole point of delaying in the first place?

At this point, it depends on how Enemy 1 reacts to being attacked. If they keep waiting for some reason, Players B and C destroy him without any retaliation, effectively upgrading the intended prone to a stun effect. More likely, being intelligent, Enemy 1 will realize they need to respond to being attacked and go ahead and take their turn. After which, Player A takes their turn to shove Enemy 1 prone, and then the party gets advantage for the remainder of combat.

[Lord Vukodlak]

I hear a lot of people complain about infinite delay but over a decade of playing 3rd edition I can’t recall this ever happening. Nor can i recall topics of people complaining about the phenomenon.

An actual issue is how 5e tracks a lot of abilities.
Say
On round one monk acts on initiative count 17. He stunning fists someone. That person stunned until the end of the monks next turn.
On round two he delays.
In 3.5 that kind of effect ended right before the monks next turn thus delaying couldn’t effect it.
So for 5e you have to track the old in initiative so effects end when they should.

Or just restrict delay to the first round of combat.

[MaxWilson]

I hear a lot of people complain about infinite delay but over a decade of playing 3rd edition I can’t recall this ever happening. Nor can i recall topics of people complaining about the phenomenon.

An actual issue is how 5e tracks a lot of abilities.
Say
On round one monk acts on initiative count 17. He stunning fists someone. That person stunned until the end of the monks next turn.
On round two he delays.
In 3.5 that kind of effect ended right before the monks next turn thus delaying couldn’t effect it.
So for 5e you have to track the old in initiative so effects end when they should.

Or just restrict delay to the first round of combat.

I think this is why Segev's rule is designed around Delay as an action that you take on a turn, instead of a way to delay your turn--because that way the Monk's Stunning Strike still ends on the turn he Delays, instead of on the new turn created by Delay.

But there are still potential timing issues around e.g. repeated saves for spells like Slow. The DM shouldn't allow you to just keep Delaying by a fraction of a round until you finally make your save.

[ff7hero]

I hear a lot of people complain about infinite delay but over a decade of playing 3rd edition I can’t recall this ever happening. Nor can i recall topics of people complaining about the phenomenon.

That's because 3.5 was not 5E. When you're playing Rocket Tag, all that matters is going first. Why Delay when you can single handedly drop a DC "No" Save or Lose or do your Pouncing Shock Trooper Leap Attack Power Attack for +DEAD damage?

3.5 high OP play is a bunch of Demigods taking turns solving encounters. 5E high OP is a bunch of Superheroes using their abilities' synergisticly to win encounters. A positive change in the core design of 5E creates an increased incentive to Delay, since no single character is just going to win the encounter by themselves.

[Reynaert]

Either of these scenarios based on my experience with 3.5/PF's delay mechanics would do fine.

Scenario 1
DM: Alright, Player A, you're up.
Player A: Hmm. If I do my thing now, it won't help anyone. I'm going to delay.
DM: Great, let me know when you want to go. Enemy 1 is next up, but they seem to have noticed you're not immediately acting and are waiting to see what you do.
Player A: Guess they're going to keep waiting, then.
DM: Hah. Alright, that brings it to Player B. What are you doing?
Player B: Great, I'm going to move up to the enemy and attack.

Scenario 2
DM: Alright, Player A, you're up.
Player A: I'm going to delay until after the first enemy's turn.
DM: Okay. Remember, unlike a readied action, you don't have to declare what you're waiting for. Just let me know if you want to act before that.
Player A: Sure thing.
DM: Enemy 1 is next up, but they seem to have noticed you're not immediately acting and are waiting to see what you do. Do you want to keep waiting?
Player A: Yep, let's see how patient they are.
DM: Alright. As both of you dare the other to move, it's Player B's turn. What are you doing?
Player B: Great, I'm going to move up to the enemy and attack.


Importantly, just because two participants in the battle have chosen to delay, that doesn't mean that anyone else has. You continue resolving combat order as normal until the delaying party chooses to stop delaying.

More importantly, in both scenarios the DM has bypassed the wording of the rule (as proposed in the OP) to resolve the situation. Which is, of course, what any good DM would do, but is hardly an argument against 'the rules as written would cause a deadlock'.

[Segev]

More importantly, in both scenarios the DM has bypassed the wording of the rule (as proposed in the OP) to resolve the situation. Which is, of course, what any good DM would do, but is hardly an argument against 'the rules as written would cause a deadlock'.

Could you elaborate on how my rule as proposed is being overridden by the DM? I am not opposed to altering the wording, as that looks like my intended behavior in the post you quoted.

