Which editions of D&D had Initiative rules like 5E's Speed Factor Initiative?

Question

D&D 5E has a variant Initiative rule called Speed Factor Initiative which has two differences compared to the standard Initiative rule:

• Initiative is rolled every combat round
• In addition to normal Initiative modifier (mostly DEX) there is an additional modifier that depends on the Action to be taken.

I recently read that a similar approach was typically used in old versions of D&D (such as AD&D 2E). If I understood correctly this edition used an initiative per side which was rolled each round and had a weapon dependent modifier as tie-breaker.

I was wondering:

• Which editions of D&D used an Initiative system like Speed Factor Initiative (i.e. rolled every round and with Action dependent modifiers*)?
• In which editions, if any, was such an Initiative system the default?

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* Since a weapon can be changed between from one round to the next, this also counts for my question.

Answer 1

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition and earlier

This Merric’s Musings blog post describes 2e initiative, and accurately says:

It is probably fair to say that the main line of D&D development never had a coherent initiative system until AD&D 2nd Edition came along in 1989. Gary Gygax was many things, but a writer of clear, unambiguous combat rules was not one of them.

2e had 3 initiative systems, the base system and 2 optional systems. In the base system each side rolled a d10 with the lower roll going first - very simple and straightforward. System 2 used an each side roll but each creature then added their spell or weapon speed and actions were resolved in ascending order - this is what you describe. System 3 was like system 2 but each creature rolled their own dice.

This was a vast improvement on 1e. I recently DMed a 1e game for nostalgia reasons, and even with the help of DMPrata’s compilation of combat rules, it was too damn hard to do it right - initiative starts on p.6 and runs to p.10 of the 20 page document.

Basic D&D did not use this type of system; there were several iterations, but none used speed factor, though some did use per-side initiative.

Prior to these editions, D&D used Chainmail initiative - per side and turn by turn with phases.