Endwell: It's a learning process, just like anything else that you want to have knowledge in (knowledge; gaming?).<br/><br/>You always have the following actions during your turn:<br/>Free Action: Something that takes no time at all. Technically, you could take as many free actions in a turn as you want, but there's a practical limitthat every GM willimpose on this. I think most go for 2 free actions at most.<br/>Swift Action: Anything that takes a moment in time, 1 second, for example. You only get one per round. I usually use these for skill checks from my players because it takes time to think and evaluate.<br/>Movement Action: Just what it sounds like. The act of moving from one square to another square.<br/>Standard Action: I think of this as the action action. Spell casting, attacking,and the like.<br/><br/>You achieve surprise when you can place yourself into a position to act before the other side can. In the case of your archer, if you popped up in the middle of a field and let off a shot before anyone can react to you, you've achieved surprise. In this case, the game primer states that you're just getting into the meadow when an explosion of white occurs right in front of you. IE, you're surprised.<br/><br/>On a side note, I forgot about this when I was doing generation guidelines and such. Everyone gets 1 bonus feat, but that feat<strong>cannot</strong>be from either the combat or meta-magic categories. I want everyone to have a feat that isn't directed at achieving a higher combat ability, but a feat that is useful in other ways. I'll have to approve this selection on a case by case situation.