Action Points let people use any initiative system, while fixing the problems.

Just Go!

Some tables don’t like rolling initiative. They want to just declare an action and go; they want a fast-paced game. That’s great, but will always lead to disagreements about who’s going first, as players will always want to start the round, and leads to players shouting over each other.

Using Action Points lets people ‘just go’, while putting a limit on the total actions taken. Whoever has the most Action Points can ‘butt in’ (but they don’t have to).

Round the Clock

GMs often find combat easier when they can go round the table, left-to-right, asking everyone for their actions in order. You can do that too when using Action Points, by going round the table and only including people with remaining Action Points. Subsequent rounds may only include one or two players, so those rounds go by fast.

Players then Monsters

The A,D&D rules defaulted to an Initiative system where all the player characters acted first, or all the non-player characters acted. Since Action Points are fixed, a group of non-player characters with 5 Action Points will usually go before all the player characters, or sometimes one player character will act first, then all non-player characters, then the rest of the player characters.

Extra Benefits

Parallel Time

If all the non-player characters act first, then the Game Master can just tell everyone ‘you’re being attacked by two goblins each, everyone make two rolls’. The table no longer looks to four players to make two rolls; everyone rolls at the same time, so we resolve all eight attacks in the time it takes for the slowest player to roll.

Skipping Slow Players

If someone’s taking a whole-ass minute so say ‘um…’ then the Game Master can just get back to them later. No Action Points spent, no time lost, just ‘go, go, go!’.