Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 7146257" data-attributes="member: 6799649">Yeah, I've given multiple examples about how this can go in the game while still making sense in the narrative while still making sure that successfully hidden foes stay hidden versus creatures that fail their Perception checks to notice them.'Surprise' and 'initiative' model different things. 'Surprise' is about noticing a threat, while 'initiative' models how quickly you act/react.It is simply not true that going first in combat MUST be 'better' than going last; that high initiative MUST be better than low. The Alert feat doesn't change that. If the plan is for our wizard to fireball the enemy and then for the fighters to charge in, then it turns out the the fighters would benefit from a lower initiative than the wizard while a higher initiative could get them friendly-fireballed.There is no rules-based OR narrative-based certainty that high initiative is more 'optimal' than low.Being able to 'blindly' act IS 'better' than not being able to act at all!Your beef isn't with not being surprised or with things like the Alert feat that mean you are immune to surprise. Your beef is with the initiative rules where creatures act in initiative order whether or not they would rather act sooner or later! Tough! Them's the breaks! You don't have control over your reaction speed in the chaos of combat; that's what 5E initiative models, that's why they deliberately made the choice to remove the Delay action from the game, and why the Ready action no longer changes your initiative score. The PCs are being hosed here, not because they are immune to surprise, not because they rolled high initiative, but because they failed to perceive the enemy!This makes sense in the narrative, and is fair in the sense that those who perceive the enemy have the logical advantages of having done so and those who failed to perceive the enemy have the logical disadvantages of that failure.It's not motivated by a desire to screw with the players unfairly. It's motivated by a desire to have the game make sense.The players can only make meaningful choices for their PCs if things make sense. If the players in this scenario get their PCs killed in an ambush they should be able to trace a reason. They failed to spot the ambush, they rolled too low. Harsh, but fair.Who's going to complain that PCs who fail to spot the enemy should get to act as if they had seen the enemy?</blockquote>

Verification