D&D Initiative & The McDonald’s Problem
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Disclaimer: I promise this post is about fighting monsters in your elfgame of choice and not fast food.
“Yeah, I’ll have the, uhhh…” You are in a McDonald’s drive-thru and, although you have been waiting for what feels like hours, when you drive up to the menu screen thing, you tell the disembodied electronic voice of an underpaid service worker to “Hold on, give me a second.” You may have an idea of what you want, but you also want to peruse the options and see if there is a new cross-marketing and unimaginative meal “inspired by” your favorite popular musician for sale or a suspicously purple milkshake. Eventually you decide on your order (perhaps the “cheeseburger bundle”, which is a bargain at nearly 175 calories per USD), and are told to pull around. But what if we lived in the ideal world, where everyone pulled up to the menu screen knowing exactly what they wanted.
“Have your order in your mind and your money in your hand.” The Varsity is an Atlanta-based fast food chain whose many slogans coined by Erby Walker, the “the world's fastest counterman”, demand that patrons think about they want to order while they wait and before it is their turn at the counter. The Varsity doesn’t fool around, and if you step up to the plate but aren’t ready to bat, they’ll even send you back to the line. To quote one of the above-linked articles, “Like an encounter with a runaway locomotive, lunch or dinner in this spirited eatery is flattening. It also happens to be one of the most exhilarating meals anywhere: not just fast food, but lightning-fast food, at curb or counter, garnished with plenty of hash-slinger sass.”
You want your combat to be exhilarating and lighting fast. But so often combat, particularly combat that uses D&D’s typical initiative methods, runs into what I call The McDonald’s Problem. I.e., players don’t decide what to do until it is their turn, meaning the entire table has to wait while they make that decision. In a perfect world, the players would think and decide while they are waiting their turn, but also in a perfect world everyone in front of me at the McDonald’s drive-thru have their order in their mind and their money in their hand. We don’t live there. But when I was running 5e (nowadays, I tend toward “side initiative”), I came up with a solution to a different problem that accidentally solved the McDonald’s Problem in my game.
The poorly organized 5th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide has some hidden gems if you are willing to mine it. One such idea is speed factor, which makes the order of actions less certain and provides different incentives for taking different actions. As the DMG describes it, “Speed factor is an option for initiative that introduces more uncertainty into combat, at the cost of speed of play.” Oh no, not slowing down combat even more! But the DMG is correct, because it still uses D&D’s basic initiative roll, it just adds even more math to it (and more consulting of a chart), as shown in the table below.
When I like an idea but not the implementation of something, I take it as a challenge. So I devised my own initiative method that I hoped would be intuitive and easy to remember. I didn’t know I was also creating something that would solve The McDonald’s Problem, but I will get to that at the end. First, the rules. And, please note, I wrote these (verbatim) back when my only TTRPG experience was 3.5 and 5.0 D&D, so I lacked a bit of the design chops I may or may not have these days (I tweeted a misremembered version of these rules and honestly my hazy recollection may be a better designer than 2016 me).
Dynamic Initiative
Lowest number goes first. You only ever roll one die* and that is your initiative for that round. Keep the die face up; no need to call out your initiative, the DM will just start counting up from one and you go when your number is called.
*unless you are making an attack with a 2d6 damage weapon or if you change plans.
Player Characters
Player characters determine their initiative count by rolling an initiative die based on the action(s) they plan to take.
| Type of Action | Initiative Die |
|---|---|
| Weapon Attack | Weapon's Base Damage Die |
| Cast a Spell | d6 Plus the Spell's Level |
| Unarmed Attacks | d4 |
| Any other action (e.g., Dash or Swap Items) | d8 |
| Multiple Actions or Bonus Actions | Largest Die of the Actions You Plan to Take |
Change of Plans. If a player decides to perform a different type of action than they initially planned, they use their reaction to roll for the new action, add it to their initiative count, and perform the action on their new initiative.
Bonuses. If an effect or ability would grant a bonus (or penalty) to initiative, instead reduce (or increase) the size of the die you roll for initiative by one step (e.g., a d6 becomes a d4, etc.).
Advantage. If an effect or ability would grant advantage (or disadvantage) to initiative, instead roll your initiative die twice and use the lowest (or highest) roll.
NPCs, Monsters & Traps
Any creature other than a non-player character does not need to determine their move in advance. The creature’s initiative die is determined by the size of their hit die, which corresponds to a creature’s size. This can be found in every monster’s statistics but is listed here for convenience:
| Monster Size | Initiative Die |
|---|---|
| Tiny | d4 |
| Small | d6 |
| Medium | d8 |
| Large | d10 |
| Huge | d12 |
| Gargantuan | d20 |
Lair Actions. These occur on initiative count 1 (losing ties).
Complex Traps. These can be slow (initiative count 5), fast (initiative count 1), or very fast (both initiative count 1 and count 5). Traps lose initiative ties.
Other Rules
Surprise. A surprised creature adds +10 to its initiative result and cannot take reactions while it is surprised. A creature is surprised until the end of the round during which it is surprised.
Ties. If two creatures tie for initiative, those creatures act in order of Dexterity, with the highest Dexterity going first. If both creatures have the same Dexterity, roll randomly to determine which one acts first.
Unable to Act. Any creature that is unable to take actions (e.g., if it is incapacitated) does not roll initiative. Any effects that such creatures must resolve, such as death saving throws, are resolved at the end of the round.
This guy has seen some shit.
Introducing house rules in 5e isn’t always welcomed with open arms. I brought more than my fair share of “hey guys, I thought of a quick tweak”s to the table, but this rule ended up being quite popular, popular enough that it was adopted across the board by all the other DMs for our 50ish person, 3 DMs West Marches campaign. When I pitched it, it was all about the added tactical depth (“I should use a dagger this turn so I can move faster and finish off the Lich before she finishes her spell!”) but the highest quality of life improvement was just the DM no longer tracking initiative. No more having to write down everyone’s initiative; the DM simply had to count up starting from 1 and players would go “me, me me! My turn!” when their number was called.
With this variant, the players feel like they are getting a number at a quick service restaurant. The restaurant workers start calling out numbers as orders are ready, and you have but to listen attentively for your number to be called. The same principle applies. (Also, counting up from 1 is just simpler than counting down from 20 [or 25, technically]).
The main reason this made combat quicker, however, was that players had their order on their mind and their dice in their hand. Because they decide on actions first each turn, it is just a matter of going through each person executing (or failing to execute) their plan. No more waiting on Wade (it was always Wade) to decide what he wants to do, even though he’s had 15 minutes while everyone else was taking their turns. The simple method of declaring actions before rolling initiative can transform your combats from an understaffed McDonald’s drive-thru to “an encounter with a runaway locomotive.”
My adventure, Barkeep on the Borderlands, is nominated for Best Supplement in the 2023 ENNIE Awards! But victory is not assured, and we need your help. For a few more days, YOU can vote for Barkeep and all the other great games and game accessories released this/last year. I would really appreciate your support. You can go vote here.
If you aren’t sure what Barkeep on the Borderlands is, it is a pubcrawl adventure I wrote alongside a team of the best bloggers and writers of the OSR/Post-OSR, including Luka Rejec, Chris McDowall, Ben Laurence, and Zedeck Siew. You can get PDF copies on itch.io or DriveThruRPG, or physical+PDF copies right on this very website, Exalted Funeral! [and many other stores, coming soon].
