Best INITIATIVE Method for D&D COMBAT

so essentially the early bird gets a surprise round over everyone, allies included!

I play pallidium rifts and people have like 3 to 7 turns when you go through the initive order. So if you roll a 20 on initive and you have two turns you go on 20 and 10. Any ideas to make this tackleable

Kind of punishing to high dex characters to not let them roll

I have my own homebrew method of dealing with initiative that seems to work quite well. Let's say I am the dm and I have 3 players at the table with me. At the start of each combat round initiative is rolled by (in this case) a d4. The player on my left is 1, across from me is 2, on my right is 3, and I am represented by a 4.

Whatever number is rolled, that person goes first in that round followed be all other players clockwise. Then the player that went first rolls a d4 again to determine the new order for the following round. The person on HIS left is 1, across from him is 2, on his right is 3, and he would go first again on a roll of 4.

This is basically how Five Parsecs from Home works, you either go before or after the bad guys.

The ultimate inisitave method: have your players sit at the table in order of dexterity and go around the table highest to lowest.

At dnd club I try to seat people in passive initiative order. I do typically go monsters in the middle and let the one opening action happen. You mentioned that Turn order consistency can be boring however in my experience having players get used to the arrangements lead to parts of the table pre planning and helping my table be ready when their turns arrive.

I'm going to be using a variation on the "don't roll monster initiative" in my games if possible.

Initiative "DCs" reflecting the speed of the creature. Giant snail? Initiative 5. Bandit? Initiative 10. Goblin? Initiative 15. Quicksilver golem? Initiative 25.

There's another rule that I've seen used
This is from 2nd edition
Use a roll of dex mod + weapon type
Small weapons are faster (daggers, unarmed strikes, etc,)
Heavier, clunkier weapons are slower
Maybe add qualifiers for reach, distance weapons

Simplest method is the first one I learned, from the Holmes bluebook: The players go in DEX order, and the GM rolls the monster's DEX at the start. You can seat the players in DEX order so that it goes around the table in familiar fashion, with the GM jumping in at a different spot each time.

I don't like it. My way of speeding combat is to tell them battle is fast if they need to think and haven't done it already it means that character is shocked and skips turn, even if they ask me what is happening which I just described means their character is assessing battlefield and skips turn while I describe everything once again for them

I like the early bird attack, and started using it. For me the player that first reacts to a situation gets to be first in initiative order

Ignores dex bonus for faster characters and items that give advantage on initiative or other bonuses. Still doesnt work for me. As cumbersome as initiative is it's a necessary evil.

I have used that at the beggining of the session, all players and the DM roll 3 sets of initiative that I write down on a piece of paper. Then when combat arrives, you just put out the first set of initiatives and start combat right away without any stoping. Now is up to the players to know what to do.

Or just 10 + dex mod, everyone knows when they'll go after which party member, and the DM can just look at stat blocks to quickly place it in DM prep before the game even begins.

I played for awhile with Dungeon Craft's method and wound up trimming it a bit into a more streamlined method:
1) immediate reactions; first player who opens the door and sees the monster can declare what they are doing, or how they are reacting to that.
2) short group planning phase where they agree on the general plan of action.
3) players proceed in an order they agree on based on what works best: so if the wizard wants to cast sleep on the goblins he can go first and the others will deal with the aftermath, if they want to bar the door then the Barbarian goes first slamming the door shut and holding it closed while the fighter grabs and places the bar, or if they want to negotiate the bard starts off the party with some discuss or maybe the calm emotions spell.
The trick being the players all get a chance to speak up first before anything big happens and can sort out how best to do that. None of this the barbarian rolled highest initiative and decided to just start killing everything in sight while the rest of the party was just their to talk or the wizard fire-balling the room after half the party had already rushed in.
This also lets you transition scenes between combat, social, and skill encounters seamlessly, and lets the party try out different and unusual approaches to the problem.

yes im late to giving my ideas but honestly when I heard 'early bird' method im surprised it wasn't something you'd made so it's established in downtime. Perhaps after a short or lnog rest, whilst they roll up hit die, players also can roll their initative and keep that with them for the rest of the session, sort of establishing 'okay, you feel extremely energized after this long rest, whilst the others maybe aren't all that morning people today or have a headache, so they move slower in combat' . Hell, maybe after a player is hit by the effects of a specific spell or after they just ate a hearty meal it might change their order. (say last combat a player cast haste on themself. then they could reroll the dice next rest but take maybe the lower as that spell really left them tired after all that running. Or the really good meal! You could say that they can reroll their initative and take it if it's higher.) It also can help establish, say, travelling order if players don't know what order to go in too much or can't decide or just other things that have a minor explanation (if your group cares about that stuff) like 'oh they're more awake, they should maybe do this'

I also have an alternative, how about having players roll initiative at the start of the session or at the end of a rest adn have them seat around the table in that order, then just pre roll initiative for the monsters at the beginning of the session

My only problem with this is that since initiative is such a big part of Dnd several subclasses now have features that affect initiative. So now, you’ve either completely nerfed some subclasses by making some of their early features useless. Or, you now have to homebrew several stuff to replace this features.

I have my players pre roll initiative in between combats so everyone knows where they are on initiative order before combat even starts