Imagine your DM ruled that every time you made a Deception roll, you had to come up with a lie so convincing that it made sense in 'reality'. That would pretty much render the Deception skill useless. The player is probably average - maybe even above average - at Deception. They are not Expertise + 20 Charisma good at Deception. Gatekeeping their skill based on player skill makes the skill pointless.
The same is true with every roll in the game. The reason we have die rolls in the first place is to eliminate the subjective DM adjudication and allow characters to have abilities that exceed those of the players. I don't know how to sneak into that castle. But my level 20 Rogue absolutely does. The DM doesn't know how to describe the castle in sufficient detail that a master infiltrator could exploit its vulnerabilities. But he knows enough to apply Advantage or Disadvantage to the roll without having to know every detail.
The same arguments being made about Stealth could be made about every roll in the game - and they'd ruin the game if accepted. If you don't want Stealth in your game, then just ban the skill. Don't try to 'soft ban' it by tricking players into characters that lose a vital part of their toolkit via arbitrary DM fiat.
Imagine your DM ruled that every time you made a Deception roll, you had to come up with a lie so convincing that it made sense in 'reality'.
Literally every single game I have played in has ruled it this way. You have to come up with a convincing lie (Deception), or a convincing argument (Persuasion); you have to explain where your character is hiding / how they are avoiding being noticed (Stealth); you have to describe how they use their muscles to do something to use Athletics, or how they use their agility to roll Acrobatics; you have to explain how they try to befriend or control an animal (Animal Handling); you have to explain how they look for clues (Investigation), or how they attempt to track something (Survival). etc... etc...
The most fundamental and most basic rule of the game is that you as the player describe or role-play what your character is doing, then the DM decides what the DC is and what roll you make to accomplish that. That's why it is a Role Playing Game, rather than a "I push the Deception button" game.
i.e. the game works as such:
DM: "You see an abandoned mansion before you, a light flickers in the upper right window." Player: "I try to see if there is something or someone moving in the room with the light." DM: "Roll Perception." Player: "27" DM: "You get a glimpse of the silhouette of a humanoid figure walking past the window."
It does not work as: DM: "You see an abandoned mansion before you, a light flickers in the upper right window." Player: "I rolled a 27 Perception, so is the evil necromancer in the mansion?" DM: "Yes, the evil necromancer is in the basement holding a petrified hand and a magic crystal."
“Hiding” from a zoned out car driver or someone ambling through a crowd is a bit different from hiding from an on guard combatant in an active engagement, which is the only time the exact crunch is relevant as opposed to a typical skill check. When making your assumptions, you should perhaps assume we’re considering what the actual state of the board would be, rather than barely to completely irrelevant comparisons.
[Redacted]
It's not irrelevant to parse out the nuances of perception and hiding in a topic about the Hide skill and the Perception skill. You presumed that we're talking about zoned out car drivers or people ambling through a crowd. Sometimes we are. But sometimes we're not. The fact that car drivers don't account for their lack of perception when they feel like they're being alert is exactly why everyone else has to assume they're invisible. Because car drivers aren't taught that "being alert" isn't nearly good enough.
There isn't an exact crunch because it would be impossible to model it in a manner that is simple. That is why it is left to DM fiat. It is possible to sneak up on people who are trying to find you. You don't need cover for that. You just need to stay out of their line of sight (the IRL one, not the game mechanic). It's not that hard. Sometimes, it's as simple as just keeping yourself above them. That absolutely works. It is possible to sneak past a lone guard who is trying to look for you in an otherwise empty and well-lit corridor. That's doable so long as you can keep out of their vision. You don't need to be above them, even. Humans are so dependent on vision that this is possible. Guard with a dog, though? Much harder. Hiding scent is harder than hiding sound and hiding from eyesight.
Once again, DM fiat is necessary.
If you rule that the Stealth skill is useless, then just say that and be upfront about it to your Rogue players. That way, they can decide whether or not they want to play the class. If you're willing to grant them the class fantasy, talk it out and how you're going to rule it's going to work. This is part of what's hashed out in Session Zero.
