The reason the language is minimalistic is because WotC decided to remove superfluous language from the rules to allow flexibility and less confusion. The problem is that it has now caused a whole new set of confusion.
Its damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
No it isn't. If removing language causes confusion, it isn't superfluous. The problem is that they did a bad job rewriting the rules for perception -- which were badly written in 2014. Just writing the rules competently would solve the problem.
As far as sucker punching people in broad daylight in assaults, yes it happens all the time and is very common. People don’t have eyes in the back of their head. I know one dude who was hit with a bottle while trying to defend his girl, another who was stabbed in the back, And another time I was fighting multiple people, I was informed later one of them pulled out a knife behind me. You may believe the sucker punch, the pickpocket, or even the person behind you putting two fingers behind your head is near impossible, but it’s really not.
Facing is an optional rule in D&D. Without it, there's no way to sneak up behind a target because they have no defined 'back' location (though in most of those examples sneak attack would work anyway).
It describes passive perception as being unconscious, that means it is not something that takes an action. It’s also used by the gm whenever they feel anything might notice something, this means players. The dm is not going to force people people to take actions.
the rules of 5e are not built where you can assume when something is not explicit, it is impossible.
And yes, there are no facing rules, you assume that means people see everything, but they are telling you via the hiding rules, and general perception that is not the case. They are falling back to the basis of 5e, when something is uncertain (ie if this person saw me try to sneak by them) use rolls.
it’s not I am in the room so I see everything in the room, it is let’s roll to determine what you see.
also facing is an optional rule in 2014, if they add facing, they can have a rule like line of sight determines how effective hiding is, it makes no sense to have line of sight based hiding without line of sight, which is why 2014 rules were totally trash for stealth. There was very little benefit to hiding that you didn’t already have for being concealed.
This is actually fixed in 2024. It made no sense that in a fantasy game, with a class that can focus on being sneaky, that you are literally unable to do something that commonly happens in real life. The reason sucker punch and backstabber exist is because they describe a real thing.
Also I don’t see how in your rules I would gain sneak attack to hit someone in the back of the head while they are in combat at 4 o clock in a well lit restaurant, or outside. There is no partial obscurement in that case.
Pentagreul is wrong . 2024 has passive perception which explicitly says it’s used for wisdom checks that aren’t conscious.
The problem is that there's no evidence that it gets used in combat. Passive scores are absolutely relevant to non-combat stealth.
In any case, assuming passive scores are relevant to combat does not solve the problem with 2024 hide. It does mean that if you roll, say, a 15, and your opponent has a passive perception of 17 and has unobstructed vision (obscurement would reduce the passive score to 12) they would find you, but... that shouldn't be a check at all. If you really don't have anything concealing you, you should just be automatically found without a roll.
you require lightly obscured for hidden. People who get backstabbed usually do not have an object between them and the attacker, and it often happens in well lit areas.
It is not actually that hard to acquire 50% cover (which, as I defined obscured, would grant obscured), and if you try to walk up in plain sight to stab someone... you deserve to fail.
Hiding and perception are not combat specific features, there is no distinction between hiding outside of combat or in combat, likewise perceiving.
The evidence is the hiding rule says that you can be found with a wisdom check, the passive perception rules say the gm can use passive perception instead of a wisdom check at their discretion
in logic, math and English, this is thransitive property.
if someone says you can use a rectangle In your drawing
and a square is defined as a type of rectangle
then you can use a square in your drawing.
i don’t really love their minmalistic language, because I think it causes confusion, but this book is full of minimalistic language. I don’t think it’s super clear for every reader, however it is logically sound (usually)
monsters primarily use passive perception to detect hidden players. According to the book, if the dm thinks someone would be able to perceive something without actively looking, they are instructed to use passive perception in place of a wisdom perception check
whether they have unobstructed vision is partially determined by stealth vs perception. The hiding person is trying not to be seen, the perceiving person is trying to detect that person. You are stating the outcome of the roll before the roll. Note in dnd 5e position is not explicit, and neither is where the monsters are looking. In 2014 they decided this mean 360 degree vision as far as the eye can see, and in 2024 this is no longer the case. In the case of someone hiding versus someone looking, the rolls determine if they were seen.
In the case where the gm has narratively decided someone is looking straight at you, your hide won’t be effective. Invisible only has 3 benefits, and concealed/advantage both don’t work while someone can see you. However baring the story requiring them to be seen, you should let the rolls decide. It should come up as often as the dm auto fails a character on a save. The recomendation in passive perception rule is to give the perceived advantage if you think the situation would be default to avoid being seen. And that is a +5. This gives your regular veteran 17 passive perception, which is considered a difficult dc. Usually only people with significant investment can make that. A red dragon has passive perception of 23, with advantage that’s a 27. They have already accounted for this. The guys who they can easily evade are meant to be fooled, the guys who are perceptive can catch them.Yes the rogue invested in stealth is slippery, that’s the whole point, in 2014, they generally were not. Hiding was only useful if the dm fudged the rules. Now hiding is generally useful unless the dm fudges the rules, that’s a better game design.
As far as sucker punching people in broad daylight in assaults, yes it happens all the time and is very common. People don’t have eyes in the back of their head. I know one dude who was hit with a bottle while trying to defend his girl, another who was stabbed in the back, And another time I was fighting multiple people, I was informed later one of them pulled out a knife behind me. You may believe the sucker punch, the pickpocket, or even the person behind you putting two fingers behind your head is near impossible, but it’s really not.
The reason the language is minimalistic is because WotC decided to remove superfluous language from the rules to allow flexibility and less confusion. The problem is that it has now caused a whole new set of confusion.
