I have some basic questions on how to best handle initiative. First off, do you roll seperately for each creature? Say for instance the PC's enter a room with 6 orcs, do you use six seperate initiative values for each orc or do you simply roll once and use that value for all of the orcs?
Secondly, after all the initiative values are recorded and the combat begins, are the PC's privy to when the monsters act?
I have some basic questions on how to best handle initiative. First off, do you roll seperately for each creature? Say for instance the PC's enter a room with 6 orcs, do you use six seperate initiative values for each orc or do you simply roll once and use that value for all of the orcs?
Secondly, after all the initiative values are recorded and the combat begins, are the PC's privy to when the monsters act?
I generally put them into rational groups. If there is more then one kind of enemy I roll separately. And if there are groups of more then 4 I usually split them up (so in the above case i would do the 3 orcs on the right and the 3 orcs on the left).
And yes I have one of my players track initiative on our white board so everyone can see it. Unless there is some hidden character I dont want the players to know about yet the monsters' initiative is on the board as well. After all the PCs will SEE the monsters move, no reason to be secretive about the initiative order.
in my current group the GM rolls seperately for each NPC combatant.
we use a dry erase board that a player (usually me) records all initiatives for NPC'S & PC'S alike and reads off the batting order as our Gme prefers to focus on what strategies he is enacting.
YMMV of course.
Generally, you'll find in practice that the PC's each have their own initiative, and the monsters use their best initiative modifier in the group and work off that, and then act in a fixed order.
You should have every creature on its own initiative, but most people just block a group of monsters of the same type into a single initiative.
Initiative is considered public, but you could try and keep it secret...? It would only last for a turn though, until the players figured it out.
I keep track of initiative on a white board as well, with all the PCs and Monsters initiative in sight.
As for grouping initiatives, I'll do that when there's, well, a group of the same monsters. If there are the PCs facing off against five NPCs, Ill roll for each of them seperately. But against six orcs, I'll roll once for the group of orcs. Maybe if the orcs have a leader, I'll roll seperately for him.
If there are six orcs, twleve goblins, an ogre and a human Wizard NPC, I'll probably roll once for the orcs, once for the goblins, once for the ogre and once for the wizard.
Then again, if there are just two or three orcs, I'll sometimes roll seperately for each of them.
I guess it comes down to speeding up the melee process in big fights.
Ultradan
Thanks for the input, I pretty much figured in the case of a group of the same monsters most people wouldn't bother to track each one individually, but I like the idea of splitting them into smaller groups when there's a lot of them.
And I just wasn't sure what the consensus was on open or closed initiative values, but since it would only be for the first round, I guess it's not really a big deal.
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We use the extremely useful Gamemastery Combat Pad from Paizo to follow initiative.
First all PCs roll for initiative and announce their results which are put on the relevant magnets by one of the players. Note that we do assume for simplicity's sake that familiars, animal companions and so forth usually act at the same initiative as their PC master.
Then the player charged with keeping track of the initiative announces the highest score and the relevant PC acts, then goes to the next higher and so on.
The GM interrupts when it is time for one (or several in a group) of his NPCs to act. The relevant magnet is then added to the Combat Pad.
Also for the sake of simplicity, all NPCs act on the same initiative unless their tactics imply that they act on differing scores (such as latecomers in a fight or the BBEG waits while his thugs charge the PCs).
I roll for named/special NPCs individually, but for groups of equal NPCs as one entity.
For instance, if there's an Orc Chieftain, an Orc Cleric, and 4 rank-and-file Orc Warriors, I'll make 3 initiative rolls; 1 for the chieftain, one for the cleric, and one for the 4 warriors.
If another group of Orc Warriors enters the fight later on, I'll make a new initiative roll for that group.
I keep track of initiatives publicly (except for enemies who the party doesn't know about). There's essentially no reason to keep it hidden, since the entire order will be known after the first round of combat anyway.
Lately I have been using the Combat Manager tool to manage my encounters, and it tracks initiative separately. Before then I used a stack of index cards where I had each monster's key stats and abilities written and would arrange the in initiative order. I normally would roll initiative for all of them, unless there was just a ton of them to deal with.
My problem with rolling for a group of monsters is that it creates a very artificial situation where the whole party goes, then the monsters go and it's back to the party again. That makes for very swingy encounters where if the monsters gang up on one character, that character can go down before any PC gets a chance to intervene. The combat just feels more natural and balanced to me when everyone has their own place in the initiative order.