D&D 5E When to Roll Initiative

[Water Bob]

Yeah, that's pretty different from both editions with similarities to both as well. It sounds like the requirements are the same as 5E (one side unnoticed), and that initiative is handled like in 1E (after surprise is resolved). However, the overall result sounds less punitive than in either edition. Is that about right?

Yes, surprise rarely happens in my 3.5 based game. Parties are usually aware of the other. For example, you can't have Surprise, under the 3.5E rules, in a town market because both sides have seen each other and are aware of them. Surprise can only happen when one side is totally unnoticed.

That's been rare in my games.

 

[Hriston]

Yes, surprise rarely happens in my 3.5 based game. Parties are usually aware of the other. For example, you can't have Surprise, under the 3.5E rules, in a town market because both sides have seen each other and are aware of them. Surprise can only happen when one side is totally unnoticed.

That's been rare in my games.

The same is true in 5E. Surprise only occurs if one side or another begins combat completely undetected making it somewhat of a corner case in most respects. Earlier editions seem to basically agree with this. In AD&D, for example, you weren't supposed to roll for surprise unless one side was possibly undetected. If a party was approaching down a dungeon corridor bearing torches then the DM would rule out surprise. The main difference was that in AD&D once the encounter began the parties were aware of each other. Surprise was the result of being undetected before the encounter. Once the encounter began you could use your surprise segments to avoid combat, but the other side was now aware of you.

Presumably there was a moment before this in which the encounter could be avoided entirely. I think it was one of the Basic sets that actually first spelled out that this was possible if surprise existed. It seems that later editions have incorporated this by making the period of non-detection extend into at least the beginning of combat.

One of the playtests I've looked at contained language along the lines of creatures that had been unaware of the approach of their opponents were surprised, but the present rules seem more consistent with the 3.5 concept that surprised creatures begin the encounter unaware.

This creates the possibility that once surprise has been determined, the encounter may not happen at all.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I wasn't sure how this could happen, or why a DM would do this. It sounds like you're talking about a situation where both parties are surprised. I haven't said how I'd handle this situation if it ever comes up, although with surprise being as difficult to get as it is in 5E, I don't think it would be very often. At best there's usually only a few people on each side that are surprised in an encounter. Then I looked at the surprise rules in the SRD. It has an odd way of dealing with both sides being unaware. It says you skip the surprise round and move on to normal initiative. If both sides are unaware of each other, I'm not sure what's supposed to happen after that. It seems the designers were determined for there to be an encounter anyway.

This is because initiative isn't rolled until someone declares a hostile action. You aren't rolling for initiative until there IS a combat because one side or the other IS attacking. Technically, if you open a door, "surprise" the creatures behind it and they are also surprised because they didn't know you were coming in...you still don't roll initiative if neither side has any intention of attacking each other. You just run it as a role playing encounter.

Which is precisely why I get annoyed when some DMs decide to run a surprise round where nobody attacks. Or to skip the surprise round when there should obviously be one and put hidden or invisible enemies into the initiative without taking any attacks.

It leads to situations where the DM has everyone roll for initiative and then has the "hidden" enemies take non-violent actions that allow them to remain hidden while the PCs are confused as to why they even rolled initiative in the first place. It is frustrating to be told "Alright, it's your turn. What do you do?" when there is literally ZERO reason to take an action that isn't "Well, I was walking down the corridor before, so I keep walking down the corridor. Nothing's changed, right?"

The proper way to do this is that the enemies continue to follow the PCs or get into the proper positions to attack while completely out of combat. Then, when the first one makes an attack of some sort, you roll for initiative and give the enemies a free round of attacks(the surprise round) before asking the PCs what they do.

This is very different from the situation in 5E where you can begin an encounter from hiding. If your opponents are completely unaware of you, you may have the opportunity to avoid a fight altogether while your opponents are surprised. If both sides are surprised, they may not, in fact, ever notice each other at all, and strict adherence to the rules would have you running a first round in which no one can do much of anything. I agree that rolling initiative and moving on to round one makes little sense in this scenario. I would most likely just tell the players they don't notice anyone, but then there's the issue of what happens if they stop hiding and give their location away to the other side. I'm beginning to think that the best way to handle it would be to ignore the encounter entirely. The two parties simply sneak past each other without alerting one another to their presence. I seem to recall that the playtest had some language to that effect.