Its damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
i undertand that some people believe by removing language they think it makes things more clear, but that is not always the case. There are trade offs for doing it either way, and communication is an art.
However that doesn’t mean there are not better ways to communicate. I think at the end of the day, this set of hide rules is not well communicated, that said, I think it’s better communicated than 2014 was, as well as being an actually better rule system.
but it’s not as good as it needs to be, and I don’t think they gained more than they lost by trying to make the invisible condition tie to both things. They could even have done it by creating a sub condition, if they wanted to still link it.
Many people in the context of dnd have a specific understanding of invisible that makes it hard to wrap their head around being invisible because someone isn’t looking at you, light rays passing through you.
In communicating ideas, it’s not just about being correct by the book, it’s about how easy it is for people to understand you, sometimes more words can make that easier. Sometimes you might avoid a word that has certain meaning, if the person you are talking too has a different understanding of the word.
i don’t really disagree with what you are getting at, I’m just trying to put out there, that it’s fair to say this rule is not well communicated, and it’s probable that it takes more words to consistently get people to understand the concept they are talking about.
i hope they release advice somewhere, and i hope they explain it better in the DMG, since it’s primarily the DM who needs a strong understanding here.
Also I don’t see how in your rules I would gain sneak attack to hit someone in the back of the head while they are in combat at 4 o clock in a well lit restaurant, or outside. There is no partial obscurement in that case.
You'd get sneak attack because they're in combat with an ally (or at least, ally of convenience). The reason sneak attack triggers when adjacent to an ally is precisely because they didn't want to track facing.
Also I don’t see how in your rules I would gain sneak attack to hit someone in the back of the head while they are in combat at 4 o clock in a well lit restaurant, or outside. There is no partial obscurement in that case.
You'd get sneak attack because they're in combat with an ally (or at least, ally of convenience). The reason sneak attack triggers when adjacent to an ally is precisely because they didn't want to track facing.
Dont forget that 2024 Rogue has Steady Aim too and can gain Sneak Attack.
Also I don’t see how in your rules I would gain sneak attack to hit someone in the back of the head while they are in combat at 4 o clock in a well lit restaurant, or outside. There is no partial obscurement in that case.
You'd get sneak attack because they're in combat with an ally (or at least, ally of convenience). The reason sneak attack triggers when adjacent to an ally is precisely because they didn't want to track facing.
That only works if the ally is 5 feet, that’s not really the same thing. My all;y moving from 5 to 7 feet away should not grant clairvoyance to the person I’m am sneaking up on, and hiding isn’t just about advantage, it’s about being unseen.
I’m not suggesting the track facing btw, I’m telling you they don’t, and they don’t assume the enemy sees everything 360 degrees for miles, which was the old rule. Now if they want to know if they are aware they use the awareness based stats to roll. Which is better because it allows the rogue class to actually live its most basic fantasy. Just like they make whether you land a hit, or a spell, or use any other skill primarily based on dice rolls, it makes no sense to make stealth/hiding based on whether people can see you in a system that doesn’t have facing rules.
they fixed that problem, your rules still treat every creature as a god who sees in all directions and is immune to one of the most basic strategies in combat.
they fixed that problem, your rules still treat every creature as a god who sees in all directions and is immune to one of the most basic strategies in combat.
Your proposal allows someone to walk through the middle of a room where nothing else is going on and remain unseen. Yes, there are situations where you can remain unnoticed in a battle involving multiple combatants, but it is absolutely the exception, not the rule.
they fixed that problem, your rules still treat every creature as a god who sees in all directions and is immune to one of the most basic strategies in combat.
Your proposal allows someone to walk through the middle of a room where nothing else is going on and remain unseen. Yes, there are situations where you can remain unnoticed in a battle involving multiple combatants, but it is absolutely the exception, not the rule.
They can only do that if they are extraordinarily stealthy, or the people are not perceptive. Which makes sense in an rpg with abstract simulated ways of determining what players are able to do. The adventurers in 5e are not commoners, they are experts. They are the olympians, the David Blain, Copperfield, Mozart, Solid Snake. They are even at level 1 exceptional.
and it’s not narratively as if they are walking -ast people’s faces, they are sneaking behind them, distracting them, avoiding them. If narratively they are seen, then they don’t have advantage or concealed. And it requires that an enemy has lost eye contact. This represents the guy on alert looking around, while the hider sneaks by, probably behind him.
So this is a trained pro, most likely, a professional thief, pickpocket, who has literally studied misdirection. They were either born or trained to be more dexterous than the average person, if it’s thief they probably have expertise which represents training. And they have to beat a 15 to even be considered hidden, which is a considered a difficult .task in terms of skills.
To be clear, even the random nobody with zero perception, if they have advantage, gets a +5 to their passive perception taking them to a 15. Which means even if they pass the basic check, a normal person will find them if the room is empty. A level 1 trained naturally talented thief, won’t even succeed at hiding 50% of the time, (3dex and expertise) And even a normie will catch them in an open room, even if they succeed. Getting a wolf to ignore you would likely require an 18, since they have advantage on sound and smell perception checks.
and specifically in combat, this is them losing track of you for a few seconds. ( a round in dnd is 6 seconds, and that’s everyone’s turn at once)
In real high pressure situations, like what initiative represents, it is very easy to lose someone, and it’s common in the stories that dnd is trying to emulate. Giving someone the slip is an idiom because people really can actually escape with a moment, it doesn’t matter what time of day it is, it’s about misdirection, and the fact that people don’t have eyes in the back of their head.
