I've often considered a counting-up initiative; the idea is appealing, but I've always felt it was a little too complicated to administer in actual play.

Quote from: trechriron;822332That is actually really nifty. In Hackmaster 5e, they have a count up initiative I really like as well. This one is actually very similar yet easier. I may try something out similar/modified for my DnD5e game.

I did convince the group to try a group initiative, but we haven't had a chance to play-test it yet...

It works for us.  Heck, we've used it for 30 odd years.  the whole 'speed vs power' thing was something I wanted to explore, as was having it more granular when people need to add an action or change their mind or move during combat.  It also allows for skills like initiative bonus and multiple attack.

Everyone in my group rolls at once, person with the highest roll acts first, people with the same roll act simultaneously. Simple.

Quote from: BloodSweatSteel;820521Hi there! Long time lurker, first time poster!

My favorite approach is simultaneous actions, but when I use an initiative system, I really enjoy a 'reverse order' approach.

In this approach, initiative is still determined in the usual way, but combatants are sorted from lowest to highest initiative, which means that the combatants with the lowest initiative go first.

The idea is that this gives a tactical advantage to combatants with a higher initiative, as they are able to react to a slower combatant, or they can use the information they gain going later to their advantage when they wish to act.

The process is simple. The combatant with the lowest initiative acts first. If nobody with a higher initiative wishes to interrupt, the combatant takes their turn. However, anyone with a higher initiative can interrupt the slower combatant's turn, and take their turn instead. Once that combatant has taken their turn, the slower combatant can then take their turn.

It gets really interesting (and fun for me) when multiple faster combatants start interrupting slower combatants. For example, combatant A has the lowest initiative, so A goes first. A is going to run over to the city gate to pull the lever to close it before the enemy's reinforcements can get inside of the city. B decides to interrupt A in order to attack A before A can act, in order to allow B's allies to get inside the city and turn the tide of the battle. Combatant C decides to interrupt combatant B in the hopes of preventing B from stopping the action of A, because closing the gate will give them a big advantage over their opponents.

It's very easy to track, and it help me visualize the scene more like a movie, where cause and effect can kind of get played out in real time.

That's a lot like how the original WEG Star Wars handled it as well.

How do you guys handle initiative and combat when the party is supposed to face a cinematic threat?

Like they activate a curse in a pyramid, and suddenly 5000 mummies rise up out of a mass grave and start shambling after them. You can't just do initiative and combat turns for all 5000 of them...

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;822811How do you guys handle initiative and combat when the party is supposed to face a cinematic threat?

Like they activate a curse in a pyramid, and suddenly 5000 mummies rise up out of a mass grave and start shambling after them. You can't just do initiative and combat turns for all 5000 of them...

The mummies would all act on 1 init roll. But in that case I'd probably not have them attack in round 1 - rising up & moving would be their turn.

Quote from: S'mon;822817The mummies would all act on 1 init roll. But in that case I'd probably not have them attack in round 1 - rising up & moving would be their turn.

Yeah, that's what I did. But what about the attack rolls?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;822871Yeah, that's what I did. But what about the attack rolls?

They are "shambling" mummies. They attack last.

I mean the problem of handling 5000 attacks.

I actually treated them more like an environmental hazard. Like a flood. Except it's a flood of bandages.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;823036I mean the problem of handling 5000 attacks.

I actually treated them more like an environmental hazard. Like a flood. Except it's a flood of bandages.

You only have to worry about the initiative of creature in reach or in action.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;823036I mean the problem of handling 5000 attacks.

I actually treated them more like an environmental hazard. Like a flood. Except it's a flood of bandages.

That makes sense.

For most characters 5000 zombies are far too many to stop or destroy. All the PCs can do is flee and treating failed flight rolls as a group of zombies that catch up or just treating the zombie flood as a hazard makes a lot of sense.

Quote from: LordVreeg;823038You only have to worry about the initiative of creature in reach or in action.

