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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ibrandul" data-source="post: 7127137" data-attributes="member: 6871736">Newbie DM here running 5e. Last night my players were moving stealthily through a dungeon and the two characters in the lead both perceived the dim torchlight of an approaching enemy from around a corner. This wasn’t visible to the other party members (who don’t have darkvision), and the two characters who were aware of the imminent threat neglected to inform the other characters. The players of those two characters announced that they wanted to “ready an action” – namely, shoot arrows at the enemy as soon as it rounded the corner.The enemy then rounded the corner, just a second or two after the two characters first noticed the light, and initiative was rolled. Due to a roll of 2 and no bonus to perception, the enemy ranked last in initiative. The enemy was “surprised” as well.My players were under the impression that, because they had readied an action prior to combat (to loose their arrows), those two characters could fire their arrows off in a sort of “free round,” then the first round of combat would take place (in which, because the enemy was surprised, it couldn’t move or take actions), and then the second round of combat would take place, at the end of which (due to its poor initiative) the unfortunate enemy would finally get to do something more than take a reaction. So, in my players’ minds, the two forewarned characters would have three attacks each, and the other PCs would have two attacks each, before the enemy could attack at all. I explained that, mechanically, “ready” isn’t something you can do prior to combat in 5e, and that the way my players expected the situation to play out was basically a combination of 5e (“surprised”) and earlier editions (“surprise round”), adding up to a double bonus for the players. They accepted this – they’re always good about accepting my rulings – and we simply resolved the encounter according to initiative order, with the surprised enemy unable to take any actions until its turn on the second combat round. But the two characters who had actually noticed the threat were second-to-last and third-to last in initiative (due to the rolls), and this seemed unsatisfactory to all of us, too. Basically, it seems that my players and I wanted three tiers: “actually aware of an imminent threat”; “actively anticipating the likelihood of a threat but not aware of any specific threat”; and “caught completely off guard.” Any suggestions?</blockquote>

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