Forked - Flatfooted and the beginning of combat.

[billd91]

What guidelines does 3.x give for when and when you can't roll for initiative? Does 3.x clearly define 'start of the battle' as anything other than 'roll for initiative' and does it define any point where we clearly must stop being 'in battle' especially if we are still aware of a potential enemy? If not, how am I outside the rules?

When do you roll for initiative? Whenever the order in which things happen is important.

Page 25 of the 3.5 DMG has a short section on Combat Actions outside Combat in which, as an example, Mialee tries to stop Lidda from pulling a mysterious lever. They roll initiative to see if Mialee has a chance to stop the incautious halfling. Similarly, I'd have my players roll initiative whenever either they or I think that timing and competing actions, not even necessarily combat, is important.

Picking out exactly when those instances occur, in and out of combat, is part of the art of DMing and setting the game session's pace.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

One last thing. I believe I'm applying the rules as written. I asserted at the beginning of the thread that the heart of this debate was however that I and almost everyone else regularly applied a house rule at the table, and it was the wide use of that house rule that was causing the trouble. That house rule is, "You don't have to roll initiative at the start of an encounter."

I disagree. Having played 3e and 3.5e in at least 3 countries in Living Greyhawk(where no house rules were allowed so we argued a lot about EXACTLY what the text in the books meant) with at least 100 different players(including in groups at GenCon and with DMs and players who have been in games with members of the R&D team), I can tell you no one I know ever played it like that.

I'm not saying you can't run it like that. But I disagree you are applying the rules as written and intended.

I think it has to due with your interpretation of threat and encounter. To me, something doesn't become a "threat" until you absolutely know that they are attacking you. Someone holding a sword who might be an assassin isn't a threat until you attack them or they attack you.

An encounter begins when the first action that would begin a "combat" takes place. An encounter is the space between the beginning of combat and the end of combat. Simply talking to someone doesn't start an encounter. Otherwise we'd be rolling initiative when we enter a bar and staying in initiative the entire time there were people around. I hope we are in agreement that this was not intended.

The idea of Flatfootedness is an interesting one. One of the first arguments I ever had about 3e rules(about 2 sessions into our first game) was between a DM and I over what flatfootedness was. He said it was impossible. No one was ever caught "flatfooted" and that if you expected combat, you'd obviously be NOT flatfooted. That discussion ended up with him removing the concept from his game and Rogues being no fun to play anymore, since they got sneak attack so little it wasn't worth playing them any more(I should know...I was the Rogue when he implemented this rule. And I had Improved Initiative in order to make sure I acted first more often).

I tried to explain to him that the concept was that you were simply caught off guard because you weren't "on the balls of your feet", "in a fighting stance", "knowing where to expect the attack from", "having your weapon in the right grip", and similar concepts that model the "I'm ready, but I'm not QUITE ready" concept of flatfootedness.

If you roll initiative at the start of every scene where a threat is or might be present or where either side is on their gaurd, the whole argument goes away and if I was presented with rules lawyerish players, then that's precisely how I would handle it. We'd roll initiative at the beginning of every encounter regardless until such time as the players shut up and agreed to not try to run the game.

Then you would be completely incapable of doing what I said in the previous post. Which is my favorite image of a Rogue ever. You see it in movies all the time. The image of the "Rogue" as a guy so fast that, even though you're standing in front of him not sure what to make of him, weapon in your hand, he pulls a dagger out of his sleeve and throws it at your neck before in one lightning fast action that catches you off guard and hits you before you have a chance to defend against it. Which is so obviously a sneak attack.

Unfortunately, in your system, it means that you roll initiative when you walk into the room and see the unarmed Rogue. After all, he MIGHT be a threat, and you should roll for initiative because an encounter has started. The fighter readies his action to attack if the Rogue makes a move. He then starts asking the Rogue some questions, the Rogue taunts him. Then, with lighting fast reflexes he whips out a dagger....and dies due to the Readied Action. Sure, it's great to be the Fighter in that circumstance. It sucks to have spent feats on Quick Draw and Improved Initiative when they give you no benefits at all(or very little).

