[Meta Thread] Dragonstrike's Pokerole Test Game: Mount Coronet Mystery

[Lord Windos]

That depends on if a player would prefer to give their orders after seeing how their pokemon stack up in the Initiative against the opponents.  Nothing wrong with Conditional Orders to compensate for not knowing, but it is additional work for the players, particularly when a lot of pokemon are involved (I've got 4 groups of enemies in this encounter, so Initiative dependent conditionals could be rather complex).

Such a technique does technically also give the NPCs a slight advantage over you guys since I know what all your Initiatives are, so I'm not sure that'd work super well either since I want to keep things relatively fair.



Orders not dependent on Initiatives/Conditional Orders that change depending on Initiatives positions do help speed things up a lot, however (though it's not much different from how we normally play, aside from hiding enemy Initiatives).

Fair enough point! So let's ask the everyone what they think about this? @PhantomUnderYourDesk, @Mikaruge108, @Spiritmon , what do you think about Blind Initiatives for the first Round of Group Combat Encounters? The Encounter goes by MUCH quicker in this case for everyone (DM and players alike), but you can't make a truly informed decision about what you want to do in said first Encounter, requiring more planning to work around that or just making Orders that don't depend on INIs. Do you think this is a good idea, or not?

I'm personally fine with things being inherently a little unfair against us in Group Combat Encounters, if it means they get resolved quicker. The fact that an entire group is fighting together is an inherent advantage in of itself, since all they're resources are pooled together into one great big counter assault, as opposed to divided, so I think the disadvantage and advantages would balance each other out.

Another way of doing Group Combat Encounters with Hordes is like what you did at Lake Acuity: Divide players and a portion of the Horde up into their own Battlefields (Or just make portions of the Horde focus on One Trainer), and treat them like individual Encounters/Battles for them. More work that way, and some players may/may not lag behind others, but it means the battles can proceed at their own pace without each of us slowing down each other and it doesn't cause INI problems, so long as a Player doesn't rush over to join another Player's battle (in which case, Re-Roll their INIs and/or have them join one Round after they said they wanted to join them). What about that idea?