Spellcasting in the Suprise round.

[Mekabar]

so an invisible assailant, who started a coup de grace action during the surprise round, would have to use a second round to finish it, or an invisible rogue with whirlwind attack would: start the action in surprise round, breaking invisibility, then complete the action in the normal round, possibly having his opponents beat his initiative and just move back out of reach?

To avoid such troubles, I would disallow taking a full-round action on a surprise round at all. If you catch your enemies by surprise, you have to act quickly, otherwise the surprise is forfeit...

 

[Pyrex]

Start/Complete Full-Round Action
The “start full-round action” standard action lets you start undertaking a full-round action, which you can complete in the following round by using another standard action. You can’t use this action to start or complete a full attack, charge, run, or withdraw.
-Hyp.

That's the piece I was looking for, but none of us could find it mid-game.

That was my first thought as well, but w/o finding the reference I ruled Standard(Suprise)+Move(1st round).

 

[andargor]

Just another thought. If said caster starts a 1 round casting time spell in the surprise round, then she can have her spell disrupted if she doesn't win initiative on the first round.

Andargor

 

[azmodean]

To avoid such troubles, I would disallow taking a full-round action on a surprise round at all. If you catch your enemies by surprise, you have to act quickly, otherwise the surprise is forfeit...

Why disallow it? The character can take a gamble that the targets will not notice them and react before they can finish their action, seems like a great situation to me. And that isn't a coup de grace against a flatfooted opponent is it? Flatfooted is not helpless.

 

[Gez]

Re: Standard+Standard or Standard+Move

The official ruling results in weird results. In the first two rounds (surprise+first full round) of a combat, you can, say, cast cause fear and then sleep, but not sleep and then cause fear...

And I never paid attention to the fact sleep is a full-round cast...

 

[Mekabar]

Why disallow it? The character can take a gamble that the targets will not notice them and react before they can finish their action, seems like a great situation to me. And that isn't a coup de grace against a flatfooted opponent is it? Flatfooted is not helpless.

Because it is my opinion that you have to act quickly to catch your opponent by surprise. If you don't use the opportunity, you have forfeit the element of surprise. Besides taking an action beyond a round has to many potential glitches and too few benefits.

 

[kenobi65]

(deleted)

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

or an invisible rogue with whirlwind attack would:

No.

You can't use Whirlwind Attack during a surprise round because you can't use the "Start a Full-Round Action" to begin a full attack.

 

[Anax]

The main problem I can think of that the standard + move action would cause is with the XPH's "hustle". Using hustle on the surprise round would allow a psion to cast a 1 round casting time power on the surprise round by beginning the casting in the normal standard action and completing in the bonus move action from Hustle.

I like the standard + standard, since it definitely gives off intense vibrations of "you can do this, but you *don't want to*." I think the only reason that these options exist is to allow certain actions (but not allow certain other actions) to be performed while Slowed, when you receive only a standard action per round.

 

[Sithobi1]

You are only allowed a standard action during the surprise round, not a swift action and a standard action...