More musings on initiative in dndnext

So, if you have peaked at this blog before, you will know that our dndnext playtests got us thinking and we decided to stop playing 4e and switch to 2e.

Tuesday night, we started our 2e campaign, and it was great fun. It got me thinking about initiative. As I have mentioned in a couple of other posts, I really didn't like way dndnext handled initiative. I put that in the past tense, since Mearls has stated elsewhere, that it's definitely one of the parts they are changing. Which of course made me happy. I mean, the initiative system worked just fine in 3.x and 4e, why change it, I thought. And then I got to play 2e.

Now, the 2e initiative system is radically different from that of the two latest edition of our favorite game. First of all, you roll with a d10, and rolling low means you are quick. Second of all, you state your intent at the start of the round, before initiative is rolled.

The 2e initiative system definitely has got some kinks, and I am not saying dndnext should copy/paste it, but there are definitely something about it that worked well. One of the most common arguments against the 2e initiative is that the fact that you have to roll for initiative every single round slows things down. And I used to think the same thing. But I am not so sure anymore.

You see, while you will of course spend more time actually rolling the dice, there is an X-factor that affects the overall speed of the combat round, which is focus. Namely player focus. During our first session of 2e, I quickly noticed that players were much more focused during the rounds, not just on their turns. We talked about it afterwards, and my players had noticed the same.

I think it is because if you use a 3.x/4e initiative, where everything is cyclical, players quickly pick up where they are in the cycle, after whom they come, and then they have a bigger tendency to "phase out" mentally, until it is their turn, whether it's because of texting, drawing, reading up on rules etc. They feel they can "keep up", even if they are not paying 100% attention.

With the 2e initiative, they can't do that. Their turn in the round changes from round to round, and they got to pay more attention to what happens if they want to keep up. Which in turn leads to a quicker resolution of individual turns.

So, I do not know if there is a way to dndnext non-cyclical initiative resolution, without running into some of the other issues that such a system has, but I would definitely like our good friends at Wizards try.