D&D 5E When to Roll Initiative

[MG.0]

Including the mooks?

Sure.

If the target is truly inept, but got extra lucky on his initiative, I'd say the assassin had the misfortune of the target looking in his general direction just as the attack was launched. The target is still briefly surprised, but recovers quick enough to prevent the attack from being as fatal as it might have been, merely by shifting his body a bit. Being unseen before combat starts needn't mean the assassin is literally undetected all the way until the blade/arrow is already in the target. He can be noticed while in the process of attacking. That's what I feel the initiative dependency was meant to represent. I think it works well for that purpose regardless.

 

[Lanefan]

Instead of overthinking this to death, why not just change the flippin' rules to suit your own games?

Me, if there's a group of PCs and NPCs standing around talkling and someone suddenly hauls off and attacks someone the target gets its own surprise roll, and everyone else gets a single overall surprise roll; and the results of these rolls determine what comes next:
- if nobody is surprised at all then it's initiative time all round with the attacker getting a bit of a bonus as her action is triggering everything
- if the target is surprised but others are not then everyone except the target gets initiative, again with the attacker getting a bonus
- if the target is not surprised but everyone else is then only the target and attacker get initiatives, with the target's intended action determining whether the attacker gets a bonus or not (straight defense, flee, etc. = no bonus; return the attack = bonus to original attacker as defender has to draw weapon etc.)
- if everybody is surprised then there's no initiative at all until the original attack has resolved, then it's normal initiatives all round

As for the stealthy group sneaking up on the Orc camp, I'd say they maintain the possibility of surprise until and unless one of several things happens:
- they give themselves away by a blown stealth roll or by doing something stupid
- they attack (and now the Orcs get a surprise roll)
- they intentionally forego their surprise to do something non-offensive e.g. initiate parlay, surrender, or whatever
- the Orcs succeed on a (situationally more or less difficult) perception check to notice the party (whereupon the party should get their own perception check: do they realize they've been spotted?)
- the party are themselves surprised by something previously unnoticed e.g. a few Orcs returning to camp see the party and sneak in to attack from behind

Every situation's a little different, to the point where I'd say trying to hard-rule everything is the path to madness.

Lan-"nobody should ever know where they are in the initiative order from one round to the next - roll every round!"-efan

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The simplest fix is really just to let the individual who initiates an ambush take his initial attack outside outside of the initiative sequence, before combat has begun, but that is difficult to justify by the rules and lets him potentially act three times before his opponents.

Honestly, the simplest fix is the one I suggested in the other thread. Have surprise last until the end of the first round of combat. Nothing in the book says it ends when you take a turn. It just says that you can take reactions after your turn during the first round when you are surprised.

That way the assassin doesn't break the rules of initiative, he gets the same number of actions as everyone else, the assassinate ability is still useful against anyone who didn't spot the assassin before he fired(which makes the most sense), and it doesn't require trying to figure out weird metagame rulings like whether the assassin knows that he has higher initiative than his target.

You can allow people to take reactions without necessarily removing the fact that they are "surprised". Given that "surprised" really only has 2 in game effects:

1. You can't act in the first round of combat and you can't take reactions until the end of your first turn
2. People with the assassinate ability can use it on you

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Me, if there's a group of PCs and NPCs standing around talkling and someone suddenly hauls off and attacks someone the target gets its own surprise roll

Wait...what's a surprise roll? I don't think there is anything like that in 5e D&D.

 

[Lanefan]

Wait...what's a surprise roll? I don't think there is anything like that in 5e D&D.

Then there should be; failing that substitute "whatever means your group uses to determine if someone is caught off-guard by something" for "surprise roll".

Lan-"guidelines...they're all quidelines"-efan

 

[MG.0]

Honestly, the simplest fix is the one I suggested in the other thread. Have surprise last until the end of the first round of combat. Nothing in the book says it ends when you take a turn. It just says that you can take reactions after your turn during the first round when you are surprised.

That way the assassin doesn't break the rules of initiative, he gets the same number of actions as everyone else, the assassinate ability is still useful against anyone who didn't spot the assassin before he fired(which makes the most sense), and it doesn't require trying to figure out weird metagame rulings like whether the assassin knows that he has higher initiative than his target.

You can allow people to take reactions without necessarily removing the fact that they are "surprised". Given that "surprised" really only has 2 in game effects:

1. You can't act in the first round of combat and you can't take reactions until the end of your first turn
2. People with the assassinate ability can use it on you

I completely disagree, for reasons I've mentioned in this thread http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?466314-Assassinate

Running surprise to the end of the round only appears simpler if you disregard the second sentence in the assassinate ability's description:

Assassinate
Starting at 3rd level, you are at your deadliest when you
get the drop on your enemies. You have advantage on
attack rolls against any creature that hasn’t taken a turn
in the combat yet. In addition, any hit you score against
a creature that is surprised is a critical hit.

Surprise running until the end of the round actually makes things more complicated for the Assassin because the first part of his ability which grants advantage is already tied to the initiative, so you STILL have to track initiative order to determine advantage before applying the auto-crit or not. If you end surprise with the target's turn, then everything reduces to either advantage + auto-crit if the assassin attacks a surprised target first, or normal attack otherwise. It's simpler.

I also disagree that assassinate working against all suprised opponents regardless of initiative "makes the most sense", as you put it. I think narratively it works just fine ending with the target's turn.

 

[Hriston]

Wait...what's a surprise roll? I don't think there is anything like that in 5e D&D.

I think in 5E the surprise roll has been subsumed into the initiative roll.

 

[Monk55]

I thought the surprise roll in 5th Edition was the passive perception number vs. stealth roll. If an assassin succeeds on the stealth roll, and then declares his attack, initiative is rolled. If the assassin loses the initiative roll, does this negate surprise? I don't think so. In my opinion, at the very least, the assassin's target would be required to succeed on an active perception check to negate surprise.

 

[Coredump]

If the Assassin has set things up well, then I might give him Advantage on the Dex Check for Initiative. Make sense to me, and helps with the Assassinate Feature.

 

[Hriston]

I thought the surprise roll in 5th Edition was the passive perception number vs. stealth roll. If an assassin succeeds on the stealth roll, and then declares his attack, initiative is rolled. If the assassin loses the initiative roll, does this negate surprise? I don't think so. In my opinion, at the very least, the assassin's target would be required to succeed on an active perception check to negate surprise.

I'm not sure if this was in response to my assertion that in 5E the 'surprise roll' had become part of the initiative roll, but if so allow me to explain. I was responding to references up-thread to the surprise roll of earlier editions. In AD&D in particular, the surprise roll was used to determine who was surprised and for how long only after the DM had independently determined that one party or the other (or both) was completely unaware of the other's presence. There was no skill system by which this was determined, but it was rather decided by the DM based on the circumstances. The surprise roll was then used to determine how quickly the two sides were able to react to the sudden appearance of the other. If they rolled well, they were not surprised. If they rolled poorly, they could be surprised for one or more segments. Importantly, the result of the roll was modified by Dexterity for individual characters, allowing them to negate or accrue additional segments of surprise.

The Stealth/Perception contest of 5E is more properly a determination of who is hidden, analogous to the DM's determination of prior detection in AD&D. Whereas, the function of the AD&D surprise roll, which determined how long surprise lasts or whether a side recovers quickly from being unaware of their opponents, has been moved over to initiative where it is still a function of Dexterity.