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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ziggy" data-source="post: 366172" data-attributes="member: 148">Hi!Lately I've become quite dissatisfied with the way 3E handles the first round of combat. While the system works well whenever there is an element of surprise (the surprise round is an excellent idea), it don't handle encounters where all involved expect combat very well. The most annoying thing is the "blanket of confusion" that hits the battlefield when an encounter goes into combat rounds. Everybody freezes (and most become flatfooted) until their initiative, something that is quite unlike real life. Consider the example where an Evil Bad Guy (EBG) confronts the PCs for a parley. He is a frail, but well-prepared gentleman, and has snipers on the roof with bows trained on the PCs, some bodyguards for close protection, and a wizard on hand with standing orders to teleport him away if anything violent occurs. But negotiations break down, and hell breaks loose as the PCs charge the EBG.If the encounter already is into combat rounds the setup works perfectly (for the EBG), as the snipers, bodyguards and the wizard have readied actions, and the PCs are filled with arrows while the EBG teleports away. But if we do this as the start of combat, the system works quite differently. Both sides definitely expect trouble, thus nobody is surprised. Then everybody roll initiative, and waits for their turn. If the EBG and his minions win initiative they ready actions, and everything works as above. But if the PCs win initiative, they charge the EBG, and probably take him out while the snipers, bodyguards and wizard scratch their head wondering what happened <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f621.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":mad:" title="Mad    :mad:"  data-smilie="4"data-shortname=":mad:" /> This is clearly very unrealistic (even for a fantasy game like 3E), and there is a possible fix for it. You could allow ready actions at the start of combat (as long as you are not surprised), determined in the order of initiative. After all ready actions have been declared, regular combat starts with those involved that didn't declare ready actions. Ready actions are then resolved (or not) when they trigger normally. The main problem with this approach is that you might get a bunch of people declaring ready actions at the start of each combat, and the first turn then degenerates into a flurry of ready actions. But the price you pay for readying an action is flexibility, and combined with the fact that you can do only partial actions, I'm pretty sure this problem will not be too common.  I have not tried this idea in practice yet, and would like comments and suggestions on its viability before I try it out IMC <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.Ziggy</blockquote>

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