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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 6057701" data-attributes="member: 32740">Firstly, there is no surprise round. By the book in 3.0/3.5 surprise is nothing more than "awareness of" an opponent. The fighter and ranger are busily engaged in verbal confrontation. Each is aware of the other - therefore there is no surprise round. Yeah, you can really stretch it and say that there's a difference between knowing that the person in front of you is actually there and knowing that he's a danger to you; to say that "aware of" doesn't just mean presence but constituting an actual threat. Frankly the rules do not care and do not address that as a possibility necessitating special rules. Now, IMO, a DM is free to decide that using a surprise round is a swift, efficient way of handling the situation, and maybe a sense motive/bluff check is a good way to determine if surprise is achieved, but that's not by-the-book. By the book the ranger player says, "I am going to attack," and the DM responds with, "Roll initiative," and play then proceeds with all that that entails. That means that by the book even though it seems that the ranger should be the first to act because the player was the first to state that combat action was indeed being taken the rules simply do not take steps to prioritize actions IN combat based on declaration outside of combat. In fact, the game goes out of its way to make that clear by specifically disallowing the use of the Ready action outside of combat. By the book the ranger simply CANNOT guarantee himself the ability to strike first in the given scenario. He HAS to win initiative. This IS a DM's call because the rules specifically do not cover this sort of thing. It is assumed that the DM wishes to guarantee to the ranger the ability to strike first which the rules make no allowance for and indeed go out of their way to prevent. But you're really making this more complicated than it needs to be. The simplest thing to do is to roll initiative but place the ranger at the top of the initiative queue. This requires no twisting interpretations of the rules, no piling on of additional procedures. If the DM believes that circumstances should allow the ranger to attack first despite the limitations inherent in the rules, then it is no more complicated than simply stating, "the ranger attacks first."</blockquote>

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