Eh, the input needed for skill checks is a spectrum- some players or DMs prefer detailed narration, others prefer relatively general “I try to convince the guard these aren’t the constructs they’re looking for”. There’s pros and cons to either approach. Now, in either case much is still dependent on DM adjudication, so saying skill checks exist to take their judgement out of the equation doesn’t hold up.
If you're willing to grant them the class fantasy, talk it out and how you're going to rule it's going to work. This is part of what's hashed out in Session Zero.
Why are Rogue players incapable of understanding common sense? Why is a specific conversation necessary to explain how "Hey the game is going to follow a reasonable expectation given reality, unless something is explicitly magical in nature." applies to rogues?
Imagine your DM ruled that every time you made a Deception roll, you had to come up with a lie so convincing that it made sense in 'reality'.
When you make a deception roll, you're expected to specify what you're trying to deceive people about, and the DM will set the DC or rule automatic success/failure depending on how plausible it is. Deception is not the skill to come up with the lie, deception is the skill to sell the lie.
Outside of combat, this is also how stealth works: you tell the DM what you're trying to do, and the DM sets a DC depending on how plausible it is. The problem is that the hide action does not give the DM discretion to set difficulty, the only tool they have is declaring automatic failure.
If you're willing to grant them the class fantasy, talk it out and how you're going to rule it's going to work. This is part of what's hashed out in Session Zero.
Why are Rogue players incapable of understanding common sense? Why is a specific conversation necessary to explain how "Hey the game is going to follow a reasonable expectation given reality, unless something is explicitly magical in nature." applies to rogues?
This is what I would call a red flag. You need to communicate to your players what is and what is not going to happen going forward. Establish expectations. Set boundaries. Make sure everyone is on the same page. Your common sense isn't the same as other people's common sense. It's called common sense, but anyone who's been around enough knows that that's an oxymoron. If everyone thought the same way, Session Zeros would not be necessary.
Specific conversations that are particularly necessary are core fantasies and expectations about classes and class functions. It would suck to take a sea-themed subclass with underwater-specific powers and then have the campaign not be anywhere near any kind of body of water. If the campaign is going to take place in Avernus, players need to know that so they know how to build a Draconic Fire Sorcerer, if they want to bring that kind of thing against demons and devils.
“Hiding” from a zoned out car driver or someone ambling through a crowd is a bit different from hiding from an on guard combatant in an active engagement, which is the only time the exact crunch is relevant as opposed to a typical skill check. When making your assumptions, you should perhaps assume we’re considering what the actual state of the board would be, rather than barely to completely irrelevant comparisons.
[Redacted]
It's not irrelevant to parse out the nuances of perception and hiding in a topic about the Hide skill and the Perception skill. You presumed that we're talking about zoned out car drivers or people ambling through a crowd. Sometimes we are. But sometimes we're not. The fact that car drivers don't account for their lack of perception when they feel like they're being alert is exactly why everyone else has to assume they're invisible. Because car drivers aren't taught that "being alert" isn't nearly good enough.
There isn't an exact crunch because it would be impossible to model it in a manner that is simple. That is why it is left to DM fiat. It is possible to sneak up on people who are trying to find you. You don't need cover for that. You just need to stay out of their line of sight. It's not that hard. Sometimes, it's as simple as just keeping yourself above them. That absolutely works. It is possible to sneak past a lone guard who is trying to look for you in an otherwise empty and well-lit corridor. That's doable so long as you can keep out of their vision. You don't need to be above them, even. Humans are so dependent on vision that this is possible. Guard with a dog, though? Much harder. Hiding scent is harder than hiding sound and hiding from eyesight.
Once again, DM fiat is necessary.
If you rule that the Stealth skill is useless, then just say that and be upfront about it to your Rogue players. That way, they can decide whether or not they want to play the class. If you're willing to grant them the class fantasy, talk it out and how you're going to rule it's going to work. This is part of what's hashed out in Session Zero
Regardless of the semantics of your initial analogy, the point remains that there’s no reason to assume combatants in an encounter will be inattentive, particularly since neither attentiveness nor facing for LoS are elements that are mechanically tracked in 2024. And since I expect most players will be quite confident of their own characters’ vigilance during combat, there’s no reason the DM can’t assert the enemies are equally vigilant short of “but then the players don’t get a special advantage”.
