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So, the Friday stream thread had this come up.
RAW, the same type of monster should all act on the same initiative roll (all goblins, all gnolls, all ghasts, all mummies, etc).
This makes the game significantly more dangerous, as there is a far increased chance of six enemies focusing a target and sending them to 0, causing a minimum of prone+drop items+slow if they're immediately healed. Without this, there is a good chance someone can intervene to save them when they notice they are getting low, before other monsters of that type can act.
I can point to at least two places that I believe my group would have TPK'd with this rule, but narrowly survived and ended up reporting 1, then 0 player deaths.
Personally, I dislike this rule.
Have you been using Grouped Initiative? Would using it have made things more deadly?
Book 4 minor spoiler:
There is one area with 10 cyclops. They can all choose to automatically succeed. All going at once, even at range, that's 20d10+20 (I think their range attack is 2d10+2?) damage, or 130 average damage on round 1 without anyone able to react between them if they want. Far more in melee, which could also hit two targets.
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I've been using grouped initiative since we started playing D&D 3.0. I'm certainly not rolling individual initiatives for oodles of opponents.
When there are 'oodles' of enemies, such as when I use squads of 20+ mooks, I start using shortcuts like grouped initiative. But I would never have a single group that is an appropriate encounter on its own all grouped up, unless the dice landed that way, and even then the players could delay to break up the initiative order (my players frequently delay until after the first enemy, so that they can avoid enemies all going at once).
Interesting. I have on occasion broken up larger groups of identical enemies into 2 or 3 groupings if there are reasons to do so, but in general, I've never even thought about handling identical opponent's initiatives individually. (Well, except when playing Blood Pig.) And I've never had a TPK that could be explained by that.
How do other GMs handle this?
I remember one example of a clear player-death-by-grouped-initiative, although the dice had put it that way. 5 enemy archers rolled in the same initiative spot. Almost the entire party had a way to heal or get someone out of danger. No one delayed. Inquisitor flew towards the archers, ending his turn in the air half way towards them. Then their turns came up. five full attacks. He went unconcious, died from the fall. If other PCs had acted between the archers, they could have saved him.
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With groups above 3, I usually split them into subgroups - 2 or 3, whatever seems to be more convenient. Not only makes fights less swingy, it also speeds up combat rotation compared to the situation when one side makes many rolls at once and the other has literally nothing to do.
Obligatory group initiative is a bad idea IMHO.
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Grouped initiative and focus fire are definitely brutal, especially when you have a group of, say, archers with Deadly bows. I generally try to avoid focus fire for less intelligent foes, but sometimes there's only one or two PCs who are obvious or visible targets. My group would have definitely TPKed in Lost Star if not for the cleric, and if the cleric had been the one hanging out in the open making himself a target, well...
Based on the fact that lions and other basic predators can focus on one enemy IRL, I would consider it a disservice to my players if any trained fighter or monster didn't focus fire. Usually able to find the least armoured target or bulky, also.
Sometimes I forgot how things not even talked about like this cause completely massive table variance, I feel like I'm playing a different game to some people by having no grouped initiative and always focus firing.
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I would never group initiative except for very weak opponents, and then I'd probably break them into squads. If the opponents are smart or skilled they *will* focus fire and it's lethal to have them all go at once.
Very smart opponents may delay so that they all go at once anyway--the PCs do this, why not the NPCs? (My current PC party has two rat-girls who get big advantages from being in the same square: the faster-moving one routinely delays to keep them moving together.)
Group initiative makes things easier for the GM, but is probably less interesting in play and definitely more lethal. I think it was noteworthy on the other threads that people who used group initiative were the ones reporting massive TPKs. It's a particularly bad idea with ranged attackers. I recall a near-TPK in 1st edition where a group of skeleton champion archers happened to roll very similar initiative; they naturally fired at the nearest foe and it was a guaranteed one-shot on any PC, no damage to dropped or dead, so healing couldn't help.
