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#818079 30/06/22 12:14 PM
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If you're going to have a turn based system it makes no sense to not have a way to buff or debuff a character or creature to increase or decrease their position in the turn order. Also, for the love of God, either provide a way to skip enemy turns or heavily increase their turn speed, because in large battles you end up sitting around doing nothing for far longer than you do actually fighting or making decisions and this feels God awful. During really big fights I feel like I can take my turns then go make a sandwich and come back and it probably still won't be my turn yet. It's just mind numbingly boring.

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I don't know if 5ed D&D has something like...increasing initiative? So it's just a tabletop mechanic implemented into a game.

Either way, yes, the AI needs to think things over a bit faster, sometimes it gets stuck doing nothing. I assume it will be fixed in the full release.

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Sure ...
Dexterity, feats and class features ... Barbarians gets advantage for initiative rolls at higher levels, if i remember it corectly.


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I don't know if you're exaggerating about making a sandwich or not. I'm not experiencing a lengthy delay like that, not even close.

It makes me wonder if there are longer pauses based on the speed/memory of the computer in question?

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The combat is much faster now than in earlier patches. It's improving dramatically.

As for initiative order, the only thing 5e provides is a Delay mechanic. Unless that's just homebrew. Lol. I can't honestly remember. Anyway, you can essentially drop further down in the initiative list but not move up - not during a combat.

And what would be the point? You forego a turn in order to increase your initiative for the next turn?

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Delaying your turn, not skipping your turn, would for instance allow a cleric to Bless the party before the first attack was made. I've thought that before as well.

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Originally Posted by GM4Him
As for initiative order, the only thing 5e provides is a Delay mechanic. Unless that's just homebrew. Lol. I can't honestly remember.

IIRC the closest to a delay mechanic in 5e is a ready action but that has some downsides such as not being able to perform extra attacks with your readied action and having to hold concentration when readying a spell.

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There are a lot of reasons to potentially delay your order in initiative. Waiting for the enemy to dash toward you, for one, or maybe getting a character in melee combat with an enemy so Astarion can perform a sneak attack on his turn.

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Right. Delay is something I'd like added to BG3. The OP mentioned INCREASING their initiative order. That is not a thing.

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Originally Posted by JandK
There are a lot of reasons to potentially delay your order in initiative. Waiting for the enemy to dash toward you, for one, or maybe getting a character in melee combat with an enemy so Astarion can perform a sneak attack on his turn.
That and it's very annoying when you're playing something like a wizard and your turn order is bad so all your setups like sleep and hideous laughter are all a turn or two off. frown

Maybe tie it into dexterity. Like if you have high dexterity you move faster so you get your turn faster than others. Then add a spell that buffs a persons dexterity by a large amount for one round of turns in order to boop them up in turn order and a hex spell that does the opposite for the enemy, but both spells can only be used like maybe once per match or they have a downside. Like you get more speed, but suffer a heavy defensive penalty for that turn.

Last edited by PixieStix2; 30/06/22 05:23 PM.
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Originally Posted by PixieStix2
Maybe tie it into dexterity. Like if you have high dexterity you move faster so you get your turn faster than others.

That ... is exactly what Dexterity already does?

I don't think that many PHB Classes or Subclasses have anything that gives a bonus to Initiative rolls, and I don't believe there are many spells that do that either. But maybe we will find some magic items that give us a flat bonus or maybe advantage on Initiative rolls.


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There are mechanical reasons in the 5e system why actual changes in initiative order once it has been established do not exist and are not permitted. There are ways that it can be abused and broken unfairly, due to the way other skills and abilities are designed to work.

If you want one quick example, take this one:

Party of four are fighting a villain who is a high level monk and several minions. Monk rolls top of initiative, party members are after her, minions are all below the party.

Monk uses extra attack and flurry to bop each character once, applying stunning strike to all of them. Normally, this would mean the players would be stunned for their turns, but by the time their turns came around a second time they'd all be free to act, unless the monk wanted to burn the resources to pull that same trick again, and they may not have that many ki points.

