Initiative, Dexterity and Ready Ref Sheets

Image by Michael Caroe Andersen. CC-BY-NC.

The title of this blog is Macaronic Latin for "Always Initiative One," but I don't actually write about initiative much. Which is odd, because I actually do think about it a good bit, just not in a format that's ready to write about. Here I'm going to be focusing on OD&D, although coming at it by way of Chainmail.

In the first round of Chainmail man-to-man, the attacker strikes first, unless the defender has a longer weapon, or the defender has high ground. In subsequent rounds, initiative stays the same, unless one side has a shorter weapon or the high ground. All of this makes sense. If a man with a sword attacks a man with a spear, the spear-wielder can fend him off and get the first blow in, but if they both survive, the man with the sword has the advantage because he's overcome the spear's range and can work more quickly.

The state of affairs in Chainmail is good, and it's worth seeing what we can do in terms of replicating it in D&D. Unfortunately, it doesn't cover enough possibilities; what if someone is firing missiles, or throwing spells, or fighting against a creature that attacks with its claws? Chainmail only has 12 weapon types (if you don't have Chainmail but do have OD&D or Holmes Basic, the weapons are arranged in order by length in both of those books). So clearly it's going to need some work.

Outside of surprise, the main comment that OD&D has on initiative is under the description of abilities:

Dexterity applies to both manual speed and conjuration. It will indicate the character's missile ability and speed with actions such as firing first, getting off a spell, etc.

We're not told how Dexterity indicates this. We can compare stats when an Elf is taking a shot at an Evil High Priest, to see whether the Elf's arrow gets off before the EHP's Finger of Death spell, but it breaks down once we have monsters with no stats. So if a Hobbit is fighting a Manticora, does the plucky hero throw his stone before the creature's tail spikes fire? We don't have a Dexterity score for the monster. Also, this doesn't specify whether it factors into melee at all.

But I like the idea that Dexterity should impact on initiative. Now our goal is twofold: a spear should get first action over a sword, and Dexterity should impact on initiative.

In the 1975 article in The Strategic Review, "Questions Frequently Asked About Dungeons & Dragons Rules," Gygax did make some attempt to clarify initiative:

Initiative is always checked. Surprise naturally allows first attack in many cases. Initiative thereafter is simply a matter of rolling two dice (assuming that is the number of combatants) with the higher score gaining first attack that round. Dice scores are adjusted for dexterity and so on.

This doesn't specify exactly how Dexterity adjusts initiative, but in the ensuing example Gygax says that the Hero gets a bonus of 1 due to high Dexterity. We can reasonably extrapolate that he is geting +1 for a Dexterity of 13 or better, matching the missile adjustments given in OD&D.

Unfortunately the method in the OD&D FAQ doesn't get us an effect much like that in Chainmail. Now initiative is mostly random, with a bump for Dexterity, but weapon length has disappeared from the equation.

The Judges Guild tried to solve all these factors (and add a few more) in the Ready Ref Sheets. The Weapon Priority table (you can see it on the Zenopus Archives site here) factors in weapon length, spell level, missile weapons, dragon breath weapons, armor, monster speed and Dexterity. Which is all for the good, except that the priority system has a fatal flaw: it makes longer weapons better in absolute terms than shorter ones. A spear in these rules is better than a sword, and if you're using all d6 damage, there's no reason to ever use a sword. Which is silly, as there are plenty of reasons to use swords in real life.

This really only works if you can work out in advance that, say, a fighting-man in plate with a sword and Dexterity of 14 has a total rating of 5, while an orc (9" move) with a spear has 6. The orc always goes first. But it has some good ideas, and we can pull this all together without so much work that it's unwieldy.

This is a much-simplified table that takes into account weapon length:

Factor	Round 1	Rounds 2+
Long Weapon*	+1	n/a
Short Weapon**	-1	n/a
Dexterity/Move 8 or less	-1	-1
Dexterity/Move 13 or higher	+1	+1
Encumbered (Moving at 1/2 speed)	-1	-1

* Morning Star, Flail, Spear, Pole Arm, Halberd, 2-handed Sword, Lance, Pike
** Dagger, Hand Axe, Mace

The system is simple: roll initiative on 1d6, individual for PCs, as a group for monsters, and apply the above modifiers. Roll-off (no modifiers) on ties.

I chose not to flip the modifiers after round 1. Particularly in d6-based damage systems, 2-handed weapons don't have a large advantage, and giving them a penalty for most of the fight makes them nearly useless. I also threw in the encumbered modifier from the Ready Ref Sheets rule, and merged Dexterity and monster Move rates, which are pretty similar.

This does pretty much everything I want an initiative system to do: it takes into account weapon length, but only on the first round, it takes Dexterity into account, and it makes movement rates a bigger part of the game. A dextrous, light-armored fighting-man with a spear (+3) is at a pretty big advantage versus a clumsy, heavily encumbered cleric with a mace (-3), and will almost certainly get the jump on him.

Better Living Through Clones: Interrupt the Spellcaster!

Most of the changes to the initiative system in Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry and first edition Advanced D&D had basically one major goal: making it so that a spellcaster could be hit in combat and stopped from casting a spell. The rules for this got infamously complicated. The best way to start a fight at Dragonsfoot or Knights & Knaves Alehouse is to make some blanket statement about how 1st edition initiative really works. Unfortunately it's one of the more important things that OD&D, Holmes, Moldvay and the RC (I would presume also Mentzer) all lack in any way – by the book there is no way to interrupt someone who is casting a spell.

I think it's very important that this ability exist in the game. It takes spellcasters down a notch (often quite literally), but more importantly it can be the PCs' best line of defense against an enemy spellcaster. If you can't interrupt his Sleep spell, well, a low level party is screwed. Generally it's a good defense against casters being overpowering and gives parties a fighting chance, but I don't like AD&D's rather difficult way of achieving it.