You’ll probably note how I’m focusing exclusively on combat here, and there’s a simple reason why- there’s no reason to delve into the mess of the 2024 Hide rules at all outside of combat. As you have correctly pointed out, there’s all kinds of factors that can hypothetically influence detection, and in cinematic circumstances such as basically everything aside from combat, that and a skill check is all you need.
Combat, however, works to a different paradigm, which is why it has so many specific rules without room for player improv. Ergo, things like character awareness in combat should ideally run on a single universal baseline rather than just whatever justifies what you would like to attempt.
Imagine your DM ruled that every time you made a Deception roll, you had to come up with a lie so convincing that it made sense in 'reality'.
When you make a deception roll, you're expected to specify what you're trying to deceive people about, and the DM will set the DC or rule automatic success/failure depending on how plausible it is. Deception is not the skill to come up with the lie, deception is the skill to sell the lie.
Outside of combat, this is also how stealth works: you tell the DM what you're trying to do, and the DM sets a DC depending on how plausible it is. The problem is that the hide action does not give the DM discretion to set difficulty, the only tool they have is declaring automatic failure.
Guidance for it currently isn't clear or concise, but it also isn't auto-failure.
Here's an example.
If a Rogue is trying to sneak across a courtyard with no clear cover and a few guards patrolling it, the basic skill check is DC 15 for Hiding, and then we compare that to the guard's passive Perception. Since they have no knowledge that they're under invasion, I would rule that a passive check. But if the courtyard is very wide and very sparsely covered, I'd give the guard Advantage, which increases their passive Perception by +5. I would communicate that difficulty to the player, to tell them that they don't think it's impossible, but it'll be tougher than usual.
If the guards are alerted and they're trying to find the Rogue, then I'll roll a Perception check for each of them, with Advantage on top, against the Rogue's Stealth check. Not impossible, but potentially quite tough.
If the Rogue asked me about trying to sneak his way past an entire platoon doing marching exercises in the same courtyard while guards are looking for them, in broad daylight, I'd just tell them it's impossible unless they had magical Invisibility.
“Hiding” from a zoned out car driver or someone ambling through a crowd is a bit different from hiding from an on guard combatant in an active engagement, which is the only time the exact crunch is relevant as opposed to a typical skill check. When making your assumptions, you should perhaps assume we’re considering what the actual state of the board would be, rather than barely to completely irrelevant comparisons.
[Redacted]
It's not irrelevant to parse out the nuances of perception and hiding in a topic about the Hide skill and the Perception skill. You presumed that we're talking about zoned out car drivers or people ambling through a crowd. Sometimes we are. But sometimes we're not. The fact that car drivers don't account for their lack of perception when they feel like they're being alert is exactly why everyone else has to assume they're invisible. Because car drivers aren't taught that "being alert" isn't nearly good enough.
There isn't an exact crunch because it would be impossible to model it in a manner that is simple. That is why it is left to DM fiat. It is possible to sneak up on people who are trying to find you. You don't need cover for that. You just need to stay out of their line of sight. It's not that hard. Sometimes, it's as simple as just keeping yourself above them. That absolutely works. It is possible to sneak past a lone guard who is trying to look for you in an otherwise empty and well-lit corridor. That's doable so long as you can keep out of their vision. You don't need to be above them, even. Humans are so dependent on vision that this is possible. Guard with a dog, though? Much harder. Hiding scent is harder than hiding sound and hiding from eyesight.
Once again, DM fiat is necessary.
If you rule that the Stealth skill is useless, then just say that and be upfront about it to your Rogue players. That way, they can decide whether or not they want to play the class. If you're willing to grant them the class fantasy, talk it out and how you're going to rule it's going to work. This is part of what's hashed out in Session Zero
Regardless of the semantics of your initial analogy, the point remains that there’s no reason to assume combatants in an encounter will be inattentive, particularly since neither attentiveness nor facing for LoS are elements that are mechanically tracked in 2024. And since I expect most players will be quite confident of their own characters’ vigilance during combat, there’s no reason the DM can’t assert the enemies are equally vigilant short of “but then the players don’t get a special advantage”.
