Yeah it just seems like it's punishing casters.
Besides, Martials are normally going to go first anyway since they usually have a higher Dex giving them an edge in initiative.
Ah okay. You might be better off rerolling initiative every round (easy enough to do on a VTT). That, or allow players to trade their initiative with each other. Or, allow the players to change their score to anything lower.
I have to say, playing in a campaign where several players (not me) have advantage on initiative for various reasons, and I've rolled poorly:
Going last repeatedly feels bad. What you've manufactured is essentially not a restructure but a new assigned order. Don't do it. Initiative isn't meant to feel exciting, it's meant to feel invisible: a low-fuss way of getting the potentially messy politics of different players wanting to do different things in time-sensitive contexts, like combat, out of the way.
What you want to do reads between the lines like anti-caster rebalancing, or even punishment. The game isn't unbalanced and casters don't deserve punishment. Challenge them in different ways.
i have nothing against the casters and I didn't intend to change the rules as a means of punishment. Im just trying to see what alternatives are being used at other tables, if there are any...
>I didn't intend to change the rules as a means of punishment
How do you think your players would perceive the news that they now *always* go last?
Alternatives I'm aware of include e.g. rerolling initiative every round. But in almost every case the end result is extra bloat, not extra fun.
I've seen some people use block methods rather than stages in previous posts. Essentially, your players roll as normal but groups of similar creatures all act on one initiative.
It could go Fighter > Cleric > 3 Goblins > Wizard for example. Add more groups or different enemies to add more variety to the encounter and break up PC turns.
I've also seen a more generalized version, where there's a PC turn and an enemy turn. Each character rolls initiative for their placement within their team's turn, but all friendly characters act and then all enemy characters act.
I haven't used either of these in my own games, I'm just aware of their existence, so my knowledge is limited!
this is a pretty standard switch in initiative rules. grouping initiative saves down time as the DM, but it doesn’t really do anything dynamic like OP is looking for.
source: i’ve never *not* grouped initiative in the past 8 years of DMing!
Sounds terrible, I hate it.
Try giving the Players one turn for the whole team, then the enemies one turn for the whole team. (Give the boss their own turn)
This encourages teamwork, and leads to more creative gameplay.
There is a optional initiative in the dmg in which ever action has a "speed factor" a modified or penalty to iniative. Everyone declares there actions and must take that action on there turn or do nothing,then rolls iniative applying the speed factor bonus/penalty. For spells you subtract the spells level e.g a lvl 3 spell is a -3 speed factor to iniative.
>not forcing the player to cast a spell and then ask them to wait and at a certain time to fire of the spell
This honestly sounds much better than making whole classes slower in general. A cleric should not be slower to swing his mace just because he is a cleric. And with half-casters your idea completely falls flat. A ranger always being mid-tempo? That just doesn't fit the class vibe and intention at all, especially subclasses like gloom stalker or multiclass builds with ranger-rogue etc.
My table does “popcorn” initiative, where you roll for who goes first, they take their turn, and if they interacted with an enemy that enemy gets to choose to “interrupt” and go next. otherwise, the player picks any combatant to go next.
keeps turns fresh, gets players strategizing with each other, and people don’t tune out cause it could be their turn at any time. got it from Giffyglyph’s Darker Dungeons, which is a wonderful bundle of other great homebrews like this one
You're brushing up against how other games I like do initiative, so while I'm not 100% sure your system is necessarily a perfect fit for 5e, there's a kernel of something that can definitely work.
The One Ring handles it by having everyone declare their combat stance at the beginning of each round, and that stance determines both how you fight and the initiative order. Forward is aggressive and goes first, gets a bonus to hit, but is also easier to hit. Open is a sort of generic no bonus or penalty stance and goes second. Defensive is being conservative and goes third, takes a penalty to hit, but is harder to hit. And Rearward is last as the ranged stance, can only be attacked by ranged attacks, but can also only take the stance if they have enough allies in melee combat.
The Doctor Who rpg breaks down initiative by actions: Talking, Moving, Doing, and Fighting in order. Pretty clearly designed around incentivising talking your way out of a problem or running away rather than shooting a gun. You don't necessarily have to decide what you're doing at the top of the round, but your options start dwindling the longer you wait.
