PF2e dying and individual initiative.

[Oladahn]

First off, hopefully this question is in the correct area. If not I'll delete and move it. It may also be applicable to other rulesets.

Does anyone else use the individual and auto initiative for combat? It's always felt wrong to me that for the duration of a combat your initiative stays exactly the same and that initiative is a group thing. Given the cut and thrust of a combat where feints and blocks occur. Where arrows zing by and swords slash creating openings and obstacles to movement.

We use the individual and auto initiative settings which makes more sense to us. Yes, you might go last in the previous round and first in this round but that's the randomness of battle, no?

The only issue is if you get knocked unconscious and dying 1.

The rules state that your initiative moves to immediately before you were incapacitated so that each of your party members has a chance to fix you up with medicine, healing spells, whatever before you have to roll your dying save. But with having random initiative that might mean that your initiative comes before your colleagues get a chance to help you.

So what we do is I change the initiative of the fallen character so that their initiative is last, allowing them to have a chance at healing.

Does anybody else use the individual initiative setting and do you have a work around for the dying check?

[LordEntrails]

Playing 5E and we have used individual and re-roll init for years. We like the randomness of it and do not worry about what the rules says about thing like 'untik your next turn' etc. Spell durations go until their initiative count (for better or worse). Allowing a chance to heal? Well, in 5E you have a few chances before you die so we don't worry about it. As you say, the randomness of combat. Better not leave your friends to bleed out!

[Griogre]

I've also used random initiative for years and play 5E. My players were hesitant at first but have really come to enjoy it. I don't do anything about dying characters initiative order. Like LordEntrails, I've found it gives an urgency to the other PCs to do *something* about characters bleeding out and dying ASAP - since you don't know when the dying characters are going to go. To me its just part of the chaos of combat.

At one time I did re-set all reactions at the start of a round instead of the start of PC/NPC turns, but these days I don't anymore as the players and I have grown more comfortable with individual initiative every turn.

Edit: I just wanted to say this is something you should work with your group on, so everyone is on board. You might play it the way you are though this campaign and transition to not doing that in the next campaign to allow your players time to adjust.

[madman]

Characters Die in 5E?

It would be hard to do in PF2E because of this. You could just pause the reroll of the initiative to resolve any Dying characters. Changing the initiative to before the one that brought them down, allowing the round to play out as intended and switching back to reroll all initiatives after.

Madman