[Waterdeep Merch]

I'm not sure if anyone else has mentioned doing this, but for the last three years or so I've let my players (and secretly, the villains) swap their rolls around. So when the Life Cleric gets a perfect 20 but the Assassin Rogue got a 4, they can switch those around to better reflect what they want to do.

I've also allowed delaying turns without a second thought, and it's never been an issue. Player describes who's turn they want to go after, and they don't get their turn until it happens. If they had a continuing effect, however, their normal placement counts against them for when it ends (so if it ended at any time on your turn, it ends when your turn should have been, not to where you're delaying). Their initiative is then reset to their new placement for the rest of the fight/unless they delay again. It's still very useful and it happens, but I've never had it happen more than twice a fight that I can remember.

[Tanarii]

Could you elaborate on how my rule as proposed is being overridden by the DM? I am not opposed to altering the wording, as that looks like my intended behavior in the post you quoted.

Rereading your wording, it actually looks like if Character A says "after enemy B" for when they want to go, and Enemy B then says "after Character A", they'd end up in a deadlock loop. Because each would reuse its next turn to state the same thing again, end its turn, then the other would get to go and do the same. And it would never proceed to any other character or enemy unless they were between the two to start.

It depends what you meant by stating where in the turn order they want to go, in your proposed rule. If you meant at a particular initiative count/number, and you had to select one at least one lower, that wouldn't happen. But IIRC you don't think initiative counts/numbers exist any more after turn order is determined?

Another idea that just popped into my head would be to have Delay put your next turn on initiative count 20+Dex on the next round. That'd take fine tuning of turn order off the table, but would only allow you to do it once a round, since doing it again would delay you an entire round. It'd also put you ahead of Lair actions, which is nice at high levels. But mainly it would address some of the not knowing what to do with your first turn, while giving you a slight boost in the next round.
(Of course, rounds are cyclical, so that does kind of reintroduce the idea that they have some kind of meaning once combat begins. For some tables that means the idea won't work. Others table think of rounds of discrete things in spite of that, so it might work for them.)

[Segev]

Rereading your wording, it actually looks like if Character A says "after enemy B" for when they want to go, and Enemy B then says "after Character A", they'd end up in a deadlock loop. Because each would reuse its next turn to state the same thing again, end its turn, then the other would get to go and do the same. And it would never proceed to any other character or enemy unless they were between the two to start.

It depends what you meant by stating where in the turn order they want to go, in your proposed rule. If you meant at a particular initiative count/number, and you had to select one at least one lower, that wouldn't happen. But IIRC you don't think initiative counts/numbers exist any more after turn order is determined?

The way initiative works in 5e is a list of actors, and you just run down it. For visualization, you could picture it as a set of index cards with the names of each actor (or acting group) on one of them, arranged from top to bottom of the order. As I envision it, you take the Delay action and move your card to a new location in the list. (If it's "before" your turn, you don't go again until next round.)

[Tanarii]

The way initiative works in 5e is a list of actors, and you just run down it. For visualization, you could picture it as a set of index cards with the names of each actor (or acting group) on one of them, arranged from top to bottom of the order. As I envision it, you take the Delay action and move your card to a new location in the list. (If it's "before" your turn, you don't go again until next round.)
In that case, it's definitely possible for an enemy and a character to deadlock delays, without ever proceeding to another character. At most, only character initially between them would get to act, and then only once each.

You need something to break that deadlock somehow.

[greenstone]

If they had a continuing effect, however, their normal placement counts against them for when it ends (so if it ended at any time on your turn, it ends when your turn should have been, not to where you're delaying). Their initiative is then reset to their new placement for the rest of the fight/unless they delay again.
Which now means you have two (or maybe more) initiative numbers to track for that one player, for the various duration-based features (some of which extend to more than one round, for example create bonfire, animate objects, blindness/deafness, faerie fire, globe of invunerability).

Not a lot of work, but it is extra work. My players have struggles with just one initiative number. :-)

As a frame challenge, it seems like side-based initiative would suit many posters in this thread.

[Segev]

In that case, it's definitely possible for an enemy and a character to deadlock delays, without ever proceeding to another character. At most, only character initially between them would get to act, and then only once each.

You need something to break that deadlock somehow.Valid point. Resolving that without re-introducing initiative count as being a tracked thing may be one reason they didn't bother.


As a frame challenge, it seems like side-based initiative would suit many posters in this thread.

Not really; the point here is to make a tactical choice a thing, not to enforce it.

