[discussion about initiating combat via ambush]
The way I am seeing it is that, if one character attacks from Surprise, then all player characters AND enemies are brought into the combat TB mode, and enemies have to make a Perception check or be Surprised = lose their first turn. This way, it doesn't require a huge amount of coordination from the players. The other 3 characters just have to be relatively close by.
I don't think I am explaining what I mean clearly enough. What I want to happen would be the tabletop equivalent of the party using hand signals or a countdown to ensure all their attacks go off at the same time. The enemies would not be making any perception check during the second or less that this would be occurring, if the party has made it up to this point successfully without being seen by the enemy then the ambush happens. Pretty sure multiplayer can do this already. Since we do not have ready attacks and a proper pause, in singleplayer we have to micromanage this one character at a time and our attacks do not go off at the same time due to the system.
How I am interpreting what you are saying, and there is a good chance I am misunderstanding, is the tabletop equivalent of having the party set up the ambush, but one person attacks before they are supposed to, which definitely would cause the enemy to make a perception check or be surprised, before any of the rest of the party gets to go. If there was a way to bring everyone into the combat once the first character has attacked, but guarantee the rest of our party got to attack first (to simulate all of us attacking at once) then I would be ok with that. I just feel like Larian would muck this up somehow and the rest of our characters would get stuck in initiative order wherever the dice puts them, forfeiting the ambush attack they would have had in multiplayer and tabletop.
Seems like we're understanding each other fine. We just disagree on how ambushes and surprise rounds should be done in BG3. Imo, a full surprise round for every singe party member is too strong, especially since the AI and stealth system are a bit broken/exploitable, making it theoretically easy (maybe even trivial) to launch an ambush for most combats. Also, I don't think real-time coordination should have that much of an effect in a TB combat game, or that a full pause should enable players to queue up actions in a TB game.
Tbf though, I don't feel
that strongly about it. Your suggestion of a surprise round for all party members would be fine, though I would hope Larian implements enemy perception circles and maybe a bit more enemy patrols to make that more difficult.
I didn't realize that what you're suggesting could be done in multiplayer. So if all players ~simultaneously launch an attack, they'll all go through before combat starts and/or before any enemy gets a chance to react?
EDIT: In fact, depending on how exactly it was implemented the character who attacked first might even get another shot in, if their initial shot is treated as happening before the first combat round. I think BG3 does this now. Or the attack they made to start the fight could be taken as part of their turn in the first round, so if if they used an action for the attack then they start the combat with (one of) their actions already used but can use any remaining actions or bonus actions. I think it should probably work the latter way, with the round then continuing from wherever the initially attacking character ends up in the initiative queue. As long as enemies remain surprised until every character in the combat has had a turn and we come back to that first attacking character, that should work I think.
+1 that, at the very least, it should work the latter way. The combat initiator's initiative should probably be automatically set to be the highest, and they can continue using whatever actions they had left after the initiating attack. But their turn should happen in the first round of combat, not before the combat.
