Context my friend. Context. We've been discussing one side attacking the other. Context is your friend. "That" in the context of our discussion clearly meant your claim that one side has to be attacking the other before initiative is rolled. It doesn't.
Are you seriously taking issue with my use of the word
combat for a situation in which at least one side is attacking the other? I don't know how you think combat could happen without creatures attacking each other.
Yep! Nothing says that has to happen before initiative or surprise is rolled. T[w]o groups sneaking around looking for people to attack can surprise each other before anyone ever attacks.
What are they surprised by if not surprise
attacks? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I'm imagining what you're describing is two parties are sneaking along, each undetected by the other, until they come upon each other at an intersection. At that point in time, they both notice each other, so by the surprise rules, no one is surprised if combat breaks out. Am I missing something here?
See, in language, words mean things. I bolded the part that says I'm right. It specifies typical for a reason. And that reason as that there will be atypical combat encounters that don't fit that mold. All of your quotes and explanations are brought to ruin by the one word. In an atypical encounter, two sides can be surprised and roll initiative before anyone moves to attack.
I don’t think the word
typical explains how participants “in a battle” “engage in combat” by standing around dumbfounded that they’ve managed to bump into someone else in a dungeon. Has it occurred to you that combat is
typically a clash between two sides because sometimes it’s a clash between three or more sides? Or would you rather maintain your assertion that sometimes combat isn't a clash between any sides, at which point I think we've departed significantly from the meaning of the word
combat?
Yes it is. By specifying "direct opposition", they automatically create "indirect opposition". You can't have one without the other.
Well, they give two examples of directly opposed efforts in the contest section, another two in the section on melee attacks in the form of grapple and shove attacks, and of course the most common example is in the hiding rules, but there aren't any examples or mention in the book of efforts that are considered
indirectly opposed. I honestly don't think it's worth distinguishing them as a separate category.
Contests are also defined in the "Contests in Combat" sidebar as representing challenges that pit one participants prowess against that of another. In initiative, each participant's Dexterity, which represents prowess in reacting quickly among other things, is pitted against the Dexterity of his/her opponents.
Me:
If I'm trying to hit you with my sword before you cast a spell on me, I'd say my effort to do so is directly opposed to your effort to cast your spell before I hit [sic] run you through.
You:
Cool beans. 1. Those are not ability checks, so they don't matter to a discussion on ability checks, and 2. they are not initiative.
Both of your statements are false. Initiative is how we find out whether I'm successful in swinging my sword before you cast your spell, so it most certainly is initiative, and initiative most certainly is an ability check.
This is a cop out. You don't get to assume motives for the game designer, especially when his answer doesn't even remotely indicate such a motive. Let me demonstrate.
I understand that Jeremy Crawford has said that the initiative roll is not a contest, but I also think Alf told him to say what he said, rather than just say it was a contest.
My answer quite literally has as much to back it up as yours does.
There's no indication from his tweet that his motive has anything to do with combat sometimes involving more than two participants or the degree of directness of the opposition represented by initiative.
Those draconian "balancer" mechanics are often not needed.