They should not have any game system, with a rogue,sneak,thief archetype where there isn’t an ability to be stealthy. So if the system has to choose between, almost can never do this, unless the DM makes an exception, or you can do this if your character is good at this, better than the opponent, unless the dm makes an exception,
then the latter is a better design for a system that is trying to house that archetype. and the second is also closer to reality than the first.
and to be clear this isn’t my design, it’s the game developers design, which is imperfect, but it works within the games framework, all I’m saying is it’s better than 2014, and better than what you presented, because it actually allows a rogue/thief/sneak fantasy to exist, whereas yours effectively makes sneaking impossible or useless.
You ever play werewolf as a kid? People actively looking for someone get surprised all the time.
Hide doesn't break when casting spells with no attack roll or verbal component.
Which spells are those? I guess we don’t know until the books are out, but are there many? Or really any? Honest question. I don’t love what I’ve seen of the hide rules, but I’m wondering how much of a problem this part will be.
Side note, I do like them specifically saying a verbal component breaks your hide. No more debating if you can whisper the V component or how far away you can be heard. Much clearer and simpler this way.
Catapult Hypnotic Pattern Illusionary Dragon Mental Prison Mind Spike Nathair's Mischief Psychic Scream Rime's Binding Ice Snare (1 min cast time) Thunder Clap (makes a loud noise)
Reading through a lot of this and this is my take on this:
If you cant be seen by anyone, and have a certain level (3/4) of cover you can hide: So that means you cant hide without TOTAL cover (or they'd see you), and only if there's something to actually hide in. So you cant hide in a scraggly, tiny bush with doesnt give full cover 'cos if anyone sees you squatting down in it while you're trying to hide they call you out to their mates. If however you hid in a scraggly bush before they rounded the corner, after a convenient fog or darkness spell or while they were being distracted by the belly dancing bard (DM discretion distraction), they aren't expecting you to be in that bush so you're allowed to hide. Probably not very well but thats what their passive perception and your hide score is for determining.
With the removal of skulker and wood elf abilties to hide in light obscurement this means you have to break LOS with full cover to START hiding if the environment has something that you could concieveably hide IN (as denoted by the 2/3 cover requirement minimum). This means you can no longer hide just because its dark, or raining without some form of distraction that would allow the DM to say they're not 'looking' at you and thus currently cant 'see' you. This makes combat stealthing a lot harder to start.
HOWEVER
The invisibility condition is added to allow you to more effectively move. Before in 2014 if you moved out of cover you were AUTOMATICLY and IMMEDIATELY spotted. You cant attack from stealth in melee unless the cover providing condition extended all the way up to the foe. This meant the dramatic dash out of the alley behind the gaurd and knocking them out/slitting their throat silently scene was mechanicly RAW litterally impossible. By granting the 'invisible' condition you can now move around until you do something that gives you away. Something previously impossible. You can now melee ambush with advantage since moving up to them from hiding in the open DOESN'T break the invisible condition on its own.
IMO this is an attempt to remove save and suck situations. Same as most spells doing 1/2 damage on a fail, almost all spells no longer having instant death (either HP caps like power word kill or 3 failed saves in a row petrification), and counterspell no longer wasting your targets spell slot. Its not fun to try something and just flat up gain no benefit due to RNG. Old stealth you were immune to any direct attack hidden, and any attempt to move or use stealth in melee auto failed. New stealth you can always be attacked... but its almost always at disadvantage, you almost always have advantage on your first attack, and you almost always go first. Pretty cool and simple. No auto wins, no auto losses.
Invisibility condition IMO was to denote the ability for lets say... that self same rogue example above that was hiding in that scraggly bush to wait till the patrolling guards look away before dashing half way to the exit... the gaurds look back around and the rogue drops flat on the grass behind the flower garden arrangement... they look away and he finishes his mad dash to the exit. In past mechanics moving after hiding was impossible because of 360 vision. Invisible condition is just a way for the 2024 rules to allow the rogue to mechanicly move position after hiding but trying to do so with existing ingame conditions to avoid 'bloat'. It represents the ability of a sniper to shoot, duck behind the wall into full cover, and crawl away on their belly before someone can run up to where she shot from and find them. They remain knowing their general area if they dont try to remain silent and move, but spraying the area with a supressive fire barrage of arrows would be disadvantageous at trying to actually hit them. At least until they actively search the area or someone with an Observant keen eye spots them.
As to what breaks invisible? Noise (including spell chants) : makes sense and means that sneaking garden rogue probably needs a sneak silent stealth check to not be ... wait for it: Found: An enemy finds you. Which also includes them poking the flower arrangement with their spear tips making you cry out as part of an active search. Attacking always broke stealth without skulker.
These changes mean stealth in combat is harder to trigger, but once gained you have more flexibility to turn it to your advantage:
Example 2: A sorcerer can hide, and be hard to hit so long as they keep the enemy guessing where they are. So long as they dont 'attack' with spells with attack rolls giving away their position and cast subtly they cant pin you down and have to return fire with disadvantage. Make sense. If theres no visible fire bolt, like a tracer round, pointing out where you shot from why would they not be penalised returning fire? That chilling cold (Frostbite) came out of nowhere! Sure the foe knows theres a witch attacking him but he doesn't know where yet...
