I saw in another thread Ways mentioning a major advantage of the DD thief being that, (seemingly, as I understand), though the party may be surprised, the thief isn’t….or may not be.
Although that possibility is implied by DD, it's not really what I was getting at
Over in the other thread, I wrote:
DD4 and 5 both give thieves the major advantage of surprising enemy more frequently than usual--which consequently means they are themselves being caught off guard less often. Meaning: they alone are surprised less often.
Surprise is an important advantage, giving one side a free, un-answered "move segment". Which really means: one free
CM turn segment: move, shoot, or melee. So that's a free move, or opportunity to shoot, throw a spell, or (if near enough) to melee attack.
The 3LBBs are characteristically brief with the main passage on surprise in UWA saying that: <<
If the possibility for surprise exists roll a six-sided die for each party concerned. A roll of 1 or 2 indicates the party is surprised>>. Arguably, it's saying that the ref dices independently for surprise, and specific qualities of the parties themselves play no part. But it's ambiguous how, for example, a figure with specific odds of surprising others, or limits on how frequently it can be surprised by others, are meant to interact with this basic chance of surprise.
Both DD4 and DD5 roll all this into (what i think is) the neatest solution: that the ref dices
for each party to surprise the other. But all that nuance doesn't really matter here. What matters is: we have two simultaneous throws of one die; one die for each of two parties. The possible outcomes of these two throws are that neither, either, or both parties could be surprised.
If neither party is surprised, then neither gains any advantage. Likewise, if both parties are surprised, then the surprise segment is effectively wasted by both and neither party gains any advantage. So the surprise advantage emerges only when
exactly one party is surprised.
So how often does this happen?
This is the vanilla, BTB scenario where two parties (A and B) each have a 2 in 6 chance to surprise the other.
The upshot is a 44% chance that neither is surprised, a 22% chance that only B is surprised, a 22% chance that only A is surprised, and an 11% chance that both A and B are surprised. The important thing (for comparisons that follow) is the
ratio of these outcomes:
Neither : B : A : Both == 4:2:2:1.
Now, what happens to this ratio when a DD thief with a 4 in 6 chance to surprise comes along?
Then we get this:
The
green box is our vanilla scenario with 2-in-6 vs 2-in-6 chances to surprise.
The two
blue boxes are our (thief) 4-in-6 vs (regular) 2-in-6,
and our (regular) 2-in-6 vs (thief) 4-in-6 scenarios, respectively.
The
pink box is our (two thieves) 4-in-6 vs 4-in-6 scenario.
(ignore the other examples in between for now, I was just too lazy to remove them)
Importantly, check out the changed ratios of the outcomes in these different scenarios:
For two regular figures: they are
equally likely to surprise each other.
For a thief versus a regular figure: The thief is
FOUR TIMES as likely to surprise the regular figure as the regular figure is to surprise the thief.
machfront this is what I meant, above, when I said "they alone are surprised less often". What I was trying to highlight was: even though it's only the thief's odds of surprising others that are explicitly improved, a side effect is that the odds of
the thief being the only surprised party are also lower.
For the two thieves encountering each other: they are again
equally likely to surprise each other. The differ between this scenario and the two regular figures scenario is that there is less chance of no surprise at all, and more chance that both theives will be surprised, effectively cancelling any possible advantage one may have over the other.
Stepping back, there are 49 possible comparisons of 0- thru 6-in-6 chances to surprise the other party, all shown here:
But realistically, only a subset of these (including the 0 chance row and column, where one side has no chance to surprise and need not throw at all) typically come up in actual play.
So now that I've dragged you all down that giant rabbit hole, I can come back to machfront's original query
a major advantage of the DD thief being that, (seemingly, as I understand), though the party may be surprised, the thief isn’t….or may not be.
Usually, if a thief is being all sneaky sneaky way out in front of the main party, I would probably dice for the thief only on one side, and the monsters/whatever on the other. The main party wouldn't know anything about it until they heard or saw something happening up ahead.
However, if a thief was, say, in the regular marching order, or near enough to "with the party" when they are about to run into monsters, I would dice for the whole party (including the thief) on one side, and the monsters/whatever on the other. The net surprise outcome could be a bit more involved because the thief could (potentially) get their own outcome, different to the main party's outcome, even though both outcomes would be derived from the same dice throws.
Examples:
Suppose we're playing "dicing high is good" (as DD does); the players include a thief (who surprises on a 3-6); the monsters are a bunch of orcs (who surprise on a 5-6).
First one:
Say the monsters dice 6. They have surprised the player party as a whole.
Meanwhile, the players dice 4. So the players as a party have not surprised the monsters. Furthermore, the players are surprised and the orcs are not so the monsters will get a free segment. All this is exactly normal so far.
BUT (now the special extra) because the players diced a 4 the thief only
has surprised the monsters (because he surprises them on a throw of 3-6). This effectively cancels the monsters' surprise advantage against the thief only. Broadly speaking, I'd rule this as: the orcs didn't notice the sneaky thief lurking in the shadows, so they couldn't target him in their free segment against the rest of the party.
Another one:
Suppose the monsters dice 3 this time. Now they haven't surprised the player party at all.
The players dice 4 once again, so the main party hasn't surprised the monsters either (they need a 5-6 to do so), but the thief only
has surprised the monsters (because, remember, he surprises them on a throw of 3-6). This time the thief
only has surprised the monsters, so the thief alone gets a free segment. In this case, I'd rule that the sneaky thief heard something, noticed something, or just intuited something was about to happen, and so wins a free segment before everyone else catches on.
Yes, they are still searching for a name for my condition. But I hope that helps some?
