[DnD]Rolling Initiative Counter

[Fragmaster01]

Here's more spew from my brain(spewwww), this time concerning the setup of initiative in combat. As it stands, initiative is static: simple to deal with, but also very boring. You will always get 1 turn per round(barring awkward spells like Celerity), and that gets to be that. But we dislike such things around here in the houserules forum, so let's spice things up!

Calculating Starting Init
This works the same as always. Roll 1d20+Init Bonus, with Init Bonus being DEX+Feats. Everyone's is calculated, and put into a little initiative table, with the highest going first. For the sake of this description, we'll have a sample with three characters: A greatsword wielding fighter(Init 12), a mage(Init 14), and a longsword wielding fighter(Init 20).

2-H Fighter	Caster	1-H Fighter
12	14	20

Taking your Turn
Here we get funky. Rather than having initiative scores stay static, we alter them based on actions taken. The usual limits apply: you can only take a Move and a Standard action in one round, with a Swift action that takes no time, and any number of Free actions working the same way. For simplification purposes, we will consider a 5-foot step to be a swift action in this system. Here's our basic cost table:

Move	10
Standard	10
Full Round	20
Swift	0
Free	0

Our longsword fighter goes first in this order. Given this table, let's say he chooses to just hit someone with his sword. That's a standard action, and costs 10 init. He'll do his action as normal, and subtract this amount from his current init. This gives us the new order:

1-HFighter	2-H Fighter	Caster
10	12	14

Note he doesn't have to take his move action in this system. As long as he takes at least one action costing time, he's considered to have "taken his turn". Thus, he could hit someone again in another 10 init, allowing for more offense at the expense of not moving around. Once we're done with his action, we move everyone's init up until someone hits 20. Our new table:

1-HFighter	2-H Fighter	Caster
16	18	20

Spells
Now that's all simple. Here we mix it up, adding a few new things to the mix. For casting spells, a stronger spell takes a greater amount of power and effort than a smaller one, and we'd like to represent that in our system. So, let's say that a spell costs a bonus amount of init equal to its effective spell level. Our new cost table:

Move	10
Standard	10
Full Round	20
Swift	0
Free	0
Spells	+Spell Level(0-9)

Our mage here wants to cast fireball, a level 3 spell. He's not worried about moving, so this is just a standard action. 10 init for the standard, plus 3 for the fireball, and he's bumped back 3 init. Our new init table:

Caster	1-HFighter	2-H Fighter
7	16	18

In this way, lower level spells find that they can have more viability in a combat. If a caster just "goes nova", he'll find that he's pushed down the initiative order further, getting less turns in compared to other, more judicious combatants.

Martial Shenanigans
This creates a gap in power, though, making martial attacks exponentially stronger. Spells slow down over time, while normal attacks don't. Still, this is easy to deal with, as attacks per round(APR) also naturally "grow" over time. Let's make it so each extra attack adds +3 to the init penalty, while making any "attack" a standard action. It's no longer a full round action to deal all your APR, but the time it takes grows progressively longer as you add more damage, just like spells. In addition, we also notice a gap in power between light, 1-handed, and 2-handed weapons. We can deal with this(and make statistically "weaker" weapons more viable) by adding a +1 penalty on 2-handed weapons(or 1-H weapons wielded with both hands), and a -1 on light weapons. Our new cost table:

Move	10
Standard	10
Full Round	20
Swift	0
Free	0
Spells	+Spell Level(0-9)
Bonus Attack	+3
Using Light Weapon	-1
Using 2-H Weapon	+1

Note that we don't want light weapons to get progressively more awesome, as at higher levels, the difference between a 1d4 knife and a 1d8 longsword is overshadowed by enchantment damage bonuses, STR damage bonuses, and so on. It still adds up, especially if using quick standard actions to attack, rather than blowing your entire APR in one go.

In this case, let's say our 2-Handed fighter has a BAB of +6, so he can attack twice. He does so, getting an attack penalty of 10, +3 for the extra attack, +1 for the 2-H weapon, for a total of 14. Our new init table:

2-Handed	Caster	1-HFighter
6	9	18

Note the difference this makes. If our 1-Handed fighter chooses to make 1 attack again next round, costing him another 10 init, he'll be in front of the 2-Handed fighter in the order. He did less damage, but it cost him less time as well.

