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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 6697033" data-attributes="member: 71699">I take your point and yet one of the few effects in the game that gives you a straight Initiative modifier is called Alert and does so because you are "always on the lookout for danger". Contemplating both points, and the RAW that surprise only applies "at the start of the encounter" to a combatants in their "first turn of the combat" because they did not "notice a threat" makes me feel that the construction they are thinking about is one of flat-footedness. According to RAW even if a threat I hadn't noticed came up after my first turn of combat, I wouldn't suffer the main effects of surprise because they can only apply to my first turn and I am past my first turn. Say a rogue joins a combat part way through - it is still their "start of the encounter" but it is not mine. In summary, what RAW encourages me toward is a notion that before they get engaged in the fight combatants can potentially be caught flat-footed. But not after that, because they are then on balance, constantly moving and reactive etc.I can see I left my thought incomplete. Deconstructing assassinate we see two effects that can both apply at once but don't have to. One of those effects is applied only if a creature "hasn't taken a turn in the combat yet". So I guess you will concede that if the monk rolls higher initiative then after he has taken his turn in the combat the rogue cannot apply that effect to him. The rules do say that even if we don't quite follow why that should be so. From the posts I've skimmed it seems people who dislike this take the obvious route of inventing ways to start the combat without giving the monk an initiative roll until after their rogue has had his go. DM fiat, but not RAW.The other effect relies on having surprise. The question hinges on when surprise ends and to an extent what surprise is. Under some constructions, surprise is a state that has two modes. In the first mode it prevents acting and reacting. Then at the end of a combatant's first turn it switches to a second mode where it no longer prevents acting and reacting and its only function is to allow the second effect of assassinate to apply. It is worth stressing that under that construction RAW gives no guide as to when the state of surprise should cease to apply. Presumably some time before the "middle of the encounter". An alternative construction would treat surprise as a state with one mode: it prevents acting and reacting. In obedience to the "start of the encounter" text, surprise ends when that one mode ends.In summary, for one of the effects of assassinate the RAW does say what I said it says and that is what I intended to refer to. But for the other effect, it is up to you what you find the more plausible. Construing surprise - a basic rule - to have two modes and lose any clear end point, apparently in order to support a single class feature - doesn't seem like very robust thinking to me.</blockquote>

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