Suggestion: Surprise gives advantage/disadvantage on initiative.

[UngeheuerLich]

I also thought about adding both.

And what is when you still end up lower than the enemy? Those things happen. Maybe he can just react before you can do something.

Of course, if you are hidden, and the enemy is faster, I would:
- let him do whatever he was doing before, maybe bringing the rogue into a worse position than he´d liked.
- make a perception check, as the rogue was clearly trying to use the element of surprise but somehow managed to act very slowly.

 

[john112364]

While I agree that a -20 is awkward, I think the reasoning for it is that it only penalizes those that are surprised.
Let's say a band of goblins sneaks up on a party of 5 pcs. Two make their perception check and are not surprised. Three do not so they are surprised and roll initiative at -20. On the other hand if instead you grant +20 to the surprisers what about the two PCs who made their perception checks. Do they get a +20 as well? I guess you could say yes even though they technically haven't surprised anyone. I suppose the results would be similar.

Personally, I'm in favor of the following:
On a surprise round everyone rolls initiative as normal. Anyone surprised during that round loses their actions for that round.

 

[Croesus]

I see two elements to this discussion: simplicity and impact.

Simplicity seems straigtforward, though corner cases can cause issues. I like the idea of using an existing mechanic (advantage/disadvantage). But as others have pointed out, it can seem confusing if only part of a group is surprised - all individuals who are not surprised, including some members of the surprised group, would have advantage. Granting disadvanage to surprised individuals would be simpler, but leads to the issue of impact.

Impact revolves around how important should surprise be. Some like the idea that anyone not surprised gets a free action, then normal initiative applies. That makes surprise powerful. Some suggest granting advantage/disadvantage in addtiona to having a free round, making surprise incredibly deadly (for the surprised party).

Eliminating the free round reduces the benefits of surprise noticeably. Adding advantage, disadvantage, or both, directly impacts the benefits of surprise, but with the potential to add some slight additional complexity. The idea of using both advantage and disadvantage is because some want to limit the possibility that a surprised character still moves early in the round.

My preference is that the base rules make surprise useful, but not overpowering. And that they use an established mechanic (advantage/disadvantage). Add in a short sidebar discussing some basic options for tweaking the surprise rules and I think most folks will be able to pick the level of simplicity and impact they want.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

+20 to the unsurprised party might work better.

 

[Ellington]

I agree. The -20 to the roll is incredibly fiddly. I'd even prefer surprised foes to just be treated as rolling a 1 on their initiative.

 

[Li Shenron]

Of course, I still think its best to give ambushers each an action and then roll normal initiative; but the advantage/disadvantage thing could work and I like it better than -20.

Personally, I'm in favor of the following:
On a surprise round everyone rolls initiative as normal. Anyone surprised during that round loses their actions for that round.

I think the intent of the designers was to exactly remove the extra round for the ambushers, presumably it was deemed too good (in 3ed, I usually only granted a partial action in the surprise round, so no full attacks). I don't know if this is the right thing to do, I just say that as far as I can tell this is the reason behind this new surprise rules proposal.

I agree. The -20 to the roll is incredibly fiddly. I'd even prefer surprised foes to just be treated as rolling a 1 on their initiative.

I really don't understand why many think that -20 is fiddly or kludgy... mechanically it's very simple and should work neatly, it just means that almost always the ambushers go before those they managed to surprise, but never get 2 full rounds in a row (as was the case in 3ed).

The only problem with the -20 is that you end up with negative initiative results. It's not really a mechanical problem, just aesthetic because negative numbers don't look very nice (and some people may even have issues calculating subtractions...).

+20 would look better, but you made a very good point that then you'd have to grant it too to those who succeed at not being surprised so the rule would still not look elegant.