You know these facts as there's now a threat you failed to notice and you're aware when you can't move and act.
Signaling intent takes you to initiative combat encounter as they say in the Sage Advice podcast.
You know there's a threat because you didn't notice anything and some mystical force is keeping you from moving and acting? Is that really your take?
I never seen the Devs claim you could enter a combat encounter as you fail to notice a threat that surprises you, and can't move or act but not know it if that's your take.
DM's are free to rule how they want though, but in Organized Play like Adventure League i never seen such take before.
Does surprise happen outside the initiative order as a special surprise round? No, here’s how surprise works.
The first step of any combat is this: the DM determines whether anyone in the combat is surprised (reread “Combat Step by Step” on page 189 of the Player’s Handbook). This determination happens only once during a fight and only at the beginning. In other words, once a fight starts, you can’t be surprised again, although a hidden foe can still gain the normal benefits from being unseen (see “Unseen Attackers and Targets” on page 194 of the Player’s Handbook).
To be surprised, you must be caught off guard, usually because you failed to notice foes being stealthy or you were startled by an enemy with a special ability, such as the gelatinous cube’s Transparent trait, that makes it exceptionally surprising. You can be surprised even if your companions aren’t, and you aren’t surprised if even one of your foes fails to catch you unawares.
If anyone is surprised, no actions are taken yet. First, initiative is rolled as normal. Then, the first round of combat starts, and the unsurprised combatants act in initiative order. A surprised creature can’t move or take an action or a reaction until its first first turn ends (remember that being unable to take an action also means you can’t take a bonus action). In effect, a surprised creature skips its first turn in a fight. Once that turn ends, the creature is no longer surprised.
In short, activity in a combat is always ordered by initiative, whether or not someone is surprised, and after the first found of combat has passed, surprise is no longer a factor. You can still try to hide from your foes and gain the benefits conferred by being hidden, but you don’t deprive your foes of their turns when you do so
__ Our table tends to use a houserule to address the foolishness of the RaW. IF the players have discussed a simultaneous attack action, that goes off, initiative is rolled and away we go. Often it turns into everyone deciding in the moment they want to do a collective attack and then one person's attack goes off, initiative is rolled and combat continues. None of us want to try and sort how the rogue shooting his hand crossbow from 20 feet away was the trigger for combat, yet occurred "after" the lead enemy dove behind a cabinet or something. he trigger for the combat goes off, then we enter initiative order.
It's poorly written and an effort to cram something very dynamic and unpredictable into a rule (the trigger) so we go by what made the most logical sense and it seems to work well. If anyone is wondering, we, the group seem to be getting surprised more often than we surprise anyone. Thus our house rule hurts us more often than foes lol.
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So if they just carried on whatever they were doing before initiative was rolled, completely unaware of anything else, what has changed? What makes them more ready/less surprised now than before initiative was rolled?
Whatever you like; call it a sixth sense, it doesn't matter. What matters is that while they're still not aware of any hostiles yet, they're now able to fight if they need to.
If they were falling asleep maybe they snap back awake; they don't know why, but they're alert again. Or a guard on duty wasn't paying close attention but they suddenly feel like they're being watched – even though they don't see any watchers, they're uneasy enough to be paying attention now, and so-on.
And to be clear, this is in the scenario where the ambushers are not spotted by any of their targets (i.e- all of the targets are "surprised"), if some of the targets aren't surprised then they at least will know they're under attack, so the surprised ones will as well soon after; at least, not unless the party can silently incapacitate the alert ones before any surprised ones notice.
Also I think it's worth keeping in mind that surprise, like the combat order rules are just part of a toolkit; ultimately the DM decides when to start the combat order, they can choose to do that after the Rogue stabs some guy in the neck if they want, but really the intended RAW time to do that is when the Rogue is about to do it, because otherwise nobody is surprised (and an Assassin would never get to user the full Assassinate feature).
While doing it during the sneaking up stage means that it's possible for enemies to detect the Rogue, or to somehow go before them despite being surprised, that's the risk you're taking by sneaking up. However, if you already rolled stealth for the sneaking then your DM is well within their rights to consider that the roll for surprise (all enemies failed) and give them disadvantage on initiative and/or the Rogue advantage. Again, it's a toolkit, your DM can use as much or as little of it as they like, and there are ways to reason it out.
