How do you describe surprise attacks in an encounter?
Do you let the players know beforehand that something will happen, ask for initiative roll and then tell them they are surprise and roll the first round or just roll the checks and if happens that they get surprised, roll the first round in background and just tell them that they got surprised?
I run my game as transparently as possible - which in this case means I follow the procedure lined out in the book, whether it is the players surprising their foes or their foes surprising the players.
So when surprise is determined, which often involves someone rolling stealth or some other skill, initiative is rolled for everyone involved and anybody that is surprised is told so.
This prevents my current players from feeling like I'm doing what their former DM would do; skip all the rules to benefit the bad guys because he wanted to kill all the PCs and make everyone want to quit playing (he really didn't get the whole cooperative play towards the goal of fun thing).
I tend to use the encounter type (easy, medium, hard) to determine if an NPC/monster surprises anyone in the party instead of the dex/stealth of the creature. Ergo, if I want it to be an easy encounter, I tell them something like "suddenly a group of Kobolds jump out from alley of the tavern you had just vacated after consuming too many drinks. Roll for initiative and another roll to see if you are surprised". If they roll a 5 or better with their wis/perception mod, then they play in the first round, otherwise they really did drink too much, were deep in thought, etc and wait until the second round to do anything. A medium encounter would be a 10 or better and a hard or the -dm-is-having-fun-at-the-party's-expense encounter would be a 15 or better. Honestly, I only do the latter when I know it'll bruise egos more than take out PCs. It also depends on the group. The cloak and dagger groups get mostly easy surprises and the murder hobos get an occasional hard encounter.
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Hello fellas,
How do you describe surprise attacks in an encounter?
Do you let the players know beforehand that something will happen, ask for initiative roll and then tell them they are surprise and roll the first round or just roll the checks and if happens that they get surprised, roll the first round in background and just tell them that they got surprised?
Thanks for your time.
I run my game as transparently as possible - which in this case means I follow the procedure lined out in the book, whether it is the players surprising their foes or their foes surprising the players.
So when surprise is determined, which often involves someone rolling stealth or some other skill, initiative is rolled for everyone involved and anybody that is surprised is told so.
This prevents my current players from feeling like I'm doing what their former DM would do; skip all the rules to benefit the bad guys because he wanted to kill all the PCs and make everyone want to quit playing (he really didn't get the whole cooperative play towards the goal of fun thing).
I tend to use the encounter type (easy, medium, hard) to determine if an NPC/monster surprises anyone in the party instead of the dex/stealth of the creature. Ergo, if I want it to be an easy encounter, I tell them something like "suddenly a group of Kobolds jump out from alley of the tavern you had just vacated after consuming too many drinks. Roll for initiative and another roll to see if you are surprised". If they roll a 5 or better with their wis/perception mod, then they play in the first round, otherwise they really did drink too much, were deep in thought, etc and wait until the second round to do anything. A medium encounter would be a 10 or better and a hard or the -dm-is-having-fun-at-the-party's-expense encounter would be a 15 or better. Honestly, I only do the latter when I know it'll bruise egos more than take out PCs. It also depends on the group. The cloak and dagger groups get mostly easy surprises and the murder hobos get an occasional hard encounter.