An event occurred in a game & I am interested in people's OPINION & RAW on how this might go.

After some combat, a party has subdued/incapacitated the enemy (NPC's). While trying to figure out what to do with them, a Runner decides to walk up & shoot 1 of them in the head. The other Runners don't want this to occur (yet). So... GM decides that the Runner (let's call the trigger happy person Lady Death) is performing a surprise combat on the NPC's & PC's.

1. Lady Death is performing this action of shooting an NPC in the head. She rolls her surprise dice & wins surprise.
2. She rolls her initiative & it's only marginally decent, let's say a 10.
3. 2 other PC's roll better than her initiative, but because they failed the surprise roll, they cannot do anything to her or against her action.
4. 1 of the other PC's is a mage (let's call him Dark Fader as he will be going "Nnnnooooo!"), & wants to stop Lady Death from killing the NPC.
5. Dark Fader (the mage going "Nnnnoooo!") wants to stop Lady Death (our trigger happy PC), but cannot affect her. So he cast Slow on the area around the NPC being targeted to keep the bullet from blowing out the brains of the NPC.

Can this work? When you are surprised, you can't take any actions against the person who surprised you or against what they are doing... but can you affect the target they wanna do something to?

No house rules, no hand waving... just people's knowledge of the RAW & any opinions that might help (& the logic behind the opinions).

Yup, surprise rules are a huge mess.

AFAIK, you can't do anything to interfere with their action. You could to something to their target only if you were going to anyway, no sneaky crap. He doesn't *know* what she's doing.

i Agree:

During the first Initiative Pass characters are considered surprised by any other characters who scored more hits than they did on the surprise test. A character who is surprised may not directly act toward or react to characters who have surprised him—this includes friends as well as foes.

you stated that Dark Fader cast slow on the hostage inorder to keep the bullet from blowing out the brains of the hostage,. this completed goes against the above rule as Dark Fader was actively and directly attempting to affect Lady Death's action.

what he could do would be to mitigate the consequences - things like immediately casting an healing spell or the like to keep the target alive even if badly injured (say full physical monitor).

i don't think that would be acceptable if the guy casting the heal spell is casting the spell in response to something that hasn't happened yet. if the caster was standing around in the conversation trying to decide what to do with the hostage, then during that caster's turn he should continue the conversation. The action that would cause the caster to decide to cast the heal spell has not happened yet. He can not act or react to it.

now if the hostage was already bleeding out or was seriously injured on the physical condition monitor, and if the caster was Honestly going to cast the spell anyways, then i can see it. But to be honest i believe it is cheesy and meta gaming to cast a heal spell on someone in reaction to something that hasn't happened yet.

However, i do think he would and should be able to"Hold Action" until after the shot and then, as you said, Immediately be able to act. his initiative was high enough to react to Lady Death's action as soon as it was completed. (which is what i think you meant, now that i re read your post)

What you cannot do: use Slow. Ever. Note that it would by RAW if you were German or CGL was willing to produce errata from time to time.

When I read "immediately cast Heal", I understand that as "casting the spell as fast as possible after the target was shot", as a reaction, which would IMHO be allowed.

The key here is that a surprised character with a higher initiative can only react to what happens and before that should only according to what the character knows. Casting "Slow" (or "Armor" for that matter) is a result of something the player knows that his character has not anticipated, so it should be ruled out.

"but I wanted to cast Slow anyways. This guy was talking so damned fast, I didn't understand a word..."

Ok no problem, you cast Slow.

So i resume the situation: A fire an Exex bullet in the head of your prisonner, B cast Slow, so you can see the inside of the head being splatch into the room in slow-motion. Would make an amasing snuff movie for the ones who have a SIMrig on.
B is it good for your spell Drain? Ok, the BackGround Count is raise by 1 now. Who act next ?

i think i was going for that and then reread his post,.. in either case i agree with ya. it was late/early when i was typing this up.



as a Game Master i would call Shenanigans.

when i do the suprise stuff i work it a little bit like some of the "other rpgs" that are out there do it...

i do the suprise test
only the people who pass get a chance of doing something (the person doing the suprising act always goes first)
then once said act is complete i get everyone to roll init

This however completely fails to deliver when someone jumps into the middle of a combat with a surprise action. And the more clever people play, the more often this will happen.

