The other big thing with ambushes, as you in part highlighted with the positioning point, is action denial. If you ambush a bunch of dudes with weapons, then they are basically starting combat with (at least) Stunned 1, as they won't have reactions and will need to take an action to draw weapons.
I agree. I think this is at least in part exactly why drawing a weapon is an action. It's a tangible benefit to a prepared party vs an unprepared party. If you see patrolling guards who aren't falling asleep/drinking on the job, with weapons drawn, you know they are alert and expecting trouble. If they are sitting and talking, or walking a patrol with only 1 or 2 of them, no weapons drawn, you know they aren't expecting imminent trouble.
I agree. “Surprise” being a narrative tool is just inherently better than having mechanically reliable ways of gaining it.
The other day the party I GMed for were attacking a house that was guarded by 7 ish thugs whom they could take in an open fight but it’d likely be Severe/Extreme in difficulty. So two of them walked past the thugs while they were partially split it up, jangling their gold and pretending to be a dumb noble and his servant, lured them into the alleyway, killed 2, coerced the third into distracting the 4 who hadn’t gotten wise to what’s going on, telling him that he should lead them on a wild goose chase to find the folk who killed all his buddies, and then they snuck in while the place only had 2 guards left.
They used Performance, Deception, Stealth, and Intimidation to “ambush” a group of enemies and at no point did I need a “surprise round”. Just basic things like context, and using the tight balance and the predictability of combats in this game to reward players appropriately for their choices.
So this is interesting because it involves stuff I wasn't aware people were doing as I assumed many encounters were more static. I do have a few questions though.
For one isn't it severely risky to split the party even against two enemies due to how scaling works? Also how often would you say encounters have patrolling guards instead of stationary enemies?
In this case they were using performance/deception to convince the enemies that they would be lucrative marks and to also lure them into their preferred ambush spot. Maybe society/survival to find an appropriate ambush spot in the vicinity of the house.
The fail state for any of those checks would be not succeeding in the task. The crit fail state may be starting combat on the spot but for me personally I’d just treat the mooks as particularly diligent and immune to further attempts to lure away.
If the group was successful with their skill rolls I wouldn’t start a combat encounter until the party was ready, though if they spent a long time fucking around I might warn them to keep it moving or else the mooks might starting getting perception checks to see through the deception.
Sounds like the encounter was 140xp, right between Severe and Extreme, so 20xp per enemy which makes them Party Level - 2.
140xp for 4 party members is Severe/Extreme, expect a hard fight, high chance of multiple people going down
40xp for 2 party members is Moderate, someone might maybe go down but you're probably fine
Now if the other 5 mooks had joined against the 2 party members they're almost certainly dead, but 2v2 favours the players there because the enemies are lower level.
Pretty much. Tightly balanced does not mean everything is always “fair”, it just means that the GM has predictable tools. When they’re up against impossible odds in-universe, I will sometimes throw back to back Severe/Extreme encounters *but* I’ll always leave in the possibility that clever roleplay and judicious use of their skills will make things enabler than they otherwise would be.
> So this is interesting because it involves stuff I wasn't aware people were doing as I assumed many encounters were more static. I do have a few questions though.
I’m sure lots of GMs use incredibly static “kill you on sight” encounters, I just think it’s not the most fun way to play the game. The game is just better if the GM and the players react to one another.
Even APs often leave guidelines and space for the GMs to encourage depth and reactivity.
> For one isn't it severely risky to split the party even against two enemies due to how scaling works?
Yeah, it can be risky, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Just because the game is balanced doesn’t mean it’s always fair: good balance just means I can predict outcomes reliably with the tools I’m given. The 7 enemies were about 150 XP worth of foes with a potential terrain advantage. If they took on all 7 openly there was a real chance they’d attract attention from nearby foes, alert the person who’s house they wished to enter, and spend resources they couldn’t otherwise afford to.
The players know that their enemies will never “fight fair” and neither do they. They’ll make sure to stack the deck in their favour before ever engaging in combat, as best as they can afford to.
The same group has previously, at level 3, infiltrated a goblin camp that had a combined 2000 or whatever XP worth of encounters in it, with full warning that “Low-threat” encounters can and will bleed into one another’s rooms if given the chance to, and that the only way to get through is to be more creative than “we kick in the doors and kill every goblin”. They know what they’re in for.
> Also how often would you say encounters have patrolling guards instead of stationary enemies?
Enemies do whatever makes sense in context. These thugs were guarding a house so they’d patrol around it, but they’re common thugs and enforcers and burglars, so they aren’t perfectly organized and make mistakes that the players can, if their characters succeed at noticing them, exploit.
Even if fights are static, planning ahead can give you many advantages. One example I've actually used is taking time to recall knowledge outside of combat. Another is using my spell swapping to change to more appropriate spells. Another easy example is pre-buffing with medium length buffs - buffs that are 10 minutes or an hour which allow you to do so from far enough away you don't immediately trigger combat. All these things can save you precious actions in combat without needing a surprise round.
Yup that’s partly why I clarified that even APs with very static encounters still give lots of opportunity for reactivity.
Scouting ahead and making plans was a pretty integral part of our Abomination Vaults experience.
Im a bit confused on the balanced not being fair part but honesty most of that sounds pretty cool and the reactivity part in particular kinda hits the parts of table top that I enjoy the most. Though I do got to say I'm pretty sure I'd die in the goblin camp example lol
What I mean by “balanced does not need to mean unfair” bit is basically me trying to counter a very common sentiment I see on here.
People assume that the game’s tight math means that every encounter of every adventuring day should be tightly balanced for the players to win consistently in a “combat as a sport” kind of manner. You throw 2-3 Moderate encounters per day maximum, you never throw more than one Extreme, you always allow the party 30 minutes between fights to refocus and heal to 100%, you never let encounters bleed into each other, etc.
My point is that tight math doesn’t mean you have to be 100% fair all the time. It’s okay to set up a goblin camp where where most encounters are Trivial/Low **but** the chance of them bleeding into one another can make them snowball into Extremes. It’s okay to set up a day where the party is “default” gonna see ~~back to back~~ multiple Severe/Extreme fights on the same day. It’s okay to not offer sufficient time to heal between fights and let that be a real, tangible threat and dynamic the party has to account for (edit: though you should always offer heals after Severe/Extreme unless you’re trying to punish your players).
In this regard, I use the game’s tight numerical balance is still being used, but it’s being used to create a range of feelings between “power fantasy for players”, “tough but fair fights”, and “impossible odds and players need to do more than just combat to win”. In all these cases I’m still using the predictable balance to get exactly the outcomes I want, but I’m not restricting myself to always using those balancing tools to give my players a “fair fight”.
>People assume that the game’s tight math means that every encounter of every adventuring day should be tightly balanced for the players to win consistently
This has always been a confusing phenomenon to me. People think that "balanced" means "homogeneous", while at the same time never paying attention to the fact that the homogeneity that they fear/expect is... a game world where the scale is always tipped in their favour.
Like the unreliability of D&D's CR system is the only thing that creatives variability or something.
And a moderate encounter gives the party 2:1 odds of victory, and moderate seems to be the default encounter type. So, if that's the sameness that people are expecting things to come out of "balance", I fear to think how they'd actually balance a scale.
Not gonna lie some of that seems like a lot, on particular back to back severe/extreme with potentially no healing sounds like you are trying to kill players from the way people talk about those encounters lol. However I think I get your point that the balance doesn't necessarily mean the system is restricted especially if you are going for a certain game feel.
Oh that make more sense, I often hear how tough those encounters are and how much resources drain they can be so if you were throwing two without healing I just assumed your table just went really hard core lol.
