Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I prefer to have no more than three teams of enemies, to reduce confusion on my part. So I do group them in initiative, particularly mooks. But then I execute their turns separately.
Side note: interleaving sounds like the term for a GM doing this the correct way; compare to interleaving the context of database transactions. When enemies start using readied actions to work together, interleaving is exactly the right term.
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Did you ask the other players their opinion? Because if the other 5 said they didn't care, I would have told the one whining that I wasn't changing initiative and he could talk to the con coordinator after if he didn't like it.As I said, he was so confident that it was a real thing that I assumed it was a rule I had not yet read. So I deferred to him in order to move the game forward. None of the other players had heard of it either, so everyone shrugged. Then it sucked.
If you search the forums, you'll find that the first instance of the word being used/discussed is right here in this thread. It has literally never been written in any PFS forum post here until now. So even when I searched, I came up empty, and had to enter uncharted territory. I was winging it.
And as mentioned, that's part of the reason I posted here. When a completely new phrase or term is used in front of a GM right in the middle of combat, it is entirely likely that the GM will have no experience with it and no idea how to handle it. That's part of what happens when something unheard of & completely new surprises you. So I started the topic so that all GMs will have read something about it, so that when a player uses it as a "hey I can foil the GM's monsters" thing, the GM will be able to think, "I've heard of that, I have an opinion about it and know how to react."
If, from reading this thread, all the GMs involved simply changed their handling of groups so that monsters delayed into grouped clusters, and moved/readied, then the game would look almost exactly the same as it does, and grouping monsters would still be a tactic to speed up gameplay, but there would be nothing for the player to whine about. Then the whole topic could just go away.
So I'm hoping something like that happens.
In game rules argument, that is in midst of combat, and would slow the combat down and lose that tension that is built up.
I as GM roll a d6, you call odd/even. You call it right we go your way, you call it wrong, we go my way. We look it up afterwards.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
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As I said, he was so confident that it was a real thing that I assumed it was a rule I had not yet read. So I deferred to him in order to move the game forward. None of the other players had heard of it either, so everyone shrugged.
If one person at a table says this is a rule, but nobody else backs up the statement, I'm probably going to ask to see a reference that proves I'm wrong; until that is shown, though, I'm going to continue to go with my understanding of the rules (to avoid wasting time).
Sometimes I will turn out be wrong - nobody's perfect. But unless there's likely to be a significant change in the outcome (and I don't just mean one more charge burned off the wand of CLW) I'm not going to go back and retcon the encounter; I'll just thank the player for educating me, and use the correct rule going forward.
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I always combine like monsters unless there is a scenario specific reason not to do so, and so do pretty much all GMs in my area. Leaders usually get separated from mooks but rolling separately for each mook takes far too long, especially when we are playing in 4 hour slots at a game store and often struggle to finish on time anyway.
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It's been a really long time since I payed two Sh!t$ about the nutz n boltz of Society play, I thought I'd have a peek. At first, I thought this was a joke thread. Post after post I read deeper into it, waiting for the punch line that never came...
To blame this pathetic behavior trend on west coast players makes me sad if even a shred of it is true. I wouldn't tolerate it from any player at my table. Don't like it? Walk.
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If players have a specific concern, then lets address specific concerns.
Lumping enemies together (broadly) speeds up gameplay and makes life a bit easier for the GM. Normally that isn't an issue - but where a player wants to do a specific thing (ie trigger a readied action/Delay) then its a simple conversation to sort out and resolve.
I don't get why people have to have GM v Player attitude...
I've also yet to come across a GM who I couldn't solve a rules/ruleplay issue with.
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I honestly do not see the concern. Enemies going back to back not going to prevent a player's character from taking and using a Readied action.
If they Ready to Attack if something comes within range aggressively, they either do or do not come within range. If they do, the PC has the option to use their Readied Action.
If they Ready to Disrupt a Caster, and suddenly three Kobold Casters begin chanting at the exact same time, or back to back, the PC still gets their Readied Action, (and in the case of if the DM is running all three at the same time rather than back to back), with the additional metagame advantage of being able to pick which of the three. There is no reason they wouldn't get their free Spellcraft checks on all three.
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But it makes more sense that if they are specifically Readying to Color Spray, they specify that they want to try to catch a bunch of them. If not, the DM is well within their rights to say "you can either take your Readied Action to Color Spray now, when the first one comes within range, or decide not to" (either at all or until others approach in order).
Ready requires specific conditions to be declared before hand. At best, how specific can be up to the DM and Player to agree, but in this case something like "I'm Readying to cast Color Spray when 2 or more enemies are within range" should be a pretty basic minimal criteria for a Readied Action.
