What do you prefer and why: Group initiative or individual initiative?

[TriOmegaZero]

blahpers wrote:

I assume he meant "clumped together" rather than actually simultaneously. PF doesn't have much in the way of simultaneous actions, which is hilarious if you want to, e.g., walk side by side with someone to keep them from leaving your aura. We just house rule a special delay for that purpose.

Yes, that would be why I said group and not synchronize.

[LankyOgre]

I usually use group initiative to speed up play. I only roll one initiative per group of the same combatant. I have enough different colored d20s that I can roll all the Attacks at once. Then I can roll damage. It also is slightly faster since I spend less time analyzing decisions.
So far it seems to be how most of the games I've participated in have run initiative.

[Xexyz]

I use individual initiative. It's generally easier for me to keep track of the combat round when I don't have a take a huge number of actions at once. I don't think it adds that much time, since individual initiatives stagger PC actions and spreads out the time each player spends thinking about what they're going to do on their turn.

[Rogue Eidolon]

Our group uses individual initiative to avoid giant novas of everything acting together, but when there's a truly enormous number of the same thing, like 10, we sometimes assign them to roll all even numbers on initiative, so there's another one acting every 2 initiative counts.

[Jurassic Pratt]

Individual Initiatve, no contest.

Group initiatives often cause combats to swing heavily towards or against the PCs based on how high you roll. There's a lot less of a chance of this happening when you roll individual initiative

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

Oh, also I'll just have badguys "Take 10" for initiative, because who can be bothered with all the fiddliness?

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

Oh, also I'll just have badguys "Take 10" for initiative, by making it static, it makes it easier for me to make groups of like, and it means lumbering or slower enemies are less likely to get lucky and jump the players, while really fast things are more likely to go first.

[Angry Wiggles]

I adamantly stick to individual initiative, including the mandate that companion creatures act on separate initiatives.

I also tend to run combats with a dozen or more hostiles in them at a given time.

However, in order to mitigate the minute or two of rolling initiatives at the start of each combat, I've taken to a system of using index cards for initiatives and rolling all of the initiatives for likely combats prior to the session's start. I also have all of my players roll 6 or 7 initiatives before the session ever starts, so that I can simply sort their cards between combats. That way combat starts up faster, I have a visual cue for everyone when the round changes (I flip the deck of cards), and I can set cards aside or turn them easily to mark delay and ready.

[walter mcwilliams]

Funny, I was thinking about this just yesterday. I prefer individual initiative both when I GM and as a player; though I must admit to often using group initiative when GMing just for the convenience factor.

Reference Initiative in general one thing I've noticed with a couple of groups I game with is the habit of staying in Initiative rounds for convince and order. I soooo hate this and discourage it whenever possible, as I feel is penalizes rogues and other classes in which surprise rounds are important.

[Weirdo]

Group Initiative.

For me, it's not the process of rolling initiative that is the biggest slow-down, it's re-assessing the combat situation for every individual enemy turn.