Monk has had her turn,
Players skip theirs, functionally,
Minions get one turn to move up and attempt to subdue the players uncontested.

Monk's tturn would be next - DM says "Actually, the Monk chooses to delay her turn until later in the initiative order. She's going to go after her minions now."
- Players, who should have recovered by now, are *Still Stunned* - because the monk has not taken her turn, and the monk having her turn is the timing for when the stun ends.
- Minions get a second turn to attack the stunned players for free.

The villian has just gotten a second full turn out of one application of stunning strike, without having to spend any additional resources at all, and has saved five ki points and risk of saves... all for no cost, just because she 'decided' to move herself further down the turn order.

Moving yourself in the turn order doesn't gel with the way 5e is designed - we have the Ready action instead, and it is written in a way to avoid these kinds of abuses, specifically.

I will note that I disagree MOST strongly with forcing casters to concentrate on their readied actions - it's not a fair stricture, for a number of reasons. A caster should not have to dismiss their wall of force just to 'be ready' to huck a firebolt at the first guard who runs around the corner. That's dumb.

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Originally Posted by Niara
There are mechanical reasons in the 5e system why actual changes in initiative order once it has been established do not exist and are not permitted. There are ways that it can be abused and broken unfairly, due to the way other skills and abilities are designed to work.

If you want one quick example, take this one: [...]

Monk's tturn would be next - DM says "Actually, the Monk chooses to delay her turn until later in the initiative order. She's going to go after her minions now."
- Players, who should have recovered by now, are *Still Stunned* - because the monk has not taken her turn, and the monk having her turn is the timing for when the stun ends.
- Minions get a second turn to attack the stunned players for free.

The villian has just gotten a second full turn out of one application of stunning strike, without having to spend any additional resources at all, and has saved five ki points and risk of saves... all for no cost, just because she 'decided' to move herself further down the turn order.
I mean, yes this is technically true according to RAW (IF delay happened to also be RAW without any other rule changes). But I feel like it's incredibly intuitive to say that "No, the players become unstunned at the end of the initiative spot where the monk *would* have gone. All tables I know who allow the Delay action run it this way.

It obviously adds more bookkeeping to keep track of original initiative spots for multi-turn effects, but imo that's worth the flexibility and fun that having a Delay option adds. I always allow and advocate for a delay option in games I'm in.

If you use a Delay rule, you're already adding homebrew so might as well add an additional homebrew caveat to that rule saying "All multi-turn effects remain at their original initiative counts; no bypassing or lengthening multi-turn effects through Delays."

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Sure... but that's adding more homebrew to balance the breaks that your homebrew created... sound familiar? ^.^

In seriousness, tables can always run the way they want to, but most rules are designed in specific way and for good reasons (there are exceptions - I'm no sycophant and there are certain rules that I've been vocal about my disagreement with ^.^), and the initiative lock is one of those. There are quite a number of ways that allowing people slide around in the initiative order can break things or be exploited in unbalanced ways. Here's another one that you need to book-keep: Player: "I'm going to delay my turn until after the monster goes, I want to see where it moves to so I can place my spell better.", DM: "The monster delays its turn to go after the players, so it can decide who to attack", Player: "Er... so... who goes?" You can make another caveat rule for that case, too, if you want, but it's far less of a headache if you just use the ready action as originally written, or, if you need to, expand how powerful the ready action is (allowing the ready action to be a full normal action, unlimited by other restrictions, for example, is a common concession that doesn't break anything, or unbalance things as long as you also nix the need for concentrating on a 'ready' at the same time, and move the 'casting' moment to the release of the ready, for the purposes of other reactions).

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Combats are usually fast enough for me now but some of them are a pain. The goblins camp inside/outside is what I have in mind but thereay have others I never tried (the zenth hideout, the mushroom lair, fighting all druergar in grymforge... i dont even underdtand why they all dissapear after you kill Nere).

