Initiative 5e rolls really high

[teufelziege]

My DM, when he hits the roll initiative button, shoes a rapidly increasing initiative for some of the players, and some have normal initiatives. For example, the first two combatants have initiatives of 72 and 71, then the rest look semi normal. This happens every round as we re roll initiative each round. Any ideas?

[superteddy57]

How is the DM rolling the NPC's initiative? We will need some steps in reproducing it as I have tested with rolling from the combat tracker entry and it's rolling d20 + init mod.

[damned]

Possibly an extension that is misbehaving or conflicting with something else.

[Moon Wizard]

Someone else reported a similar issue in Discord, but it did not occur without extensions loaded. So, it sounds like either an extension issue; or a conflict between multiple extensions. I'm not seeing that locally without extensions.

Regards,
JPG

[SilentRuin]

If you have Combat Groups or Carrier and set common initiative option in either or both then its going to insure after all inits are rolled that they are unique. Then its going to make only the same groups the same or the same carriers the same. And, for example, if you have 200 combat tracker entries (visible or not) then that init can be very high when they are forced to be unique. If you are scared of big numbers you should definitely turn off the common initiative options in Combat Groups and or Carrier. I myself am not scared of big numbers, but am scared of my players complaining about common init rolls from FGU mixing up the things they are riding on/in or the groups they directly control. Hence, why the inits are all set to unique before it determines common ones. Just as if you were in a table top game - there are no ties.

One of the version descriptions from a few weeks back in both extensions explained it when it was put in. But as nobody reads those - meh - you get the "surprise" :)

[Post Edit: If you use common init option - beware your numbers may be higher - just like the version info implies it will (to be unique init it has to be higher). For sure effects that adjust on initiative will respect the init that is placed when the effect is set (high or not) but if like me you use the roll every round option your still going to have issues with those. So if those adjustments on your effects are more important than turn order - for sure turn them off. It won't save you from the roll every round option messing you up regardless (if just raw FGU or common init is in play) unless you have Effective Initiative.

Plus if you turn on or off this effect after effect adjust on inits have been set - obviously they will not be correct (just like when you reroll init on round changes normally would not be).

Also fixed inits like lair ranges set to 20 or things like that would have to be modified by the DM to be more toward the topp or bottom of your unique inits (or just don't use common init options).]

[SilentRuin]

I could not figure out why so many people are using the common init options as I figured it would only be something my players wanted - but now I realize they were defaulted to "on" which was a mistake. They will be changed to default to "off" now.

[teufelziege]

Thanks everyone for your insights. He has combat groups extension and I'll refer him to this thread. Thanks so much!

[SilentRuin]

Thanks everyone for your insights. He has combat groups extension and I'll refer him to this thread. Thanks so much!

Just make sure they are up to date if he keeps the common init options of carrier or combat groups on - as I just delivered a fix to both as my players noticed the numbers kept changing (high of course as I have a lot of hidden CT entries) but the actual order was not changing. Forum thread version updates of either explain the fixed problem.