Adding New Combatants to an Existing Initiative Order

[Ring_of_Gyges]

Suppose the PC's break into the mad archmage's tower and begin fighting his servants. Initiative is rolled, combatants start acting, and then on turn three, the archmage teleports into the room. The archmage didn't know about the fight ahead of time, as far as he is concerned he's just returning home.

Question 1: When in the round does the archmage appear? My guess would be a random point, he didn't know he was heading into a fight, he could have finished his teleport any time during the 6 second window in which he cast.

Question 2: When does he next act? Last? Next? On an initiative he rolls up? Everyone rerolls initiative? Suppose the answer is on an initiative he rolls:

Suppose people in the fight are acting on 25, 20, 15, 10, and 5. Wizard appears on initiative count 8. Rolling high for initiative could make him go later rather than sooner. Example, if he gets a 6 for initiative he acts before anyone else, if gets a 22 two people go before him.

There are various solutions with different advantages and disadvantages, but is there a RAW answer to how to insert new combatants in existing initiative orders?

[Legowaffles]

Note, I'm not 100% certain on this:

1. Randomly I believe.
2. When he appears, he rolls initiative. He moves when his initiative is reached the round after his arrival. Note, I am considering the end of the round to be the same as the beginning of the next round. He would also be flat-footed until he actually acts (barring an ability that prevents that).

In your example, if the Wizard rolls a 29 for initiative, he would go first the round after he arrives.

[Johnny_Devo]

I believe this is just something up to the GM, as I don't believe I've seen any convention.

However, I feel that you simply do what makes sense. An initiative roll is for how quickly compared to everyone else your character reacts to combat starting. The archmage therefore would roll initiative as normal, then be placed into initiative order next round. I say next round because what if he rolls a low initiative but happens to be going next in the initiative order?

In addition, as legowaffles pointed out, in a combat that is already full swing that you don't expect to be there, until you react you won't be actively guarding yourself. Thus flatfooted.

Now you can take what I say with a grain of salt because I have no rules to back it up, but in my opinion a lot of unusual situations can be handled by GM discretion and common sense.

[Keydan]

I usually use one of these 2 methods:

1) they are piled up at the end.

2) inserted into the track with a new roll.

I use the later one for players, unique monsters and big baddies usually.

[Shin Bilirubin]

Another thought might be to roll initiative at the same time as everyone else. He won't know he's in combat, but he'll teleport on his turn, then have a full round before he can act, pretty much the same as being caught flat-footed. This only works if you know someone will be entering combat as combat starts though.

[Gilfalas]

I don't see a big issue here. Roll initiative. Since he is surprised by the combat he is surprised for the first round he is here. Simple and RAW as far as I can tell.

[thorin001]

Roll for his initiative at the start of combat. You know he is going to be there, so there is no reason to wait as waiting will only confuse things.

On turn 3 he teleports into the fray on his initiative number. You could treat this as a surprise round for him, or as a normal round. Either way he has used his standard action for the round.

[Cap. Darling]

If he is a important guy i would reroll all initiatives since every body pause for a moment to realize that he just arrived. But i belive that RAW is unclear. But Rolling beforee arrives is like Rolling for folks that dont get to act in the suprise round, unnessesary and killing a bit of suspension.
In a situation like the one described i think i would allow some sort of perception Roll to realize somthing was coming, and Award a suprise round to those that made it in the start of the new initiative order. If the bad guy know he was going in to combat he would get to act in that round as well.

[wraithstrike]

I would have rolled init before he even teleported in, just to see where he places at in the order. That keep everything simple so he does not show up in the middle of a fight and then act again at the top of the next round because he rolled hight.

[thorin001]

Cap. Darling wrote:

If he is a important guy i would reroll all initiatives since every body pause for a moment to realize that he just arrived. But i belive that RAW is unclear. But Rolling beforee arrives is like Rolling for folks that dont get to act in the suprise round, unnessesary and killing a bit of suspension.

In a situation like the one described i think i would allow some sort of perception Roll to realize somthing was coming, and Award a suprise round to those that made it in the start of the new initiative order. If the bad guy know he was going in to combat he would get to act in that round as well.

If he had been sitting there invisibly the whole time and then suddenly decided to act would you have everybody re-roll initiative? It is the same thing, a previously unknown actor starts participating in the combat.

[Cap. Darling]

thorin001 wrote:

Cap. Darling wrote:

If he is a important guy i would reroll all initiatives since every body pause for a moment to realize that he just arrived. But i belive that RAW is unclear. But Rolling beforee arrives is like Rolling for folks that dont get to act in the suprise round, unnessesary and killing a bit of suspension.

In a situation like the one described i think i would allow some sort of perception Roll to realize somthing was coming, and Award a suprise round to those that made it in the start of the new initiative order. If the bad guy know he was going in to combat he would get to act in that round as well.

If he had been sitting there invisibly the whole time and then suddenly decided to act would you have everybody re-roll initiative? It is the same thing, a previously unknown actor starts participating in the combat.

If he had been there waiting for the rigth moment to strike i would have allowed perception checks to discover him just like every other invisibel guy and if nobody made the check i would allow him to strike when ever he wanted.

I dont think it is the same at all.

[thorin001]

From the perspective of the other combatants it is. From the perspective of the wizard it is completely different. But since we are talking about how the other combatants react the wizard's perspective is irrelevant.

[Kalahen]

If I knew ahead of time that the Wizard was coming I would roll his initiative even though he doesn't know he's teleporting into combat. Initiative is an artificial thing designed to make a turn based game possible.

If something else happened that triggered the wizard to teleport back at a specific initiative count (maybe someone rang his magic doorbell?) I would rule that the Wizard was delaying until that initiative count.

In either case I would allow the wizard to move after his teleport, who says "I'm going to teleport home now, but first I will move 30' that way"? This also prevent him from being flat-footed.

[Toddpinil]

OK, similar but not similar question. What if a new combatant IS aware, or at least not unaware? Two examples:

1. You hear a fight going on in the next room, but don't engage. So basically, do I have to use a readied action, or can I choose to delay? I don't like having to force a readied action, because that limits them to one action, so I'd think allowing them to roll initiative (when they hear sounds of battle) and then just delay until someone comes in is fair.

My players got a little miffed that they went into the second room, and I just immediately threw the new combatants into the initiative at that point, but I think that's fair because they are aware.

2. If the combatants in the 2nd room DON'T hear a fight going on, Initiative-wise how is that different than just the start of a new battle? The party isn't sneaking, they don't get "surprise" per se. I don't like the argument of "the party was already in battle, so they get the drop on the combatants in the second room. With that logic, party members could just claim "I'm always vigilant and assume I'm going to be in combat, therefore I always get a surprise round if the person behind the door doesn't know I'm coming."

Simply having the new combatants roll initiative could screw them on a high initiative...even if they roll high, they might just happen to be last depending where in the initiative order the triggering action was.

BUUUUUUUT

All of this begs the question "what is initiative?" In theory, if the defender knows someone is coming (but not when) they could just "always be on alert." (same argument the PC's could make.) I've even seen paizo modules (going back into 3.5) state that an aware enemy readies an action for if the PCs come into the room...but 3.5 rules state that you can't ready an action outside of combat.

If I allow defenders to prepare themselves for someone entering the room, I promise that my players will just say "OK, so we always assume something's around every corner and behind every door, so we always win on initiative and never get caught surprised." I already had one guy lose his (bleep) because I got a surprise round AND beat him on initiative and it took 3 other players looking up rules, quoting, and explaining to him for 10 minutes before he calmed down.

Erg.

UGH!