Total- and Partial Surprise (B393), who uses it?

[khorboth]

Originally Posted by Gnome

I’m having trouble locating anything in the rules about Danger Sense and surprise/initiative. Are you using a house rule that DS takes the whole party from total to partial surprise? I’m not saying it’s unreasonable, I’m just curious where you got this.

Pretty much what others have said. There's no specific rule but when Danger Sense triggers, most PCs will say something like, "Look alive everyone!" So the party is now somewhat on guard instead of totally unaware. Total surprise is pretty much limited to times when the party is relaxed and Danger Sense specifies enough time to react. So, it's enough time for the party to at least change posture unless there are extenuating circumstances.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Danger Sense plus Combat Reflexes should pretty much allow a character to never suffer even partial surprise if they make the IQ roll. Since they know something bad is coming, they are prepared for it

Partial surprise is used in cases where the party is expecting trouble. Danger Sense alerts the character to trouble. Therefore, Danger Sense does not mitigate partial surprise; it prevents total surprise. A critical success on a Danger Sense roll might give you enough information to completely prevent surprise, but that's up to the GM.

Surprise isn't the state of not knowing something has just started to happen; it's the state of knowing that's happening but not being able to react to it.

(other characters with Combat Reflexes would need to make a Per roll to notice that the character with Danger Sense is already reacting to something bad and therefore not suffer surprise).

The character with Danger Sense need merely blurt out that something bad is about to happen. For characters so alerted, total surprise is impossible, except in extreme circumstances (e.g., the example of werewolves bursting in in a mundane setting).

But Danger Sense will not prevent characters with Combat Reflexes from experiencing partial surprise. In fact, Danger Sense will give no surprise benefit to characters with Combat Reflexes because those characters never experience total surprise — they always react as well as someone who was expecting trouble.

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Partial surprise is used in cases where the party is expecting trouble.

Expecting trouble sounds to me like the most prepared you can be. Does this mean essentially every combat begins with surprise? I always assumed surprise was a special circumstance for when you’re not fully prepared for an attack.
Surely someone with Danger Sense should never be surprised (on a successful Per roll), since they have time to react before trouble starts! Whether they can warn companions in time so that those companions get the full benefits is an open question (DF16 seems to imply the answer is no).

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Gnome

Expecting trouble sounds to me like the most prepared you can be. Does this mean essentially every combat begins with surprise?

No. The surprise rules do not determine whether an attack surprises; they determine what happens if you are surprised. "The GM is responsible for determining when the attackers have achieved surprise." The only combats that begin with surprise are the ones that the GM says begin with surprise. Once surprise is determined, it has to be determined whether it is total or partial and whether each character freezes.

To reiterate: even characters with Combat Reflexes and Danger Sense can be surprised. The rules simply deal with how quickly such a character can react to the surprise.

Surely someone with Danger Sense should never be surprised (on a successful Per roll), since they have time to react before trouble starts!

Danger Sense just lets you know there is trouble. Only a critical success on the Perception roll will tell you anything about the nature of that trouble. Since partial surprise is what happens to people who are expecting trouble, partial surprise is what happens to people whose Danger Sense caused them to expect trouble.

If a character with Danger Sense DOES get a critical success on the Perception roll... "The GM is responsible for determining when the attackers have achieved surprise."

Whether they can warn companions in time so that those companions get the full benefits is an open question (DF16 seems to imply the answer is no).

I do not take DF16, or any supplement, as a definitive judgment of the systems outlined in the Basic Set unless they state that they are. It is surely ludicrous to expect someone to buy a wilderness supplement to a dungeon supplement just to get an implied answer to a question arising from an incomplete reading of the Basic Set. "The GM is responsible for determining when the attackers have achieved surprise." This is pretty straightforward. If the character with Danger Sense tries to warn their companions of danger, and the danger is a surprise attack, the GM is explicitly empowered to determine whether the attackers achieve surprise.

[Rupert]

My general interpretation of Danger Sense is that it's quite personal and in the case of ambushes also quite immediate. Thus if your Danger Sense goes off because a bunch of bad guys are about to mow you down with AKs from a concealed position (and nobody noticed them before they opened fire), all it does it give you an active defence, with or without penalty for stunning depending on the surprise check. Everyone lacking Danger Sense won't get that Dodge vs the initial attack because they had no idea it's coming.

