Re: mechanics of surprise

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 22:26:49 +0000, Mary K. Kuhner wrote:

> (4)  Side which gets surprise acts first, but can only do
> "half-actions".  This is what current D&Dv3.5 does.  When normally
> a character can move and attack, or move and cast, in a "surprise
> round" she can only do one of those.  This reduces the danger
> posed by fighters a lot.  Unfortunately it doesn't do the same to
> the danger posed by spellcasters.  Also, some characters'
> combat manuvers don't work in a surprise round and this can lead
> to grumpy comments "we didn't want to get surprise here, it's
> screwing us up."  (Of course the characters can wait out the
> surprise round without acting, but that feels horribly artificial.)

	Less artificial might be to allow people to trade the limited action for
a hefty initiative bonus.  For instance, in D&D you could give up your
surprise round action in order to "take 20" on your inititave roll.


	In a continuous inititative system I toyed around with for the Palladium
system a while back, (but never got around to testing, I gave up on
Palladium at about the same time), being surprised meant you didn't get an
inititative roll.  This would have meant restrictions on using defenses,
(non-auto and early use of auto defenses cost an initative point), and no
ability to break inititative ties in your favour until you spent an action
to re-roll inititative.

-- 
				Phoenix