Okay, lets say you are an oracle of 7th level with the 'War Sight' revelation, and you also have the 'deaf' oracle curse. What happens in a 'surprise' round if an enemy ambushes you while you are asleep?
War Sight: Whenever you roll for initiative, you can roll twice and take either result. At 7th level, you can always act in the surprise round, but if you fail to notice the ambush, you act last, regardless of your initiative result (you act in the normal order in following rounds). At 11th level, you can roll for initiative three times and take any one of the results.
From what I can tell, War Sight pretty much counters your deafness (granted, you still take penalties on sound-based perception, but otherwise initiative isn't really a problem). However, I'm not really sure how War Sight is suppose to work if you are deaf and asleep. I mean, do you somehow 'sense' the battle and simple wake up 'aware' of the enemies/danger?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
If you were deaf and asleep I would say you likely wouldn't perceive any threat so you "fail to notice the ambush". So you would get to act in the surprise round, but you would act last. You then act on your initiative count after the surprise round.
Gods I wish I were deaf and asleep. I'd feel great in the morning.
Warsight would allow you to act in the surprise round. That action would be to continue sleeping. There's nothing in the ability that suggests that it wakes you up automatically, or that it counters deafness, at least by my reading.
Now if you weren't deaf, being able to always act in the surprise round would give you a chance to roll Perception to wake up, but being deaf....
yup, unless you pass your perception check, your actions are to remain sleeping. Warsight (or rolling initiative in general) does not wake you up.
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The reason I say War Sight counters deafness is because being deaf affects your ability to perceive danger (and thus also hurts your initiative). With War Sight, it no longer matters if you can perceive danger or not, since you can always act in a surprise round regardless of whether you perceived the enemies or not (plus, it helps with the initiative issue as well).
I guess the issue I'm having is that if you are allowed to 'act' in a surprise round, doesn't that essentially suggest that you are 'aware' that a surprise round is taking place? If so, wouldn't that mean that you are automatically 'awakened' if a surprise round occurs?
Again, I would chalk it up to a 'sixth sense' or 'battle-sense' that goes beyond normal senses, allowing you to perceive danger even though you would not normally perceive it (hence the example of being asleep).
Nope. There are no rules allowing you to wake up. There is even a perception modifier for sleeping, which implies that you can fail to perceive something while asleep, thus failing to wake up.
Now, sounds of battle nearby give you a +20 modifier on the roll, so your chances of waking up while battle is going on is excellent (DC0 +20 for battle, -10 for sleeping, means you need to roll a -11 to fail)
It still wont automatically wake you up when battle starts
So you fail a save against Hold Monster, a round later the critter who cast it dies. Combat ends. A round later, a new group of monsters, alerted by the sound of combat, pounces on your group.
Does Warsight break you out of Hold Monster since it says you can "act"?
Of course not. Being able to act in the surprise round means you are treated as part of the surprise round. If you are asleep, you must wake up. If you are lying down, you have to stand up. If you are under the effects of a snare or paralysis, you have to break out.
Warsight negates none of this, it just means you get a turn in the surprise round, not that you'll necessarily be able to make use of it. (Though in almost all situations you will, save for the deafness.)
Nope. There are no rules allowing you to wake up. There is even a perception modifier for sleeping, which implies that you can fail to perceive something while asleep, thus failing to wake up.
Now, sounds of battle nearby give you a +20 modifier on the roll, so your chances of waking up while battle is going on is excellent (DC0 +20 for battle, -10 for sleeping, means you need to roll a -11 to fail)
It still wont automatically wake you up when battle starts
Again, I fail to understand how I can 'act in a surprise round' if I can only remain asleep. As stated before, the 'act of sleeping' is NOT an action. Standard, move, full-round, etc. Those are actions.
War Sight would seem to imply that you DO wake up in the event of a surprise round, because you need to be awake in order to take an action.
Which means you are 'never helpless' while sleeping, only flat-footed.
I think what I'm trying to say is that War Sight makes you 'aware' that a surprise round is happening, regardless of whether you know it or not. Now then, regarding the examples of 'hold person' and such, I'm not suggesting War Sight negates spell effects.
All I'm saying is that it makes you 'aware' that a surprise round is happening.
I suppose you could make the example of 'what if someone cast a sleep spell on you, what then?' kind of deal, but I would argue that the spell itself changes the condition you're in (by essentially putting a restriction on when you can wake up).
Natural sleep doesn't have that restriction.
It is based on your 'awareness' (or perception, if you will), and due to the wording of War Sight, it would seem that you are ALWAYS aware that a surprise round is happening (and because there is no restriction preventing you from waking up, like say, a spell...I don't see why you wouldn't be able wake up and act during the surprise round)
You wake up by making your Perception roll, as already outlined (though without the penalty you'd have for being deaf).
I think I'm going to bow out at this point. I've made my argument as plainly as possible, and understand yours, though I think it's...incorrect.
There are a million reasons why you might not be able to take actions in the surprise round. Warsight negates none of them, as I read the rules, it merely includes you in the surprise round, to act as you are able.
If you are unable to act by reason of being the victim of a spell, tied up, unconscious due to negative hit points, paralyzed due to dex poison, or deaf and asleep, then you're SOL. Even with Warsight.
If you pass the perception test to act on the surprise round, you get to act on the surprise round, and that means waking up.
I always assumed that War Sight pretty much allows you to pass the perception test to act in a surprise round regardless of whether you 'actually' passed it or not. It essentially says 'if you don't pass the perception check, you still act, you just act last.'
Is this not correct?
So that would mean:
1) I'm sleeping
2) Enemy attacks (I failed my perception check, and thus am not aware)
3) Surprise round starts
4) I wake up, I go last, I am not helpless, but I am flat-footed
Am I missing anything?
I have a question, the answer of which might solve this issue.
Say there is an assasin, he sneaks up on agroup of Pc's. He studies one of them long enough and moves to make the kill.
The PC's in this case are 100% incapable of deteting them, cannot see invisible and we'll say they are all working off hang-vers and cant make the perception checks to beat his stealth and invisibility.
Is iniative rolled, the moment the asassin does his attack (which the Pc's are incapable of being aware of) or is it rolled the round one of them suddenly has a dagger in his left eye.
If the answer is initiative is rolled only when they are somehow conceivably aware of something is happening and thus in theory able to react. Then the warsight oracle will sleep through the whole fight.
Really it seems wierd that you could run an entire army past the guy and have canon's go off but as long as those canons are not aimed at him or his party he'll sleep through it :P