Surprise is a mess. *shrug* It's also very hard to fix, which is why I try not to be too hard on the writers.

Is there a reason why the surprise test is different from the main initiative test? Couldn't you just use one roll for both?

Possibly. I'm not sure how the numbers would turn out differently, but if you're trying to shave a few seconds off the rolling process, you could try it. Obviously, Initiative scores are hits + the Initiative stat, while the Surprise Test is just the hits compared.

The surprise test also gives you a +4 for ambushing. And I believe some powers/'ware specifically only apply to the surprise test? I might be mistaken on that last one though.

Good point. That sounds correct to me.

Also, and maybe people are thinking about this, let's not forget terrain, lighting, range and cover effects, as well as the opportunity for the ambushing party to take some Aim actions. Plan far enough in advance and you can add the kind fo fun and mayhem involving cluster munitions, motion sensors and white phosphorous!

Take Aim and Called Shot for +4 DV can make someone go from living to dead in a single shot.

So can cluster munitions. Seriously though proper prior planning can be the edge in any game.

How did we go from 'Surprise mechanics' to 'I can kill someone'?

Well at this point in the conversation we've basically hit an impasse. So might as well move onto the fun parts!

I would allow Dark Fader to throw himself infront of Lady Deaths bullet, because that would make for a cool scene.

Other than that, no. Dark Fader better hope his jaw doesn't drop cuz he's going to get a mouth full of prisoner brain.

and I would probably say "Why am I not surprised..."

Or the more they meta-game, intentionally or not.

The problem with surprise (and the turn sequence system in general) is that each player isn't having their character do what they think their character would be doing, they are having their character react to what the last action was and where they know they fall in the initiative sequence. So the IP's are never "real time" - they're actor A then actor B then actor C

What we did was develop a house rule that re-works that portion of combat and, so far, it's worked really well and has actually made combat faster and a lot more entertaining.

Brazilian shenanigans, even!

Keeping on the topic of surprise it's impossible to surprise with a spirit just dropping out of the Astral correct? I mean it takes a complex action to emerge and then it can't act until it's next turn. I ask this because we keep getting surprised with spirits and I was quite sure you couldn't do that unless they were already on the physical plane.

part of it is covered in the Declare Actions phase, where everybody says, what he will be doing this IP, dispite what outcome other people's actions will have before you go. We actually never used this like that, maybe we should.

I didn't think you could be surprised once you were in combat. Otherwise reinforcements could always be a "surprise".

To me, the surprise round happens when someone gets the drop on an unaware person. Once you're in combat looking for threats, you're not really unaware.

This is true. I don't see the problem. Someone kicking down a door behind you while you're in midst of dodging bullets from your front will surprise you. Someone who hasn't been seen since the moment bullets started flying, and has been crawling around on the floor, while being obscured by obstacles, to flank your point of cover, will surprise you when he pops up from behind said obstacles in an area that contained nothing hostile first.

Care to share your house rule? I find that my group has a similar problem when it comes to reacting to things that have happened earlier in the pass, or even in the initiative phase (i.e. I shoot a guy, and shoot him again if he doesn't go down, or shoot someone else if he does go down).

