I have a question about how "Ready an action" works with "suprirse" rules.Suppose the situation is the party is getting ready to ambush a dragon. They are all hiding, and want to ready an action since they know the dragon will be in a specific place at a specific time. Can the party get in position, and then say: the mage has a ready action to fire a magic missle at time X. The fighter will have a ready action to jump out and bash once magic missle is fired. The barbarian will have a ready action to bash once the fighter jumps out. This seems reasonable to me. However, does the party get a "surprise" round after the readied actions? It seems kind of wrong to basically give the party two free rounds of attacks before the monster gets to go.
D&D 5E (2014) Ready Action / Surprise Actions
- Thread starter Shine Tu
- Start date
Li Shenron
Legend
No.
The party just checks for Stealth, while the Dragon checks for Perception.
If the party wins, they win surprise, i.e. everybody rolls Initiative and during the first round the Dragon cannot act while the PCs can act as they like.
If the dragon wins, no surprise, everybody rolls Initiative and combat starts normally.
The benefit of their "readying" is the chance of winning surprise and force the Dragon to skip the first round.
Otherwise there is no "Ready action" outside of combat. The players can say what actions they plan to do once combat starts, but they don't need to.
The party just checks for Stealth, while the Dragon checks for Perception.
If the party wins, they win surprise, i.e. everybody rolls Initiative and during the first round the Dragon cannot act while the PCs can act as they like.
If the dragon wins, no surprise, everybody rolls Initiative and combat starts normally.
The benefit of their "readying" is the chance of winning surprise and force the Dragon to skip the first round.
Otherwise there is no "Ready action" outside of combat. The players can say what actions they plan to do once combat starts, but they don't need to.
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
Me too. It sounds like a thing that could reasonably happen in the fiction given the context you have provided.
If the dragon is surprised, it doesn't get to act or move in its first turn or take reactions until the end of its first turn. I would say these readied actions are what takes place in the first round when the dragon is surprised.
D&Dsince76
First Post
Greetings All...
I agree with the statement:
"The party just checks for Stealth, while the Dragon checks for Perception. If the party wins, they win surprise, i.e. everybody rolls Initiative and during the first round the Dragon cannot act while the PCs can act as they like. If the dragon wins, no surprise, everybody rolls Initiative and combat starts normally."
Additionally, if they were my players - and they thought up a really good plan (not just: "we hide in the bushes and wait to surprise the dragon") - I would grant them Advantage on the Stealth roll(s).
Bill W.
I agree with the statement:
"The party just checks for Stealth, while the Dragon checks for Perception. If the party wins, they win surprise, i.e. everybody rolls Initiative and during the first round the Dragon cannot act while the PCs can act as they like. If the dragon wins, no surprise, everybody rolls Initiative and combat starts normally."
Additionally, if they were my players - and they thought up a really good plan (not just: "we hide in the bushes and wait to surprise the dragon") - I would grant them Advantage on the Stealth roll(s).
Bill W.
