Initiative - on the GM side


GM Discussion

Scarab Sages 5/5

So, obviously from my lack of stars I am new at this Pathfinder GMing thing (if all the tables make - then I'll get my first at DragonCon (a con where 35000 people are not gamers).

Initiative for bad guys - I guess I should say opponents since sometimes it is the Pathfinders who are the bad guys.

I've asked around and I'd like the benefits of your suggestions and wisdom. Up to now I've had a different initiative for each opponent- i use pawns and each base is labeled and with a initiative each base has its strip, so it is not hard.

Do you actually roll the initiatives? I know of an excellent gm locally that just gives everyone an 11 and adds the bonuses. I talked to someone else narrows the range before adding modifiers - I don't remember exactly something like rolling a d20 like a d10 and adding 5.

So how do you do it, or suggest to do it. I'm likely to stick with an initiative per opponent because it is easier when things like readying and delaying forces groups in different direction, but the last game I went ahead and rolled and i rolled really high for three of the opponenents (an alchemist and two rogues) and the party suffered greatly before they even got to act - most definitely not fun for players.

Thanks in Advance,

Scarab Sages 5/5 5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Washington—Spokane

I roll my initiatives for each group of adversaries (1 alchemist, 2 rogues = 2 initiative rolls).

Liberty's Edge 4/5 5/5

Preston Hudson wrote:
I roll my initiatives for each group of adversaries (1 alchemist, 2 rogues = 2 initiative rolls).

Same here. Sometimes I'll combine different groups if they have the same initiative modifier.

3/5

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I roll the initiative for the NPCs. I'll never "give" all the opponents the same initiative. The NPCs have the same chance of rolling a "1" as a "20". That's the game. That said, at Gen Con, with a table of kids, I rolled a 10, 10, 9 and 11 for four goblins. It looked like they all had the same initiative.

I never liked the idea of all the NPCs going at the same time. It just seemed kind of unfair. Then at Gen Con I saw this first hand, and it was bad. Our big bad barbarian walked through a portal. Four surprise round hits later he was hurting. One initiative for all four critters beat his initiative (30 vs. 23 ?). Four full round attacks later and he was at -12. I know the GM ran them all on one initiative, I asked. Now if they had all rolled init, they may have all beat his. But if he had just beat one of their initiatives, I think he still would have been standing. We managed to save him but it wasn't pretty.

All that said, if I have a group of 5+ NPCs I may group their initiative in pairs. Boss has his own initiative. Two mooks have one and the other two mooks have one as well. Otherwise I end up with too many initiative cards and people can get missed.

4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ***** Venture-Captain, United Kingdom—England—Coventry

Interestingly, I stopped rolling 1 initiative for all bad guys after an Living Greyhawk game. We (Level 3 characters) came across 4 stirges (which had some template which game them a breath weapon). They all went first(all 4 breathe, 1 party member looks at his fallen comrades).
Our GM realised his "error" and backtracked - rolled different initiatives, much happier party :-)

Liberty's Edge 4/5 5/5

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I think it's about finding the right balance between speed (having all enemies acting together reduces time taken per round) and difficulty (single initiative rolls for all opponents makes things more 'swingy', compared to having them spread throughout the turn order).

Horizon Hunters 4/5 5/5 *** Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Indianapolis

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I roll initiative for each distinct group in an encounter. So, all monsters X get one init, all monsters Y get another. And, I roll all my initiatives in advance and jot them down in the scenario/module. Fewer rolls I need to make at the table.

I find rolling them in groups spreads them out a bit more than having all of the bad guys go at the same init.

Mark

Sovereign Court 4/5 *

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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Maps, Rulebook Subscriber

I cluster initiatives by group as others have said. Lately to save time I will take 10 on initiative for mooks and just roll for important enemies.

One piece of advice is that it is best for players to be able to see the initiative order. Tends to make them more ready for their turn. This is especially true at a con. I use a combat pad for this reason.

Grand Lodge 1/5

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

I have a series of note cards I use for initiative and tracking spell effects/hp etc. I have everyone roll init and I roll init for each creature, then sort the carts by initiative. When a card comes up, I resolve any spell effects and have that creature take its turn. It generally doesn't take me long to roll if I have the cards prepared before hand...or even if I don't really. The thing that tends to bog it down I find, is looking up what that creatures init is.

1/5

Run them seperate. This is for the players benefit.

Ex: Group of NPC witches with ill omen and a save or suck, like hold person. Every round you can ill-omen, hold person, coupe de gras. If all the enemies are on the same initiative, the players have no way of preventing it from happening. If you split them up though, the players can get in the way and hopefully kill off the npc before the player dies.

