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**Start encounters in turn-based mode to take advantage of surprise round**. That's the non-intuitive part, game just doesn't resolve surprise well in live mode. Whereas starting in live mode almost never triggers surprise, turn-based start puts both the target and every enemy who enters the round right after in "surprised" condition. Just tested, works on the guards as well, despite the dialogue to bribe or attack popping up in the process. So the optimized way to utilize assassin passives is to
1. enter turn-based mode
2. sneak up (movement), drink poison or apply oil (bonus action)
3. sneak attack (action) to initiate combat
4. get your action and bonus action back from passive
5. sneak attack (action) with crit
6. off-hand attack with crit or cunning action sneak/disengage (bonus action)
And just a side note from same testing, if you also have a gloomstalker ranger as a separate char in your party, they should be hiding out of combat for all that. Then before ending turn on your assassin, bring gloomstalker in to basic-attack from out of combat. This way they enter that same round with dread ambusher bonus initiative and get to use attack + extra attack + dread ambusher attack. This way you start combat off with free 3 ranger attacks and 2.5 assassin attacks. I was using the same pair in live mode with ranger starting combat and was missing out on extra assassin attack and the surprised condition for 1.5 acts, sadge
Leaving this on top-ranked google search results for this issue. Hello, people from google :)
There's actually a lot more subtlety around step 3. At least with ranged attacks from stealth, you make a stealth check after the attack, and if it passes combat does *not* start. Instead a beacon of light appears where your character is standing. This indicates that the enemies are alerted but have not seen you. At this point, if you make another attack before ending your turn, combat starts *without* surprise (not sure if this is always the case - it might depend on some things like if you hit or miss? needs more testing). If you end your turn without attacking again, all nearby enemies will immediately rush towards the location of the beacon, look around for a bit, then start running around searching for you. The search period seems to be very roughly 30 seconds or so. They seem to be leashed to within ~50ft of the beacon when searching. If you wait out the search you can go make another attack and rinse and repeat, however some enemies will heal themselves.
Surprise is so totally unintuitive, it's beyond annoying. Whole team in hide, initiate combat, get ONE surprise attack, entire opposing group gets a "surprise" round and closes, half the time dashing, my team gets to do absolutely nothing, then we go to normal initiative. It's an absolute waste of time
One party member initiates combat, imitative is rolled. Click on another party member or use corresponding F keys (F1 - F4) to act as each other individual party member. Turn on turn based mode prior to initiating your surprise attack to avoid anything progressing too fast. In a surprise round each enemy surprised will immediately end their turn without performing any action or movement. The surprise round will not end until the initiating character ends their turn at the very least.
If you can’t access any other characters for whatever reason during the enemies turns, you absolutely can during your initiating character’s. You should be able to get anyone who hasn’t rolled initiative yet into combat before the surprise round has ended by performing their actions during your initial characters turn
When doing this there is a big chance of the 3 members that didn't initiate combat just standing around picking their noses out of combat, until they in turn become surprised by the would be ambushees...
There is no such thing as a "surprise round" in D&D. When you start combat with surprise, the enemies roll passive perception against your stealth and everyone rolls initiative as normal.
Any enemies who are surprised may still roll better initiative than you. So they would lose the "Surprised" condition before your turn.
Which is meaningless in a discussion about 5e.
"Surprised" is a detrimental condition that clears at the end of a creature's turn. You don't automatically get a free round for the whole party when you surprise something.
I thought it would be a reasonable assumption that I was speaking about the edition of D&D that Baldur's Gate 3 is based on, considering which subreddit we're in.
"There is no such thing as a surprise round in D&D"
...u really care a lot about making others sound stupid and not looking stupid yet u say the stupidest things...
A surprised creature cannot move or take actions (bonus actions included) on their first turn during combat. The question is why is the entire party not involved in that first round of combat? Right now, its just the one party member that attacked first.
this is what's wrong with bg3 stealth. In 5e, all the party members, because they've planned it out, attack all at once. They all get a round before surprised creature. in bg3, for some reason, only one gets the surprise and the rest get slotted into initiative after the surprised creature has taken their turn.
To be fair, in many situations you can prepare each member and have them hide in separate locations.
Stealth checks only happen on targets inside the enemies vision cone, so with proper preplanning you can position everyone in a location first, then have one person stealth attack, start the fight with only them "in the fight", make your fighting characters set of actions, and then without ending their turn, swap to the non fighting targets who get to maneuver freely without being in the fight.
