Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="tiornys" data-source="post: 5662814" data-attributes="member: 17633">Good deal, although I wasn't precisely against the idea.  More like I was analyzing the consequences of such a house-rule and thinking "out loud", listing things off as I came up with them.  I don't have a ready answer to this, which is part of why I said I was ok with surprise round mechanics here.  By "ambush style", I'm not sure if you mean any creatures that are trying to get the drop on us, or if you mean a specific tactic of exposing one creature to draw out attackers while others lie hidden and wait for an opportune moment to come in.  For the former, I think straight mechanics work fine:  the monsters start stealthed.  One of four scenarios occurs.  If the PC's detect the monsters without being detected or the monsters detect the PC's without being detected, then that side has an opportunity to move into place/wait for the other side to move into place, then launch an attack with full surprise.  The longer they wait, the more chance there is for the other side to detect, in which case we wind up one of the other two scenarios.If some of the PC's and monsters detect each other, but not all, then we have an immediate surprise round, where only those who detected the other side act, and then we go into normal initiative.  If everyone becomes aware of each other at once (an unlikely initial condition in a setup where the monsters start stealthed, but possible if for example the PCs detect first, try to move to better positions, and fail their group stealth), we have normal combat with no surprise, even in cases where one side had a chance at a surprise round.For the latter--I don't know the best way to handle that, especially if you're trying to fool the players and not just the characters.  What I probably would have done is used scenario three when Kali spotted the creature in the corner--Kali is aware of the enemy, the enemy is aware of the party, the enemy and Kali get surprise round actions.  In doing so, of course, I would have made it explicit that the enemy knew of the party rather than dropping hints, so I'd have lost some potential for tension.But yeah, there are scenarios that are hard to handle well, and this is one of them.  As I said, your way of handling this was reasonable, and arguably better than what I would have done.t~</blockquote>

Verification