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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7181660" data-attributes="member: 4937">Agreed.  But that means mechanically that Han surprised Greedo.  The question is, how was Greedo surprised despite being aware of Han and being wary, and having even got the drop on Han.   That is to say, Greedo presumably has readied an action such as, "If Han makes any sort of sudden movement, I'll shoot."  My answer to that is the same as before.  Han has achieved surprise by cozening Greedo into a state of unjustified relaxation.  Greedo doesn't think he possibly can lose this engagement, and like an idiot he's lost track of Hans hands.  Han doesn't beat Greedo to the punch merely because Han's player states he fires first, giving Greedo no time to react, or even because Han the PC intends to fire first in the fiction.  The out of game order in which actions are declared has no bearing on the in game order that they are resolved.  If Han's player declared any sort of normal attack action, or if Han in the fiction had tried a normal quickdraw, he would have fired second because of Greedo's presumed readied action (symbolized by the drawn and pointed gun, or vica versa the drawn and pointed gun can be presumed to be a readied action).  Instead, Han passes a bluff check, one that is called out in film, to distract Greedo away from the fact that under the table Han has now drawn his weapon.   And, with a drawn weapon that Greedo is not aware of, Han can now win a surprise check and attack without triggering Greedo's readied action.Note that Han could not have succeeded in this plan if part of his body was not obscured from Greedo's view.   Also note that the scene is a very common one in Western cinema.  Compare with John Wayne's shower scene in "Big Jake".By the RAW, I'm not sure the Greedo vs. Han cantina scene can even happen, so citing as an example a scene that isn't covered by the rules doesn't really serve to explain or justify the rules.  At best, it provides an example of why in some edge cases, you'll need some sort of new ruling pertaining to surprise.I think it's readily apparent that though I have quibbles with how Hemlock justifies his viewpoint, I also consider how Hemlock justifies his viewpoint largely irrelevant.  So even if I didn't fully understand his actual view, that's irrelevant, because the thing I object to the most is the outcome of his viewpoint, namely that you can, merely by performing a metagame action (that is, the player declaring an action), override the normal mechanics of the game.  In my view, metagame actions NEVER exist in the fiction, and declarations always must reflect the current fictional positioning.  In hopefully rare cases, fictional positioning in my viewpoint can override the rules to the extent that the rules do not actually address the situation in the fictional positioning (as in the case of Han and Greedo and partially obscured bodies and hidden actions), but metarules never can effect fictional positioning nor is the case Hemlock is describing actual rare, narrow, and not covered by the rules.  The initiative declaration itself has no meaning in the fictional world, and a declaration to attack first can only achieve that success if it is based on fictional positioning that would in fact allow for the mechanical prospect of attacking first as provided by the rules, namely, achieving surprise.There might be rare and narrow situations where I would rule that merely by declaring an action you could automatically achieve surprise, but they would not be the general case Hemlock raises.  For example, I probably wouldn't object to achieving surprise with a Silent Still version of the spell or casting a spell which had no observable components, although probably for consistency with my own rulings I'd simply have this impose a massive penalty (-20?) on the observers opposed check to avoid surprise so that beings with godlike perceptiveness still might be able to react.  If there was a hypothetical spell or ability which was an attack and which could be cast as immediate action, I likewise wouldn't object to using that attack to achieve surprise, because then it really would fall into the 'instantaneous' category you are talking about however it was imagined as color.  Although as a practical matter, I wouldn't allow non-reactive attack actions as immediate actions in my game anyway.Beyond that central point, you are also neglecting that I object not only to the fact that the color doesn't match the mechanics consistently, so that merely changing the color doesn't logically resolve the conflict I perceive.   I also objected to the fact that Hemlocks own mechanics contradict themselves, such as the assumption that you can ready an action to resist an attack in once case that he treats as instantaneous in  other cases.   Compare this position with my prior arguments over whether the metagame act of rolling for initiative is something that actually exists in the fiction.  I have previously argued that the metagame act of rolling for initiative does not change the fiction, but merely acknowledges a state of the fiction that is presumed to exist.  That is to say, in my view of the world, initiative is something that is inherent to the fiction, and we only start tracking it as a metagame convenience, but that it is there whether we declare it or not.   This is in opposition to the view that if initiative is called for the fiction changes between two states of being, each of which has its own rules - much like an old Ultima style RPG where toggling between combat and non-combat determined whether you could move the party as a whole or its individual members separately (which was something that in some Ultima clones could be metagamed to change the rates of movement between PC's and NPCs).  Likewise, my view suggests a PC can always that an initiative count and a round to round adjudication process begin, even if they don't plan to take immediate violent action, in contrast to viewpoints that suggest it's the DM prerogative to determine the game state.In my opinion, the view opposed to mine is not logically consistent.  Rather, I think it's actually justified by expediency rather than logical consistency.  That is to say, Hemlock could validly argue that he does not care about logical consistency in his fiction, and that he uses this method because it works for him.  But I don't think you can defend his position by claiming it's logically consistent when it clearly isn't.  You might argue that I place too much value on logical consistency - you early noticed that I took instantaneous very literally in a way that surprised you.  And that's fine.  We can argue or disagree over how much consistency we ought to achieve, since in a game I concede how much logical consistency you have is subjective.  But that's a very different argument.UPDATE: Since everyone keeps insisting I don't fully understand, I went back and reread his argument again, and I'm still convinced I understand it.  Compared to some of the arguments I've seen related to this subject and justifying the point of view, it's not that illogical, but since it produces the same undesirable, problematic and illogical outcome I dislike it just as much.Fundamentally, I think my problem with his justification comes down to the claim that unless otherwise stated, everyone is taking a Delay action implicitly, as if everyone was always just politely waiting their turn and waiting for the other party to take their turn, without the slightest concern in the world.  This situation might pertain to a group of close friends having a conversation, but it's a wholly unreasonable framing of a tense negotiation between armed and potentially belligerent parties.  And while it's not a strict violation of the rules, it is applying a portion of the rules to a situation that they aren't meant to cover when much more applicable rules are at hand.  Specifically, although you attempt to frame his argument as being based around the very brief nature of the character's action - flicking a finger and saying "zot!" - in fact quite the opposite is true of the assumption that standard combat rounds are implicitly occurring and that everyone is implicitly taking the Delay action only one character decides to be more proactive.  If that is the rules description we apply to the situation, then not only does the player delay through a brief and surprising action, but stands stock-still and unreactive through entire lengthy actions as well.  The attacking character could for example charge all the way across the room and strike someone and no one would even react.Quite obviously, the portion of the rules that applies to a surprise attack are the rules on surprise, and whatever rules based description of the fiction that we apply should not be contradictory to the rules on surprise.In general, what is actually occurring in a tense negotiation between armed, hostile, and potentially belligerent parties is not Delay, but Readied Actions.   Implicitly, the parties are doing something round to round like, "If X makes any sudden movement..." or "If X approaches within 5' feet..." or "If X reaches for something..." or "If X tries to attack..." or whatever.  Each party is alert and on a hair trigger.  To again turn to Westerns as providing examples, when a Parlay is going on in a Western, you'll note that they verbally negotiate and announce actions that they intend to take before they take them, such as, "I'm going to reach really slow into my pocket...." and so forth.  This is because everyone knows everyone else is holding readied actions, and they want to avoid accidentally triggering an action as a result of a misunderstanding, and allow everyone else to change their readied action trigger to something that keeps ensuring security without causing violence to instantly erupt.</blockquote>

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