D&D 5E Flatfooted? Or: Advantage on Surprise?

[Mercule]

At some point, my group got into a disconnect about how things work for surprise rounds. With the holidays and a couple of personal events, it's been almost a month since the last game, and we had a difference in recollection, last night. My main goal is in fairness and knowing the RAW. With that in mind, I'm asking folks to help me out, here.

A couple of players (specifically the rogue) recall me giving advantage on attacks made against surprised enemies. This is, understandably, important to the rogue, to help with sneak attack.

My recollection is that the rogue was usually hiding/scouting, so was getting advantage from that, not from surprise. In this particular case, the enemy was 30 feet away, and the rogue wanted to engage in melee, so I ruled that charging across an open room negated any advantage from being hidden, so no advantage. Now, I do allow PCs and NPCs to take a "5 foot step" out of cover to shoot/swing as part of the attack, while retaining hidden status -- it's a way of giving the feel of being mugged/ambushed. That's very, very different from a 30 foot charge, though.

I can also find no rule that grants any sort of bonus to the attacker during the surprise round. The best I've got is that the defender doesn't get a reaction during the surprise round. But, it's possible I'm just not remembering a rule that I'd applied, previously.

 

[Henrix]

You don't have advantage when attacking surprised enemies - not being able to act or react for a round is bad enough.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Yeah, as I recall surprise round is just the unsurprised acts.

If you wanted to do a surprise round that is a little less harsh, give everyone the chance to act -- if you are unsurprised, your actions have advantage, while if surprised, your actions have disadvantage.

 

[Joe Liker]

It doesn't really matter what happened before. Even if you did mistakenly give advantage for surprise in the past, just explain to them that you shouldn't have, and you're going to do it correctly from now on. It's all part of the growing pains when learning a new system.

 

[Riley37]

The difference between "I'm cautiously advancing 30' with my shield up and weapon drawn", versus "I'm walking calmly down the street (or forest path), just enjoying life" is a distinction beyond the granularity of 5E, along with facing/flanking, or the differences between a glaive, a guisarme, and a glaive-guisarme.

I prefer house rules in which the former gets DEX bonus to AC, and the latter has an effective DEX 0, because none of their movements are responses to possible threats. But those are definitely house rules.

 

[designbot]

Is your rogue a level 3+ Assassin?

PHB page 97:

Assassinate
Starting at 3rd level, you are at your deadliest when you get the drop on your enemies. You have advantage on attack rolls against any creature that hasn’t taken a turn in the combat yet. In addition, any hit you score against a creature that is surprised is a critical hit.

 

[guachi]

Question: If Person B is surprised by Person A (an Assassin), when do you roll initiative? If you roll initiative before the surprise round and surprised Person B wins then he goes first. He can't do anything as he's surprised, but he does go first. Therefore, Person B has taken a turn and Person A doesn't get advantage, unless he's still hidden. Furthermore, Person B is no longer surprised so Person A can't get his automatic critical hits.

 

[Dayte]

I'd like to see thoughts on this too -

I was thinking of the case where the assassion suprises their victim (goes in suprise round before they act) and then has a higher initiave so it goes first in the first round (getting to act before victim again)

 

[Mercule]

Is your rogue a level 3+ Assassin?

PHB page 97:

Nope. Arcane Trickster. I'm now wondering if that stuck in his head, though, when he read through, and he just confused it with the fact that he's almost always sneaking (and gets very similar bonuses from it).

 

[Trit One-Ear]

I'm of the opinion that any time you give everyone a bonus that comes as a class ability, it cheats that class out of what makes them special. As a Rogue, knowing that everyone got advantage on surprise rounds would either make me not want to choose the Assassin archetype, or be disappointed if I had already chosen it.

That being said, if you like adding this rule to your game, don't let me stop you. There is an element of realism to it that Flatfooted in 3E captured, and I understand if some players miss that. I'd just suggest giving the Assassin archetype something to make up for that choice.

Trit