At the risk of it getting flamed ....
Combat sequence

1. Players declare the actions they intend to do for all of their IP's for the first turn (GM or players should write it down)
2. GM writes down what the NPC's will be doing for all of their IP's (GM still has to be careful not to metagame)
3. Roll Initiative as normal
4. Actions are then executed (aka rolled) in initiative order through each IP
5. If, before executing their action(s) for an IP, the player wants to change their declared actions for the remainder of the turn (i.e. intended target is already down) they make a "Cancel Action" roll against the following (with no modifiers):

1: No Actions regained. Player must continue with the declared Action for this IP. Player can re-declare all subsequent Actions after this IP.
2: No Actions regained. Declared action is canceled but this IP is lost canceling it. Player can re-declare all subsequent Actions after this IP.
3-4: 1 Simple Action regained. Player can re-declare all subsequent Actions after this IP and 1 Simple Action during this IP.
5-6: Full actions for this IP regained. Player can re-declare all subsequent Actions after this IP and All Actions during this IP.

Other points

• Even though initiative determines which actions happen first the difference is in milliseconds so, effectively, all actions within an IP happen virtually simultaneously. What this means, from a practical standpoint, is any target that is neutralized makes a rea+will roll against the difference in initiative order to the individual who landed the killing shot to still try and get their action off (though with full dmg modifiers)... think two gunfighters drawing down on each other, sometimes only one gets his shot in, sometimes the second shooter is "almost" as fast and manages to get his trigger pulled. If, after being neutralized, they receive more damage in that IP that would, by itself, have neutralized them then they roll against the initiative order difference of those attackers as well in individual rolls. One note: If they decide to attempt to cancel their declared action instead they still roll on the table to see if the action was canceled. If it wasn't canceled (they rolled a 1) then they have to roll to see if it still went off. If it was canceled with a roll of 3-6 they can invoke Dead Man's Trigger to attempt to perform a different action.
• Also, since a whole IP is only 3/4 of a second, any target that is neutralized will not actually hit the ground until the next IP. The benefit here, other than being a little more realistic, is that actions to shoot that target that don't get canceled will still hit the target instead of passing through the spot he was standing in. However, if someone had declared they were shooting the target in a following IP and fail to cancel that action then the bullets will pass through the space the target was in and you get to determine where those stray bullets went
• Characters are still free to hold their actions, however they lose initiative for whichever IP(s) they decide to hold them in. To regain their action during that IP (which is totally optional) they have to announce they want to take their action and what action they want to take before whoever they're trying to jump in front of in the Initiative order executes their action and then they have to pass an opposed Rea+Ini test with them. If they fail the test then they *must* roll a Rea+Ini test against each subsequent person in the IP order before those people execute their declared action until they win the test or theirs is the last action. At that point the declared action occurs. This action cannot be canceled.
• Movement is handled per IP. Since a turn is broken into 4 IP's and you can move x meter's per turn then you can move x/4 meters per IP (whether you actually have any actions in that IP or not). Like actions, you declare where you're moving to and how fast at the start of the turn. If you want to stop before your reach the declared distance/location you make an agi+rea test against your speed in meters/5. If you pass you stop there, if you fail you continue your movement into the next IP then stop. If you glitch the GM gets to use his imagination
• Since the effect of Surprise only happens during the first IP, there's no real reason not to handle surprise as an independent IP outside of the normal combat turn. Everyone rolls surprise test as normal to see if they're surprised. If they aren't surprised they declare their action(s) for the Surprise IP then roll initiative and resolve the IP as above. Once the Surprise IP is complete a regular combat turn starts.

So that's what we've found is fun and more realistic. It still doesn't address the weird time gap for characters with differing numbers of IP. If all the characters in a fight have 1 IP then everyone's actions take 3 seconds but if just one character in the fight has 4 IP then everyone's action suddenly only take .75 seconds and those with 1 IP get to spend the subsequent 2.25 seconds sitting around twiddling their thumbs. I'm sure it also has some grey areas I'm not remembering or we haven't encountered yet. For those we figure out what makes sense and handle it that way. Again, this is just what we do - not saying it's right for everyone (or anyone) else.