3/5

I usually roll by group of ennemies, but came to regret it on my last game.
I had 6 rogues cultists(all same stats) and one evil cleric.
I rolled high on the rogues, and they were the first to act.
They really got into good positionning and the PC's had a really hard time as a result.
Also, all my rogues had sneak attacks as the PC`s were flatflooted.
Next time, if I get a lot of ennemies with the same stats, I may break them in groups of 2 or 3, to prevent that. It seemed a bit unfair, that all the rogue cultists rushed into positionning without the PC doing a thing.

Liberty's Edge 3/5

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

As a GM, I roll all NPCs separately, and if two NPCs end up back to back, I make sure there is a distinct beginning and end to their turn. I've seen GMs clump together as many as four powerful characters, go through a move phase where all the NPCs get into tactically optimal positions, then all attack, all gaining the benefits of things like flanking.

I think mixing the NPCs and PCs creates more dynamic combat. When all the NPCs go on the same initiative, it means the PCs can all delay until they are all in optimal initiative order, then have to react to the massive wave of consequences of NPC actions. Mix the NPCs in and there's a different ebb and flow to combat each time.

Silver Crusade 1/5

My preference is to roll separately, and I do on my home VTT games, cause it's quick and easy. Just a click of a button. However, in a five hour block for a PFS scenario, I usually group them for pace concerns. I like to keep things moving as quickly as possible.

The Exchange

Glen Shackleton wrote:
One piece of advice is that it is best for players to be able to see the initiative order. Tends to make them more ready for their turn. This is especially true at a con.

Great advice. In my home game I prefer to write the initiative on the battle map so anyone can see it as I lack a fancy pad. Since it's wet/dry erase it's easy as pie to adjust as readied and delays take affect.

One of my biggest headaches both as a player and a DM is keeping the party aware of the combat when it's not their turn to speed things along.

Dark Archive 4/5

Sometimes if I want a group of four mooks to go together, I'll roll four d20s and take the lowest. It's the equivalent of them delaying for each other.

Otherwise I roll for each enemy individually, and use initiative cards so that my baddies can delay for convenient opportunities.

3/5

I use this to track initiative:
http://brain.pan.e-merchant.com/3/0/03414503/l_03414503.jpg
Quite cheap, and very effective.
If a PC tells me he readies an action I give him back his carton, and he gives it back to me when he takes his action (or I ask him the carton back)
If a PC delays his action, I move his carton down.
I usually displays them on the table, in order, so players can see when their turn comes up. So they can prepare ahead.

2/5 *

Preston Hudson wrote:
I roll my initiatives for each group of adversaries (1 alchemist, 2 rogues = 2 initiative rolls).

Previously I was doing this.

Now I take 11 and then add modifiers for initiative. I think Baird suggested it. The reason is that high or low results make combats really swingy, and it's a better experience if the average is taken. And I agree with that now.

A long time ago I rolled for every creature, but that can take too long and it's too hard to track initiative (I like fast combat).

I use simple recipe cards to track initiative. It's faster and works better than any other method, especially when players are readying actions and delaying.
Link from Martin

4/5

I use the combat pad to track initiatives.

I also roll the initiative for all the NPCs when I'm prepping the scenario and write it on their magnets.

At the beginning of a session, I explain to the group that I pre-rolled initiatives to save time, but that I'd be happy to roll them again if the players prefer. So far, no one has asked me to and they all seem to appreciate the savings in time.

Dark Archive

I usually roll initiative for creature. But if there are more than 3 of one type of creature, I usually break them up into groups, initiative wise. tracking 12 orcs is a pain and wastes time. Tracking groups 1-4 with 3 orcs each works much better, and doesn't overly punish the PCs.

Shadow Lodge 4/5 5/5 RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8

For simplicity: Roll enemy initiative in groups, as stated above. Group them by location, levels, or class -- whatever you can keep straight during combat.

The reality: While grouping initiative works great for speed, sometimes it'll make things very unfair for the players. So use your best judgement, and maybe split up the pair of rogues (or have one delay to work with the other!), so you're not obliterating an unfortunate PC.

Example: I was playing a high level module (12+), and we opened a door to find over a dozen (redacteds) waiting for us! Needless to say, when the GM started to roll damage for 13 simultaneous fireballs on the entire party, we petitioned for separate initiative rolls.

Otherwise, we would have TPKed before getting to go as we would have all taken something like 78d6.

5/5 5/55/55/5

Mooks go together, Big bads go individually. For me its the right balance of speed and realism.

