Celebrim
Legend
When I first sprung on most groups that the amount of segments that they were suprised by was the number of rounds the surpriser could attack, they were stunned. But its right there in the DMG.
The surprise rule became broken for fighters at higher levels of play though (especially after specialization), and the rule about readied missile weapons was broken period and I would be very surprised indeed if anyone ever played with it. To resolve the problems, I changed the rule to one melee attack per segment, except for monks (and monsters!) who could use thier full unarmed attack sequence each segment (I wanted monsters to get full rounds of attack because 1st edition monsters needed help, and then it only seemed fair to let monks do it too), or characters using a weapon in each hand who could use both weapons each segment (with standard penalties for two handed attacks). Thieves that qualified for a backstab could apply the multiplier for backstab to each attack of a surprise.
Readied missile weapons could make one attack each surprise segment up to a maximum of the number of attacks the character could make in a round. Unreadied missile weapons could be readied in one segment.
Oh, and I applied the characters reaction modifier to initiative, and to prevent that from being too gross I used a d10 instead of a d6. And I didn't have a declaration phase because I liked that the major events of the round occurred in a sequence. So for example a spell caster could wait till thier turn in the initiative order to choose whether (and what) to begin casting, and they would complete X segments after that point. Players could elect to hold thier turn in the initiative until a later point (essentially whats now called a 'readied action') so as to thwart spell casters, shoot an opponent taking advantage of cover ('pop up attacks') or whatever. If two characters held thier action waiting on the other, the one with the lower initiative was forced to go first. Some of that may have been borrowed from 2nd edition, or it may have been an actual first edition rule, or I may have just borrowed it from the house rules of someone else's campaign. At this point, I don't even remember how it came about.
Like I said, almost no one played by the same rules.
The surprise rule became broken for fighters at higher levels of play though (especially after specialization), and the rule about readied missile weapons was broken period and I would be very surprised indeed if anyone ever played with it. To resolve the problems, I changed the rule to one melee attack per segment, except for monks (and monsters!) who could use thier full unarmed attack sequence each segment (I wanted monsters to get full rounds of attack because 1st edition monsters needed help, and then it only seemed fair to let monks do it too), or characters using a weapon in each hand who could use both weapons each segment (with standard penalties for two handed attacks). Thieves that qualified for a backstab could apply the multiplier for backstab to each attack of a surprise.
Readied missile weapons could make one attack each surprise segment up to a maximum of the number of attacks the character could make in a round. Unreadied missile weapons could be readied in one segment.
Oh, and I applied the characters reaction modifier to initiative, and to prevent that from being too gross I used a d10 instead of a d6. And I didn't have a declaration phase because I liked that the major events of the round occurred in a sequence. So for example a spell caster could wait till thier turn in the initiative order to choose whether (and what) to begin casting, and they would complete X segments after that point. Players could elect to hold thier turn in the initiative until a later point (essentially whats now called a 'readied action') so as to thwart spell casters, shoot an opponent taking advantage of cover ('pop up attacks') or whatever. If two characters held thier action waiting on the other, the one with the lower initiative was forced to go first. Some of that may have been borrowed from 2nd edition, or it may have been an actual first edition rule, or I may have just borrowed it from the house rules of someone else's campaign. At this point, I don't even remember how it came about.
Like I said, almost no one played by the same rules.
I imagine my own AD&D games were the same, but I'm not sure. I didn't ever DM AD&D, and I quit playing shortly after the gamers I knew finally fully adopted it instead of the boxed sets. Back then gamers I knew were more interested in diversity and we had Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Top Secret, and I don't even remember what else to try out anyway.
