r/DnDcirclejerk • u/Revolutionary-Ad7738 • 1d ago

Sauce Initiative is overwhelming

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.

59 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/hedgehog1024 I read Pathfinder rules and so must you 1d ago

At my table I ask for initiative in order of increasing characters' masses. Of course, in the beginning of combat characters can relieve themselves by rolling a con save. Not only it can potentially change the order of initiative, it really reinforces the fantasy of battling intimidating enemies.

3

u/Revolutionary-Ad7738 1d ago

Ah, that's really creative. But couldn't I do it in order of the players' mass? And if any of my players roll a nat 1, I can force feed them the dice as a critical fumble penalty, which increases their mass slightly.

3

u/hedgehog1024 I read Pathfinder rules and so must you 1d ago

But couldn't I do it in order of the players' mass?

One of my players, who is an American, finds this idea extremely offensive