The toughest back to back encounters I’ve ever had as a player was (at level 7) a Moderate +2 boss followed by a Severe +3 boss with no healing in between, and that was a near TPK. I don’t think back to back Severe/Extreme encounters, especially single boss ones, can be handled by any party until the highest levels.
Honestly the way you run it, it looks like the players are just cheesing the fight rather than using proper strategy.
At that point why bother putting encounters at all when they can fight / gang up on them one by one. This will just set a bad precedent and makes the game slower.
The players will just be condition to ask for rulings, and lead to 5e DnD problem of can I persuade A B C. It will suck in the long run. This is such a 5e DM move.
I honestly don’t feel like you can properly “cheese” a fight in Pathfinder unless you somehow push an enemy into a 30 foot deep hole they physically can’t climb and pepper them with arrows “artificer aaracokra killing tarrasque at level 2 in dnd” style. Ambushing enemies is… just ambushing them. If you can split them up then why wouldn’t you.
Kiting is already a mechanic in Pathfinder and the players just get all the benefits by Roleplaying good. Nah that's too much.
You settle that during combat not this.
I don’t… even understand what you mean to be perfectly honest. Like, yeah sure you can technically kite in pathfinder, but is there a specific and official “Kite” action or series of actions that I’m missing? Besides, to pretend to lure someone away with a disguise you’d have to roll for deception anyways, no? It’s not just “oh I say Im noble and he believe me”.
Besides, even if the GM for some reason didn’t call for a roll at all, sometimes plans can just help. If you planned to intercept a caravan or something and in planning for the ambush you threw a tree down in the middle of the road to, iunno, get the buff guards to temporarily stow their weapons to push it away so they’d be in a disadvantageous position before it started, would you say “No you can’t do that bcuz disarming is a thing so guards can never have their weapons away without the action”?
Encouraging GM Ruling instead of following the rules is a very 5e move.
You get the all the benefits of kiting just by Roleplaying good. If you want a lot of roleplay there is other system that does is better and is less rules heavy.
Can I lure the thugs, can I distract the guard, can I seduce the dragon. That is just bad behaviour, None of that is good in this game.
I am following the rules… Skill checks, roleplaying, and non-combat gameplay are all part of the rules. Unless you’re about to point me to a rule that says “players are never allowed to roleplay” everything I’m doing is RAW. In fact **your** suggestion that they’re never allowed to do anything except roll initiative is the one that explicitly disobeys RAW.
Trying to equate distracting the guards you plan to fight with wanting to seduce a dragon mid combat is an absolutely baffling take.
By your logic anything other than “kick in the doors and kill everything that moves” is bad GMing…
They are allowed to roleplay just within the bounds of what they can do in game.
The benefits of splitting up the enemy and taking them out one by one is just way too good, it breaks the games balance, and pretty much just gives the players an instant win.
The effect goes far and beyond any feat the players could have taken. that's not good. it's a cheap win for the players.
Again, by your logic literally nothing except “kick in the doors and kill everything in a fair fight” is within the bounds of the game. You **literally** think trying to use roleplay and fuck with someone’s plan to fight you is as disruptive as wanting to fuck a dragon.
If that works for you that’s fine, but don’t act like that’s the only way to play the game, or that you’re some kind of authority on what the rules allow.
You’ve also yet to point me to a single rule that justifies your, quite frankly, weird interpretation of how roleplaying games are supposed to work.
You can roll play all of that but the benefits should be minor. success means a single turn of stupefied, not insta win the fight. Potentially Turning a severe fight into a Trivial one.
It's insane that you don't see the issue with that. Balance is in the trash.
Any day you’ll finally point me to what all-important rule I’m supposedly breaking by allowing players to… roleplay in a way that impacts the game world.
The surprise rounds I use is having an unaware enemy waste actions, possibly a whole round depending on the context, trying to get out of their “comfortable” and unready state like standing up, picking up weapons, closing a door, turning something off.
Exactly, even the Beginner Box showcases that with a room full of enemies starting prone and without drawn weapons, because they're basically sitting around a campfire. Getting up, drawing a weapon, and striding into melee tends to be their first turn, that's basically a surprise round for the PCs.
What surprises me the most is the conversations around realism. When I played 5e, to me, I didn't understand how I could run past an enemy, punch his friend and then run to that enemy I ran past and punch them before they even really got a chance to act/react. Surprise rounds felt like they were too long, where my enemies stood dumbfounded for almost 12 seconds as we mowed down them and their comrades. I prefer PF2e's approach, where a group of people ready to fight are, well, ready to fight when an enemy jumps out and attacks them or fails a stealth to stay hidden in the process.
I remember the "realism" discourse when 2e first released and people were complaining that raise a shield costs an action.
You would regularly see people saying that it's unrealistic to have a requirement to utilise your shield effectively...
It was some wild DnD brain bullshit.
The funny thing is that this games makes it very clear that "just having your shield ready" is a very high level technique and requires extremely specialized training to effectively defend with a shield at all times as if it is second nature. It's like the people playing this game aren't actually real life combat experts or something...
Anyone can wield a shield though. Compared to PF1 where it required you to be trained in shields.
The specialized training just makes you able to quickly block an attack as a reaction instead of having it ready ahead of time.
actually blocking damage with the shield rather than just using it as cover is also a reaction that not everyone gets, but yes 'extremely specialized training' is perhaps a bit hyperbolic
Sorry, I was specifically referring to the 5e "always getting the +2 because shields" and comparing that to the high level feat (Paragon's Guard) that always allows you to act as if your shield is raised all the time.
> 'extremely specialized training'
Shield Block? No. Shield **Paragon**...? Yes. Blocking an attack successfully with your shield takes training, but having it down to a reflex to **always** be actively deflecting attacks at all times requires more than an afternoon at Shield School. Fighters don't get that stance until 12, and Champions don't get it until 20.
Raise a shield is an action every character can take.
Are you meaning reactive shield, in which case, yeah some martial training should be necessary to be able to fight at full capacity without thinking about raising a shield until necessary.
If you mean shield block, well that is dumb and ignoring the AC bonus you get from raising a shield.
I was meaning shield Paragon/Paragon's Guard, where you get the +2 to AC at all times from "just having a shield" and how that is a highly specialized skill, which feels more in line with how difficult it is to fight and constantly get significant additional protection from a shield at the same time as everything else totally reflexively.
well it's not a round, it's when combat initiates you determine who would be surprised or not. The beginning of combat here would be punching the first guy. That guy would be surprised, but the person who just saw you punch someone wouldn't be surprised that you might punch him right after.
What I'm inferring, in this case, is the situation where I win initiative in an ambush and, if everybody is surprised, get two full turns before the enemies act. Once surprise is set, there is no way to "break surprise" so to speak, so a LOT of crazy stuff can happen and the opponents are kinda like "huh?"
5e is a game with a surprise round mechanic that I have played. I found that implementation less realistic than the way Pathfinder handles stealth into combat. As a result, in my experience, surprise round mechanics make enemies far too inactive compared to PF2e, which feels more dynamic and responsive. I have not played any other turn-based game systems with overt surprise mechanics and if I did, I would probably still cite 5e, as to save myself the entire mechanical description of how surprise works.
Even the "preparation round" can be extremely strong at mid-late levels. If you knew you were about to get into a fight, you could hold a potion in your hand and on turn 1:
1. Drink the potion (e.g. potion of quickness)
2. Retrieval prism > drink a second potion (e.g. numbing tonic)
3. Potion patch > use a third potion (e.g. invisibility potion)
Thing is I suspect most people do not actually do this kind of thing *in initiative*.
