It's kind of situational for me, but I usually give individual initiative to every creature until it's unmanageable.
My group likes to make big explosive entry, alerting everyone around. So group init there.
3 soldiers: 15 init
2 archers: 19 init
3 mages 17 init
...
It can be convenient just for ease of play to have both sides essentially act on the same initiative. There's less to track, and it means coordinating with your party members can just be hand-waved (since there are no practical consequences to taking a delay action). However, it does put a lot of emphasis on a single all-or-nothing due roll; a high roll means all the monsters act before the PC's, and a low roll means none of them do. This can get particularly irritating for your players if the GM consistently rolls high for an entire session, since it means even players with good initiative bonuses are always going after the monsters.
Doppleman's suggested approach is a good middle-ground; having some of the enemies roll together. For particularly large encounters (10+ enemies) it's often not practical to track everyone's initiative separately anyways, and this is a nice way to do some simplification without fully-committing to having everything be on the same initiative. Use your judgement to decide whether ease and quickness of play outweighs the downsides.
The rules make it clear that every combatant gets its own initiative. No where in the rules is it assumed that creatures can act at the same time.
That being said, I don't know very many people who actually run it that way. In my experience, most GMs roll initiative for all creatures with the same stats.
For example, if you had 3 bugbears (with identical statblocks), a dragon, and a bugbear chief, the GM would make 3 initiative rolls; 1 for the three bugbears (who all act together), 1 for the dragon, and 1 for the bugbear chief.
I've found that it's not only easier to manage, but promotes a more fun tactical atmosphere.
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I've been running my combat the way Ravingdork describes for years. If the opposition has different types of opponents, then individual initiatives for each group. However recently, I've been going back-and-forth between a single group initiative and individual initiatives when the opponents are the same (i.e. 3 bugbears or 2 scorpions or 5 guards).
I've always had my PCs run individual initiatives, regardless of the number and type of opponents. My question is focused on whether there's any advantage (aside from management) to run individual initiatives or single group initiative for their opponents.
I generally go with the same type on the same initiative count, but I still deal with each individual one at a time.
So at initiative 10 the 3 bugbears will go, but bugbear1 will do all of his actions before bugbear2. No moving all three up and then having them all get flanking for example.
That said, if there were ONLY the 3 bugbears, I would probably roll out each one's initiative. It is only when their are more bad guys that I group them up for ease of management, more than 10 and it is going to be groups for sure, 5 or less probably individuals, between depends on the encounter and my mood at the time.
So at initiative 10 the 3 bugbears will go, but bugbear1 will do all of his actions before bugbear2. No moving all three up and then having them all get flanking for example.
To be fair this is usually legitimately possible with a combination of readied and delayed actions. Simultaneous turns are perfectly fine as a simplified handwave to keep the game moving.
Also another proponent of grouping like enemies into the same initiative roll.
I also used to always do new initiative reach round; just to add to the chaos and ebb and flow of battle. That ended when my campaigns ran long and everything is a CR15+and tracking everything becomes an amazing head ache.
You ask about spells and effects that last X Rounds ,etc? Some last longer, some cut out at beginning of the round. Genial hand waving never irritated my players.
I'll do individual initiatives for both sides unless the bad guys have a LOT of people present, then I turn to a single initiative to expedite things. It might not work for every group but we sort of fast and loose with the rules sometimes (we're much more RAI than RAW) but it does for us.
Individual initiatives whenever practical. Sometimes I've grouped initiative to make things go a little faster, but only when we're running short on time. It does make a tactical difference, as PCs have no chance to react to some of the baddies attempting to set up flanking and other tactical advantages before the rest of them finish the combo.
This can happen anyway with individual initiatives, but only if they roll pretty much the same thing or the faster folks delay until everyone is ready, and the latter is a compensating disadvantage. For that matter, I find delaying until everyone is ready to act simultaneously unrealistic for some creatures (though perfectly rational for others).
I often do it when the game is running late, too. Some of my players drive over 2.5 hours to get here so I'll cut a corner or two so they don't have to on the road really late. Especially in winter, where we get more rain and ice than we do snow anymore.
In a situation were the PCs are fighting a group of creatures (let's say 3 bugbears), do you find it better to split each creature with individual initiatives or have the group act on the same initiative? Aside from tracking turns, is there a tactical advantage of one option over the other?
If I, as the GM, am controlling 5 or less creatures in a battle I will normally roll individual initiatives for all of them.
If I am running a combat with a large number of creatures I will usually 'bundle' 2-4 identical types of creatures into initiative 'groups'.
Also leaders or special NPC's I always have roll their own individual initiatives.
But that just works for me. I am normally reffing for 6 players plus an animal companion, familiar and trained mounts so I do what I can to streamline enemies.
I've also done the "PC goes then a foe acts" back and forth. The only thing that was rolled was initiative for both sides. So it's A attacks B then B attacks A. Then C attacks D and D reciprocates and so forth.
If reasonable, I keep monsters initiatives seperate as it allows players more ability to react. I’d done enemies in groups before and a mass of ghouls were able to get into flanking and would have tore two of them apart if I hadn’t fudged a few rolls in the players’ favor. By keeping it seperate players have a chance to swap out front liners, throw up a protective buff, or do emergency healing. It makes it where that it’s not an all or nothing for some enemies, if the players don’t know about a dangerous ability they don’t identify, it lets them get hit by it just once or twice then adjust their tactics to compensate rather than get clobbered.
For groups if >6 creatures I usually swap out the monsters with troops I build based on the original creature. I admit this is more work for me up front, but less headache during the fight and tends to make filler fights (which large groups of low CRs tend to be) more memorable.