Surprise round question

KahlessNestor said:

So now I'm questioning my decision. Wondering how others would handle it.

Party is tracking a band of goblins across a grassland that kidnapped a young woman. They are ambushed by a small group of goblins and wolves. It's night, they have 2 torches lit. Grass is waist high, easy enough to hide goblins, though wolves need to be prone.

Goblins roll high stealth. Only one with high enough passive perception to notice would be the ranger, but she's tracking, so by the travel rules she doesn't get a perception to notice. Wolves roll abysmally low, so everyone would notice them.

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Except for the ranger. Grassland isn't her favored terrain, so because she's tracking she has no chance of noticing hidden threats. When combat starts, the ranger is surprised.

Question 1: Do you roll a Stealth check for each group of monster, or just one? Which Stealth do you use? Higher (goblin +6)? Or lower (wolf +4)? Or split the difference (+5)? Or maybe lower, but advantage (for the Help action)?

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I do what you seem to have done and roll a separate check for each group of identical monsters.

I then gave the goblins a surprise round, but left the wolves out. I am wondering if that was correct.

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No, in the first round everyone except the ranger goes on their turn in initiative order. Once the ranger's turn is over, she's no longer surprised.

Question 2: Should I instead have given no surprise round (players should have known something was there, because terrible wolf rolls) and given the goblins advantage on their first attacks for being hidden?

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No one except the ranger is surprised because everyone else noticed the wolves even though they failed to notice the goblins. No matter how low the wolves rolled, however, the ranger would not notice them or the goblins because she is not alert to hidden danger. If the goblins have a ranged attack available to them, they can attack with advantage from within the dense foliage. The wolves probably have to come out into the open to attack and no longer be unseen.

Thanks for the input.

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You're welcome.

Hriston said:

Why on earth would it require a Perception check to hear any loud or even normal level of noise within hearing range?

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Back in the Dark Times of 3e D&D, there was this idea of "Rules As Physics" where people argued that the rules should mechanically emulate every aspect of in-world reality, obviating the need for common sense/GM judgement (the latter aka 'magical tea party' by its detractors). I think this legacy still lives on here & there in how people think about the game. (I see this 3e legacy in other areas too, eg my 5e Wizard player tends to assume 3e style Caster Supremacy/Magic Trumps Mundane, and is surprised when I allow non-magical counters to magical effects, or 4e style opposed rolls eg athletics vs arcana - she thinks the arcane effect should always beat the mundane ability).

Hriston said:

That's cool. I guess I just run Perception a little differently than you and some of the other posters in this thread. In my games, Perception is only for those who are keeping watch. If you aren't keeping an eye out for hidden threats, I don't consult your Perception score, and that goes for sleeping people as well.



I guess I should have explained that to begin with. I was thinking in terms of exploration, however, rather than combat, because that's usually where you find players declaring that their characters are going to sleep. In the OP I don't think anyone was asleep, so I really wasn't speaking to the ambush situation presented there. But yeah, if combat begins while anyone is sleeping, I have them immediately wake up, usually explained by some noise or commotion, or just the imminence of the attack jolting them to consciousness.



To clarify, because I've made some statements here that may be seen as contradictory, if circumstances are appropriate for hiding, such as a dark room (not an unusual situation to find someone asleep), an assassin can get surprise by just declaring that he sneaks up on the sleeper and may have the opportunity to get within very close striking range before declaring an attack and starting combat. For comparison, I would also auto-award surprise if a creature was ambushed while mapping or foraging. On the other hand, I'm not going to make attacking a sleeping creature more powerful than getting surprise some other way. I also don't think it's very realistic for a creature to stay asleep while someone is plunging a knife into them no matter how low a Perception score it has.

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I guess that the reason I find your posted rulings astonishing is that you seem to have an aversion to rolling! You just rule either 'autofail' or 'auto success', when I think that the rest of us roll. I think that the game is set up so that 'rolling' is how we find out what happens; was the ninja stealthy enough? Did the PC wake up in time? Roll, and find out!

If I made a PC and devoted most of my choices toward stealth/assassination, I'd be right miffed if all of my victims auto woke up!

If my PC was all about Perception and heightened senses and paranoia, I'd be mightily miffed at autofailed Perception.

If I was about to attack an enemy or he was about to attack me, I'd be astonished if the DM just 'ruled' hit or miss instead of rolling.

When I saw the title of the thread, "Surprise Round Question," I thought this was a game show thread with a mysterious prize inside. Turns out, I'm surprised.