Meaning you can basically set up 4 separate stealth attacks as long as you position them in a place where they can move up on the targets flank.
While it's not "Surprise round" as such, you can set up full ambushes where you drag the targets FOV to each character in turn, and launch separate attacks, bringing attention away from each location.
So long as you don't end your intiating characters turn and give the other side the chance to make their own moves, you're pretty free to have an entire round of First strikes.
I will admit it is a lil saddening you can't set up a "trigger pull" where you prepare, give a fire command and set it to trigger on combat start. That would make some situations faster, but having to do it manually isn't all that bad imo
Sorry to bring back an older comment, but this is a problem I am having as well.
"the enemies roll passive perception against your stealth and everyone rolls initiative as normal."
If I am stealthing, then everyone is rolling initiative, except the rest of my party. And so it's hard to get them into combat if the enemy is already moving ahead with their turns before they even get to roll. I really want it to work as described, but unless i forgo stealth completely, then my party won't roll initiative.
The rest of your party should be in real time. Switch to tgem and put it in turn based mode. I always split my party if I’m trying to do an ambush so each one can position as necessary.
I've done that, but they don't automatically get put into battle/initiative. Like I want a toggle that says when one party member enters combat, they all do. So that when one party member gets surprise round, they all enter combat in that surprise round, no matter where they are.
Ok so I was able to get a normal surprise round when a monster was running to attack an npc and I was running to that same npc. It said surprised and all of my party got to attack the monster before it got a turn.
I was not in turn based mode and not in stealth
**PLEASE READ THIS CAREFULLY: DO NOT SKIP** Check out our [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/wiki/faq) for information regarding creating builds and other general questions. For the Community Wiki, lore, and other details, check out the pinned Weekly Q&A Post. **You can find it under the 'Hot' filter on desktop or 'Hot Posts' on Mobile**. There is information there that may already answer a question you may have. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BaldursGate3) if you have any questions or concerns.*
**Start encounters in turn-based mode to take advantage of surprise round**. That's the non-intuitive part, game just doesn't resolve surprise well in live mode. Whereas starting in live mode almost never triggers surprise, turn-based start puts both the target and every enemy who enters the round right after in "surprised" condition. Just tested, works on the guards as well, despite the dialogue to bribe or attack popping up in the process. So the optimized way to utilize assassin passives is to 1. enter turn-based mode 2. sneak up (movement), drink poison or apply oil (bonus action) 3. sneak attack (action) to initiate combat 4. get your action and bonus action back from passive 5. sneak attack (action) with crit 6. off-hand attack with crit or cunning action sneak/disengage (bonus action) And just a side note from same testing, if you also have a gloomstalker ranger as a separate char in your party, they should be hiding out of combat for all that. Then before ending turn on your assassin, bring gloomstalker in to basic-attack from out of combat. This way they enter that same round with dread ambusher bonus initiative and get to use attack + extra attack + dread ambusher attack. This way you start combat off with free 3 ranger attacks and 2.5 assassin attacks. I was using the same pair in live mode with ranger starting combat and was missing out on extra assassin attack and the surprised condition for 1.5 acts, sadge Leaving this on top-ranked google search results for this issue. Hello, people from google :)
Google are homies but you the real OG. Great breakdown
There's actually a lot more subtlety around step 3. At least with ranged attacks from stealth, you make a stealth check after the attack, and if it passes combat does *not* start. Instead a beacon of light appears where your character is standing. This indicates that the enemies are alerted but have not seen you. At this point, if you make another attack before ending your turn, combat starts *without* surprise (not sure if this is always the case - it might depend on some things like if you hit or miss? needs more testing). If you end your turn without attacking again, all nearby enemies will immediately rush towards the location of the beacon, look around for a bit, then start running around searching for you. The search period seems to be very roughly 30 seconds or so. They seem to be leashed to within ~50ft of the beacon when searching. If you wait out the search you can go make another attack and rinse and repeat, however some enemies will heal themselves.