Secondly, as to the 'can you take a combat action out of combat', my interpretation of when the game is in a combat state is when there is some character NPC or PC that wants to take a combat action. There really aren't any other guidelines in the rules. If the PC offers a combat action, its not my place to say, "No, you can't do that because we are not in combat now." I'm not a DM that says, "No."

It's not about saying no. It's about keeping the game balanced. Whenever an option becomes so useful that I can't come up with a reason NOT to do it, it is too powerful. If an option is too powerful, it either needs a house rule or I may be misinterpreting the intent of the rule and running it wrong.

Readying constantly out of combat was way too useful It was one of my first house rules. I was glad it became a rule in 3.5e.

As for the Total Defense option. I ran it precisely by the rules. You can take the Total Defense option out of combat all you wanted to, but it gave you a dodge bonus to your AC. You lose all dodge bonuses when flat footed. You are flat footed from the time combat begins to when you take your first action in combat. Therefore allowing those with higher Initiative than you to hit you with sneak attacks and catch you off guard, thus removing the benefit for the Total Defense option. It also only lasts for 1 round. Which ends when you take your next action. In other words, it has no effect at all outside of combat...because EVERYONE is defending themselves all the time when they aren't attacking. That's the default position.

If you can describe something which is reasonable and which even a 5 year old can do, its my job to say 'Yes' to it, not to try to figure out how to say, 'No' That's the guiding philosophy of my game refereeing. It's not merely my job to enforce the rules. My job is turn player propositions into concrete rules. The rules say that if a player proposes to do nothing but defend themselves, they recieve a small bonus to defense in exchange for small penalties in other ways. That seems perfectly reasonable to me, so I go with it.

There's a difference between describing an action and its in game effect. The rules tell you when an action sometimes fails or has a different effect then you'd expect.

To a player that said "I'm keeping my shield up defending myself from all attacks as I walk down the hallway", I'd simply say "Alright, you keep your shield up, you are ready to defend against anything. You are looking left, right, back, forward, keeping your shield at the ready for any attack, not knowing where or when it'll come. Then, suddenly, you see an Orc walk around the corner. Roll initiative. He wins. He's fast. He runs towards you and attacks in one fluid motion. He's so fast, that although you have your shield up, he attacks downwards, at your legs. Not expecting that move, you are thrown off guard and he cuts right underneath your shield and hits you soundly in the legs. You watch his weapon, his eyes, and his stance closely now, ready to move your shield to compensate for any move he makes."

Which is a long way of saying "It's the first round of combat, you are flatfooted and lose all dodge bonuses to AC since you haven't acted yet."

And the interactions of those rules are not coincidental. There's a reason it's a dodge bonus.

It sounds like your problem is the same one that my first 3e DM had. He didn't LIKE the concept of flatfootedness.

 

[Celebrim]

When do you roll for initiative? Whenever the order in which things happen is important.

Page 25 of the 3.5 DMG has a short section on Combat Actions outside Combat in which, as an example, Mialee tries to stop Lidda from pulling a mysterious lever. They roll initiative to see if Mialee has a chance to stop the incautious halfling. Similarly, I'd have my players roll initiative whenever either they or I think that timing and competing actions, not even necessarily combat, is important.

Picking out exactly when those instances occur, in and out of combat, is part of the art of DMing and setting the game session's pace.

I agree with all of this.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

When do you roll for initiative? Whenever the order in which things happen is important.

Right. That's worded better than I could come up with. You don't roll for initiative when talking to someone, even if they MIGHT be hostile, because who talks first isn't important. You roll for initiative as soon as someone takes an action that someone else is going to want to stop or act before.

So, if you corner a guy in an alley, he has a weapon in hand, it doesn't matter who acts first unless the other group wants to stop them from doing it. Which means if either party attacks, the other party is going to want to kill them first or disarm them first or whatever. Then we roll for init. And everyone becomes flatfooted.

 

[Celebrim]

I think it has to due with your interpretation of threat and encounter.

