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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 8079498" data-attributes="member: 58197">That's a generally reasonable house rule, but very much a house rule. Per RAW, you declare your action on your turn, not before it. And until initiative is rolled, it can't be your turn because there are no turns.This is one of the many hiccups that result from having &quot;roll initiative&quot; a) be a discrete event with mechanical consequences, and b) take place before the action that triggers an initiative roll. My group has stumbled over this little paradox more than once. I hope the next edition, whenever it comes, does away with a). Rolling initiative should be viewed simply as determining a pre-existing state of affairs: You are always in initiative order, but normally you don't care what that order is. As soon as it becomes important to know, you roll initiative.In this approach, surprise would not depend on &quot;Initiative was just rolled&quot;--it would be the result of &quot;On my last turn, I was not aware that combat was imminent, and since then combat has begun.&quot; If the action that starts combat is an assassin attacking an unaware target, the assassin gets the benefit of surprise, end of story. If the assassin sees the result of the initiative roll and for some reason decides not to attack, okay. You don't attack. Nothing happens. If the initiative roll doesn't change anything, it doesn't matter if it's followed by combat or not.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 8079498, member: 58197"] That's a generally reasonable house rule, but very much a house rule. Per RAW, you declare your action on your turn, not before it. And until initiative is rolled, it can't be your turn because there are no turns. This is one of the many hiccups that result from having "roll initiative" a) be a discrete event with mechanical consequences, and b) take place [I]before [/I]the action that triggers an initiative roll. My group has stumbled over this little paradox more than once. I hope the next edition, whenever it comes, does away with a). Rolling initiative should be viewed simply as determining a pre-existing state of affairs: You are [I]always[/I] in initiative order, but normally you don't care what that order is. As soon as it becomes important to know, you roll initiative. In this approach, surprise would not depend on "Initiative was just rolled"--it would be the result of "On my last turn, I was not aware that combat was imminent, and since then combat has begun." If the action that starts combat is an assassin attacking an unaware target, the assassin gets the benefit of surprise, end of story. If the assassin sees the result of the initiative roll and for some reason decides not to attack, okay. You don't attack. Nothing happens. If the initiative roll doesn't change anything, it doesn't matter if it's followed by combat or not. [/QUOTE]

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