Post by DnDPaladin on Jun 10, 2016 16:17:37 GMT
Adam, yes they did lose their actions !
that was the goal of that method to begin with. in D&D 1e and 2e the initiatives was like that and thats why i said i hated it because it forced anticipation instead of reactions. basically you could never react to something that was hapenning on board. you had to always anticipate what was gonna happen. people call it being proactive. and people often tend to think proactive is better then reactve. but in combat that is not a thing. in a fight things happens and often you change mid swing to react. you dont just run into a wall of fire that suddently appeared in front of you. nor would you dive into a pool of water turning acid before you even get there. those games consider that things happens all at the same time. like all 5 players attacking the wwizard all attacked at the same time and thus the wizard just poofed out of overkill damage. but thats the problem... that forces the players to estimate their opponents ability scores and life in order to know when not to overkill the creature. in the end this is why most systems goes away from that system.
About 3 months ago i started trying a new initiatives thing.
it's still group initiatives. but the way i calculate it is as if the initiatives is a DC like anything else.
so basically how do you set up the DC to beat to go first.
well its easy.
8 + initiatives modifiers of all monsters
that gets you the DC to beat to go first. then your players that actually beat the DC goes first. then monsters go, then all players can now acts. so now my intitiaves are always geared toward the enemy going first. because if the players dont, the enemy will act first. heres an exemple of initiatives.
players rolls...
P#1 = 13, P#2 = 21, P#3 = 18, P#4 = 9
monsters DC = 8+1+1+1+1+3 = 15
player #2 and player #3 beats the 15, so they go first. they play out their turn.
after that...
Monster, player, monster, player and so on.
of course in this method the monsters can get huge advantage on players if they have huge dexterities. or if there is too much opponents on board. but i think this balances out the fact that players have much more potent abilities then monsters. it also gives the players a sense of danger at the beginning of combat. it also makes them want initiatives to be of use.
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WARNING WARNING WARNING
the next wall of text is just me calculating the time it takes to resolves combat if you are not interested in that just skip it.
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i'm just gonna point this out for anyone thinking group initiatives are as long as to resolve as regular initiatives...
time taken to set initiatives for 8 monsters since the roll initiative roll call.
players = 10 seconds. they already all have their numbers by that point and waiting on DM.
DM, about 4 seconds per roll per monster to determine their initiaves. so 4x8 = 32 seconds. this includes writing down their initiave on a sheet with numbers.
total that 10 seconds to set player son the sheet, and 32 seconds to set all 8 monsters on the sheet.
thats 42 seconds worth of time wasted on initiatives.
now during combat...
each players usually takes between 30 seconds to a minute to play their turn. let's take 45 seconds to be sure.
45x4=180seconds. thats 3 minutes.
playing monsters the DM usually already knows what to do... thanks to being vigilant. so 15 seconds per monsters
15x8=120 seconds, thats 2 minutes.
total = 5 minutes worth per round. fights usually are 3-4 rounds worth. so 20 minutes should be the usual whole fight.
now im asking you... how often does a fight holds for only 20 minutes in an evening ? from my experience, never. players often take more then a whole minute to determine what they wanna do because they are more often then not, waiting on their turn because they want the most recent information they can get and knowing what to do on the spot is something they dont comprehend in a game where you have all the time in the world to know what to do because the game pauses to know what you are doing.
so just to be sure we'll multiply that number by 5. which gives me about an hour long fight sequence.
now let's calulate the group initiatives.
i take about 20 seconds to calculate the DC.
my players rolls their init while im doing so.
my players wait a little 10 seconds more to meet up my 20 seconds at which point combat starts with the players who beats the DC.
players still takes a bit of time to discuss, but usually they are done after 30 seconds. thanks to other players keeping tabs.
so 30x4 = 120 seconds, thats 2 minutes. 1 minute less time consumed by the players.
since i play all monsters now, i take 45seconds to a minute to play them all.
thats 3 minutes a whole round. thats actually 2 minutes lesser then the regular initiatives that i usually takes.
so 2 minutes multiplied by 3-4 rounds = 8 minutes. multiplaying by 5 because of usual wasted time. thats 40 minute a fight. thats literally 20 minute less on combat and more on playing ! and thats per encounter !
thats what my stats told me over the last few months as i calculated.
now i have 8 players and have been for the last 2 months. so those numbers have gone way up. but a fight actually held out for as long as a whole 3 hours during one session. so imagine if i had done that with regular initives, the fight would of taken like 2 sessions to finish ! thats way too much time really. and out of that players actually lose interest in the middle of a fight, so let alone continu that fight next week.
so yeah overall, with my method right now i've been saving a ton of time on fights. but with 8 players fights usually take me about 1 hour and a half to resolve entirely.