Now, if the incoming attack was a mortar shell, taking a second or two to land from the point where it could've been detected, and everyone just missed their hearing check, the guy with Danger Sense will have time to yell "Watch out!" and I'd give everyone a chance to make that last second dive for cover. If he got a critical success and thus had some idea what was coming he could yell "Incoming!" and everyone would have time to move and dive into the best available cover. Obviously having Combat Reflexes so you don't freeze when your Danger Sense pings or your friends shouts a warning is a great help.

What I'm trying for is making Danger Sense worth buying even if someone else has it, and not just as a backup. I feel that advantages should benefit the character that paid for them first and foremost, and the rest of the party secondarily and primarily through the benefit they bring to their owner.

As for DF16, I've found it a really useful summation and clarification of the rules for camping and outdoors/wilderness adventuring with a cinematic slant, just as I've found After the End 2 - Exploits handy for investigating and looting ruins in all settings and TLs, as long as they're somewhat cinematic.

EDIT: And in case Dr. Kromm (and other authors) happen to be reading this, and because some people don't and have said so loudly, I really like the light-hearted and slightly joking voice used in writing the DF series. I think it suits the subject matter perfectly, and I say that as someone who loves a Traditional wilderness and dungeon romp.

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

"The GM is responsible for determining when the attackers have achieved surprise."

This makes sense. Unfortunately, it's a little lacking in detail.
And the partial surprise rules appear to be designed to determine which side surprises the other. (For example, the final sentence is "If the initiative roll is a tie, no one is surprised.")

If I were a PC with Danger Sense, I would be pretty disappointed if the GM told me: "your Danger Sense told you there was trouble, but you didn't know what nature that trouble would take since you didn't critically succeed, so you're still mentally stunned just like everyone else." Why did I buy Danger Sense exactly? If it's supposed to warn me of trouble in time for me to act, shouldn't I be able to...you know...act? Rather than standing there doing nothing while me and my buddies get shot?

To me, "surprise" is synonymous with "unexpected." Part of what bothers me about the surprise rules is they seem to be using the word in a different way. (When you're "expecting trouble," and trouble then rears its ugly head, that does not constitute what my dictionary would term a "surprise.")

If the GM determines when surprise has occurred, but surprise can occur even when danger is expected, then it sounds like the GM should either always use surprise or never (and I don't much like either option).

I wasn't citing DF16 as the authority on the Basic set, but I was looking for a more detailed approach that would shed light on what Basic was talking about in the first place. And since DF16 uses Per rolls to assess whether surprise occurs, that's seems reasonable to me.

In my games, surprise is rare, because if the PCs are in an area they know to be dangerous (like a monster-filled dungeon), then I just can't fathom how a monster appearing could be a surprise.
I use the rules in DF16 (since I find them intelligible) whenever the PCs are traveling across the wilderness (or in a city, etc.), or anytime the general level of danger is unknown and the travel time is long enough that the PCs couldn't plausibly be on "high alert" the entire time. This works fine for non-DF games as well.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Gnome

This makes sense. Unfortunately, it's a little lacking in detail.

Sure. Because the circumstances in which surprise might occur are many and varied. Rather than a complex set of rules trying to classify all the ways in which one might be surprised and the factors modifying it, it's far simpler for the GM to apply common sense and just recognize when something is meant to be a surprise.

And the partial surprise rules appear to be designed to determine which side surprises the other. (For example, the final sentence is "If the initiative roll is a tie, no one is surprised.")

The exact quote is "If the initiative roll is a tie, nobody was taken by surprise." There was a surprise, but nobody was taken by surprise. Not being taken by surprise means you can immediately react to a surprise, not that there was no surprise.

If I were a PC with Danger Sense, I would be pretty disappointed if the GM told me: "your Danger Sense told you there was trouble, but you didn't know what nature that trouble would take since you didn't critically succeed, so you're still mentally stunned just like everyone else." Why did I buy Danger Sense exactly?

You bought Danger Sense so that the GM would roll Perception for you and tell you "There's some danger about to happen." What you do with that information is up to you.

You bought Danger Sense so that when you're asleep the GM would roll Perception for you and tell you "There's some danger about to happen," and when the attack comes you're only partially surprised.

Danger Sense is not an immunity to surprises.

To me, "surprise" is synonymous with "unexpected." Part of what bothers me about the surprise rules is they seem to be using the word in a different way. (When you're "expecting trouble," and trouble then rears its ugly head, that does not constitute what my dictionary would term a "surprise.")

When you're creeping down a dungeon corridor, you're always "expecting trouble." That would suggest, by your reasoning, that it's impossible for anyone exploring a dungeon to be surprised. But when a rock monster suddenly jumps out from around a corner and charges you, it's reasonable that you can still be surprised, no matter how much trouble you were expecting. All the surprise rules do is determine how long it takes you to react to the attack.