An encounter doesn't happen unless one side actually ENCOUNTERS the other side. At least one side has to be aware of the other side for an encounter to start at all. And initiative isn't rolled until the moment BOTH sides become aware of each other(or, more accurately, milliseconds BEFORE both sides become aware of each other).

What if a hostile action is what makes one party aware of the other? Shouldn't you roll initiative before that action is declared, or just before it is resolved?

Yes. As I said, you roll initiative when that action is declared(but before it actually takes place). Because now you know with 100% certainty that a battle is going to take place because an attack has been declared.

Then you determine surprise(the other side doesn't know the attack is going to take place, since they don't see the enemy, so there is surprise). Then you roll for initiative and everyone on one side of the combat goes in initiative order taking actions...at least one of which was the formerly declared attack. Then it goes to the first round of combat and both sides act in initiative order.

Shouldn't initiative be rolled before this to adjudicate things like when a creature is no longer surprised and can take reactions?

Yes, that's what happens. One side is unseen so they have surprise. You roll for initiative and they get to act during the surprise round. So you go down from the highest initiative down to the lowest initiative of all the enemies and they each get a round of actions while the other side(the people who are surprised) don't get to take actions and can't make reactions. Until you get to the lowest initiative in the surprise round and then start back at the highest initiative during round "1". Then from that point onward no one is "surprised" anymore.

I absolutely agree with all of this, except the last part. I only award surprise when it's the result of an attempt to be stealthy, not for other surprising events.

I try to avoid it whenever possible since, as I said before, it's a little unfair to allow someone to attack while perfectly visible without given fast PCs(or fast monsters) the chance to react. But there are certain situations where the idea that someone would "react" to something they never saw coming is kind of silly. The book says that you need cover or concealment to successfully hide. Which makes sense, since if someone can see you, you aren't exactly hidden. But it also says that the DM can rule in certain circumstances while out of combat that a creature is looking in a different direction or distracted by something and therefore you don't need cover or concealment to hide from them. In combat, it's assumed people are always paying enough attention to avoid this.

I just extend this to its logical conclusion. The spirit of it being that if the creature in question doesn't "see it coming" you can hide from them and if you are hidden from someone when the encounter starts, you've successfully surprised the other side. It's certainly up to each DM to interpret this their own way but I've allowed people deception checks to seem completely non threatening while allowing slight of hand checks to draw small weapons without anyone seeing and then allowed someone to get a surprise round. I almost never allow any of their friends to join in on that surprise round since they were just as unaware of the attack as everyone else, though.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

It's a round of the combat encounter the way I play it. Sorry it makes no sense to you. I think I did a pretty good job of explaining why it makes sense to me. In your example, the players are getting something in exchange for losing the element of surprise. They are getting valuable information about the chief's plans and about the prisoners they are trying to rescue. Without that information, attacking might be totally pointless. From my point of view, also giving them a surprise attack is like having your cake and eating it too.

Stealth is supposed to be useful. As long as combat hasn't started, according to the rules, initiative hasn't been rolled. The surprise round is the first round that someone makes an attack in. If they orcs still don't know the PCs are there, then they are still surprised when an attack is made.

The book says that initiative is rolled "When combat starts". Listening to people isn't combat.

I'm not sure where your idea that the PCs should only get so much benefit from hiding comes from. They get as much benefit as hiding would logically give them. That means it could give them information, a surprise round, and possibly free food as they sneak into the camp and take meals from the Orcs for the next week as long as they remain hidden. With a properly crafted stealth plan, the PCs could literally murder all the Orcs one by one without any of the Orcs being able to fight back if the PCs managed to somehow get them all alone, make good stealth checks and attack quietly thus getting a surprise round against EACH of them, individually.

It just seems extremely gamist to say "Sorry, your ONE stealth roll can't give you TOO much benefit".

 

[Hriston]

Stealth is supposed to be useful. As long as combat hasn't started, according to the rules, initiative hasn't been rolled. The surprise round is the first round that someone makes an attack in. If they orcs still don't know the PCs are there, then they are still surprised when an attack is made.

The book says that initiative is rolled "When combat starts". Listening to people isn't combat.