The gaurd's response? -Active perception check: Success- Guard 1: "There he is! behind that bush on the hill" -invisible hide ends- -sorcerer wants to re-hide- Guard 2: "He's trying to duck down behind the bush, but I can still make him out 'cos of his huge pointy hat and the bush is pretty small -not allowed- -Sorcerer lies down flat behind the bush: goes prone to get full cover and is now allowed to hide, since cant be seen (full obscured=blind) and has the minimum cover requirement of 3/4- Gaurd 2: 'He's gone! I lost sight of him does anyone know where he is? Go up there and check it out!" -sorcerer moves to a new location as Gaurd 1 heads up the hill. Makes stealth (sneak silent) check. -Gaurd passive perception beaten, no noise was made moving so invisibility remains unbroken... The guard didnt hear the sorcerer move and thinks they're still in the bush- -Gaurd passive perception compared to Re-Hide check: hide check DC better than check so invisibility remains. He walks past the sorcerer who crawled into a nearby ditch before he got up the hill. Invisibility not being litterally 'magical invisibility', just represents the fact the gaurd was looking towards the bush and didnt look down at the ditch and the mud smeared sorcerer. -Gaurd can't see sorcerer and starts looks around- Gaurd 1: "Huh? Who's there?" -ACTIVE perception check from action- Pass: 'Stop right there, criminal scum!' -invisible breaks- or Fail: 'He's not here, he must have fled. Keep an eye out!" -still invisible- -sorcerer tries to leap up and knife him thinking he's not sneaky enough to crawl silently away through the ditch- -stand up from prone: still invisible. -move to gaurd: : still invisible. -pull out knife: still invisible. -stab gaurd with advantage: Breaks invisible. Gaurd 1: 'Gahh! He's still here, I've been stabbed in the back!' Gaurd 2: 'I heard Bob get stabbed and cry out in pain, charge lads!'
The rules seem confusing and extra invisible seems superfluous compared to the 2014, but as far as I can tell its just there to allow a mechanical interpretation and advantage to movement after they loose sight of you.
Reading through a lot of this and this is my take on this:
If you cant be seen by anyone, and have a certain level (3/4) of cover you can hide: So that means you cant hide without TOTAL cover (or they'd see you), and only if there's something to actually hide in. So you cant hide in a scraggly, tiny bush with doesnt give full cover 'cos if anyone sees you squatting down in it while you're trying to hide they call you out to their mates. If however you hid in a scraggly bush before they rounded the corner, after a convenient fog or darkness spell or while they were being distracted by the belly dancing bard (DM discretion distraction), they aren't expecting you to be in that bush so you're allowed to hide. Probably not very well but thats what their passive perception and your hide score is for determining.
With the removal of skulker and wood elf abilties to hide in light obscurement this means you have to break LOS with full cover to START hiding if the environment has something that you could concieveably hide IN (as denoted by the 2/3 cover requirement minimum). This means you can no longer hide just because its dark, or raining without some form of distraction that would allow the DM to say they're not 'looking' at you and thus currently cant 'see' you. This makes combat stealthing a lot harder to start.
HOWEVER
The invisibility condition is added to allow you to more effectively move. Before in 2014 if you moved out of cover you were AUTOMATICLY and IMMEDIATELY spotted. You cant attack from stealth in melee unless the cover providing condition extended all the way up to the foe. This meant the dramatic dash out of the alley behind the gaurd and knocking them out/slitting their throat silently scene was mechanicly RAW litterally impossible. By granting the 'invisible' condition you can now move around until you do something that gives you away. Something previously impossible. You can now melee ambush with advantage since moving up to them from hiding in the open DOESN'T break the invisible condition on its own.
IMO this is an attempt to remove save and suck situations. Same as most spells doing 1/2 damage on a fail, almost all spells no longer having instant death (either HP caps like power word kill or 3 failed saves in a row petrification), and counterspell no longer wasting your targets spell slot. Its not fun to try something and just flat up gain no benefit due to RNG. Old stealth you were immune to any direct attack hidden, and any attempt to move or use stealth in melee auto failed. New stealth you can always be attacked... but its almost always at disadvantage, you almost always have advantage on your first attack, and you almost always go first. Pretty cool and simple. No auto wins, no auto losses.
Invisibility condition IMO was to denote the ability for lets say... that self same rogue example above that was hiding in that scraggly bush to wait till the patrolling guards look away before dashing half way to the exit... the gaurds look back around and the rogue drops flat on the grass behind the flower garden arrangement... they look away and he finishes his mad dash to the exit. In past mechanics moving after hiding was impossible because of 360 vision. Invisible condition is just a way for the 2024 rules to allow the rogue to mechanicly move position after hiding but trying to do so with existing ingame conditions to avoid 'bloat'. It represents the ability of a sniper to shoot, duck behind the wall into full cover, and crawl away on their belly before someone can run up to where she shot from and find them. They remain knowing their general area if they dont try to remain silent and move, but spraying the area with a supressive fire barrage of arrows would be disadvantageous at trying to actually hit them. At least until they actively search the area or someone with an Observant keen eye spots them.
As to what breaks invisible? Noise (including spell chants) : makes sense and means that sneaking garden rogue probably needs a sneak silent stealth check to not be ... wait for it: Found: An enemy finds you. Which also includes them poking the flower arrangement with their spear tips making you cry out as part of an active search. Attacking always broke stealth without skulker.
These changes mean stealth in combat is harder to trigger, but once gained you have more flexibility to turn it to your advantage:
Example 2: A sorcerer can hide, and be hard to hit so long as they keep the enemy guessing where they are. So long as they dont 'attack' with spells with attack rolls giving away their position and cast subtly they cant pin you down and have to return fire with disadvantage. Make sense. If theres no visible fire bolt, like a tracer round, pointing out where you shot from why would they not be penalised returning fire? That chilling cold (Frostbite) came out of nowhere! Sure the foe knows theres a witch attacking him but he doesn't know where yet...