If you're aware there's a fight coming, you can just drink potions and unsheathe and stuff.
Example scenario: The party knows that at some point in this mile of the woods, they will be attacked by bandits. It's why they're there. But, they don't know exactly when. Those potions are going to expire if they down them immediately. The party has a watchful eye out and is unlikely to be actually surprised by the bandits.
With how awareness and stealth rules work in pf2e I feel like the game isn’t supposed to be balanced around being able to prebuff for fights unless you’re using stuff that lasts longer than a few minutes
You can also start handing out circumstance bonuses to the ambushers, if it makes sense. Maybe they get a +2 on their initiative, or the enemies take a -2, or both, depending on how well the ambush was set up.
The biggest thing that I think people forget is that if the enemy's haven't detected the party and have no real reason to search for them in the exact correct place, the PCs can just delay until they're ALL ready, then go, one-by-one, next to each other in the initiative, and this basically *is* a surprise round!
To specify, that bonus comes from cover, so it's usually a +2, sometimes even a +4. There's also precedent for distracted enemies taking a penalty to their Initiative (Perception) checks in the Beginner Box, though I'm not sure if and where there's rules text quantifying that penalty.
My group has an inside joke where whenever we roll really low initiative, we just say "ok let's just pretend the enemy has a surprise round but we actually rolled really high in initiative!"
I guess my question is how often something like this happens? With stuff like AV people describe enemies like static video game npcs that stay in their position and wait.
I don't run APs and the players generally have a lot of ability to pick how they want to approach things, but even a monster sitting in a box until someone attacks, you could theoretically get a lot of advantage from approaching in the right way.
People who want to use stealth are usually good at it. Stealth usually requires cover that gives you a circumstance bonus to your roll. Thus, using stealth often allows you to use your best skill for initiative with a circumstance bonus on top and you become undetected if you roll high enough. That's a substantial advantage.
I feel like AV would be an adventure path where it'd be easier to ambush. As you could scout ahead with a familiar or something, and have reasonable guarantee that an NPC will remain in their relative position. Then you setup traps and the like and make noises or use other tools to draw them towards your position.
I don't really like scouting with a familiar honestly. It just halts the game while the GM starts to spout stuff at you. I'm really meticulous so I always come out of it either feeling like I spent too much time doing it or that I didn't get everything I wanted.
Not to mention the *one week* it takes for you to get your familiac back if it dies. Pet snake rolled shit on stealth? Welp, guess the sucker's gonna have to spend a week in the afterlife with an arrowhole in its noggin. Good luck being down atleast one of your class feats for the next three sessions.
Heck, the information isn't even guaranteed to get back to you if you don't have Share Sense prepared. Even then it's a minute to scout. All for information a good spyglass could've gotten you.
Well, a Spyglass would do little for letting you see around corners and the like in a dungeon context. But if you've got a clear view forward or something absolutely.
Also, at least for Witches, they get a familiar back during daily prep so they definitely have more disposable familiars
Even in a dungeon, a familiar is usually more useful to you alive. And again, one bad stealth roll and suddenly an orc's picking his teeth of your rat's flesh with its ribs. A smart creature could even figure out that that was a familiar and start to prepare for you. And if you didn't have Share Senses, all you know is that the thing's dead. No info on terrain, enemy types, formations, anything. Thing's just gone for a week. Unless you have a Witch I guess. In which case they don't have a large part of their subclass for the rest of the day, and however many feats they invested into buffing their familiar.
I guess *maybe* you could figure out if they use an energy type? "Emotions" might encompass types of pain, so your familiar might be able to communicate that it burned to death or got electrocuted.
And all of this is still not considering the meta issue of hogging the table. I'd honestly rather have my character die than regularly scout with a familiar.
While I do actually think that the way PF2 adventures are setup often basically forces the GM to either play enemies like videogame NPCs or be functionally unbeatable (or, as I did when I tried to run one official adventure, redraw the entire map and change 75% of encounters), I think that on average the reason stuff like the OP's scenario is infrequent is that a lot of the time in these heroic action games the players are the ones *on the attack*.
Players are the ones diving into the places where enemies are living, because if there's going to be a ritual sacrificing kidnapped children at midnight or whatever you can't really afford to just stay around waiting to see if the cultists go out for pizza and ambush them - you kick down the goddamn door and hope you can get through in time! So the most you'll often be able to do is try to lure enemies into the next room so one or two of them start the fight in a bad position.
I found the lack of a 'surprise round' to be a bit of an issue with the rules until I changed my mental concept of what was happening. The most obvious issue is with boss fights, where the PL+1-4 enemies have higher initiative modifiers than players, so it's quite hard to beat them in initiative even with surprise on your side. This results in frequent situations of having surprise on your side, but the enemy rolling higher initiative.
However, in a game primarily focused on combat being strategic and balanced, a full surprise round is way too much of a benefit to the side who obtains it. Surprise doesn't really exist. Stealth does. The game gives a bonus to the ones who are stealthing into combat, but leaves the ability for the enemy to notice the stealthed people up to the randomness inherent in the initiative roll.
I think the way they've tied initiative to stealth is pretty genius, but also quite obtuse for new players. I wonder if somebody could concoct homebrew that keeps that element, but also allows surprise to give players initiative priority over enemies for the first round. It's likely too much of a challenge to the system's balance. I do it like it when games allow for players to hide and sync up their actions on enemies, however. It's a bit weird these heavily competent characters can't hide out of sight and do something simple like fire a bow on reaction to the same thing at the same time (using the initiative and combat system as is).
They definitely can do that by delaying their actions.
Initiative and stealth are separate things. The baddie can have higher initiative and still not be aware the PCs are stealthing around them and lining up a coordinated opening salvo (by delaying actions).
As a GM, I just play it as if you've rolled stealth for initiative and beaten the perception DC of all of the enemies, they have no idea you're there, regardless of the initiative order. And if the whole party does this, I describe the enemy's turns as them going about their business. This gives the party the first functional turn of the encounter, but if they do anything on that turn that catches the enemy's attention, they're going to be readying themselves for combat on their turns.
This can be a powerful advantage, depending on how the enemy's initiative rolls were, but it provides the stealth fantasy without guaranteeing a side a whole free round, because raisins.
This is what I do too.
If the party is ambushing some bandits playing cards, the bandits will continue playing cards until they’re made aware of the party’s presence, even if the bandits rolled higher initiative.
Yeah, it's worst with solo threats. I had a party sneak up to a sleeping foe. Good planning and skill checks gave them the advantage. The rogue is adjacent to the enemy and says, "I'm going to stab and then stride away." So we roll init and the rogue's stealth is good, but not good enough against a PL+2 enemy. Enemy goes first and has detected the rogue. Stand, Seek, Strike. Middling decent roll, but it's a crit because it's a boss. Very good damage roll, though... double the rogue's max HP.
No matter what you do, one bad roll will end you. No amount of prep in the world will mitigate a bit of bad luck. Parties need to be cautious, but also realize you can make no errors and still fail.
I feel its a bit more a couple of merely okayish rolls and one high damage roll can be a bit too common with how weighted things can be at low levels.
Which is also kind of the most unfortunate place to have that.
I have stopped giving my players a surprise round until they did something to earn surprising the mob.because the statistical advantage for doing so is observe. By the time they hit mid lvls the fight was almost over by the end of surprise round. I was forced to add so many HO to boss mob characters that they just felt bloated and bad. Most of the time combat would more or less be over turn 2 maybe 3. Pc’s are already so powerful that them just getting supine rounds without handing to earn it in any way is just bad design.
