A Dark and Stormy Knight IC [3.5]

[zlefin]

As the piece of door is thrown through the doorway Lars notices a perturbation; it looks as if there was something in the doorway; suddenly a spider as large as a man rushes out of the room! you must have disturbed its web across the doorway.

Spoiler: ooc notes about decision process

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not entirely sure how best to adjudicate the situation with respect to surprise/initiative; you were being careful; you made the spot check to notice the web due to a circumstance bonus for having tossed something through it, but not the check to see the spider who has a huge hide bonus. the spider could sense you the whole time with its tremorsense even before you neared its web. it just seems odd to give it an entire surprise round, then possibly winning initiative in the next round as well, when Lars was being careful and ready; the rest of the party of course is going to be unaware of this until Lars' screams for help, as they're still in the other room with the coins.
PS I made a bunch of spot checks offline to see how all that stuff goes.

PPS as i'm writing up this post, I realize I should give the rest of the party round 1 listen checks to see if they hear the commotion or not; and I'm not quite sure how to adjudicate all the variables involved with that. since they don't need to just hear the sound, but recognize that it's something other than Lars walking around. at least I can calc the distance modifier right (it's going to be 60ft, at least by the end of the spiders' first action)

Round 1 surprise round; only the spider gets to act.
It rushes out from the room, getting a mere 10 feet away from Lars!

Round 2; initiative rolled now; only the spider and Lars get to act (rest of party will get to act in round 3 after they've been alerted. for the rest of the party, this is the surprise round so to speak) edit adjust: Aareon can also act, he's the only member of the rest of the party to make the listen roll to notice a problem, he won't yet know what it is until Lars gets to say something, but he'll know that something's up.
party init:
(1d20+2)[17]

spider init:
(1d20+3)[7]

the party's action! Lars and Aareon can take their actions now. Aareon is of course still in the other room, about 50 feet away from Lars; including turning around one corner.