| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
*GM has to declare the actions of six enemies before rolling initiative*
Yeah, no thanks.
|
I haven't tried something like this exactly before. I have done the Savage Worlds deck of cards drawing each round. I have also done dynamic initiative from Traveller. I also did some crazy count down initative for Aces and Eights that im not sure was all that fun for the complexity. Different strokes can work for TTRPGs so I don't see why not for PF.
For me however, combat is the "game-iest" part of an RPG. It doesn't have to make sense realistically, just mock up a model of a fight that can be played out on the table. With that said, I think your idea could work out ok. Though, many actions wont make sense anymore in sequence, so what would you do about that?
Declaring action before rolling Initiative wouldn't work. Players with multiple characters (particularly the GM) would quickly get swamped and/or confused. It's one of those ideas that sounds cool, but is too impractical to actually work.
Similarly, I personally like the idea of rolling Initiative every round, to make combat more exciting and unpredictable... But that's just not feasible, as rolling initiative takes too long and the break in action pretty much kills the players' enthusiasm.
If you're willing to put up with all the extra work and bookkeeping, then I suppose it can be done... It's a lot of extra work and bookkeeping, though. It's not as bad in PbP, but it's still quite bad, IMO.
It worked perfectly fine before 3.0 came around.Declaring action before rolling Initiative wouldn't work. Players with multiple characters would quickly get swamped and/or confused (particularly the GM). It's one of those ideas that sounds cool, but is too impractical to actually work.
Similarly, I personally like the idea of rolling Initiative every round, to make combat more exciting and unpredictable... But that's just not feasible, as rolling initiative takes too long and the break in action pretty much kills the players' enthusiasm.
"Worked". Only in the sense that it can be done... It wasn't an effective use of time. It made combat turns take even longer... And the extra time was spent on the most boring part of combat: rolling initiative.
Welcome to 2nd edition AD&D! Players would declare their actions while GM would determine (though not declare) NPC actions, initiative would be rolled, and then everything would play out in initiative order. Spellcasting, for one thing, was a lot riskier back then because it was easier to have a spell disrupted.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
AND then
I think you mean "and THEN". ;)
Anyway, it's an interesting idea, but I think it's based on an easy-to-make but nevertheless false assumption: that "random"/"unpredictable" is inherently more lifelike or believable.
There are some cases where it makes sense. I mean, all those elven archers at the top of Helm's Deep are firing at the same time with no communication about their targets. Isn't it likely that there's going to be at least a little bit of target-selection overlap, and somebody's arrow is going to be headed for an already-dead uruk-hai? It's easy to imagine things like this (I actually had this thought while watching this and other movies) and then picture this "blind initiative" system as delivering on this hectic experience of bloody mayhem. Cool, right?
Yeah, until you consider all the other scenarios it also enables. For example, the fighter is badly injured, so the cleric declares his intent to move up and cast a cure spell on him. Meanwhile, the enemy archers all target the fighter (figuring on some of them missing due to the fighter's high AC) and the enemy mage tosses a fireball in hopes of finishing him off while damaging the rest of the PCs in the process.
Then the cleric rolls the lowest initiative, and you get this scenario:
Enemy mage fireballs the party with a high damage roll, killing the fighter and leaving other PCs injured.
Enemy archer #1 shoots the fighter's body (much easier to hit now).
Enemy archer #2 shoots the fighter's body as well.
Enemy archer #3 crits the dead fighter.
The PC with the highest Wisdom score in the party walks past his injured comrades to cast a powerful healing spell on the charred corpse with three arrows in its face.
That's ridiculous. It's nonsensical. It's so dumb that it's even more immersion-shatteringly "meta" than the modern initiative system you moved away from. And it's mind-bogglingly different from what you were going for.
So what do you do, then? Maybe safeguard against situations like the above with a list of exceptions? Like, maybe if there are enough initiative counts between a plan-altering event (like the fighter dying) and your own turn, you can change? Or maybe actions like archery are deemed easy enough to adjust that those archers can change targets when the fighter dies to the fireball? Or if your turn involves movement and a touch spell, you're still committed to those actions but can change what target you move toward? Maybe all of the above?
