Why is my party surprised in about 80% of travel encounters?

[BoogieMan]

I usually travel at normal or slow speed. Yet we are almost always surprised during any travel encounter.

As a fun bonus, we also like to travel super closely packed, elbow to elbow even, so that when we are inevitably surprised, two enemy mages can AOE wreck us extra easily.

I have a Ranger with perception and so forth. Doesn't seem to matter whatsoever.

EDIT:

The issue almost entirely stopped once my party hit level 7. From there it felt natural, only got surprised in 1 out of 3 or 4 encounters. Seems to be an issue with low level parties.

[Grinnar]

Yeah, I was reading some of the replies and it made me curious if I was wrong about it bein survival and it being perception. So I uhh... I dunno.

[EdrickV]

The survival check may be a check that I understand is sometimes done at the beginning of combat to identify an unknown creature?

[Blackdragon]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von EdrickV:

Ah, that's not quite what this thread is about, this thread was about being surprised/getting surprise while travelling the world map.

Well, if surprise works a certain way on the tactical map, it is likely to work the same on the overmap, no? After all, there shouldn't be different rules for the same thing, that would be absurd.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von EdrickV:

The survival check may be a check that I understand is sometimes done at the beginning of combat to identify an unknown creature?

I thought it was rather clearly implied to be related to the surprise condition:

https://imgur.com/AYn3cxM

That was the first check in the entire encounter, and the surprised condition is indented to it, implicitly marking causality. What's interesting though, is that the character making the check is not the character attacking the target... and there's only one check rather than four (which may feed into the theory of group surprise). The character making the check also had the highest Survival bonus in the group. I am not certain about this either, perhaps more experiments are in order.

As to the identify creature survival check, I thought it was made at the end of combat:

https://imgur.com/sZ3Uk2Q

Previously the "creature data" was updated after this check, by now this enemy is well known so no update. However, I did note the DC is the same in both checks, but that may only mean that they're following the same formula, not carrying the same effect.

________

Part 2

All right, after more experiments I stand re-re-corrected: the Survival checks at the beginning of combat are most likely related to identifying the enemy creature. Just tested it in different conditions:

1) On a completely unknown creature, after the initial Survival check the creature's window indicated "Knowledge: 1/4" when before it was "Knowledge: 0/4";

2) On a completely known creature ("Knowledge 4/4") there was NO survival check made at the beginning of combat, though the creature was Surprised.

This brings us back to the question of what determines surprise. Well, after experimentation, it seems to go as follows:

- if your group is not in stealth, enemies will run up to it and begin combat with normal initiative, no surprise for anyone;

- if your group is in stealth, enemies will ignore it if you keep them outside the "detection range" (wavy circles around around your characters), allowing you to attack them from stealth and causing surprise automatically (no check of any kind is apparently made);

- the stealth circles depend on your stealth score apparently, so higher score - smaller circle. If you get close to the enemy so it's inside the circle, the stealth indicator (hooded head) appears with a colored bar filling at a certain speed, probably also depending on your stealth score and possibly also the enemy's (passive?) perception. During this time, until the bar is filled, you can also attack the enemy and get surprise (as well as advantage for being hidden).

Those are all pretty basic points, anyone who used stealth in game is probably already acquanted with them. What they do show is that there is no special "surprise" calculation and it's all simply based on whether you are undetected by your target at moment of attack, which gives you the benefit of surprise. Obviously high stealth increases these chances, however even with relatively low stealth and wearing heavy armor you can still surprise enemies on the tactical map if you move carefully.

As to the overmap movement, I haven't experimented much with it yet, but I would assume it's also dependent on stealth vs. perception, as rules would require.

[EdrickV]

The traveling surprise encounter system does use perception, because travel speed can apply a modifier to perception. That much I know. The actual rolls are not shown in the log, and I didn't have any luck with the Data Viewer in finding any variables they might be stored in. (There is a /ton/ of data to look through, and searches for things like surprise didn't help.)

There's also the question of how watch rotation while camping might work. One thing that does differ from regular 5e rules, is that the game uses group surprise rather then individual surprise checks for each character. So that brings up the question: Who are the checks based on in various situations? It wouldn't make sense for a group of goblins to be making a stealth check vs the passive perception of a character who is asleep, for example. And in a mixed group of monsters attempting to ambush the party, is the stealth check done by the most stealthy or the least stealthy?

