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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 6696606" data-attributes="member: 6799649">Lets get to the specifics of our little mini-debate: I'm not suggesting the DMs should never say that something auto-fails or succeeds without enforcing a roll. There are definitely times when that's a good and appropriate thing to do. I do it frequently when I'm DMing.In case it wasn't clear, my problem here is that you have combat take place outside of combat rounds.Sure, the DM can just narrate the result of some fights whether they are between armies, gods, or town drunks. I'm not saying that every single combat in the whole game world must be rolled!I'm saying that the fights that are worth playing out, the ones that are the expected stuff of RPGs, the 'kill them and take their stuff' murderhobo activity, the duel at dawn between the PC and Baron Kittensquisher, these combats should not just be decided by DM fiat. These combats are why we play the game! This is why the game has any rules at all! Otherwise, the game would have continued as a game of 'let's pretend' and never have evolved into what the hobby is today.Here's an example of what I mean: a band of orcs are intent on attacking a village, and the PCs have been hired/conned/persuaded/bribed/blackmailed/whatever into protecting the village from wave after wave of orc attacks. In this scenario, the PCs can't be everywhere at once. When they are not there, it's perfectly okay for the DM to just tell us what happened, who the orcs killed, what was stolen or destroyed, etc. But when a combat between the PCs and some orcs break out, the expectations of the hobby, the players, and the game rules themselves, is that the combat will be run according to the combat rules of the game you're actually playing, not just narrated by the DM.Now, there are some rules that are optional, some tables use houserules, and that's okay. But no DM who wants to keep his players is going to just say, 'I won't bother with the combat rules for this one, I'll just rule that the orcs lose seven warriors but the thief and wizard died. Roll up  new characters'.Now, that's an extreme example. But it is possible to mess with the combat rules in such a way that, without meaning to, the DM takes away the players' fair chance (either for or against them), and one way of doing that is...allowing combat outside of combat, before the combat round begins.If the DM has the first attack resolve before initiative is rolled-and remember, the rules do say that combat takes place in Combat Rounds-then the victim has his chance of noticing the threat and reacting faster than the attacker taken away by DM fiat. This is likely to result in a death which might not have happened if the combat was run in Combat Rounds, as the rules intend. This means that the DM has effectively almost chosen who lives and dies, instead of the combat playing out as it would have.So, my problem is with 'pre-combat' combat. It takes away from the whole point of the players being there, and changes it to the DM choosing who he think should win.</blockquote>

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