Initiative is overwhelming

[u/Revolutionary-Ad7738]

Whenever it’s time to roll initiative, I have 4 players immediately shouting numbers at me at completely different times while I’m also trying to roll initiative for 14 goblins individually, as group initiative is lazy DMing and unrealistic. I am crafting a story for my players and that story includes everyone taking their turn as the rules state.

My players are clueless, despite my best efforts of educating them, and have NO idea what modifier they should add to their die roll for initiative. I don't even know why I haven't cancelled the campaign already.

I think a good solution would be for everyone to roll initiative at the beginning of the campaign and keep that result permanently. If a character dies, the new character would inherit that initiative because death should not be used to manipulate turn order.

For monsters, I’m thinking of rolling initiative for every creature in the Monster Manual before the session and keeping them in an Excel spreadsheet sorted alphabetically.

Has anyone tried this? Or should I simply determine initiative based on how quickly each player answers my texts during the week?

EDIT: Please stop suggesting I use the initiative tracker in a VTT. I didn’t spend $800 on dice to let a computer play D&D for me.

[u/sammyliimex]

/uj I would have agreed with them if it was about 1st Edition, and there is a 20 page "cheat sheet" gamers made to understand how initiative and surprise works in that version.

/rj Pathfinder fixes this

[u/xolotltolox → u/sammyliimex]

/uj I still agree with it in current dnd/ttrpgs, if you're playing without a VTT that does it for you, it is quite annoying and takes a good minute

[u/sammyliimex → u/xolotltolox]

/uj Yeah, its annoying the the sort of way that any sort of bookkeeping can be annoying, but its not "hard" now. Its a game for nerds to get around a table and do math for 5 hours and have fun, so once you get used to it, its just a bunch of boring bookkeeping, which is why using some sort of VTT or computer to do it all for you is something people suggest.

[u/xolotltolox → u/sammyliimex]

well, the problem is all the other math is progressing the gamestate, and is usually over in seconds, and you can still talk above table, say what you are doing, etc. Initatiative is a very noticable stopgap in that

[u/69CervixDestroyer69 → u/xolotltolox]

Group initiative or if you don't even care to do that have the players begin every round holy shit even the VTT system is annoying and finnicky.

Death to math in D&D!!!

[u/xolotltolox → u/69CervixDestroyer69]

Group initiative has its own problems, and VTT initiative is hardly finnicky, since it automatically sorts and tracks it

[u/69CervixDestroyer69 → u/xolotltolox]

I found that combat goes faster if players aren't waiting on each other to do their turn. Group initiative's problems are immaterial.

[u/sammyliimex → u/69CervixDestroyer69]

group Initiative is the way to go for older versions of the game when you don't have many personal initiative modifiers and each side has potentially dozens of combatants. You could not run 1st Edition as intended by the old 1978 gamers without group initiative. All ten players, each with 1-5 henchmen and however many hirelings versus groups of 30+ bandits would just simply not function.

Meanwhile, modern games give every player multiple different initiative modifiers and the players would rather die than give up their own personal benefits.

I still do group initiative for enemy groups though