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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7142024" data-attributes="member: 16814">Strongly disagree.  At no point should you be punishing a player for their abilities, and saying 'you have no idea what's going on, and I will not inform you of anything, but you must now declare an action without knowing why because you picked a feat, rolled poorly once, and too well the second time' is just bad, bad, bad.  This also shows a failure to understand what surprise is -- it's not 'I don't know what up' it's 'something is now happening, but it shocked me and I hesitate.'  The wizard acting should be made know to everyone at the same time -- those with good perception checks don't freeze; those with poor check do.  The Alert players don't need to roll -- they're not surprised, period.  Punishing players for succeeding at initiative is bad play.Again, if you ask for initiative it is incumbent for you to frame the precipitating event.  This action is just known, it's not gated behind a roll.  If you think that this precipitating event may catch characters off guard, check for surprise, but this doesn't remove the fact that even the surprised players will still know what precipitated initiative, they just can't act the first round of combat.</blockquote>