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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6340680" data-attributes="member: 6677017">There isn't a delay action in 5e. Not having that action kind of messes up surprising foes quite a bit.Most likely it is to keep the game simple and keep everyone on their initial initiative count, rather than moving it all over the during the course of an action scene. And it can be justified when visualizing the scene too. In the course of combat rounds, you don't have a whole lot of time to plan. You need to choose and act decisively now (ie, as soon as your reflexes let you) or you end up just standing around as the fight goes on around you. You can ready an action to respond to a specific trigger, because you are taking a decisive action to focus on paying attention trying to notice exactly that trigger you are waiting for. If you aren't decisive, you can either just stand there thinking, or you can try to defend yourself while you stand there thinking (Dodge).However, when you are attempting to surprise, you often want a specific character in the party to act first. RAW, the only way I can see to do that is to either declare the party is attacking and then hope that character wins initiative, or for anyone who beats their initiative to ready an action (and it's iffy whether you can perform a Ready action before the action that initiated combat contact has taken place). Otherwise, when character one says he looses his surprise arrow, everyone has to roll initiative, and those who beat him have to basically forfeit their action until their next turn--which means they might not even get surprise at all.My solution is to either allow characters who beat the combat initiator to Ready their actions as normal (right after he shoots at the orcs, I...), or to let the character who intends to initiate combat simply act before everyone in this particular round. They act first this round, forfeit acting on the initiative count that they rolled, and then commence acting on their initiative count next turn and for the rest of the battle. I haven't fully decided which one I like best.Another method would be to allow the person who initiates combat to perform their action for free--essentially before the surprise round, and then act in their normal initiative. The potential problem with this is that they will automatically be able to act twice before their opponents, and potentially three times.</blockquote>

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