Dungeons & Dragons is a great game that offers endless hours of creative fun, but at times I get the feeling that some of the game’s rules are actively trying to prevent you from having any of that fun. In my endless quest to make combat more dynamic and less time-consuming in the game, I often start by looking at its first step: initiative. The initiative roll in D&D determines the order in which the players and the monsters or NPCs will act in combat. In theory, every participant has to roll and add their dexterity score. Considering that a party of player characters is usually composed of at least four, and they will often fight groups of monsters, just the act of rolling, writing down initiative scores, and keeping track of them can be time-consuming and annoying for a dungeon master.
Of course, nowadays, there are apps and digital tools that help you with that, but I’m an old-school guy and I like being as analog as possible when playing the game. (Only recently did I make the switch to digital note-keeping and campaign-tracking. I’ll admit it, it’s better, but it still feels wrong.) Last week, while looking at the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Manual, I stumbled into a little section in the amazing Chapter 9: Dungeon Master’s Options, whose existence I had completely forgotten: “initiative variants” (p. 270). It lists alternative options for handling initiative in combat, and while they all offer something good, none felt like they would completely fix the issues I had. Luckily, I still had one Inspiration Point, so I re-rolled my failed Intelligence check and got the idea: Why not mix these variants to craft my own?
I started with the Side Initiative rule (also adopted by Draw Steel, the upcoming RPG from MCDM Productions), which suggests making only one roll per faction (the characters and the monsters). When it’s a side’s turn, the members can act in the order they choose. This makes everything simpler, of course, but I didn’t like that the sides don’t get a bonus to their rolls. Even extremely fast monsters could lose the roll off, allowing the characters to gang up on them, piling up attacks and spells and ruining a hard-planned encounter. So, I added two rules:
- First, each side gets a bonus to the roll based on the highest Dexterity bonus among its members (it makes sense that a quick character or monster can direct the others to follow).
- Second, you repeat the roll each round of combat. This means that neither faction should get an unfair advantage, in theory.
The next variant in the book is Speed Factor, which can be used to make combat more uncertain, at the cost of speed of play. Expert players will normally use their knowledge of the initiative order to inform decisions in combat, giving them a further advantage over those poor monsters. This variant requires each character or monster to choose an Action before rolling for initiative (which is done every turn). Move Actions and Bonus Actions can be chosen as normal during the round, but players and monsters have to use the Action they declared or take no Action at all. This adds an element of unpredictability and forces players to adapt and think on the fly. However, this variant also introduces “speed factors” that modify the initiative roll, such as casting a spell or what type of weapon is used, and keeps the initiative scores secret until the DM calls the numbers down from 30 at the start of the round. These sound overcomplicated and a further waste of time (I’m here to play D&D, not Bingo), so I got rid of them and only kept the “declare your Action” part.
In the end, I was left with the following initiative house rule. At the start of the round, each player has to declare what Action their character will take (Bonus Actions and Move Actions are declared during the turn as usual). The DM does the same with monsters. You can write the monsters’ Actions down on a piece of paper, declare them before the players to make combat easier, or after them to make it harder; it’s up to you and it adds some flexibility. Then, the players make one initiative roll for their side, adding the highest Dexterity modifier available. The DM does the same for the monsters. Once everyone has acted, go back to the declare actions step.
This system makes things easier for me as a DM because I don’t have to keep track of individual initiatives, and it also makes combat a little more unpredictable and less of a drag by encouraging players to think fast and adapt. I was eager to test it, and I introduced it in the next session of my weekly game. So, did it work? Kind of.
When it was time for my players to declare their actions at the start of the round, they took a long time. Not being used to quick thinking in D&D combat, they were put on the spot and struggled to adapt. Which is only natural, of course. I’m sure that, with time and practice, this issue will be overcome, but for the moment it’s an obstacle to my main goal: making combat in D&D faster without oversimplifying things.
Ultimately, everyone experiences the game in different ways, and house rules or “fixes” should always be tailored to a specific gaming group. I’ll always keep trying to come up with ideas to make the game more enjoyable for me and my players.