Surprise!

[P1NBACK]

For those people that want devastating surprise rounds, are you ok with the same happening to your PCs? Enemies maybe getting two attacks, or double damage as someone mentioned?

Absolutely. Makes scouting and alertness important.

 

[Ahnehnois]

For those people that want devastating surprise rounds, are you ok with the same happening to your PCs? Enemies maybe getting two attacks, or double damage as someone mentioned?

Yes. I'm okay with the DM killing my character in its sleep if he has a good reason for it. (There aren't many good reasons to do that though.)

The need to have safe accomodations, defined watch periods, and skilled scouts is kind of a D&D trope; this is just more incentive for you to be good at not being surprised.

Oh and I think that there is already a difference between surprising the armed guards to surprising the feasting guards - the latter must spend movement and actions to get up, get their weapons and so forth. Perhaps the costs of getting up from prone/sitting and drawing a weapon are not high enough?

You make a good point, but even so I think a surprise round is indeed a reasonable cost.

 

[Minigiant]

Surprise means an extra round.

It mean the ambushes enter combat and the surprised are scenery. The unaware are trees. Fleshy trees. Trees don't get actions.

 

[the Jester]

I'm a huge fan of the surprise round.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

Should the surprise round be an entire round or just an action?

I'm wary of this sort of rule, because it is troublesome mid-combat. I think that if you instead treat surprisers as a separate initiative group to the surprised, and the first group gets advantage on the second, you have a rule that can be implemented mid-combat. It only allows for 1 surprise attack though.

 

[Lanefan]

Should the surprise round be an entire round or just an action?

An entire round for melee. A single action for anything else.

I'm wary of this sort of rule, because it is troublesome mid-combat. I think that if you instead treat surprisers as a separate initiative group to the surprised, and the first group gets advantage on the second, you have a rule that can be implemented mid-combat. It only allows for 1 surprise attack though.

I'm missing somethng, perhaps, but I thought surprise was only relevant at the beginning of combat. Once combat began there was no "surprise" as different mechanics took over.

New entrants joining into an existing combat should roll initiative as normal; if they are hidden before they act their initiative can be taken as when they appear and act. If a Thief is sneaking into the combat they get a backstrike or sneak attack if they make their Hide (in Shadows) roll - in the roar of combat Move Silently is pretty well irrelevant.

The problem is, surprise is almost always situationally dependent; and this is one area where the DM might have to do some on-the-fly rulings now and then for the sake of realism - as others have noted there's a big difference between surprising an alert guard and surprising one who is half-passed-out after a night at the tavern.

Lan-"is someone having a surprise party?"-efan

 

[Jester David]

The full round of actions is typically too much, so limiting it to moving or taking an action (but not both) might be better.

Personally, I like being surprised conferring disadvantage to the person being surprised more than advantage for the surprisers. It's easier to rule: if you were unaware of the opponents you have disadvantage with initiative, allowing for mixed results on both sides.

 

[ComradeGnull]

I kind of like the idea of a two tiered system:

Startled: You have reason to suspect danger, but can't anticipate what it is going to be. You're opening a door, wary of what might be behind it, but don't know if a trap is going to fire a crossbow bolt at your head, a crouching goblin is going to cut your Achilles tendon, or a drop bear is going to fall from the ceiling. You take a significant penalty to initiative, but fantastic reflexes or spectacular luck mean you might instinctively swat the danger out of the air before you are really aware of it.

Surprised: You are asleep, unwary, or distracted (say by fighting someone else looking the other way). You have no reasonable hope of defending yourself from an attack until you manage to figure out what is going on and orient yourself towards danger. The ambusher gets a full round to wail on your inept person and then enters initiative normally- if you get ambushed by a big, slow moving critter, they get the first move but then may lose initiative to you.

 

[Stormonu]

There should be two levels of surprise. The surprise faced by an adventuring party creeping through and primed for trouble is not the same as that faced by a group of people, swords sheathed at the most, and busy chatting and/or eating. The first should be a standard action and flat footed, or even just +20 to initiative. The second on the other hand should be incredibly powerful.

There already was a difference in the two, when drawing a weapon takes an action.

 

[Vael]

I kind of like the idea of a two tiered system:

Startled: You have reason to suspect danger, but can't anticipate what it is going to be. You're opening a door, wary of what might be behind it, but don't know if a trap is going to fire a crossbow bolt at your head, a crouching goblin is going to cut your Achilles tendon, or a drop bear is going to fall from the ceiling. You take a significant penalty to initiative, but fantastic reflexes or spectacular luck mean you might instinctively swat the danger out of the air before you are really aware of it.

Surprised: You are asleep, unwary, or distracted (say by fighting someone else looking the other way). You have no reasonable hope of defending yourself from an attack until you manage to figure out what is going on and orient yourself towards danger. The ambusher gets a full round to wail on your inept person and then enters initiative normally- if you get ambushed by a big, slow moving critter, they get the first move but then may lose initiative to you.

Interesting, but I'd combine it with the other idea of using advantage, if you are startled, enemies gain advantage over you. If you're surprised, you also have disadvantage on your first turn.