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<blockquote data-quote="Bill Zebub" data-source="post: 8603959" data-attributes="member: 7031982">Thinking more about this, the only way I would implement anything other than rolling initiative as normal is with some kind of risk/reward mechanic.&nbsp; That is, the players (or the NPCs!) could attempt to get the drop on their opponents, but it would involve a risk of being strictly worse off than just rolling initiative normally. But I do think the initiative system handles these situations just fine.&nbsp; If you win initiative it means you caught them off guard.&nbsp; If you don't win initiative it means your plan didn't work.&nbsp; My opinion on this comes from the experience of seeing two things:1) Players rushing into combat, both to try to get this advantage and to prevent the NPCs from doing the same2) Dissatisfaction on the part of the players about the DMs arbitration of whether the surprise succeeds.&nbsp; (Which is what can happen when you ditch the rules, but don't have clear new rules to replace them.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Bill Zebub, post: 8603959, member: 7031982"] Thinking more about this, the only way I would implement anything other than rolling initiative as normal is with some kind of risk/reward mechanic. That is, the players (or the NPCs!) could [I]attempt[/I] to get the drop on their opponents, but it would involve a risk of being strictly worse off than just rolling initiative normally. But I do think the initiative system handles these situations just fine. If you win initiative it means you caught them off guard. If you don't win initiative it means your plan didn't work. My opinion on this comes from the experience of seeing two things: 1) Players rushing into combat, both to try to get this advantage and to prevent the NPCs from doing the same 2) Dissatisfaction on the part of the players about the DMs arbitration of whether the surprise succeeds. (Which is what can happen when you ditch the rules, but don't have clear new rules to replace them.) [/QUOTE]

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