Group Initiative?

[volt875]

Hey all! Getting ready to run my first game of Palladium Fantasy and just had a question. Does it break anything if I have groups of enemies go on the same initiative? Say party is up against 5 goblins and a troll. Could I just do two initiative rolls, one for the goblins and one for the trolls or is it better to do them for each combatant?

[Warshield73]

Having most of your NPCs going at the same time can be a little disruptive but I don't think it would break anything.

In the situation you are describing I suggest three groups
- Troll on his own
- 2 goblins of similar arms
- 2 other goblins

Now if you have your 4 PCs going up against a dozen or more small critters groups of 4, 5 or even 6 are probably just fine but that is just preference.

If you are looking to save time I suggest using pre-labeled initiative trackers with initiative for the NPCs already rolled. I use small strips of paper that are about 1 or 2 inches wide and 5 to 6 inches long. The size is not really important but they all need to be the same dimensions.
Set up as follows
- One tracker/slip for each PC. Just put the name at the top and leave it. Every time your player rolls you just write the number down and when the round is over you cross the number out and use it again.

- one tracker for each NPC or group of NPCs and then I pre roll four initiatives for them in a specific order so I don't have to roll at the table.
Example: on one tracker I would put "Troll" and then list under the numbers I rolled plus bonuses in order of the roll so "8, 17, 3, 19" . This means the first melee he has an initiative of 8, the second 17, and so on.

At the table when the encounter starts I can just lay the papers out say it went - Goblin Pair B - Goblin Pair A - Troll (he got an 8 after all) - then as your PCs give you there initiative you just put there trackers in-between the NPCs, stack the paper lowest on bottom highest on top and you are ready to roll.

Hope this helps.

[volt875]

It does, thank you very much.

[Killer Cyborg]

Hey all! Getting ready to run my first game of Palladium Fantasy and just had a question. Does it break anything if I have groups of enemies go on the same initiative? Say party is up against 5 goblins and a troll. Could I just do two initiative rolls, one for the goblins and one for the trolls or is it better to do them for each combatant?

I've frequently broken up NPC initiative by creature type.
In this case, I'd probably go with two initiatives just like you... depending on how many NPCs there are vs. how many PCs, and so forth.
It's never really caused any problem that I know of, as long as you're not dealing with something like "And now 100 trolls all attack on the same initiative..."
Smaller groups is better to avoid bogging things down, unless you're also doing bulk attacks and such.