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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 4973042" data-attributes="member: 82106">The Surprise Round is (surprise!) a round. What does a round consist of? It consists of turns (See the very first rule of combat on P266 where the term "Round" is defined as "every combatant takes a turn". Thus we have established that the surprise round is a round and it consists of turns. Bullet point 4 on the same page never uses the term "turn", however it doesn't need to since the round by definition consists of turns. The box on page 267 says "The Surprise Round" once again reinforcing that this is a round. It says "Two special rules apply to the surprise round" which means by standard exception based rules design that in all other respects the surprise round is a round and follows the rules of a round.It simply states that if you are surprised you get NO actions of any kind. This would include IA and OA type actions. Technically it doesn't state that you have the surprised condition, but its a fairly logical deduction. All this means is you don't flank since the other effects are already specified in the box, so its not a really big deal for the most part.Likewise it states that the only actions a non-surprised character can take in the surprise round are ONE standard, move, or minor action and that you can't use an AP. That means no OAs or IAs for these characters either. You COULD however take triggered free actions or any other type of free action which generally covers most of the added things you could do as part of an attack.As for DC, it is quite true that it isn't going to be a good idea to use it during a surprise round unless you are already adjacent to the target. Its a bit of a limitation, but not really all that big a deal. There are plenty of other things that don't make much sense to use in a surprise round either.Basically the idea is you can charge, hit with an attack if you are adjacent or can get the enemy with an area/close attack or ranged attack, or you can move around without worrying about OA and get all set to kick butt in the following round. Note that in the case of a rogue they may well have First Strike still applying in the subsequent round as well. Other options would include things like using HQ or Warlock's Curse etc.</blockquote>

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