Surprise rounds

Discussion of initiative tool.

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Blakey
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Surprise rounds

Post by Blakey »

Does IT handle surprise rounds (e.g. where the party surprise the monsters and all get a free partiual action) ?

If so, can someone explain how please?

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jay
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Post by jay »

Currently there isn't any special support for a Surprise round. But, I can certainly add something IT to help do this. What would you, and everybody else, like to see the tool do for a surprise round?

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Post by dorpond »

Per the SRD3.5:

SURPRISE
When a combat starts, if you are not aware of your opponents and they are aware of you, you’re surprised.

Determining Awareness
Sometimes all the combatants on a side are aware of their opponents, sometimes none are, and sometimes only some of them are. Sometimes a few combatants on each side are aware and the other combatants on each side are unaware.

Determining awareness may call for Listen checks, Spot checks, or other checks.

The Surprise Round: If some but not all of the combatants are aware of their opponents, a surprise round happens before regular rounds begin. Any combatants aware of the opponents can act in the surprise round, so they roll for initiative. In initiative order (highest to lowest), combatants who started the battle aware of their opponents each take a standard action during the surprise round. You can also take free actions during the surprise round. If no one or everyone is surprised, no surprise round occurs.

Unaware Combatants: 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.



For the record Jay, I too am very interested in a surprise round function for InitTool.

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Post by dorpond »

As far as how it would work, I would think that we would need to have the surprise option when we go to Start Encounter. We could specify who in the list of combatants are getting a surprise round then when we start the combat, those who are in the surprise round will go first and THEN we start at the top of initiative order.

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Post by dorpond »

Another option would be to have a check box next to each combatant in the initiative list. We can put a check in the box if that person has a surprise round. Those who have a check in the box immediately move to the top of the combat list in initiative order. Once we click the Next Initiative button after that player acted, the check box goes empty and the next surprise combatant acts. All surprises round combatants go first and all their boxes will be unchecked once they act. Once they are all unchecked, combat starts as normal.

That might be the easiest and more system agnostic. Plus if for some reason, a GM wanted to throw a surprise round in during an existing battle, all he has to do is put a check in the players checkbox and that person automatically moves to the top of the initiative. If there are more than one, they simply go in initiative order while in the surprise.

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jay
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Post by jay »

I'll add a tracker for it to make sure it shows up in version 1.1 for Init Tool.

I've been thinking about it some and it seems like the most generic way would be to create a timer for all of the surprised creatures and have the creatures attached to that timer be automatically skipped until the timer expires. This would also be useful for some conditions like dazed as well.

Thoughts?

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Post by dorpond »

Originally I was thinking something like this (a visual to go with the second idea I had above):

Image

Notice that when a box is checked, the combatant goes first even though his initiative is 3. Now, once I hit the Next Initiative button, he would then insert into the proper order and appear between Trayal and Oscar.

I am not sure about your suggest method Jay because I cannot visualize it easily being a timer like you state.

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dLANbandit
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Post by dLANbandit »

I don't understand, why you don't just have the people in the surprise round have init value and the unaware people don't have an init. Then the init tool gives those with an init a turn, those without none.

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jay
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Post by jay »

dorpond wrote:Another option would be to have a check box next to each combatant in the initiative list. We can put a check in the box if that person has a surprise round. Those who have a check in the box immediately move to the top of the combat list in initiative order. Once we click the Next Initiative button after that player acted, the check box goes empty and the next surprise combatant acts. All surprises round combatants go first and all their boxes will be unchecked once they act. Once they are all unchecked, combat starts as normal.
You can do that now by defining a 'wait state' called Surprised and changing how it looks (different bg color, font, etc). You can even make the surprised players be skipped if you wanted.

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jay
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Post by jay »

dorpond wrote:Originally I was thinking something like this (a visual to go with the second idea I had above):

.. image omitted ...

Notice that when a box is checked, the combatant goes first even though his initiative is 3. Now, once I hit the Next Initiative button, he would then insert into the proper order and appear between Trayal and Oscar.
Hmmm... I'm not sure that cluttering up the list with state is worth it since the surprise in d20 only lasts for the first round. I'd like to stay away from adding any more state to the lists because too much gets very confusing.
dorpond wrote:I am not sure about your suggest method Jay because I cannot visualize it easily being a timer like you state.
Just add a regular timer to the list that effects the surprised players. There isn't anything new to see because the surprised players are skipped automatically until the surprised timer expires. If you really want to see who is busy then I suggest using a special 'Surprised' wait state.

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Post by jay »

dLANbandit wrote:I don't understand, why you don't just have the people in the surprise round have init value and the unaware people don't have an init. Then the init tool gives those with an init a turn, those without none.
It could be done this way, but it requires you to stop and add the initiative for the surprised combatants after the first round which kinda puts a kink in the action. It just seems more natural IMO to assign all the initiatives at the beginning and then skip the surprised combatants. Also, you couldn't use the Start Encounter menu option in this case because it assigns initiative to everybody.

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dLANbandit
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Post by dLANbandit »

ok thanks, that is clearer.

Are their plans to enable init tool to trigger my init roll automatically? Basicly I create the macro for it with a special name or property set, that lets init tool it is my initiative roller. Then when the DM hits, START COMBAT, init tool tells Maptool to go get rolls from people. Then people can roll manually or the macro fires if you set the property.

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Post by dorpond »

jay wrote: Hmmm... I'm not sure that cluttering up the list with state is worth it since the surprise in d20 only lasts for the first round. I'd like to stay away from adding any more state to the lists because too much gets very confusing.
That is incorrect - surprises don't only happen in the first round. Yeah, that is how it works most of the time but in many cases you could have support monsters join in on existing combat. In that case, the players could very well be surprised of their arrival while in mid battle.

So in this case, I would simply add the new monsters to the list and check them as being in a surprise round so they act first. Then once they get their attacks in, they join in the existing battle according to thier initiative.

Know what I mean?

But I do agree that the screen could get a bit cluttered.

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Post by Amaril »

Surprise rounds are just the first round of combat in which all participants roll for initiative, but with the following exceptions:
  1. Aware combatants can take only a standard action.
  2. Unaware combatants are skipped as they cannot act and are flat-footed for the entire round.
After the surprise round, initiative should continue in the order initiative was rolled.

As far as I can tell, InitiativeTool doesn't handle actions per round and allows for combatants to be skipped, thus InitiativeTool handles surprise rounds as is. You just simply skip those who are unaware.

Regarding additional surprises during an encounter, such circumstances do not prevent a combatant from taking more then a standard action nor do they force the character to be skipped. The surprising combatants simply get bonuses for surprise attacks (e.g. - sneak attack) if any are applicable.

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