Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThePaladinWay" data-source="post: 6501905" data-attributes="member: 6789287">I’d appreciate hearing how other DMs handle these types of situations.Background: PCs know enemies are in a room. Enemies are unaware of PCs and not even ready for combat (playing cards, cooking, arguing, etc). PCs decide to burst into the room and attack suddenly, like a SEAL team. Not using stealth, so technically no surprise. Question 1: Do you penalize the enemies on their initiative check (disadvantage), or give the PCs advantage, or neither? If giving advantage or disadvantage, do you roll two d20’s (DM discretion, PHB page 173), or add or subtract 5 (or some other number) to the roll (similar to passive perception checks (PHB page 177)?Question 2: Would you set the PCs up in the room, or outside? This will make a huge difference if the enemies win initiative, as either the PCs will be in the room or outside (and thus allowing the enemies to establish a choke point in the doorway). Note that rules state DM decides location before everyone rolls initiative. Also, DM also needs to decide if an enemy is standing right inside the doorway, unknowingly blocking the entrance, which might be a good explanation for why the enemies won initiative and why the PCs are trapped outside of the room - but that is IF the enemies win initiative, and technically we don’t know if they have won yet. Maybe we should roll initiative before deciding where everyone is located?Question 3: Assume the enemies get the highest initiative roll. Do you allow them to get in the first round of attacks? (Seems counterintuitive, since they are totally unprepared, but one could postulate a situation where it might happen, of course, such as one enemy standing by chance near the door) Question 4: Would your answers change if the enemies were unaware but more alert and prepared, such as on guard duty?I lean towards giving the enemies disadvantage when they are unprepared, but I am unsure if this is against the official rules, and/or leads to giving the PCs too much of an advantage. It does help differentiate different levels of enemy awareness and alertness.</blockquote>

Verification