As I’ve mentioned before, D&D combat is not really the most realistic of systems. This doesn’t matter much, because it’s fun! However, with Mike Mearls talking about providing an alternative initiative system, it’s revived my interest in the various initiative systems D&D has used over the years – an abiding interest of mine.

Mike’s system, for those who haven’t seen it, requires all combatants to announce their actions at the beginning of each combat round. They then roll initiative dice depending on which actions they’re doing. The DM then counts up from 1, with combatants acting when their initiative score is reached. If a character does more than one action, they add all the dice together and end up acting later in the turn.

• Ranged Attack: 1d4
• Melee Attack: 1d8
• Cast a Spell: 1d12
• Other Action: 1d6
• Swap Gear: +1d8
• Bonus Action: +1d8 (or 1d6)
• Movement: +1d6

Spell effects that last “1 round” end at the end of the round after they were cast, rather than after your or the creature’s next turn.

Dexterity does not affect initiative (Mike says it’s strong enough already).

Mike notes that it promotes teamwork within the group, as each player must co-ordinate their actions with the other players. Another aspect of it is that it can speed up combat. This seems counterintuitive, but it’s because everyone decides on their action together rather than waiting for their turn and then having to analyse the situation and decide on their action. All the analysis is as a group activity (and keeps everyone engaged in the game); the resolution of actions isn’t as time-consuming as the decision of what to do.

Now, one of the things that is not there – but has been requested by a few people – is the concept of weapon speeds. That is, some weapons strike faster than other. This was a feature of earlier versions of D&D, going back to the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement.

Weapon speeds look great. It makes sense to people that a dagger, a tiny little weapon, can strike more often than a two-handed sword, which is so big and bulky and slow.

Except… does the dagger actually manage to strike more often than a sword, when the length of the sword is such an advantage? I mean, there’s a reason that the sword was the dominant weapon throughout a lot of history and the dagger wasn’t – if the dagger always got to strike first, then we’d surely see a lot more of them about? I don’t know the answer to that; at what point does the opportunity to strike override the speed to strike?

The original Chainmail (and AD&D, and Magic Realm) rules actually had two separate initiative systems. In the first round of melee – that is, the round that you close to combat – the longer weapon struck first. In the later rounds, these systems have the “faster” weapon strike first – or at least have an improved chance of striking first.

The strangest way of dealing with this was in AD&D, where a fast weapon against a very slow weapon (such as a dagger vs a pike) had the chance of striking additional times – albeit only on a tied initiative roll (that’s a 1 in 6 chance in that system). This rule came up very rarely and was likely often ignored by players; it certainly disappeared out of the rules when 2^nd edition came along.

Mike suggestion for those who do want to use weapon speeds is to use the weapon’s damage dice as the initiative dice. Thus, a dagger uses 1d4, a greatsword uses 2d6 – the longsword and other versatile weapons depend on how it is being used. Me? I’d prefer to keep all weapons at the same speed.

I find the oddest thing about Mike’s system is how ranged weapons have a 1d4 speed. It’s an unfortunate effect of needing ranged weapons to be discharged before movement – if you moved and did nothing else, you could get adjacent to a ranged character before they shot and cause the attack to have disadvantage. If a ranged weapon had the same speed as a melee weapon, and the character moving then made a melee attack, this wouldn’t be so much of a problem. How do you feel about a set modifier for movement? Say +1 for every 5 feet travelled with a maximum of +6? Or +1 for every sixth of your movement rate moved?

Personally, I don’t think an archer engaged in melee combat should be able to fire at all (let alone with disadvantage), but that’s as much a part of starting with the AD&D rules as anything else. (That, and I want missile weapons to have disadvantages… oh, and have a chance of hitting your allies when they’re in melee…)

I’m going to try using Mike’s rules this Friday, so I’ll have an article up sometime on the weekend on how they played, and on what my group thinks could improve them.