If you find your players are still meta-gaming by spending 30min+ before the fight setting up their actions (which a bunch of guys entering into a fight wouldn't really be able to do) you can always have them write down their actions without discussion and pass them to you. It's a little more realistic but I think it detracts from the overall fun of the game since the pre-fight discussions can get pretty entertaining

[Edit: Forgot to add Surprise and declaration alternative ]

It actually notes that surprise can explicitly happen while already in combat. For instance, you and I are firing on a bunch of gangers down the street. An invisible, Concealed, Ruthenium-Polymer coated Ninja with a monowhip sneaks up behind us and attacks us. There is a decent chance we will be surprised by him, unless we had some means of detecting his ultra-stealthy ass.

Conversely, if a bunch of Lone Star cops ar running at us from down a side street, shouting "THERE THEY ARE, GET 'EM!" we probably won't be surprised, because we won't need to make a perception test to notice the obvious reinforcements. Even if we did need to roll, chances are (with a sane GM) we could eat the -2 dice for not using the "Observe in Detail" action and still make the basic 1 hit required not to be surprised by guys coming out of nowhere. Or to put it another way, a Street Sam with cybereyes & ears with enhancements can reasonably expect to roll at least 10 dice on perception checks against being surprised by reinforcements, even if he's not explicitly searcing for them.

Being surprised is an opposed Initiative (Surprise) test. A succesful Perception might give a bonus to this roll, but it won't stop you from being surprised on its own. Seeing something and being able to react to it in time are two different things altogether.

Sigh.



See that word "Unexpectedly?" That's key, there. If you see someone who is about to enter combat, they definitionally cannot "unexpectedly" enter combat. Obviously the GM should adjudicate if surprise is possible on a case by case basis, but if something is "expected" to enter combat - such as seeing charging guards - then obviously the above "surprise while in combat" rules do not apply.

That doesn't compute. If I *see* you arrive, that doesn't make you expected. If you see the guy sprinting into the combat from a mile down the street, fine; it'll take him more than one Turn to arrive. If you knew that the new guard was arriving at 12:02am, that's expected… *maybe*.

And you can't ever have heard them approaching, intercepted a radio communication, had a spirit warn you, smelled cordite, or otherwise had a tip off about something being up before you boot the door down? Every entrant into combat is totally undetected and undetectable until they enter three meters of you?

Seriously, why the hell is this even being argued? Obviously, surprise can happen while in combat. Obviously each individual situation should be adjudicated independently. Obviously you will sometimes need to make a perception check and still risk surprise, and sometimes you won't. Not ever perception test is succeeded/failed immediately before someone fires a gun.

This isn't rocket science. This isn't even computer science. This is basic GMing 101.

I don't recall saying any of those things, nor did *you* mention them before. I just took issue with your implication that a Perception test *categorically* countered 'unexpected', and therefore all Surprise. As you agreed, that's not the case.

I didn't say anything categorical at any time.



Decent chance we will be surprised by him unless we had some means of detecting him. Nowhere did I say if we did detect him we wouldn't have to roll. All dice being equal, we will have +3 on our surprise roll and he'll have +0, because an Ambush modifier can't really be considered applicable if you know it's there. Then it's just some guys who are trying to hide.



Again, nowhere did I say this would defeat the need to roll the basic surprise test, and I'm sorry if you thought it did. What I was implying here is that we probably wouldn't need to make a surprise test because we would be expecting these people to enter combat.

Ah, the gap from 8pm yesterday and 6pm tonight threw me off. Looking just at the last bit where you quote Mardrax, I read that you were disagreeing with his point that 'Perception can't negate Surprise'. I see now that you were only qualifying it.

Sorry for being snippy, too. It just seems like every time I open my mouth on Dumpshock lately, people are arguing crazy points and claiming the "rules are unclear" when they are clear, but require an application of GM adjudication.

Or to put it another way, being the same old Dumpshock, but abnormally concentrated.

Even, in this case, the rules are clear in that they require GM arbirtration.


I took issue with the same thing. Misinterpretation abound!

That said, I could have more fully qualified my statement.