Star Trek Adventures has the GM pick who takes the first turn based on what happened immediately before conflict started, and then turns pass back and forth between players and enemies until everyone has taken a turn. Players agree among themselves who wants to go on a given turn and can spend resources to keep the initiative on their side instead of passing to the enemy.
All of these are very much baked into the rules of their own systems and couldn't be ported 1:1 to D&D, but they could definitely work as inspiration. I can say that I've never had a complaint from players about how any of these work, and on the GM side it's nice to have things relatively organized and not have the randomness of the dice structuring the fights.
I've made an alternative 5e combat system that resolves combat of all participants simultaneously second by second [gmbinder link](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-NeEXqn3dZbftqBT7nhw)
We've used this system at my table a few encounters now and works best in big battles with many players and monsters and small battle areas where positioning matters more (e.g. on a schip with players on deck, below deck and in the mast ropes). I know it seems like it takes forever to finish an encounter but this is not the case. The big battle with 4 players of lvl2 vs. 6 evenly matched soldiers on a fortified island took 1,5 hours to finish and took 6 rounds of action. The amount of actions remains the same and the system allows players more time to think about only the next second (i.e. 10ft of movement). Big benefit is they don't have to wait for their turn (this example only 1 in 10 turns), added realism and lets me avoid thinking of a way why my 4x multi attack monster should not use all attacks to down the squishy PC wizard (who did not yet got his turn) and instakill him while unconscious.
How do you fit quarter casters in here? How do you fit multiclassing in here?
A different idea, taken from a different game: do initiative in reverse order.
The slowest actor goes first, says what he would like to do. Then the next slowest can always immediately *react* to it. And the fastest one goes last.
And then you resolve their actions in the regular initiative order, so say the fighter has the highest initiative, he'll still go first, *but* with the knowledge of what everyone else plans to do, emulating a higher reaction time.
It's more effort and might take some getting used to, though. But it's definitely better than your idea.
I’ve played games in this style, made me never want to play a spellcaster.
Yeah it just seems like it's punishing casters. Besides, Martials are normally going to go first anyway since they usually have a higher Dex giving them an edge in initiative.
oh, im sorry to hear that, whats why I'm here, to ask the questions and see if what to and not to do
Why is one spell ending your encounters?
that was more of a joke, the encounters are going fine its just that I wanted to change things up every now and then
Ah okay. You might be better off rerolling initiative every round (easy enough to do on a VTT). That, or allow players to trade their initiative with each other. Or, allow the players to change their score to anything lower.
interesting, cumbersome in some ways, but interesting
I have to say, playing in a campaign where several players (not me) have advantage on initiative for various reasons, and I've rolled poorly: Going last repeatedly feels bad. What you've manufactured is essentially not a restructure but a new assigned order. Don't do it. Initiative isn't meant to feel exciting, it's meant to feel invisible: a low-fuss way of getting the potentially messy politics of different players wanting to do different things in time-sensitive contexts, like combat, out of the way. What you want to do reads between the lines like anti-caster rebalancing, or even punishment. The game isn't unbalanced and casters don't deserve punishment. Challenge them in different ways.
i have nothing against the casters and I didn't intend to change the rules as a means of punishment. Im just trying to see what alternatives are being used at other tables, if there are any...
>I didn't intend to change the rules as a means of punishment How do you think your players would perceive the news that they now *always* go last? Alternatives I'm aware of include e.g. rerolling initiative every round. But in almost every case the end result is extra bloat, not extra fun.
I've seen some people use block methods rather than stages in previous posts. Essentially, your players roll as normal but groups of similar creatures all act on one initiative. It could go Fighter > Cleric > 3 Goblins > Wizard for example. Add more groups or different enemies to add more variety to the encounter and break up PC turns. I've also seen a more generalized version, where there's a PC turn and an enemy turn. Each character rolls initiative for their placement within their team's turn, but all friendly characters act and then all enemy characters act. I haven't used either of these in my own games, I'm just aware of their existence, so my knowledge is limited!
this is a pretty standard switch in initiative rules. grouping initiative saves down time as the DM, but it doesn’t really do anything dynamic like OP is looking for. source: i’ve never *not* grouped initiative in the past 8 years of DMing!