KahlessNestor said:

So now I'm questioning my decision. Wondering how others would handle it.

Party is tracking a band of goblins across a grassland that kidnapped a young woman. They are ambushed by a small group of goblins and wolves. It's night, they have 2 torches lit. Grass is waist high, easy enough to hide goblins, though wolves need to be prone.

Goblins roll high stealth. Only one with high enough passive perception to notice would be the ranger, but she's tracking, so by the travel rules she doesn't get a perception to notice. Wolves roll abysmally low, so everyone would notice them.

Question 1: Do you roll a Stealth check for each group of monster, or just one? Which Stealth do you use? Higher (goblin +6)? Or lower (wolf +4)? Or split the difference (+5)? Or maybe lower, but advantage (for the Help action)?

I then gave the goblins a surprise round, but left the wolves out. I am wondering if that was correct.

Question 2: Should I instead have given no surprise round (players should have known something was there, because terrible wolf rolls) and given the goblins advantage on their first attacks for being hidden?

Thanks for the input.

Sent from my SM-G900P using EN World mobile app

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As Defcon 1 said about the decision on rolling for the group, individual, etc. I prefer to allow goblins and other creatures that are setting up an ambush to use their passive stealth with advantage if two or more creatures are working together to setup an ambush. In my mind, goblin A is telling goblin B that it is too loud or can still be seen and isn't all that stealthy. Then the same happens with reversed rolls. I would not allow this to occur with the wolves. However, I would use the wolf passive stealth score rather than rolling. In this case, I'm assuming the wolves are repeating their stealth check to remain unseen and unheard as long as their state does not change. If the wolf moves 5-ft or more (I use grids), then a stealth check is needed to remain undetected.

I believe you identified that you are familiar with the first round of combat and determining if a creature is surprised or not. If there is still a question about this please let us know.

S'mon said:

Back in the Dark Times of 3e D&D, there was this idea of "Rules As Physics" where people argued that the rules should mechanically emulate every aspect of in-world reality, obviating the need for common sense/GM judgement (the latter aka 'magical tea party' by its detractors). I think this legacy still lives on here & there in how people think about the game. (I see this 3e legacy in other areas too, eg my 5e Wizard player tends to assume 3e style Caster Supremacy/Magic Trumps Mundane, and is surprised when I allow non-magical counters to magical effects, or 4e style opposed rolls eg athletics vs arcana - she thinks the arcane effect should always beat the mundane ability).

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I haven't played 3.x. Its publication coincided with a period of my life that was on the one hand somewhat unstable, and on the other one in which concerns of work and family took precedent. I only came back to RPGing when my son was old enough to take an interest, which coincided with the beginning of the 5e Playtest, after I had lost interest in D&D with the publication of AD&D 2e. I remember being disappointed with the shift in aesthetics that edition took more than anything else.

Nevertheles, for me, the temptation to see the system of D&D (whatever the edition) as some sort of grand simulator accountable for any and every world event has been, and remains to this day, a very seductive aspect of the D&D experience. Nowadays however, I look at the system less as the physics of the game-world and more as the logic of adventure stories, which IMO is more in line with the goals Gygax et al. had in mind when designing the game.

Hriston said:

Nevertheles, for me, the temptation to see the system of D&D (whatever the edition) as some sort of grand simulator accountable for any and every world event has been, and remains to this day, a very seductive aspect of the D&D experience. Nowadays however, I look at the system less as the physics of the game-world and more as the logic of adventure stories, which IMO is more in line with the goals Gygax et al. had in mind when designing the game.

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Aye - hence 'rules not rulings'.A system could certainly simulate reality down to the finest detail. We're nowhere near there yet - so we have a human agent to arbitrate. Common sense should always trump our abstracted manner of simulating reality - and of course, one table's common sense may not reflect another table's. And currently, a human agent is our best source of common sense, hence we have a DM.

[sblock] Regarding Gygax's playstyle, I found this quote by Gygax:

''The new D&D is too rule intensive. It's relegated the Dungeon Master to being an entertainer rather than master of the game. It's done away with the archetypes, focused on nothing but combat and character power, lost the group cooperative aspect, bastardized the class-based system, and resembles a comic-book superheroes game more than a fantasy RPG where a player can play any alignment desired, not just lawful good.''

