Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 6697149" data-attributes="member: 71699">We want to avoid the fallacy of begging the question, i.e. we don't want to say that it must be that way solely because the desired interpretation of assassinate requires it. So we need a reason for a surprise that has two modes. (One mode for delaying first reaction until the end of a combatant's first turn, and a second mode for delaying first action until the start of a combatant's second turn.) One advantage with prevents is it only envisions one mode. And if there is no other difference between them, Occam's Razor would seem to prefer prevents.Since we are thinking about game mechanics we can concentrate on what the rules allow, and then construct the narrative. One of the interesting aspects of the wording of Assassinate is the use of "In addition". That causes me to challenge my earlier idea that the two effects of assassinate are separable. We know that a rogue must beat a target's initiative in order to apply the advantage effect. For the sake of argument, let's temporarily accept the proposal that surprise ends at the end of a combatant's first turn. That would mean that the only time a rogue gets their crit is when it is in addition to having advantage.We could then come back to the narrative construction in the obvious way, and everything would click together very nicely. Against that, I think a reasonable test for a version of surprise that runs past the end of a combatant's first turn, is to ask if working that way serves any purpose in the game other than allowing a rogue with the assassinate feature to get their crit in the absence of having advantage? Do you see what I mean? If it does have some other consequence - then that would offer a motive for the RAW needing to work that way. As a strawman, I suggest that it has no other consequence. Can we knock that one down?</blockquote>

Verification