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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Uller" data-source="post: 6864928" data-attributes="member: 413">It is reasonable for the PCs to surprise monsters in this case unless there is some reason why the monsters may have heard the PCs approach the door (such as one monster is alert or has some sort of heightened senses).  I always require a stealth check, often against disadvantage passive perception...clumsy, heavily armored PCs have blown it on a few occasions.  However, monsters should react in a reasonable manner.  If you're a guard sitting in your guard room playing dice or snoozing or whatever because NOTHING has happened in the last 6 months then suddenly 4 murder hobos burst in and kill 2 of your comrades before you can even grab a weapon, what are you going to do?  Fight them toe-to-toe at a tremendous disadvantage or run down the hall and alert everyone else to the danger?  Even the noise of combat should have some chance of alerting someone...especially spells or other effects that do thunder damage and the like...It should not be an easy thing for a party to sneak through the dungeon and gain surprise on every encounter.Also, we modified the surprise rules for my game mainly because as written the surprise rules leave open the possibility of one side getting to act twice before the other side can act once.  The way I explained it to my players: "do you want it to be possible for a high damage monster to get two rounds of attacks on you if you get jumped?".  So basically we added the "surprised" condition:- attacks against you have advantage- you have disadvantage on DEX saving throws- you cannot take reactions- on your turn, start of turn effects take place then you are no longer surprised and your initiative is moved to the end of the queue- once your turn comes up again, only new start of turn effects take place, you take your turn then all end of turn effects take placeSo let's say PCs A B C and D surprise monster Z.  Everyone rolls init normally (so high dex critters are good at becoming unsurprised).  Init order ends up beingA B Z C D.A and B both have advantage on attacks on Z and Z has disadvantage on dex saves during their turn and can't take any reactions.  On it's turn Z is no longer surprised but new init order becomes A B C D Z but C and D do not get advantage then Z gets it's normal turn and combat progresses from there.</blockquote>

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