Okay, so now you've gone from the original blind initiative idea to a whole subsystem with its own list of special rules and exceptions, and each one of those special rules brings the net result one step closer to the modern initiative system you were moving away from in the first place.
Meanwhile, if you're anywhere between the two extremes of these different initiative systems, people would just play toward the best options. That is, if archery gets to change targets easily, then everybody wants to be an archer. If something else gets an exception, folks play to that. Whatever's worst off doesn't get used (for instance, folks might just decide to never heal each other in battle for fear of the above scenario, and push even harder toward "rocket tag", which is probably not what you're after either).
Of course, you could then take the most forgiving actions initiative-wise and give them other drawbacks (like maybe archery deals less damage, etc) in an attempt to rebalance things so that there's real diversity and choice again, so you can have your complicated-but-dynamic initiative system without breaking anything. Great, except now you're rewriting so much of the game in your attempt to create a workable context in which your initiative system can function, that you may as well be playing a different game.
You know, like 2E.
TLDR: The idea sounds neat, but won't deliver the experience you think it will.
|
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
Well, I think it would give me the exact experience I think it would, which I think might not be the sort of experience a lot of players would like. But that's just me.
I suppose it was indeed presumptuous of me to just assume you'd dislike the fighter/cleric scenario I described. My apologies; if that's fun, then knock yourself out. :)
I wonder how many different games would be changed in the basic approach to combat if you were required to declare your actions for a round , AND then roll for initiative (which is how we used to do it in the stone age).
It seems to me that rolling for initiative, and then selecting actions for your character is just pure and simple meta-gaming. After all, if you already know when everyone is going to act, you can better select your actions, right?
It would seem more chaotic and “fog of war” like, if players had to decide what their characters were going to do, and with a very limited ability to wiggle around within those declarations, be held to those choices after initiative dice are roiled.
Player Characters might try to reach the same place, attack an already disabled opponent, or waste their actions entirely, which would, to me, feel more like a wild and crazy fantasy battle
But that’s just me.
Has anyone else tried using this sort of reverse initiative rule?
People are pretty good at adjusting on the fly. Micheal Jordan's hand switch mid-air against the Lakers is an example of that.
I am not a professional athlete, but I have suddenly changed my mind while playing football, and I likely had less time to react than the characters do.
What a former GM of mine did for the first round of combat to simulate your idea to some extent was to not show the players the initiative order when combat first started. That way people don't just ignore Monster(with reach) and set up a flank because they know he can't make any AoO's until after he is flanked, but most groups I have been in didn't use that knowledge anyway.
It's worked fine when I've played it before. Has also lead to some pretty epic arguments in and out of game. I don't think this has anything to do with edition, it's just a cumbersome way of handling things.
I agree with Jiggy that if you want that system, play 2e or find some retroclone or other 'old school' game that uses it, don't try and bolt it onto a 3.X based game.
Pretty much the only reason I can think of it not working for 3e is in the way it handles short durations like effects that are measured in a relatively small number of rounds. Cyclical initiative makes that fairly convenient to manage since, with everyone going in the same order every round (barring holds and delays), it's easy to keep track of when the effect should stop and you avoid cases where someone is affected a different number of times by having first a low then a high initiative roll (or vice versa).
Other than that and cyclical initiative's general ease of use, declare-then-roll should work OK in 3e and be no more ridiculous than always being able to reliably predict turn order (and planning accordingly).
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Never had an issue with it back in the day.
And like I said, it was one of many things that kept caster's in check.
Hell, I didn't have a problem with it last week and won't tomorrow night.
Any action that is negated by a faster action can be changed to a new action speed at a penalty, if that penalty takes you out of the timer for the round - the action doesn't happen that round. If the target is gone (dead) then you can change to a new action at a penalty, and same rule applies - if you can't do the changed action within the confines of the round then you don't do it that round. It isn't hard.It doesn't become rocket tag or some other nonsense, people don't switch to faster weapons or attacks under this system because those usually deal less damage, just as heavier weapons tend to deal more damage.