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You know these facts as there's now a threat you failed to notice and you're aware when you can't move and act.
Why would they be aware that they were surprised? You literally become surprised by failing to notice any enemies. If those enemies still aren't showing themselves yet then you have nothing to be aware of.
Saying "oh I wasn't allowed to do any attacks this turn, and also there are turns now" is meta-gaming awareness of something that a creature very specifically did not notice, and if there is still nothing to see (i.e- attackers are still hidden at this point), they have no basis under which to take any actions other than to keep doing whatever it was that they were already doing. They might now be able to act if attacked (e.g- they're alerted but don't know why) but they still don't know anything is actually there.
If I was DMing and a player tried to use not noticing something as a reason for their character to behave differently, I'd slap that shit down so hard there'd be thunder damage. 😝
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
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You know these facts as there's now a threat you failed to notice and you're aware when you can't move and act.
Why would they be aware that they were surprised?
Because when surprised the rules tell you what effect it has on you and being unaware of them isn't part of it?
You're generally not aware you were charmed, which is not in the charmed condition itself, either. You can't assume the rulebook is organized in a sane way, let alone complete, when trying to make rulings on things. A DM ruling that the surprised pseudo-condition works like the charmed condition in that respect would not be violating any RAW.
You know these facts as there's now a threat you failed to notice and you're aware when you can't move and act.
Why would they be aware that they were surprised?
Because when surprised the rules tell you what effect it has on you and being unaware of them isn't part of it?
You're generally not aware you were charmed, which is not in the charmed condition itself, either. You can't assume the rulebook is organized in a sane way, let alone complete, when trying to make rulings on things. A DM ruling that the surprised pseudo-condition works like the charmed condition in that respect would not be violating any RAW.
Don't get confused here. Characters are generally not aware they're currently charmed. Often, when charms break the character becomes aware. Players almost always are aware that the character that they're playing is charmed and the rules imply that they can use this information for mechanics such as Stillness of Mind.
You know these facts as there's now a threat you failed to notice and you're aware when you can't move and act.
Why would they be aware that they were surprised?
Because when surprised the rules tell you what effect it has on you and being unaware of them isn't part of it?
You're generally not aware you were charmed, which is not in the charmed condition itself, either. You can't assume the rulebook is organized in a sane way, let alone complete, when trying to make rulings on things. A DM ruling that the surprised pseudo-condition works like the charmed condition in that respect would not be violating any RAW.
Don't get confused here. Characters are generally not aware they're currently charmed. Often, when charms break the character becomes aware. Players almost always are aware that the character that they're playing is charmed and the rules imply that they can use this information for mechanics such as Stillness of Mind.
Yes, but that's not material, because we're discussing the general case, not specific cases where surprised creatures have rules that require they know they're surprised, and we're discussing characters, not players. It's utterly irrelevant if the player knows their character was surprised (or charmed) - the topic at hand is whether or not characters without any special abilities know they were surprised.
You are incorrect. Half of this thread is confusing whether the character knows if they’ve had a turn with whether the player does. And to that point, I don’t think any feature requires the character to know anything, as mechanics are purely player facing. Assassinate isn’t a thing a character has any idea about.
You know these facts as there's now a threat you failed to notice and you're aware when you can't move and act.
Why would they be aware that they were surprised?
Because when surprised the rules tell you what effect it has on you and being unaware of them isn't part of it?
You're generally not aware you were charmed, which is not in the charmed condition itself, either. You can't assume the rulebook is organized in a sane way, let alone complete, when trying to make rulings on things. A DM ruling that the surprised pseudo-condition works like the charmed condition in that respect would not be violating any RAW.
They quite different, being surprised is not a condition like charmed where it gets applied by different game element that may address it specifically like Charm Person do for exemple.
Surprise happens because the threat remains hidden until you start combat. the problem is that surprise can drop before the combat actually starts based on Initiative.
