Alternative Initiative

Inspired by Mike Mearls' recent description of an alternate initiative system. The system as described felt rather clunky, but it has significant potential. This system aims to make player's choices impact their ability to participate in combat.

This is strictly a homerule variant, and should be used at your own risk.

TL;DR

In this variant, initiative counts up, rather than down. This breaks a few of the mechanical nicities of D&D, unfortunately. The alternative is to start high and count down, but it turns out tracking negative numbers is more annoying.

All participants in combat start by rolling their initial initiative. Characters take their turns acting from lowest to highest. At the end of a character's turn, they roll some dice based on what they did that turn, add it to their previous score, and are reinserted in the initiative order. There is no concept of a 6-second Round anymore. Instead, treat each initiative number as 1 second for the purposes of casting long spells or calculating the duration of spell effects.

The action economy stays the same: On your turn, you have 1 Action, 1 Bonus Action, 1 Reaction (until the start of your next turn), 1 object interaction (like chugging a flagon of ale or whatever) and an amount of Movement equal to your speed.

Rolling for initiative

To roll for initiative, every participant rolls a D6. If you have the Alert feat, you roll a D4 instead of a D6. Add nothing to it. If you have advantage, roll twice and keep the result of your choice. If you have disadvantage, keep the higher of the two results. If you are surprised, you make this roll with disadvantage (even if you have the Alert feat. The disadvantage is somewhat offset by the fact that a D4 has a lower maximum value).

Barbarian's Feral Instict The Barbarian may choose to rage when rolling for initiative while surprised. The Barbarian's advantage on initiative cancels out the disadvantage from the roll

Effects

The biggest mechanical change is that it is now entirely possible for a combatant to get multiple turns in relatively short succession. It is possible through bad dice luck that someone can fail 3 death saving throws before anyone has a chance to do anything about it.

What you do

For each thing your character does in combat, roll the following dice and add it to your initiative total. That determines when your next turn starts.

Value Things you did 1 Using a Reaction d4 1 object interaction d6 Using movement, All unlisted Actions d8 Attack Action, Cast a Spell Action to cast a Cantrip d10 Cast a Spell Action to cast a spell that requires a spell slot d12 Using a Skill as an Action d20 Make a Death Saving Throw, Continue Casting a Spell with a cast time of longer than 1 Action or 1 Bonus Action

Bonus Actions

Use 1 dice size smaller than the associated Action if you use a Bonus Action. Attacking with a weapon as a bonus action is a D6. Casting a spell as a bonus action is a D8. Using Bardic Inspiration, Rage, or Wild Shape is a D4 (since Class Feature actions default to D6).

Ready Action

If you use the Ready Action, roll your initiative as if you had performed the action you are preparing. You still use your reaction to perform the readied action.

Extra Homerule: Bonus Actions as Actions

You may use an ability that requires a Bonus Action instead as an Action, but only by increasing the initiative die size by 1 category. This would allow a Bard to use 2 uses of Bardic Inspiration on their turn, for example, by first using a D4 for the Bonus Action, and a D6 for the Action.

Extra Homerule: Acting Fast

A player could impose disadvantage on themselves to reduce the die size of the initiative modifier by 1 category. For example, a player could take Disadvantage on an attack roll to instead roll a D6 for their initiative modifier. A player may not use this if they already have Disadvantage, may only use this if their action requires a roll, and may only apply this once for a given roll.