Hi all,

I am about to try the introductory adventure "Forsaken Bounty" that I picked up at GenCon. In the condensed aka "quick start" rules it talks about determining surprise, but then it doesn't tell you how to do it /roll for it. How does one determine if anyone (enemies or PC's) are surprised at the start of combat?

Thanks,
Ed

HI, I usually go with a what makes sense sort of thing. If my pc's bust in a door the guys on the other side (if not aware of the pc's) are surprised, on th flip side if they ARE aware and have had a little time the PC's might be surprised. Basically you just ask would i be surprised in that situation.

If they fail an awareness check of the actions of the incoming party they remain unaware and will be surprised. You can handle it by giving them minuses on their initiative, or you can give them minuses for their first round actions, or even further than that you can skip their whole first round and allow the ambushing party to do all their actions first.

Yes...a die-roll mechanic is what I was looking for, though an "Awareness check" seems to create surprise all too much. Most beginning PC's have an Awareness score in the 30's....which means they are surprised about two-thirds of the time. Does anybody who has the rulebook care to clarify this?

As written, the GM either determines whether people are surprised or not. While one of the factors that creates a situation of surprise may have been from an Opposed Test between one of the sneaky skills vs. Awareness, in general there are no checks. Simply put, if a group creates a situation where they are attacking people who don't know they are there, it counts as Surprise. However, creating that situation may require some skills checks/contests.

Characters with Rapid Reaction get an Agility Test to avoid being surprised.

BostonEd said:

The thing with Dark Heresy (and Rogue Trader as well, based on the quick-start rules) is that quite a lot of play is spent putting yourself in a position to gain extra modifiers to your base stats. For example a character with BS 30 is a pretty poor shot until he aims as a full-round action then upens up on full-auto.

Similarly, there will be circumstances that increase and decrease awareness: In the aforementioned example of guards behind a door; are the guards paying attention to the door or playing cards? Are the assaulting group sneaking up to the door then attempting to determine what the guards are up to, or clattering down a metal walkway at full tilt?