There exists an issue with initiative when you become more powerful. It was even seen in encounters we have experienced in this campaign where the enemy doesn't even get a chance to engage before they're all killed.
Since initiative is vitally important, messing with that adds complexities and messiness that I'm not prepared to manage yet, especially in this play format, but it does help mitigate this when separate monsters can have initiative ahead of you rather then treating both sides as two, I could roll imitative of each monster separately, some would therefore get a shot before any of you act. However, because of the constraints of this format, only those monsters that beat your best initiative would be able to take a turn. We know all that, it makes battles less interactive and gives you an advantage as monsters can't intermix with your turns. So we want to mitigate this in some way.
The next possible way to mitigate this issue is to in some way nerf advantage and disadvantage. Making them less powerful but not incrementing them is the easiest way to mitigate this. Instead of allowing a second roll, we could add a bonus to the attack roll or a penalty to the DC/AC.
This makes some sense as a distracted creature being flanked would have trouble dodging everything, but would it be so distracted that it's effectively being double attacked? Arguably that's the worst case.
When rolling a d20 let's say with a modifier of +5 against a 16AC target, we see there's a 50/50 shot of hitting (50%) (rolling at least a 11). Roll it twice and it improves to 75%, so that's equivalent to a +10 modifier.
1d20+10 will hit against AC16 75% of the time (rolling 6-20).
Disadvantage is the opposite, if we need both dice to hit, then 50% becomes 25% that they both hit, so this is equivalent to a -5 penalty to hit. (rolling 16-20 hits)
It would still be advantageous to get advantage and avoid disadvantage if it was a +/-2 or +/-3 modification.
We are testing out different ideas on yet a third independent run. One of which is a less severe advantage/disadvantage with just a +/-2 modifier, another is the three action per turn system that would allow three attacks, or say 1 attack, one bonus action and one use action as treated equally.
A turn has 3 parts 3/3:
Up to 3 attacks are possible but each attack after the first has greater disadvantage. -5, and -10 respectively but these can be overcome and mitigated in different ways.
2 bonus actions are possible within the same turn as in our run, but they each occupy 1/3 turn
1 use action is allowed for 1/3 turn.
this prevents the mega-turns that are otherwise possible with 1 attack, 2 bonus actions, a use action and countless free actions.
Though I am not limiting free actions, so it's limiting it in a lesser way.
Potentially Cat could Attack using claws, attack again as a bonus action as her claws are unarmed and therefore obviously light, then also nick on the first attack, do something else as a second bonus action, and do a use action. That's 5 things that would be limited to 3 in the system we're testing.
We have some hope that filling out turns with other things that can be done, nerfing the effect of advantage and disadvantage, and limiting the things that can be done on a turn will make encounters less dependent on initiative.
Reactions are not being considered to be limited. A dragon can still defend his hoard against a hoard of orcs running past. You're welcome.
No changes are proposed at this time for your run.