No, I think this has to do with your interpretation of threat and encounter.

To me, something doesn't become a "threat" until you absolutely know that they are attacking you. Someone holding a sword who might be an assassin isn't a threat until you attack them or they attack you.

Neither the law nor the common usage of the word 'threat' sees it that way, nor for that matter does your interpretation have anything to do with the rules as written so stop telling me I'm the one who is evading the intention of the rules.

Simply talking to someone doesn't start an encounter. Otherwise we'd be rolling initiative when we enter a bar and staying in initiative the entire time there were people around. I hope we are in agreement that this was not intended.

No, we aren't in agreement over that. If you don't like the outcome of your own hardheadness, don't blame me for it.

The idea of Flatfootedness is an interesting one. One of the first arguments I ever had about 3e rules(about 2 sessions into our first game) was between a DM and I over what flatfootedness was. He said it was impossible. No one was ever caught "flatfooted" and that if you expected combat, you'd obviously be NOT flatfooted. That discussion ended up with him removing the concept from his game...

I don't know why you think this story speaks in your favor.

I tried to explain to him that the concept was that you were simply caught off guard because you weren't "on the balls of your feet", "in a fighting stance", "knowing where to expect the attack from", "having your weapon in the right grip", and similar concepts that model the "I'm ready, but I'm not QUITE ready" concept of flatfootedness.

Again. Surreal.

Then you would be completely incapable of doing what I said in the previous post. Which is my favorite image of a Rogue ever. You see it in movies all the time.

Right there is the crux of the matter. You are bending the rules to enable 'your favorite image...ever'. If the rules don't enable that image for you, you get cranky and by your own admission badger your DM about it until he pulls a nuclear option on you.

The image of the "Rogue" as a guy so fast that, even though you're standing in front of him not sure what to make of him, weapon in your hand, he pulls a dagger out of his sleeve and throws it at your neck before in one lightning fast action that catches you off guard and hits you before you have a chance to defend against it.

It's called 'Flick of the Wrist'. It's a feat. Look it up.

Which is so obviously a sneak attack.

What part of that involved sneaking?

Unfortunately, in your system, it means that you roll initiative when you walk into the room and see the unarmed Rogue. After all, he MIGHT be a threat, and you should roll for initiative because an encounter has started.The fighter readies his action to attack if the Rogue makes a move. He then starts asking the Rogue some questions, the Rogue taunts him. Then, with lighting fast reflexes he whips out a dagger....and dies due to the Readied Action.

Absolutely. Which is why you shouldn't play a Rogue if you aren't creative. There are several ways under the rules to handle this situation.

Sure, it's great to be the Fighter in that circumstance. It sucks to have spent feats on Quick Draw and Improved Initiative when they give you no benefits at all(or very little).

Surreal.

This discussion clearly serves no purpose. Obviously, this means so much to you that you are willing to wreck games over it, so we are going to have to agree to disagree.

 

[Janx]

I'm going to look at a different angle. Namely, what me and my friends commonly do, which seems to gloss over most of this nit-picking. This is under at least 3 different DMs, including one who only comes down once a year or so. (Meaning we have 2 groups who evolved to play it the same way).

In most encounters, we've never applied the flat-footed penalty. It's like we forget about it. We also RARELY have a surprise round, if ever. We usually manage to convince the DM that we should have surprise, based on the in-game state. That's no die rolls to make that determination.

That means, in the scenario of the unaware orcs in a closed room, the party opens the door and sees orcs. The DM says "roll initiative" and we all do.

Then combat ensues, nobody is flat-footed, neither side. The fight goes until the orcs are dead (becauser we're PCs and almost always win).

What's really going on is we're basically 2E converts. We're playing without the flat-footed rules.

What flat-footed really means, for the beginning of the round, is that the rogue (guy with high dex) would have gotten an extra bonus to attack first by having everyone be easier to hit.

If you're going to justify the rule, the rogue's lighting fast reflexes lets him get a quick stab, before anybody expected. It is a perk of being high-dex that you get this easier attack on the first round. And it helps, since a high-dex char usually has a worse attack score.

