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“Parley” is the French word for “everyone else is flat-footed and bare-handed”.
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Please post the actual panel :)
You WOULD NOT believe what the problem was. Well, you probably would. But it’s fixed now.
Ah, murdering the bad guy’s envoy. One of the edgy action hero’s favorite Geneva Convention violations, along with “playing dead” and “pretending to surrender before shooting the bad guys”.
Edit: and I reloaded the page to make this its own post and it failed (my joke about “well this adventuring party didn’t sign any geneva’s conventions didn’t seem worth it).
I’m not sure how explicitly the comic was or was not “set” in 3rd/3.x/3.5 edition, but as always I must point out how the after-text is not how it works (whether it was entirely joke or not I don’t know). Which is also mentioned in the original comments (searching for “initiative”), though not as strongly as I would have, with one person pointing it out and another responding that “that’s a good way to handle it,” but it’s not a “good” way to handle it: it is the only correct way to handle it.
Because 3.x is very clear that if both parties are aware of and able to act against each other, you have to roll initiative. Any whining about “oh but they don’t know I’m about to attack them so they’re not aware,” which many DMs seem to fall for, probably because they would do it themselves, is just flat-out not what the rules say. This ends up being one of the things you need to keep in the back of your head whenever someone is going on about how easy or hard or just in general how “DnD works,” because it both a hugely popular and possibly massive majority of how people play, and also blatantly breaking basic rules of the game.
Of course now that I think about it, they might have actually changed it in new editions and basically made this “be evil= get surprise round” canon. I seem to recall reading the newer initiative section and laughing at how they’d got rid of the simple checklist and examples in favor of “eh whoever the DM thinks is surprising gets surprise.” Let’s check. . . well sort of. this 5e PHB says that “the DM determines it” followed immediately by anyone “being stealthy” can roll and anyone who doesn’t notice is surprised. This can be extrapolated into the older checklist, but is also very prone to the player just saying “I do X stealthily” and the DM letting them have surprise whenever they want it (the 5e DMG makes no further comment). So yes, very 5e “there are rules but only if the DM notices and enforces them.”
As I recall from my 3.5ed days, it did partially work like that.
Even without a surprise round, everyone is flatfooted until their first turn comes around (barring special abilities like Uncanny Dodge), and unless you already had your weapon drawn before the fight, you’d have your hands empty at the start of your turn.
To get an actual surprise round, you’d need to win some kind of opposed skill roll, yes (and bluff vs sense motive could achieve that).
But if Aragorn has a great initiative modifier and maybe has quickdraw, this can happen. But yes, that’s a far cry from ‘parley = guaranteed surprise attack’.
Though in high level DnD, this should be unlikely to take enough HP of a non-trivial opponent to end the fight.
5E mostly does it the same way as 3.x, that you roll initiative when hostilities start. You can use stealth to suprise an enemy (as in: hide before they see you, roll better than their perception, jump at them). But in the latest 2024 update, surprise doesn’t grant a full round of pounding on the basically already defeated enemies: only disadvantage on the surprised’s initiative.
I think this falls under “rule of funny”.
Another common one is ‘dress up in the enemy uniforms’ and the related, but less common ‘march our troops under a stolen enemy banner’.
Fun fact! The Khwarazmian Shah, Muhammad II, killed a diplomatic envoy that Genghis Khan had sent to inquire about the disappearance of one of his trade caravans. In response, Genghis launched one of his most ruthless and thorough invasions and almost single-handedly wiped out the entire burgeoning Muslim empire in the Middle East. If it wasn’t for his unexpected death (and his sons pulled back to argue over who would become the next Khan), the modern day Middle East might look very, VERY different today.
This kind of thing would be fun to do if the DM weren’t so invested in his own stories and morals that he exact retribution on us not as the NPCs might, or based on what would be fun, but as his sense of propriety demands. As you can tell, I’ve never been a DM :D
That is a pitfall of GMing, letting go of the story you worked so hard on when it would make the game more fun overall.
In writing it’s called ‘murder your darlings’, but it applies to GMing as well: if you’re so proud of something you’ve come up with you don’t want to let go of it, consider extra hard whether letting go of it would in fact be better.
I know I struggle with that when running.
I was trying to think of another word to murder (morals, propriety, mores, pedantry) but all I can think of now is Pride & Prejudice, and Sense & Sensibility. All four of those come up so much in games, and must be difficult to let go of as a DM!
I remember while reading LOTR I often thought JRR just couldn’t bear to have his beloved characters die. Fate and magic seemed to always step in to rescue them when they are in mortal danger. I especially felt he pushed the boundaries when Sam entered Minas Morgul and rescued Frodo who had survived an attack by Shelob!
It was probably pushing a bit far, but it was also the only way Sam would take the Ring from Frodo, without which there could not have been a scene of Sam giving it back.
I think the character that stood out as the biggest ‘darling’ was Prince Imrahil. Turned up out of nowhere and sorted everything out. He and Glorfindel probably should have just gone and 2v2ed Sauron and the Witch King easy. :D