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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9866815" data-attributes="member: 29398">The post I was replying to when I first brought this up had as its main point somethng to the effect that trivialized combats aren't fun and so the game has moved to make it much harder to trivialize them, part of said movement being the softening of surprise benefits.To me, this sounded like the game wants players to ignore tactical advantage and character self-preservation in favour of "cinematic" combats, which from the point of view of the characters themselves seems bag-o'-hammers dumb.Not at all.  If the PCs can set up a situation that's so one-sided that the combat's not even worth playing out (the point being made in the post I quoted) then so can the PCs' opponents.  As the PCs losing a fight without it being played out wouldn't be good for the game, the flip side is that the so-called trivial combats that the PCs would normally win should (and IMO must) also be played out.That, and I've on numerous occasions seen things go horribly wrong for parties even in the most trivial of combats.  Dice can be stern masters sometimes.The most famous example of this is the end combat in A3 Aerie of the Slave Lords, where the PCs are supposed to be captured in order to set up A4.  The module takes it as a fait accompli that the PCs will lose and be captured.When I ran A3 I ran this combat in full, and I'm glad I did; of a party of (I think) 8 characters, three or four escaped and fled while the rest got captured.  From there, I ran it split-party for the rest of that adventure where half the party was operating outside the slavers' dungeon and the rest were operating inside it.It's less likely in 5e than older editions, to be sure, but a trivial combat going sideways can still happen.  A party of 8th-level characters vs lowly bandits can still get hammered if the PCs all roll 1s and the bandits hit 20s every time; and disallowing the chance for that to occur, no matter how remote that chance may be, IMO defeats the purpose of using dice in the first place.</blockquote>

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