My post Turns and Turn Order Are the Worst, so Why Do Roleplaying Games Make Us Spend So Much Time Deliberating Them? compared the two most common methods for setting turn order, player-driven and cyclic, and weighed their merits and flaws. This post shares suggestions for making cyclic turn orders play better.
Dungeons & Dragons and closely related games like Pathfinder and Shadowdark use cyclic initiative where a set a turn order is set at the start of a fight and combatants cycle through the same order throughout the battle.
Initiative tents
The two best methods for tracking cyclic use cards folded into tents. Such tents enable two methods with different strengths. One technique only puts numbers on the tents, the other uses names and numbers.
- To use numbers only, create a set of tents numbered from 1 up. When initiative starts, everyone compares numbers and take the card the matches their place in the order. The highest takes 1, second highest 2, and so on. The DM takes cards for the monsters’ place in the order. Everyone shows their number at their spot at the table so others can see their place. The technique always uses the same numbered tents, so it skips the need to write anything. This method doesn’t work with games like Pathfinder where a Delay action can change the initiative order.
- To use names and numbers, each player puts their character name on a card. When initiative starts, the players roll and write their scores on their card. Someone collects the cards, and lines them up in initiative order where everyone can see. I drape these cards on my DM screen, but this technique also lets someone other than the game master track initiative. I delegate sorting the cards to a player.
These tracking methods make the initiative order visible to everyone. When players can see the tents and initiative order, they can see when their turn is coming and plan their actions. This speeds play. Plus, the visible initiative invites players to remind less-attentive people of their turns. It prevents GMs from accidentally skipping someone’s turn.
Pre-rolling initiative
Combat runs better when exploration or interaction flips immediately to attack rolls without the minutes of bookkeeping required to set an initiative order. To avoid postponing the action, try rolling initiative in advance, either at the end of the last fight or at the start of a session. Pre-rolling works best with names and numbers on initiative tents.
At the start of the session, while everyone unpacks their dice and chats, I typically have players pre-roll initiative for a few fights. These initiative rolls build anticipation for the session to come and fit easily in the pregame chatter. Players write their scores on initiative tents. Before the next fight starts, I delegate the task of sorting the tents. If a player wants to use Alert, the person sorting organizes the swap.
Delay adds flexibility and complexity
Unlike conferring with allies to arrange when everyone takes a turn, Ready and Delay feel like battle strategies characters might take in a split second of mayhem.
Roleplaying games with combat rules need something like the Ready action to cope with the way one creature’s turn freezes time for every other creature. Strangely, many games omit such a rule and either rely on game masters to improvise one or on players to never abuse total cover by not giving foes a sporting chance to shoot back.
Fourth edition D&D and Pathfinder also include a Delay action. In a way, this action gives players a more powerful way to tinker with the turn order than games like Draw Steel and Daggerheart, because unlike those games where the game master can intrude between two characters’ turns, Delay allows characters to coordinate actions without monsters getting turns in between. Delay also brings a price, because characters who delay fall back in initiative and keep the later place. Such tradeoffs make interesting tactical choices.
The fifth edition design team opted for a simpler game when they dropped the Delay action. The game plays fine without it, but players lose flexibility to change the turn order in a way that seems natural.
Although Delaying seems simple, it requires intricate rules. In D&D, many effects trigger at the start or end of a creature’s turn, so fourth edition needed rules summarized by this text: “You can’t Delay to avoid negative consequences that would happen on your turn or to extend beneficial effects that would end on your turn.” The fifth edition designers opted to skip all that baggage.
For an easy house rule, allow players to delay at the start of initiative before their character acts. This adds no rules complications while still creating tactical options. Delaying at the start of combat might allow the rogue to flank after the fighter moves adjacent to a foe and sets up a sneak attack.
For the players who enjoy the tactical intricacies brought by the full Delay action, groups can import the delay rules from fourth edition D&D. Here are the rules the fifth edition designers wished to avoid.
Delay
By choosing to delay, you take no action and then act normally on whatever initiative count you decide to act. When you delay, you voluntarily reduce your own initiative result for the rest of the combat. When your new, lower initiative count comes up later in the same round, you can act normally. You can specify this new initiative result or just wait until sometime later in the round and act then, thus fixing your new initiative count at that point.
You never get back the time you spend waiting to see what’s going to happen. You also can’t interrupt anyone else’s action (as you can with a readied action).
Your initiative result becomes the count on which you took the delayed action. If you come to your next action and have not yet performed an action, you don’t get to take a delayed action (though you can delay again).
If you take a delayed action in the next round, before your regular turn comes up, your initiative count rises to that new point in the order of battle, and you do not get your regular action that round.
When you Delay, any persistent damage or other negative effects that normally occur at the start or end of your turn occur immediately when you use the Delay action. Any beneficial effects that would end at any point during your turn also end. You can’t Delay to avoid negative consequences that would happen on your turn or to extend beneficial effects that would end on your turn.
Related: What to Do When a D&D Player Wants to Be Ready, Call a Shot, or Delay
New Printable Initiative Trackers for Dungeons & Dragons
What to do when a player interrupts a role-playing scene to start a battle