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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 5142761" data-attributes="member: 15470">.. Apologies; I hadn't meant to get personal with you! I simply meant that post as a reply to the part I quoted after "I still find it strange.."; I was trying to address the "fluff" more than the "crunch" in that last post.MMmmm?? .. I think you're putting words in my mouth. At no point have I stated that I felt the +2 benefit was trivial; in fact, I think that I've been arguing the opposite! As you noted, it would be a pretty silly position for me to take!I was actually trying to demonstrate that the "Hey, why can I 'parry' an attack I'm not aware of" was, while an understandable argument, one which might fall far enough down the list of edge cases that the game designers, in their quest for simplicity, would simply decide to allow it to slide rather than making "Total Defense" more complicated by trying for wording like "You only get the +2 against attacks which you can see coming".Making that argument in more detail:First, attacks you aren't aware of much less common than attacks you are aware of, especially at lower levels. Second, being in Total Defense is much much rarer than being in "normal" mode.Third, the odds of the +2 affecting any given attack are merely 10%. Fourth, when you put #1, #2, and #3 together, you see that a 10% advantage is significant when you're looking at hundreds of rounds of normal vs normal combat .. but not so significant when you consider the rarity of the case meeting all three: "hidden" attack, Total Defense, and within the 10% range that made it matter.Fifth, odds are that its the players in Total Defense, not the monsters, so we're "giving" the players the edge case, not taking it away from them.Sixth, the players are most often going to be in Total Defense when we can't get to a creature: e.g., a ground-based melee fighter versus a flying creature which is out of his reach; that makes "Total Defense" a reasonable strategic choice.(Though I suspect there are some Defender builds which could make good Strategic use of it, e.g., a Warden: close burst, mark eight guys, then be in Total Defense so that they're all less likely to hit him.)I'd say that falls under the sack of rats rule, myself. You can't initiate combat without a target any more than you can walk around with your best friend, each punching each other on the shoulder every round, and claim that you're "in combat" and therefore can't be surprised. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  (Or even better, start, and stop, combat, until you both have initiative rolls of 18 or higher plus modifiers! Oh, and then we're both in Total Defense, of course...)Likewise, I'd say you can't initiate combat against an invisible enemy unless you're actually aware that it is there, for some reason. Otherwise, your characters simply "Initiate Combat" at the end of each Short Rest, and stay in it until they meet something. I'd actually be quite surprised if the PHB doesn't cover what counts as Combat and what doesn't; I don't have it available at the moment.Again, I suspect this was an intentional "keep Total Defense simple" decision on the part of the developers. You could well argue for a House Rule applying the Total Defense benefit only to attacks which you can see coming ... but I don't think that's really necessary.However, from a fluff perspective: the alert vigilant not-in-combat character is unlikely to be moving around as much as the in-combat character. No matter how "wary" he is, he's not shifting his feet and changing his orientation anywhere near as much as a fighter in combat is, his weapon is unlikely to be "up" and moving around as much as the fighter's is, etc .. there are many many ways you can imagine "Total Defense" being a bit different in combat than "I'm on alert" is out of combat. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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