Strategic Initiative

After testing the Cinematic Initiative system, a few problems stemming from unfortunate rolls and general inflexibility of the dice-based system, Strategic Initiative aims to correct these flaws while expanding on the possibility of player influence on combat at the same time.

Summary

Players don't roll initiative. Instead, in an alternating fashion, players and enemies each act for one turn before the opposite side gets to act.

Player Initiative

Each player is being handed one initiative token at the beginning of combat. Then, any one player can choose to use their initiative token to take their turn. Players can choose any method of deciding among themselves who's next to act.

If a character has any kind of bonus to their initiative beyond their Dexterity modifier (such as advantage), the player doesn't apply it. Instead, that player can demand to take the first action of combat.

On a player's turn, all other effects and creatures originating from that player's character also act during that player's initiative, even when those effects say that they use their own initiative roll.

Enemy Initiative

Every time a player finishes a turn, the DM chooses one enemy (or group of smaller enemies) or an NPC (on either side) to take their turn, or describes an event that happens during combat and that affects the battlefield.

The number of enemies will often not match with the number of players, which means the respective enemies act more or less often than the players, and the DM needs to account for this fact in advance when designing encounters.

Playing Initiative

After a turn has been completed, the other party gets to act. Once all initiative tokens have been used up, they're being redistributed to the players, and a new round begins.