D&D 5E Assassinate

[MG.0]

I think Arial Black's interpretation is too literal.

Simply "not noticing a threat" is a bad definition of surprise. It's OK as a precondition, which is how I read it in the PHB, but not a definition.

Forgetting the rules for a moment, what does it mean to be surprised? If an attacker jumps out of a tree and swings a sword at me, am I surprised? Probably (it might depend on if this happens to me every day). Is it possible I could recover my wits fast enough to do something about it, even though I didn't see the attacker while he was in the tree? Possible. Is it possible two people could drop out of the tree and both hit me before I can react? Possible. Might I be fast enough to react to one but not the other? Sure. So what kind of definition will allow all these things to possibly be true?

Surprise is noticing a threat and being unable to react to it.

So we have not noticing a threat at the start of combat being a precondition to surprise, and the effects lasting until I have recovered enough to do something about my situation. In that respect, the rules make sense to me with surprise ending as soon as you get your reaction back, i.e. after your first turn.

This quite nicely handles the situation of the hero deflecting the unseen attacker's blade in the nick of time because of superhuman reflexes, magic, or whatever. It also allows the possibility of two or more attacks striking a very surprised opponent before he can react, e.g. taking three or more arrows and stumbling forward, shocked.

This is how I will continue to play it.

 

[epithet]

Boots of Elvenkind give you advantage on stealth checks, because you're silent. If being silent gives you advantage, it just makes sense that being invisible would likewise give you advantage.

 

[MG.0]

There's no inherent advantage conferred to stealth by invisibility.

Huh? Can anyone explain how cloak of Elvenkind could give advantage on stealth checks for camouflaging you, but a cloak of invisibility wouldn't do the same? Thematically it should be even better.

 

[Paraxis]

Huh? Can anyone explain how cloak of Elvenkind could give advantage on stealth checks for camouflaging you, but a cloak of invisibility wouldn't do the same? Thematically it should be even better.

I think it falls within the scope of DM adjudication when it comes to some situations giving advantage/disadvantage.

 

[Hriston]

"Fixed" takes after its dictionary meaning - unchanging. So, the same distance every time vs doubling.

And I see our disconnect. Your talking sound pressure effect, not loudness. While loudness is somewhat subjective, there are general baselines that work well enough for this purpose. Loudness drops a bit more than twice as fast as sound pressure, which is why I suggested halving your distances.

It's generally agreed that loudness is perceived as dropping twofold for every 10dB decrease, but what's being measured here? Is it still sound pressure, or is it something else?

 

[Arial Black]

I think Arial Black's interpretation is too literal.

Simply "not noticing a threat" is a bad definition of surprise. It's OK as a precondition, which is how I read it in the PHB, but not a definition.

I have a lot of quibbles here, but I respect the fact that you've put some thought into it, trying to make the rules match the internal reality of the game world, so I'll resist the temptation to counter every little detail here.

So we have not noticing a threat at the start of combat being a precondition to surprise, and the effects lasting until I have recovered enough to do something about my situation. In that respect, the rules make sense to me with surprise ending as soon as you get your reaction back, i.e. after your first turn.

What about the situation where, in the first round, the assassin did nothing to give himself away? There is no more reason for the target to 'notice a threat' on round two than he had on round one.

Now the target, being surprised, couldn't move or act on his first turn, and on round two can do what a guy who doesn't notice a threat wants to do, but why should he suddenly be impossible to Assassinate?

The way you play it, the perfectly hidden assassin cannot aoto-crit the still totally oblivious target. Why? Conceptually, not in game terms. What has changed here, beyond the game construct of which round it is?

The way I play it, the target is still 'surprised' in round two simply because he still hasn't noticed a threat. Conceptually? The fact that you didn't notice a threat means that the enemy has the drop on you, allowing them to do their stuff while you are still on your heels. If the enemy chooses not to act in that window, then the target can continue going about his business, but is still blissfully unaware of any threat and still vulnerable to Assassinate, just as he was six seconds ago.

Here's an analogy. If you get caught speeding, you have to pay a fine before the end of the week. If you slow down before the end of the week, do you still have to pay the fine? Sure do! But the time span between getting caught speeding and paying the fine is not identical and does not define the time span that you are speeding. You are speeding until you slow down, and while you are actually speeding you are vulnerable to wrapping your car around a tree. Vulnerability to wrapping your car around a tree is not tied to whether or not you've paid the fine yet, but it is tied to whether or not you are speeding as you approach the tree.

If you are 'surprised', the 'fine' is that you cannot move/act on your first turn, nor use reactions until after that. But this effect, this 'fine', does not determine the duration of your vulnerability to Assassinate OR the duration of your surprise.

Also, your vulnerability to Assassinate does not determine the duration of your 'surprise' either; it's the other way around: the duration of your 'surprise' determines your vulnerability to Assassinate.

