D&D General Surprise, Initiative and What will you do?

[I'm A Banana]

When I hear the word "turn" in the context of D&D, I still think of it in terms of the TSR era 10 minute turns.

"You get to wail on your enemies for 10 minutes before they can react"

...well, I DID say I liked a powerful ambush, hahaha.

 

[Distracted DM]

When you would've given a whole round out to the side with surprise, just give out one turn to the character with the highest initiative bonus on the surprising side (or just have the party elect someone). Then, roll initiative (you can keep 2024's advantage/disadvantage if you like, too) and go normally.

Makes ambushes worth getting (an extra sneak attack or TWF + hunter's mark turn is nothing to sniff at!), but means we're not going through EVERYONE before the other side gets to act. Which, even just as a meta-consideration, can be kind of tedious.

I like ambush being a potent strategy, I don't mind a significant advantage, I don't even mind the occasional binary result (I mean, you could use that surprise turn to teleport everyone to the next zip code, I suppose!), but I also try to avoid rolling dice when there's a foregone conclusion, too.

I think I've been going by "if you were stealthy your character gets to act, everyone else doesn't" with a little "the not-stealthy people can trigger a readied action."

 

[OptionalRule]

If I read correctly, there is no surprise anymore (granting advantage or disadvantage on initiative isn't surprise, IMO).

So, no ambushes where one side acts first. No planning what to do outside a door, opening it, and acting first *

Is that correct? If so, not a fan....

*sure, you could theoretically let your players ready an action for opening the door, but that's just gaming the system, IMO. Otherwise, why not let them walk down every hallway, with actions always at the ready? They would always get to go first every fight....

I'm likely going to not play by this particular rule (and it is another example of why I hate the initiative rules in 5e).

Thier is surprise, it's jsut that the mechanics for it aren't very exciting.

As with a lot of things in 5e, they are trapped by their own poor design.

1. There are even more abilities now so turns take even longer, so players that have been surprised under the 2014 and had a low initiative had to wait 2 rounds before they went, which was terrible.
2. If the players had surprise and monsters low init. The Monsters would typically be just about finished by the time they went, which makes all that time rather pointless.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I have come to the conclusion that having a whole turn of action before the enemy can react is not that fun.

A roll with advantage vs a roll with disadvantage will probably guarantee you to go first.

And the question is just: can a defender react to a sniper/ambusher in time.

And if you watch movies: many times the ambusher is detected and at least a dodge action is used or a shove action to help the target.

So the new rules do reflect being ambushed well enough.

In very few circumstances I'd actually allow a readied action to shoot first. When passive perception is beat and it is more a trap than an actual encounter.

 

[Zaukrie]

I appreciate that many replies disagree with me, yet are polite and logical