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Message: <blockquote data-quote="77IM" data-source="post: 7796749" data-attributes="member: 12377">I struggle with this a lot, but I've developed a process that mostly works for me. It's called "advantage/disadvantage to initiative." Let me see if I can summarize:1. Roll for initiative, and the person initiating the action (the instigator) gets advantage. Here, your initiative represents your reaction time. It IS possible for someone to start doing something (e.g. cast a spell) but get interrupted because somebody else noticed and got the jump on them. (Sometimes, if a character is specifically watching to interrupt, I will give that character advantage too.)2. Roll for surprise, typically either Wisdom (Insight) vs. passive Charisma (Deception) or sometimes Wisdom (Perception) vs. passive Dexterity (Sleight of Hand). Here, the surprise result indicates whether the person knows what they are seeing and can choose to try to react. I give advantage to someone who is suspicious or to a player who's told me they're scrutinizing the target.This leads to four possible outcomes:1. The instigator wins initiative and everybody is surprised. Best case scenario for the instigator; they can't be interrupted.2. The instigator wins initiative, but some people are not surprised. Second best scenario, this is mostly the same as above, but may have implications for certain abilities (e.g. assassin rogues) and allows unsurprised characters to possibly react later in the round instead of waiting until next round.3. The instigator loses initiative, but everyone ahead of them is surprised. Third best scenario, because even though the surprised characters can't act, they can take reactions once their turn has past.4. The instigator loses initiative and doesn't surprise anyone. Worst case scenario. Instigator gets dogpiled.This mechanic heavily favors the instigator, which I think makes sense -- it's often hard to interrupt someone. BUT it's balanced by the fact that usually there's only one instigator, and a whole party of people trying to interrupt them.Also, this basically works exactly as 5E says it should. All I've really done is apply situational advantage/disadvantage to initiative, which is something most people overlook for some reason.</blockquote>

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