Surprised by Surprise


Homebrew and House Rules


1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.

Since v3.0, I've always had a bit of a problem with the rules for the surprise round. I'll provide an example that seems to come up quite a bit. This happens whenever a character can do a particularly devestating action that takes 1) a full round and 2) a flat-footed opponent. There are a lot of variations of this, so please don't get hung up on the details of this example.

Let's say there are two long time enemies. Jack-Be-Nimble is a high level rogue. He has a great initiative score, a great perception score, a high BaB, and a huge sneak attack bonus. His nemesis is Igor-the-Imp. He also has a great initiative and a great perception score, but he can't hold his own in a fight. So, whenever Jack shows up, he flies away.

These two have been playing "tag" for years and the results are pretty predictable. Whenever Jack wins initiative, 1) he takes a move action to approach Igor and 2) takes a standard action to sneak attack and kill Igor. Jack loves the game, so he always resurrects Igor to play again. Whenever, Igor wins initiative, he flies away.

So far, so good. The problem happens when Jack tries to recruit some help. He brings along his fighter friend Frank-the-Tank. Frank is a power house, but he wears a full helm and he's usually caught by surprise.

With Frank in the picture, there is almost always a surprise round, but only Frank is caught unaware. Jack and Igor are the only two who get to act. However, now the results are very different since they are each restricted to a single standard action. When Igor wins the initiative, the results are basically the same. He flies away to safety. But when Jack wins, he can't finish Igor anymore. Since he only has a standard action, he can only move up to Igor. He can't get in his sneak attack.

This has always bothered me that the presence of a third party can affect the results of the combatants who aren't caught surprised. In fact, Igor could abuse the RAW and just bring along his own fighter friend to sit in the room with his eyes closed. This new character will always trigger the surprise round and allow Igore to escape.

This problem is caused because my being surprised affects what you can do on your turn. To fix this, I think being surprised needs to be changes so that my being surprised only affects what I can do on my turn.

In the next post, I'll propose a couple of ideas that I have for fixing this. I'm looking for comments on the playability of these ideas.


Option 1: Any surprised character get a -20 penalty to their initiative roll. This will mean that most surprised characters will get their turns after the aware charaters. If that's true, at any point in time, the expected number of actions taken by the aware character will be 0.5 greater than that of the surprised character. This is exactly the same as what you get with the RAW.

Option 2: Any surprised character can take only a single move action or standard action (but not both) during her first turn. This results in the same expected number of actions, but it has a significant change to both the RAW and Option 1. The surprised characters are no longer flat footed unless they also happened to lose initiative.

Option 3: A combination of 1 and 2. Perhaps with a lesser initiative penalty like -10.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

You're right. I never realized that before. I like and vote for option 1. Maybe only -10 though. Going to run this past my players.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Personally I like Option #1. That would have the added benefit of eliminating the matter of partial actions etc. You will always have your normal actions but the aware parties will almost always go first (and also have their normal actions, which I like.)


Infiniti wrote:

Since v3.0, I've always had a bit of a problem with the rules for the surprise round. I'll provide an example that seems to come up quite a bit. This happens whenever a character can do a particularly devestating action that takes 1) a full round and 2) a flat-footed opponent. There are a lot of variations of this, so please don't get hung up on the details of this example.

Let's say there are two long time enemies. Jack-Be-Nimble is a high level rogue. He has a great initiative score, a great perception score, a high BaB, and a huge sneak attack bonus. His nemesis is Igor-the-Imp. He also has a great initiative and a great perception score, but he can't hold his own in a fight. So, whenever Jack shows up, he flies away.

These two have been playing "tag" for years and the results are pretty predictable. Whenever Jack wins initiative, 1) he takes a move action to approach Igor and 2) takes a standard action to sneak attack and kill Igor. Jack loves the game, so he always resurrects Igor to play again. Whenever, Igor wins initiative, he flies away.

So far, so good. The problem happens when Jack tries to recruit some help. He brings along his fighter friend Frank-the-Tank. Frank is a power house, but he wears a full helm and he's usually caught by surprise.

With Frank in the picture, there is almost always a surprise round, but only Frank is caught unaware. Jack and Igor are the only two who get to act. However, now the results are very different since they are each restricted to a single standard action. When Igor wins the initiative, the results are basically the same. He flies away to safety. But when Jack wins, he can't finish Igor anymore. Since he only has a standard action, he can only move up to Igor. He can't get in his sneak attack.

This has always bothered me that the presence of a third party can affect the results of the combatants who aren't caught surprised. In fact, Igor could abuse the RAW and just bring along his own fighter friend to sit in the room with his...