Just a failed slippery slope argument. It didn't happen in 2nd but it's being framed retroactively like it did to fit the narrative.
Again, compared to Pathfinder, declared initiative rounds with weapon/action speeds and lost actions go x10 faster than my PF games with all the round-to-round ticking off of buff/debuff +1/-1 nonsense. I've tested combats and adventure completion between AD&D and PF, AD&D wins hands down every time. On a PF night we would get through one combat and maybe 3 encounters/rooms, on an AD&D night - around 3-4 combats and 7 encounters or more - they tend to be more cautious in AD&D due to the sheer lethal nature of the game - but even with that we get more actual game time.
I think it also makes a difference how general you can be with your statements of intent. For example, could you get away with "I move the shortest distance possible towards the nearest active enemy and then hit him as often as possible with my sword"? And can you cancel an action that is still possible to take but that is no longer desirable -- such as deciding not to attack a foe who just surrendered?
|
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
It didn't happen in 2nd but it's being framed retroactively like it did to fit the narrative.
Your use of unspecified pronouns makes this sentence really hard to parse. Can you be more explicit as to what you're trying to communicate here?
Again, compared to Pathfinder, declared initiative rounds with weapon/action speeds and lost actions go x10 faster than my PF games with all the round-to-round ticking off of buff/debuff +1/-1 nonsense. I've tested combats and adventure completion between AD&D and PF, AD&D wins hands down every time.
I think it's pretty close to universally agreed that 3.X is basically the slowest combat system ever, so I'm not sure who you think you're arguing with here.
Unless maybe you're trying to attribute the difference to the different initiative systems? That would seem kinda silly, and I don't think you're trying to say that, but I'm not sure what other point you could be making here. Can you elaborate?
I think it's pretty close to universally agreed that 3.X is basically the slowest combat system ever, so I'm not sure who you think you're arguing with here.
I'm going to assume you've never played either Torg or Champions. I'm sure I can probably find more slower combat systems as well...
Chief Technical Officer
|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
It would seem more chaotic and “fog of war” like, if players had to decide what their characters were going to do, and with a very limited ability to wiggle around within those declarations, be held to those choices after initiative dice are roiled.
Player Characters might try to reach the same place, attack an already disabled opponent, or waste their actions entirely, which would, to me, feel more like a wild and crazy fantasy battle
But that’s just me.
If you haven't already played RoboRally, I am extremely confident that you'll enjoy it.
|
Then the cleric rolls the lowest initiative, and you get this scenario:
Enemy mage fireballs the party with a high damage roll, killing the fighter and leaving other PCs injured.
Enemy archer #1 shoots the fighter's body (much easier to hit now).
Enemy archer #2 shoots the fighter's body as well.
Enemy archer #3 crits the dead fighter.
The PC with the highest Wisdom score in the party walks past his injured comrades to cast a powerful healing spell on the charred corpse with three arrows in its face.That's ridiculous. It's nonsensical. It's so dumb that it's even more immersion-shatteringly "meta" than the modern initiative system you moved away from.
I don't think this is as nonsensical as it seems. You're forgetting that this is all happening almost at the same time.
The cleric is already on his way to the fighter and casting the spell while 3 arrows are in the air on the way to his body. The cleric just happens to be too slow in completing his action.
It always strikes me as sort of weird, that older versions of D&D used a one minute combat round, and clearly tried to explain that combat was not a simulation, but an approximation
Now rounds are six seconds long, which is clearly meant to be a simulation, but when you point out that certain actions should end up being useless, someone will say
Oh but it's not supposed to be a simulation at all
Well, I say, if you want a more theatrical approximation of combat, where actions occur with a greater degree of certainty, go back to using one minute rounds.
How do you judge one more accurate than the other? They both seem to be abstractions to me,
It's not something we worry about. My players might declare and action and then I tell them to roll initiative or they might declare it after. It doesn't matter to us.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
No. Just no.