Incorrect. There is no situation in which a surprised creature can take an action during round 1. Suppose you are bursting through a door in a surprise attack. There are two possibilities, depending on initiative
You win initiative. Your target is blindsided.
You lose initiative. Your target reacts fast enough that he is not blindsided, but still doesn't take any action.
Both situations are surprise. It's just one of them is better surprise than the other.
Even if i do attack i get nothing for it and i reveal myself. You are claiming going first creates the ability to see threats when they technically should not be in initiative.
you will say yeah, they are in combat with you, that is how combat works....
they do not know combat has happened or that a threat exists. You are applying the threat is revealed at the start of initiative and it is not.
The threat is caused by the thing that the DM decides triggers the need for Initiative rolls.
If a surprised creature rolls higher than the creature performing the initiating action, then that simply means that their instinctive reactions are quick enough to respond when the initiating action occurs.
Anyone who rolls lower than the creature performing the initiating action is definitely not quick enough to react when the initiating action occurs.
Because when surprised the rules tell you what effect it has on you and being unaware of them isn't part of it?
Characters are not aware of the game mechanics, and the surprise rule does not tell you that you are aware of anything; quite the opposite in fact. Again, you become "surprised" by not noticing something, why would that instead mean the exact opposite?
All the rules tell you is that you can't act on the first turn of the combat, they don't tell you that the character knows this, or knows why.
However it would be completely inexplicable for the attacker not to attack, since, to them, absolutely nothing changed that would change their mind.
Except they don't know they're under attack, or that there is anyone nearby to attack?
You seem to be arguing that a surprised target should gain hyper awareness of something that they explicitly and unambiguously did not notice? This would make the surprise rules the opposite of what any assassin would want because by catching any enemy unawares you also force them to be aware of your presence without being able to see you.
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I think you are very confused. The ambusher is not under attack at all. There is no 'surprised attacker.' That is an oxymoron.
I meant surprised target, which I feel should have been fairly obvious.
Beckket is talking about a situation where a character declares 'I am attacking.' Stealth is checked and the defenders still do not notice the attacker. The DM says 'roll initiative.' The player rolls initiative. The DM says 'Ok, your turn, describe your attack' and the player says 'I am not attacking after all.'
On what basis did they change their mind? A low initiative roll that their character knows nothing about?
They can potentially know that the defenders are no longer surprised, because if they're no longer surprised then something must have changed that makes this so, as the moment to take them unawares is gone. After all, the whole point of surprise is to try and get the drop on an enemy; while the defenders don't know they were about to be attacked, the attacker does.
This is entirely reasonable, though it'd also be entirely reasonable for the DM to ask the player to roll some kind of check to see if they know that the moment has passed, as the character may not notice the same thing that the player already knows.
As for the defenders, they do not know they are under attack until the attack but when the attack happens, you are arguing that they do not know that the attack happens?
I'm talking about the case where no attack happens. Nothing in the rules says that the defenders are aware that they were surprised, so if nothing else has happened that they might be aware of then there is no basis upon which to justify them attack enemies that they do not even know are there.
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Because when surprised the rules tell you what effect it has on you and being unaware of them isn't part of it?
Characters are not aware of the game mechanics, and the surprise rule does not tell you that you are aware of anything; quite the opposite in fact. Again, you become "surprised" by not noticing something, why would that instead mean the exact opposite?
All the rules tell you is that you can't act on the first turn of the combat, they don't tell you that the character knows this, or knows why.
However it would be completely inexplicable for the attacker not to attack, since, to them, absolutely nothing changed that would change their mind.
Except they don't know they're under attack, or that there is anyone nearby to attack?
You seem to be arguing that a surprised target should gain hyper awareness of something that they explicitly and unambiguously did not notice? This would make the surprise rules the opposite of what any assassin would want because by catching any enemy unawares you also force them to be aware of your presence without being able to see you.
This is nonsensical.
Therse's a threat for a combat encounter to occur and initiative to be rolled, precisely when narrative transition to violence as the Devs says. If said threat was not noticed, it can cause surprise when there's a transition to violence. If it was not the case there would be no combat encounter nor surprise. And when combat break out you know if you can move and act or not because you're surprised, This is the RAW wether its sensical to some people and not to others. I personally find nonsensical that you'd be suddenly unable to move or perform the action you were doing and not be aware if it, the DM is supposed to have your character hallucinate he still can move and act while it can't? A traveler being ambushed doesnt' know it can't move anymore so it stop moving but its unaware because the ambusher didn't attack yet?