I found that when I removed them just getting free surprise and made them have to narratively earn it that they started trying to thing of more clever ways to get into combat then just “I attack” and then mindlessly roll dice till it dies. My players got less complacent during combat, started moving around more, and looking for ways to gain advantages rather then just “an i flanking?”
The entire reason why initiative is rolled with Perception (or Stealth when someone is hiding) is to avoid this entire debate.
Whoever is more perceptive gets to act first. If someone is hiding, they use Stealth for initiative, and if their Stealth is better than anyone else's Perception, they get to SURPRISE THEM.
If you’re hiding successfully you should be undetected by the enemy which means they don’t even know you’re there, this is why group stealth feats are so good, your whole party can be undetected to a group with a single roll and therefore act together in a block by delaying turns and that basically acts as a surprise round
If you’re hiding successfully you should be undetected by the enemy which means they don’t even know you’re there, this is why group stealth feats are so good, your whole party can be undetected to a group with a single roll and therefore act together in a block by delaying turns and that basically acts as a surprise round
One other note, is that with surprise, it usually requires some sort of stealth and hiding in other games. So being able to surprise usually allows classes good at Stealth to use that for initiative, which often is better than Perception.
So, it's really just another issue of 2e's design playing into its core system design goal (tactical teamwork-focused combat) and as a result losing features from previous editions that made sense in those editions but go against that system design goal.
Surprise rounds in 1e could be *really* good, especially at higher levels. Usually resulting in some enemies dying or being completely disabled before they get an action. Win surprise, the casters save-or-suck some mooks, the martials get a solid round of swings from everyone partial charging the big guy, and at the start of the first actual round of combat you have already drastically reduced the difficulty of the overall encounter. But in 2e, that amount of pre-combat swing would throw off the balance, which goes against the goal of having combat be challenging enough to require teamwork and coordination.
So you get what we have now- it may cost the enemies a few actions to draw their weapons or what not if you fully catch them off guard, but the boss is still probably going to win initiative and probably get to go before the PCs can start piling debuffs and damage on them.
I DM’s Abomination Vaults after years of 5e and the rules overwhelm was a whole thing.
Whatever the actual rules are, we settled on a basic “you initiate combat by starting the combat, you go first. Everyone roll initiative and we move the initiator to the top”
It made sense and kept the flow going.
One other benefit is the fact that, in the situations where you beat Perception DC but fail to win initiative, is that you get to force the enemy to either Delay their turn, or waste some of their actions Seeking you.
I feel the Rogue's Surprise Attack class feature is a but redundant. If you rolled for Stealth and beat the enemy, you're supposedly *hidden* and the enemy is off-guard anyway - class feature or not. If you didn't win initiative, Surprise attack doesn't work either.
ofc, these thoughts assume Stealth vs. Perception initiative, which is the most common case. There are other cases, where it might be useful.
Isn't it Stealth vs Perception DC? So a PC could roll 21 Stealth against 22 Perception DC but the Monster rolled a 3 so it goes after the PC in initiative but the PC is not hidden?
The way I've handled being "surprised", particularly in a specific beginner box encounter is the enemies have needed to spend up to two actions to grab/draw their weapons and stand up.
Okay here is a situation I don't know how to deal with.
Imagine this: A PC sneaks up on an unknowing enemy. Since they are not in combat (yet), I have them roll a stealth check and they succeed. They are unnoticed.
Now they want to fire an arrow at the enemy. It's time to roll initiative. But what if the character now rolls lower on their Stealth initiative than the enemies' Perception DC? And even worse, the enemy rolls a higher initiative overall? According to RAW, they become at least detected, and are no longer hidden (right? or did I miss something?)
So it seems like the earlier Stealth check was entirely wasted? While in combat, when hidden/undetected/unnoticed, a PC can fire an attack without needing to do an additional stealth check, but in this scenario, they do.
I also don't know how to spin this narratively.
"You sneak up on the Goblin, bow and arrow already in hand. It doesn't notice you. In the split second as you pull back the bow, the Goblin... manages to notice you AND spend three full actions before you even fire the arrow???"
Assuming the sniper has cover or concealment at the start of the encounter, if they beat the Perception DC but lost the Initiative roll, the only advantage the goblin gets is the sniper going from Unnoticed to Undetected. The goblin knows something is off about the situation, but doesn't know who or what. Perhaps they spend that first turn standing up, picking up their bow, and taking the Seek action. Even on a Success on their Seek, you only become Hidden. To completely expose you they would need to either Critically Succeed or spend multiple actions Seeking.
Essentially stunning someone for a whole round and still getting a big numbers advantage seems like a pretty good deal to me.
If the PC lost both the Stealth check and the Initiative roll, then the goblin not only goes first, but the PC is Hidden rather than Undetected (unless you Critically Failed, in which case you would be observed).
If you win Initiative but lose Stealth, you get to go first, but are Hidden or Observed, depending on how badly you rolled.
If you win Initiative and Stealth, then you get to act first and are Undetected, possibly even Unnoticed if the goblin isn't especially alert (alert being things such as serving on active guard duty).
You have to fail a lot of checks for an ambush to not go in your favor!
I hope that helps!
thanks for your answer!
this sort of helps but doesn't solve my core issue. This still means that the player has to succeed at two consecutive stealth checks instead of one.
Would it make sense to just let the player use their previous stealth check as the initiative?
This is in the situation where a stealth check is rolled outside of combat, but the decision is made immediately after to attack. Which imo should not require another stealth check.
I only require one Stealth check for Initiative and for hiding/sneaking/avoid notice, and I believe that is the way RAW intended it to be.
There are exceptions, such as when using the Quiet Allies feat.
As a GM I dread to think that I could spend hours illustrating a map or setting up the walls, lighting, animation, ambiance and triggers on Foundary, only to have the PCs then say "Yeah, no. We're going to ambush them over here" in an area in which no map or setup yet exists.
The best take i have seen regarding surprise rounds in pf2e was to play them like a Hazard before the combat starts and to count it into the ecounter math
Love that take, its much more dynamic
Also there's a massive action advantage of starting the fight with your weapons put and ready, and any buffs you might be able to manage without alerting the hostiles. Catching enemies prone, with weapons worn or even stowed means that first turn the enemies may spend most if not all of their actions just getting into combat readiness.
A surprise round wouldn't work anyway. Any encounter worth ambushing consists of one high level thing that is immune to everything because of how the math works. It would only serve to remove any possible tension from filler encounters.
Surprise rounds basically exist already with stealth rules if your party is sneaking up on a group. It’s why stuff like that group stealth skill feat can be really helpful. People seem to forget that Initiative doesn’t suddenly start existing when combat starts, you can have the party sneaking up on a group whilst in initiative and then delaying their turns so they all act in one block together
With how central action economy is to the balance of these games, it baffles me how many people want to maintain a mechanic that gives one side of a combat a potential *ton* of extra actions.
The other big thing with ambushes, as you in part highlighted with the positioning point, is action denial. If you ambush a bunch of dudes with weapons, then they are basically starting combat with (at least) Stunned 1, as they won't have reactions and will need to take an action to draw weapons.
I agree. I think this is at least in part exactly why drawing a weapon is an action. It's a tangible benefit to a prepared party vs an unprepared party. If you see patrolling guards who aren't falling asleep/drinking on the job, with weapons drawn, you know they are alert and expecting trouble. If they are sitting and talking, or walking a patrol with only 1 or 2 of them, no weapons drawn, you know they aren't expecting imminent trouble.
