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Message: <blockquote data-quote="redrick" data-source="post: 6678634" data-attributes="member: 6777696">While I appreciate your celebration of DM discretion and DM fiat, I will say, as a discrete and fiative DM, that a guideline on the duration of "surprise" is helpful.The D&D combat round and action economy is an abstract thing. We know that it lasts, nominally, 6 seconds, but, sometimes it doesn't, and I don't really know what could actually happen in 6 seconds anyway. (And I say this as somebody who deals in short durations for a living.)So, when I determine surprise, I feel pretty good about using my DM powers to do this in a consistent way, but once we ask the question, "ok, but when does character A stop being surprised?" That is going to be a hard one for me to answer. For that reason, it's helpful to have a general sense of, "what has to happen for a character, under normal circumstances, to be able to acquire a general awareness of surrounding combat threats? And the options seem to be:1. After the character's initiative (ie turn) during the first (surprising) round of combat, after which point the character can take reactions (it makes sense to couple the ability to react with an improved sense of general combat awareness, and it also makes sense to tie the duration of surprise to reaction speed/initiative)2. After the end of the first combat round (simpler. more generous to Assassins. decouples the end of surprise from reaction time.)3. After the characters initiative (ie turn) during the second (no longer surprising) round of combat, at which point the character has now been able to take normal actions (still tying surprise to reaction speed, but in a way that is much more generous to Assassins, often allowing them to get Assassinate attacks in two consecutive rounds against the same target)4. After the character has taken an action (this one doesn't make much sense to me, as there are a number of ways to defer character actions, allowing "surprise" to last indefinitely)All of those options are reasonable options, even number 4, which I think is a bit silly. What would not be reasonable would be, at the DM's discretion, alternating between those 4 durations, without a really damn good reason. So I do think it is valuable for a DM to have a working, mechanical guideline on the duration of surprise that makes sense and can be consistently applied.</blockquote>

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