From a real-world perspective, any sport person has experienced the "first to move" effect. Both sides are waiting for the moment, either a whistle, or just staring down the other side. And then one side moves. And for a moment, the other side is off guard. Once everythings in motion, it all works out, but for that first instant, the guy who went first has an advantage.

 

[El Mahdi]

... it was the wide use of that house rule that was causing the trouble. That house rule is, "You don't have to roll initiative at the start of an encounter." Every DM, including me, avoids rolling initiative at the start of at least some encounters, either because no one in the scene is 'on gaurd', or the probability of combat is IMO low (which is actually a form of railroading), or because I don't want to give away that the probability of combat is high and thus spoil the natural reactions of the players. But not rolling initiative in a situation where a threat is present is precisely what leads to this argument. ...

A slight aside, but I've gotten around this problem by having players roll all of their initiatives before the game actually starts. I put them all on an Excel sheet and use them in order as needed. Using the sort function I can even randomize initiative from round-to-round, with the players own actual rolls.

It alleviates the problem of not being able to surprise the playres (not the characters) with a possible combat. It also saves time during combat since it's one less die roll that's being made. Also, if you randomize from round-to-round, it keeps players focused on the combat, since they're never sure when their turn will come up.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Neither the law nor the common usage of the word 'threat' sees it that way, nor for that matter does your interpretation have anything to do with the rules as written so stop telling me I'm the one who is evading the intention of the rules.

The law is completely unrelated to this discussion. Regardless of your definition of the word threat, as was said above, the point of initiative is to determine who goes first when that's important. Two people have swords pointed at each other, who gets to strike first? A puck drops, who is the first to get it with their stick and so on. When walking down a hallway, it isn't important who goes first. No one else is around. When talking to someone, it doesn't matter who goes first, they can both talk over each other for all anyone cares. So, you don't roll initiative in these cases.

No, we aren't in agreement over that. If you don't like the outcome of your own hardheadness, don't blame me for it.

What? Why would you need to roll initiatve when you walk into a bar? What purpose does this serve? How does it help the game? How does it make the game more fun?

I don't know why you think this story speaks in your favor.

I'm not sure what you mean. It was just a story. I was explaining that I had a DM who didn't like flatfootedness and it unbalanced Rogues. They were no fun to play because they could suddenly do a lot less damage than they could when flatfootedness plus rolling initiative at the very beginning of combat was in effect.

Without flatfootedness, the Rogue was one of the least powerful members of the group. To the point where I rolled up a fighter just so I could compete. With flatfootedness, the Rogue was still slightly less powerful than everyone else, but still competitive.

Our DM decided to change the rules from the ones in the book to better fit his sense of "realism" and in the process made a class less powerful that I, and the rest of the group, thought it should be.

I'm saying that allowing initiative to be rolled whenever you want essentially removes flatfootedness from the game, causing the same effect.

Right there is the crux of the matter. You are bending the rules to enable 'your favorite image...ever'. If the rules don't enable that image for you, you get cranky and by your own admission badger your DM about it until he pulls a nuclear option on you.

How does anything I've said bend the rules? There's nothing in the rules that says if you walk into a room with a guy with a sword, you MUST roll initiative immediately. Failure to do so is bending the rules.

In fact, as pointed out above, it says the exact opposite. It says to roll for initiative only when you need to know who goes first and timing is important.

This discussion clearly serves no purpose. Obviously, this means so much to you that you are willing to wreck games over it, so we are going to have to agree to disagree.

Wow. No need to be offensive. But I do have one question...how does this wreck any game? How does this interpretation make the game less fun for anyone? It is a fair interpretation that means those who roll higher initiative get a bonus(no dex modifier for their enemies for one round) that isn't removed simply by stating "I'd like to start initiative early".

Also, why is everything surreal?