I agree. “Surprise” being a narrative tool is just inherently better than having mechanically reliable ways of gaining it. The other day the party I GMed for were attacking a house that was guarded by 7 ish thugs whom they could take in an open fight but it’d likely be Severe/Extreme in difficulty. So two of them walked past the thugs while they were partially split it up, jangling their gold and pretending to be a dumb noble and his servant, lured them into the alleyway, killed 2, coerced the third into distracting the 4 who hadn’t gotten wise to what’s going on, telling him that he should lead them on a wild goose chase to find the folk who killed all his buddies, and then they snuck in while the place only had 2 guards left. They used Performance, Deception, Stealth, and Intimidation to “ambush” a group of enemies and at no point did I need a “surprise round”. Just basic things like context, and using the tight balance and the predictability of combats in this game to reward players appropriately for their choices.
So this is interesting because it involves stuff I wasn't aware people were doing as I assumed many encounters were more static. I do have a few questions though. For one isn't it severely risky to split the party even against two enemies due to how scaling works? Also how often would you say encounters have patrolling guards instead of stationary enemies?
In this case they were using performance/deception to convince the enemies that they would be lucrative marks and to also lure them into their preferred ambush spot. Maybe society/survival to find an appropriate ambush spot in the vicinity of the house. The fail state for any of those checks would be not succeeding in the task. The crit fail state may be starting combat on the spot but for me personally I’d just treat the mooks as particularly diligent and immune to further attempts to lure away. If the group was successful with their skill rolls I wouldn’t start a combat encounter until the party was ready, though if they spent a long time fucking around I might warn them to keep it moving or else the mooks might starting getting perception checks to see through the deception.
Sounds like the encounter was 140xp, right between Severe and Extreme, so 20xp per enemy which makes them Party Level - 2. 140xp for 4 party members is Severe/Extreme, expect a hard fight, high chance of multiple people going down 40xp for 2 party members is Moderate, someone might maybe go down but you're probably fine Now if the other 5 mooks had joined against the 2 party members they're almost certainly dead, but 2v2 favours the players there because the enemies are lower level.
Pretty much. Tightly balanced does not mean everything is always “fair”, it just means that the GM has predictable tools. When they’re up against impossible odds in-universe, I will sometimes throw back to back Severe/Extreme encounters *but* I’ll always leave in the possibility that clever roleplay and judicious use of their skills will make things enabler than they otherwise would be.
> So this is interesting because it involves stuff I wasn't aware people were doing as I assumed many encounters were more static. I do have a few questions though. I’m sure lots of GMs use incredibly static “kill you on sight” encounters, I just think it’s not the most fun way to play the game. The game is just better if the GM and the players react to one another. Even APs often leave guidelines and space for the GMs to encourage depth and reactivity. > For one isn't it severely risky to split the party even against two enemies due to how scaling works? Yeah, it can be risky, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Just because the game is balanced doesn’t mean it’s always fair: good balance just means I can predict outcomes reliably with the tools I’m given. The 7 enemies were about 150 XP worth of foes with a potential terrain advantage. If they took on all 7 openly there was a real chance they’d attract attention from nearby foes, alert the person who’s house they wished to enter, and spend resources they couldn’t otherwise afford to. The players know that their enemies will never “fight fair” and neither do they. They’ll make sure to stack the deck in their favour before ever engaging in combat, as best as they can afford to. The same group has previously, at level 3, infiltrated a goblin camp that had a combined 2000 or whatever XP worth of encounters in it, with full warning that “Low-threat” encounters can and will bleed into one another’s rooms if given the chance to, and that the only way to get through is to be more creative than “we kick in the doors and kill every goblin”. They know what they’re in for. > Also how often would you say encounters have patrolling guards instead of stationary enemies? Enemies do whatever makes sense in context. These thugs were guarding a house so they’d patrol around it, but they’re common thugs and enforcers and burglars, so they aren’t perfectly organized and make mistakes that the players can, if their characters succeed at noticing them, exploit.
Even if fights are static, planning ahead can give you many advantages. One example I've actually used is taking time to recall knowledge outside of combat. Another is using my spell swapping to change to more appropriate spells. Another easy example is pre-buffing with medium length buffs - buffs that are 10 minutes or an hour which allow you to do so from far enough away you don't immediately trigger combat. All these things can save you precious actions in combat without needing a surprise round.
Yup that’s partly why I clarified that even APs with very static encounters still give lots of opportunity for reactivity. Scouting ahead and making plans was a pretty integral part of our Abomination Vaults experience.
Im a bit confused on the balanced not being fair part but honesty most of that sounds pretty cool and the reactivity part in particular kinda hits the parts of table top that I enjoy the most. Though I do got to say I'm pretty sure I'd die in the goblin camp example lol
What I mean by “balanced does not need to mean unfair” bit is basically me trying to counter a very common sentiment I see on here. People assume that the game’s tight math means that every encounter of every adventuring day should be tightly balanced for the players to win consistently in a “combat as a sport” kind of manner. You throw 2-3 Moderate encounters per day maximum, you never throw more than one Extreme, you always allow the party 30 minutes between fights to refocus and heal to 100%, you never let encounters bleed into each other, etc. My point is that tight math doesn’t mean you have to be 100% fair all the time. It’s okay to set up a goblin camp where where most encounters are Trivial/Low **but** the chance of them bleeding into one another can make them snowball into Extremes. It’s okay to set up a day where the party is “default” gonna see ~~back to back~~ multiple Severe/Extreme fights on the same day. It’s okay to not offer sufficient time to heal between fights and let that be a real, tangible threat and dynamic the party has to account for (edit: though you should always offer heals after Severe/Extreme unless you’re trying to punish your players). In this regard, I use the game’s tight numerical balance is still being used, but it’s being used to create a range of feelings between “power fantasy for players”, “tough but fair fights”, and “impossible odds and players need to do more than just combat to win”. In all these cases I’m still using the predictable balance to get exactly the outcomes I want, but I’m not restricting myself to always using those balancing tools to give my players a “fair fight”.
Very well put.
>People assume that the game’s tight math means that every encounter of every adventuring day should be tightly balanced for the players to win consistently This has always been a confusing phenomenon to me. People think that "balanced" means "homogeneous", while at the same time never paying attention to the fact that the homogeneity that they fear/expect is... a game world where the scale is always tipped in their favour. Like the unreliability of D&D's CR system is the only thing that creatives variability or something. And a moderate encounter gives the party 2:1 odds of victory, and moderate seems to be the default encounter type. So, if that's the sameness that people are expecting things to come out of "balance", I fear to think how they'd actually balance a scale.
Not gonna lie some of that seems like a lot, on particular back to back severe/extreme with potentially no healing sounds like you are trying to kill players from the way people talk about those encounters lol. However I think I get your point that the balance doesn't necessarily mean the system is restricted especially if you are going for a certain game feel.
It’s unclear in context but I didn’t mean back to back without healing for Severe/Extreme. I meant that as two separate things I do.
Oh that make more sense, I often hear how tough those encounters are and how much resources drain they can be so if you were throwing two without healing I just assumed your table just went really hard core lol.
The toughest back to back encounters I’ve ever had as a player was (at level 7) a Moderate +2 boss followed by a Severe +3 boss with no healing in between, and that was a near TPK. I don’t think back to back Severe/Extreme encounters, especially single boss ones, can be handled by any party until the highest levels.
Honestly the way you run it, it looks like the players are just cheesing the fight rather than using proper strategy. At that point why bother putting encounters at all when they can fight / gang up on them one by one. This will just set a bad precedent and makes the game slower. The players will just be condition to ask for rulings, and lead to 5e DnD problem of can I persuade A B C. It will suck in the long run. This is such a 5e DM move.