And because the Readied Action does not trigger until the conditions are met, then interrupting that action that triggered it.
The only part that really becomes relevant then would be the focus on "2" or "or more", but realistically, the caster that Readied should have a pretty good idea where these enemies are likely to move to, so that's really just a matter of point of view best case, and worst case the DM being DM vs PC.
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Doesn't look like we are talking about the same thing, then.
Interleaving is the practice of better organizing to maximize efficiency and ease of use. So things like having individuals Ready or Delay until their boss goes.
Grouping is the practice of breaking up Init rolls into small groups, where like individuals go together, but still in order.
The above two are what I am referring to.
There is also Old School for the Win style:
This seems to be what you are referring to, which is pretty obviously not the same thing.
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Doesn't look like we are talking about the same thing, then.
Interleaving is the practice of better organizing to maximize efficiency and ease of use. So things like having individuals Ready or Delay until their boss goes.
...
Grouping is the practice of breaking up Init rolls into small groups, where like individuals go together, but still in order.
...
The above two are what I am referring to.
There is also Old School for the Win style:
This seems to be what you are referring to, which is pretty obviously not the same thing.
These aren't quite the definitions I was working under. There is absolutely no problem with your first example, which you call 'interleaving'. It is exactly by the rules. Players can interrupt individual turns and react appropriately.
The second example you list is almost by the rules, so long as the turns aren't mixed together (which is what I understood 'interleaving' to mean). The only adjustment needed to be made to make it specifically legal by the rules is to roll multiple initiative dice for the groups and choose the lowest result. This simulates delaying to go on the same initiative.
The example I had that I mentioned early in the thread was the GM placing all of the monsters on the same initiative, and then proceeding to move each one of them, and then attacking. There was no readying, no way for the player characters to react to what was happening. It was: monster a moves, monster b moves, monster a attacks, monster b attacks. The turns were 'interleaved' in this way.
In the hands of a skilled or meticulous GM, this can work as if the rules of initiative were being followed, but someone who isn't as careful can change how the game works dramatically.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Online—PbP
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I just always assumed that everyone always rolled initiative once for multiple enemies that are exactly the same. This is because the beginner box GM guide tells GMs to do this. Not suggests that it can be a time-saver, but tells GMs to only roll initiative once for multiples. (pg 5 of the Game Master's Guide) And then the Transition Guide does not point out that this is something that changes when you move over to the Core Rule Book. I know that the Beginner Box is not authoritative in this context, but it is suggestive of developer thinking on the issue.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Hummmn.
I am now considering the option of having six goblins attacking, rolling a group initiative for five of them, and having the sixth goblin act on his own initiative. Surely, players wouldn't meta-game that.
Another tool for the toolbox.
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You can call that "Interleaving" or "Grouping" as you wish, though I don't think your definition of the terms is at all universal.
From what I can gather from this entire thread, I think that is basically the issue.
I was going off of the definition I had to look up, because I had no idea what they where even talking about to be honest.
I was just pointing out that, from what I can tell to be the general interpretation of interleaving here, (having people Delay or Ready to act together) and Grouping (what I tend to do in PbPs, though not in F2F games) are essentially the same thing with even fewer steps removed to speed things up.
Neither of them, however, lead to the last thing.
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Hummmn.
I am now considering the option of having six goblins attacking, rolling a group initiative for five of them, and having the sixth goblin act on his own initiative. Surely, players wouldn't meta-game that.
Another tool for the toolbox.
I'd be perfectly fine with that honestly, though wonder why you didn't make it a bit more organic and do 3 and 3 or all 6? Hell, worst case scenario it might make level 1 fighting goblin levels of play interesting at least.
Probably one of the worst things is having the party waiting around for all those goblins to miss on a Nat 18.
:P
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Hummmn.
I am now considering the option of having six goblins attacking, rolling a group initiative for five of them, and having the sixth goblin act on his own initiative. Surely, players wouldn't meta-game that.
Another tool for the toolbox.
I've got all sorts of anti-metagaming tricks like that in my tool box that I use when I have extra time to keep players on their toes, I like the 5-1 initiative split though.
Other related tricks: having an extra initiative entry for a non-existent reinforcement that I ask players to roll perception checks for.
Counting up on a very noticeable counter when characters step on a particular square.
One of my favorite things is I answer all looking for traps questions with "No traps, perfectly safe" and a grin, unless the player actually finds a trap. Once I even saw a GM go you find a... wait you said 24 perception, *checks scenario text* never-mind, you don't find any traps.