The gaurd's response? -Active perception check: Success- Guard 1: "There he is! behind that bush on the hill" -invisible hide ends- -sorcerer wants to re-hide- Guard 2: "He's trying to duck down behind the bush, but I can still make him out 'cos of his huge pointy hat and the bush is pretty small -not allowed- -Sorcerer lies down flat behind the bush: goes prone to get full cover and is now allowed to hide, since cant be seen (full obscured=blind) and has the minimum cover requirement of 3/4- Gaurd 2: 'He's gone! I lost sight of him does anyone know where he is? Go up there and check it out!" -sorcerer moves to a new location as Gaurd 1 heads up the hill. Makes stealth (sneak silent) check. -Gaurd passive perception beaten, no noise was made moving so invisibility remains unbroken... The guard didnt hear the sorcerer move and thinks they're still in the bush- -Gaurd passive perception compared to Re-Hide check: hide check DC better than check so invisibility remains. He walks past the sorcerer who crawled into a nearby ditch before he got up the hill. Invisibility not being litterally 'magical invisibility', just represents the fact the gaurd was looking towards the bush and didnt look down at the ditch and the mud smeared sorcerer. -Gaurd can't see sorcerer and starts looks around- Gaurd 1: "Huh? Who's there?" -ACTIVE perception check from action- Pass: 'Stop right there, criminal scum!' -invisible breaks- or Fail: 'He's not here, he must have fled. Keep an eye out!" -still invisible- -sorcerer tries to leap up and knife him thinking he's not sneaky enough to crawl silently away through the ditch- -stand up from prone: still invisible. -move to gaurd: : still invisible. -pull out knife: still invisible. -stab gaurd with advantage: Breaks invisible. Gaurd 1: 'Gahh! He's still here, I've been stabbed in the back!' Gaurd 2: 'I heard Bob get stabbed and cry out in pain, charge lads!'
The rules seem confusing and extra invisible seems superfluous compared to the 2014, but as far as I can tell its just there to allow a mechanical interpretation and advantage to movement after they loose sight of you.
I like this. This is the kind of scenarios I thought of as well after reading all the parts that involve sneaking. I just wish WotC had put them all in one place for ease of access, cause right now you have to go to 5 different places in the book to read all of them
They can only do that if they are extraordinarily stealthy, or the people are not perceptive.
Beating passive perception does not require extraordinary stealth. You can expect to do it 55% of the time against someone of equal skill.
Not true, hide requires a base chance of dc 15, this means getting past commoners and guards with no advantage is harder than their perception. Before stealth rolls of 12 or 13 were sometimes good enough. there are a lot of enemies early on in the 0+4 perception range. iE stealthing past a commoner of equal skill is a 70% chance of failing. You need some actual investment to get to 55% regardless of the opponent.
now stealth requires more investment to use at the floor. Before a stealth roll of 10 versus a -1 perception creature was effective, now a 10 does nothing for you. And, whether it’s a toss up versus someone of equal skill has nothing to do with how extraordinary it is. Olympic runners might be a toss up, they are still extraordinary, most of population cannot compete.
The fact that some exists on your level does not make you less extraordinary. And that’s a huge flaw with the old system, a level 20 thief with a 30 stealth still couldn’t sneak by random passerby mostly looking at their phone. It’s actually a less realistic system than rolling the stats. David Copperfield, this dude https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rII8vR_1wMY are superhuman who cant exist but for the will of the DM gods. The kid we used to play werewolf with that always caught people by surprise, he must be a magical demon from another plane.
The fact that some exists on your level does not make you less extraordinary. And that’s a huge flaw with the old system, a level 20 thief with a 30 stealth still couldn’t sneak by random passerby mostly looking at their phone.
Untrue. The old system basically amounted to "the DM decides whether it's appropriate for stealth to be possible".
The fact that some exists on your level does not make you less extraordinary. And that’s a huge flaw with the old system, a level 20 thief with a 30 stealth still couldn’t sneak by random passerby mostly looking at their phone.
Untrue. The old system basically amounted to "the DM decides whether it's appropriate for stealth to be possible".
it decided its impossible, unless the DM makes an exception.
which is going to set a different likelyhood of being useful than
its possible, unless the DM makes exception.
The DM is generally going to default to whatever the stated rules are for situation and once in awhile alter it, when it makes sense, or is good gaming. But i think you already know there is a huge difference between the two.
it decided its impossible, unless the DM makes an exception.
Which, in the case of in plain view stealth, is absolutely the correct way for the rules to work.
‘In a system without facing, giving every creature omnidirectional vision to the horizon = hiding and most stealth served no purpose. Since the ga,me is supposed to be able to host the rogue/theif/assasssin/ranger fantasies, and could not it was an inherently flawed rule set. By raw, hiding and staying behind an object served the exact same purpose, except one required an action cost.
plain sight, in a system without facing is just clairvoyance.
it was an unrealistic flawed system that couldn’t accommodate basic reality, in a system that is supposed to be able to represent whatever the players can imagine.
You personally prefer a system where stealth is impossible, but if stealth is impossible, without dm fiat, there shouldn’t be rules for stealth or classes based around it.
They should not have an rpg system especially a fantasy one, that cannot by default answer the question what if someone wants to sneak up on someone. People can summon dragons, but I can’t surprise my niece without the DM creating a special rule.
it was a flaw, the current system is less flawed and uses the basic rule of rolling to answer uncertain questions, instead of the DM deciding it every time, and being totally inconsistent from table to table and day to day.
They changed it because it was a huge flaw, it wasn’t ok.
Indeed. I also don't see why one could be without a minimum of cover, obscurement or similar circumstances. In the end the most important is that
The Dungeon Master decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding.
cover has specific rules, obscurement is less clear, and similar circumstances is totally up in the air. It’s not a good idea to build classes and subclasses that are based primarily on the whims of the DM. The players named actions should be fairly consistent in what they can be expected to do.
