Bringing initiative passes over to D&D.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Mar 03, 2011 7:25 pm

Any downsides to introducing such a mechanic into D&D? Obviously you couldn't do the Shadowrun thing where some people had 1 IP and others had 4, but if IPs were a strict function of level I think it would work out really nicely with D&D's design goal of 'the dragon that nearly TPKed you when you were level 5 can't even threaten you in a horde at level 15' without causing the numbers to inflate too much.

For example, assume the PCs are level 10. They come across a mixed encounter with one level 13 dracolich, a zombie horde at level 7, and three quisling liches at level 10. A sample combat sequence would go like this:

Round 1 --> Dracolich, PCs, Liches
Round 2 --> Dracolich, PCs, Liches, Zombies
Round 3 --> Dracolich
Round 4 --> Dracolich, PCs, Liches
Round 5 --> Dracolich, PCs, Liches, Zombies

Of course it would make the initial math a lot harder, but I think that it could reduce the final values a significant amount. I personally think that three-digit hit points and two-digit damage reduction as proposed in the 'fixing the D&D math' thread is still too much, especially when it's balanced such that the average combat length is supposed to remain roughly the same throughout all levels.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Thu Mar 03, 2011 7:33 pm

So some enemies just fail to do anything on certain rounds?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Mar 03, 2011 7:47 pm

shadzar wrote:So some enemies just fail to do anything on certain rounds?

Maybe round was a bad term to use because round refers to an objective unit of time. But I'm not good with relative units of measurements. I suppose you can look at it as how much of a 'regular' person's 6-second activity a speedier character can do in a certain timeframe, though I can't come up with a quick-and-dirty conversion at the top of my head.

But the idea is that some characters are moving so fast relative to the others that it looks like they aren't doing anything. That's not necessarily so from a fixed time frame of reference, but relative to the PCs that's what it looks looks like. To 1st-level mook guards, the zombies would get three times as many actions to their one--so while zombies would move at a shambling 30 ft. pace at the 10th level PC perspective, to THEM the zombies are leaving the Dawn of the Dead Remake zombies in the dust.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Mar 03, 2011 7:49 pm

I'm not hot on it... You're either reinventing the wheel or you have a situation where a wizard can blow off 3 meteor swarms a turn and the fighter is dealing 3d8+10 points of damage assuming he hits all 3 times.

Unless you intend to have init passes allow full-round attacks, which begs the question: why are you using init passes at that point? Just say you can only do X number of actions per Y rounds.

To make init passes work you'd need to implement the speed rules from AD&D to compensate for the unending cascade of death that the wizard could then subject the other side to.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Mar 03, 2011 9:16 pm

TheFlatline wrote: Unless you intend to have init passes allow full-round attacks, which begs the question: why are you using init passes at that point? Just say you can only do X number of actions per Y rounds.

Several reasons.

1) You can have credible Big Bad Evil Guys without resorting to weird 4E D&D simulation-breaking garbage (like solos getting super-secret extra rounds) or without them turning into damage sponges. Any monster of sufficient level bulge on the PCs can be used as a solo or elite.

2) When you plop down horde monsters of lower level than the PCs then you don't have to construct as many actions for them on a round-by-round basis. This speeds up combat.

3) Most importantly, to limit the attack/AC/damage/DR/etc. curves. If a higher-level character has more actions they can take relative to low-level guys then you don't have to inflate their numbers as much in order to have the classic D&D scenario of 'monster that was a boss character 10 levels ago is now something you destroy in hordes'.

jadagul · Post by **jadagul** » Thu Mar 03, 2011 9:35 pm

TheFlatline: I'm pretty sure Lago means everyone gets a full round's worth of actions on every initiative pass. So a wizard casts meteor swarm three times and a fighter takes three full attack actions. Now, that's not balanced (in 3.x) because wizards are better than fighters, but between characters of the same level it's no more unbalanced than it was before.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Mar 03, 2011 9:40 pm

It works to a certain extent in the Champions/HERO system. You just have to make sure that increasing your initiative is atrociously expensive.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Thu Mar 03, 2011 11:19 pm

isnt that what weapon speed used to be for then?

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Fri Mar 04, 2011 12:56 am

shadzar wrote:isnt that what weapon speed used to be for then?

That's what I meant by "reinventing the wheel".

Rounds might have to alter in how long they lasted. Right now they're 6 seconds or so if memory serves. The idea of a fighter attacking 15-20 times in six seconds standing in his underwear and not under the effects of magic is kind of nuts. I could see that happening in epic levels (because reality is sneered at when you hit those levels) I guess.

However, I'm not at all opposed to the concept that a bad guy might have multiple init passes. It's not a bad way to buff up monsters.

I'll upgrade my opinion to "I'd like to see it in action" as opposed to "meh". I'm not sold on it, but I can see how it would be a benefit.

So long as it doesn't turn into a celerity arms race, where if you don't have extra actions you are basically fucked in combat if your opponent does, it might work.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Fri Mar 04, 2011 12:56 am

As long as fighters get the best initiative, I could see it working.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Mar 04, 2011 2:38 am

I think hypothetical discussions of game mechanics could do a lot better if we don't work under the assumption that fighters are getting hosed from jump.