But i cant see any solution other than removing ennemies or bot making them enter the combat at the same time (which would make more sense inside the goblins camp, but not outside).


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I had a suggestion that like people can do their turns simultaneously in multiplayer, make our enemies do the same. For example, if there are 2-3 enemies standing next to each other in the initiative order, let them do their turns simultaneously. Combined with the reaction system(point-to-trigger, this thread https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=817585#Post817585), combat will become much more smooth and fast


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Originally Posted by mercurial_ann
I had a suggestion that like people can do their turns simultaneously in multiplayer, make our enemies do the same. For example, if there are 2-3 enemies standing next to each other in the initiative order, let them do their turns simultaneously. Combined with the reaction system(point-to-trigger, this thread https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=817585#Post817585), combat will become much more smooth and fast

This... If it can be done... Was more what I was thinking. Something like this:

Combat starts. Player is able to start commanding their PCs immediately even if their turn isn't up yet. Starting with the first PC in initiative order, they issue commands like "Move towards Goblin A and melee attack" even as the computer is moving enemies on the field. So, to be clear, the screen doesn't jump to the character being controlled. It just moves them in order. Whether you can see it or not, they are moving in initiative order. Then, as your PCs come up in initiative order, the computer has them obey your commands. It's chaotic, but it would be a smidge more like RTWP.

But, players who just want standard Turn based could click an option that centers the camera on whoever is taking their turn, and they'd just wait for their turn like normal.

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Originally Posted by mercurial_ann
...if there are 2-3 enemies standing next to each other in the initiative order, let them do their turns simultaneously.

I don't like this at all. I want to see what they're doing, to know what's happening. It would be impossible to follow if they all acted at once. Players would have to go through the combat log just to figure out what happened. How long would that take?

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I think they originally wanted to go this (edit: that is enemies sharing turns) route, at least for some enemies. I am happy they didn't go full mob behavior on all enemies, but I admit that it'd be probably better if they reintroduced 'mobs' for some enemies where it does make sense: archers in grove battle, those things in the swamp, etc. Emphasis on 'where it makes sense' though, only when a group can be assumed to behave like a mob because they are under command of same entity, behave as a group (e.g. those hound like creatures on the road) or part of some hivemind. Mechanically it would also help for non freakishly obsessed players to distinguish between minor and major/boss like enemies on the map. Not sure if you ever played Descent the tabletop game, but I'm thinking something similar, trash mobs move in group, individual high value enemies move alone.

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Originally Posted by Niara
Sure... but that's adding more homebrew to balance the breaks that your homebrew created... sound familiar? ^.^
I would say it's the opposite. I'm *restricting* added homebrew in order to balance the breaks my homebrew created. Limiting the effects of the Delay action by modifying its own rule, not introducing entirely new homebrew to counter other homebrew. It's a converging, not diverging process!

Originally Posted by Niara
In seriousness, tables can always run the way they want to, but most rules are designed in specific way and for good reasons (there are exceptions [...]
Here's another one that you need to book-keep: Player: "I'm going to delay my turn until after the monster goes, I want to see where it moves to so I can place my spell better.", DM: "The monster delays its turn to go after the players, so it can decide who to attack", Player: "Er... so... who goes?" You can make another caveat rule for that case, too, if you want, but it's far less of a headache if you just use the ready action as originally written, or, if you need to, expand how powerful the ready action is [...]
Why do I need a caveat for that? It sounds fun! A good ol' fashioned western standoff, fingers hovering over the trigger, waiting to see who messes up first.

It's also unlikely that the ENTIRE set of players and monsters will do the above, so the few who do will just be losing their turns while everyone else fights. Which can also make for good, if tactically poor, drama. Additionally, a similar thing could be done with the ready action: "I can't see or reach the enemy so I remain in cover, readying my action to use a ranged attack on the first enemy I see." -> Enemy does the same -> nothing happens.

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