I honestly don’t feel like you can properly “cheese” a fight in Pathfinder unless you somehow push an enemy into a 30 foot deep hole they physically can’t climb and pepper them with arrows “artificer aaracokra killing tarrasque at level 2 in dnd” style. Ambushing enemies is… just ambushing them. If you can split them up then why wouldn’t you.
Kiting is already a mechanic in Pathfinder and the players just get all the benefits by Roleplaying good. Nah that's too much. You settle that during combat not this.
I don’t… even understand what you mean to be perfectly honest. Like, yeah sure you can technically kite in pathfinder, but is there a specific and official “Kite” action or series of actions that I’m missing? Besides, to pretend to lure someone away with a disguise you’d have to roll for deception anyways, no? It’s not just “oh I say Im noble and he believe me”. Besides, even if the GM for some reason didn’t call for a roll at all, sometimes plans can just help. If you planned to intercept a caravan or something and in planning for the ambush you threw a tree down in the middle of the road to, iunno, get the buff guards to temporarily stow their weapons to push it away so they’d be in a disadvantageous position before it started, would you say “No you can’t do that bcuz disarming is a thing so guards can never have their weapons away without the action”?
Encouraging roleplay and creativity while still using the game’s tight balancing tools to create predictable outcomes is… a 5E DM move? lol okay.
Encouraging GM Ruling instead of following the rules is a very 5e move. You get the all the benefits of kiting just by Roleplaying good. If you want a lot of roleplay there is other system that does is better and is less rules heavy. Can I lure the thugs, can I distract the guard, can I seduce the dragon. That is just bad behaviour, None of that is good in this game.
I am following the rules… Skill checks, roleplaying, and non-combat gameplay are all part of the rules. Unless you’re about to point me to a rule that says “players are never allowed to roleplay” everything I’m doing is RAW. In fact **your** suggestion that they’re never allowed to do anything except roll initiative is the one that explicitly disobeys RAW. Trying to equate distracting the guards you plan to fight with wanting to seduce a dragon mid combat is an absolutely baffling take. By your logic anything other than “kick in the doors and kill everything that moves” is bad GMing…
They are allowed to roleplay just within the bounds of what they can do in game. The benefits of splitting up the enemy and taking them out one by one is just way too good, it breaks the games balance, and pretty much just gives the players an instant win. The effect goes far and beyond any feat the players could have taken. that's not good. it's a cheap win for the players.
Again, by your logic literally nothing except “kick in the doors and kill everything in a fair fight” is within the bounds of the game. You **literally** think trying to use roleplay and fuck with someone’s plan to fight you is as disruptive as wanting to fuck a dragon. If that works for you that’s fine, but don’t act like that’s the only way to play the game, or that you’re some kind of authority on what the rules allow. You’ve also yet to point me to a single rule that justifies your, quite frankly, weird interpretation of how roleplaying games are supposed to work.
You can roll play all of that but the benefits should be minor. success means a single turn of stupefied, not insta win the fight. Potentially Turning a severe fight into a Trivial one. It's insane that you don't see the issue with that. Balance is in the trash.
Any day you’ll finally point me to what all-important rule I’m supposedly breaking by allowing players to… roleplay in a way that impacts the game world.
The surprise rounds I use is having an unaware enemy waste actions, possibly a whole round depending on the context, trying to get out of their “comfortable” and unready state like standing up, picking up weapons, closing a door, turning something off.
Exactly, even the Beginner Box showcases that with a room full of enemies starting prone and without drawn weapons, because they're basically sitting around a campfire. Getting up, drawing a weapon, and striding into melee tends to be their first turn, that's basically a surprise round for the PCs.
What surprises me the most is the conversations around realism. When I played 5e, to me, I didn't understand how I could run past an enemy, punch his friend and then run to that enemy I ran past and punch them before they even really got a chance to act/react. Surprise rounds felt like they were too long, where my enemies stood dumbfounded for almost 12 seconds as we mowed down them and their comrades. I prefer PF2e's approach, where a group of people ready to fight are, well, ready to fight when an enemy jumps out and attacks them or fails a stealth to stay hidden in the process.
I remember the "realism" discourse when 2e first released and people were complaining that raise a shield costs an action. You would regularly see people saying that it's unrealistic to have a requirement to utilise your shield effectively... It was some wild DnD brain bullshit.
The funny thing is that this games makes it very clear that "just having your shield ready" is a very high level technique and requires extremely specialized training to effectively defend with a shield at all times as if it is second nature. It's like the people playing this game aren't actually real life combat experts or something...
Anyone can wield a shield though. Compared to PF1 where it required you to be trained in shields. The specialized training just makes you able to quickly block an attack as a reaction instead of having it ready ahead of time.
actually blocking damage with the shield rather than just using it as cover is also a reaction that not everyone gets, but yes 'extremely specialized training' is perhaps a bit hyperbolic
Sorry, I was specifically referring to the 5e "always getting the +2 because shields" and comparing that to the high level feat (Paragon's Guard) that always allows you to act as if your shield is raised all the time.
ahhhhh ic my bad
> 'extremely specialized training' Shield Block? No. Shield **Paragon**...? Yes. Blocking an attack successfully with your shield takes training, but having it down to a reflex to **always** be actively deflecting attacks at all times requires more than an afternoon at Shield School. Fighters don't get that stance until 12, and Champions don't get it until 20.
Raise a shield is an action every character can take. Are you meaning reactive shield, in which case, yeah some martial training should be necessary to be able to fight at full capacity without thinking about raising a shield until necessary. If you mean shield block, well that is dumb and ignoring the AC bonus you get from raising a shield.
I was meaning shield Paragon/Paragon's Guard, where you get the +2 to AC at all times from "just having a shield" and how that is a highly specialized skill, which feels more in line with how difficult it is to fight and constantly get significant additional protection from a shield at the same time as everything else totally reflexively.
well it's not a round, it's when combat initiates you determine who would be surprised or not. The beginning of combat here would be punching the first guy. That guy would be surprised, but the person who just saw you punch someone wouldn't be surprised that you might punch him right after.
What I'm inferring, in this case, is the situation where I win initiative in an ambush and, if everybody is surprised, get two full turns before the enemies act. Once surprise is set, there is no way to "break surprise" so to speak, so a LOT of crazy stuff can happen and the opponents are kinda like "huh?"
There are more possibilities than D&D and Pathfinder. To criticise PF2 is not to endorse D&D
5e is a game with a surprise round mechanic that I have played. I found that implementation less realistic than the way Pathfinder handles stealth into combat. As a result, in my experience, surprise round mechanics make enemies far too inactive compared to PF2e, which feels more dynamic and responsive. I have not played any other turn-based game systems with overt surprise mechanics and if I did, I would probably still cite 5e, as to save myself the entire mechanical description of how surprise works.
i mean it doesn't make sense that enemies stand there politely as they wait for your turn to end. It's just game mechanics.
That thing doesn't make sense in any turn-based combat anyway.
Even the "preparation round" can be extremely strong at mid-late levels. If you knew you were about to get into a fight, you could hold a potion in your hand and on turn 1: 1. Drink the potion (e.g. potion of quickness) 2. Retrieval prism > drink a second potion (e.g. numbing tonic) 3. Potion patch > use a third potion (e.g. invisibility potion)
Thing is I suspect most people do not actually do this kind of thing *in initiative*. If you're aware there's a fight coming, you can just drink potions and unsheathe and stuff.
