Question regarding Surprise

[Melkor]

Another question in preperation for Wednesday night's game:
Did I read correctly that a character that doesn't achieve at least one success on his roll to avoid being surprised can do nothing for an entire round ? Not even defend (but a character that hesitates to throw red or white at the start of combat may ONLY defend for an entire round) ?

Dang! That's deadly - two exchanges with no defense......I'd say it's a death sentence for sure.....as it should be I suppose.

Thanks again.

[Lance D. Allen]

Yup. It's become a running joke in my group that whenever I turn to one of the players, that I'm going to say "Roll Surprise" because I did so... two, three times in the first session with that character.

Surprise is indeed a deadly thing.. though, looking at it more closely, I might consider house-ruling it that if you fail but survive the first exchange with dice left over (not particularly likely.. If you surprise someone, why wouldn't you try to take them out immediately?) you can attempt to defend on the second exchange.

[Valamir]

My personal, but untested house rule for surprise would be to have the character roll their entire CP vs a target number set by how difficult the surprise was.

They have a 0 CP for the first exchange.
Their CP for the second exchange is then however many dice succeeded from the above roll.  (i.e. the failed dice are considered spent and wasted on recovering from surprise, the successful dice are what's left over).

If they failed all of the dice than the process continues the next round with the TN now 1/2 what is was before and the successful dice being available for both exchanges.


Rolling the CP in this manner I feel captures both the Reflex portion of reacting to surprise as well as the training portion of being always on ones toes.

[Lance D. Allen]

So, wait.

The rolling of the CP is before or after the actual surprise roll? If they don't get a chance to defend, they very well may be dead before the dice that "succeeded" come into play.

[Valamir]

So, wait.

The rolling of the CP is before or after the actual surprise roll? If they don't get a chance to defend, they very well may be dead before the dice that "succeeded" come into play.

After, as a way of determining how screwed they are from being surprised.  Instead of a blanket, no action for the entire round.

[Pyske]

So, wait.

The rolling of the CP is before or after the actual surprise roll? If they don't get a chance to defend, they very well may be dead before the dice that "succeeded" come into play.

After, as a way of determining how screwed they are from being surprised.  Instead of a blanket, no action for the entire round.

Although the combination of this rule (reducing the combat pool by a percentage) with the inability to take initiative during the round might be a good way to house rule a more "forgiving" version of surprise.  One would still have dramatically fewer dice to defend with than normal, without the instant kill effect of having none at all for that first exchange.

However, this might have the undesired effect that someone with a suficiently large combat pool is immune to the knife in the ribs from an untrained peasant.  However, if the target number was high enough, the pool size required to reach such a feat starts getting obscenely large...

. . . . . . . -- Eric

[Valamir]

Quite.  The rule as I concieve it now (in all its unplaytested glory) would still have you defenseless in the first exchange for that initial knife to the ribs.

But someone with a godawful CP is going to have both a high Reflex and a high proficiency.  Given the holistic nature of TROS proficiencies, it would seem quite reasonable for such a person to be able to respond in the second exchange (assumeing he's still alive) with a sizeable pool.

[Lance D. Allen]

With that clarification, I like.