You’ll probably note how I’m focusing exclusively on combat here, and there’s a simple reason why- there’s no reason to delve into the mess of the 2024 Hide rules at all outside of combat. As you have correctly pointed out, there’s all kinds of factors that can hypothetically influence detection, and in cinematic circumstances such as basically everything aside from combat, that and a skill check is all you need.
Combat, however, works to a different paradigm, which is why it has so many specific rules without room for player improv. Ergo, things like character awareness in combat should ideally run on a single universal baseline rather than just whatever justifies what you would like to attempt.
I would say you still need to tell that to your players. Specifically. In combat. You can rule it that way. A Rogue coming up to a guard and ganking them is resolved using combat rules. I will also point out that a Halfling can also use the Hide action specifically while only being obscured by a Medium creature (which can be their mount or their ally), so that's at least one hard-coded instance of a player being able to use the Hide action, in the best lighting conditions, in combat, against alert and attentive combatants.
I might also suggest that you should also tell your players that you're not sympathetic to improvisation of actions in combat. That's a thing that works for some people, but your swashbucklery Fighters might need to know that beforehand.
I am NOT saying you can't rule things the way you want. I'm saying you need to tell the people involved before it comes up in play.
If you're willing to grant them the class fantasy, talk it out and how you're going to rule it's going to work. This is part of what's hashed out in Session Zero.
Why are Rogue players incapable of understanding common sense? Why is a specific conversation necessary to explain how "Hey the game is going to follow a reasonable expectation given reality, unless something is explicitly magical in nature." applies to rogues?
In full fairness (and I'm more or less in your camp about what can and cannot be done) people can be protective of, what to them, feels like having key abilities 'stripped'. (i.e. the rules say X, but the DM is saying Y).
There is justification in fiction of characters like Batman who seem to appear and disappear almost at will by using nothing more than high Stealth, despite the situations often being almost ludicrous (how, exactly, did he sneak away from Commissioner Gordon when there were no windows and only one door out of that room?). I think from my use of the word 'ludicrous' you can see how I feel about such feats, even in fiction.
Your average D&D game tends to take place in a world with some pretty fantastic things going on. People learn how to immolate buildings just by studying really hard. Impossibly large creatures take to the air and do things that are biologically impossible. There are massive underground constructions that often don't seem to have very solid reasons for existing. With all that suspension of disbelief, why not suspend disbelief and allow nigh-superhuman fears from skills?
My answer as a DM, because that's not the world I want to construct. I want magic to be magic and skill to be skill. Someone might be really good, but it still has to be believable in my world. A person with a massive Stealth skill cannot simply dance between two alert guards when that person has no cover and a person with a massive proficiency in Smith's Tools can't craft a suit of plate armor out of bar stock with three swings of their hammer.
But just because I don't want to construct the world that way doesn't mean other people might prefer something a bit more 'fantastic'. The real solution is that people at the table need to be sure everyone is at least roughly on the same page as far as these types of things go (which is something a Session 0 document should be covering).
All of which, for a short answer, boils down to 'you're deciding something is 'common sense' in a world where the impossible happens daily and twice on Sundays.'
I will vociferously disagree with Rogue players who want to take the stance that the RAW 'guarantees' they can do something, but won't say it is simple 'common sense'. Rather it is matter of things such as game balance, the agreed upon level of disbelief, and other such factors and that my interpretation of the rules disagrees with theirs, though I might still be able to see how they came to such an interpretation.
Sneaking past supposedly alert people is the fantasy. Blank hallway? No apparent means of egress? No problem. We have film, book, and folk tale examples. (And are those guards really hyper-alert? Guard duty is really boring. Real life actually favors the stealthy character in many use cases).
Certainly in combat, we seem to pretend creatures are far more alert than they'd actually be. Tunnel vision is likely in a combat situation, especially one that happens at close range. The guy in your face is taking up most of your attention. You're not looking over your shoulder because that's how you get stabbed.
