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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 6697124" data-attributes="member: 6799649">You cannot react to danger before you notice the danger. It's a cause/effect relationship. What your reaction speed might be is irrelevant before you know that there is any danger.Once you have noticed the danger, then your reaction speed measures how fast you react to it.The Alert feat makes you immune to the game effects of surprise. It doesn't make you automatically perceive the hidden assailant, but it does mean that you can react to the slightest of clues so that you can always use reactions and you can move/act on your first turn, and you are considered (all else being equal) to constantly be looking out for danger, just like people who are already in combat. This makes you immune to the auto-crit from Assassinate, both in terms of fluff (unlike most people, you are always ready for danger unless unconscious or the like) AND crunch (you cannot be surprised while you are conscious).Sure, the feat gives you +5 to initiative rolls, but that makes sense because you 'cannot be surprised', because you are 'always on the lookout for danger'.It's not your 'reaction speed' that measures your ability to notice the threat in the first place, either with this feat or without.Perhaps this is the source of our disagreement. 'Surprise' does not prevent acting/reacting, surprise delays acting and reacting. Under that construct, one of the effects of being surprised is that it delays your ability to take reactions until after your first turn, and delays your ability to act/react by about six seconds or so; one combat round.The other effect of being surprised is not a delay in doing your stuff; the other effect is that, while you do not notice a threat, you can be auto-crit by Assassinate, precisely because you are not 'on the lookout for danger'!</blockquote>

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