Can you use Sleight of Hand to draw a firearm during a surprise round to get the initiative boost?

Question

Can you use Sleight of Hand to draw a firearm during a surprise round to get the initiative boost? How you implement it since it's vs yourself?

A Spot Hidden vs Sleight of Hand? or Sleight of Hand vs enemy Spot Hidden?

Answer 1

No matter how good is the Sleight of Hand success, I think it would never be as fast as a "ready to shoot" gun. My view is that your drawing speed is determined by your dexterity and thus makes more sense to do it in normal dexterity order: While pull a trigger is faster than swinging a club, the act of drawing a gun is, in my opinion, similar to swinging a melee weapon or in terms of speed.

Answer 2

I don't really understand what you mean by "initiative boost" but you can get a free attack if you manage to surprise your opponent (overriding the DEX order just once, before reverting to combat rounds).

There's an answer to that p.107 of the Core rules :

Of course if the target has their wits about them, they may see the attack coming. The Keeper may allow a skill roll to determine if the target anticipates the attack, using either Listen or Spot Hidden to hear or see it coming, or Psychology to perceive the attacker’s intent.

The Stealth skill of the attacker can be used to set the difficulty level for the investigator’s Listen, Spot Hidden, or Psychology skill, or vice versa if the investigator is the one making the surprise attack (remembering that the player should be rolling the dice where possible).

Depending on the outcome of the roll:

• If the target anticipates the attack, they may choose to dodge or fight back.
• If the target fails to anticipate the attack, the Keeper may allow the attack to be an automatic success (unless a fumble is rolled) or award the attacker a bonus die, depending on the situation. If the attacker is making a ranged attack (for example with a gun or throwing knife), a roll should always be made to hit.

Nevertheless, if you think it would make sense to replace Stealth with Sleight of Hand (and maybe make the roll with a bonus die), go for it. CoC gives quite some room for rules interpretation.