Arial Black, Saying surprise only ends when you notice a threat can lead to a nonsensical situation if for whatever reason the target does not become aware of a threat in the first round of combat. In that case he is still surprised during the second round, but can now move and act. How would you describe being unable to move and act in the first round, yet being able to move and act later all the while being oblivious of any perceived threat? It makes no sense. I think tying surprise to initiative allows modelling the situation where a heroic character can notice a surprise attack in the instant it happens. It makes intuitive sense to me. I would argue if something prevented a target from perceiving a threat through the entire round, then the target was never really in combat at all, despite rolling initiative (the fact we roll is merely an artifact of needing to determine how fast the potential target would react). So in the case the target was never attack and didn't perceive a threat, if an attack comes on the second round, the target is still surprised because it is in fact the first round of combat from his perspective. It comes out nearly the same as your method, except I find it easier to visualize.
D&D 5E Assassinate
epithet
Explorer
But in your example, Robin has an arrow drawn and ready to fire before you determine surprise, roll initiative, etc. In that circumstance, Robin should begin the first round of combat with an attack readied.
Every 6 seconds is a round, whether it is "combat" or not. If there is no initiative rolled, the assumption is that everyone's actions in that 6 second window occur simultaneously - if you need to know who's action happened first within that 6 second window, that's when you roll for initiative. You absolutely can "use an action" outside of combat. Every spell, for example, is either an action, a reaction, or a bonus action (or a 10 minute ritual, but those are different.) If you cast a normal spell, you have used an action of some sort, whether or not you're in combat or on the initiative tracker.
Look, I don't know where this attitude of "the almighty rules only mention a thing in one context, it cannot exist outside of that context" attitude comes from, but I wish it would go back there. I never saw any such thing from Basic through the 3rd edition, but I think with 3.5 and Pathfinder came a level of granularity and specificity that spawned this abomination of "if it isn't expressly written in the rules, it doesn't exist! All hail the Rules as Written!"
No one should have to spell out the ability to ready an attack before the encounter starts and initiative is rolled. The DM should be able to react and accommodate the player's actions without every little detail being specified in a hardcover. If a player holds an arrow drawn, pointed at a door, then when something comes through that door and you roll initiative, that player should start the combat with an action readied to shoot the thing that comes through the door. If he's been holding that shot for long enough, start calling for strength checks to see if he gets disadvantage on the shot. If he's got a crossbow propped on a rest, call for a wisdom check after a couple minutes to maintain the held action. The right answer is never to say "you can't have a shot ready, we haven't rolled initiative yet," because that's penalizing role-play and forcing your players to meta-game the combat to a greater degree, both of which are Very Bad Things.
Agreed.
I had a new player a while back. He decided he was going to ready a spell *all the time* while the party wandered around. Insisting that it would go off before anything else could happen if an enemy appeared. It caught me off guard and I couldn't find anything written to prevent this so I eventually decided that holding a spell beyond 1 round rerquires a check. A failure could have the spell go off and target a random location or individual, and expending a slot. I made the difficulty of the check dependent on the spell level, so he switched to readying his attack cantrip, since it was easy and didn't use slots. Argh.
epithet
Explorer
The impact of that is really minimal, though. It just means that he burns his reaction in the first round of combat to cast a cantrip... which means any enemy spellcaster can target him with magic missile and he will not be able to pop a shield spell to counter it.
Still, claiming to have a spell readied all the time is an abuse of the system, and should carry consequences. You cannot perform any other action with the spell readied, including making an ability or skill check, and your passive perception should drop by 5 (reflecting disadvantage) for holding a spell ready for more than one round. If he is surprised while holding a spell, he loses it (has no reaction until his initiative comes around) and I would make him roll on the wild magic table or, if he's really being a pain, just have the cantrip go off on him. If he's an abjurer with Arcane Ward, that wouldn't soak any of the damage because it was released within the boundary of the ward.
That said, role-playing a paranoid caster who is holding a firebolt ready at all times and expecting a monster around every corner could be pretty hilarious, especially if you start playing on that loss of perception. Tell him he sees what looks like a crouching humanoid, ready to pounce! Actually, the light for your firebolt reveals nothing more than a wooden chair, now smoldering in a haze of smoke from your attack.
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I'd also allow that scenario to play out. I wouldn't do it often, but I don't have a problem with it if it fits the circumstances and the PC's failed their Perception checks.
The assassin can shoot up to 600' without disadvantage with the Sharpshooter feat.