That aside, I would really say it depends on how deadly missing a round is for the game. If losing in actions hurtz too much and the opposition already has higher level abilities you could be looking at a situation where any boss played right tactically could kill half the party just by saving its big guns for when it gets a free round.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Fri Mar 04, 2011 2:40 am

I'm not sure it would be much of an improvement. Most of my sessions go something like popcorn-popcorn-equal CR enemy-popcorn-boss monster, this system would be good for the Boss but incredibly tedious or lopsided for the popcorn.

Vnonymous · Post by **Vnonymous** » Fri Mar 04, 2011 3:23 am

Players and monsters should have exactly one way to increase their "initiative" and that is to level up/CR up. Anything else and you are asling for trouble.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Fri Mar 04, 2011 3:58 am

Probably a bad idea.

I know I'm generally a HERO evangelist, but dangit, the SPD Chart is confusing to new players and adds complexity in multiple phases* of the game while also requiring an atrocious amount of MC supervision to keep the action economy balanced. For this cost you get the ability for some characters to act slightly more or less frequently than others.

In all of the Champions games I have seen, anytime the normal XP system is used, a majority of players spend a majority of their XP on improving their SPD to go more often. This is partially because it is a big tactical advantage to act more frequently than the opposition (allowing perfect kiting, or super srping attack, or just limiting opponent's chances for ranged fire) but the bigger deal in a tactically complex rules-heavy system (aka HERO or D&D) is that a higher SPD actually gets you THE PLAYER more screen time.

Consider a scenario where each of the five players in the game takes 2 minutes to resolve their turn, and MC takes 1 minute to resolve the turn of each of 5 monsters and after 5 total rounds (25 PC actions) the fight is over. In D&D round-robin initiative that means each player waits 13 minutes from one turn to the next. In a Champs game where the monsters and 3 of the PCs are SPD 5, but one PC is a SPD 4 brick and one PC is SPD 6 speedster, that means the brick is stuck with a 15 minute wait time between his phase 3 and phase 6 actions, and totally shafted by the 26 minute wait between his phase 9 action and the phase 12 action that comes just after the PCs have already won, while the speedster gets to enjoy a mere 2-minute realtime lag between his phase 6 and phase 8 actions. That's what a mere +/- action does to spotlight time and waiting for your turn when 5 actions / turn is the standard. In games where fewer actions per turn are the standard, or in games where the variance can be bigger, the differences are more extreme, so you can pretty much expect players to always max their actions to whatever the cap is. The only exception to this will be when PCs try to min/max by gaining actions from non-initiative effects - such as summoning, dam/time effects, or triggered interrupts. (and yes I have seen all of those built into Champs characters)

Now with that sort of player incentive inherent in any such a system, and additional time tracking complexity required, you need to ask yourself what you would gain by implementing it in D&D, and whether that gain would be worth it?

*pun intended

Swordslinger · Post by **Swordslinger** » Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:32 pm

Essentials tries to do this with many solo monsters who get an extra action at their init count +10 or something like that.

It's something you could maybe do to PCs in a single class system like Essentials where you can have one class that attacks a lot but with low damage attacks. However, there is much potential for that to get broken fast (see original 4E ranger and multi-attacks).

As far as 3E goes, this would be crazy stupid to do.

Also generally speaking, the initiative pass system in SR4 was very clunky, mostly because it was hard to figure out how or when people actually took their movement.

CCarter · Post by **CCarter** » Mon Mar 07, 2011 3:01 am

I'm not 100% against having different attack phases, but I haven't seen any perfect implementations of this. Ideally I'd use it to try to create multiple types of attacking style...i.e. characters who can attack multiple times for piddly damage or once for alot of damage. Its difficult to do since unless the cost of an extra attack is somehow costed as directly proportional to its damage the system breaks.

One problem I could see happening with it tied into level-advancement is that it leads to inflation in attacks per round, so that the 20th level combat against hordes of 10th level mooks becomes infinitely more painful than the same combat at lower levels.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Mon Mar 07, 2011 1:25 pm

You might want to think about just shifting any extra actions/attacks from haste/speed weapons/spells and so on into their own initiative pass(es). Handing out passes by character level or the likes will just end up in noticeable power bumps at those levels, which is probably not desirable. But spreading your actions out over a longer timeframe, with others getting to act in between, might be worthwhile. It also allows you introduce abilities like this:

Hydra Strike
Make a single attack as a full-round action. You get an additional attack in the next four initiative passes.

Aimed Shot
Move action. Name an opponent. You get an extra attack on that opponent on the next initiative pass. Your next attack against that opponent deals extra damage equal to your base damage for each move action you expend on aiming. You lose this bonus if you move.

Delay
Free action. Take your entire action on the next initiative pass.

In short, you get additional ways to shape the flow of combat and you get to break up turns into mini-turns, which might be beneficial in a rocket-tag game like DnD. You might also be able to insert it into DnD with minimal alterations to existing content and abilities - and I can't see that happening with just handing out extra passes to do more stuff in. That will probably just lead to more extremely onesided fights.