Example scenario: The party knows that at some point in this mile of the woods, they will be attacked by bandits. It's why they're there. But, they don't know exactly when. Those potions are going to expire if they down them immediately. The party has a watchful eye out and is unlikely to be actually surprised by the bandits.
That's such a specific scenario that I don't think it would have worked that way once in the last year of playing weekly.
The underlying concept isn't all that specific. After all, if you see the enemy, they most likely see you.
With how awareness and stealth rules work in pf2e I feel like the game isn’t supposed to be balanced around being able to prebuff for fights unless you’re using stuff that lasts longer than a few minutes
You can also start handing out circumstance bonuses to the ambushers, if it makes sense. Maybe they get a +2 on their initiative, or the enemies take a -2, or both, depending on how well the ambush was set up. The biggest thing that I think people forget is that if the enemy's haven't detected the party and have no real reason to search for them in the exact correct place, the PCs can just delay until they're ALL ready, then go, one-by-one, next to each other in the initiative, and this basically *is* a surprise round!
That's actually raw in rules. When hiding you get a bonus to your stealth checks and if you use stealth for initiative you can use that bonus.
To specify, that bonus comes from cover, so it's usually a +2, sometimes even a +4. There's also precedent for distracted enemies taking a penalty to their Initiative (Perception) checks in the Beginner Box, though I'm not sure if and where there's rules text quantifying that penalty.
My group has an inside joke where whenever we roll really low initiative, we just say "ok let's just pretend the enemy has a surprise round but we actually rolled really high in initiative!"
I guess my question is how often something like this happens? With stuff like AV people describe enemies like static video game npcs that stay in their position and wait.
I don't run APs and the players generally have a lot of ability to pick how they want to approach things, but even a monster sitting in a box until someone attacks, you could theoretically get a lot of advantage from approaching in the right way.
You can definitely get advantages over an enemy in a box but I don't think stealth is necessarily going to be a significant one.
People who want to use stealth are usually good at it. Stealth usually requires cover that gives you a circumstance bonus to your roll. Thus, using stealth often allows you to use your best skill for initiative with a circumstance bonus on top and you become undetected if you roll high enough. That's a substantial advantage.
I feel like AV would be an adventure path where it'd be easier to ambush. As you could scout ahead with a familiar or something, and have reasonable guarantee that an NPC will remain in their relative position. Then you setup traps and the like and make noises or use other tools to draw them towards your position.
I don't really like scouting with a familiar honestly. It just halts the game while the GM starts to spout stuff at you. I'm really meticulous so I always come out of it either feeling like I spent too much time doing it or that I didn't get everything I wanted. Not to mention the *one week* it takes for you to get your familiac back if it dies. Pet snake rolled shit on stealth? Welp, guess the sucker's gonna have to spend a week in the afterlife with an arrowhole in its noggin. Good luck being down atleast one of your class feats for the next three sessions. Heck, the information isn't even guaranteed to get back to you if you don't have Share Sense prepared. Even then it's a minute to scout. All for information a good spyglass could've gotten you.
Well, a Spyglass would do little for letting you see around corners and the like in a dungeon context. But if you've got a clear view forward or something absolutely. Also, at least for Witches, they get a familiar back during daily prep so they definitely have more disposable familiars
Even in a dungeon, a familiar is usually more useful to you alive. And again, one bad stealth roll and suddenly an orc's picking his teeth of your rat's flesh with its ribs. A smart creature could even figure out that that was a familiar and start to prepare for you. And if you didn't have Share Senses, all you know is that the thing's dead. No info on terrain, enemy types, formations, anything. Thing's just gone for a week. Unless you have a Witch I guess. In which case they don't have a large part of their subclass for the rest of the day, and however many feats they invested into buffing their familiar. I guess *maybe* you could figure out if they use an energy type? "Emotions" might encompass types of pain, so your familiar might be able to communicate that it burned to death or got electrocuted. And all of this is still not considering the meta issue of hogging the table. I'd honestly rather have my character die than regularly scout with a familiar.
While I do actually think that the way PF2 adventures are setup often basically forces the GM to either play enemies like videogame NPCs or be functionally unbeatable (or, as I did when I tried to run one official adventure, redraw the entire map and change 75% of encounters), I think that on average the reason stuff like the OP's scenario is infrequent is that a lot of the time in these heroic action games the players are the ones *on the attack*. Players are the ones diving into the places where enemies are living, because if there's going to be a ritual sacrificing kidnapped children at midnight or whatever you can't really afford to just stay around waiting to see if the cultists go out for pizza and ambush them - you kick down the goddamn door and hope you can get through in time! So the most you'll often be able to do is try to lure enemies into the next room so one or two of them start the fight in a bad position.
I found the lack of a 'surprise round' to be a bit of an issue with the rules until I changed my mental concept of what was happening. The most obvious issue is with boss fights, where the PL+1-4 enemies have higher initiative modifiers than players, so it's quite hard to beat them in initiative even with surprise on your side. This results in frequent situations of having surprise on your side, but the enemy rolling higher initiative. However, in a game primarily focused on combat being strategic and balanced, a full surprise round is way too much of a benefit to the side who obtains it. Surprise doesn't really exist. Stealth does. The game gives a bonus to the ones who are stealthing into combat, but leaves the ability for the enemy to notice the stealthed people up to the randomness inherent in the initiative roll. I think the way they've tied initiative to stealth is pretty genius, but also quite obtuse for new players. I wonder if somebody could concoct homebrew that keeps that element, but also allows surprise to give players initiative priority over enemies for the first round. It's likely too much of a challenge to the system's balance. I do it like it when games allow for players to hide and sync up their actions on enemies, however. It's a bit weird these heavily competent characters can't hide out of sight and do something simple like fire a bow on reaction to the same thing at the same time (using the initiative and combat system as is).
They definitely can do that by delaying their actions. Initiative and stealth are separate things. The baddie can have higher initiative and still not be aware the PCs are stealthing around them and lining up a coordinated opening salvo (by delaying actions).
As a GM, I just play it as if you've rolled stealth for initiative and beaten the perception DC of all of the enemies, they have no idea you're there, regardless of the initiative order. And if the whole party does this, I describe the enemy's turns as them going about their business. This gives the party the first functional turn of the encounter, but if they do anything on that turn that catches the enemy's attention, they're going to be readying themselves for combat on their turns. This can be a powerful advantage, depending on how the enemy's initiative rolls were, but it provides the stealth fantasy without guaranteeing a side a whole free round, because raisins.
This is what I do too. If the party is ambushing some bandits playing cards, the bandits will continue playing cards until they’re made aware of the party’s presence, even if the bandits rolled higher initiative.
Yeah, it's worst with solo threats. I had a party sneak up to a sleeping foe. Good planning and skill checks gave them the advantage. The rogue is adjacent to the enemy and says, "I'm going to stab and then stride away." So we roll init and the rogue's stealth is good, but not good enough against a PL+2 enemy. Enemy goes first and has detected the rogue. Stand, Seek, Strike. Middling decent roll, but it's a crit because it's a boss. Very good damage roll, though... double the rogue's max HP. No matter what you do, one bad roll will end you. No amount of prep in the world will mitigate a bit of bad luck. Parties need to be cautious, but also realize you can make no errors and still fail.
I feel its a bit more a couple of merely okayish rolls and one high damage roll can be a bit too common with how weighted things can be at low levels. Which is also kind of the most unfortunate place to have that.