Given the noise versus perception portion of this encounter is highly subjective (or my hearing must suck, relative to guards), we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Arial Black
Adventurer
In 5E the full name of 'Actions' is actually 'Actions In Combat'. To organise the things that every combatant wants to do at the same time, we have Initiative Order, Turns, and Actions In Combat. In order to do stuff during combat rounds, you absolutely need permission by taking the appropriate Action In Combat, and doing so allows you to do stuff related to that particular Action In Combat from the moment you take that action until the end of your turn.
Outside of combat rounds, you don't need to take an Action In Combat to do stuff, you just Do Stuff.
The Ready Action In Combat does not represent Doing Stuff. It represents Doing Stuff Later In The Combat Round. It therefore has no existence (and no need for existence) outside of Combat Rounds, and you just inform the DM when you Do Your Stuff in relation to the Other Stuff that is happening.
If you make the mistake of allowing the Ready Action In Combat outside of Combat Rounds, then you'll run into the same trouble as MC.0 did in players declaring Readied Actions for every single six seconds of their existence in a bid to ALWAYS go first.
A similar problem is created whenever you allow players to declare that their PCs are ALWAYS 'ready for trouble' and therefore can never be Surprised!
Think of it this way: if it were possible to Ready Actions In Combat outside of Combat rounds, then the bad guys would do it too! Both sides would have declared (as soon as they finished breakfast) that they had a Readied Action to shoot/blast/enspell/eviscerate the first enemy that hoves into view. Since they all have readied attacks, in which order are they resolved? Roll initiative?
This is how the game works here: initiative resolves the order in which turns are resolved, based on how fast they react to the threat. Initiative does not help you notice the threat, but once you do notice it then initiative measures how fast you react to it.
'Surprised' creatures are slow to go from 'not doing anything, including being ready to dodge attacks' to 'being ready to dodge attacks'. That's why they can suffer auto-crits when they are not ready, but can't when they are. Houdini could take a punch to the stomach when he was ready, but died as a result of a surprise punch to that same gut; that's why the surprise rules interact with the initiative rules in the way that they do.
This is why something that is detected by Perception or Insight or whatever affects what you can or cannot do when your turn comes up in the initiative order, but your place in the initiative order does not affect what you detect.
Outside of combat rounds, you don't need to take an Action In Combat to do stuff, you just Do Stuff.
The Ready Action In Combat does not represent Doing Stuff. It represents Doing Stuff Later In The Combat Round. It therefore has no existence (and no need for existence) outside of Combat Rounds, and you just inform the DM when you Do Your Stuff in relation to the Other Stuff that is happening.
If you make the mistake of allowing the Ready Action In Combat outside of Combat Rounds, then you'll run into the same trouble as MC.0 did in players declaring Readied Actions for every single six seconds of their existence in a bid to ALWAYS go first.
A similar problem is created whenever you allow players to declare that their PCs are ALWAYS 'ready for trouble' and therefore can never be Surprised!
Think of it this way: if it were possible to Ready Actions In Combat outside of Combat rounds, then the bad guys would do it too! Both sides would have declared (as soon as they finished breakfast) that they had a Readied Action to shoot/blast/enspell/eviscerate the first enemy that hoves into view. Since they all have readied attacks, in which order are they resolved? Roll initiative?
This is how the game works here: initiative resolves the order in which turns are resolved, based on how fast they react to the threat. Initiative does not help you notice the threat, but once you do notice it then initiative measures how fast you react to it.
'Surprised' creatures are slow to go from 'not doing anything, including being ready to dodge attacks' to 'being ready to dodge attacks'. That's why they can suffer auto-crits when they are not ready, but can't when they are. Houdini could take a punch to the stomach when he was ready, but died as a result of a surprise punch to that same gut; that's why the surprise rules interact with the initiative rules in the way that they do.
This is why something that is detected by Perception or Insight or whatever affects what you can or cannot do when your turn comes up in the initiative order, but your place in the initiative order does not affect what you detect.
Arial Black
Adventurer
Creatures that don't notice a threat are still going about their legitimate (or illegitimate) business.
They don't get actions on their first turn to represent the fact that they have been caught flat-footed (for want of a better phrase), and it'll take a moment for their reactions to kick in.
However, if nothing has happened in round one (that they know about) then they won't stay frozen forever! They'll do the stuff they were going to do anyway. But they can't attack the assassin that they don't even realise is there!
It all makes sense.
Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth
So that would be a "no" to my question, which leaves me feeling a bit confused since you just said that surprise is not limited to the start of combat, but can actually apply throughout combat. Now you seem to be saying that if you are "in combat", you can't be surprised at all. I don't know when else it would be relevant for someone to be surprised, unless you are meaning to draw a distinction between someone who is "in combat" and someone who is merely an unwitting participant in combat because that person's enemies have all not been noticed by that person. It seems to me that such a distinction is unnecessary, not to mention misleading, since the only direct effect of not noticing your enemies is being unable to move or act until the end of your first turn. This is what is called being surprised. If you continue to be unaware of your enemies past the end of your first turn there is no longer any effect.
I wouldn't look to the text of Assassinate to define the effect of surprise. It only tells you what effect a successful attempt to Assassinate has on someone who is surprised. The surprised person is already feeling the full effect of being surprised whether they are assassinated or not.
You defined "in combat" above as having noticed, or believing there is, a threat. I agree that having done so makes it so you cannot be surprised. It does not follow, however, that once you are surprised, noticing a threat will make you unsurprised. This would in fact contradict the rule that says that if you are surprised you can't take actions or move until your first turn is over, because if you start the encounter surprised, then notice a threat before the end of your turn, becoming thus unsurprised by your reading, you would suddenly be able to take actions and move on your turn. What then did it mean to have been surprised?
No we can't, because it would mean you are both surprised (from the threat you didn't notice) and unsurprised (from the threat you have noticed since). I addressed this reading above, but I'd like to add that surprise is neither a condition nor an effect, per se. I believe it is best defined as the relationship between a cause (not noticing any threats at the start of the encounter) and an effect (being unable to move or act until after your first turn). A surprised creature is one to which both the cause and effect currently apply.
This is why noticing a threat after you have been surprised cannot make you unsurprised. You remain surprised for the duration.
Do you see how this is circular? "You are surprised for as long as you are surprised." Assassinate does not tell us what surprise is.
You have the effect right. The cause is not surprise, however. The cause is being unaware of your opponents when surprise is determined, at the beginning of an encounter. A creature who is thus unaware, when combat begins, is surprised. A creature who suffers from the effect of that lack of awareness is surprised.
Who is vulnerable to the assassin's auto-crits? Anyone who is surprised, right? But how do we know they are still currently surprised? Surely once having been unaware of their opponents doesn't make creatures permanently surprised. I know you aren't saying that. When the assassin strikes, however, the cause of surprise is most certainly in the past because surprise was determined at the beginning of the encounter, so the absence of the cause in the present does not negate the effects of surprise. They exist for a predetermined duration. A creature can be aware of his opponents and yet still be surprised because surprise is still in effect until the end of the creature's first turn. "Surprised" is not defined by an assassin's ability to auto-crit you, but rather the ability depends on the target being surprised.
Ah, I've seen it now. Cheers! I'm new to this forum and to this XP thing.
Yes, and welcome once again!
Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth
Right, but that's also the maximum range of the weapon, and no other weapon can shoot that far, at least none on the weapons list. For the sake of simplicity, I like to assume that, within that range, noises are generally audible.
I agree that the audibility of noise is entirely left to the subjective discretion of the individual DM. It would have been nice, however, to have some general guidelines as to range of hearing included in the rules, along the lines of what was provided in the DMG for range of vision. I don't see any reason not to have done so. There are a number of factors involved that might have dissuaded the designers from doing so, namely the ability of the environment to absorb or dampen sound, and the speed and direction of wind. I like to put all that down to the die roll, however, and would have liked a simplified list of common sources of sound and distances over which they can be heard in typical adventuring environments. I can only assume they didn't do this because of the complications that would arise when people started asking things like, "What if the sound is twice as quiet, but can still be heard?" or, "What about intervening noise?" They obviously didn't want to produce a long list of modifiers to apply to any Stealth roll. That's what advantage/disadvantage is for anyway.
As it is, I've compiled a list of four sound levels: quiet whisper, whisper, normal conversation, and loud singing, just what I've been able to find decibel measurements of on the internet. I've then applied a sound level drop of 6dB per doubling of distance. I'm not an expert in acoustics, however, so I'm not sure if I've done the calculations correctly. What it tells me, however, is that a whisper approaches becoming inaudible at about 6', normal conversation at about 100', and loud singing at about 600' or more. The sound of combat I would generally expect to be louder than any of these, but keep in mind these figures would apply only under ideal conditions. If anyone has more accurate numbers, I would love to hear about them.
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