Also, a round lasts a minute, right? And each PC’s turn represents not a single attack but a full minute of combat. So who cares who goes first on a detailed level? If I’m not mistaken Pathfinder rounds are a matter of seconds. So a rogue getting the jump makes more sense there, whereas in OD&D it’s not significant enough to represent mechanically.

However, I also like the 3e/Pathfinder method. I had a printout of every character’s sheet for all my players plus one for the monsters (just cut and paste from the SRD usually). When the players announced their rolls I would put the sheets in order, highest to lowest, with the monsters secretly inserted at their die roll.

Now you just look at the top sheet and see which character’s action it currently is with the added advantage of having all their stats right in front of you. When the character performs his action, place his sheet on the bottom of the pile and the next character to go is on top. Continue until combat is over.

Also, one thing to realize, is that in Pathfinder with it’s delay rules, once the monsters have made their first move, the players can really go in any order they wish (those at the top of the list simply wait until those below go). So combat become: all the players move, then all the monsters, then all the player, then all the monsters, etc. There’s really isn’t need to keep strict track of the actual initiative values among the various players.

This encourages avoiding combat, or any straight forward combat where one can’t get other advantages. Compare our success vs. the bandits (mostly thanks to using the doorway for cover) vs. the straight forward fight with the rats. Now in both cases we had certain advantages – but the rat fight was a lot more straight forward tactically, and we lost poor Gavin and almost lost the fighter. The key was that in fight one we surrounded and cut down each enemy as they emerged and in the second they got in more attacks due to numbers. Fighting in OD&D is horribly dangerous as any attack has at least a 5% of hitting and likely killing (I could launch into a babble about why +1 bonuses to hit are pretty good bonuses). Simple initiative adds to this by making it unclear which side is going to get less attacks due to attrition.

Another benefit of this system that I wrote about a while ago was that (at least in my games) it appeared to keep the players engaged more. Actions seemed to pass more quickly this way (as there isn’t as much “Well I was going to do this, but now that X Y and Z have happened…”) and since initiative isn’t fixed, your players don’t have the temptation to zone out until it comes back around to them. Did you find the same thing?

Incidentally, there are two variations on this system I’ve come across in the OSR and reading about how “they” used to play the game. The first variation I read about I think came from a play session report from Blog of Holding in one of his Mike Mornard posts (though I can’t recall at this time for sure). Basically, initiative is still rolled on a d6, but it’s rolled individually modified by the dex modifier. The trick is, rather than processing each person’s order and breaking ties, the DM just goes down the list (“Any 6′s? Any 5′s? Any 4′s?” etc). Then at each number, all combat occurs simultaneously as it does in OD&D. The second variation comes from Dark Dungeons and extends on the previous one a bit. During the intent phase (Intent -> Initiative -> Move -> Missile -> Magic -> Melee -> Other Side -> Repeat), players choose whether to declare their intent before or after the DM declares the monsters. Players who choose to go before get a +1 to the initiative roll as a “charging into battle” bonus, where as players who go after (and thus waited to see what the monsters were going to do) get a -1 as a “cautious fighter” penalty.

Both let you add individual bonuses to initiative back without making it into the larger production the 3 and 4e initiative is, and with only 6 numbers to count down you can reasonably manage to re-roll every round more so than if you were counting down from 20.

The players then roll their individual initiative. Everyone who beats the DMs roll gets to take a combat action (with bad guys considered flat footed as normal). Then we alternate between DM’s turn, in which all enemies make their move, and the Player’s turn, in which all player’s take their turn in any desired order.

No initiative tracking, retains the usefullness of high personal initiative bonuses, and no need to bother with as many delay actions. A major side benefit is that players are engaged more in the combat, no longer just waiting for their individual number to come up and tuning out. During the players turn, the whole group actively discusses the best course and order of actions and combat is sped up as a result as players take their turns in rapid fire fashion.

“Holmes has combattants act in order OF dexterity”

In the case of a one on one fight, I would give characters with a high dexterity a +1, but I figure this averages out in the case of a general group-based struggle, especially at the d6 resolution. Also, I think weapon length may sometimes (by ruling) override the need for a general initiative roll. Also also, were a thief or other character stealthy, one of the benefits would almost certainly be acting first (if they wanted to). I think that gets to your concern about not being able to jump the initiative order. Another good way of acting first is to use a ranged weapon with a greater range than your enemy’s weapon.

For your proposed Pathfinder system, it seems like it would be better to average the dexterity modifier for the group, so that one player does not feel obligated to have max dexterity (the “skill tax” dynamic). Such an average need only be calculated once, so it would be fast. And, it seems reasonable that a party of fleet elves would have a better overall initiative than a party of plate-armored slowpokes with one super-agile rogue.