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rhielm Offline OP
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I have had lots of issues with trying to create a "Surprise Round" in game. It has been very inconsistent, and seems to follow different rules depending on the encounter. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work and sometimes it glitches out, and gives me infinite surprise rounds until all enemies are dead, without giving them a turn at all.

My understanding in 5e rules, is that if I attempt to start a surprise round, all of your party members should get a full action during their turn of the surprise round before your opponents even roll for initiative, giving all your characters a chance to make an attack before the enemy even gets a chance to make their first turn. I have not yet been able to get this functionality to work properly. I might have all my characters hidden, I set up turn based mode, make my initial sneak attack, then initiative gets rolled before my other characters get the chance to make their own surprise round attacks, even though they were all hidden. On top of that, once initiative was rolled, all characters that were hidden are suddenly removed from "hiding" mode, and their chance to make their own surprise attack is removed.

My goal is usually to have all my characters make their initial attacks "simultaneously" to start combat, but I've only gotten it to work twice, despite very similar circumstances being in place. And it appears to me to be some sort of functionality bug, and not just that my characters were all spotted, so they didn't surprise anyone.

One time, the surprise round just kept giving me repeated full rounds of combat, over and over again without ever letting the enemy get a turn at all, despite the fact that my characters were no longer hidden at all. (That's how I finally beat Dror Ragzlin. I attacked for 4 full rounds in a row without a single enemy moving or reacting in any way, until they were all dead)


Last edited by rhielm; 12/10/20 03:55 PM.
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apprentice
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+1

"Surprise" never works for me. I attack with one member of the party from stealth, and the other members just sit in stealth not getting into the initiative. Meanwhile all the enemies are taking turns despite "suprise", gank party member I initiated combat with, and the others are just sitting there picking their noses until they get detected.

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Originally Posted by silverace99
+1

"Surprise" never works for me. I attack with one member of the party from stealth, and the other members just sit in stealth not getting into the initiative. Meanwhile all the enemies are taking turns despite "suprise", gank party member I initiated combat with, and the others are just sitting there picking their noses until they get detected.
What you can do in that case is instead of taking your turn with the character who is in the active fight, select character(s) who are not in the fight, then get them into the fight.

I run across this situation quite often when I have one character scouting and triggers combat - but just for that character. I then switch to the other characters and move them (clear across the map if need be) until they're spotted and join the combat. If you're stealthy, you can even get them in backstab positions in the same turn.

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old hand
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I think the surprise mechanic is bugged sometimes. Some party members get their turn completely ignored during the first round, even though they are listed in the turn order.

There is another bug as well, linked to stealth. Some companions who came out of stealth and have a simultaneous turn with the companion who started the fight get their round forgotten if you press the space key. You can control them normally if you select them with their icon.

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Originally Posted by rhielm
My understanding in 5e rules, is that if I attempt to start a surprise round, all of your party members should get a full action during their turn of the surprise round before your opponents even roll for initiative, giving all your characters a chance to make an attack before the enemy even gets a chance to make their first turn.

While I realize, I'm necroing this thread, I was looking for some rhyme or reason to how surprise works in BG3 and clearly it simply doesn't.

That said, this is not how 5e works at all and this has been a huge misinterpretation of the rules from a tabletop perspective by many people. Firstly, there's no such thing as a surprise round. Surprised is a condition. While surprised a creature cannot take actions or reactions. Surprise does not have to apply to all creatures on one side of a fight. Secondly, by 5e rules, nothing happens before everyone rolls initiative. You don't get attacks outside of initiative under any circumstances. The mere intent to take an offensive action results in initiative being rolled. Jeremy Crawford has gone in depth on this topic a number of times because it is so widely misinterpreted.

Edit: With further testing... reloading the same scenario multiple times - all 4 characters hidden, ranged sneak attack with Astarian, sometimes we get all enemies surprised, sometimes we just get initiative as normal and sometimes everyone rolls initiative but it behaves as though everyone except Astarian in the party is surprised while the enemies act as normal.

Last edited by WebSpyder; 13/01/22 04:36 AM.

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