Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Six segments of surprise is crazy. Even a high level party is going to have a hard time recovering from that. Four can be killer, but six could very easily be a TPK with a typical drow party.

Assuming a party like that in D1-3 it seems very unlikely that six segments would ever really come to fruition. Of the nine sample characters, three have 18 dexterity and so negate 3 segments of surprise, three have 17 dexterity and negate 3 segments of surprise, and one has 16 dexterity negating 1 segment of surprise.

That said the suggestion of 6-in-8 would only really apply if you wanted to keep the literal text and apply it to AD&D. It could just as easily be viewed as an exception to the regular rule and be 75% of one surprise segment, though that would be a poor comparison with elves. A 5-in-6 chance of surprise is not unheard of even in the Monster Manual. On the other hand, perhaps surprise should never extend beyond "complete surprise" [i.e. 2 segments], anything over and above that is ignored.

Matthew wrote:

I think we always have to bear in mind the context of G1-3, in that AD&D was itself not entirely complete when they were written...so it is unsurprising to find different takes on rule mechanisms than we might ordinarily expect...Given that elves surprise 4-in-6, I should think drow surprise 6-in-8.

I am not unsettled in that drow might broaden the range of surprise, but I am wondering at the 'rule mechanism'...have I overlooked something all this time, or should one be reading the thief percentages in the very same way?