D&D 5E Declarations that start combat vs. initiative

[Dausuul]

Actually, there is a very interesting logic puzzle with 3 shooters, one with 100% chance to kill at every shot, one with 80% and the last one with 50%. The assumption is that someone's turn to shoot will come in any order and he can pick his target, then he can only fire again once all others have fire once, etc. If you don't know who is going to shoot first, who has the highest chance of survival ?

Assuming rational behavior from all parties, the least accurate gunslinger--call him Eddie--always has the highest chance to survive. Exactly how high depends on how the scenario is set up.

If the gunslingers are allowed to hold their fire, but there is some time limit which will force them into combat eventually, then the two best gunslingers go after each other, and Eddie holds his fire until one of them falls. If the middle gunslinger--call her Susannah--survives, then Eddie gets the first shot on her and has a 50% chance to win right there, plus a nonzero chance that Susannah could miss her return shot and he could get her with his second.

If the best gunslinger, Roland, survives, then Eddie's chances are exactly even. Either he hits with his first shot, or he misses and Roland, who never misses, kills him. Even odds against Roland, better than even against Susannah, means a combined chance over 50% for Eddie.

If gunslingers are not allowed to hold their fire, Eddie still has the best chance to survive out of the three, but it's a shade under 50%, because he might go before Roland and hit him; which means Susannah is likely to kill him before he can shoot again.

If holding fire is allowed and there is no time limit... then it becomes a question of how confident the gunslingers are in each other's intentions. If they are fully confident that the others are behaving rationally and are interested only in survival, they all simply holster their guns. This results in a 100% chance for everybody to survive, which is better than anyone would have in a shootout. But if they suspect the others are not rational, or have some motive other than survival, then there is a strong incentive for both Roland and Susannah to shoot each other before the other can fire back. Eddie probably holds his fire... but if he's worried that Roland and/or Susannah are not rational, he has to weigh the risk that one of them shoots at him while the other is still alive.

 

[Bill Zebub]

And most of the time the initiative rules are fine. But if the evil baron is feeling perfectly secure telling the player characters that of course he is not responsible for all those awful atrocities, and one of the players says, to hell with this and attacks, catching everyone off guard, that player goes first. It's only for the first round of combat. Everyone still rolls initiative, but regardless of the instigating player's roll they get bumped to the front, first round only. It feels right narratively.

To whom?

I mean, there are lots of valid narrative possibilities here. Think of all the movies where this exact same thing happens, except that before their sword is even out of their sheath, all the guards have their spears a foot from the hero. That's a valid narrative possibility too, right? So who is deciding what "feels right" and based on what criteria?

If I'm at that table, and the DM just decides that feels right narratively, without any planning and ability checks, I'm going to wonder where else the DM ignores the rules for his/her own sense of what "feels right narratively." Maybe in a circumstance that I think is similar I try the same thing, and now the DM has the guards own me, because in the DM's mind it's not at all the same situation and it doesn't feel right narratively. How am I supposed to understand how this works?

Again, there are perfectly good rules for this. The player says, "To hell with this, I'm going to draw my sword and go for the Baron before anybody else can react." The DM says, "Any more information on how you're going to try to catch them off guard?" The player might say, "I'm just going to move really fast because I have high Dex" or "I'm going to whisper to the wizard to cast prestidigitation and knock over a vase, and when everybody looks that's when I go" or whatever. The DM says, "Ok, I'm going to have you roll Dex (or Deception, or Sleight-of-Hand, or whatever) opposed by the Baron's and the guards' Perception/Insight/Intelligence/etc. Everybody you beat will be surprised in the first round. Let's roll initiative...

 

[Flamestrike]

Six seconds is a long time to stand there with a dagger in hand while someone charges across the room at you; especially if you're the one who provoked the charge and thus cannot be surprised.

And this sentence explains nicely why you're in error here.

No-one is standing there for six seconds, frozen in time, while other creatures act. around them, one at a time.

The round by round, turn based, cyclical nature of combat rounds are an abstraction, and not a reflection of some in game objective reality.

Assume an Orc and PC are standing off in melee combat. On the Orcs turn he takes the Withdraw action, and heads towards an open doorway at the other end of the room, ending his turn 30' away from the PC. On the PCs turn he then moves 30' towards that Orc, finishing that move adjacent to that Orc, and then makes an attack against the Orc.

While to us (at the table) it looks like the PC is frozen in time, while the Orc moves 30' away (ending his turn 30' away from the PC), from the perspective of the PC all in game observers of that combat, the PC and the Orc both (at the same time) raced towards the open doorway, the Orc backing off and with the PC in hot pursuit, swinging away as he does so, and never more than a few feet away from the Orc.

All the actions taken in a combat round, are all happening more or less simultaneously, over the space of approximately 6 seconds. Your 'initiative' check simply determines when your action gets to be resolved.