Class Ability Rules
Flurry of Blows: Each flurry of blow attack(after the first one) costs 2 init, instead of 3. This is to prevent the monk from being horribly crippled in the turn order from using tons of attacks. If he chooses to make less attacks than his max APR, the attacks are made in order of decreasing attack bonus, from highest to lowest.
Haste/Slow: These spells would work differently here. Rather than giving an extra action, it would decrease or increase the init penalty for each action that costs time by 2. So someone Hasted doing an otherwise unmodified Move and Standard action would instead spend 16 init instead of 20. Obviously, a Full Round action would be considered to be 2 actions in this case, and get a +/- 4 shift to keep it in line with other effects. Swift and Free actions would not be affected by Haste/Slow.
Quicken Spell: Quicken spell would remove the normal base 10 init penalty for casting a spell, and allow a second spell to be cast normally(like having a second APR, essentially). The casting level penalty would be lowered to +3, to make up for the fact that it's not an entire negation of the casting time(the spell level is still factored in). Still, it's a hefty boost, allowing a 6th level spell to be cast in less time than a cantrip would normally(10, +6 for level, +3 for the metamagic boost, -10 from Quicken Spell = 9|versus|10, +0 for level =10).
Tome of Battle: Maneuvers from Tome of Battle cost the same extra init penalty as spells: a 2nd level maneuver is +2, for example.

Possible Additions
Counterspelling: Make it so casters can counterspell during the casting penalty of the spell? Say someone casts a level 3 spell, fireball. Within the next 3 init, anyone who counterspells or attacks the caster can attempt to interrupt it. After that time, the spell is considered cast, and cannot be disrupted anymore. Makes it so you don't "have" to ready action or delay to counterspell, but it gives you a 100% chance your turn will be up when it's available to counter.

Flaws with the System
It's more math, because you have to calculate the rolling initiative.
It would make more sense and be easier mathwise if a person's turn was at 0 or 1, and everyone rolled down. However, this is counter to the usual rule of rolling(higher is better) ala THAC0, and is thus awkward to mentally deal with.

Thoughts? Questions? Harsh criticisms? Throw them at my face, so I may eat them and grow fat.

[Silent Tiger]

No, I too was thinking about doing this, but the calculations involved are staggering. I was just considering starting at 0 and counting up. When you did an action, you just added your action time to your initiative. It would get progressively higher and higher. This would be a lot easier to make a simple computer program for keeping track of actions.

What do you do if someone has beaten another's starting initiative by more than 10? You could potentially get someone taking a standard action to attack an enemy, dropping 10 and taking another standard action to attack before the enemy actually gets to react and take a turn at all.

Also I would put that in case of a tie on future initiatives, the person who has been waiting longer to take an action gets to go first. Thus if 2H fighter had starting initiative 20 and 1H fighter starting initiative 10. First round 2H takes a full round moving him to 0 and 1H takes a move action taking him to 0, then next "round" 2H would get to go first because he was waiting longer.

 

My consideration was also for 4E which would be tons easier to assign times to your actions, as it has Standard, Move, and Minor actions. One thing that hampered me was making it so you could switch standard action to a move action to a minor action without 3 minor actions taking more time than a standard action. And 2 move actions + minor not being more than a S+M+m. You would have to do S=6, M=5, m=4 Thus S+M+m=15 2M+m=14<15(and any other action would be over) and 3m=12<15(and any action would be over) That way, you could take any number of actions as long as the total time did not exceed 15. An action point would nullify the time of one action.

[Caput]

Having used a similar system in White Wolf's Scion and Exalted, I have to wonder what your actual goals are here. In those games, it's a pain in the ass to use and the whole game system is built from the ground up to enable and exploit it. In this, you seem to be trying to slow everybody down equally to maintain balance. A simpler solution that avoids all the problems with that approach would be to make everything the same speed.

If working out who's turn it is somehow interesting, I'd suggest it's taking up to much of the spotlight. Abstracted time management is important, but it just isn't as engrossing as working out if you hit the monster or talking to the shifty guy in the bar, so I'm quite happy to give it as little attention as I can get away with.

Edit: Thinking about it, what this does is make full attacks much much worse in relation to everything else and spells worse than standard action attacks. The more you depend on multiple attacks, the more you're screwed, but if you can get by on Pathfinder's Vital Strike feat you can attack faster than casters can cast.

Have a suggestion taken from Scion: Try making movement speed per-tick, not per round. Move actions take up 10 ticks worth of movement.

[chaosaccountant]

This is going to have across-the-board effects on game balance, many of which aren't going to be obvious unless you're playtesting. Honestly, the action economy is one of the hardest things to exploit in standard DnD (ToB infinate-action loops not-withstanding), and this has the potential to mess with that a great deal. It suggest handing this to someone with serious char-op experience and asking them to break it hard.