From a real-world perspective, any sport person has experienced the "first to move" effect. Both sides are waiting for the moment, either a whistle, or just staring down the other side. And then one side moves. And for a moment, the other side is off guard. Once everythings in motion, it all works out, but for that first instant, the guy who went first has an advantage.

Precisely. There are many times when both parties are expecting something to happen, but they don't know when. The person with a faster reaction time gets a small bonus in these circumstances.

 

[Rykion]

It seems to me this is just a discussion over whether it is possible to catch someone who is alert momentarily off-guard at the start of action, and also when that action really starts.

Sports have been used for analogy, so I will use sports again. In football, the offense knows the snap count and therefore have an advantage on the start of action over the defense. In most games I've seen, it's not that unusual for a defensive lineman, linebacker, or safety to get a jump on an offensive lineman and go through a gap or around the outside untouched. The offensive line isn't surprised that the defense is acting. They were just not fast enough at the start of action to stop their opponents. I think this is a good illustration of the game condition of flat-footed.

The other issue is deciding when action, in this case when to roll initiative for combat, starts. I've always done it once the decision to take offensive action has been made by either or both sides. I don't do it just because both sides are potentially hostile and at least one is aware of other. The immediate intent to start combat must be there.

I don't consider it a perfect system. It's very unusual for someone to get a full 6 seconds of activity without response from opponents. That is the abstraction of 6 second rounds though.

 

[Celebrim]

What? Why would you need to roll initiatve when you walk into a bar?

Obviously, to prevent this argument over whether or not someone is flatfooted.

I'm saying that allowing initiative to be rolled whenever you want essentially removes flatfootedness from the game, causing the same effect.

I know what you are saying, and you are wrong. There are actions like 'feint' and feats like 'flick of the wrist' that allow you to flatfoot even an aware opponent, but more importantly nothing I have said prevents a character from ambushing another character at which point neither of us disagree over how the game works. Additionally, as I've said, there is no reason to suppose that every one goes around ready for combat and I consider it completely appropriate that if you attack someone who has no belief that you are a threat, that if you win initiative you'll catch them flatfooted. Moreover, the rogues main source of sneak attack damage is usually flanking a foe. The only area where my interpretation elimenates flatfootedness is one narrow set of circumstances - the one you claim is 'your favorite image...ever'.

How does anything I've said bend the rules?

For the simple reason that you claim that a being alert to a threat that has taken an action is still flatfooted, which is a clear violation of both the intention of and letter of the rules. And you've been very clear about why you want to bend the rules, because you think that rogues aren't powerful enough without your interpretation and because you are clearly emotionally invested in a certain cinematic outcome.

There's nothing in the rules that says if you walk into a room with a guy with a sword, you MUST roll initiative immediately.

No, but there is nothing that says you shouldn't either and quite abit that implies that you should. Precisely because not rolling initiative leads to this sort of argument over the physical state of the inhabitants of the room and leads the player to imagine a world that is more or less frozen in place until the player takes the initiative to launch an attack it is a very good practice to do so.

In fact, as pointed out above, it says the exact opposite. It says to roll for initiative only when you need to know who goes first and timing is important.

But clearly any time you plan on attacking one of the inhabitants, its important or we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Wow. No need to be offensive. But I do have one question...how does this wreck any game?

It wrecked the one where the DM was forced to remove flatfootedness from the game. That's an extreme reaction, and my guess is the DM did it because he recognized how broken your account of the rules is and didn't realize that the world as you described it is not the world as the rules describe it.

Also, why is everything surreal?

Really, I should stop answering you, but I suppose that's a fair question.

By surreal I mean the experience I have when a person uses a word but then immediately claims that the word doesn't mean what it means. For example, they might say, "It's rape but not rape rape." or they might say, "Its being prepared but not you know really being prepared." On of the funniest is asking a person who is looking at an aligator what color it is, because many people will reflexively say something like, "Green.", and then look at the aligator again and say, "But not you know green green." It's the name I have for the experience of hearing someone deny what they just said because what they just said doesn't conform to what they wish or think they know. I don't know if there is a better word, but it conjures for me the image of a melting quivering reality.