D&D 5E Little rules changes that still trip you up

[Mouseferatu]

This thread was very interesting until it became yet-another-stealth-assassin thread.

Yep.

 

[abirdcall]

Fair cop, it does say turn and not round, you're right. So yes, they can take reactions if they have reactions to take.

So then it boils down to an interpretation of whether "taking an action on their turn" is the same as "taking a turn," which is too damn fuzzy.

It seems to me RAI that the assassin should get their ability, but I agree the wording is vague. The auto-crit is still there in any case; it's just the advantage (and sneak attack that goes with it) that's in dispute. If the assassin strikes from hiding, they'll still have advantage anyway.

-The Gneech

It literally says 'during their turn...' how is it fuzzy whether or not they get a turn. The terminology is directly used.

Assassinate triggers when they win initiative. You figured it out, if the assassin attacks from hiding they get advantage anyway, so in addition to that if they auto-crit if the opponent is still surprised.

This is in the rules. Even still, Sage Advice was good enough to clarify it for people.

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/rules-answers-july-2016

For triggering the rogue’s Assassinate ability, when does a creature stop being surprised? After their turn in the round, or at the end of the round? The intent is that a surprised creature stops being surprised at the end of it’s first turn in combat.

 

[The_Gneech]

Heh. Okay then! It's "flat-footed" in disguise, basically.

-The Gneech

 

[Chaosmancer]

DM: 'OK, nothing happens. The guard opens a Playboy mag (Play-orc?) he had lying around and starts flicking through the pages'

Your move.

I agree, obvious counter.
Does every battle then start with a declared action? If the players are at a peace negotiation and you say “the orcish delegation roars angrily and draws their weapons, roll initiative” Is their turn spent drawing their weapons? After all, they declared an action, they can’t take that back and do something else instead, like moving or attacking.

We’re in the same situation, you’re having the player pre-commit to an action, then rolling initiative. The only time that happens seems to be with this one situation, when a player is initiating combat against an unprepared enemy.

If a spellcaster wanted to cast a fireball on a shaman (because he is standing in the middle of the enemies), initiative is rolled, they go last and the shaman splits off from the main force so that the fireball is only going to hit one person instead of the crowd, like the spellcaster intended, are they still forced to strike the shaman as they declared, or change the target hit as many people as they can?

It is a minor situation, but if the assassin has to commit to their turn, before we even enter into combat, then how many other situations do we normally let slide, that also must be followed through on? I don’t want to argue slippery slope, just that if we’re being inconsistent towards what some people have called a minor ability of the assassin we need to realize it.

You are misinterpreting what it means to win initiative and then are troubled by your own misinterpretation. Of course you are troubled by it because it doesn't make sense.

Think of it this way: The Assassin fires the bolt at their target. Target rolls initiative, if they fail they don't get a chance for a special reaction. If they succeed they do.

Also, 99% of characters won't have a reaction to use anyway. Even if the guard does succeed on initiative, they are highly unlikely to have a reaction to use. In this case it just means that they adjusted themselves (or whatever) in a way that the Assassin didn't anticipate, and so they only do sneak attack damage, not an auto-critical.

I get that you think things represent different things. Here is the thing: This isn't 3.x or 4e or some other different game.

This is how 5e has always been. You just misinterpreted how to play it and haven't been playing by the rules the whole time.

I get that much of the terminology is the same or similar to previous editions, but this is a new edition which means that it is a new game. It has different design goals and the rules are constructed in a different way. I am personally 100% on board with the new design philosophy which is probably why I read it correctly from the start.

Transition periods are always the most difficult thing to handle. In this case we are looking at how different games handle the transition from a loose narrative timing structure to a strict turn based one. 3.x is very strict in what you can do turn by turn and is much more simulationist in its approach than 5e is. 5e is more concerned with representing tropes and story beats and is more narrative in its structure than 3.x. As a result they have entirely different ways of handling a similar situation. It is because they are different games.

I’m sorry to say you are arguing under a misunderstanding. I know what the rules are, I specifically houseruled this because I felt the narrative makes no sense.

Therefore I am not playing any other game other than my own, which I recognize as being houseruled, and I hope I said that explicitly… looks like I did not. I’m thinking of the ranger discussion where I said that multiple times.

Taking your example though is interesting. Assassin fires a bolt. Initiative is rolled, guard turn comes and goes, assassins turn… he fires the bolt he just fired….

Let’s make this a coordinated group ambush. The barbarian is going to charge a second guard as soon as the assassin fires his shot. Assassin fires, initiative is rolled, the guard does nothing, the barbarian charges, then the assassin fires the bolt that signals the barbarian to charge. After all, according to Flamestrike once you declare an action you can’t take it back, so the assassin fires and barbarian charge at the same time, which is before initiative is rolled and then they roll initiative and take their actions in initiative order, which ignores the narrative. Sure, the barbarian can ready an action, but since you can only ready a single action and can no longer delay your turn the barbarian charges and then stands there as the guard attacks them because the barbarian needs to wait for his turn to make his attack. Which gives the surprised guards an entire turn to attack, sound the alarm, ect. Ambush failed because initiative decided the players did not surprise the guards, despite the fact that stealth and planning were impeccable.


But, it seems we are moving too far away from the point of the thread and driving people away from the conversation. I houseruled it to work the way I want, you guys do it the way you want. This was never a discussion about rules, only narrative.

 

[Hriston]

DM: 'OK, nothing happens. The guard opens a Playboy mag (Play-orc?) he had lying around and starts flicking through the pages'

Your move.

