D&D General Is Surprise worth it as a mechanic?

[Shiroiken]

Surprise was huge in 3.5, not only because of Rogues, who could deliver massive sneak attack damage, but in general, due to how much you could get away with if you got to go first in general after awhile. High level 3.5 battles were called "rocket tag" for a reason.

Didn't 3.5 have the "half turn" surprise round, or was that 3E? While amazing for spellcasters that seldom move unless they have to, it sucked for martials (kinda like the whole edition). AD&D was often a game of rocket tag too, since HP were much, much lower and you had little control over your initiative modifier.

 

[James Gasik]

3.5 did, but you were allowed to make a "partial charge" as a standard action, moving your speed and making an attack. Or more attacks if you could pounce. There were builds devoted to charging without pounce, called "uberchargers" that could deal more damage than anything else in the game.

3.5 didn't suck so much for martials as one might suppose, but it did force them to specialize with very complex builds, at least until the Tome of Battle came out. Which made playing martials fun and easy, but some people didn't like the paradigm shift or the flavor of their abilities and were quite vocal about it.

 

[RuinousPowers]

I always preferred the idea behind the earlier editions' surprise rules, where surprise wasn't just limited to thieves.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I agree. Surprise often has far more than a minimal effect. An entire round where only 1 side gets to act is often huge.

I think you’re right. At low level you cannot survive more than an attack; at higher levels, people start slinging spells.

Going first can matter.

 

[Vaalingrade]

For most of the D&D Next playtest, being surprised just gave you a -10 to your initiative roll. It was very simple and easy to use, while still being pretty advantageous to the surprising party. You could try bringing that back.

Once again, impressive competence from the Playtest.

Hmm...

I'm not thinking about Simple Surprise, being -10 to initiative if you fail the detect an enemy before an attack.

But then we have the Ambush skill challenge, where PCs can set up an ambush and impose Flatfooted on surprised enemies for the first round of combat. And the Ambushed! challenge for the reverse where enemies do it. Neither require just Perception checks to resolve.

Monsters are already covered as Stalker class monsters in my system already have the Ambusher quality that grants bonus damage to targets with certain conditions ala Sneak Attack.

 

[Plaguescarred]

Surprise is worth it as you need some form of mechanic to emulate the result of ambush for both sides.

I quite like 5E Surprise rules as they don't grant an advantage to the ambusher beyond being unseen or hidden so much as they impede on the ability to act/react by surprised creature. I would have went a step further and made Surprised a condition.