[Cancer]

After thinking about it, I think I have a list of what character concepts this screws over :
- Two weapon fighters
- Pouncing Chargers
- Low Initiative characters, such as guess who? The fighter!
- Still doesn't balance spellcasting versus non-ToB classes as terrain and action denial still are better than hitting someone with a sword.
- In fact, this actually makes fighters and the like worse because they can't fully utilize their full capability anymore.
- This ruins totemists as they rely on getting as many attacks as possible.
- This makes Factotums, Wizards, Sorcerers some of the only viable classes to play as they each have their own method of either adding actions or increasing initiative through spells or class abilities.

Fixes :

- Define immediate actions
- Make standard actions worth 5 points or less
- Utilize a randomized action economy based on valued tokens

Alternative Idea :

Have each player roll a pool of d10's equal to 2 + their initiative modifier (Minimum 2). Starting from 10, grant actions to the person with the highest value. Ties go to the person with the larger dice pool. Actions cost a certain number of dice, but occur on the number they were rolled. Standard actions and move actions cost 1 dice. Full round actions cost all the die that the character possesses and occur on the lowest value dice they hold.

[Fragmaster01]

Move Speed per Tick: That's how it's supposed to work. It just didn't get mentioned. As "full attacks" are relegated to Standard Action plus iterative delay, "movement" is relegated to Move actions(and a standard if you want to double move), or a Full round if you run.

2-Weapon fighters: Make them work ala Flurry of Blows, then.
Pouncing: Yeah, that needs work.
Low-Init: This only slows them down at the start of the battle. The difference is inconsequential over the long term compared to the roll on the d20.
Casting vs. Martial: It doesn't try to fix everything. That would be impressive if I could.
Fighters worse?: Not really. A fighter using his full attack and a caster using his strongest spells both take roughly the same amount of initiative to do their stuff.
Totemists: Not familiar with them. Can has link?

Immediate Actions: The obvious would be to make them 0-init costs that can only be done in response to something else. I have, however, seen systems that let people have "defensive actions" that work as immediates, but shove them down the init order in response.
Standard Action Cost: Nah. If anything, move actions could be lowered slightly, to allow for easier repositioning/not punishing being out of position as much.
Randomized Action Economy: Clearly defined rules and algorithms on the action economy keep it in balance. Randomizing it and moving it around by numbers of dice is awkward and can lead to strings of horrible luck/unluck.

[Cancer]

Is there a cap on how high one can roll within this system of initiative?

Totemist, a class within Does no one read this book?Magic of Incarnum, rely on getting as many natural attacks in as possible so it would function similar to Flurry within this system.

The reason I brought up that this punishes low initiative characters is that if they roll under a 10, they are most likely never going to get an action in as all of the costs are too high. For example the typical fighter build doesn't emphasize on dexterity and at most the build is going to have a +2 bonus around levels 5-10. In this case the player behind this character has to roll an 8 or higher to even get an attack or movement on his round. In total, the fighter has a 35% chance of being completely useless, 50% chance to operate in a degraded state(He can either move or attack both of which options the fighter can be totally ignored by the enemies, and 15% to get full capabilities that he would have had in the vanilla system, move and attack.

This system works in the favor of those who can circumnavigate movement costs or those who can pump their initiatives into oblivion (I'm looking at you Factotums, Dread Necromancers, Wizards, Clerics, Artificers, Sorcerers.)

Benefits : Rewards high rolling
Drawbacks : Burdens down weaker statted characters and punishes MAD

[Fragmaster01]

Ah, I see your confusion. This is part of why I mentioned in the flaws section that it would make more mathematical sense to have rounds be at 0 or 1 and costs go up.

Example Time, with Fraggle the human:
Our fighter rolls an 20 for his starting init. He's a longsword fighter, and wants to move and attack at 4 APR. That's 10+10+9, or 29. His new init is -9.

[jackolantern]

Some other games have staggered initiatives for one person, like Shadowrun and V&V. Why make it all happen at once?

Start with their highest initiative, then subtract the cost of what they're doing. When that new lower initiative comes up, they can act again, up to full round equivalent. Can also use for multiple attacks, with first attack at full initiative, then second swing/arrow/whatever a few steps down, etc. until all used up instead of getting three swings at init 25 then sitting around.

[Fragmaster01]

True, but we want some sense of simplicity. The idea here is to keep the "all at once" model everyone knows, so that a person isn't constantly in a state of bouncing back and forth. Makes things run smoother, keeps people from getting confused.

[Raziel Majere]

Nice system. I ay have to use this with your permission.

[OnceAndForEver]

I feel that this is dangerous because a high dex character can act two or more times before a low dex creature especially with improved initiative. Feels like free time walks for high dex improved initiative wizards. Maybe stick in a rule that says no matter how high your initiative you only get one round of actions total before someonoe else gets to go?