Initiative

Initiative determines the order of turns during combat.

Rolling Initiative

When combat begins, every participating combatant rolls  d20 + Dexterity Modifier to determine their position in the initiative order. The participant with the highest roll goes first and the particpant with the lowest roll goes last. If two participants roll the same Initiative result, the one with a higher Dexterity Score goes first.

Surprised

Surprised is a special condition that overrides the initiative roll made by a creature for the first round of combat. When one side of a combat encounter is unaware of the other side, they may be surprised. A surprised creature cannot take any Actions or Reactions for one combat round.

Surprise can be achieved when initiating combat by attacking an unaware enemy while Hidden.

Notes about surprised:

• Some creatures, even when surprised themselves, may call out to nearby allies to prevent them from being surprised.
• Certain combat encounters are rigged to always surprise either the player's party or the enemy party when the proper conditions are met. For example:
  • The first encounter with the Lesser Imps during the Prologue always grants the player a surprise round.
  • A Mimic will always surprise the player's party when interacting with the object it's disguised as.
• Characters with the Alert feat cannot be surprised.