Initiative and combat doesn't trigger off a violent action taken prior to it, but on signaling intentions, so that every combat actions can take place within combat following an initiative order. Its not necessarily sensical when gamist trump realism.
I'm having a hard time keeping up with your discussion, so forgive me for not addressing your various points directly.
Do you see any faults with the below scenarios as a practical implementation of RAW?
Scenario 1 Assumptions: (1) Monster Initiative is hidden from the players. (2) Monsters are surprised by the Player Characters.
The PCs decide to ambush a group of goblins. The DM asks the players to make Stealth checks (determining Surprise).
The players then decide to have the rogue attack first, with the others following up in whatever order they see fit. The DM asks everyone to roll Initiative.
According to the Initiative order, the Paladin is the 1st to act, with a Goblin Booyagh going 2nd, and the Rogue going 3rd. a. The Paladin takes the Ready action waiting for the Rogue to initiate the combat. b. The Goblin Booyagh does nothing, but is in a state of mind where it wouldn't freeze up completely if combat suddenly erupted. c. The Rogue attacks the Goblin Booyagh.
The Goblin Booyagh reacts to the Rogue's attack by casting Shield.
The Paladin uses his reaction to run up to the nearest Goblin.
The rest of the party take their turn as normal, while the remaining Goblins react as best they can (depending on their initiative).
Scenario 2 Assumptions: (1) Monster Initiative is hidden from the players. (2) Monsters are NOT surprised by the Player Characters.
The PCs decide to ambush a group of goblins. The DM asks the players to make Stealth checks (determining Surprise).
The players then decide to have the rogue attack first, with the others following up in whatever order they see fit. The DM asks everyone to roll Initiative.
According to the Initiative order, the Paladin is the 1st to act, with a Goblin Booyagh going 2nd, and the Rogue going 3rd. a. The Paladin takes the Ready action waiting for the first attack to initiate combat. b. The Goblin Booyagh turns to face the party, and throws a Fireball at them. c. The Paladin uses his reaction to run up to the nearest Goblin d. The Rogue attacks the Goblin Booyagh.
The rest of the party and Goblins take their turns as normal.
Scenario 3 Assumptions: (1) Monster Initiative is hidden from the players. (2) Monsters are NOT surprised by the Player Characters.
The PCs decide to ambush a group of goblins. The DM asks the players to make Stealth checks (determining Surprise).
The Goblins turn on the PCs and make ready to attack. The DM asks everyone to roll Initiative.
These 3 scenarios looks fine to me. The only thing may be is in scenario #2 the paladin trigger would not be met as Fireball is not an attack, its readied action would trigger after the rogue attack instead.
These 3 scenarios looks fine to me. The only thing may be is in scenario #2 the paladin trigger would not be met as Fireball is not an attack, its readied action would trigger after the rogue attack instead.
Fair enough, however at my table I'd know that the player wasn't talking about the mechanical term, but the act of aggression, whatever form it might take.
These 3 scenarios looks fine to me. The only thing may be is in scenario #2 the paladin trigger would not be met as Fireball is not an attack, its readied action would trigger after the rogue attack instead.
Fair enough, however at my table I'd know that the player wasn't talking about the mechanical term, but the act of aggression, whatever form it might take.
In that case any hostile action yeah otherwise 3 good scenarios that illustrate different situations with or without surprise.
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I never seen the Devs claim you could enter a combat encounter as you fail to notice a threat that surprises you, and can't move or act but not know it if that's your take.
DM's are free to rule how they want though, but in Organized Play like Adventure League i never seen such take before.
