Ridley's Cohort
First Post
I agree, William_2. Surprise is part of resolving start of Initiative. There is no logical necessity to resolve Initiative until someone decides to make an actual attack (or similar significant action).
Trying to track "awareness" and following the RAW formulaicly will only get you gibberish because awareness is not usefully defined by the RAW. There are a dozen weird hypotheticals in this thread and no one here has yet dared attempt to answer them based on the RAW alone. I could easily come up with more.
A few of the things missing from the definition of awareness:
Aware of danger or aware of a specific enemy?
How specific must the awareness be?
What if the information is partially incorrect?
What if the specific information is incorrect but the danger is real?
What if the information is a good guess? How correct does a good guess based on minor clues need to be?
Does guessing apply at all?
Is awareness alone sufficient?
Does general readiness apply to any degree?
Let me give one more hypothetical to illustrate my point...
I left what the "scouting report" was deliberately vague.
The scouting could be...
* I know you are usually in your room at this time of day.
* A wild and lucky guess.
* A dumb servant said he just saw you there.
* I used a crystal ball 6, 12, 60, 600, or 6000 seconds ago and saw you there.
* I detected evil.
* I detected evil and I have no idea whether you were evil or not. Just assuming.
* I actually thought your right hand man would be here, and I decided to kill him first.
* etc, etc.
By KarinsDad's simplistic application of the RAW, the answer is (a).
I think the common sense answer is that would be (b) in "most" cases. Does it make sense that some kicking in a door and expecting a fight can be surprise by what he expects to occur? I think not.
Trying to track "awareness" and following the RAW formulaicly will only get you gibberish because awareness is not usefully defined by the RAW. There are a dozen weird hypotheticals in this thread and no one here has yet dared attempt to answer them based on the RAW alone. I could easily come up with more.
A few of the things missing from the definition of awareness:
Aware of danger or aware of a specific enemy?
How specific must the awareness be?
What if the information is partially incorrect?
What if the specific information is incorrect but the danger is real?
What if the information is a good guess? How correct does a good guess based on minor clues need to be?
Does guessing apply at all?
Is awareness alone sufficient?
Does general readiness apply to any degree?
Let me give one more hypothetical to illustrate my point...
I am coming to kill you. You are in your room, as you always are this time of day, practicing your moves, sword in hand. You hear a noise. It is me in the hallway, but it could easily be a servant passing by. Most likely a servant. I have a "scouting report" that you are in your room. When I burst in, sword in hand and screaming for blood...
(a) Am I automatically surprised because you are aware and I am not?
(c) Roll for Initiative?
(b) Are you surprised?
(d) Other?
I left what the "scouting report" was deliberately vague.
The scouting could be...
* I know you are usually in your room at this time of day.
* A wild and lucky guess.
* A dumb servant said he just saw you there.
* I used a crystal ball 6, 12, 60, 600, or 6000 seconds ago and saw you there.
* I detected evil.
* I detected evil and I have no idea whether you were evil or not. Just assuming.
* I actually thought your right hand man would be here, and I decided to kill him first.
* etc, etc.
By KarinsDad's simplistic application of the RAW, the answer is (a).
I think the common sense answer is that would be (b) in "most" cases. Does it make sense that some kicking in a door and expecting a fight can be surprise by what he expects to occur? I think not.