Side note, i'm not as unlucky as i thought i was...
i've been rolling the same dice over and over for the last month and noted my rolls... with dice towers they are pretty much well balanced. without dice towers i ended up with most likely low numbers, but not as often as i thought i was. so after a whole month of rolling, thats 4 sessions. and another month because i was to be sure. my sheet had about 500+ rolls and they were pretty balanced still, with or without the dice tower. though the dice tower did balance things out even more. so yeah i figured that the way we roll dices actually affect the dice itself. hence why one of my players is godly in his dice rolling every session.
that was the goal of that method to begin with. in D&D 1e and 2e the initiatives was like that and thats why i said i hated it because it forced anticipation instead of reactions. basically you could never react to something that was hapenning on board. you had to always anticipate what was gonna happen. people call it being proactive. and people often tend to think proactive is better then reactve. but in combat that is not a thing. in a fight things happens and often you change mid swing to react. you dont just run into a wall of fire that suddently appeared in front of you. nor would you dive into a pool of water turning acid before you even get there. those games consider that things happens all at the same time. like all 5 players attacking the wwizard all attacked at the same time and thus the wizard just poofed out of overkill damage. but thats the problem... that forces the players to estimate their opponents ability scores and life in order to know when not to overkill the creature. in the end this is why most systems goes away from that system.
About 3 months ago i started trying a new initiatives thing.
it's still group initiatives. but the way i calculate it is as if the initiatives is a DC like anything else.
so basically how do you set up the DC to beat to go first.
well its easy.
8 + initiatives modifiers of all monsters
that gets you the DC to beat to go first. then your players that actually beat the DC goes first. then monsters go, then all players can now acts. so now my intitiaves are always geared toward the enemy going first. because if the players dont, the enemy will act first. heres an exemple of initiatives.
players rolls...
P#1 = 13, P#2 = 21, P#3 = 18, P#4 = 9
monsters DC = 8+1+1+1+1+3 = 15
player #2 and player #3 beats the 15, so they go first. they play out their turn.
after that...
Monster, player, monster, player and so on.
of course in this method the monsters can get huge advantage on players if they have huge dexterities. or if there is too much opponents on board. but i think this balances out the fact that players have much more potent abilities then monsters. it also gives the players a sense of danger at the beginning of combat. it also makes them want initiatives to be of use.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WARNING WARNING WARNING
the next wall of text is just me calculating the time it takes to resolves combat if you are not interested in that just skip it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i'm just gonna point this out for anyone thinking group initiatives are as long as to resolve as regular initiatives...
time taken to set initiatives for 8 monsters since the roll initiative roll call.
players = 10 seconds. they already all have their numbers by that point and waiting on DM.
DM, about 4 seconds per roll per monster to determine their initiaves. so 4x8 = 32 seconds. this includes writing down their initiave on a sheet with numbers.
total that 10 seconds to set player son the sheet, and 32 seconds to set all 8 monsters on the sheet.
thats 42 seconds worth of time wasted on initiatives.
now during combat...
each players usually takes between 30 seconds to a minute to play their turn. let's take 45 seconds to be sure.
45x4=180seconds. thats 3 minutes.
playing monsters the DM usually already knows what to do... thanks to being vigilant. so 15 seconds per monsters
15x8=120 seconds, thats 2 minutes.
total = 5 minutes worth per round. fights usually are 3-4 rounds worth. so 20 minutes should be the usual whole fight.
now im asking you... how often does a fight holds for only 20 minutes in an evening ? from my experience, never. players often take more then a whole minute to determine what they wanna do because they are more often then not, waiting on their turn because they want the most recent information they can get and knowing what to do on the spot is something they dont comprehend in a game where you have all the time in the world to know what to do because the game pauses to know what you are doing.
so just to be sure we'll multiply that number by 5. which gives me about an hour long fight sequence.
now let's calulate the group initiatives.
i take about 20 seconds to calculate the DC.
my players rolls their init while im doing so.
my players wait a little 10 seconds more to meet up my 20 seconds at which point combat starts with the players who beats the DC.
players still takes a bit of time to discuss, but usually they are done after 30 seconds. thanks to other players keeping tabs.
so 30x4 = 120 seconds, thats 2 minutes. 1 minute less time consumed by the players.
since i play all monsters now, i take 45seconds to a minute to play them all.
thats 3 minutes a whole round. thats actually 2 minutes lesser then the regular initiatives that i usually takes.
so 2 minutes multiplied by 3-4 rounds = 8 minutes. multiplaying by 5 because of usual wasted time. thats 40 minute a fight. thats literally 20 minute less on combat and more on playing ! and thats per encounter !
thats what my stats told me over the last few months as i calculated.
now i have 8 players and have been for the last 2 months. so those numbers have gone way up. but a fight actually held out for as long as a whole 3 hours during one session. so imagine if i had done that with regular initives, the fight would of taken like 2 sessions to finish ! thats way too much time really. and out of that players actually lose interest in the middle of a fight, so let alone continu that fight next week.
so yeah overall, with my method right now i've been saving a ton of time on fights. but with 8 players fights usually take me about 1 hour and a half to resolve entirely.
Side note, i'm not as unlucky as i thought i was...
i've been rolling the same dice over and over for the last month and noted my rolls... with dice towers they are pretty much well balanced. without dice towers i ended up with most likely low numbers, but not as often as i thought i was. so after a whole month of rolling, thats 4 sessions. and another month because i was to be sure. my sheet had about 500+ rolls and they were pretty balanced still, with or without the dice tower. though the dice tower did balance things out even more. so yeah i figured that the way we roll dices actually affect the dice itself. hence why one of my players is godly in his dice rolling every session.