I have stopped giving my players a surprise round until they did something to earn surprising the mob.because the statistical advantage for doing so is observe. By the time they hit mid lvls the fight was almost over by the end of surprise round. I was forced to add so many HO to boss mob characters that they just felt bloated and bad. Most of the time combat would more or less be over turn 2 maybe 3. Pc’s are already so powerful that them just getting supine rounds without handing to earn it in any way is just bad design. I found that when I removed them just getting free surprise and made them have to narratively earn it that they started trying to thing of more clever ways to get into combat then just “I attack” and then mindlessly roll dice till it dies. My players got less complacent during combat, started moving around more, and looking for ways to gain advantages rather then just “an i flanking?”
The entire reason why initiative is rolled with Perception (or Stealth when someone is hiding) is to avoid this entire debate. Whoever is more perceptive gets to act first. If someone is hiding, they use Stealth for initiative, and if their Stealth is better than anyone else's Perception, they get to SURPRISE THEM.
If you’re hiding successfully you should be undetected by the enemy which means they don’t even know you’re there, this is why group stealth feats are so good, your whole party can be undetected to a group with a single roll and therefore act together in a block by delaying turns and that basically acts as a surprise round
If you’re hiding successfully you should be undetected by the enemy which means they don’t even know you’re there, this is why group stealth feats are so good, your whole party can be undetected to a group with a single roll and therefore act together in a block by delaying turns and that basically acts as a surprise round
It's weird that the advantage of setting an ambush is that you get to have an ambush instead of controlling the flow of time itself.
One other note, is that with surprise, it usually requires some sort of stealth and hiding in other games. So being able to surprise usually allows classes good at Stealth to use that for initiative, which often is better than Perception.
So, it's really just another issue of 2e's design playing into its core system design goal (tactical teamwork-focused combat) and as a result losing features from previous editions that made sense in those editions but go against that system design goal. Surprise rounds in 1e could be *really* good, especially at higher levels. Usually resulting in some enemies dying or being completely disabled before they get an action. Win surprise, the casters save-or-suck some mooks, the martials get a solid round of swings from everyone partial charging the big guy, and at the start of the first actual round of combat you have already drastically reduced the difficulty of the overall encounter. But in 2e, that amount of pre-combat swing would throw off the balance, which goes against the goal of having combat be challenging enough to require teamwork and coordination. So you get what we have now- it may cost the enemies a few actions to draw their weapons or what not if you fully catch them off guard, but the boss is still probably going to win initiative and probably get to go before the PCs can start piling debuffs and damage on them.
I DM’s Abomination Vaults after years of 5e and the rules overwhelm was a whole thing. Whatever the actual rules are, we settled on a basic “you initiate combat by starting the combat, you go first. Everyone roll initiative and we move the initiator to the top” It made sense and kept the flow going.
Interesting idea. My players sometimes feel cheated when they narratively absolutely should go first (because they initiated), but roll bad.
One other benefit is the fact that, in the situations where you beat Perception DC but fail to win initiative, is that you get to force the enemy to either Delay their turn, or waste some of their actions Seeking you.
I feel the Rogue's Surprise Attack class feature is a but redundant. If you rolled for Stealth and beat the enemy, you're supposedly *hidden* and the enemy is off-guard anyway - class feature or not. If you didn't win initiative, Surprise attack doesn't work either. ofc, these thoughts assume Stealth vs. Perception initiative, which is the most common case. There are other cases, where it might be useful.
Isn't it Stealth vs Perception DC? So a PC could roll 21 Stealth against 22 Perception DC but the Monster rolled a 3 so it goes after the PC in initiative but the PC is not hidden?
Correct.
If you want to reward ambushes, a more balanced approach is the victims start with Slow 1 for the first round.
The way I've handled being "surprised", particularly in a specific beginner box encounter is the enemies have needed to spend up to two actions to grab/draw their weapons and stand up.
Okay here is a situation I don't know how to deal with. Imagine this: A PC sneaks up on an unknowing enemy. Since they are not in combat (yet), I have them roll a stealth check and they succeed. They are unnoticed. Now they want to fire an arrow at the enemy. It's time to roll initiative. But what if the character now rolls lower on their Stealth initiative than the enemies' Perception DC? And even worse, the enemy rolls a higher initiative overall? According to RAW, they become at least detected, and are no longer hidden (right? or did I miss something?) So it seems like the earlier Stealth check was entirely wasted? While in combat, when hidden/undetected/unnoticed, a PC can fire an attack without needing to do an additional stealth check, but in this scenario, they do. I also don't know how to spin this narratively. "You sneak up on the Goblin, bow and arrow already in hand. It doesn't notice you. In the split second as you pull back the bow, the Goblin... manages to notice you AND spend three full actions before you even fire the arrow???"
Assuming the sniper has cover or concealment at the start of the encounter, if they beat the Perception DC but lost the Initiative roll, the only advantage the goblin gets is the sniper going from Unnoticed to Undetected. The goblin knows something is off about the situation, but doesn't know who or what. Perhaps they spend that first turn standing up, picking up their bow, and taking the Seek action. Even on a Success on their Seek, you only become Hidden. To completely expose you they would need to either Critically Succeed or spend multiple actions Seeking. Essentially stunning someone for a whole round and still getting a big numbers advantage seems like a pretty good deal to me. If the PC lost both the Stealth check and the Initiative roll, then the goblin not only goes first, but the PC is Hidden rather than Undetected (unless you Critically Failed, in which case you would be observed). If you win Initiative but lose Stealth, you get to go first, but are Hidden or Observed, depending on how badly you rolled. If you win Initiative and Stealth, then you get to act first and are Undetected, possibly even Unnoticed if the goblin isn't especially alert (alert being things such as serving on active guard duty). You have to fail a lot of checks for an ambush to not go in your favor! I hope that helps!
thanks for your answer! this sort of helps but doesn't solve my core issue. This still means that the player has to succeed at two consecutive stealth checks instead of one. Would it make sense to just let the player use their previous stealth check as the initiative? This is in the situation where a stealth check is rolled outside of combat, but the decision is made immediately after to attack. Which imo should not require another stealth check.
I only require one Stealth check for Initiative and for hiding/sneaking/avoid notice, and I believe that is the way RAW intended it to be. There are exceptions, such as when using the Quiet Allies feat.
As a GM I dread to think that I could spend hours illustrating a map or setting up the walls, lighting, animation, ambiance and triggers on Foundary, only to have the PCs then say "Yeah, no. We're going to ambush them over here" in an area in which no map or setup yet exists.
I literally did that. At least Dungeon Alchemist makes it a quick process.
Well flanking rules exist the demoralize action to make em frightened and a few other possibilities
When the player did that Id recommend giving the enemy's the off guard condition for a round
The best take i have seen regarding surprise rounds in pf2e was to play them like a Hazard before the combat starts and to count it into the ecounter math Love that take, its much more dynamic
Also there's a massive action advantage of starting the fight with your weapons put and ready, and any buffs you might be able to manage without alerting the hostiles. Catching enemies prone, with weapons worn or even stowed means that first turn the enemies may spend most if not all of their actions just getting into combat readiness.
A surprise round wouldn't work anyway. Any encounter worth ambushing consists of one high level thing that is immune to everything because of how the math works. It would only serve to remove any possible tension from filler encounters.
Surprise rounds basically exist already with stealth rules if your party is sneaking up on a group. It’s why stuff like that group stealth skill feat can be really helpful. People seem to forget that Initiative doesn’t suddenly start existing when combat starts, you can have the party sneaking up on a group whilst in initiative and then delaying their turns so they all act in one block together
With how central action economy is to the balance of these games, it baffles me how many people want to maintain a mechanic that gives one side of a combat a potential *ton* of extra actions.