Gentlemen,
I’ll dive right in:
I GM a party of 6 people and last night I had a robbery distraction-extraction scenario planned. The party was walking in the city in a 1-2-2-1 formation (their choice after asking) and I ruled that the 25 and the next round 26 performance bluffs (The distraction) kept the front half of the party too busy with two passionate guys arguing and trying pull the bystanders in to notice anything happening in the back.
In the back the last person was tased and grabbed. Only one person in the back saw it happen. I was deep into storytelling before I got a reminder of the initiative system. IMHO I felt that the front half was not aware nor attacked so they should not roll initiative and that got on the wrong side of one of the players. He claims that in combat everybody gets to roll initiative (always!). I did not want to slow down the pace and knew I had read somewhere that if you are not aware nor attacked you are not in combat so I pressed forward.
We finished the night, the event was handled and passed. The next day I did some reading as in the moment I didn’t want to stop everything. I found that in rule one of the combat cycle (core rulebook page 178), it reads:
1.When combat begins, all combatants roll initiative.
So I send this ruling to the player exclaiming that to be a combatant you need to be aware or attacked. And He just texted back that he has never been more sure and that I am interpreting the meaning of the pathfinder ruleset wrongly.
As English is not our first language I do want to know am I wrong or am I reading it right?
PS: if more background is needed I can supply but it didn’t feel helpful to post a wall of text.