Dm fiat is a horrible basis for basic rules, many players will not choose an option that defaults to no, unless the dm agrees, they will generally try to do what the rules allow, or what the dm usually accepts.
also if hide requires full cover, it serves no purpose because full cover already provides the same benefits of hiding. The 2014 rules were bad. Most dms had to modify, ignore or adjust the rules to make it work at a table that featured sneaky characters. Which is generally a sign of a bad rule. The DM can always make stuff up, may as well have had no stealth rules in that case.
plain sight, in a system without facing is just clairvoyance.
Walking into plain sight, in a system without facing, is magical invisibility. You could say "concealment or distraction" rather than just concealment, but something that would force everyone to be looking away is the minimum requirement for remotely plausible stealth in open view.
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No it isn't. If removing language causes confusion, it isn't superfluous. The problem is that they did a bad job rewriting the rules for perception -- which were badly written in 2014. Just writing the rules competently would solve the problem.
It describes passive perception as being unconscious, that means it is not something that takes an action. It’s also used by the gm whenever they feel anything might notice something, this means players. The dm is not going to force people people to take actions.
the rules of 5e are not built where you can assume when something is not explicit, it is impossible.
And yes, there are no facing rules, you assume that means people see everything, but they are telling you via the hiding rules, and general perception that is not the case. They are falling back to the basis of 5e, when something is uncertain (ie if this person saw me try to sneak by them) use rolls.
it’s not I am in the room so I see everything in the room, it is let’s roll to determine what you see.
also facing is an optional rule in 2014, if they add facing, they can have a rule like line of sight determines how effective hiding is, it makes no sense to have line of sight based hiding without line of sight, which is why 2014 rules were totally trash for stealth. There was very little benefit to hiding that you didn’t already have for being concealed.
This is actually fixed in 2024. It made no sense that in a fantasy game, with a class that can focus on being sneaky, that you are literally unable to do something that commonly happens in real life. The reason sucker punch and backstabber exist is because they describe a real thing.
Also I don’t see how in your rules I would gain sneak attack to hit someone in the back of the head while they are in combat at 4 o clock in a well lit restaurant, or outside. There is no partial obscurement in that case.
i undertand that some people believe by removing language they think it makes things more clear, but that is not always the case. There are trade offs for doing it either way, and communication is an art.
However that doesn’t mean there are not better ways to communicate. I think at the end of the day, this set of hide rules is not well communicated, that said, I think it’s better communicated than 2014 was, as well as being an actually better rule system.
but it’s not as good as it needs to be, and I don’t think they gained more than they lost by trying to make the invisible condition tie to both things. They could even have done it by creating a sub condition, if they wanted to still link it.
Many people in the context of dnd have a specific understanding of invisible that makes it hard to wrap their head around being invisible because someone isn’t looking at you, light rays passing through you.
In communicating ideas, it’s not just about being correct by the book, it’s about how easy it is for people to understand you, sometimes more words can make that easier. Sometimes you might avoid a word that has certain meaning, if the person you are talking too has a different understanding of the word.
i don’t really disagree with what you are getting at, I’m just trying to put out there, that it’s fair to say this rule is not well communicated, and it’s probable that it takes more words to consistently get people to understand the concept they are talking about.
i hope they release advice somewhere, and i hope they explain it better in the DMG, since it’s primarily the DM who needs a strong understanding here.
You'd get sneak attack because they're in combat with an ally (or at least, ally of convenience). The reason sneak attack triggers when adjacent to an ally is precisely because they didn't want to track facing.
Dont forget that 2024 Rogue has Steady Aim too and can gain Sneak Attack.
That only works if the ally is 5 feet, that’s not really the same thing. My all;y moving from 5 to 7 feet away should not grant clairvoyance to the person I’m am sneaking up on, and hiding isn’t just about advantage, it’s about being unseen.
I’m not suggesting the track facing btw, I’m telling you they don’t, and they don’t assume the enemy sees everything 360 degrees for miles, which was the old rule. Now if they want to know if they are aware they use the awareness based stats to roll. Which is better because it allows the rogue class to actually live its most basic fantasy. Just like they make whether you land a hit, or a spell, or use any other skill primarily based on dice rolls, it makes no sense to make stealth/hiding based on whether people can see you in a system that doesn’t have facing rules.
they fixed that problem, your rules still treat every creature as a god who sees in all directions and is immune to one of the most basic strategies in combat.
Your proposal allows someone to walk through the middle of a room where nothing else is going on and remain unseen. Yes, there are situations where you can remain unnoticed in a battle involving multiple combatants, but it is absolutely the exception, not the rule.
They can only do that if they are extraordinarily stealthy, or the people are not perceptive. Which makes sense in an rpg with abstract simulated ways of determining what players are able to do. The adventurers in 5e are not commoners, they are experts. They are the olympians, the David Blain, Copperfield, Mozart, Solid Snake. They are even at level 1 exceptional.
and it’s not narratively as if they are walking -ast people’s faces, they are sneaking behind them, distracting them, avoiding them. If narratively they are seen, then they don’t have advantage or concealed. And it requires that an enemy has lost eye contact. This represents the guy on alert looking around, while the hider sneaks by, probably behind him.
So this is a trained pro, most likely, a professional thief, pickpocket, who has literally studied misdirection. They were either born or trained to be more dexterous than the average person, if it’s thief they probably have expertise which represents training. And they have to beat a 15 to even be considered hidden, which is a considered a difficult .task in terms of skills.
