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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 6899756" data-attributes="member: 6787503">This is correct. You don't begin combat because someone's thinking about attacking. You begin combat because someone actually is attacking. It took me a while to figure this out for myself. When I DM, I prefer to ask for action declarations at the beginning of each round of combat, but when I run vanilla, I don't have a no-takebacksies rule. Instead, if a player declares an action that initiates combat, and then decides on her turn not to follow through and resolve that action, it's with the understanding that the action was already underway at the point at which it was aborted. In the case of a hidden rogue having declared a ranged attack on an unaware target, the arrow is in flight. Combat has begun, and the unaware target is surprised by the arrow flying towards her. Now if the rogue decides to do something else on her turn, because the target is no longer surprised, then the arrow-shot doesn't get resolved and doesn't count as an attack at all, i.e. it doesn't reveal the rogue's position. It just flies wild because at the last minute the rogue stopped concentrating on shooting and decided to do something else, but it's still enough to cause surprise in the target.</blockquote>