And a skill check in the 25-30 or higher range is in magical/mythic territory.
People seem to think they're much better at perceiving things than they actually are. The reality is that we're generally more unaware of our surroundings than we are aware of them, especially when there are concrete things we're focusing on. It's the same principle in play during a magic trick - distract attention while the 'real magic' is happening elsewhere. (And adjudicating how much attention a character is actually paying is what the perception skill is for.)
As far as game balance goes... i don't even know what that means in this context. Stealthing is the stealth character's time to shine - they're not stealing that spotlight from someone else. Thus, there's no possible 'balance' concern, because the only balance that matters is player participation/contribution. Indeed, stealing away the stealth fantasy ruins balance, because it steals that character's time to shine. The game guarantees wizards their spells and fighters their attacks - they don't have to depend on the DM to play out their fantasy. A reading of the rules which holds the Rogue fantasy hostage to DM fiat is manifestly unfair and unbalanced against the Rogue.
And a skill check in the 25-30 or higher range is in magical/mythic territory.
And if the DC was actually dependent on the difficulty of what you're attempting, that argument would be meaningful. As long as the DC for the hide action is 15, the hide action can't do anything that is inappropriate for a DC 15 skill check.
The “balance/overpowered” aspect is the idea that very nearly from the start Rogues would have the equivalent of a high tier magic item at will. With a +3 DEX mod and expertise for +7, it’s already roughly 2 in 3 odds in favor of making the roll with a Bonus Action at 2nd level. By 7th level it would only take the prof for them to be objectively unable to fail the DC test, and if they have expertise they’d have a minimum of 19 as a score to beat to be found under the interpretation that they’re now literally unfindable without a Search Action. Note that the magic items with similar effects are all Legendary- admittedly they aren’t 1-to-1 comparisons, but it’s the same ballpark.
I, for one, find the idea that a 2nd level build can emulate an effect that seems to be classed as Very Rare to Legendary when coming from magic items is probably not the result intended by the designers.
And a skill check in the 25-30 or higher range is in magical/mythic territory.
And if the DC was actually dependent on the difficulty of what you're attempting, that argument would be meaningful. As long as the DC for the hide action is 15, the hide action can't do anything that is inappropriate for a DC 15 skill check.
The quality of your stealth is your roll. Ignore the DC (it's silly anyway, since hiding is fundamentally an opposed roll, not a flat DC). If you roll a 30, you haven't just passed a DC 15.
And this is why it should always be perception vs. stealth, with at best advantage. If they can beat your perception with advantage, it shouldn't matter that it's a featureless room, you're just that much stealthier than their awareness.
The quality of your stealth is your roll. Ignore the DC (it's silly anyway, since hiding is fundamentally an opposed roll, not a flat DC). If you roll a 30, you haven't just passed a DC 15.
The DC is what the rules say to do. Yes, you can just ignore the DC, but then you aren't using the 2024 stealth rules -- the argument is about what the 2024 stealth rules actually say, not about what your personal house rules for stealth say. And, well, difficulty of stealth is in fact dependent on factors other than the perception skill of adversaries.
The “balance/overpowered” aspect is the idea that very nearly from the start Rogues would have the equivalent of a high tier magic item at will. With a +3 DEX mod and expertise for +7, it’s already roughly 2 in 3 odds in favor of making the roll with a Bonus Action at 2nd level. By 7th level it would only take the prof for them to be objectively unable to fail the DC test, and if they have expertise they’d have a minimum of 19 as a score to beat to be found under the interpretation that they’re now literally unfindable without a Search Action. Note that the magic items with similar effects are all Legendary- admittedly they aren’t 1-to-1 comparisons, but it’s the same ballpark.
I, for one, find the idea that a 2nd level build can emulate an effect that seems to be classed as Very Rare to Legendary when coming from magic items is probably not the result intended by the designers.
Or maybe more creatures should have better perception checks. Nor is a 19 that amazing.
A 19 against even a +5 perception with advantage has better than 50% odds of being seen. (231 in 400 chance they spot a 19). That's not very good odds for sneaking down that featureless hallway. (7 in 20 chance they get spotted without advantage).
