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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 6066820" data-attributes="member: 32740">Actually I believe I said:Emphasis mine.I was asking for a citation of the broad discretionary powers which it was asserted extended beyond that - in particular bearing upon the situation in the OP.  Yes, the DM is given powers for determining whether surprise exists (and why would a DM bother to determine the existence of surprise except as a necessary initial part of combat?)  My point, apparantly badly made, was that it did NOT give rules nor concern itself beyond starting things in those three ways, despite assertion that there were broad discrtionary powers SPECIFIED for doing precisely that.  It suggested to me that there was a statement in the DMG somewhere that said something along the lines of, "The DM can determine that an encounter begins in OTHER ways than these three through the use of the following discretionary powers," but all I see is the DMG suggesting the DM to use a variety of means ONLY to determine surprise in those limited contexts.Which by context is STILL limiting those discretionary powers to dealing ONLY with starting encounters by the noted three possibilities, all concerning nothing more than 'awareness".  Had the DMG wanted to specify broad discretionary powers to start combats in ways OTHER than by determining awareness it would have been simple to do so, and that would have been the place to do it.  But it only goes on to deal with those three methods in detail.  It is quite clear that the authors of 3E either did not anticipate the possibility of encounters starting in some other way, or they DID anticipate it but chose NOT to address them at all, preferring to deal only with the method of "awareness" which they'd come up with as the starting mechanism.A situation as described in the OP is simply not adequately covered by those three possibilities.  That's not a crime.  It's not an insult to you or me.  It is simply an omission or an oversight of the possibility of combats beginning in ways OTHER than just one side becoming aware of each other and the need to provide particular intiative rules for that.  Situations like standoffs or arguments such as was being described are simply not covered by the rules.  They must be covered by DM adjudication.See, this is actually kind of funny because I am a RABID champion of the DM telling the rules to get stuffed whenever and wherever he feels the rules are inadequate, incorrect, or simply inconvenient for the game he wants to run.  If you say the DM should simply handle it in the way he thinks is right then I AGREE!  I'm saying that the rules don't cover this.  The 3.5 DMG is fallable. In this matter its fallability is exposed in that it cannot or will not provide rules for the possibility of beginning encounters in alternative ways except as noted.Who's trying to RUIN the game?  I'm trying to improve it, or at least my own handling of it as a DM.  That includes acknowledging failures, omissions, inadequacies of the rules, suggestions of how to handle things within the boundries given by the rules, but most of all emphasizing that the DM runs the game, the game does not run the DM, and that creation of new and better rules is not just a DM's privilege it's often a DM's JOB - and this is one of those areas.  I often feel I'm making myself obnoxious by repeating this as often as I do, but back in 1979 in the preface to the 1E DMG Gary Gygax summed it up nicely - not just for AD&D but IMO for EVERY version of D&D that might also come after it:</blockquote>

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