To be clear, even the random nobody with zero perception, if they have advantage, gets a +5 to their passive perception taking them to a 15. Which means even if they pass the basic check, a normal person will find them if the room is empty. A level 1 trained naturally talented thief, won’t even succeed at hiding 50% of the time, (3dex and expertise) And even a normie will catch them in an open room, even if they succeed. Getting a wolf to ignore you would likely require an 18, since they have advantage on sound and smell perception checks.
and specifically in combat, this is them losing track of you for a few seconds. ( a round in dnd is 6 seconds, and that’s everyone’s turn at once)
In real high pressure situations, like what initiative represents, it is very easy to lose someone, and it’s common in the stories that dnd is trying to emulate. Giving someone the slip is an idiom because people really can actually escape with a moment, it doesn’t matter what time of day it is, it’s about misdirection, and the fact that people don’t have eyes in the back of their head.
They should not have any game system, with a rogue,sneak,thief archetype where there isn’t an ability to be stealthy. So if the system has to choose between, almost can never do this, unless the DM makes an exception, or you can do this if your character is good at this, better than the opponent, unless the dm makes an exception,
then the latter is a better design for a system that is trying to house that archetype. and the second is also closer to reality than the first.
and to be clear this isn’t my design, it’s the game developers design, which is imperfect, but it works within the games framework, all I’m saying is it’s better than 2014, and better than what you presented, because it actually allows a rogue/thief/sneak fantasy to exist, whereas yours effectively makes sneaking impossible or useless.
You ever play werewolf as a kid? People actively looking for someone get surprised all the time.
Catapult
Hypnotic Pattern
Illusionary Dragon
Mental Prison
Mind Spike
Nathair's Mischief
Psychic Scream
Rime's Binding Ice
Snare (1 min cast time)
Thunder Clap(makes a loud noise)Reading through a lot of this and this is my take on this:
If you cant be seen by anyone, and have a certain level (3/4) of cover you can hide:
So that means you cant hide without TOTAL cover (or they'd see you), and only if there's something to actually hide in. So you cant hide in a scraggly, tiny bush with doesnt give full cover 'cos if anyone sees you squatting down in it while you're trying to hide they call you out to their mates. If however you hid in a scraggly bush before they rounded the corner, after a convenient fog or darkness spell or while they were being distracted by the belly dancing bard (DM discretion distraction), they aren't expecting you to be in that bush so you're allowed to hide. Probably not very well but thats what their passive perception and your hide score is for determining.
With the removal of skulker and wood elf abilties to hide in light obscurement this means you have to break LOS with full cover to START hiding if the environment has something that you could concieveably hide IN (as denoted by the 2/3 cover requirement minimum). This means you can no longer hide just because its dark, or raining without some form of distraction that would allow the DM to say they're not 'looking' at you and thus currently cant 'see' you. This makes combat stealthing a lot harder to start.
HOWEVER
The invisibility condition is added to allow you to more effectively move. Before in 2014 if you moved out of cover you were AUTOMATICLY and IMMEDIATELY spotted. You cant attack from stealth in melee unless the cover providing condition extended all the way up to the foe. This meant the dramatic dash out of the alley behind the gaurd and knocking them out/slitting their throat silently scene was mechanicly RAW litterally impossible. By granting the 'invisible' condition you can now move around until you do something that gives you away. Something previously impossible. You can now melee ambush with advantage since moving up to them from hiding in the open DOESN'T break the invisible condition on its own.
IMO this is an attempt to remove save and suck situations. Same as most spells doing 1/2 damage on a fail, almost all spells no longer having instant death (either HP caps like power word kill or 3 failed saves in a row petrification), and counterspell no longer wasting your targets spell slot. Its not fun to try something and just flat up gain no benefit due to RNG. Old stealth you were immune to any direct attack hidden, and any attempt to move or use stealth in melee auto failed. New stealth you can always be attacked... but its almost always at disadvantage, you almost always have advantage on your first attack, and you almost always go first. Pretty cool and simple. No auto wins, no auto losses.
Invisibility condition IMO was to denote the ability for lets say... that self same rogue example above that was hiding in that scraggly bush to wait till the patrolling guards look away before dashing half way to the exit... the gaurds look back around and the rogue drops flat on the grass behind the flower garden arrangement... they look away and he finishes his mad dash to the exit. In past mechanics moving after hiding was impossible because of 360 vision. Invisible condition is just a way for the 2024 rules to allow the rogue to mechanicly move position after hiding but trying to do so with existing ingame conditions to avoid 'bloat'. It represents the ability of a sniper to shoot, duck behind the wall into full cover, and crawl away on their belly before someone can run up to where she shot from and find them. They remain knowing their general area if they dont try to remain silent and move, but spraying the area with a supressive fire barrage of arrows would be disadvantageous at trying to actually hit them. At least until they actively search the area or someone with an Observant keen eye spots them.
As to what breaks invisible?
Noise (including spell chants) : makes sense and means that sneaking garden rogue probably needs a sneak silent stealth check to not be ... wait for it:
Found: An enemy finds you. Which also includes them poking the flower arrangement with their spear tips making you cry out as part of an active search.
Attacking always broke stealth without skulker.
These changes mean stealth in combat is harder to trigger, but once gained you have more flexibility to turn it to your advantage:
Example 2:
A sorcerer can hide, and be hard to hit so long as they keep the enemy guessing where they are. So long as they dont 'attack' with spells with attack rolls giving away their position and cast subtly they cant pin you down and have to return fire with disadvantage. Make sense. If theres no visible fire bolt, like a tracer round, pointing out where you shot from why would they not be penalised returning fire? That chilling cold (Frostbite) came out of nowhere! Sure the foe knows theres a witch attacking him but he doesn't know where yet...
The gaurd's response?
-Active perception check: Success-
Guard 1: "There he is! behind that bush on the hill"
-invisible hide ends-
-sorcerer wants to re-hide-
Guard 2: "He's trying to duck down behind the bush, but I can still make him out 'cos of his huge pointy hat and the bush is pretty small
-not allowed-
-Sorcerer lies down flat behind the bush: goes prone to get full cover and is now allowed to hide, since cant be seen (full obscured=blind) and has the minimum cover requirement of 3/4-
Gaurd 2: 'He's gone! I lost sight of him does anyone know where he is? Go up there and check it out!"
