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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ferghis" data-source="post: 5144639" data-attributes="member: 40483">NEVER!!! I will not stand for someone disagreeing with me on the internet! (insert smiley here)As a player, I've found other obstacles that prevent me from taking full advantage of surprise rounds. Sometimes the enemies have cover. Sometimes they are even hidden. Sometimes they are out of range. Sometimes they have really good defenses. I don't see another +2 to their defenses as dramatically problematic. I'm not particularly happy about it, but I wouldn't make a fuss about it. But my point is that the roles of Perception and Stealth remain untarnished, as does that of surprise. Further, as you correctly pointed out in the earlier post in this thread, characters that are being cautious are less likely to be surprised generally, so I think the cases in which characters will be surprised and have total defense set up would be very few. Usually, I imagine, it will be a straight to initiative situation.Ah, okay, I get it. I agree that the in-combat situation where a character's use of total defense is what it takes to defeat the attack of an until-then unknown attacker is very rare, and probably not high on a list of things to be dealt with by a game designer. Your point is valid.The fact that I expect players to act reasonably is why my issue #3 weighs in favor of allowing it IF (and only if) a player seriously wants to do this. The flip side of the coin applies. I expect the DM to act reasonably. I expect most monsters act like they should: I expect zombies to fight stupid, dragons to be tactical geniuses, and all the love-intersts to be good looking. How about an instance where the characters clearly know there is an enemy attacking them, but has no idea where that enemy is. Here's a scenario I'm planning on unleashing on my players (who, obviously, should neither highlight nor read the remainder of this paragraph). [Spoiler]Imagine a long-range sniper, attacking a bunch of minion-type allies the party is escorting at extreme range. I'm thinking of using a bellows-powered blow gun. It's going to take a bunch of perception checks to find the sniper. During that time, the PCs are aware of an attacker's attacks, and therefore are aware of the attacker, but have no idea where the attacker is. Do you see how, until they actually pinpoint and home in on the sniper, this encounter can be resolved both in combat time or in non-combat time?[/spoiler]This implies that there is something wrong with taking a standard action before surprise rounds. I may be wrong, but I don't remember reading that. In-combat actions (other than the two types of actions we have isolated in this thread: total defense and readied actions) are pretty much the same thing folks do out of combat: perception checks, knowledge checks, movement, talking, and so on. There are powers that you can't use out of combat because you have no legal target, but that's really beside the point. You can't use them in-combat either, if you lack a legal target. So characters constantly take actions that, if they were done in-combat, would be termed standard actions, movement actions, and so on. I don't see how allowing a character to take a Standard Action of some kind before combat strains the rules. As to the impact Total Defense specifically has on surprise, I'll refer you to what I posted above on that matter. The usual penalty still applies. Instead of advancing (taking two move actions per round), or doing other things (casting rituals? intimidating the help? skydiving?) the character is wasting time preparing to defend from an attack. This may be perceived as less of a loss if there is no time constraint, but, in my experience, DMs become quite adept at punishing parties that waste time. I know that I would.I can't say that I have sufficient personal expertise to address this realistically, so I will have to refer to the theatrical version of reality. In the movies, when a party is advancing, they do not have their weapons drawn, they are walking normally, but they are alert. They would make good travelling speed, and would not be caught off guard if someone approached them. They might, however, easily fail to note a concealed trap or ambush. A shield may be equipped, but is not held up. It hangs on the character's arm, equipped and ready to use, but not in active use. Even in combat, the character would not necessarily keep  the shield in front of him or her. It might be off to the side somewhere while a sword is swung, or while the character scans and assesses the battlefield, providing some protection, but not all the protection it could provide.When I think of total defense, weapons and shields are raised and actively interposed to prevent potential vectors of attack. Movement is done in quick short spurts. The character crouches a bit and stands sideways, keeping his or her knees bent, maybe to make themselves a slightly smaller target, maybe to have greater ease in dodging. The character's weapon is not wound back or up, but it is interposed to deflect potential attacks. The character does not appear ready to strike, but is doing what he or she can to avoid harm (short of fleeing to a desk job). I have to admit that I don't really know what I'm talking about here, but I keep coming back to the fact that I can't imagine anything that the character could do in combat to prepare to defend against an attack, that the character could not do out of combat to achieve a similar state of readiness. That is the problem, fluffwise.</blockquote>

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