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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Noctem" data-source="post: 6820345" data-attributes="member: 6801315">The houserule is only related to surprise and the transition from the triggering event into initiative.  The houserule doesn't change anything else.  Some of the problems off hand would be:1.  Initiative being called for no discernible reason as far as the players are concerned.  (breaks immersion, spoils events for the players themselves, causes confusion, etc..)2.  Players being told they are surprised during round 1 for no reason they understand (or in fact no mechanical reason) because the person initiating combat (for example), in other words causing the surprise, has not yet acted or had a turn.  (players questioning what's happening, confusion, having to tell them they can't do anything until the triggering creature has had a turn, assigning surprise for no actual reason since nothing has happened, etc..)3.  Players being told they can't do anything until the person causing surprise has acted.  (losing any relevant effects within round 1, potentially ruining the plans of the party, skipping initiative down to the triggering creature, removing options from the players, etc..)4.  Narrative issues because the person initiating combat might be required to perform certain actions for story purposes, which gets you into simply giving the NPC / PC the first position in the initiative.  (story line events can be disrupted, PC plans disrupted, I mean this is just off-hand, I rule from scenario to scenario.  An example scenario would be:The party is moving on a trail in the woods, they enter the kill zone of a goblin ambush without noticing the goblins since they are hidden (either passive or active perception failed to beat stealth).  The goblin leader then fires an arrow at one of the PC's to initiate the attack (or yells out in goblin, or whatever prompts combat.  Could be many things, such as triggering a trap.  But let's say for the sake of the example it's an attack.)  I would resolve the attack first, then determine who hadn't noticed the goblins before the triggering event (the attack) to apply surprise as appropriate, and finally I would have everyone roll initiative and start at the top of the initiative order.Note of course that the reverse is also true in the case of the party lying in ambush.  They would get to plan out their ambush, decide who would trigger combat via an attack, yell, triggering a trap or whatever else and then continue from there per the RAW.So what happens if we go by the RAW only?  First, if the triggering event is a goblin triggering a trap / making an attack that would meet your hostile intent requirement so you would roll initiative before that happens.  That means that if the goblin triggering the trap / making an attack is low on the initiative order.  The party is presumably surprised for no reason they understand since nothing has happened.  The trap / attack that was the "hostile intent" and the "triggering event" doesn't actually follow the narrative.  If it's a yell then the problems aren't really present since you can yell outside of combat.  For me, telling people "ok roll initiative" is less fun and interesting as narrating the event, "an arrow flies out of the bushes at you", and then asking for initiative from the party.  At least that way the players start immediately talking about what the plan is vs "why are we rolling initiative?", "why are we surprised?", "Why don't I get to play my turn?", etc..</blockquote>

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