This is correct. You don't begin combat because someone's thinking about attacking. You begin combat because someone actually is attacking. It took me a while to figure this out for myself. When I DM, I prefer to ask for action declarations at the beginning of each round of combat, but when I run vanilla, I don't have a no-takebacksies rule. Instead, if a player declares an action that initiates combat, and then decides on her turn not to follow through and resolve that action, it's with the understanding that the action was already underway at the point at which it was aborted. In the case of a hidden rogue having declared a ranged attack on an unaware target, the arrow is in flight. Combat has begun, and the unaware target is surprised by the arrow flying towards her. Now if the rogue decides to do something else on her turn, because the target is no longer surprised, then the arrow-shot doesn't get resolved and doesn't count as an attack at all, i.e. it doesn't reveal the rogue's position. It just flies wild because at the last minute the rogue stopped concentrating on shooting and decided to do something else, but it's still enough to cause surprise in the target.

 

[abirdcall]

But, it seems we are moving too far away from the point of the thread and driving people away from the conversation. I houseruled it to work the way I want, you guys do it the way you want. This was never a discussion about rules, only narrative.

Sure, if you don't like how 5e does things then you are free to houserule.

5e is all about narrative and I think it handles this problem rather well.

We can't play the game in 6 second increments. We wouldn't be able to get anything done. So we need a way to transition from a loose time structure to an acute one.

3.x's answer was to have everything regimented in an attempt to stop people from abusing the rules. 5e's answer is to accept that people who want to abuse the rules will find ways to do so and instead give intent and guidelines on how to handle it. I prefer the latter.

If you are in a social situation and people want to start fighting (or doing anything else that others might want to have a contest to react to) then you stop and switch to a 6 second increment governed by rounds and initiative.

What you don't do is say, 'I draw my sword and attack the delegation' then when initiative is rolled and you get a 1 you say 'okay I haven't acted yet so they don't know that I am hostile. I wait to draw my sword until I get initiative 20'.

The game doesn't work like that for good reason. An easy way to see why is to switch it around on the players. Say that during a social encounter with a group of orcs they have decided to act first so they all win initiative and do lots of damage before the PCs can react. Suddenly no one talks anymore, it's just who says what they're going to do first.

That is why we have initiative in the first place. It is a randomized contest to see who gets their way. If you want to houserule it so that one side can automatically win the contest you can do so, but I don't recommend it.

 

[Olrox17]

I look at this as a difference between being totally caught off guard and unprepared and on edge or a heightened sense of awareness. The character with alertness can be completely caught off guard but they'll never be surprised because of their "spidey sense". Whether it's a heightened set of reflexes, a preternatural awareness, or something mystical. They're caught off guard but not "surprised". It's the same with being hidden. Just because you are hidden doesn't mean that no one knows or suspects that someone is there.

This works for initiative too. In my games it would go like this.

1 - Assassin (hidden): "I'm going to shoot my bow at the unaware guard!"
2 - DM: "Roll initiative."
3 - Initiative is rolled. Guard wins.
4. - DM: "Just as you prepare to draw your bow back the guards ears perk up. He appears to be on alert. Your turn."
5. - Assassin (still hidden): "Okay, I don't shoot the guard. I'll wait until he comes back around and try to line up another shot."
6. - DM: "Ok, but it may be a while, something seems to have spooked the guard and he's looking around nervously. As you wait, you notice him talking to another guards who is acting more alert now."
...

To be honest, your interpretation is the one I like the most out of all the ones I've heard on this thread. I think I'll use it for my game.

 

[abirdcall]

To be honest, your interpretation is the one I like the most out of all the ones I've heard on this thread. I think I'll use it for my game.

So you are using intiative to determine stealth and you are allowing your players to metagame the initiative contest system.

 

[Hriston]

By RAW, you are surprised at the start of combat if you don't detect a threat.

Whether you are aware of the creature or not.

I disagree with this, although it does appear to be a popular approach. To me, a straight reading of the rules indicates that you don't need to recognize the creature as a threat. You only need to notice the creature and you will not be surprised by it.

For example, you could be in high-level government-type diplomatic negotiations; you can detect all the creatures, but that doesn't mean you automatically detect the threat of the guy suddenly drawing his dagger and stabbing you with it!

This sounds like a case that needs to be resolved with an initiative roll! The rules don't say you need to detect a threat, as in determining for yourself whether someone actually poses a threat. No, they say you need to notice a threat, and if this guy has a concealed dagger and may end up stabbing you, then he is most certainly a threat. If he isn't trying to be stealthy then you automatically notice him.

The RAW is that DMs determine surprise. He can determine surprise any way he damn well pleases!

He can just say, "those guys are surprised, those guys are not!"

Usually, he will ask for opposed skill checks.

Usually those skills will be Perception versus Stealth, because usually as soon as you detect the creature you detect the threat because you have reason to believe that the troll you see wishes to kill everything it sees.

But 'Stealth versus Perception' is not the rule; 'the DM decides who is surprised' is the rule.

The rules tell the DM how to determine surprise. Someone has to try to be stealthy. If they do, their Stealth check is contested by the Perception check of anyone focused on detecting hidden threats. That's it.

 

[nexalis]

I eliminate the initiative metagame by rolling everyone's initiative behind the DM screen when there is a surprise round. That way, if the assassin has declared an attack, he has no reason not to attempt the attack, since he has no idea whether his target has beaten his initiative roll. From a narrative perspective it's:

1) Assassin: I attempt to stab the guard as he passes by.
2) DM: *silently makes some rolls behind his screen*
3) DM: OK, roll to hit.
4) Player: I roll a 19.
5) DM: You hit, but the guard flinches a little to the side at the last moment, so your assassinate ability does not trigger.