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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 6684719" data-attributes="member: 6787503">Oh, sure. I didn't think it was worth clarifying that only adding unhidden creatures would actually increase the assassin's chances of winning initiative on a viable target, and so didn't realize that was the point you were making. Basically, you're still talking about how the assassin can't use Assassinate on the orcs because he didn't beat their initiative. It's true that Assassinate is useless in this situation, but that doesn't make the assassin's attack useless. He still gets advantage for being unseen, and thus Sneak Attack damage.It depends how you run Stealth. I try not to give the players the meta-game knowledge that they have beat the Perception of their target, but I do telegraph via the narrative that the target just seems to be going about its business, rather than becoming alert, sounding the alarm, etc., so the assassin would probably have a good idea if he'd been detected.That would depend on him knowing the initiative order, which is very difficult to justify in the fiction. How would the assassin know how fast his target will react before the attack is made? The only way I could see this knowledge being narrated is if the assassin has observed his target in a similar situation (i.e. being surprise attacked) before, and even then would probably be expressed as a likelihood of getting the drop on his target, rather than a certainty. Something like, "From your past observations of the target, you can tell that he doesn't have the greatest reflexes." The other way you could go is to narrate that the target somehow looks like he's ready for an attack, but that doesn't sit very well with me because I don't see the fiction playing out that way.There could be any number of reasons that he could change his mind and not do it. As a DM, I wouldn't introduce any new information between rolling initiative and the first round. The assassin declares his attack. We roll initiative. The attack is resolved. But the player could decide to change his mind for whatever reason, so I'm not going to prohibit that simply because I see it as meta-gaming based on not winning initiative. I see no reason, however, to roll a new initiative at that point. The combatants are still the same with presumably the same level of alertness. Surprise is still based on the original Stealth check, so I'd continue to use the same initiative unless the assassin stopped hiding and then set up a new ambush, perhaps at a later time. At that point I could see re-rolling for initiative.</blockquote>

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