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..now personally, I like a could combat simulation as much I like hours of pure in-character chat. Gygax had his way of playing, his table, other folks have theirs. D&D has and continues to grow in many ways - it is, after all, just a popular collection of mechanics and each of us is free to use/ignore/re-write them however we wish.[/sblock]

Arial Black said:

I guess that the reason I find your posted rulings astonishing is that you seem to have an aversion to rolling! You just rule either 'autofail' or 'auto success', when I think that the rest of us roll. I think that the game is set up so that 'rolling' is how we find out what happens; was the ninja stealthy enough? Did the PC wake up in time? Roll, and find out!

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The extent to which different DMs use the dice is covered under "The Role of Dice" on pp 236-37 of the DMG. You seem to be advocating for the approach known as "Rolling with It". One of that approach's drawbacks, according to the DMG, is that it can lessen roleplaying if players' die rolls always determine success or failure, rather than their decisions.

I'm not averse to rolling dice. I'm not a proponent of "Ignoring the Dice", as you seem to be making me out to be. But I do think, for me, fun is heightened when game-play is punctuated with fewer, more dramatic die rolls, rather than when die rolls become more routine. Again IMO, this is best supported by what's described as "The Middle Path", which takes a healthy dose of DM adjudication and is summed up with the quote, "Remember that dice don't run your game -- you do." I believe this is the playstyle the game is best set up to support.

My "middle path" isn't going to look just like anyone else's, however. What it means to me is that I'm only going to engage the fortune mechanic in situations where there is enough uncertainty about the outcome, in my view, that it could go either way. And I'm not an arbitrary or capricious DM by any means. I simply have some guidelines I follow about what sort of circumstances will make the outcome of certain actions uncertain.

Is a ninja, or anyone else for that matter, stealthy enough to escape the notice of a sleeping creature that by dint of being unconscious is unaware of its surroundings? Yes! All it has to do is declare that it's being stealthy and the sleeping creature won't notice it. And even if the ninja doesn't try to be stealthy, the sleeping creature won't wake up unless a loud noise, or some other disturbance wakes it up, so all the ninja has to do is not make a loud noise to avoid waking the creature. So unless the ninja's player tells me they are making a loud noise or trying to wake the creature, it stays asleep.

Does the sleeping creature wake up in time to defend itself? I'm not sure how Wisdom (Perception) applies to the situation. For me, it usually comes into play when there is an actual attempt to detect something. Sleeping creatures aren't trying to detect anything. Perception "measures your general awareness of your surroundings", but we already know how aware the sleeping creature is of its surroundings. It's unconscious and therefore completely unaware of its surroundings. To me, whether the creature wakes up in time is better measured with a DEX check. When combat begins, roll initiative. If the sleeping creature wins, it wakes up in time to take action. If it loses, the ninja attacks first.

If I made a PC and devoted most of my choices toward stealth/assassination, I'd be right miffed if all of my victims auto woke up!

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Why? If appropriate conditions prevail, you can very easily gain surprise over your victim and strike the first blow. If they don't, then your particular talents aren't coming into play. Stealth doesn't keep people asleep while you're attacking them after all.

If my PC was all about Perception and heightened senses and paranoia, I'd be mightily miffed at autofailed Perception.

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Unaware of surroundings is unaware of surroundings. You can't keep watch while you're asleep. Even the Alert feat requires you to be conscious to avoid surprise.

If I was about to attack an enemy or he was about to attack me, I'd be astonished if the DM just 'ruled' hit or miss instead of rolling.

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A more apt analogy would be if an enemy was about to attack you, and you told me you were going to make no attempt to avoid the attack. In that case, I would rule it an auto-hit. A sleeping creature is making no attempt to notice things around it, so its Wisdom check is irrelevant in answering whether it notices something.

What I find interesting is that before the tangent, the only answer given to the OP doesn't match the RAW.

RAW for determining surprise says each and every creature attempting to sneak up on the other side must make a Stealth check vs passive perception. So ruling 'one roll for each type of creature' or the like isn't following the RAW. (Which is fine and dandy, but worth noting.)

O would seriously question the idea that one is unaware of one's surroundings when asleep. Sleep is different from unconscious. I know from experiance that I am aware enough to know when my power goes out when I am asleep. I have also woken up just from the fact that a creepy roommate was sitting in a chair next to my bed watching me. He wasn't making any noise or anything. Kust a little preternatural awareness something was off. Hindbrain thinking, if you will.

So yes, you are aware of your surroundings when asleep. Perhaps not as much, but it's there. You're not unconscious. That's a completely different medical condition.

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