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.