I found rolling initiative every round kind of annoying, but not a game breaker.
But the fact you have to declare what you were going to do before you could see what was going to happen a game breaker. It really shuts down player creativity; you can't respond to changing circumstances.
So i've been doing this system basically since a week after I introduced this post, and I think most of my players seem to like it more. Nobody has asked to return to the original system or expressed really any concerns about it, other than to keep making it better. I actually had a DM who is usually one of my players apologize to me for not using it, which I think speaks volumes to it's playability (his campaign started before we began using this system, and we hadn't played since, and so he made the decision to keep the old system as a couple of players had taken classes with initiative features and the improved initiative feat.) I actually thought it was kind of silly he did that (it's his campaign after all, and I believe the ultimate arbiter of who decides what goes is the DM) until I sat down to write about it right now and thought about what that meant towards this system.
The thing about it being clunky or slow is basically on you as a DM. What I do to keep it fast paced is at the "discussion phase" I set a 3 minute timer in which players have to sort of race to decide what they want to do, declare and roll. Thematically, I feel this discussion phase is appropriate as the PCs are better fighters than us, and are somewhat attuned what decisions in combat their party might take, so the discussion phase is representative of a unspoken understanding with each other. After the round begins, players roll initiative and follow their set actions or make adjustments as their turn comes up. We only ever pause for crosstalk to look up rules. It's pretty intuitive if you assume things set at the same initiative order are happening simultaneously and if necessary you can do sub initiative rolls to decide how the turn will go down (say in the case that two people roll the same initiative and one is trying to run away and another is attacking.) I also just ask players to specify what they are holding their turn for if they want to delay so that I avoid the "delay to the end of the round every time" thing someone brought up in this thread. It's also worth having all the initiative rolls somewhere all the players can see to avoid confusion (I keep them on a white board behind my head.)
Honestly one of the things it does the very best is it keeps movement dynamic. Most people are going to fight the same way, unless their target moves from them first. Because of this, chase sequences and moving past someone's maximum range increment to get into melee combat with them becomes extremely fun. Ultimately, yeah It might not be factually accurate to what weapons actual speeds are, but I don't know that it really detracts from verisimilitude all too much. If this system gets anymore complicated we might as well just play second ed and give every weapon an initiative speed or however it is they did that.
I get that it's not for everyone though, I may have come off as if this was the greatest thing to ever hit dungeons and dragons, and it's not. It's not even particularly new, there was a similar version of this in 2nd ed as I already said. It is however something I appreciate though and I think it's a good house rule to have. I think SmiloDan, if you played this and felt it was shutting down your options to pick what to do on the fly, it's possible you weren't allowed to add dice to your roll after actions changed and your turn came up? that's a really big part of what makes this work. Nobody at my table has expressed any frustration with not being able to do what they want to do, except when it plays to the nature of the game (like a kobold ran away before they could attack it with a two handed weapon)
As for how to do improved initiative or class features, I gave improved initiative a 8th level prerequisite and it counts as -2 to your total. I do really like the idea of getting to roll a smaller count dice for each roll for improved initiative though, I may consider that, but it's not something I'll have to worry about for at least five more levels. Class features typically count as half the negative initiative of the system (with a minimum of -1) Generally this seems to work pretty well.
All in all I like it better than the typical system, but it just comes down to me feeling it's more dynamic. I have played as a player in this system by the way, and I like it just as much as I do as a DM, and I've also played as a player using the original system since I started this endevour and I can feel the drag that made me change to this in the first place more than ever. I honestly don't see myself ever running it the original way again. There are definitely some quirks that you have to houserule on the fly and you have to have a good handle on crosstalk (shutting it down if necessary) but overall it has a nice pace that seems about the same as a typical battle which is really neither faster or slower. Overall, I think it comes down to personal preference, I'm not going to say that this is for sure BETTER, and it definitely wont be the very first time it's run considering all the work I've done trying to get a handle on it.
It's worth a few games of trying it out though. Think of it like one of the marvel netflix shows, those always start out slow, and usually they get pretty good, depending on personal taste and who is behind the helm. But, much like trying to get someone into a show you swear is really good but drags the first few episodes, some people are never going to get past the initial drag or their preconceived feelings about it and that's fine, if not a little disappointing. I'd love to try to keep this thread on the subject of people who want to try this, people using it (which might just currently be me on this forum) and people who really get the rules helping to troubleshoot this system and make it work, but it's the internet so, y'know, that's probably impossible.
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3 minutes of discussion before every round? Yeah, no thanks.
Thanks alot Colby for sharing your experience. For a while there, I wasn't sure that I wanted to try this system anymore. But you've given me hope again!
So I think I'll try the lower dice for Improved Initiative feat and add a negative bonus of -2 for the trait and class feature. Try to keep it simple.
My players and I are scheduled to come back to the gaming table in a couple of weeks. We took a break during the summer. I'll talk to my players about playtesting the system. If they agree, we'll try it and I'll report back here ASAP.
I think SmiloDan, if you played this and felt it was shutting down your options to pick what to do on the fly, it's possible you weren't allowed to add dice to your roll after actions changed and your turn came up? that's a really big part of what makes this work. Nobody at my table has expressed any frustration with not being able to do what they want to do, except when it plays to the nature of the game (like a kobold ran away before they could attack it with a two handed weapon)
No, we did that. It's just that if you play a complex character, you go last. I was also playing a druid, and focusing on both wildshape and battlefield control, so when I was in wildshape mode, I could get 2 or 3 attacks in pretty quick, but if I wanted to use spells, the timing was always off because everyone moved before I could go.
Also, 3 minutes of declare time! We can usually run a whole round of combat in that time! With 6 PCs! Well, maybe double that time, but we run pretty quick combats.
3 minutes of discussion before every round? Yeah, no thanks.
3 minutes maximum, though. Most of the time they finish this before the timer is up by a margin of a minute or two. I dont have a faster timer or I may have considered using that. When you take into account players who aren't ready to make decisions when using the standard initiative system, I think it roughly works out to about the same time frame. It certainly doesn't feel slower, and thats my main worry.
There's certainly the possibility of combat becoming too complex to run this properly at higher levels, but I've played at higher levels (9th was my highest level character) and I don't foresee that happening. I'll watch out for it though, and if it becomes an issue I'll report back. Some of my players leveled to 4 today.