"Total surprise" is what happens when you weren't expecting trouble and don't have Combat Reflexes and an attack comes suddenly. "Partial surprise" is what happens when you are expecting trouble or have Combat Reflexes and an attack comes suddenly. There is no surprise if you can anticipate the attack beforehand, not just as a general sense of impending trouble, but with specific knowledge of the attack.

If the GM determines when surprise has occurred, but surprise can occur even when danger is expected, then it sounds like the GM should either always use surprise or never (and I don't much like either option).

Why?

Situation 1: The party is moving through a ravine. They know there's an enemy in the area, but they don't know where. They're expecting trouble. The enemy suddenly attacks from the top of the ravine. The party has partial surprise.

Situation 2: The party is about to enter a ravine. They know there's an enemy in the area, but they don't know where. They're expecting trouble. The party scout decides to climb up the side of the ravine first to check for enemies. He spots a gleam from a shiny helmet and suspects an ambush. He returns to the party and reports. The party begins to move through the ravine, expecting an ambush. When the ambush begins, the GM decides it is not a surprise.

I wasn't citing DF16 as the authority on the Basic set, but I was looking for a more detailed approach that would shed light on what Basic was talking about in the first place. And since DF16 uses Per rolls to assess whether surprise occurs, that's seems reasonable to me.

I don't assume that DF rules are always consistent with the intention of rules in the Basic Set. Sometimes they expand the rules in ways that are specific to the Dungeon Fantasy series. If DF recommends using Perception to determine whether surprise occurs at all, that's advice to the GM in figuring out the "GM determines" part of surprise, not an interpretation of the rest of the rules.

In my games, surprise is rare, because if the PCs are in an area they know to be dangerous (like a monster-filled dungeon), then I just can't fathom how a monster appearing could be a surprise.

Really? You can't fathom how a monster popping out of a hole and going BLARGH! could be startling when you're expecting trouble?

When you watch a horror movie, and you see the protagonist scared by something and backing up, you KNOW there's going to be a jump-scare just behind them, but you jump anyway when it happens.

[Black Leviathan]

I also don't use surprise rules as written much. For one I think the Total Surprise rules are way over the top. For another my combats in my games just very rarely happen the way they're laid out in surprise rules.

I'd say 90% of combats involve two or more parties engaged in a conversation in plain view of one another about 10-15 yards apart. Nobody is unaware of the danger. The rest are ambushes with clear total surprise.

Recently I had a player who wanted to quickdraw and shoot an enemy who had a gun trained on them. I reasoned that the captor believed they were safe from the person they had gun on so I gave him essentially a Fear Check to govern his reaction to them suddenly pulling a concealed pistol to avoid being stunned per partial surprise.

I've had people throw a punch in the middle of a calm social exchange to start a combat. I've run this as partial surprise for everyone other than the PC throwing the punch.

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

The exact quote is "If the initiative roll is a tie, nobody was taken by surprise." There was a surprise, but nobody was taken by surprise. Not being taken by surprise means you can immediately react to a surprise, not that there was no surprise.

This is a helpful distinction I hadn't noticed. Are you saying there's an objective definition of surprise independent of someone actually being surprised? So certain types of events are surprises, and some people are surprised by them and some are not? If so, I would like to know what counts as a surprise beyond "the GM decides."

You bought Danger Sense so that the GM would roll Perception for you and tell you "There's some danger about to happen." What you do with that information is up to you.

You bought Danger Sense so that when you're asleep the GM would roll Perception for you and tell you "There's some danger about to happen," and when the attack comes you're only partially surprised.

Danger Sense is not an immunity to surprises.

This would suggest that if I have Combat Reflexes, DS has no use against surprise (since CR includes immunity to total surprise). That result is...surprising. What I would like to do with that information is act on it, but it sounds like you're saying I can't actually do that until I recover from stun. In which case it doesn't seem too useful. Unless you're saying I can use DS to avoid entering the situation and being surprised in the first place? But then if I need to enter anyway for some other reason, I will still be surprised by the threat I know is there?

When you're creeping down a dungeon corridor, you're always "expecting trouble." That would suggest, by your reasoning, that it's impossible for anyone exploring a dungeon to be surprised. But when a rock monster suddenly jumps out from around a corner and charges you, it's reasonable that you can still be surprised, no matter how much trouble you were expecting. All the surprise rules do is determine how long it takes you to react to the attack.