Venture-Captain, Texas—Waco
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Well, if I ever ran into a situation in PFS that had 13 vampire sorcerers I certainly might reconsider how I do it.
As a player, the only times I can recall having serious problems with all the monsters going on the same initiative went something like this:
1) Monsters all go and take me down to negative.
2) I go and lie there pathetically wasting my turn as I bleed to death.
3) The cleric goes and heals me.
4) Monsters all go and take me back down to negative before I can get an action.
5) I go and lie there pathetically again wasting my turn.
6) Cleric goes and heals me again in order to keep me alive but the order insures I never actually get a turn.It doesn't happen very often, but I admit it is very annoying when it does.
Since no one addressed this particular corner case on page 1:
In my games, if a character is in the negatives and his turn comes up, he rolls his stabilization check and then I put him in delay, albeit an involuntary one. Then when he gets healed, I let him know that he can come out of delay whenever he wants. Usually they want to go right away to avoid the "I never got to go" situation described above, although on occasion they are sitting at only a few hp and prefer to Bluff that they're still unconscious until the tactical situation becomes a little safer to act.
Same goes for the enemies, of course! I don't consider this to be a PFS rule, just a Pathfinder RPG rule.
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Hummmn.
I am now considering the option of having six goblins attacking, rolling a group initiative for five of them, and having the sixth goblin act on his own initiative. Surely, players wouldn't meta-game that.
Another tool for the toolbox.
I've got all sorts of anti-metagaming tricks like that in my tool box that I use when I have extra time to keep players on their toes, I like the 5-1 initiative split though.
Other related tricks: having an extra initiative entry for a non-existent reinforcement that I ask players to roll perception checks for.
Counting up on a very noticeable counter when characters step on a particular square.
One of my favorite things is I answer all looking for traps questions with "No traps, perfectly safe" and a grin, unless the player actually finds a trap. Once I even saw a GM go you find a... wait you said 24 perception, *checks scenario text* never-mind, you don't find any traps.
I've definitely had invisible stalkers #1, 2 and 4 in an encounter before. Everyone kept waiting for #3 to show up.
But I think my favorite trick is:
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I just always assumed that everyone always rolled initiative once for multiple enemies that are exactly the same. This is because the beginner box GM guide tells GMs to do this. Not suggests that it can be a time-saver, but tells GMs to only roll initiative once for multiples. (pg 5 of the Game Master's Guide) And then the Transition Guide does not point out that this is something that changes when you move over to the Core Rule Book. I know that the Beginner Box is not authoritative in this context, but it is suggestive of developer thinking on the issue.
I find this very interesting. Now why would Paizo tell beginner GM's to do something different then what the actual rules say? I can only speculate.
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
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Now why would Paizo tell beginner GM's to do something different then what the actual rules say? I can only speculate.
Because if they didn't do that, the Beginner Box rules would have to be the size of the Core Rulebook? There are several simplifications and omissions in the Beginner Box rules.
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Last year, I thought the best answer for this initiative issue was "GM does what makes the game easier to run for them as long as they still provide positive experience for the players."
And a year later I still can't understand why people are so worried about this that it needs to become a campaign policy.
Did the GM clump initiative to create an unfair situation, kill a bunch of PCs and make people mad? That sounds like they did the wrong thing. Did the GM clump initiative and nobody noticed and had a good time? Then what's the problem?
Is this really a big problem in PFS? Do we really need a ruling for this? Aren't there more valuable things we could spend time discussing on the forums?
Sometimes I wonder if the incessant arguing here about little things is a deterrent for new people.
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Sigh....
I've been at more than one table where it was a problem.Always with the starting round... Either a PC sucks up all the attacks and dies before his friends get to act, or the bad guys all get mowed down before they even get in one shot.
Mostly now all the people I play with either roll individual INIT, or are at least awair it might be a problem and watch for it.... And adjust as needed
That is a problem with the individual GM not understanding how to run a fair table.
Not an indictment of interleaving (whatever that actually has to do with gaming--I still say the word is not applicable to initiative).
My only experience with this negatively, was in the opening round of
So this can happen without interleaving. All it takes is a GM who chooses to try and kill characters, rather than provide a good time.
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As far as I am concerned, this is a tempest in a teapot. I have never found a PFS DM to use blatantly unfair tactics against players. If anything, I feel that most DM's go out of their way to avoid killing player characters.
I have seen that happen a few times at my tables, but I would say that in the cases I've seen it has more to do with GMs trying to give the best experience they know how, and to them that means being the harshest, cruelest, and utilize the rules in the best ways they know how to provide the greatest challenge to they party. When they run into groups that won't necessarily enjoy that play style they plow right through them just because going anything less than 110% on an encounter is a disservice to the game.