Swords & Wizardry has a simple system. Spells being cast start at the beginning of the round, and go off on the caster's initiative. So if a spellcaster loses initiative and gets hit, this interrupts the spell. Easy peasy. There is a more complex method that involves taking a full round to prepare a spell, at which point the caster can be interrupted by damage, and once readied the spell can be cast when the magic-user is ready. Not quite as easy.

Adventurer Conqueror King expands this to damage or failed saving throws interrupting spellcasters. Lamentations of the Flame Princess puts more or less the same rule in different terms: if a character takes any damage in a round, they can't cast a spell after that. It's not a proper interrupt, but it serves basically the same purpose.

OSRIC has a cleaned-up interpretation of the AD&D rules, while BLUEHOLME, Labyrinth Lord and Basic Fantasy RPG just follow their Basic versions in neglecting this area.

The interesting choice here is how Swords & Wizardry and ACKS both assume that the spell is specifically interrupted and lost, while LotFP merely forbids spellcasting once damage is taken. The former approach is harsher on the magic-users, to be sure, and rooted in AD&D, where being hit can likewise cause spell loss. Neither proposes any kind of roll (such as a saving throw) to see if the spell can be kept; it is simply gone. I think this is a good compromise between the harsher S&W / ACKS approach and LotFP's method.

Another possibility I haven't seen explored much is that the attack causes a misfire of the spell. This is always a good excuse to pick your favorite "haywire spell effect" table and roll on it, to reflect the magical energies that have been let loose by the incomplete incantation. These should be used sparingly, and perhaps only have a certain percent chance (maybe 5%-10% per spell level) so that it doesn't devolve into complete unpredictability.

Whichever is your favorite, I think these are the most straightforward spell-interruption rules out there, and deserve consideration for any OD&D or classic D&D game.

On Holmesian Initiative

WHO GETS THE FIRST BLOW?

When two figures are brought into position 10 scale feet (or less) apart they may engage in melee. The character with the highest dexterity strikes first. If the Dungeon Master does not know the dexterity of an attacking monster he rolls it on the spot. Subject to the limitation of heavy weapons the two figures exchange blows in turn until the melee is resolved. If dexterities are within 1 or 2 points of each other, a 6-sided die is rolled for each opponent, and the higher score gains initiative — first blow.

Attackers who surprise an opponent or who approach him from behind always get the first blow. Characters who are wounded continue to strike valiantly until they are killed or the melee ends in their favor, unless they choose to break off the combat and flee. If combat is broken off, the fleeing party must accept an attack without any return on his part, the attacker adding +2 to his die roll for hit probability, and the armor class of the fleeing party can not include a shield.

- Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, Edited by J. Eric Holmes

The initiative rules above comprise the relatively simple "Dexterity based" rules from Holmes. It leads to a situation where combat takes place in a relatively static order, with each player announcing what they do in order by Dexterity. But as I've been thinking about it, the rule could actually work better in practice than the OD&D FAQ method of simply rolling off (which was duplicated in AD&D with some complications, and without them in Moldvay).

First: there is the question of monster Dexterity scores, which can be cumbersome to deal with. But monsters already have scores which are roughly on the scale of Dexterity - simply multiplied by 10 - in their Movement rates. In fact, this is probably the biggest utility those rates will have; chases are rarer than fights and it gives fast monsters a much more significant advantage. It's also less arbitrary than rolling Dexterity for a given monster. So the rule of thumb is movement rate divided by 10.

Second: This system works best if you treat every melee as an individual conflict. Rather than simply raffling through Dexterity scores each round, the referee should note which combatant went first and proceed through each mini-melee on the field. Dexterity is only referenced, and dice only rolled for ties, when first engaging an opponent. So three fighting-men taking on four orcs will be considered three separate melees, with the fourth orc having to compare Dexterity scores with the warrior he is going up against. But if a cleric arrives and wants to go up against the fourth orc, they compare scores again.

Third: For reasons of tension and balance, I think spell-casting should always be subject to a roll-off, and being hit in a round should stop a spell from being cast for the rest of the round. So if a magic-user is trying to Sleep a group of goblins, the one who reaches him can roll off to see whether it can try to attack the M-U and disrupt his spell. This accomplishes the goal that Gygax was getting at with AD&D initiative without the enormous difficulty.

Fourth: Note the attack of opportunity in the Holmes rules. It's worth noting that this actually accomplishes everything the 3.x rules were trying to do, again with far less complication. Let's say a fighting-man is trying to guard a magic-user behind him. An orc tries to sneak by and whack the magic-user. The fighter can try to enter melee with the orc, and if his Dexterity is 12 he gets a roll-off; if it's higher he enters melee with the orc. In those cases, if the orc tries to get to the magic-user and hit him, he has withdrawn from combat with the fighter and takes an attack at -2. So this really makes guarding a character or objective a function of initiative, which makes sense. Fighting-men are guards, but if only if they're fast enough and not already engaged.

Finally: When expanding Holmes, I think one of the natural moves is to give fighting-men extra attacks at higher levels. These can be treated as if the fighting-man is in melee against two separate creatures. So if a fighting-man at 5th level with 10 Dexterity is fighting an orc (MV 120 for Dex 12) and an ogre (MV 90 for Dex 9), the orc goes before him, but he goes before the ogre each time. If he had Dex 12, he would roll off once (for him versus the orc) and always go before the ogre.

With these points in mind, I think Holmes initiative can be the most straightforward way to run initiative in classic D&D. I'd still avoid the weapon speed rules which are a crude version of what wound up in AD&D, but it's worth using initiative with the tweaks.