-sorcerer moves to a new location as Gaurd 1 heads up the hill. Makes stealth (sneak silent) check.
-Gaurd passive perception beaten, no noise was made moving so invisibility remains unbroken... The guard didnt hear the sorcerer move and thinks they're still in the bush-
-Gaurd passive perception compared to Re-Hide check: hide check DC better than check so invisibility remains. He walks past the sorcerer who crawled into a nearby ditch before he got up the hill. Invisibility not being litterally 'magical invisibility', just represents the fact the gaurd was looking towards the bush and didnt look down at the ditch and the mud smeared sorcerer.
-Gaurd can't see sorcerer and starts looks around-
Gaurd 1: "Huh? Who's there?"
-ACTIVE perception check from action-
Pass: 'Stop right there, criminal scum!'
-invisible breaks-
or
Fail: 'He's not here, he must have fled. Keep an eye out!"
-still invisible-
-sorcerer tries to leap up and knife him thinking he's not sneaky enough to crawl silently away through the ditch-
-stand up from prone: still invisible.
-move to gaurd: : still invisible.
-pull out knife: still invisible.
-stab gaurd with advantage: Breaks invisible.
Gaurd 1: 'Gahh! He's still here, I've been stabbed in the back!'
Gaurd 2: 'I heard Bob get stabbed and cry out in pain, charge lads!'
The rules seem confusing and extra invisible seems superfluous compared to the 2014, but as far as I can tell its just there to allow a mechanical interpretation and advantage to movement after they loose sight of you.
Beating passive perception does not require extraordinary stealth. You can expect to do it 55% of the time against someone of equal skill.
I like this. This is the kind of scenarios I thought of as well after reading all the parts that involve sneaking. I just wish WotC had put them all in one place for ease of access, cause right now you have to go to 5 different places in the book to read all of them
Not true, hide requires a base chance of dc 15, this means getting past commoners and guards with no advantage is harder than their perception. Before stealth rolls of 12 or 13 were sometimes good enough. there are a lot of enemies early on in the 0+4 perception range. iE stealthing past a commoner of equal skill is a 70% chance of failing. You need some actual investment to get to 55% regardless of the opponent.
now stealth requires more investment to use at the floor. Before a stealth roll of 10 versus a -1 perception creature was effective, now a 10 does nothing for you. And, whether it’s a toss up versus someone of equal skill has nothing to do with how extraordinary it is. Olympic runners might be a toss up, they are still extraordinary, most of population cannot compete.
The fact that some exists on your level does not make you less extraordinary. And that’s a huge flaw with the old system, a level 20 thief with a 30 stealth still couldn’t sneak by random passerby mostly looking at their phone. It’s actually a less realistic system than rolling the stats. David Copperfield, this dude https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rII8vR_1wMY are superhuman who cant exist but for the will of the DM gods. The kid we used to play werewolf with that always caught people by surprise, he must be a magical demon from another plane.
Untrue. The old system basically amounted to "the DM decides whether it's appropriate for stealth to be possible".
it decided its impossible, unless the DM makes an exception.
which is going to set a different likelyhood of being useful than
its possible, unless the DM makes exception.
The DM is generally going to default to whatever the stated rules are for situation and once in awhile alter it, when it makes sense, or is good gaming. But i think you already know there is a huge difference between the two.
Which, in the case of in plain view stealth, is absolutely the correct way for the rules to work.
Indeed. I also don't see why one could be without a minimum of cover, obscurement or similar circumstances. In the end the most important is that
The Dungeon Master decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding.
‘In a system without facing, giving every creature omnidirectional vision to the horizon = hiding and most stealth served no purpose. Since the ga,me is supposed to be able to host the rogue/theif/assasssin/ranger fantasies, and could not it was an inherently flawed rule set. By raw, hiding and staying behind an object served the exact same purpose, except one required an action cost.
plain sight, in a system without facing is just clairvoyance.
it was an unrealistic flawed system that couldn’t accommodate basic reality, in a system that is supposed to be able to represent whatever the players can imagine.
You personally prefer a system where stealth is impossible, but if stealth is impossible, without dm fiat, there shouldn’t be rules for stealth or classes based around it.
They should not have an rpg system especially a fantasy one, that cannot by default answer the question what if someone wants to sneak up on someone. People can summon dragons, but I can’t surprise my niece without the DM creating a special rule.
it was a flaw, the current system is less flawed and uses the basic rule of rolling to answer uncertain questions, instead of the DM deciding it every time, and being totally inconsistent from table to table and day to day.
They changed it because it was a huge flaw, it wasn’t ok.
cover has specific rules, obscurement is less clear, and similar circumstances is totally up in the air. It’s not a good idea to build classes and subclasses that are based primarily on the whims of the DM. The players named actions should be fairly consistent in what they can be expected to do.
Dm fiat is a horrible basis for basic rules, many players will not choose an option that defaults to no, unless the dm agrees, they will generally try to do what the rules allow, or what the dm usually accepts.
also if hide requires full cover, it serves no purpose because full cover already provides the same benefits of hiding. The 2014 rules were bad. Most dms had to modify, ignore or adjust the rules to make it work at a table that featured sneaky characters. Which is generally a sign of a bad rule. The DM can always make stuff up, may as well have had no stealth rules in that case.
Walking into plain sight, in a system without facing, is magical invisibility. You could say "concealment or distraction" rather than just concealment, but something that would force everyone to be looking away is the minimum requirement for remotely plausible stealth in open view.