I was reading Rules Answers: November 2015 | Dungeons & Dragons and in the Combat section and someone had asked "Does surprise happen outside the initiative order as a special surprise round?". This was answered by an explanation of how surprise works. On Page 189, in the last paragraph describing Surprise it says:
If you're surprised, you can't take move or take an action on your first turn of combat, and you can't take a reaction until that turn ends.
Fighters have this nifty class feature called Action Surge which they have starting at 2nd level. Action Surge says:
Starting at 2nd level, you can push yourself beyond your normal limits for a moment. On your turn, you can take one additional action on top of your regular action and a possible bonus action.
And this is my question: If a 2nd level Fighter is caught surprised, can they use their Action Surge feature to get an Action on their turn?
I just want to be sure about how that works, so I am asking here.
Best Answer
You can activate Action Surge, but it would waste it
The rules on surprise state:
Since you can't take an action, that means any actions (even if you have 2) and a bonus, since you can't take bonus actions when you can't take actions.