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Message: <blockquote data-quote="redrick" data-source="post: 6678975" data-attributes="member: 6777696">I quite disagree here. You seem to be equating surprise with the state of unawareness. Once you are aware, you are no longer surprised.I would say the opposite. Surprise happens after you are aware of something. Before anybody has attacked you, you're not surprised. You're blissfully ignorant, possibly enjoying your last peaceful seconds of life. You are surprised by that arrow suddenly sticking out of your chest. Where did that arrow come from? Or maybe you are surprised by all of these men with swords jumping out from behind that rock. Here you thought you were peacefully picking lichen in the dungeon, and all these dudes with swords showed up. You know they're there. But you can't actually act, because you are surprised.The question now is, how long does it take from learning something surprising to stop being surprised by it? (In the D&D sense of the word, of course.) And, personally, if I were to just stick with my sense of my game world and the characters in it, I would say, "I have no idea." That's where I look to a rule for guidance. And I think we have that rule, at least implicitly, which is that a character stops being surprised once their turn is over in initiative order. This is the point at which that character can now take actions again (reactions any time, and actions on his or her next turn.) So, without any suggestion to the contrary, this makes sense as when all the other effects of surprise end as well. Apparently, Mike Mearls, tweeting off the cuff, agrees with that assessment. On the other hand, so long as a DM is consistent in his or her application, I think any of the 4 measures I used above would work.So, yeah, if I had multiple assassins in my party, you bet all of those assassins could assassinate the same creature in one round, so long as they all got the sufficient initiative. Julius Caesar that goblin.</blockquote>

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