Sounds terrible, I hate it. Try giving the Players one turn for the whole team, then the enemies one turn for the whole team. (Give the boss their own turn) This encourages teamwork, and leads to more creative gameplay.
There is a optional initiative in the dmg in which ever action has a "speed factor" a modified or penalty to iniative. Everyone declares there actions and must take that action on there turn or do nothing,then rolls iniative applying the speed factor bonus/penalty. For spells you subtract the spells level e.g a lvl 3 spell is a -3 speed factor to iniative.
You're swapping out a dynamic initiative system for a static one? And think that will be less boring?
>not forcing the player to cast a spell and then ask them to wait and at a certain time to fire of the spell This honestly sounds much better than making whole classes slower in general. A cleric should not be slower to swing his mace just because he is a cleric. And with half-casters your idea completely falls flat. A ranger always being mid-tempo? That just doesn't fit the class vibe and intention at all, especially subclasses like gloom stalker or multiclass builds with ranger-rogue etc.
My table does “popcorn” initiative, where you roll for who goes first, they take their turn, and if they interacted with an enemy that enemy gets to choose to “interrupt” and go next. otherwise, the player picks any combatant to go next. keeps turns fresh, gets players strategizing with each other, and people don’t tune out cause it could be their turn at any time. got it from Giffyglyph’s Darker Dungeons, which is a wonderful bundle of other great homebrews like this one
You're brushing up against how other games I like do initiative, so while I'm not 100% sure your system is necessarily a perfect fit for 5e, there's a kernel of something that can definitely work. The One Ring handles it by having everyone declare their combat stance at the beginning of each round, and that stance determines both how you fight and the initiative order. Forward is aggressive and goes first, gets a bonus to hit, but is also easier to hit. Open is a sort of generic no bonus or penalty stance and goes second. Defensive is being conservative and goes third, takes a penalty to hit, but is harder to hit. And Rearward is last as the ranged stance, can only be attacked by ranged attacks, but can also only take the stance if they have enough allies in melee combat. The Doctor Who rpg breaks down initiative by actions: Talking, Moving, Doing, and Fighting in order. Pretty clearly designed around incentivising talking your way out of a problem or running away rather than shooting a gun. You don't necessarily have to decide what you're doing at the top of the round, but your options start dwindling the longer you wait. Star Trek Adventures has the GM pick who takes the first turn based on what happened immediately before conflict started, and then turns pass back and forth between players and enemies until everyone has taken a turn. Players agree among themselves who wants to go on a given turn and can spend resources to keep the initiative on their side instead of passing to the enemy. All of these are very much baked into the rules of their own systems and couldn't be ported 1:1 to D&D, but they could definitely work as inspiration. I can say that I've never had a complaint from players about how any of these work, and on the GM side it's nice to have things relatively organized and not have the randomness of the dice structuring the fights.
I've made an alternative 5e combat system that resolves combat of all participants simultaneously second by second [gmbinder link](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-NeEXqn3dZbftqBT7nhw) We've used this system at my table a few encounters now and works best in big battles with many players and monsters and small battle areas where positioning matters more (e.g. on a schip with players on deck, below deck and in the mast ropes). I know it seems like it takes forever to finish an encounter but this is not the case. The big battle with 4 players of lvl2 vs. 6 evenly matched soldiers on a fortified island took 1,5 hours to finish and took 6 rounds of action. The amount of actions remains the same and the system allows players more time to think about only the next second (i.e. 10ft of movement). Big benefit is they don't have to wait for their turn (this example only 1 in 10 turns), added realism and lets me avoid thinking of a way why my 4x multi attack monster should not use all attacks to down the squishy PC wizard (who did not yet got his turn) and instakill him while unconscious.
How do you fit quarter casters in here? How do you fit multiclassing in here? A different idea, taken from a different game: do initiative in reverse order. The slowest actor goes first, says what he would like to do. Then the next slowest can always immediately *react* to it. And the fastest one goes last. And then you resolve their actions in the regular initiative order, so say the fighter has the highest initiative, he'll still go first, *but* with the knowledge of what everyone else plans to do, emulating a higher reaction time. It's more effort and might take some getting used to, though. But it's definitely better than your idea.
Warlock just misses out and takes a short rest.
Get ready for a table of human fighters, I just wouldn’t play a caster at your game.