The situation that came up was this. I was winging a game completely from scratch and decided to go for an Acquisitions Inc style game since it was the first time a few of my friends were playing.

They were exploring the Temple of Black Blood to retrieve an ankh from a pharoah buried there.

The room with the ankh is a circular tower that rises high, high up to where a hole in the ceiling filters down a pillar of sunlight onto a pedestal in the center of the room.

All along the walls are alcoves with mummies stored in them, going all the way up and around the room. Like honeycombs in a beehive, or a morgue.

When the PCs took the ankh from the pedestal, the mummies all came to life and started dropping down onto the floor and then shambling after them. So pretty much all of them were close enough that you'd want to track initiative if you were going to use them individually in combat.

Also they were all level 1 so there's no way they'd fight that many of them off. It was more of an "Indiana Jones in D&D" type of scenario.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;823036I mean the problem of handling 5000 attacks.

I actually treated them more like an environmental hazard. Like a flood. Except it's a flood of bandages.

Treating them as more of an environmental hazard is actually a pretty good idea. There are swarm rules that basically do the same thing... I think I wrote something about a cat swarm halving all movement. 5000 mummies is a swarm of mummies.

As for attack rolls... really, 5000 mummies can't all attack at once, unless they are the size of dust motes. (I think I once wrote about that, too, or at the very least hundreds of 1-inch high skeletons.) You figure out how many creatures of that size can reasonably attack each character at one time and roll that many attacks. I'd probably say 8, if each character is surrounded by mummies, or three, if the characters are together and form a ring or shield wall.

If the characters aren't alone, but have an army of mercenaries, switch to some kind of mass combat rules.

The main hazard of 5000 mummies is not that they can do 5000 attacks per round, but that killing the ones attacking you just makes room for fresh mummies to take their place. It's like you're fighting a monster with 2500 hit dice.

Quote from: S'mon;821233I do think this is generally the best 'system', at least as long as you aren't using minis or similar. With minis everything is in a defined location at all times, with theatre of the mind they can be rushing about all over the place as in real life.

Another possibility is to use the attack rolls as initiative - highest attack roll goes first. This is basically what Tunnels & Trolls and Fighting Fantasy do, but it's surprisingly uncommon.

For minis, I'd probably do "announce actions in reverse Int order, then move in Dex order". But I hate minis.

I actually rethought the initiative I posted earlier and decided to simplify it, because it's way too complicated.

(1) Do surprise attack first, if any, then side that attacked first announces actions first. This order stays the same for the rest of the combat.
(2) Hasted actions all go first, then normal actions, then slowed. Actions are otherwise simultaneous.
(3) For interrupted actions, lowest damage goes first. Roll a pseudo-damage roll (1d6) for any action that doesn't do damage. If interrupting a spell, the spell's pseudo-damage max is equal to spell level. Tied results are simultaneous.

I wouldn't mess with weapon length for initiative any more. I'd just give attackers with a longer reach an opportunity to step outside an opponent's reach, forcing them to use their next attack to close the distance again.

Quote from: RPGPundit;821467Talysman's "no initiative" system sure sounds a lot like an initiative system...

Depending on what you mean by "initiative", I suppose it is. Most initiative systems requiring rolling or comparing numbers. I try to keep the numbers out of it as much as possible. Hence, it's not an "initiative system", the way most people think of initiative.

Originally, initiative wasn't really about order of actions, but order of turns. If you aren't using simultaneously revealed written orders, the side that goes second has the advantage of hearing the other side's plans first.  So, Chainmail had an optional roll-off, with the side that won the roll picking whether to move  first or last.

The way I see it, there's no point in doing that for a dungeon crawl game (the GM has technically already "gone first" by setting up the dungeon.) So, I'd be willing to just let the players go first or last, whichever they prefer, unless surprised.

I think initiative is any way of establishing who does what in what order.  we tend to do it with rolls, out of tradition, but there's probably lots of other interesting ways to do it.