Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6504233" data-attributes="member: 58197">Yup. Remember that if you're not surprised, that means you knew the enemy was there and there was potential for combat; you were already on your guard. There's no "combat mode" where you become able to take reactions--you can always take reactions, whether you're in initiative order or not. Initiative is just a way to resolve the question of who gets the first swing.Surprise handles the special case where an enemy you didn't know about is attacking you. In that case, you can't take reactions because you haven't "woken up" to the threat yet.(Admittedly, the assassin's ability to get advantage versus any creature that hasn't acted yet doesn't quite fit into this model, but that's one ability of one subclass. There are various ways you could explain it. In general, I think it works a lot better to treat "roll initiative" as a way to organize combat, not a transition from one game-world state to another.)</blockquote>