"Total surprise" is what happens when you weren't expecting trouble and don't have Combat Reflexes and an attack comes suddenly. "Partial surprise" is what happens when you are expecting trouble or have Combat Reflexes and an attack comes suddenly. There is no surprise if you can anticipate the attack beforehand, not just as a general sense of impending trouble, but with specific knowledge of the attack.



Why?

Situation 1: The party is moving through a ravine. They know there's an enemy in the area, but they don't know where. They're expecting trouble. The enemy suddenly attacks from the top of the ravine. The party has partial surprise.

Situation 2: The party is about to enter a ravine. They know there's an enemy in the area, but they don't know where. They're expecting trouble. The party scout decides to climb up the side of the ravine first to check for enemies. He spots a gleam from a shiny helmet and suspects an ambush. He returns to the party and reports. The party begins to move through the ravine, expecting an ambush. When the ambush begins, the GM decides it is not a surprise.

I like your example. Are you saying the difference has to do with knowing the exact location of the enemy? Let's suppose I'm about to open a door (in a dungeon for example), and I know that many such doors have enemies behind them, ready to leap out, but I don't know with 100% certainty about this door, nor of the nature of the enemy behind it. Will I be surprised if, upon opening the door, an enemy jumps out? What if I open 100 such doors in a row, and none have enemies? What if they all do?
In the ravine example, what if I don't know the enemies' exact location (as in your situation #1), but I know based on knowledge of the local geography that there's only one reasonable place for an ambush? Is it considered surprise if the ambush indeed occurs exactly where I suspected it would? What if there are two such locations, so I approach them both with extreme caution, fully expecting the enemy to jump out each time?

I think my problem has to do with the fact that it's an RPG. I don't want anything to depend on whether the player describes his own character as being on high alert for the enemy, expecting a specific danger in a specific place, etc., because it would quickly get boring as PCs are incentivized to constantly invent hypothetical dangers so that they can later claim their character had anticipated the specific type of danger and therefore is not surprised. I would rather have some standard of whether an event was surprising to the PC--CR may come into it, as would DS perhaps, as would skills like Area Knowledge (to know the best local ambush spots), Hidden Lore (to know that trolls like to hide under bridges like this one), Strategy (to know the enemy forces' ambush procedures), etc. And none of this has anything to do with rolling 1d and adding bonuses based on the attributes of the leader, which to me sounds appropriate for a military engagement in which everyone is following a certain standard procedure but not for a typical group of adventurers with a myriad of skills and advantages that would seem relevant to the situation.

I don't assume that DF rules are always consistent with the intention of rules in the Basic Set. Sometimes they expand the rules in ways that are specific to the Dungeon Fantasy series. If DF recommends using Perception to determine whether surprise occurs at all, that's advice to the GM in figuring out the "GM determines" part of surprise, not an interpretation of the rest of the rules.

Agreed. I use DF16 because I can make sense of what to do. I can't make sense of Basic without it.

Really? You can't fathom how a monster popping out of a hole and going BLARGH! could be startling when you're expecting trouble?

When you watch a horror movie, and you see the protagonist scared by something and backing up, you KNOW there's going to be a jump-scare just behind them, but you jump anyway when it happens.

Absolutely, surprise is a real thing in the world! I'm trying to determine when an individual is surprised by something like that enough to be mentally stunned. For example, if you've seen the movie before, you're presumably less likely to jump. If you're deeply familiar with the director's work, you may also be less likely to jump. Or if you'd read the book the movie is based on, etc. Some people might just be more jumpy and jump every time, while other people might just be jaded and never jump when they view a scene like that, and so on. These are all ways character traits add up to whether or not you're surprised, and none of what's in Basic seems to be about that, it's all about how long you're surprised and how your "side" all have the same reaction.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Gnome

This is a helpful distinction I hadn't noticed. Are you saying there's an objective definition of surprise independent of someone actually being surprised? So certain types of events are surprises, and some people are surprised by them and some are not? If so, I would like to know what counts as a surprise beyond "the GM decides."

There are two meanings of the word surprise being employed here. There is the sudden attack, which is "a surprise" — i.e., the characters didn't perceive it coming. There is being frozen, which is when you are "surprised" — i.e., you are feeling too startled to act immediately.

"The GM decides" is the ONLY definition of when surprise — a sudden attack being unperceived — occurs in the rules.

This would suggest that if I have Combat Reflexes, DS has no use against surprise (since CR includes immunity to total surprise). That result is...surprising. What I would like to do with that information is act on it, but it sounds like you're saying I can't actually do that until I recover from stun. In which case it doesn't seem too useful.

