Among the rule changes in the Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Player’s HandbookA certain condition has received a great degree. Surprise, once one of the most powerful tools in a player’s or DM’s belt to quickly turn the tide of battle to significantly favor one side, has lost its bite. how so Builds that rely on ambushing enemies and receiving surprise attacks have decreased in strength.
Admittedly, surprise, as it worked in earlier versions of 5e, is probably too powerful, in addition to being commonly misunderstood. The new clarifications, which are already available in the free version of the new rules on D&D Beyond, are simpler and less impactful on the flow of combat. Some players, tired of being ambushed on the road by monsters, may see this as a good thing. Others may already be mourning the loss of their surprise attack strategies that will no longer be viable.
Surprise has been a meeting destroyer in past editions
End a fight before it starts
As it worked before, surprise could be used to essentially give one side of a fight an extra round. Contrary to popular misconception, however, there was no such thing as a “surprise round”. rather, Creatures caught unawares or off guard when an action starts take multiple penalties from this condition. They get no action or movement on their turn, and they can’t take reactions until the end of their first turn when the surprised condition ends. In addition, attack rolls against surprised creatures have advantage.
Creatures still roll initiative at the start of combat, even if surprised. There’s a chance that they could roll higher than the creatures ambushing them. In this case, they would still not get any action on their turn, but they could take reactions later in the round, and attacks against them would no longer have an advantage.
That’s a lot, and certain builds can use surprise to wipe out their opponents. Gloomstalker Rangers and Assassin Rogues, in particular, gain attack and damage bonuses in the first round of combat and against creatures that have not yet gone through the initiative. And even without the subclass, smart players who get multiple turns to play without enemies who can do anything about it can tip the fight in their favor right at the start. Of course, stealthy enemies could do the same, which made the Agility feat valuable to avoid the effects of surprise.
New surprise is not useless but is nowhere near as devastating
These changes devalue ambush tactics and the power of remaining alert
The new surprise rules only affect initiative: If a creature is surprised, it has disadvantage on its initiative roll at the start of combat. This can mean that even if players go through the trouble of planning an ambush, they may roll badly and end up going after their enemies anyway. This makes surprise less of a threatening condition, and for better or worse, getting ambushed less scary.
Related
Interestingly enough, rules-as-written Can actually help assassin rogues trigger their abilities more often. They rely on getting a higher initiative roll to gain advantage and deal with first-turn critical hits, something previous surprise rules technically didn’t affect. But for the Gloomstalker and other builds created around acting while enemies are still too dazed to react, this is a major downgrade.