Thoughts on the UA alternative initiative

[Hurske]

After running many different systems, I'm starting to feel like 5E's combat is very, well boring.

I'm wondering if anyone here has experience with the Unearthed Arcana Initiative, and what their experience with it is?

I just think that having the initiative change every round brings more sense of tension to the game.

I do know of the extension here, and already have it.

[Nylanfs]

I have an opinion #ResistMearls :-)

[LordEntrails]

IMO, just set the option to pause at the start of each round and then have the DM re-roll all initiatives. It's easy, and it adds uncertainty which seems to be the biggest complaint about 5E RAW initiative.

[JohnD]

Go one further; re-roll initiative every round but don't show order in the CT.

[Nickademus]

I've used it for a single game, which wasn't much since it was mostly RP. I'll let you know in a couple weeks.

[Artrem]

We recently used re-roll initiative each round in our long standing campaign. We did exactly as stated by LordEntrails, I set the option to pause after end of round and I manually clicked menu to reroll all initiatives. We ran 6 sessions with this method in our current Out of The Abyss campaign. It did add a great deal of randomness to our combat rounds. Unfortunately, it made spells/effects very chaotic due to duration and spells/effects sometimes not lasting a full round (since the combat tracker tracks the effect by the numerical numbering of the previous round when it was cast).

[Ex: Character 1 is last of the PCs to attack and has a 12 on initiative order, he casts guiding bolt on monster 1. This spell allows the next attack on monster 1 to have advantage until the end of character 1's next round. Well, the next rounds initiative is rerolled and character 1 is at highest PC on the initiative order at 11. Due to RAW and automation of fantasy grounds, this drops the advantage from monster 1 before any additional PC's have a chance to attack creature 1 to gain bonus from that spell.] Granted this seems isolated, but it occurred more often than I expected and was too chaotic for our liking as a group (we also use crit/fumble tables as well which probably made it more obvious to us during our sessions).

I did like that it prevented advanced planning of both myself (DM) and the players to use the initiative order to plan their actions. It just wasn't for our group.

As for the extension, we did not use it. We did as I stated above.

[Full Bleed]

[Ex: Character 1 is last of the PCs to attack and has a 12 on initiative order, he casts guiding bolt on monster 1. This spell allows the next attack on monster 1 to have advantage until the end of character 1's next round. Well, the next rounds initiative is rerolled and character 1 is at highest PC on the initiative order at 11. Due to RAW and automation of fantasy grounds, this drops the advantage from monster 1 before any additional PC's have a chance to attack creature 1 to gain bonus from that spell.] Granted this seems isolated, but it occurred more often than I expected and was too chaotic for our liking as a group (we also use crit/fumble tables as well which probably made it more obvious to us during our sessions).
Yes, this is the kind of mechanic that seems to make round by round init incompatible with some 5e mechanics.

That said, things do tend to "balance out" over time... for example they could cast the spell early in round one because they have high init... then get low init in round two and basically extend the window of opportunity.

5e has a lot of effects that tend to happen "at the end of your turn"... so it can be problematic with init's changing so much. In many of these cases I wish we could lock effect expiration to a particular tic in a round. So if you cast Guiding Bolt on init 10 it's good until init 10 in the next round. Moving inits can still make it more or less useful, but at least it would exist for a static length of time irrespective of the chaos of battle around it.

[Zacchaeus]

5e has a lot of effects that tend to happen "at the end of your turn"... so it can be problematic with init's changing so much. In many of these cases I wish we could lock effect expiration to a particular tic in a round. So if you cast Guiding Bolt on init 10 it's good until init 10 in the next round. Moving inits can still make it more or less useful, but at least it would exist for a static length of time irrespective of the chaos of battle around it.

You can do this by amending the 'initiative to adjust on' box in the CT

[Bonkon]

You can do this by amending the 'initiative to adjust on' box in the CT

Good Day All :)
I must be missing something, I am interested in using the round by round initiative roll bit do not see where in the CT to set the "initiative to adjust" box on the CT Zacchaeus is talking about.

Thanks
Bonk

[Zacchaeus]

There are two boxes to the right of each effect on the CT. one of those is the box you are looking for.