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RAW, the same type of monster should all act on the same initiative roll (all goblins, all gnolls, all ghasts, all mummies, etc).
Where do the rules make it a "should"? The only rules I'm seeing say
The GM rolls initiative for any potential adversaries in the encounter. If the potential adversaries include a number of identical creatures, she could roll once for the group as a whole and have them take their turns within the group in any order she wishes. She could even change the initiative order within the group from round to round. The GM could also roll any or all creatures individually.
The possibilities of group initiative and individual initiative are clearly presented on an equal footing. It's totally up to the GM.
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I sometimes impose 'disadvantage' (rolling 2d20 and taking lowest) for initiative of a group. A group that wants to act together is going to respond at the speed of the slowest person in that group.
Whether you want to roll for initiative individually or as a group is up to the GM. Honestly, I don't even roll for monsters, I give them a 10 on the die.
To me, rolling for initiative individually for each monster is onerous and a waste of time. Most GMs in PFS have trouble tracking initiative when it's grouped, they're always skipping your turn.
In PF1, groups of monsters were tracked with the initiative within their group and we didn't have an unusual amount of deaths. And it was much easier to die from damage in PF1 as well.
If you want to roll individually, that's your right, but for most of us we'd rather the game run faster.
What is causing the deaths in PF2 is:
1) Perception and initiative for the monsters is too high, on average they beat the PCs.
2) The attack bonus is slightly too buffed in PF2. If they can't get the attack bonus right for level 0 monsters, they're going to make the same mistakes for level 10 monsters.
If you're getting destroyed in 1 round by the monsters, chances are you're going to get destroyed anyway. At least you're not instantly dead. If the GM wants, just because the monsters go on the same initiative doesn't mean she has to focus fire one PC. So this can be easily solved by using a different GMing style.
I use the Combat Manager app so having individual initiative for foes isn't a problem for me to track. The application will roll initiative for the PCs, the foes, or both, so large numbers of foes is absolutely no hassle for me, though I only roll for the foes as my players prefer rolling for themselves. I display the initiative window on a monitor for the players to see but use CM's ability to mask monster names so all they see is ??????? for each foe. The only thing I have to do is label the foes so that I am easily able to distinguish them. The initiative order in the application often ends up something like this a few rounds into combat:
PC 1
PC 2
Skeleton 1
PC 3
Skeleton 2 spear
Skeleton 3 club left flank
Skeleton 4 spear right flank
PC 4
Skeleton 5 rear
I'd have a hard time going back to playing without CM and battles would certainly take much longer than they already do. I really hope CM is updated for second edition once the ruleset is finalized.
Interesting that people find rolling 12+ initives very slow. I think this might be a result of format differences. For me, I have a button on Roll20 that does it. Rolling 12 initiaives and putting them in the tracker takes less than a minute.
For record, I GM without grouped initiative, and find the game is already lethal in both PF1 and PF2, as I tend to focus on playing enemies tactically, including the old get-reinforcements tactic. My PCs have mastered the art of retreat. I find that when enemies roll grouped initiative, PCs often die if no one intentionally delays between the enemies. I always have enemies focus fire if they're smart, because otherwise players would ask why all the archers suddenly switched from the squishy cleric to the tanky fighter when it looked like the cleric was actually going to go down. It removes all idea of an earned victory.
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Grouped initiative could be deadly in PF1 too.
The rogues surprise the PCs. One PC is in front. The rogues all make a sneak attack. Then they win initiative and make another round of sneak attacks; PC is dead.
The new style of initiative will alleviate that a bit, but it still allows a lot of focus-firing, with no chance for the PCs to respond halfway. And it's not a "realistic" advantage that we should naturally expect, it's purely a convenience thing that sometimes turns extremely deadly.
And sometimes it's super-lame too, as when you roll initiative for all of your monsters at once and get a 1, and the players walk all over them before they ever got a chance to do anything.