I'll leave here a Sage Advice on Surprise Rules Answers: November 2015 | Dungeons & Dragons (wizards.com)
__ Our table tends to use a houserule to address the foolishness of the RaW. IF the players have discussed a simultaneous attack action, that goes off, initiative is rolled and away we go. Often it turns into everyone deciding in the moment they want to do a collective attack and then one person's attack goes off, initiative is rolled and combat continues. None of us want to try and sort how the rogue shooting his hand crossbow from 20 feet away was the trigger for combat, yet occurred "after" the lead enemy dove behind a cabinet or something. he trigger for the combat goes off, then we enter initiative order.
It's poorly written and an effort to cram something very dynamic and unpredictable into a rule (the trigger) so we go by what made the most logical sense and it seems to work well. If anyone is wondering, we, the group seem to be getting surprised more often than we surprise anyone. Thus our house rule hurts us more often than foes lol.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Whatever you like; call it a sixth sense, it doesn't matter. What matters is that while they're still not aware of any hostiles yet, they're now able to fight if they need to.
If they were falling asleep maybe they snap back awake; they don't know why, but they're alert again. Or a guard on duty wasn't paying close attention but they suddenly feel like they're being watched – even though they don't see any watchers, they're uneasy enough to be paying attention now, and so-on.
And to be clear, this is in the scenario where the ambushers are not spotted by any of their targets (i.e- all of the targets are "surprised"), if some of the targets aren't surprised then they at least will know they're under attack, so the surprised ones will as well soon after; at least, not unless the party can silently incapacitate the alert ones before any surprised ones notice.
Also I think it's worth keeping in mind that surprise, like the combat order rules are just part of a toolkit; ultimately the DM decides when to start the combat order, they can choose to do that after the Rogue stabs some guy in the neck if they want, but really the intended RAW time to do that is when the Rogue is about to do it, because otherwise nobody is surprised (and an Assassin would never get to user the full Assassinate feature).
While doing it during the sneaking up stage means that it's possible for enemies to detect the Rogue, or to somehow go before them despite being surprised, that's the risk you're taking by sneaking up. However, if you already rolled stealth for the sneaking then your DM is well within their rights to consider that the roll for surprise (all enemies failed) and give them disadvantage on initiative and/or the Rogue advantage. Again, it's a toolkit, your DM can use as much or as little of it as they like, and there are ways to reason it out.
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Why would they be aware that they were surprised? You literally become surprised by failing to notice any enemies. If those enemies still aren't showing themselves yet then you have nothing to be aware of.
Saying "oh I wasn't allowed to do any attacks this turn, and also there are turns now" is meta-gaming awareness of something that a creature very specifically did not notice, and if there is still nothing to see (i.e- attackers are still hidden at this point), they have no basis under which to take any actions other than to keep doing whatever it was that they were already doing. They might now be able to act if attacked (e.g- they're alerted but don't know why) but they still don't know anything is actually there.
If I was DMing and a player tried to use not noticing something as a reason for their character to behave differently, I'd slap that shit down so hard there'd be thunder damage. 😝
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
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Because when surprised the rules tell you what effect it has on you and being unaware of them isn't part of it?
You're generally not aware you were charmed, which is not in the charmed condition itself, either. You can't assume the rulebook is organized in a sane way, let alone complete, when trying to make rulings on things. A DM ruling that the surprised pseudo-condition works like the charmed condition in that respect would not be violating any RAW.
Don't get confused here. Characters are generally not aware they're currently charmed. Often, when charms break the character becomes aware. Players almost always are aware that the character that they're playing is charmed and the rules imply that they can use this information for mechanics such as Stillness of Mind.
Yes, but that's not material, because we're discussing the general case, not specific cases where surprised creatures have rules that require they know they're surprised, and we're discussing characters, not players. It's utterly irrelevant if the player knows their character was surprised (or charmed) - the topic at hand is whether or not characters without any special abilities know they were surprised.
You are incorrect. Half of this thread is confusing whether the character knows if they’ve had a turn with whether the player does. And to that point, I don’t think any feature requires the character to know anything, as mechanics are purely player facing. Assassinate isn’t a thing a character has any idea about.
They quite different, being surprised is not a condition like charmed where it gets applied by different game element that may address it specifically like Charm Person do for exemple.
Incorrect. There is no situation in which a surprised creature can take an action during round 1. Suppose you are bursting through a door in a surprise attack. There are two possibilities, depending on initiative
Both situations are surprise. It's just one of them is better surprise than the other.