Even in 1 on 1 combat only a standard action is allowed in a surprise round. The number of participants does not change that.

Example 1:
Jack:rolls stealth check of 34, he waits to ambush Igor
Igor:rolls a perception check of 26

This gives Jack a surprise round allowing him one standard action. If Igor is still alive after this round then initiative is rolled.

If Jack wins initiative but he does not beat Igor's stealth check there is no surprise round, and whoever goes first just gets a full-round worth of actions.

The 3rd party is not a factor.

Sovereign Court

The PRD entry for CHARGE wrote:

*snip*

If you are able to take only a standard action on your turn, you can still charge, but you are only allowed to move up to your speed (instead of up to double your speed) and you cannot draw a weapon unless you possess the Quick Draw feat. You can't use this option unless you are restricted to taking only a standard action on your turn.

Unless there's something I'm missing in the situation description, shouldn't the Standard Action charge be useable to achieve the result? Igor is still flat-footed, as he has not acted yet, so sneak attack should still go off.


El Baron de los Banditos wrote:
The PRD entry for CHARGE wrote:

*snip*

If you are able to take only a standard action on your turn, you can still charge, but you are only allowed to move up to your speed (instead of up to double your speed) and you cannot draw a weapon unless you possess the Quick Draw feat. You can't use this option unless you are restricted to taking only a standard action on your turn.

Unless there's something I'm missing in the situation description, shouldn't the Standard Action charge be useable to achieve the result? Igor is still flat-footed, as he has not acted yet, so sneak attack should still go off.

Yes, but there a lot of people that don't know about that rule. I only realized it existed earlier this year.


wraithstrike wrote:
El Baron de los Banditos wrote:
The PRD entry for CHARGE wrote:

*snip*

If you are able to take only a standard action on your turn, you can still charge, but you are only allowed to move up to your speed (instead of up to double your speed) and you cannot draw a weapon unless you possess the Quick Draw feat. You can't use this option unless you are restricted to taking only a standard action on your turn.

Unless there's something I'm missing in the situation description, shouldn't the Standard Action charge be useable to achieve the result? Igor is still flat-footed, as he has not acted yet, so sneak attack should still go off.
Yes, but there a lot of people that don't know about that rule. I only realized it existed earlier this year.

A simple ranged sneak would help in both situations too. (assuming drawn weapons or quick draw)

And Yeah, thats specifically the situation that partial charges are there for ( and other standard-only situations)


@Concerro, @El Baron, @Wraitstrike, @Azmahel. Thanks for your feedback, but this is sort of what I was afraid would happen with this thread. Please don't get caught up in the details of this example. Partial charges, different rogue attacks etc at all fine and dandy ways to optimize within the Suprise RAW. I'm not actually looking for ways that a character can make the best of what's allowed. The example could just as easily be a wizard moving into range and casting a spell, a fighter drawing a weapon and attacking, etc.

None of that changes the fact that if I have two unsurprised characters, the presence (or non-presence) of a third surprised character changes their options and tactics. If the third character is in the room, the two unsurprised characters have to optimize around a single standard action. If the third character is not in the room, the two unsurprised characters get to both take a full round action.

This is the problem that I'm trying to house rule and solve. IMO, the presence of a third, surprised character should not affect what the two unsurprised characters can do.


Infiniti wrote:

@Concerro, @El Baron, @Wraitstrike, @Azmahel. Thanks for your feedback, but this is sort of what I was afraid would happen with this thread. Please don't get caught up in the details of this example. Partial charges, different rogue attacks etc at all fine and dandy ways to optimize within the Suprise RAW. I'm not actually looking for ways that a character can make the best of what's allowed. The example could just as easily be a wizard moving into range and casting a spell, a fighter drawing a weapon and attacking, etc.

None of that changes the fact that if I have two unsurprised characters, the presence (or non-presence) of a third surprised character changes their options and tactics. If the third character is in the room, the two unsurprised characters have to optimize around a single standard action. If the third character is not in the room, the two unsurprised characters get to both take a full round action.

This is the problem that I'm trying to house rule and solve. IMO, the presence of a third, surprised character should not affect what the two unsurprised characters can do.

For a Houserule I would suggest simply giving each character that can act in a surprise round a full round action. It makes surprise more significant for the game ( and by extension provides a small but significant power boost), but doesn't change too much. Also Pathfinder is relatively tame on with the effects of surprise when compared to other systems.

In order to alleviate the power boost for rogues, let surprised characters each have a standard (or move) action at the end of the surprise round.

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