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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 6901373" data-attributes="member: 6799649">That's the logical disconnect right there.You're assuming, incorrectly, that anyone who is now a threat was always a threat.But in the scenarios we're using as examples, the person was not a threat the whole time!In the diplomacy example, none of the people present are threats (in combat terms), until someone decides to initiate combat.What happened to move someone from 'non-threat' to 'threat'?In narrative terms, someone said something about his mother.In game terms, he initiates combat!Because, in game terms, 'surprise' is inextricably linked to the first round of combat! In game mechanics, 'surprise' has no other function whatsoever, because its effects only apply to the first round of combat.Therefore, another person possibly being a threat at some unspecified time in the future does not intersect with the 5E surprise rules. Only when combat rounds begin is surprise determined, at this is the moment when the rules adjudicate whether or not you were expecting to actually be attacked at that moment.You've been in negotiations for an hour. Although these guys are the 'bad guys' in campaign terms (we are negotiating so that our countries can end the war, implying that we are at war), we do not expect the negotiators to draw daggers and attack. The guards don't assume that; if they did then they'd mow everyone down as they walked into the room! The guards are on the lookout for someone going postal(!), but even they would not expect the danger to be from the diplomats themselves.TLDR, creatures can turn from 'non-threat' to 'threat'; 'surprise', and the determination thereof, is only done as combat begins, so the fact that you think that someone could be a threat if they were to attack you is irrelevant. Only at the moment they actually attack you do the rules determine whether this caught you....flat-footed, for want of a better term.</blockquote>

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