'Surprise' in 5E (or an attack 'outside of combat') is effectively rendering a creature deaf, mute and dumb, and unable to move or react for an entire 6 seconds worth of actions by an attacker. It is only appropriate when you literally catch your opponent with their pants down (such as attacking them from hiding, when they're asleep, or totally and completely off guard such as a Doppelganger, posing as a trusted loved one, stabbing you in the back, following on from a successful Deception vs Insight check.

As soon as there are imminent hostilities (such as a declared attack) the DM stops narrative time, provides a quick explanation why ('Suddenly as you talk to the King, the King reaches for a concealed knife, with murder in his eyes') and asks everyone to roll initiative, transitioning to combat time, to see what they do over the next six whole seconds.

The problem is not with the rules here; it's with your inability to see the abstraction of combat and turns for what it is.

 

[Bill Zebub]

The problem is not with the rules here; it's with your inability to see the abstraction of combat and turns for what it is.

I have a different take on that. It seems to me that they start with a desired narrative and then make the game rules/mechanics conform to it. I've seen this in the debates about NPC's "using" social skills on PCs, and about player knowledge. Their interpretation was along the lines of "this is what would happen" or "this is what the character would do" and so the goal then becomes how to interpret/bend/ignore the rules to make sure the correct thing happens, because otherwise it would "break immersion".

In my opinion this gets it backwards. My approach is to start with what happened according to player actions and rules, and then ask what narrative supports that. If the player declares an action I find surprising, I want to know why. Not to catch them "cheating" but because it's interesting. In fact I honestly don't care if the player is really just trying to gain advantage and they're simply making up a rationale after the fact in order to justify the choice: that improvisation is likely to be creative and add more color to the evolving narrative.

So it's the same thing here. Yes: it does sound like you should be able to catch the Baron off guard. But the dice said otherwise, so what happened? What went wrong? The disconnect between the narrative that "makes sense" and the narrative that actually unfolds is an opportunity to improvise something new and surprising.

To quote the Dungeon World motto: play to find out what happens.

 

[Arilyn]

It's a very small moment of time that gives a player who acts unexpectedly a small advantage. Yes, there's nothing wrong with dicing to find out what happens. I like to reduce rolling when I can, however. The character can still miss. Everyone does get to act in the round. I don't see how I'm seizing the narrative here, or if I am it's pretty miniscule. And this will be an infrequent occurrence, only happening if no one expected it. No alert guards, no "ah ha" moments from the bad guy.

Dungeon World actually has my favourite initiative system, as there isn't one. The "camera" follows the action in a logical and/or cinematic way. In Dungeon World my impatient example would work just fine.

 

[Maxperson]

If that is your stance, you lose even more, because it says that initiative = roll, since it's an ability check.

Um, no, my stance does not fail in that case. Clearly you fail yet again to understand what I am saying. I'm beginning to wonder if you are even trying.

And once more, you are stuck, prove to me that, at the start of combat, there is anything else than the step 3, ROLL.

I have. Your sticking your head in the sand and yelling lalalalalala in order to not understand that initiative as an ability check is subject to the ability check rules, though. I can't help you with that.

And on this you are wrong as well, again showing your ignorance of the RAW. Many examples in the rules, for example, under ability checks: "A passive check is a special kind of ability check that doesn’t involve any die rolls." or in the DMG: "One approach is to use dice as rarely as possible. Some DMs use them only during combat, and determine success or failure as they like in other situations."

You bolded the wrong portion. I corrected it. Specific beats general. It's specifically different, because it represents an average roll. Even so, the DM can just skip the passive check and say it auto succeeds or auto fails.

 

[Bill Zebub]

. In Dungeon World my impatient example would work just fine.

Yes, that’s true.

 

[Maxperson]

I think he's saying that declaring the action of throwing the dagger happens at a different meta-time than the in-fiction act of throwing the dagger; and though others at the table can (and probably will) react to the declaration, there isn't really enough time in the fiction for anyone to interrupt the throw.

No. I'm saying that the act is the PC reaching for the weapon. That act prompts the combat initiative rolls. The action is the actual throw and the action happens on the PCs initiative. The act and action are two different things no matter how badly @Lyxen wants to try and equate them in order to be right.

 

[Maxperson]

I may not be a gunslinger(although I play a mean game of paintball), I am defiantly no cop, but I think there is WAY more to it then the second to hurl the dagger. you tense for that second, and are about to draw and the MUCH faster combatant gets to hit you seems to fit fine.

So you think the fighter can run 30 feet and attack in 1 second? Remember, there is no "draw" here. The dagger thrower already had the dagger in his hand.

 

[Maxperson]

I know this may side trek... but I miss those rules...

throw 2 darts (we used to refluf as razor cards) or more when specilized....
we HAD fighter throwing daggers as a main attack this way.

I thought darts had a throw rate of 3 without specializing. Daggers had a rate of 2.