I'm not sure where your idea that the PCs should only get so much benefit from hiding comes from. They get as much benefit as hiding would logically give them. That means it could give them information, a surprise round, and possibly free food as they sneak into the camp and take meals from the Orcs for the next week as long as they remain hidden. With a properly crafted stealth plan, the PCs could literally murder all the Orcs one by one without any of the Orcs being able to fight back if the PCs managed to somehow get them all alone, make good stealth checks and attack quietly thus getting a surprise round against EACH of them, individually.

It just seems extremely gamist to say "Sorry, your ONE stealth roll can't give you TOO much benefit".

You're right. It's an extremely gamist rationalization, and I admitted as much in one of my other posts. I think I've been getting hung up on the way the rules don't take action declaration into account in the steps of combat. I've been trying to start initiative before anyone had the opportunity to declare they were making an attack, thinking that by default that should be happening on their turn. I actually like to have everyone declare their actions at the beginning of the round anyway, so it shouldn't be that different to declare at least one first round action, the hostile one, before iniative is rolled. It's just a little dissonant for me at that point to stop everything and go back in time, possibly allowing others to take actions that happen before the initial attack, although I have no problem justifying this in the fiction as quicker reaction time. When it comes to combat I think I might be losing sight of the "conversation" between players and DM, trying to set everything up before hand so they could make decisions in something like real time. I'm going to try holding off on initiative until I or the players declare hostile actions and see if that causes us any problems.

 

[Scorpio616]

Party sneaks up on target orcs, and decides to watch the targets. Party dwarf makes a "Let's kill them" gesture, but leader gestures 'No, we watch.' Player of dwarf decides F___ this, and attacks. He surprises the target orcs AND his allies as they were not expecting to attack.

 

[Hriston]

The simple answer, for me, is whenever I need something outside the narrative to know who goes first, whether in or out of combat. If the party has set their marching order and just says "we go down the northern corridor," then the result might be "when you turn the corner you see several man-sized humanoids with weapons drawn and teeth bared. Roll for initiative."

I'm a little torn here, because this makes sense to me. This sounds like what I was talking about as far as using the occurrence of an encounter itself as the trigger for rolling initiative. As described, there's no hostile action taking place here, unless it's holding drawn weapons, which I assume the PCs are doing much of the time. There's nothing that tells me that combat's about to begin other than I'm looking at some ugly dudes, and the DM just said, "Roll initiative." What happens next is up to the players and the DM. There still might not be a fight.

On the other hand, if the party is meeting with an unfriendly group to try to parlay, and everyone has an action ready to go as soon as the first person attacks, then I if someone attacks (PC or NPC) I'll resolve that first, then give everyone who was ready (PC and NPC) a reaction to that in DEX order to resolve their readied attacks, then roll initiative and proceed as normal. It makes no sense to me to force the role playing into an initiative order in a situation where it is obvious who goes first and which action begins combat.

To me, this is better handled by just launching into the first round with an initiative roll right after the first person declares they are going to attack. Since everyone's ready to fight, it seems kind of arbitrary to resolve their attacks in Dexterity order rather than initiative. If the first person rolls low on initiative that just means she was slow to complete her attack. Why would those with a higher initiative wait for her to finish attacking once they knew a fight was going to erupt?

As an aside, if a character has 5 feet or more of their movement left and readies an attack, if that attack is triggered I let him use 5 feet of movement on his reaction as part of that attack. I came to 5e from Pathfinder, and was greatly enamoured of the "five foot step."

I hadn't realized that Ready could only be used to take an action or move. It appears, however, that you are correct.

 

[Hriston]

Initiative is used to resolve the sequence of actions that are happening simultaneously. These actions could be happening over a span of time (6 seconds, in a standard combat turn,) but initiative determines which outcome gets resolved first.

So, combat begins (with an initiative roll) whenever two opposing parties are aware of each other and at least one seems reasonably inclined to do violence (or some other undesired action). Most of the time, the starting gun is reaching for a weapon, raising a weapon in a threatening manner, or even the change of facial features into a hostile "we're-going-to-kill-you" look. In other words, it happens as soon as one character (or NPC) says, "I attack." The intention is registered, and initiative is rolled. The initial aggressor may be a little slow on the draw, roll a lower initiative, and be attacked by somebody else before his own attack is resolved. This is, I believe, the approach that both Paraxis and Histron are describing. That's are default combat setup, and, at my table, I sometimes used to say, "The goblin reaches for his initiative..." as a way of saying, "monster looks like he's going to attack, you will probably all want to roll initiative."

