Delay from Surprise Round into First Round

[Ridley's Cohort]

Your reasoning is flawed Coredump. Accoring to your examlpes the guy with the lowest initiative suddenly is allowed to take a full action whereas the ones who go before are limited to a standard action. The guy with Init 7 doesn't give up anything and gains everything. Doesn't look right to me. Winning the Init should always be beneficial, not detrimental.

In seems a little odd in this narrow case, but it is not that strange if you look at the big picture.

The guy with the 17 initiative may choose to delay. If he foregoes that option to have an immediate Standard action, that is his choice. 7 may choose to take advantage of that.

Other characters may enter initiative and you do not know what their Initiatives are or even if they are Surprised. It is not normal to have a Surprise round where you absolutely know you are going last.

Time marches on. Reinforcements may appear, say, after two rounds. Delaying often means fewer actions before their arrival.

 

[Hypersmurf]

If I remember correctly (and it hasn't been changed) he would start casting at init 16 of the first regular round, and the spell effect would occur at init 16 of the second regular round.

It hasn't been changed, but you don't remember correctly

A spell like Summon Monster has a one round casting time, and acts as you describe.

A sorcerer casting a Metamagic spell, like Empowered Fireball, has a casting time of one full round action. It takes the same amount of time to cast as a full attack, or loading a heavy crossbow; you finish casting within your turn, but can't take a move action.

One round casting time is longer than a full round action.

-Hyp.

 

[Coredump]

Your reasoning is flawed Coredump. Accoring to your examlpes the guy with the lowest initiative suddenly is allowed to take a full action whereas the ones who go before are limited to a standard action. The guy with Init 7 doesn't give up anything and gains everything. Doesn't look right to me. Winning the Init should always be beneficial, not detrimental.

~Marimmar

Huh?? Look at it again, the '7' *is* most definitely giving something up. He is getting *no* action in the surprise round. And in exchange for that, he is getting to move up his initiative in the second round.

The second guy isn't 'suddenly allowed to take a full action' He has always been allowed a full action. He just gave up his standard, to get his full moved up. But after the end of two rounds, he will have gotten only a full action, and the other two will have a full and a standard. Sounds pretty balanced to me.