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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 6679903" data-attributes="member: 6787503">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.AD&D is similar in that surprise on both sides cancels out, but surprise in AD&D is a little different because it assumes you are standing face to face with an opponent of which you were previously unaware. You'd get a free segment or so in which your opponent was unable to act due to their lack of preparedness, but there was no doubt the encounter had already occurred.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.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?Shouldn't initiative be rolled before this to adjudicate things like when a creature is no longer surprised and can take reactions?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.</blockquote>

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