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The problem with the existing system is that it doesn't scale well, which is a problem for me in particular since I run a group with 8 PCs and commesurately greater numbers of adversaries.
For a while we've been running with everyone 'taking 10' on initiatives. It speeds things up, but removes flavour.
What I would like to do is to use a card system, where everyone is represented by a card and you simply shuffle the deck to see who goes first.
However, this cannot take into account individual Initiative Bonuses. So I've been wondering how I could use Initiative Bonus in a different way.
And the idea that I'm playing with is that:
a) If you have a negative Bonus, you apply this to your Flat-footed AC.
b) If you have a positive Bonus, you apply this as a To-Hit Bonus against flat-footed foes.
Any thoughts?
Richard
I think it would negatively impact certain classes or characters that like to go first, like battlefield control wizards, or rogues. Its still even odds of going whenever. You lose the realism of quicker people acting first, and your initiative bonus becomes dramatically less important.
Not to mention there are lots of non-who goes first related reasons for people to be flatfooted. Improved initiative now becomes synergistic with improved feignt which i dont think is your intention.
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You could pre-roll the initiatives of the things you know are going to be combatants for your side, that's help a lot in...what honestly is a very small part of the game. I've seen tables with 15-ish people at them and not have trouble with the present initiative system.
So rather I want to find out why your group is having trouble.
How are you keeping track of initiative, are you doing it, is a player, do you use note cards or a board or an initiative tracker or just write it down?
Your not rolling a new initiative every round, right? If you are that would explain why it takes so much game time.
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I'm going to be trying out an 'initiative block' system in my future sessions. Everyone rolls, and all you keep track of is 'did you roll over or under the monsters init?'
Thus you have one group going before the monsters, one group after. And people can take their turns in any order according to those blocks. Keeps people interested even when it isn't there turn and allows some planning. Gets a little complicated if you like to have multiple bad guy initiatives.
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Having the players do their own initiative is ok, just about. Takes a minute or two for everyone to roll and then for one of the players to gather up all the initiatives on the Paizo initiative tracker.
The monsters all go in groups.
When I was using DMGenie, and sometimes with HeroLab (though I find it rather slow to use as a combat tracker), all the adversaries had their own initiatives. That's the bit I'd like to get back - combats were much more entertaining / interesting when the adversary initiatives were spread out.
Richard
At the start of every session I ask every player to roll 5 perception checks and initiative checks. It is easy enough to roll initiative on enemies when preparing the encounter.
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At the start of every session I ask every player to roll 5 perception checks and initiative checks. It is easy enough to roll initiative on enemies when preparing the encounter.
My thief has feats that allow him to apply small bonuses to skill and ability checks so many times per day. At the beginning of the session, I wouldn't know how many daily uses he has left at those future points in time, nor how critical it would be to pass the check or have a higher initiative.
I've never cared for the initiative system. I found one game had a great way of doing things. The PCCS (Phoenix Command Combat System) had an interesting way of using actions to perform tasks. You action were determined base on you combat skill, intelligence, dexterity and strength. You'd figure out you weight to get a value to cross reference with you dexterity to get another value. They you add you intelligence and combat skill together and cross reference that with your value you got from the dex chart to determine the number of actions you got. Complex for sure but I think they wanted to take many stats and skill into the equation.
So you'd get something like 4 actions. Then you had a turn which consisted of 4 impulses which spanned a 2 second period of time. With 4 actions you had a action you could take each impulse. When you attacked you could had a weapon that took a certain amount of actions to use. Such as basic weapon which had a cost of 1 to strike, 1 to set, 1 recover and 1 to parry. If you set you did normal damage, if you didn't set you did half damage and if you double set you did double damage. After any attack you had to spend an action recovering. You could also parry making it more difficult to hit you. In each impulse everyone goes at the same time. They handled it by having a plan. You had to have a plan and based on your intelligence it determined how many impulses you had to plan for. So the higher you int the less rounds you had to plan and you could react to changes quicker.
So with 4 actions and having to plan 4 the round would go like this. Impulse 1 I get 1 action, I spend it on a set. Impulse 2 I strike, impulse 3 I recover, impulse 4 I parry.
I think it would be interesting to adapt this system to Pathfinder. Not sure exactly how I'd do it though.
Savage Worlds...already has a card based initiative system...
Works well with the Savage Worlds system, not sure it would work with PF...
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If you're dead set on using the cards, you could have each PC and monster group have a different number of cards based on their Init.
For example:
PC1 - Init +4: 5 cards.
PC2 - Init +1: 2 cards.
Mook1 - Init +0: 1 card.
The order of the first occurrence for each entity would be the order of initiative.
If you wanted to make it statistically equal to the current system, then every starts off with 20 cards + their Init modifier.
I'd love to have a system that was based on this, say everyone getting 100 or so cards + init. Then, you shuffle and draw from the top. Whoever comes up, gets their usual turn. Rinse, repeat. So, your turns are always random, but it would put a lot more emphasis on Initiative scores: high enough and you'll be getting multiple turns more often. Also, the higher the party's collective Init, the less turns the mooks would have.