Suppose Dalfgan the Wizard is moving around invisibly. He spots a group of goblins and wants to cast a sleep spell. Because they are unaware of him he gets a surprise round. He cannot cast this spell on the surprise round, since it is a full-round action to do so and he only gets a standard. Rather than doing something to break invisibly, he passes his turn. The goblins win initiative and go first but are still unaware that there's an invisible wizard in the room. What happens?
The most straightforward ruling is that everyone who was unaware remains unaware. In this case combat effectively begins at Dalfgan's initiative count. For all intents and purposes this ruling allows a character to give up their surprise round (provided that everyone who can act on the surprise round coordinates to do so) in order to ensure they come first in the regular initiative order. The problem with that ruling is that it leads to blatant metagaming. Since initiative is rolled before the surprise round occurs, whoever is doing the ambushing can change their actions to take advantage of this out-of-character knowledge. This can get really abusive with the delay action, allowing an entire party to synchronize their initiative count. A perverse consequence is that high initiative results are of little value if the ambusher does this. All these consequences lead me to believe this ruling is wrong.
A more draconian ruling is that combat doesn't begin until you actually take your surprise round. Dalfgan in the above example could keep passing turns until his invisibility expires, he's never going to get a full-round action until he reveals himself to the goblins so they can act. This ruling would be great for a tactical board-game, but it doesn't work well for a tabletop roleplaying game. If my wizard player wants to cast his sleep spell, there needs to be some way of resolving that. "You can't do that right now" is not an acceptable response.
What are people's thoughts on this one?
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"Combatants who are unaware at the start of battle don't get to act in the surprise round. Unaware combatants are flat-footed because they have not acted yet, so they lose any Dexterity bonus to AC."
This does not apply to characters in normal initiative. Those characters are denied their Dex due to not seeing the enemy.
The Start/Complete Full-Round Action solves some of the issues I raised (I somehow missed it. It doesn't help that table 8-2 omits it for some reason) and provides a mechanical way to resolve Dalfgan's intent of casting a sleep spell on the surprise round. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. However, it still leaves some of the issues I've brought up unaddressed. For instance, if all creatures remain unaware of combat when the first regular turn of combat begins, what happens?
Let's modify my above example. Dalfgan now wants to cast a silent sleep spell on the surprise round. He uses the start/complete full-round action to begin casting, and since the spell is silent and he's still invisible there is no evidence of the spell being cast so the goblins remain unaware. What happens? Is combat averted and he gets another surprise round to complete his spellcasting, or did the regular combat round begin and the goblins with higher initiative results lose their turns due to being unaware?
I'm also curious as to whether it's possible to take a delay action on the surprise round. While I'm definitely ruling *no* at my table (too much abuse potential) I am curious as to the actual rules legality on that. Doesn't seem to be anything against it.
Once Dalfgan begins casting a spell at the hapless goblins, combat ensues; all participants, aware or unaware, roll initiative, and Dalfgan begins casting during the surprise round. This does not make the goblins aware of the caster. If a goblin's initiative count comes up and he is unaware of any foes, they should simply act as they would if no combat was occurring.
(Note: I will not challenge the assertion that the spell provides no evidence of it being cast as it's immaterial to the topic under debate.)
(Note: I will not challenge the assertion that the spell provides no evidence of it being cast as it's immaterial to the topic under debate.)
Thanks for not nitpicking ;-)
Once Dalfgan begins casting a spell at the hapless goblins, combat ensues; all participants, aware or unaware, roll initiative. This does not make the goblins aware of the caster. If a goblin's initiative count comes up and he is unaware of any foes, they should simply act as they would if no combat was occurring.
While I agree that sounds right by RAW, it does have the perverse effect of making high initiative results bad and low initiative results good.
Let's say Dalfgan isn't alone. There's also Drofo the Rogue in the room. Drofo is using standard stealth and has succeeded all his stealth checks. He draws his weapons on the surprise round but doesn't do anything else. If his initiative is higher than Dalfgan's, he takes a delay action on his first real turn so that Dalfgan's spell has the element of surprise. This creates a really weird dynamic. Dalfgan wants the lowest initiative possible so all the goblins waste their first turn and the rest of his party can just delay to act right after him. The goblins (ie, me the GM) want to get an initiative result that is lower than Dalfgan's but higher than his other party members so they can pre-empt some of them. This seems really meta-gamey to me, although disallowing delay actions on the surprise round itself gets rid of the worst of the abuse.
Yep, bummer, that. But it's not the first time d20 combat rules leave one scratching one's head.
Edit: Actually, disallowing delay actions has the effect of not allowing the party to effectively ambush in synch with each other, which should be possible. You're better off just enforcing surprise rounds until someone on the goblin side is aware. Don't worry so much about metagaming; it's all an abstraction anyway, and it makes the players feel competent when it works and compensates somewhat for all of the things RAW doesn't allow that it probably should.
You're better off just enforcing surprise rounds until someone on the goblin side is aware.
That's my line of thought. By creating a second surprise round there's no way to pre-empt someone's "regular" turn. This makes the whole "delay on a surprise round" a moot point since there's no reason to do it. You want the best initiative modifier possible, and if for some reason you don't you can just delay on the actual combat round to the initiative you want.
I think that's going to be my home ruling. I'm not entirely comfortable with effectively letting spellcasters cast 1-round spells on back-to-back surprise rounds when martials explicitly cannot do this with their full-round attacks, but the alternative has too many abusive possibilities. That said, spellcasters would need silent spell or some other conditions to conceal their spellcasting to do this, so it should be fine in most cases.