Metagaming and the Initiative tracker....

I have a suggestion that would make combat more exciting for both the gm and the players. Too often, I've had a player tell me... "I will hold initiative until after the Ogre, but before player X..." Would it be possible to give GM placed enemies an Invisible status on the turn tracker? Or maybe even a toggle on the token to "Hide" on the tracker? Most of the time my players try to stay in the moment... but when they see an Ogre going before their Barbarian it tends to cause a touch of metagaming.. I do not really care if they know when their teammates go, but seeing my enemies' turn order kills the surprise for me and the realism for them.

Tokens on the GM Layer will not appear in the turn tracker for players. If you want to have an enemy visible to players but not visible to them in the turn tracker, you can put another token on the GM layer to hold the spot in the turn order.

That may work. I'll just need a work around for my generic beasts so I don't have to number them all. :S Thanks.

Still, I run into this quite a bit too. It'd be nice to have a checkbox to hide the initiative of any GM-controlled tokens (those not controlled by a player) so that you don't have to keep a token for each individual monster or lose the ability to highlight which token's turn it is.

Brian said: Tokens on the GM Layer will not appear in the turn tracker for players. If you want to have an enemy visible to players but not visible to them in the turn tracker, you can put another token on the GM layer to hold the spot in the turn order. I used Brian's suggestion and simply added a number to each mob (a bit time consuming, but worth it) then copied the group and pasted to the token layer. It worked well and I found the players appreciated the extra effort. Thanks again Brian!

I do not allow initiative holding, ever. You either act or pass, waiting to see what someone does is your turn.

Michael P. said: I do not allow initiative holding, ever. You either act or pass, waiting to see what someone does is your turn. It's a defined part of the rules for many systems. D&D 4e, for example, has the Delay action (DDI link, requires subscription to read). Exalted 2e has the Guard action, which is Speed 3/DV -0, which does nothing, you can end it prematurely, and repeat it indefinitely, meaning you can use it to act on any particular tick you desire (usually, players use it to set up for a Coordinated Attack).

ICly, it refers to stalling until just the right moment to act, such as waiting for the fighter to get into flanking position before attempting a sneak attack. The player is already giving up acting first, there's no game balance reason to further punish them for having a high initiative. Remember that in most systems that once you lower your initiative you can't bring it back up in the same fight. The bookkeeping isn't that difficult either, assuming you make it the player's responsibility to speak up when they want to take their action. Change their initiative, move them up top, let them take their action, continue as normal. If they forget to speak up when they want to act, they just don't get to act that turn.

Let's try not to get into any game mechanic debates, please. Stick to comments directly about the original suggestion.