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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 6899749" data-attributes="member: 6801228">I agree, obvious counter.Does every battle then start with a declared action? If the players are at a peace negotiation and you say “the orcish delegation roars angrily and draws their weapons, roll initiative” Is their turn spent drawing their weapons? After all, they declared an action, they can’t take that back and do something else instead, like moving or attacking. We’re in the same situation, you’re having the player pre-commit to an action, then rolling initiative. The only time that happens seems to be with this one situation, when a player is initiating combat against an unprepared enemy. If a spellcaster wanted to cast a fireball on a shaman (because he is standing in the middle of the enemies), initiative is rolled, they go last and the shaman splits off from the main force so that the fireball is only going to hit one person instead of the crowd, like the spellcaster intended, are they still forced to strike the shaman as they declared, or change the target hit as many people as they can? It is a minor situation, but if the assassin has to commit to their turn, before we even enter into combat, then how many other situations do we normally let slide, that also must be followed through on? I don’t want to argue slippery slope, just that if we’re being inconsistent towards what some people have called a minor ability of the assassin we need to realize it. I’m sorry to say you are arguing under a misunderstanding. I know what the rules are, I specifically houseruled this because I felt the narrative makes no sense. Therefore I am not playing any other game other than my own, which I recognize as being houseruled, and I hope I said that explicitly… looks like I did not. I’m thinking of the ranger discussion where I said that multiple times. Taking your example though is interesting. Assassin fires a bolt. Initiative is rolled, guard turn comes and goes, assassins turn… he fires the bolt he just fired…. Let’s make this a coordinated group ambush. The barbarian is going to charge a second guard as soon as the assassin fires his shot. Assassin fires, initiative is rolled, the guard does nothing, the barbarian charges, then the assassin fires the bolt that signals the barbarian to charge. After all, according to Flamestrike once you declare an action you can’t take it back, so the assassin fires and barbarian charge at the same time, which is before initiative is rolled and then they roll initiative and take their actions in initiative order, which ignores the narrative. Sure, the barbarian can ready an action, but since you can only ready a single action and can no longer delay your turn the barbarian charges and then stands there as the guard attacks them because the barbarian needs to wait for his turn to make his attack. Which gives the surprised guards an entire turn to attack, sound the alarm, ect. Ambush failed because initiative decided the players did not surprise the guards, despite the fact that stealth and planning were impeccable.  But, it seems we are moving too far away from the point of the thread and driving people away from the conversation. I houseruled it to work the way I want, you guys do it the way you want. This was never a discussion about rules, only narrative.</blockquote>

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