Want to supercharge your D&D combat? Roll initiative last!
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Maybe it’s different in D&D 5th, but in Pathfinder 1st (similar to D&D 3.5) you can never know what the PCs’ initiative is in advance due to varying levels of buffing spells. This also kills proposals to have it on tap and just hit a key to populate the turn tracker.
You could, however, consider doing all the NPCs in advance, unless they have buffing spells of their own–in which case their initiative is likely to depend on whether they had enough forewarning to use them, which is hard to predict.
I am currently running a mid-high level campaign and varying levels of buffing spells is the bane of my life–it slows down play *so much*. I would not care to play in the campaign I’m running, though the player seems to like it.
I’ve used this with D&D 3E for over twenty years.
What happens if the PCs cast cat’s grace? You just bump their initiative scores on the list. (If it’s a mass buff that effects the whole group, you can also apply it as an effective penalty all NPC initiatives if you don’t want to rewrite the PCs’ scores.)
I don’t disbelieve you…but for us it’s not just a matter of cat’s grace. There are multiple factors, some whole-party, some individual. I can ask the (single) player for all the mods and adjust all the pre-rolled initiatives: or I can ask him for initiative rolls. Stops the game either way. Actually less table time to just ask him for initiatives at the start of the fight when the values are known. He can do that very quickly (dice rolling program and good bookkeeping).
Rolling NPCs in advance would surely help, though. I’ll try it.
Pathfinder 1e at high levels is almost unbearably “twiddly” for me, as the above illustrates. I don’t enjoy running or playing past about 7th-8th level, but the player really wanted a high-level campaign. As a result he’s doing a lot of the stat blocks for me. Unfortunately, while 2e is less twiddly, both of us hate it; and our playtest of D&D 5e wasn’t encouraging either.
Last session was 4 hours 15 minutes of one (admittedly complex and spread out) fight scene. It was an interesting fight: I’m not sure it was interesting enough for that much time, though the player seems okay with it.