[Tanarii]

Valid point. Resolving that without re-introducing initiative count as being a tracked thing may be one reason they didn't bother.
How about: you can't choose to go after the same creature(s) in the turn order more than once, until you've chosen all available creatures in the combat?

Although if you're a PC and and would have to choose to go after multiple creatures that the DM chose to roll initiative only once for, not sure how often they'd Delay until after an enemy anyway. Far more likely they'd just use it to go after another Pc who still goes before the creatures, most of the time.

[ZZTRaider]

How about: you can't choose to go after the same creature(s) in the turn order more than once, until you've chosen all available creatures in the combat?

Although if you're a PC and and would have to choose to go after multiple creatures that the DM chose to roll initiative only once for, not sure how often they'd Delay until after an enemy anyway. Far more likely they'd just use it to go after another Pc who still goes before the creatures, most of the time.

That just seems overly complicated -- it adds extra things to keep up with when you're already mucking with initiative order. To me, it seems like the only actual problem is two creatures attempting to specify times that are dependent on each other, so let's not declare a time at all. Something like:

"Instead of taking your turn, you may declare that you are delaying your action. Any positive effects with a duration tied to your turn tick down as if you had taken your turn, but provide no benefit. Negative effects are unaffected. Between any two turns, you may declare that you are no longer delaying and take your turn as normal. This moves your position in initiative order for the remainder of combat or until you choose to delay again. If your turn comes back up before you stop delaying, you forfeit the delayed turn but may take your new turn as normal."

I'm sure that needs some clean up to be proper rules language, but it seems like something along these lines should prevent even a strict reading from leading to an infinite waiting loop. I think the language about effect durations is also sufficient to avoid trying to extend beneficial effects or shorten negative effects by playing with initiative, though some examples might be warranted to assist the DM.

[Thane of Fife]

With the rule as suggested, I think it will be trivial for any group of allied creatures clumped together to reshuffle their turns every turn into whatever order they want (that is, Dragon>A>B>C>D can easily be manipulated to Dragon>B>D>C>A if that's what the PCs want). Moreover, I think it is likely that the rule will tend to converge toward this because it is possible to "hide" behind your allies' initiative to get to where you want (for example, if the order is A>Bad Guy>C, the best way for A to get to immediately before C is to delay until after C, at which point the bad guy has to delay and take a free hit from C, or go immediately and allow C to delay into position after A).

So, if you think it would be a big advantage to be able to shuffle initiative about in a group, are you sure you would want to use the rule? And if you don't think it would be a big advantage, but you still want to change the rule, why not skip the Delaying complexity and go straight to group initiative in the first place?

[Reynaert]

With the rule as suggested, I think it will be trivial for any group of allied creatures clumped together to reshuffle their turns every turn into whatever order they want (that is, Dragon>A>B>C>D can easily be manipulated to Dragon>B>D>C>A if that's what the PCs want). Moreover, I think it is likely that the rule will tend to converge toward this because it is possible to "hide" behind your allies' initiative to get to where you want (for example, if the order is A>Bad Guy>C, the best way for A to get to immediately before C is to delay until after C, at which point the bad guy has to delay and take a free hit from C, or go immediately and allow C to delay into position after A).

So, if you think it would be a big advantage to be able to shuffle initiative about in a group, are you sure you would want to use the rule? And if you don't think it would be a big advantage, but you still want to change the rule, why not skip the Delaying complexity and go straight to group initiative in the first place?

Oh, good one! I hadn't thought of the other players delaying to enable the first player, that's a much better way to use it, thanks for the insight.

[Segev]

To me, it seems like the only actual problem is two creatures attempting to specify times that are dependent on each other, so let's not declare a time at all. Something like:

"Instead of taking your turn, you may declare that you are delaying your action. Any positive effects with a duration tied to your turn tick down as if you had taken your turn, but provide no benefit. Negative effects are unaffected. Between any two turns, you may declare that you are no longer delaying and take your turn as normal. This moves your position in initiative order for the remainder of combat or until you choose to delay again. If your turn comes back up before you stop delaying, you forfeit the delayed turn but may take your new turn as normal."If I understand this correctly, I like the concept. Essentially, once you've delayed, you're not declaring where you will go, but instead you can, after any other creature's turn, declare you're going.

This would mean that, if PC A, Monster A, PC B, PC C, is the original order, and PC A delays intending to go after Monster A, but Monster A delays because it's waiting to see what PC A does, PC A could choose to go after Monster A delays, but then Monster A could go immediately. If PC A doesn't decide to go after Monster A delays, then PC B gets to go. Monster A could choose to go, now, after PC B has gone, or it could choose to keep waiting for PC A to go.