As a tabletop compromise between "fair balanced" and "practical", I prefer to split the enemies into about three initiative teams. That's not too cumbersome even without computer aid, but also prevents it from being too swingy.
I definitely think the suggested alternative to independent/individual Init is 3-4 groups NOT 1 giant group.
If a 3-4 monster encounter doesn't need to be grouped, why reduce the # of group to less than that?
The idea that lowest Init within the group is used for group make sense, and actually there should be Init PENALTY as well, possibly -1 per additional creature grouped with that Init roll?
I never group initiative as a whole. I might subgroup it for lots (10+) mooks but that's it.
What I sometimes do is roll the die and (say there are 5 monsters) I'll apply +4, +2, +0, -2 and -4 to the five in turn. Once you've established the order the maths doesn't much matter.
I occasionally use cards. The 4 mooks might be the A, 2, 3 and 4 of clubs, the BBEG is the A of spades and the PCs are the JQK of hearts and diamonds. Once you have them in order you just go round and round the stack and won't miss any out. Or you can write them on 3x5 index cards or business cards, prepared before the adventure.
What I sometimes do is roll the die and (say there are 5 monsters) I'll apply +4, +2, +0, -2 and -4 to the five in turn.
Fair enough for what that does, but avoiding Init rolls is really only part of motivation for grouping Init, actually resolving multiple creatures on same turn is a big part of it. We agree that medium size groups is better than all enemies (or all of large amount of mooks).
I've played a system where combats are done in "pulses" of 0.1 second. It certainly avoids this problem, but it does come with a host of other issues.
I've never had an issue with this:
- a creature more than pc level rolls own initiative
- for equal or lower level creatures, a group of 3 or less of the same shares initiative.
-a group of 4 or more is split up into groups of 2-4 enemies based on how many (6 becomes 2 of 3, 12 is 3 of 4, etc).
I too use combat manager. I can't recommend it highly enough, it's the best GM tool I've found.
In any case, if the monster wanted to be able to focus attack, they could easily delay their actions until they can all act together.
I break them up by CR. So if I'm using 5 CR 2's and say 2 cr 6 versus a 7th level party I would have all the 2's go together and the 2 sixes roll seperatly each. basically the closer the monsters are to being a challenge by themselves I suppose.
Frankly I'd just as soon roll party vs monster initiative each round, than do it in the string as I think it gives the party a nice ability to act in unison instead of a mass of reactions.
Many of the examples of it hurting the party, like the flying Inquisitor, are really bad play. Leaving yourself separated and exposed for a full round is going to set you up for death.
My one suggestion would be as a DM I try to spread the attacks out over the party rather than going after one or two party members (unless they put themselves in an exposed position out front of the party). That's a more logical pattern for attacks than selective targeting. That way everyone gets some damage, and you don't as DM choose to take out 2 or 3 party members. Players like to play, not watch, so yeah everyone gets hurt, and you may die, but I'm not going to pick the ones that do in the first round of a fight.
I will usually run all of one type together, with leader/special types going solo. With party initiative affected by their positioning at the point initiative was called. Nothing is more ridiculous than the two fighters in the doorway standing still for a round while everyone behind them moves up and attacks.
Frankly I'd just as soon roll party vs monster initiative each round, than do it in the string as I think it gives the party a nice ability to act in unison instead of a mass of reactions.
Many of the examples of it hurting the party, like the flying Inquisitor, are really bad play. Leaving yourself separated and exposed for a full round is going to set you up for death.
My one suggestion would be as a DM I try to spread the attacks out over the party rather than going after one or two party members (unless they put themselves in an exposed position out front of the party). That's a more logical pattern for attacks than selective targeting. That way everyone gets some damage, and you don't as DM choose to take out 2 or 3 party members. Players like to play, not watch, so yeah everyone gets hurt, and you may die, but I'm not going to pick the ones that do in the first round of a fight.