[Blackdragon]

"Group surprise" can mean different things. In my example above, the Survival check was made by the character with highest Survival. Granted, it's apparently not related to surprise, but it shows how the game can select a party member with the highest score in a skill and use that party member to determine a skill check outcome for the whole group.

If we assume the game follows these rules:

1) Surprise = one side is unseen while the other is seen,
2) Unseen = winning DEX (Stealth) vs. WIS (Perception or passive perception) check,
3) Seen = losing DEX (Stealth) vs. WIS (Perception) check,

then it's obvious characters with high Stealth and Perception scores (as well as other related bonuses, like Darkvision if it's night time) have the advantage to surprise rather than be surprised.

As I understand, it's not quite clear whether the game checks every party member for surprise (as it should per PnP rules) or uses "group surprise", and if the latter, whether "group surprise" means selecting one party member (presumably with highest scores, but maybe with lowest scores?) to represent the group, or somehow averaging the Stealth and Perception scores of all party members to determine a "group score" that is then used.

A good experiment therefore would be to compare traveling across several different parties:

1) A party that contains 1 member with high Stealth and Perception scores, others having them purposefully low;
2) A party that contains 1 member with high Stealth and another member with high Perception, others having them low;
3) A party where all members have high Stealth and high Perception.

That would help us to determine how surprise actually works on the overmap.

[yacks]

Yeah it feels totally broken to me. I only travel in slow mode as food rains down from the skies and you never need to ration it, and even then EVERY.SINGLE.ENCOUNTER I am surprised and i have a Rogue and Ranger in the party. Please fix this, it's obviously broken.

[Jimbob]

Yeah, I was wondering if there was a bug in my game until I came here and saw this thread. I's a long time since I played DnD, but as I recall, a party only gets surprised if everyone fails their dice rolls. I've got a Ranger with a Wis score of 20, so nobody should be getting the drop on us- at least, not once a day like clockwork. If the Devs are reading this, It'd be nice to see an acknowledgement that clearly something isn't working right.

[Saigoth_74]

Actually I been noticing that Surprise happens to my play though the most when using Normal or Slow. When I use Fast I normally always end up being the one surprising the enemies. That I believe is a true bug. Should be handled in a way where slow takes longer, but offers advantage vs surprise encounters. Normal should be even chance. Where fast should mean you have disadvantage on the roll and become surprised in turn easier.

It seems its what they setup, but mine seems backwards, like the Slow offers a penalty to my group instead of the other way around.

[Twitch.tv/KAEN_SG]

Just to add my data...

I have an anti-surprise party... All Sylvan Elves (no sleep).. all Dex 18-20. One Oblivion Cleric... playing on Cataclysm Difficulty and I have been surprised 3-4 times while travelling from level 1 to 5. I only travel in "Fast" mode though, mostly because I enjoy grinding random encounters for extra gold and xp. 2 of the surprises seem to be scripted, ie. first encounter after leaving town... and one encounter after picking up the crown. My party is now lvl 6 and my cleric got to 22 wis and I haven't been surprised for some time now.

Oblivion Cleric is definitely weaker in general except for the sole benefit of safe travelling.

[gmVASID]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Grinnar:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von easytarget:

Because of bad game design.

Your stats largely impact your surprise state. How is that bad game design when it's also in the core rule books?

I call ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on this. My level 10 party was still getting surprised on random encounters.

[Grinnar]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von VΛSID:

I call ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on this. My level 10 party was still getting surprised on random encounters.

What's your survival skill?

[Pup]

Survival doesn't have any effect on being surprise from what I can tell, as it shouldn't as 5e rules pit Perception against Stealth, not Survival against Stealth as that wouldn't really make much sense. Survival is for noticing tracks, finding food and stuff in the wild while traveling, and recognizing monsters. You make Survival checks after beating enemies to see if you learn extra information on them for the bestiary or not. You make Survival checks while traveling to see if you find extra rations or not. You roll Perception to see if you perceive enemies sneaking up on you.

[Joe Jinis]

I was systematically surprised while travelling ( 100% slow ) until I switched to "Fast" after reading the forums. Now I am aware/spotter 75% of the time, I think there are clearly bugs :D
I have a cleric and a ranger, but only 4 in Perception.
I even seem to find the same amount of food and random craftings components.

The only "advantage" of traveling slow, would be for crafting maybe :x