This creates the situation I am looking for, where Monster A trying to wait on PC A after PC A delays leads to Monster A giving up opportunities to act (and PC A doing the same thing), rather than "deadlocking" the fight.


With the rule as suggested, I think it will be trivial for any group of allied creatures clumped together to reshuffle their turns every turn into whatever order they want (that is, Dragon>A>B>C>D can easily be manipulated to Dragon>B>D>C>A if that's what the PCs want). Moreover, I think it is likely that the rule will tend to converge toward this because it is possible to "hide" behind your allies' initiative to get to where you want (for example, if the order is A>Bad Guy>C, the best way for A to get to immediately before C is to delay until after C, at which point the bad guy has to delay and take a free hit from C, or go immediately and allow C to delay into position after A).

So, if you think it would be a big advantage to be able to shuffle initiative about in a group, are you sure you would want to use the rule? And if you don't think it would be a big advantage, but you still want to change the rule, why not skip the Delaying complexity and go straight to group initiative in the first place?
I think sometimes there's advantage to going first, even if the rest of your party goes after the monsters, and sometimes there's advantage to reshuffling your order. Therefore, going to "group initiative" loses a lot.

[CapnWildefyr]

Why not restrict any delay to be only after one of the player's turns, and only during the first round of combat?

Or maybe create a Synchronize action instead: Once during a combat, before you start your turn, you can move your turn so it begins after another player's turn. If this causes a tie, resolve the tie normally (by die roll or higher Dexterity goes first). You cannot choose to lose a tie (for example, with an opponent). If Synchronize would change the timing of any currently-existing effects, the DM chooses whether to continue to apply the effects at your original initiative spot, or at the new one. In no case should a player receive any additional actions from Synchronize, nor should a player or opponent be subjected to a extra helpful or harmful effect. For example, a monk's stun expires after his next turn; by Synchronizing, other players might benefit, so the DM can have the stun end on the original initiative count - even if the monk becomes deprived of the benefits of the stun. For another example, if within the area of effect of wall of fire and on the last round of damage, the DM can choose to apply the damage at the old initiative spot if the player tries to Synchronize to avoid the damage, but waive the damage (EDIT: due to spell expires) if the player Synchronized several rounds earlier to coordinate with a fighter's shove attack. Immediately after the Synchronize, any new effects, attacks, etc. occur for you based on the new initiative order.

[ZZTRaider]

If I understand this correctly, I like the concept. Essentially, once you've delayed, you're not declaring where you will go, but instead you can, after any other creature's turn, declare you're going.

Yep, sounds like you understand what I'm trying to convey. This is how Delay worked in Pathfinder at all of the tables I played at, and I think it worked out pretty well.


Why not restrict any delay to be only after one of the player's turns, and only during the first round of combat?

I'm not sure what the real gain here would be? It definitely loses a bit for the current example of someone shoving an enemy prone so the entire party gets advantage. Whichever player is forced to be between the enemy and the shoving player ends up missing out. I guess if still allowed it after the first round, they could rectify that after a round by delaying until after the shoving player? But now we've had to modify initiative order twice when once could have sufficed.

Limiting to the first round also seems unfortunate. Sometimes these things come up mid-combat. I've played in plenty of combats where new enemies show up in the middle of a fight, and sometimes that alters where I want to be in initiative order.

[Segev]

New attempt:

Delay
At the start of your turn, you may choose to Delay. This immediately ends your turn. After any other creature's turn before your turn comes up again, you may choose to take a turn. If you do, you may not choose to delay on this turn. Ignore any ongoing effects that occur on your turn (such as saving throws to end effects, damage that occurs when you start your turn in an area of effect, or other such things), and otherwise take your turn as normal. Any effects based on movement or actions you take during your turn apply as normal should you trigger them with your movement or actions. Your place in the initiative order permanently moves to this position. If you do not do this before your turn comes up in the initiative order again, your turn comes up at its normal point and you simply lose the turn from the prior round. You may take your turn as normal, delaying if you like.

[CapnWildefyr]

I'm not sure what the real gain here would be? It definitely loses a bit for the current example of someone shoving an enemy prone so the entire party gets advantage. Whichever player is forced to be between the enemy and the shoving player ends up missing out. I guess if still allowed it after the first round, they could rectify that after a round by delaying until after the shoving player? But now we've had to modify initiative order twice when once could have sufficed.