As I said before, Danger Sense is not the ability to be immune from being startled. If the roll is successful, it IS a way to reduce potential total surprise to mere partial surprise. But the true value in Danger Sense is in the GM giving the player a warning that something bad is coming.

Someone with Combat Reflexes is immune to total surprise. Someone with Danger Sense is immune to total surprise only if they make a Perception roll and the GM agrees that the danger they perceive is relevant to the pending surprise. But you're right: someone who succeeds at a Danger Sense Perception roll doesn't need Combat Reflexes to avoid total surprise. But they DO want Combat Reflexes for the bonuses to initiative during partial surprise.

Unless you're saying I can use DS to avoid entering the situation and being surprised in the first place? But then if I need to enter anyway for some other reason, I will still be surprised by the threat I know is there?

Again, it's up to the GM, but as GM I would say no. My example is of NO surprise situation when the party was warned of the ambush ahead of time, and I would expect most GMs to do the same. But what you decide to do with a successful Danger Sense is up to the player, not automatically rolled into combat. If the scout in Situation 2 above had gotten the tingle of Danger Sense but hadn't gone looking for the trouble, there would have been no benefit because the party was already expecting trouble just by being in the area. If, instead of a ravine in enemy territory, the party was strolling through Central Park on a sunny day and King Kong suddenly appeared out of a vortex and started to attack, it would normally be total surprise (unless you had Combat Reflexes). But a Danger Sense coming first would kick that down to partial surprise: you started to expect danger, even on a sunny, peaceful day.

I like your example. Are you saying the difference has to do with knowing the exact location of the enemy?

No, it has to do with knowing the attack is about to happen. You can "expect trouble" without knowing what kind of trouble is about to happen, or even IF trouble is actually going to happen.

Let's suppose I'm about to open a door (in a dungeon for example), and I know that many such doors have enemies behind them, ready to leap out, but I don't know with 100% certainty about this door, nor of the nature of the enemy behind it. Will I be surprised if, upon opening the door, an enemy jumps out? What if I open 100 such doors in a row, and none have enemies? What if they all do?

I wouldn't use surprise in such a routine way. As GM, I would use my explicitly described authority to determine that no surprise exists.

In the ravine example, what if I don't know the enemies' exact location (as in your situation #1), but I know based on knowledge of the local geography that there's only one reasonable place for an ambush? Is it considered surprise if the ambush indeed occurs exactly where I suspected it would? What if there are two such locations, so I approach them both with extreme caution, fully expecting the enemy to jump out each time?

If you know the ambush is going to happen, it's not a surprise, regardless of its exact origin.

I think my problem has to do with the fact that it's an RPG. I don't want anything to depend on whether the player describes his own character as being on high alert for the enemy, expecting a specific danger in a specific place, etc., because it would quickly get boring as PCs are incentivized to constantly invent hypothetical dangers so that they can later claim their character had anticipated the specific type of danger and therefore is not surprised.

This is something I commonly heard when I played D&D. "I'm always suspicious."

But unless you can accurately tell me what it is you're guarding against, BEFORE IT HAPPENS, I'm not going to be convinced. And if you actually try to guard against EVERYTHING, then as GM I'd be very motivated to label you the Boy Who Cried Wolf, and let you be surprised anyway.

If this is about policing players who are trying to abuse the system, I can't think of a better defense than putting it in the hands of the GM.

I would rather have some standard of whether an event was surprising to the PC--CR may come into it, as would DS perhaps, as would skills like Area Knowledge (to know the best local ambush spots), Hidden Lore (to know that trolls like to hide under bridges like this one), Strategy (to know the enemy forces' ambush procedures), etc.

And as the GM, you are encouraged — nay, required — to come up with whatever method you like to determine whether there is surprise. If you just want to arbitrarily decide based on what you know, that's fine. If you want to require skill rolls of the players, that's fine. "The GM decides" doesn't mean the GM can't make use of any method the GM wants.

And none of this has anything to do with rolling 1d and adding bonuses based on the attributes of the leader, which to me sounds appropriate for a military engagement in which everyone is following a certain standard procedure but not for a typical group of adventurers with a myriad of skills and advantages that would seem relevant to the situation.

I disagree. The bonuses due to leaders and those with Combat Reflexes reflect the influence they have on others with their body language, warnings, etc. If the leader dives in one direction, the party will be influenced to follow his or her lead. If someone quickly shouts "Get down!" the others are given a motivation to get down quicker than they themselves could have processed what is going on.