I just played my first session of D&D last week and I liked how quick determining initiative was. For those of you who don't know, you roll a D20 then add your modifier and give the final number.

Here is my idea:

1. Roll a D20

2. Add the number of the characteristic that is needed (cool, vigilance)

3. Add the number of how many levels you have in the skill cool or vigilance

Ex: Scott rolls a D20 and gets a 15. He adds the modifier of 3 for his Presence characteristic. He then adds 2 for his levels in cool.

15+3+2=20 total initiative roll

I decided during my session to pitch my idea to our group and they went for it. We really liked how much easier and quicker it was to determine the combat order.

I know it might not be perfect and it defeats some of the narrative stuff the proprietary dice from FFG do, but it worked pretty well. Let me know what you think and if I'm missing some giant obvious aspect I forgot to factor in!

Do you pre-roll NPC initiative? doing that saves a bucket load of time. Also having enough dice for everyone to roll at the same time helps too:

GM: "Vigilance initiative guys"

PC's: roll, roll, roll, roll, etc

GM: "Who beats 2/3"

PC1: "Me, 3/1"

PC2: "Me 4/0"

GM: "OK, who beats 2/0? No one? so who beats 1/1"

PC3: "Yep, 1/3"

PC4: "Yeah i do too, 1/1"

GM: "ok ok then its PC, PC, NPC, NPC, PC, PC, NPC. PC1 can you track it this time?"

PC1: "Sure thing, pass the whiteboard over"

Its a process that takes less than 30 seconds if you have it down pat, AND you preroll NPC's.

On the flip side, looking purely at the mechanics of the system that the OP has suggested, by using a die with such a large number of sides what has happened here is that the GM has said that random effects are much more important than attributes or skills — you just need to roll well, and you win.

Personally, I don’t think that’s the message I’d want to be sending to my players.

EDIT: On the flip side, if you were to use a die with a lower number of sides (say, a d10), what you’d be saying is that someone with an attribute of 5 and a skill of 5 can never lose when compared to more wimpy types.

Again, I don’t think that’s a message I’d want to be sending to my players.

The thing I like about the existing FFG SWRPG system in this respect is that probability is on the side of the better/more skilled, but it’s always possible for them to roll all blanks while the wimpiest one on the board rolls really well.

Using multiple dice and adding the results together (in some fashion) also gives you a bell curve of likely outcomes, whereas rolling a single die will give you a flat percentage probability of a given outcome.

IMO, there have to be better ways to solve the problem of handling initiative than just throwing the whole system out and bringing in something rudimentary and trivially simple from D&D.

What about my Triumph results for the Skills? How do you do ambushes if you don't have setbacks and upgrades to add to the roll? What are you giving PCs for ranks in Rapid Reaction? Are you concerned about the larger curve where minion/lowlies might beat your PCs rolls badly, consistently?

These are the kinds of things I needed to be reminded of, do thank you guys for bringing these points up.

FiPrst off, I think if I did roll for my NPC's ahead of time that would help. We have been playing these games for over 2 years now and the setup of initiative had always been a pain so I tend to delegate it to one player while I setup the rest of the battle on the board and notate enemy thresholds on my end.

The mention of more luck involved I do agree that is true, I was just trying this out to see how we liked it since it was a faster way to setup combat. So far my rolls were pretty bad so a majority of the time the PC's got to go first, so they weren't too upset.

Now with ambushes and things that involve setback, I've never really had anyone roll that with an initiative check before so that is something to think about. In terms of Rapid Reaction, with my idea I would allow the PC to essentially do the same thing, take strain to add +1 to their number of levels in the talent.

I get where you guys are coming from though, it is now left to chance than the FFG system is... However we all agreed that this last games initiative checks were much quicker than they have been... It's something to think about I suppose.

To each their own but I wouldn't want it. Most people tend to ignore their initiative skills and stats, and when you think about it, a solid Cool/Vigilance-Willpower/Presence, are all a player's best defense and offense. Winning consistently, which is easy to do with proper attention to the stat/skill, allows a group of PCs to get their shots off, engage their defensive Talents, take cover, or just plain retreat before the opposition can fire. Under your system even with the stat/skill effort they could lose and lose big repeatedly with all opponents able to fire before they can do anything.

True, I think I'll need to try what Richardbuxton suggested and roll ahead and lay it out like he does to make it faster.

Since we didn't experience any bad rolls by my players and most of them on my part they liked it because of the ease of use and the fact that the enemies didn't decimate them.

Some groups roll one Vigilance and one Cool check for each PC at the start of a session then just use what's appropriate each encounter. Personally I don't like that, especially if there is an Initiative Expert in the group who specialises in getting the top spot.

I just played my first session of D&D last week and I liked how quick determining initiative was. For those of you who don't know, you roll a D20 then add your modifier and give the final number.

Here is my idea:

1. Roll a D20

2. Add the number of the characteristic that is needed (cool, vigilance)

3. Add the number of how many levels you have in the skill cool or vigilance

Ex: Scott rolls a D20 and gets a 15. He adds the modifier of 3 for his Presence characteristic. He then adds 2 for his levels in cool.

15+3+2=20 total initiative roll

I decided during my session to pitch my idea to our group and they went for it. We really liked how much easier and quicker it was to determine the combat order.

I know it might not be perfect and it defeats some of the narrative stuff the proprietary dice from FFG do, but it worked pretty well. Let me know what you think and if I'm missing some giant obvious aspect I forgot to factor in!

Not a fan because the D20 allows for too much variance and having to much variance is one of the core problems of the system anyway. So use a D10 or D6 instead if you are really that slow in counting your successes from a simple role with zero challenge/difficulty dice.

Besides for NPCs pre-rolling or the dice apps are simple solution to make it quick, together with the brilliant an easy initiate sheet and the method described by Richard.

One possible option is to have each PC make a set of six checks for Cool and Vigilance before the start of the session, assigning them a value between 1 and 6. Also, as the GM be sure to pre-roll the bad guy's initiative results for the encounter long before the group gathers at the table (or around their monitors if playing via Skype and/or Roll20)

Then, when combat starts, the PCs simply roll a d6 to see which initiative result they use.

For a large group (6+ players) I could see this working to help alleviate initiative woes while still keeping the skills in question relevant and thus worth investing XP if the PCs want to be able to act before their enemies.

Generally my group does one of two things.

We either roll at the start of the session and use the roll during the first combat encounter of any given session; the only advantage is the player might know they have a particularly good inti roll, but due to the flexible nature of inti it shouldn't be a huge problem anyway.

Everyone rolls dice, records the result and the DM simply announces "Ok, who beat two success, two advantage" rather then asking for the precise number.

Is the complaint that initiative takes too long a result of unfamiliarity with the dice, or just collating the results?

In my group, we delegate a person to track initiative (for +5XP a session!) to free the GM from the task. We all roll at once and indicate our result when asked. It generally takes under 10 seconds to get everything in order, which is on par with our D&D initiative tracking.

Pre-rolling initiative works if there are no environmental factors that have changed since prep time, so notation is important because it might be necessary to add a setback at the table. We denote ours as <Successes>.<Advantages>.<Triumphs> so when we call them out or write them down, it comes out as "2.1" or "3.0.1" - this has worked exceedingly well for us.

Initiative takes very little time, once you get used to the system. I don't pre-roll anything for my game and it takes a couple of minutes, max.