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<blockquote data-quote="Primitive Screwhead" data-source="post: 2627360" data-attributes="member: 20805">Infiiniti, you mistook my reading of the rules.&nbsp;I treat it as if the aware side can 'start combat' by themselves. Once in initiative, they can stack in the order they wish, but the first one to act is the initiative number they fall behind.&nbsp;Then, when they encounter the non-aware side, I treat is as if the non-aware is joining a battle in progress. No surprise round, but they may not be prepared and have to spend some time drawing weapons, dropping thier ale, whatever.&nbsp;This method increases the usefullness of a succesful ambush as the party gets normal actions in the first round. Cyclic initiative solves the rest.&nbsp;The ambushee's still get chances to notice the ambush, potentially messing up the entire deal.&nbsp;I use the RAW as it is generally accepted in other situations, as I feel that the surprise round/initiative system works fairly well. The details of a well planned ambush are grey areas in the RAW. My intepretation tends to encourage players to plan ambushes instead of just jumping into combat only to have a different intepretation spoil the plan.And, of course, turn about is fair play. The group occasionally faces similarly executed ambushes.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Primitive Screwhead, post: 2627360, member: 20805"] Infiiniti, you mistook my reading of the rules. I treat it as if the aware side can 'start combat' by themselves. Once in initiative, they can stack in the order they wish, but the first one to act is the initiative number they fall behind. Then, when they encounter the non-aware side, I treat is as if the non-aware is joining a battle in progress. No surprise round, but they may not be prepared and have to spend some time drawing weapons, dropping thier ale, whatever. This method increases the usefullness of a succesful ambush as the party gets normal actions in the first round. Cyclic initiative solves the rest. The ambushee's still get chances to notice the ambush, potentially messing up the entire deal. I use the RAW as it is generally accepted in other situations, as I feel that the surprise round/initiative system works fairly well. The details of a well planned ambush are grey areas in the RAW. My intepretation tends to encourage players to plan ambushes instead of just jumping into combat only to have a different intepretation spoil the plan. And, of course, turn about is fair play. The group occasionally faces similarly executed ambushes. [/QUOTE]

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