In second edition, the action you took modified your initiative. Casting time, weapon speed, etc. That made it a necessity. But oh, such a horrid, joyless mess it made. Such endless arguments about changing your action. Such a stupid idea.
Each side rolled once per round, and there were no modifiers and combat in earlier editions was significantly faster.
The major reason combat was faster pre-3.0, there wasn't a tactical grid. The grid is the biggest time sink in combat. And it's not just the physical presence of the gird, but all the rules associated with it. Back in the day you might count, but often as not you just "eyeballed" it and the DM would say "yeah, you can make it that far" or "no, he's just out of reach".
I personally prefer a system where the higher your initiative, the later you declare your action and the earlier it resolves.
I love this system, but I'm not sure how well I could adapt it to d20. One thing I have found is that actions before initiative tends to work in more fluid games, while the more tactical you make your game board the harder it is to get it to play out.
I personally prefer a system where the higher your initiative, the later you declare your action and the earlier it resolves.I love this system, but I'm not sure how well I could adapt it to d20. One thing I have found is that actions before initiative tends to work in more fluid games, while the more tactical you make your game board the harder it is to get it to play out.
that makes for excellent mental exercise, but not really good gaming, at least in my experience(shadowrun).
that makes for excellent mental exercise, but not really good gaming, at least in my experience(shadowrun).I personally prefer a system where the higher your initiative, the later you declare your action and the earlier it resolves.I love this system, but I'm not sure how well I could adapt it to d20. One thing I have found is that actions before initiative tends to work in more fluid games, while the more tactical you make your game board the harder it is to get it to play out.
Shadowrun still is closer to the mechanics heavy end of the spectrum. Worked great for Nobilis, where everything is abstract and you may be using metaphysical concepts to attack your opponent.
Each side rolled once per round, and there were no modifiers and combat in earlier editions was significantly faster.The major reason combat was faster pre-3.0, there wasn't a tactical grid. The grid is the biggest time sink in combat. And it's not just the physical presence of the gird, but all the rules associated with it. Back in the day you might count, but often as not you just "eyeballed" it and the DM would say "yeah, you can make it that far" or "no, he's just out of reach".
Theater of the mind. That's how we still roll.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I personally still like maps, because I have serious difficulty with spacial reasoning based purely off verbal descriptions. Unless positioning is completely irrelevant.
For example: 13th Age works great with just using the map as a reference for relative positioning. You know who is in melee with who, but the distances between non-melee opponents doesn't have to be exact, just generalized.
Dungeon World on the other hand doesn't care about positioning at all, so complete theater of the mind I'm okay with.
I personally prefer a system where the higher your initiative, the later you declare your action and the earlier it resolves.
That's how WoD combat rules were originally written. Actions were declared from lowest to highest initiative so that faster folks could react to and/or attempt to preempt the slower ones.
I've only ever seen it run that way once: when I used it as part of a "cinematic" sword duel system (for the Highlander style Immortal character). It worked excellently for that, but for general combat going from high to low each round is much faster for game flow.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Well, I think it would give me the exact experience I think it would, which I think might not be the sort of experience a lot of players would like. But that's just me.I suppose it was indeed presumptuous of me to just assume you'd dislike the fighter/cleric scenario I described. My apologies; if that's fun, then knock yourself out. :)
Your scenario seemed awesome to me Jiggy - everything came down to timing, and the cleric died before he could save anyone. As a Player I would be groaning, but would accept it as suitably heroic/epic.
|
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Your scenario seemed awesome to me Jiggy - everything came down to timing, and the cleric died before he could save anyone. As a Player I would be groaning, but would accept it as suitably heroic/epic.Well, I think it would give me the exact experience I think it would, which I think might not be the sort of experience a lot of players would like. But that's just me.I suppose it was indeed presumptuous of me to just assume you'd dislike the fighter/cleric scenario I described. My apologies; if that's fun, then knock yourself out. :)
You might want to re-read the story. The cleric didn't die, he walked past his injured allies to a thrice-dead fighter and cast a cure spell on the corpse.
Oh. Ok, I'll go back and reread it.