Everyone messes up rules, but the games I've seen, these GMs are much less likely to screw up rules in favor of the players just because they want those encounters to challenge the PCs.
So I can understand the aggressiveness against this tactic because I am confidant I know some GMs would happily use this to their advantage to threaten/kill a PC to challenge the party.
I am fine with GMs using the rule just because there isn't really a cure for this. A killer GM will play hard with whatever rules they have on hand, but that shouldn't bar them from GMs who would use them to grant more groups a better experience (speed up table play).
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I really do not wish to criticize anyone, but with all honesty, this "interleaving" word leaves a bad taste. It almost feels like someone teenager invented it just to provoke GM's further.It is a real term used most commonly in Computer Science applications.
It is indeed. I googled it, but English isn't my native language and I cannot comprehend how it even relates to Pathfinder.
Oh well, I am just ranting a bit.
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I vote to strike the word "Interleaving" from the record. I play at multiple stores on the west coast and usually play at all 5 Northern California conventions and have never heard this term used.
It appears to be made up by a small group of gamers who used the word at a convention. I'm not sure what got up the word users craw but I have never seen anyone debate initiative grouping of mooks who share stat blocks in my 350+ tables of GMing and playing in PFS.
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The best example is the 13 vampire sorcerers that won initiative and hit us with 13 simultaneous fireballs before we could act.
13 level 5 vampire sorcerers would be at least a level 13 encounter. They'd do a collective average damage of 227,5 on 13 failed reflex saves of DC19. Even if you'd managed to make all your saves, you'd face the damage output of a CR of 19. This sounds like an unexperienced GM to me.
What was the party level?
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In my (limited 1 star) experience as a GM, I've done my fair share of things that may be construed as interleaving, but I generally prefer to roll initiative for all monsters for at least the first round of combat. Often times I'll use delayed actions to group large squads later, but I've found the first turn in combat to be critical at just about any level of play. In the past I have used the shortcut of 1 initiative roll for a group of identical monsters, but I've felt that it tends to make combats swing a lot more towards the extremes of cakewalk encounters that could almost be hand-waved to severely threatening encounters, leaving much less room in between.
These days I roll all monster initiatives, and then group them on the initiative sheet afterwards, eg. if PCs 1, 2 and 3 have initiatives of 5, 10, and 15 respectively, and Monsters 1, 2 and 3 have initiatives of 18, 6, and 7 respectively, I'll group PCs 2 and 3, directing them to take their actions in whatever order is most beneficial to them, and likewise I'll group monsters 2 and 3 doing likewise. I'm sure I've been guilty of interleaving actions in a way that may or may not be 100% explainable given the creature's intelligence, but given the quantity of rules errors I've made and seen others make as GMs, this has always been incredibly minor. In my case, I like to take advantage of little shortcuts like this so I can spent more time paying attention to more difficult interactions without stalling combats excessively. Then I proceed to screw up said interaction 1 round later anyways.
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I don't think I've ever seen a conversation more perfectly calculated to make me want to avoid PFS like a plague. And I'm saying that as someone who plays a lot of PFS.
Who does this kind of fun-vampire hair-splitting benefit? Move the damned NPC's and get on with the game!
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Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne
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Am I the only person who, every time I have seen the word in this thread, reads it as "interweaving"? Which, as far as I can tell, is a functionally equivalent word anyway.
Not to be confused with "enterleaving" which is walking backwards out the door you just came in. Which is what most of the people reading this thread wished they had done well before they got to the end.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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The best example is the 13 vampire sorcerers that won initiative and hit us with 13 simultaneous fireballs before we could act.13 level 5 vampire sorcerers would be at least a level 13 encounter. They'd do a collective average damage of 227,5 on 13 failed reflex saves of DC19. Even if you'd managed to make all your saves, you'd face the damage output of a CR of 19. This sounds like an unexperienced GM to me.
What was the party level?
I believe it is from ** spoiler omitted ** so the group would have been level 15-17.
I am not sure why there were 13 as that particular level has 8 and a vampire succubus mistress so there shouldn't have been more than 9 of them total. The leader is level 11 and the vampires are normal sorcerer 8's and they explicitly work together so you could easily find yourself facing 74d6 damage in one round although the leader has lightning bolt rather than fireball.
Correct on the scenario. I already "told all" in a post earlier up regarding the details of the module.
I believe that throughout the course of the game our actions caused certain elements of the scenario to adjust in reaction, chaining some encounters together.