The threat is caused by the thing that the DM decides triggers the need for Initiative rolls.
If a surprised creature rolls higher than the creature performing the initiating action, then that simply means that their instinctive reactions are quick enough to respond when the initiating action occurs.
Anyone who rolls lower than the creature performing the initiating action is definitely not quick enough to react when the initiating action occurs.
Characters are not aware of the game mechanics, and the surprise rule does not tell you that you are aware of anything; quite the opposite in fact. Again, you become "surprised" by not noticing something, why would that instead mean the exact opposite?
All the rules tell you is that you can't act on the first turn of the combat, they don't tell you that the character knows this, or knows why.
Except they don't know they're under attack, or that there is anyone nearby to attack?
You seem to be arguing that a surprised target should gain hyper awareness of something that they explicitly and unambiguously did not notice? This would make the surprise rules the opposite of what any assassin would want because by catching any enemy unawares you also force them to be aware of your presence without being able to see you.
This is nonsensical.
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I meant surprised target, which I feel should have been fairly obvious.
They can potentially know that the defenders are no longer surprised, because if they're no longer surprised then something must have changed that makes this so, as the moment to take them unawares is gone. After all, the whole point of surprise is to try and get the drop on an enemy; while the defenders don't know they were about to be attacked, the attacker does.
This is entirely reasonable, though it'd also be entirely reasonable for the DM to ask the player to roll some kind of check to see if they know that the moment has passed, as the character may not notice the same thing that the player already knows.
I'm talking about the case where no attack happens. Nothing in the rules says that the defenders are aware that they were surprised, so if nothing else has happened that they might be aware of then there is no basis upon which to justify them attack enemies that they do not even know are there.
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Do you think a character knows they they were unable to move or take actions for turn?
Therse's a threat for a combat encounter to occur and initiative to be rolled, precisely when narrative transition to violence as the Devs says. If said threat was not noticed, it can cause surprise when there's a transition to violence. If it was not the case there would be no combat encounter nor surprise. And when combat break out you know if you can move and act or not because you're surprised, This is the RAW wether its sensical to some people and not to others. I personally find nonsensical that you'd be suddenly unable to move or perform the action you were doing and not be aware if it, the DM is supposed to have your character hallucinate he still can move and act while it can't? A traveler being ambushed doesnt' know it can't move anymore so it stop moving but its unaware because the ambusher didn't attack yet?
Initiative and combat doesn't trigger off a violent action taken prior to it, but on signaling intentions, so that every combat actions can take place within combat following an initiative order. Its not necessarily sensical when gamist trump realism.
I'm having a hard time keeping up with your discussion, so forgive me for not addressing your various points directly.
Do you see any faults with the below scenarios as a practical implementation of RAW?
Scenario 1
Assumptions:
(1) Monster Initiative is hidden from the players.
(2) Monsters are surprised by the Player Characters.
a. The Paladin takes the Ready action waiting for the Rogue to initiate the combat.
b. The Goblin Booyagh does nothing, but is in a state of mind where it wouldn't freeze up completely if combat suddenly erupted.
c. The Rogue attacks the Goblin Booyagh.
Scenario 2
Assumptions:
(1) Monster Initiative is hidden from the players.
(2) Monsters are NOT surprised by the Player Characters.
a. The Paladin takes the Ready action waiting for the first attack to initiate combat.
b. The Goblin Booyagh turns to face the party, and throws a Fireball at them.
c. The Paladin uses his reaction to run up to the nearest Goblin
d. The Rogue attacks the Goblin Booyagh.
Scenario 3
Assumptions:
(1) Monster Initiative is hidden from the players.
(2) Monsters are NOT surprised by the Player Characters.
These 3 scenarios looks fine to me. The only thing may be is in scenario #2 the paladin trigger would not be met as Fireball is not an attack, its readied action would trigger after the rogue attack instead.
Fair enough, however at my table I'd know that the player wasn't talking about the mechanical term, but the act of aggression, whatever form it might take.
In that case any hostile action yeah otherwise 3 good scenarios that illustrate different situations with or without surprise.