Limiting to the first round also seems unfortunate. Sometimes these things come up mid-combat. I've played in plenty of combats where new enemies show up in the middle of a fight, and sometimes that alters where I want to be in initiative order.

FWIW I was thinking that (1) you want to avoid "delay wars," where each side delays and delays, and (2) you want less chance of abuse trying to juggle things so you avoid damage or get extra whatever, and (3) you want it simple to figure out when to apply an effect.

Personally, I like to play that what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and constantly swapping initiative order would drive me nuts. And I suspect that the people shoving opponents prone or stunning them will tend to be the same ones over and over, right? So wouldn't you be mostly able to get in your attacks with advantage? Pick to go after the guy/gal who does the stunning/shoving. Also, there's no guarantee that you get to attack the prone opponent. I mean, if my fighter pal goes on 18, knocks his opponent prone then gets an advantage attack, and then the opponent gets up on 17 before I get to go on 16, how is that any different than "missing out" on an advantage attack because you couldn't synchronize twice in a round?

I suppose you could allow an additional Synch whenever new opponents join the fight on either side, but you always have to Synch down -- or totally give up a round to Synch to the top of the next one?

[Segev]

FWIW I was thinking that (1) you want to avoid "delay wars," where each side delays and delays, and (2) you want less chance of abuse trying to juggle things so you avoid damage or get extra whatever, and (3) you want it simple to figure out when to apply an effect.

Personally, I like to play that what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and constantly swapping initiative order would drive me nuts. And I suspect that the people shoving opponents prone or stunning them will tend to be the same ones over and over, right? So wouldn't you be mostly able to get in your attacks with advantage? Pick to go after the guy/gal who does the stunning/shoving. Also, there's no guarantee that you get to attack the prone opponent. I mean, if my fighter pal goes on 18, knocks his opponent prone then gets an advantage attack, and then the opponent gets up on 17 before I get to go on 16, how is that any different than "missing out" on an advantage attack because you couldn't synchronize twice in a round?

I suppose you could allow an additional Synch whenever new opponents join the fight on either side, but you always have to Synch down -- or totally give up a round to Synch to the top of the next one?

Yeah, I expect that the delay-shifting will happen on average less than once per combat, with the occasional twice or more per combat if situations change and who's best to do a particular round-by-round debuff changes. But it likely won't come up all that often. Just often enough that, if you CANNOT do it, it starts breaking verisimilitude by reminding us that we have rules that exist solely in the game layer and don't make sense in the fiction layer.

[ZZTRaider]

New attempt:

Delay
At the start of your turn, you may choose to Delay. This immediately ends your turn. After any other creature's turn before your turn comes up again, you may choose to take a turn. If you do, you may not choose to delay on this turn. Ignore any ongoing effects that occur on your turn (such as saving throws to end effects, damage that occurs when you start your turn in an area of effect, or other such things), and otherwise take your turn as normal. Any effects based on movement or actions you take during your turn apply as normal should you trigger them with your movement or actions. Your place in the initiative order permanently moves to this position. If you do not do this before your turn comes up in the initiative order again, your turn comes up at its normal point and you simply lose the turn from the prior round. You may take your turn as normal, delaying if you like.

I think that still results in issues with cheesing certain negative effects. If I'm affected by Hold Person and my turn comes up, I opt to delay. My turn immediately ends, giving me a new save against Hold Person. If I succeed, I let whoever is going next take their turn, then take mine and get to act this round when I otherwise could not. If I fail the save, I just wait until next round, never bothering to stop delaying, and haven't effectively lost anything.

[Segev]

I think that still results in issues with cheesing certain negative effects. If I'm affected by Hold Person and my turn comes up, I opt to delay. My turn immediately ends, giving me a new save against Hold Person. If I succeed, I let whoever is going next take their turn, then take mine and get to act this round when I otherwise could not. If I fail the save, I just wait until next round, never bothering to stop delaying, and haven't effectively lost anything.

Good catch. And it's nontrivial to separate, because there are things you'd like to extend LONGER that end with the end of your turn, as well. Can't make it originator's choice nor victim's choice without letting it be cheesed.

Categories to consider:
Effects that end/are saved against at the start of your turn that you'd like to continue
Effects that end/are saved against at the start of your turn that you'd like to end
Effects that end/are saved against at the end of your turn that you'd like to continue
Effects that end/are saved against at the end of your turn that you'd like to end
Effects that happen once per turn "the first time" a trigger happens that you'd like to avoid
Effects that happen once per turn "the first time" a trigger happens that you'd like to experience

Am I missing anything?