 

[Hriston]

I think your problem is that you believe the guidelines in the hardcovers to be integrated - in other words, you think that they are intended to be a complete system contained "within the four corners" of the documents. They are not.

No. My problem, if you wish to define it as such, is that I try to educate those who are unreceptive to broadening their understanding. It's funny that you mention integration, however, because if I were to attempt to identify your problem, it's that you interpret specific rules, in this case Assassinate, in isolation from the rest of the rules. I think you're wrong in assuming the rules are not cohesive, that they are not meant to work together. How can that be the intent? Obviously, the work was carried out by a team that compared and refined their texts to be in agreement with one another, not by isolated translators fearful of being exposed to the worlds funniest joke. If there are any significant failures of cohesion I think they can be attributed to human error, rather than that being the intent, but honestly I haven't noticed any worth mentioning. It certainly doesn't constitute a problem for me as I find that the rules all work together just fine. This is different from the meaning being contained within the four corners. Of course you have to bring an understanding of natural language to the text to discern its meaning. Of course you have to have some understanding of real situations to adjudicate the outcomes of imaginary ones. You also, in my opinion, need to understand the context of any particular rule if you are going to understand how that rule is supposed to work within the game.

We are expected to bring our knowledge and common sense to the table with us, not just our rulebooks, and so we all know what 'surprise' is. You quote what you assert to be a definition of surprise, but it isn't. It says "When you are surprised, [things happen.]" If it said "when you're an adult you can vote," it would not be accurate to say that suffrage is the definition of adulthood.

Perhaps definition was the wrong word to use. What I meant is that those thing are defining of surprise in the same way voting is defining of adulthood. If I see someone voting I think I would be correct, at least in this country, in assuming they are an adult, just as I would be correct, if those things are happening to a creature, to say the creature is currently surprised.

It's certainly not just you, and certainly not just this thread, but there seems to be a great deal of focus on the "rules as written" that runs directly counter to the "intent as written" regarding the rules, generally.

To my mind, there seem to be many who claim they understand the intent of the rules and use that as an excuse for ignoring what the rules actually say. It seems they don't understand how intent works. We can only assume that the designers wrote what they intended to write, unless they issue errata to the contrary. There is no intent to be found anywhere else.

 

[epithet]

... if I were to attempt to identify your problem, it's that you interpret specific rules, in this case Assassinate, in isolation from the rest of the rules. I think you're wrong in assuming the rules are not cohesive, that they are not meant to work together. How can that be the intent? ...
...
To my mind, there seem to be many who claim they understand the intent of the rules and use that as an excuse for ignoring what the rules actually say. It seems they don't understand how intent works. We can only assume that the designers wrote what they intended to write, unless they issue errata to the contrary. There is no intent to be found anywhere else.

I don't assume the rules are not cohesive, in fact I absolutely believe they work together. I also believe they work with--and in fact require--a creative and adaptive exercise of the "theater of the mind." That's the difference between a military simulation and a role-playing game. The simulation is bound by the rules, the role-playing game is facilitated by them.

Here is my understanding of the intent of the rules: "The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game. That said, your goal isn't to slaughter the adventurers but to create a campaign world that revolves around their actions and decisions, and to keep your players coming back for more!" That's what the DMG says, anyway.

It takes more than the rules to make the world revolve around the actions and decisions of the players. I agree that the rules work with each other, but I also believe they work with a lot of other things, too.

 

[MG.0]

I have a lot of quibbles here, but I respect the fact that you've put some thought into it, trying to make the rules match the internal reality of the game world, so I'll resist the temptation to counter every little detail here.

Thanks, making a believably consistent game world is pretty much my only goal. The rules as written hold very little interest for me beyond being a convenient starting point.

What about the situation where, in the first round, the assassin did nothing to give himself away? There is no more reason for the target to 'notice a threat' on round two than he had on round one.

Simple, if the assassin is somehow prevented from attacking, or chooses not to, then the target was never actually surprised or in combat! You can't really be surprised by something that didn't happen. He continues doing whatever he was doing before the round started. Consider the initiative roll in that case to be how fast the target WOULD have reacted if the attack had happened.

If the assassin attacks the target later, the target will still be surprised because it is the first round of combat from the target's perspective. I would also continue to use the initiative already rolled, rather than re-rolling. This assumes of course that nobody else gave the target cause for concern while the asassin hesitated.

 

[epithet]

...
Simple, if the assassin is somehow prevented from attacking, or chooses not to, then the target was never actually surprised or in combat! You can't really be surprised by something that didn't happen. He continues doing whatever he was doing before the round started. Consider the initiative roll in that case to be how fast the target WOULD have reacted if the attack had happened.

If the assassin attacks the target later, the target will still be surprised because it is the first round of combat from the target's perspective. I would also continue to use the initiative already rolled, rather than re-rolling. This assumes of course that nobody else gave the target cause for concern while the asassin hesitated.

That seems to be completely reasonable and fair.