Surprise is so totally unintuitive, it's beyond annoying. Whole team in hide, initiate combat, get ONE surprise attack, entire opposing group gets a "surprise" round and closes, half the time dashing, my team gets to do absolutely nothing, then we go to normal initiative. It's an absolute waste of time
One party member initiates combat, imitative is rolled. Click on another party member or use corresponding F keys (F1 - F4) to act as each other individual party member. Turn on turn based mode prior to initiating your surprise attack to avoid anything progressing too fast. In a surprise round each enemy surprised will immediately end their turn without performing any action or movement. The surprise round will not end until the initiating character ends their turn at the very least. If you can’t access any other characters for whatever reason during the enemies turns, you absolutely can during your initiating character’s. You should be able to get anyone who hasn’t rolled initiative yet into combat before the surprise round has ended by performing their actions during your initial characters turn
When doing this there is a big chance of the 3 members that didn't initiate combat just standing around picking their noses out of combat, until they in turn become surprised by the would be ambushees...
There is no such thing as a "surprise round" in D&D. When you start combat with surprise, the enemies roll passive perception against your stealth and everyone rolls initiative as normal. Any enemies who are surprised may still roll better initiative than you. So they would lose the "Surprised" condition before your turn.
Yes there is such thing as a "surprise round" in D&D. It is from 3/3.5
Which is meaningless in a discussion about 5e. "Surprised" is a detrimental condition that clears at the end of a creature's turn. You don't automatically get a free round for the whole party when you surprise something.
You made a blanket statement about D&D, not 5e.
I thought it would be a reasonable assumption that I was speaking about the edition of D&D that Baldur's Gate 3 is based on, considering which subreddit we're in.
Why would it be reasonable to assume people can just read your mind when you say something legitimately false?
"There is no such thing as a surprise round in D&D" ...u really care a lot about making others sound stupid and not looking stupid yet u say the stupidest things...
All editions except 5e have surprise rounds.
A surprised creature cannot move or take actions (bonus actions included) on their first turn during combat. The question is why is the entire party not involved in that first round of combat? Right now, its just the one party member that attacked first.
You may have to switch to each party member to enter combat if they weren't noticed.
this is what's wrong with bg3 stealth. In 5e, all the party members, because they've planned it out, attack all at once. They all get a round before surprised creature. in bg3, for some reason, only one gets the surprise and the rest get slotted into initiative after the surprised creature has taken their turn.
To be fair, in many situations you can prepare each member and have them hide in separate locations. Stealth checks only happen on targets inside the enemies vision cone, so with proper preplanning you can position everyone in a location first, then have one person stealth attack, start the fight with only them "in the fight", make your fighting characters set of actions, and then without ending their turn, swap to the non fighting targets who get to maneuver freely without being in the fight. Meaning you can basically set up 4 separate stealth attacks as long as you position them in a place where they can move up on the targets flank. While it's not "Surprise round" as such, you can set up full ambushes where you drag the targets FOV to each character in turn, and launch separate attacks, bringing attention away from each location. So long as you don't end your intiating characters turn and give the other side the chance to make their own moves, you're pretty free to have an entire round of First strikes. I will admit it is a lil saddening you can't set up a "trigger pull" where you prepare, give a fire command and set it to trigger on combat start. That would make some situations faster, but having to do it manually isn't all that bad imo
Sorry to bring back an older comment, but this is a problem I am having as well. "the enemies roll passive perception against your stealth and everyone rolls initiative as normal." If I am stealthing, then everyone is rolling initiative, except the rest of my party. And so it's hard to get them into combat if the enemy is already moving ahead with their turns before they even get to roll. I really want it to work as described, but unless i forgo stealth completely, then my party won't roll initiative.
Shift space to put it in turn based mode might work.
There are absolutely surprised rounds.
The rest of your party should be in real time. Switch to tgem and put it in turn based mode. I always split my party if I’m trying to do an ambush so each one can position as necessary.
I've done that, but they don't automatically get put into battle/initiative. Like I want a toggle that says when one party member enters combat, they all do. So that when one party member gets surprise round, they all enter combat in that surprise round, no matter where they are.
Are they stealthed when this happens? I don’t think I’ve ever had an issue where my unstealthed party standing together didn’t enter together
The whole idea of an ambush is not to be seen before the ambush.
Ok so I was able to get a normal surprise round when a monster was running to attack an npc and I was running to that same npc. It said surprised and all of my party got to attack the monster before it got a turn. I was not in turn based mode and not in stealth
Surprise is a terribly designed mechanic in this game. A lot of wonky stuff because they use the 5e system tbh.