I will usually run all of one type together, with leader/special types going solo. With party initiative affected by their positioning at the point initiative was called. Nothing is more ridiculous than the two fighters in the doorway standing still for a round while everyone behind them moves up and attacks.
That is how we did it in 1st edition D&D but since people tend to have their own individual initiative modifier it seems wrong in later editions. plus it invalidates some feats and class features.
I always use grouped initiative, and have done since my AD&D days, and I've not noticed that PF2 is particularly lethal - certainly not any more so than any previous incarnation of the game. I've knocked a couple of players down to 0, but nothing that has significantly threatened multiple characters.
On the topic of grouped archers - barring specific orders to do so, I would find it weird if a group of archers all focused their fire on a single target, especially if they were firing simultaneously; one would expect that they spread their shots out under the assumption that some of those shots might be lethal and they don't want to waste shots.
You very rarely see in movies/novels every archer in a team all firing at the same target when there are multiple targets available.
If they are all focusing on the same target, I would expect that they keep firing at that target even if it dies from the first few arrows - after all, they are firing simultaneously, and have no way of knowing that the first two arrows are both going to crit and kill the target.
Combat is split into initiative to help keep track of what it going on, but it's important to remember, imo, that all creatures in a given combat are acting roughly simultaneously each round.
I sometimes group initiative, but rarely (because initiative should be a shifting, flowing thing, so NPCs sometime ready or delay as appropriate). I don't think grouping initiative causes TPKs, in this or the previous edition. It just saves time at the cost of a little tactical granularity.
Assuming your NPCs are still being roleplayed appropriately, grouping initiative won't cause problems because your NPCs most likely won't have the opportunity to take advantage of the tactical benefits if you held them to cinimatic standards.
In the hands of a less competent, more competitive, or simply cruel game master, Focus-Fire and Grouped Initiative are often accompanied by outright metagaming; which is what really causes the most excessive TPKs and other problems in my opinion.
For example: NPCs that act as if they know the exact status and capabilities of their enemies (because the GM does). Or NPCs that execute perfectly coordinated tactical maneuvers in relative silence; as if they were reading each other's minds, or otherwise obviously all being controlled by the same hand.
I will note though, when combating my test-group of three (whose primary healer is a bard with medicine), I've had to really, really pull my punches not to wipe the group out. Even level 0 monsters the with the Weak Adjustment would be too deadly if my goal as GM was to simply to rack up PC Deaths. The PCs margin of victory is too narrow, despite being a good team.
I don't think grouping initiative causes TPKs, in this or the previous edition.
I've been burned by GMs that grouped difficult creatures into one initiative. The best example is the 13 vampire sorcerers that won initiative and hit us with 13 simultaneous fireballs before we could act.
Though in that case the GM turned back time to give the party a second chance, seeing that the combination of weird encounter design and competent tactics and grouped initiative wasn't fair.
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I almost never use grouped initiative due to how swingy it makes fights. If you have multiple enemies crit or activate effects that some portion of the party is particularly vulnerable to, the players can quickly become swamped and get stuck in a deteriorating loop of trying to recover without ever really getting an opportunity to leverage their own tactics.
One thing I'll do dependent on the composition of the enemies, is make one roll for the group and then either count up or down; so for example if I roll an 18 for the first goblin in a group of 5 goblins for a total of 21, then I'll go down by units of 2 so that one goblin acts on each initiative count at 21, 19, 17, 15, and 13. While some of the goblins might still end up bunched together, the PCs should have a reasonable chance of at least one of them getting to act before at least one or two of the goblins. The reverse works as well, where if I roll particularly poorly for the first goblin I'll count up instead to make sure the goblins have a reasonable chance of at least one or two of them getting a turn before all the PCs have acted.
That being said, there's a difference between "almost never" and "never", and occasionally there will be combats where I don't foresee grouped initiative being particularly problematic and I'll use it for the sake of expediency and convenience.