This isn't quite what I was describing. I was thinking more along the lines of, "You meet a random party of NPCs. You don't know if they're hostile or not. Roll initiative." If someone in the party gets the first turn, they could attempt to open a parley and risk losing the first attack, or attack first, or whatever. I'm realizing that instead of saying, "Roll initiative", I could accomplish pretty much the same thing by just saying, "What do you want to do?" Then if one of the players says they want to attack, or if my plan is to have the NPCs attack, I could call for initiative with more or less the same result. So,pretty much what you're saying.

The main exception to that default is when one combatant, or group of combatants, is unaware of the other. That is, they might be surprised. In this case, there is no ability to read the intention of the attacker, because there is no awareness of the attacker. (Or maybe the attacker has, by some other means, disguised his intention. Like a poison needle on a handshake.) In this case, initiative is rolled once the surprising party does something to alert the surprised of their intent. This could be kicking down a door, or it could be jumping out from behind cover, or it could be firing an arrow from a well-hidden position. At that point, initiative is rolled, surprise is determined, and all actions after the "alerting action" occur in initiative order. The alerting action counts as part of that characters turn, though they can use any additional movement or bonus action allowed them.

If the characters have agreed to hold their attacks until after the alerting action, wouldn't it make more sense for anyone with higher initiative to ready an action with the alerting action as a trigger? Since their opponents are surprised, they won't be able to act on their initiative until the second round anyway, no matter how high it is.

 

[epithet]

...
To me, this is better handled by just launching into the first round with an initiative roll right after the first person declares they are going to attack. Since everyone's ready to fight, it seems kind of arbitrary to resolve their attacks in Dexterity order rather than initiative. If the first person rolls low on initiative that just means she was slow to complete her attack. Why would those with a higher initiative wait for her to finish attacking once they knew a fight was going to erupt?
...

My reasoning is that everyone has an action readied, and therefore mechanically everyone takes that action on the turn of the person who attacks first, using a reaction. They are "tied" for initiative since they all act in that turn, and initiative ties are resolved in DEX order, aren't they?

This is obviously a special "Mexican stand-off" situation, not a typical way to start an encounter.

 

[redrick]

This isn't quite what I was describing. I was thinking more along the lines of, "You meet a random party of NPCs. You don't know if they're hostile or not. Roll initiative." If someone in the party gets the first turn, they could attempt to open a parley and risk losing the first attack, or attack first, or whatever. I'm realizing that instead of saying, "Roll initiative", I could accomplish pretty much the same thing by just saying, "What do you want to do?" Then if one of the players says they want to attack, or if my plan is to have the NPCs attack, I could call for initiative with more or less the same result. So,pretty much what you're saying.



If the characters have agreed to hold their attacks until after the alerting action, wouldn't it make more sense for anyone with higher initiative to ready an action with the alerting action as a trigger? Since their opponents are surprised, they won't be able to act on their initiative until the second round anyway, no matter how high it is.

Yes, I've appreciated over the course of this thread that our interpretations differ more than I initially thought.

As for readied actions and triggers — there's no point to deal with that for me. After all, if I remember correctly, a readied action can only be an action. You can't ready an action, a move and a bonus action. And it adds mechanical complexity to something that I consider mechanically simple. If nobody is trying to "go first", you can just go first. There's no contest. So there's no roll. Just like I don't ask for a roll to open an unlocked, unstuck door. Or to buy an item from a merchant at list price.

However, going first doesn't necessarily mean resolving an attack or another action. Going first might just mean opening a door. Or jumping out from behind a rock. Or doing any other number of things which make you stop being hidden and alert people of your presence and possible intentions, and invite them to try to kill you. Anything that happens once you've made that generous invitation (to your opponents and their guests!), happens in initiative order. If your invitation came in the form of an economically measured action (be that attacking, moving or casting healing word as a bonus action), that counts towards off whatever you could do on your turn during the first round of combat. That's how I do it.

(And, it's worth adding, it what I'm describing, if your invitation does not constitute your action, and you feel compelled to follow it up with continued actions, you conduct those actions in initiative order on your turn.)

It's a distinction that probably doesn't matter very often. But it's how I think of it, and it's where I start when it comes to making rulings on corner cases.