Cyclic Initiative, opinions please

So we have a bard and a fighter facing off in combat against two orcs. Their respective initiative ranks are Bard=7 Fighter=5 Orcs=9. I determined these numbers by subtracting normal init bonus from ten. Assuming each opponent was aware of each other except orc two who failed his spot check by 4, a 20 turn round of combat would look like this.

1 F,B,O-1
2
3
4 O-2
5
6 F
7
8 B
9
10 O-1
11 F
12
13 B,O-2
14
15
16 F
17
18
19 O-1
20 B

Taking damage could possibly push your back a initiative step or two.

Tam

How did you come up with that order?

I've thought about trying to force the old Starfleet Battles move system into a DnD game. It was very well done... though slow.

rv

That looks good!

Doubt that anyone will use it, but if I was a DM I certainly would.
If I understand it correctly, everyone starts on round one, except the unlucky orc2. Then they hit the next time after a number of rounds indicated by initiative rank has passed.
But there should be determined times for actions too. I don't think it's a good idea to perform actions as fast as your initiative rank is.

We are using something similar. (Based on skill-level and dexterity on a bellcurve with 6 seconds reaction time being the norm of a untrained person with a normal dex.)

Works really well.

I'm sorry, but I think I'm missing something here. I'm really not understanding what the initiative is supposed to be.

Based on how you calculated the numbers if you have a high dex (20, +5) fighter with improved initiative (+4), giving him an initiative rank of 1, would that mean that the fighter got to go 20 times while Orc #2 only gets to go twice?

Personally I'm a huge fan of streamlined combat. I like the cyclical nature of the initiative rules in d20 as they are. It's very easy to keep track of for both the DM and Player.

In AD&D I think that the initiative would have to be based on the relevant creature's level as well but the basic idea of a cyclic initiative is good, makes for less of the "Here comes two attacks at once" problem of many systems.

the idea is far from refined, just an idea I had right before posting it. The individual turns would be shorter maybe 3 seconds or so. There would have to be a minimum initiative, maybe three, and the only way to get faster would be with the aid of magic.

I determined the initiatives by taking samle d20 initiatives and subtracting them from 10.

I think the entire idea would be to cumbersome unless it was handled by a program. Maybe I should learn visual.

Or is there a better programing language that I could use to create this?Maybe something based on the Java Platform.

Tam

The way we solved it is actually far simpler than so. GM (me usually) just calls the initiative number and it is up to the players to remember when and where their actions come in, if they don't their character is hesitating and misses the action.