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<blockquote data-quote="Chiaroscuro23" data-source="post: 3107045" data-attributes="member: 15371">The Shield spell could, too. Actually, I was thinking of the way force damage interacts with incorporeality in 3e. I can't remember an equivalent rule in earlier editions.What's been outlined above is that the 1e surprise rule was itself problematic. Not that changing it was, but that the rule as it existed didn't work very well. It needs houseruling to function at all, apparently. Since it's opaque and poorly balanced to start with, changing it is pretty much just hacking randomly at a rulesset that was hacked at randomly by the designers. Your argument is just for how 3e is better because the listen check is a unified way to handle hearing someone approaching. It does not follow from that conclusion that changing how listen works would affect more other parts of the system than changing how old-style surprise worked.I think you might actually be right about surprise, though, because apparently it was tied to segments in initiative (I don't think I ever knew anyone who used segments, myself, and don't really know the rules), whereas removing or changing listen checks now just weakens the classes that have Listen as a skill, and doesn't mandate change of the surprise round structure.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Chiaroscuro23, post: 3107045, member: 15371"] The Shield spell could, too. Actually, I was thinking of the way force damage interacts with incorporeality in 3e. I can't remember an equivalent rule in earlier editions. What's been outlined above is that the 1e surprise rule was itself problematic. Not that changing it was, but that the rule as it existed didn't work very well. It needs houseruling to function at all, apparently. Since it's opaque and poorly balanced to start with, changing it is pretty much just hacking randomly at a rulesset that was hacked at randomly by the designers. Your argument is just for how 3e is better because the listen check is a unified way to handle hearing someone approaching. It does not follow from that conclusion that changing how listen works would affect more other parts of the system than changing how old-style surprise worked. I think you might actually be right about surprise, though, because apparently it was tied to segments in initiative (I don't think I ever knew anyone who used segments, myself, and don't really know the rules), whereas removing or changing listen checks now just weakens the classes that have Listen as a skill, and doesn't mandate change of the surprise round structure. [/QUOTE]

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