Horizon Hunters 4/5 5/5 *** Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Indianapolis

BigNorseWolf wrote:
Mooks go together, Big bads go individually. For me its the right balance of speed and realism.

Right, which is typically what I do, too. Baddies that are, essentially, class-based all go individually in my games.

Spoiler:
When I ran Halls of Dwarven Lore at Gen Con, I had the three ghouls at the end all go on separate initiatives because I was effectively dealing with a fighter, a rogue, and a cleric.

Mark

Sovereign Court 4/5

I always have done grouped initiatives. The rogue mooks go as one, the cleric mook goes as one, the big wizard goes as one. The scant few times payers have addressed me having them cluster together and then attack, I say they got into position and delayed before attaching with flank. It's how it was always run for me when I was learning and it's how I run.

It really is faster to run groups then several individuals.

Also, for those who say it's not fair to players, most GMs allow our insist animal companions or eidolons go on the players' turn or immediately after it for simplicity. While not the rule to the exception, I've seen some druids and their companions solo many fights, same for rangers.

One thing I insist on, however, is rolling bad guy initiative. The random element is what makes it fun. Yes, it nerfs some boss fights, but that's the game. I won't allow players to take 10 on init, why should I as their GM? (And before someone asks, yes, I would be more than willing to let two payers take their turns simultaneously like the baddies do, but no one's asked to.)

Very interesting to see everyone's take on this, I must say.


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Quaseymoto wrote:
One of my biggest headaches both as a player and a DM is keeping the party aware of the combat when it's not their turn to speed things along.

For higher level games, I have a known experienced player or GM playing, I have been known to ask them to run the initiative combat pad. They call out who's initiative it is, and remind the next person that they are "on deck". I have found that this speeds the play greatly for higher level games.

As an added bonus, the players are usually more ruthless than I about not giving the other players a lot of time to decide before they move the offending player to delaying and move on to the next init.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

Starfinder Superscriber
Sior wrote:
(And before someone asks, yes, I would be more than willing to let two payers take their turns simultaneously like the baddies do, but no one's asked to.)

I think the "RAW" way to make that work is just between delaying and reading an action. You can use delays to get yourselves grouped, and then ready an action to attack once the other player is in position to flank.

If you want to full attack with a flank, you can just delay until after the other player has moved.

If I'm not mistaken, this is a "RAW" way to complete any set of actions that "acting at the same time" could do, so it's entirely reasonable just to let them act at the same time and not necessarily worry about what combination of delays and readying of actions made it all happen.

Grand Lodge 4/5

In face-to-face games, I usually make groups of enemies, except for the named ones.

For online games, given the way Roll20 works, I usually roll individually for each enemy. Then again, I haven't had any really large groups of enemies in the online games I have run, so far.

And, yes, you can, and should for new players, do the "Mook A moves to here, then readies to attack when he gains flanking. Mook B moves to here, setting off Mook A's ready, who attacks, hitting AC X for Y damage, then Mook B completes his turn with an attack, hitting AC X' for damage Y'."

Hopefully, your players will learn by watching enemy tactics, so they know how to do the same thing, in the future. (IMO, the GM is also going to be a teacher for the new players.)

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Like opponents with the same initiative bonus go together. Those with varying bonuses have separate rolls.

If I need to justify this I say the others delayed to coordinate their attacks.

Grand Lodge 3/5

This is my opinion.

It is clearly defined in the CRB -> Combat -> How Combat Works -> Initiative (pg 178).

CRB wrote:
At the start of a battle, each combatant makes an initiative check. An initiative check is a Dexterity check. Each character applies his or her Dexterity modifier to the roll, as well as other modifiers from feats, spells, and other effects.

So d20 + Dex mod + modifiers. That's it, in a home game sure do base 11, or whatever. In PFS it has to be rolled like normal. Each combatant must roll separately. This means animal companions, eidolons, and each separate enemy has their own initiative. Mounts go on their riders initiative (this is stated in the mounted combat section).

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5

I have to agree with Kintrik. Since it is a Society game we need to follow the set guidlines estabilshed in the manual. I don't even like hearing myself say it, because I also agree with the idea that it can hurt a party badly if you get super rolls and they get bad ones. That is how life is sometimes though so, always bring a Cleric.

Dark Archive

I strongly encourage rolling for each individual enemy. You even already have a system to tell each mini apart from each other, good job!

You might want to preroll the init when reading and writing it into the product. Even if PDF, you can still add notes, highlights, ext. I love using pdf-notes on my iPad, free.

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