initiative Archives - Tribality

UA: Greyhawk Initiative Breakdown

Brandes Stoddard — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 05:07:47 +0000

Several weeks ago in Twitter, Mearls explained a variant initiative system that he had been playing round with, and today in Unearthed Arcana, he has explained it in full so that people will stop arguing about a piecemeal presentation of it. Just to get this out of the way, I disliked it in its initial presentation, but assumed there were some safeguards in the system that I didn’t know about. It turns out that there’s one safeguard I didn’t know about, but otherwise it’s what he originally presented. I do not recommend this for anyone, unless what you like on your turn is the frustration of invalid actions. Um, spoiler for the rest of this article, I guess.

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Unearthed Arcana – Greyhawk Initiative

Shawn Ellsworth — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 20:27:05 +0000

After the flurry of Unearthed Arcana articles this year, we’ve had to patiently survive a short break. This month’s Unearthed Arcana offers a different look at initiative. The ‘Greyhawk Initiative’ variant was inspired by Mike Mearls’ preparing to visit to Gary Con earlier this year. His design tinkering for this (and hopefully other future stuff) pulled heavily from older editions of the game. At 5 pages, it is a quick read and worth a look. Download the PDF | Read […]

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Six Pop Culture Sword Masters to Inspire Your Characters

A.A. Amirault — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 11:59:35 +0000

Historically speaking, there have been dozens of legendary sword masters from all over the world. Some examples include: Tsukahara Bokuden (1489-1571) who is accredited with winning 20 duels and killing over 200 men in several battles; Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645) accredited with winning 60 duels and authoring The Book of Five Rings; Salvator Fabris (1544-1618) considered by many to be the greatest fencing teacher in history; Johannes Liechtenauer (c. 1500) was the father of the German style of fencing; and William […]

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The Endless Character Stats Debate

A.A. Amirault — Tue, 05 May 2015 11:50:13 +0000

Here’s a question that every DM gets asked a hundred times: How do you roll stats/attribute scores? Doesn’t sound like a terribly tough question; but, depending on your players and the kind of avatars they are accustomed to playing, the answer to this question can be the foundation for the entire future of the character. I mean let’s face it, over time a Fighter with 8 Strength is going to get laughed at and a Wizard with 19 Intelligence is […]

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5 Ways To Be A Better Roleplayer

A.A. Amirault — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 11:42:30 +0000

Fundamentally, I look at D&D campaigns as stories. Each adventure or event is a chapter and the campaign as a whole is a novel. It should have set-up, background, main characters, side characters, plots, sub-plots, victories, losses, triumph, and heartbreak. Maybe characters will die along way (Boromir) and maybe new characters will come to the party late (Lando). There should be some twists and a few unexpected detours and the end result should never be certain. Danger should be stalking […]

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4 Simple Steps to Creating a Campaign

A.A. Amirault — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 13:06:32 +0000

“How do I create my own campaign?” is a question that gets asked a lot by both players and new DMs alike. Unfortunately, the answer is as varied as their creators. Some DMs like to start with a story, others like to start with a problem that must be solved, others still will start with a villain and work out from there, and so on. There’s really no right or wrong answer other than to say, “whatever works for you”. […]

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D&D 5e Combat – Initiative House Rule Option #2

Michael Long — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 14:00:45 +0000

This is the second article I have written about house rules for initiative. I haven’t thrown the initiative rolls out the window, yet. After play testing Robert Schwalb’s Shadow of the Demon Lord action economy system, I have found that it works, but I want to try out some other methods of determining play order. So the image below is a typical table top game seating arrangement (excuse my poor MS Painting skills). So in this example there are 5 […]

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D&D 5e Combat – Initiative House Rule Option #1

Michael Long — Sat, 20 Dec 2014 00:00:33 +0000

I wrote an article about initiative, strategy and team play. Recently after reading some more, and playing, I am ready to just throw Initiative out the window. I am more in favor of what Robert Schwalb has going with in his new game “Shadow of the Demon Lord.” He uses an Action Economy system and a simplified system that let’s the players go in what ever order they want. I really like that system, but want to use it for […]

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D&D 5e Combat – Initiative in Adventurers League

Michael Long — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 17:04:30 +0000

So after playing for a while with people in D&D Adventures League games, I’ve noticed a strange behavior when players roll for initiative and the dexterity check is a tie. When they tie, they will compare each other’s dexterity, or do a d20 roll off. High number wins. DMs usually don’t even institute this, and it’s almost an automatic reaction by the players. It is like a competition to see who will get the better initiative. And then they stick to […]

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