Initiative decides who acts first in combat, and it's one of the few pieces of D&D 5e where the rule is genuinely simple: everyone rolls, everyone gets sorted, and the fight goes in that order until it ends.
The base rule
At the start of combat, every combatant rolls a d20 and adds their Dexterity modifier. That total is their initiative score. Combat proceeds from highest to lowest, and repeats in the same order every round until the encounter is over.
A few things that trip people up:
- Initiative is rolled once, at the start of combat, not every round.
- Surprised creatures don't act on their first turn but are still placed in the initiative order.
- Group initiative (having all enemies act on one shared roll) is a valid house rule to speed up big fights, but it's not the base 5e rule - decide before the session if you're using it.
Handling ties
The 2014 5e rules leave tie-breaking to the DM, and the 2024 rules suggest comparing Dexterity scores directly (not the modifier) as the tiebreaker, with the DM breaking any remaining tie. In practice, most tables use one of:
- Higher Dexterity score goes first
- Players go before monsters (or vice versa, pick one and stay consistent)
- Re-roll only the tied combatants
Whatever you choose, decide once and reuse it - the goal is not spending table time debating the rule mid-fight.
Keeping the order moving
The actual skill in running initiative isn't the math, it's pacing. A few habits that help:
- Announce the next two combatants, not just the current one, so players can start thinking about their turn before it arrives.
- Track conditions and durations (like a spell lasting "until the end of your next turn") right next to the combatant's name, not in a separate list you have to cross-reference.
- Don't wait on decision paralysis - if a player is stuck, move to the next person and come back to them.
Tools versus paper
A physical initiative card system works fine for many tables, but it falls apart quickly once you add HP tracking, conditions, and more than five or six combatants. A simple digital tracker removes the sorting and re-sorting by hand, which is the part that actually slows a table down mid-fight.
ArcForge has a free D&D Initiative Tracker if you want a quick, no-login way to sort turn order and step through rounds - and a combat tracker if you also want HP, AC, and conditions in the same view.