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<blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 7354875" data-attributes="member: 5143">As a side note, this weird bug in the rules appears to be a side effect of trying to remove &quot;rounds&quot; from the game. There's no reason for the DM to ever keep track of the &quot;beginning of a round&quot; or the &quot;end of a round in 5e. Lair actions happen at Initiative 20, not at the beginning. All spell effects end at the end of a certain turn, not the end of a round.This appears to have been a design goal.But they kept the stealth rules about 95% the same from 3.5e/4e D&amp;D where the first round of combat was the &quot;surprise round&quot;. As far as I can tell, they realized that they didn't like the idea that there was still a reason to figure out who the &quot;last&quot; person in initiative was, so they just had it end at the end of each person's turn like everything else.But they didn't realize that it would cause Rogue's Assassinate ability to fail to work against people higher in initiative to them. You can tell from the first couple of answers both Mike Mearls and the Sage gave to this question. It seemed to surprise them (pun intended). But they aren't going to change the rules because of such a small bug in the rules, so we are left with this weird quirk.I think in most home games it is worth house ruling surprise until the end of the round.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Majoru Oakheart, post: 7354875, member: 5143"] As a side note, this weird bug in the rules appears to be a side effect of trying to remove "rounds" from the game. There's no reason for the DM to ever keep track of the "beginning of a round" or the "end of a round in 5e. Lair actions happen at Initiative 20, not at the beginning. All spell effects end at the end of a certain turn, not the end of a round. This appears to have been a design goal. But they kept the stealth rules about 95% the same from 3.5e/4e D&D where the first round of combat was the "surprise round". As far as I can tell, they realized that they didn't like the idea that there was still a reason to figure out who the "last" person in initiative was, so they just had it end at the end of each person's turn like everything else. But they didn't realize that it would cause Rogue's Assassinate ability to fail to work against people higher in initiative to them. You can tell from the first couple of answers both Mike Mearls and the Sage gave to this question. It seemed to surprise them (pun intended). But they aren't going to change the rules because of such a small bug in the rules, so we are left with this weird quirk. I think in most home games it is worth house ruling surprise until the end of the round. [/QUOTE]

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