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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saeviomagy" data-source="post: 6972117" data-attributes="member: 5890">How I do it:I always endeavor to have only one party make rolls. Rolling 1D20 is swingy enough. Rolling 2 is ridiculous, diminishing typicalI always choose who rolls what based on the range of possible outcomes. In this case, the monsters being spotted before the ambush happens is binary, and ideally having a small group of ambushers should be feasible. That rules out having each player roll vs each monster: the result of doing so will almost always be a failure to ambush, which is ridiculous.In this situation the PCs will take their passive perception as their perception score - which also means I don't need to tell them anything that might change their behaviour. Note that depending on situation, certain members of the group are supposed to have their perception scores ignored or reduced... but I personally find those rules to be ridiculous, and assuming the passive scores also makes them someone redundant: you're simply assuming the character with the highest perception will be the lookout.I only have to look at the highest passive score. The monsters need to roll, however having them all roll basically means that the chance of 4 monsters succeeding at an ambush is vanishingly slim, even if they're good at hiding. To me, that's a ridiculous outcome. Instead I use a (modified) group check. Roll each monsters skill, the result of the check is the median result (ie - you roll all the checks, arrange them from lowest to highest, then take the middlemost result OR the average of the two middlemost results). This is to determine whether an ambush happens at all.But what if there's an entire army, I hear you say? Shouldn't they have less chance to perform an ambush? My reply to that is that if you've got an entire army in an ambush position over a rise, then yes, they can perform an ambush without ending up with a DC of 1 + lowest member's stealth score. That's why armies have scouts.Once you've determined that an ambush happens, the surprise round is done in reverse: the players are now the ones who roll their perception score, and they do so vs the monster's lowest passive stealth. This establishes who is surprised.</blockquote>

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