[MaxWilson]

I think that still results in issues with cheesing certain negative effects. If I'm affected by Hold Person and my turn comes up, I opt to delay. My turn immediately ends, giving me a new save against Hold Person. If I succeed, I let whoever is going next take their turn, then take mine and get to act this round when I otherwise could not. If I fail the save, I just wait until next round, never bothering to stop delaying, and haven't effectively lost anything.

Since Segev is modelling Delay as an action, you can't Delay while you're under Hold Person. A better example might be a spell like Slow.

[ff7hero]

Since Segev is modelling Delay as an action, you can't Delay while you're under Hold Person. A better example might be a spell like Slow.

Not anymore. He's on a new version:


New attempt:

Delay
At the start of your turn, you may choose to Delay. This immediately ends your turn. After any other creature's turn before your turn comes up again, you may choose to take a turn. If you do, you may not choose to delay on this turn. Ignore any ongoing effects that occur on your turn (such as saving throws to end effects, damage that occurs when you start your turn in an area of effect, or other such things), and otherwise take your turn as normal. Any effects based on movement or actions you take during your turn apply as normal should you trigger them with your movement or actions. Your place in the initiative order permanently moves to this position. If you do not do this before your turn comes up in the initiative order again, your turn comes up at its normal point and you simply lose the turn from the prior round. You may take your turn as normal, delaying if you like.

[Segev]

Since Segev is modelling Delay as an action, you can't Delay while you're under Hold Person. A better example might be a spell like Slow.

I would model it as an action if it always costs you any action until the NEXT round, but in a model where "the round" doesn't exist discretely (and I do not believe it does, in the default 5e model, with everything lasting for "a minute" at least and all effects ending or being checked for endings on creatures' turns), that's its own complication to define.

I could make it require a bonus action as both an additional cost and as a way to gate against Incapacitated creatures doing so, but that doesn't prevent, for example, Delaying to try to evade Otto's irresistible dance.

So I'm now trying to collect the specific cases that could be affected/manipulated by this, and how, so that I can try to write it as neatly as possible to prevent "gaming" anything like that.

[Reynaert]

This creates the situation I am looking for, where Monster A trying to wait on PC A after PC A delays leads to Monster A giving up opportunities to act (and PC A doing the same thing), rather than "deadlocking" the fight.

There may be some situations involving multiple enemies that you can't fix, but a few posts back it was pointed out to me that PC A can essentially force-avoid the deadlock by delaying until after the PC next up after the enemy, and then have that PC delay after him again, effectively putting him 'just behind the enemy', in such a way that the enemy can't nullify it.

Also, as a corollary, that means that a PC can 'Delay without delaying' by having the other PC's delay until they're after him. This fixes any situation where you can freely switch the perspective from 'I want to go just after the enemy' to 'I want to go just before my allies', which I think are most useful situations.

As a side note, this insight shows the delay action would be more advantageous to the side that has more bodies, (and/or more initiative slots if you give all 'same creature' types the same initiative).

[Hytheter]

Have you considered just playing with side initiative instead?

[Segev]

Have you considered just playing with side initiative instead?

Considered and rejected, yes. It destroys other tactical and strategic options.

[ZZTRaider]

Good catch. And it's nontrivial to separate, because there are things you'd like to extend LONGER that end with the end of your turn, as well. Can't make it originator's choice nor victim's choice without letting it be cheesed.

Categories to consider:
Effects that end/are saved against at the start of your turn that you'd like to continue
Effects that end/are saved against at the start of your turn that you'd like to end
Effects that end/are saved against at the end of your turn that you'd like to continue
Effects that end/are saved against at the end of your turn that you'd like to end
Effects that happen once per turn "the first time" a trigger happens that you'd like to avoid
Effects that happen once per turn "the first time" a trigger happens that you'd like to experience

Am I missing anything?

Off the top of my head, I think that covers things, but there's probably something weird somewhere I'm not thinking of.

Generally speaking, it seems we've got beneficial and detrimental effects that will either trigger or have their remaining duration reduced. I think we want beneficial effects to reduce duration but not trigger, and detrimental effects trigger but not reduce duration. That leads to a few weird cases where things trigger or reduce duration twice in the same round, but I think that's mostly fine if you're not trying to abuse the mechanic.

I think it's totally up to the DM whether an effect is beneficial or detrimental, though. I think that's probably too hard to define in rules terms.