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What would change if there was no rolling for initiative and instead, whoever had the highest bonus to initiative went first (in descending order)? The only rolling would be for determining who would go first if your modifiers were the same.

Teralynx
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1 Answers1

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Citing the Dungeon Master's Guide (p. 270), it is listed as an optional rule:

Initiative Score

With this optional rule, creature don't roll initiative at the start of combat. Instead, each creature has an initiative score, which is a passive Dexterity check: 10 + Dexterity modifier.

By cutting down on die rolls, math done on the fly, and the process of asking for and recording totals, you can speed your game up considerably—at the cost of an initiative order that is often predictable.

Essentially, you're creating tiers of initiative. The Alert feat would become exponentially more valuable as an "I always go first" ability, rather than an "I often go first" ability, as would the Barbarian's feature Feral Instinct, which would raise your passive initiative score by +5. Jack of All Trades would make Bards an excellent class for going first in battles, too. Having disadvantage on initiative would almost guarantee you went last.

Since we are using the option of rolling to determine ties, the speed benefit mentioned in the DMG is largely dependent on unique initiative scores. If you have eight combatants in the battle, and their initiatives are +0, +0, +1, +1, +2, +2, +3, +3; you will still end up rolling 8 times to determine turn order. This also means that the higher the amount of participants in the conflict, the more likely you'll have to roll initaitve anyways to break ties.

Dumpcats
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    +1 for pointing out the fact that you'd still need to roll for every same-modifier creatures. – daze413 Aug 22 '16 at 06:57
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    One thing I may add: You may also use the score instead of the modifiers as a tie breaker. Some monsters (and players) may have odd scores, and I think this is more often found in monster than players. – Chepelink Aug 22 '16 at 08:29
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    I don't own the DMG. I didn't know there was actually a rule pertaining to this! – Teralynx Aug 22 '16 at 09:54
  • I think this pretty much answers my question, just gonna wait a bit more to see if someone else has anything to say. – Teralynx Aug 23 '16 at 02:53
  • @Chepelink It would probably alleviate the problem a little bit in certain cases, but if you were fighting multiples of the same monster you're going to have to roll between them anyways unless you want them all to move at once, which would raise the likelihood of a PC getting wombo-comboed by multiple turns of attacks before they have a chance to react. – Dumpcats Aug 23 '16 at 19:45
  • @Dumpcats Well, that is an expected outcome for not rolling initiative. Furthermore, unless multiple PC has the same initiative than the NPC, having multiple monster of the same type would make groups that will move at once. I mean, if we have 5 zombies and 1 PC with the same "speed", no matter how you roll, you'll have groups. Also, the wombo-combo also apply to the NPC :) – Chepelink Aug 23 '16 at 19:59
  • If we're assuming that's an expected outcome, maybe it should be included in the answer? – Robert Aug 23 '16 at 20:18
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    You don't roll to determine the results for for ties, per the PHB. If two players tie, the players choose who goes first on that initiative count. If a player and a monster or two monsters tie, the DM chooses. The initiative count stays the same (so two players on initiative 21 decide each turn who acts first, but they both still act on initiative 21). – LegendaryDude Aug 23 '16 at 20:21
  • You could skip the rolls and have ties go simultaneously. Tied players/monsters in initiative would all declare actions then resolve them. If you end up with overkill on a monster, it isn't that unbelievable that 2 heroes could be stabbing it simultaneously anyway. If a player and a monster do something that simultaneously incapacitates each other that also isn't out of line. The concept would reduce the rolling and add a type of flavor that isn't already there. – Rodger Aug 23 '16 at 23:36