Background

The typical Assassin’s Guild waylay mechanic involved making a hand-sign at somebody for 5 seconds or so. If they haven’t noticed by the time you’re done, you’ve knocked them out. As Charles Hope says,

I feel like it doesn’t actually mechanic the "lurk behind the door and beat someone over the head when they open" it thing, it mechanics something closer to a "leet ninja sets up target and takes him down" thing, which is less what I want, as I don’t think all my combatants should be leet ninjas, but I think they should all be able to knock someone out from surprise when lurking behind a door.

So how do you deal with this? You could have the surpriser just jump out and say, "Waylay," and if the target’s really surprised, he falls down. But this raises multiple-stance issues that the Guild traditionally dislikes.

Solution

Have the surpriser jump out and say "Waylay N times M" for N, M in [1,20]. If the surprisee can respond with the result quickly enough, he’s not surprised. If he can’t, he’s out.

Update: Make "times" explicit. That’s what I get for blogging when hours of sleep + ounces of caffeine < 8.