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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 6677972" data-attributes="member: 6787503">That isn't how I read it. Surprise retains its natural meaning throughout the rulebook, but D&D surprise doesn't cover all meanings of the word surprise. I can give someone a pleasant surprise by giving them a gift they weren't expecting. By the dictionary definition they are surprised. In D&D, however, surprise is never pleasant.Use the natural meaning by all means, but you have to go beyond a dictionary definition if you aren't going to simply ignore the majority of what the rules say on the subject. The rules give certain benefits for surprising your opponents, but they also tell you what sort of surprise that has to be. All surprise is not equal. This type of surprise requires your adversary to have not noticed any threats when the encounter begins. Any other type of surprise is irrelevant if you want to gain the game-benefits of surprise.The rules also tell us what the benefits of surprise are and how long they last: only up until the end of the surprised creature's first turn. Any other surprise the creature might experience after this time is irrelevant because in game terms it can't have the same effect as surprise, the time for surprise being in the past.A natural language meaning of surprise is useful, and the reason in my opinion they even used the word surprise in the first place, because it tells us when something is not surprise. By a reading of the rules which ignores the natural meaning, someone might think it was possible for me to gain surprise by first telling you, "Look, I'm going to go hide behind that bookshelf, and when you walk by I'm going to jump out and attack you." I get behind the bookshelf and stay as quiet as possible, like I'm not even there. None of your senses can detect me. When you walk by and I jump out, are you surprised? Of course not. I told you exactly what I was going to do. It simply isn't surprise.I actually engaged in a long debate on another thread about this several months ago arguing for an interpretation in which the above situation would result in surprise. My reading was that if someone noticed a threat but didn't notice another threat then they would still be surprised. I was so sure I was right that I asked Jeremy Crawford if this was the case, and he said no, you are only surprised if you haven't noticed any threats whatsoever. Now, in the above situation maybe your girlfriend isn't much of a threat, or maybe hasn't been noticed as a threat per se. I think there is some room for DM discretion as to what constitutes a threat. Her intentions certainly seem to be hostile given what happens, but this might not be apparent to me. Do I get an Insight check?And I'm sure that it's very surprising when you jump out with a knife, but how much more surprising would it have been if you and your girlfriend had both hidden and jumped out and attacked me together as I walked along, lost in thought. Maybe its because I've lived in cities most of my life, but a stranger approaching me, even one asking for help, would probably put me a little on guard, and I'm not an adventurer walking around in a dungeon.That's awesome. The only thing I would've ruled differently is letting the PC use Assassinate on the Drow. He noticed a threat: the Wizard, and you let him act in the first round, so he must not have been surprised. You seem to be using one definition of surprise for Assassinate, and another when it comes to actual surprise. If that works for you and your group, that's great. Personally, I like for the word to be used consistently throughout the text, and besides, surprise can be fairly deadly and shouldn't be too easy to get, IMO.</blockquote>

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