That same +9 stealth has only a 1 in 4 chance of rolling a 25 or better, which is almost unfindable by a +5 perception. (25 itself can be spotted on a natural 20 with +5). But that also means they're being almost mythically stealthy. Sneaking down a featureless hallways or "disappearing" from a featureless room seems appropriate at that point.
Now, how attentive is +5 perception for a 7th level challenge? Ultimately the Rogue ends up with +5 dex +12 expertise = +17 before magic items at ~17th level. What does a CR17 monster have for perception? Adult Red Dragon: +13. Adult Gold Dragon: +14. Dracolich: +14. Death Knight: +3 (someone should have taken proficiency). Dragon Turtle: +1. Goristro: +7. Sphinx of Valor: +12. So the Rogue who specialized in stealth has a small edge against creatures with good perception, and trivially sneaks around monsters which aren't very perceptive. That feels about right to me. (And keep in mind that several of those have blindsight - no playing out the Bilbo Baggins the Burglar fantasy of sneaking into a dragon's lair and making off with something from its hoard, because blindsight renders hiding moot within its area).
The quality of your stealth is your roll. Ignore the DC (it's silly anyway, since hiding is fundamentally an opposed roll, not a flat DC). If you roll a 30, you haven't just passed a DC 15.
The DC is what the rules say to do. Yes, you can just ignore the DC, but then you aren't using the 2024 stealth rules -- the argument is about what the 2024 stealth rules actually say, not about what your personal house rules for stealth say. And, well, difficulty of stealth is in fact dependent on factors other than the perception skill of adversaries.
Except whenever stealth actually matters, the enemies aren't trying to beat a DC15 perception check, they're trying to beat your stealth roll. That's what the 2024 rules tell you to do. So despite being in the rules, the DC15 is meaningless, because whenever stealth is meaningful, the actual DC is 'whatever beats the enemy perception roll'.
Literally the only effect the DC15 has is you can't even force the enemy to make a perception check unless you roll a 15 or better. But otherwise its an opposed roll.
I mean, I can't believe we're having this conversation. The Hide rules explicitly say "On a successful check, you have the Invisible condition. Make note of your check's total, which is the DC for a creature to find you with a Wisdom (Perception) check." It's explicitly an opposed check, so how well you roll absolutely does matter. It's not just passing a DC15.
The point you are missing in the context of this discussion- admittedly, one that I could have been clearer about- is the action economy advantage this creates. If mid-combat essentially any Rogue can find cover and become invisible functionally indefinitely and the only way to break the effect is a Search Action, then you’re effectively forcing at least one enemy to forgo attacking to make the attempt per round if they want to clear the effect, whereas it only takes a Bonus Action to be guaranteed to Hide per the RAW DC. Given the premium action economy represents in 5e, that’s enough of an ask that I expect most DMs to go without, especially when half the time my 7th level Rogue will be scoring higher than 19 on their rolls whereas enemy Perception bonuses are in the +4-7 range for CRs near that level per the current MM, with advantage granting mechanics for Perception checks having been largely if not completely phased out, making its application to counter Hide homebrew, not RAW.
All of which, for a short answer, boils down to 'you're deciding something is 'common sense' in a world where the impossible happens daily and twice on Sundays.'
Except it doesn't at least not in most D&D games / settings. In most D&D games and settings the PCs are not just regular people. Levels 1-4 they stand out as exceptional in small towns and villages, levels 5-10 they are stand out as exceptional in cities and counties, levels 11-14 they stand out as exceptional in entire countries or continents, and levels 14+ they are the most powerful people on the planet.
A group certainly can play a high-fantasy game where every priest in every tiny town is a level 12 cleric capable of reviving the dead. But at least in my experience that usually isn't how the game is played. A level 1 Rogue can pretty easily get a 20+ stealth check, ergo, a 20+ stealth check is not particularly exceptional. Even a regular highway bandit can get a 20+ stealth check without much effort. At a DC 15 even a commoner can beat that more than 25% of the time.
If skill checks can perform supernatural feats then the entire world would be filled with supernatural things happening all the time. A random 15 year old street urchin could easily assassinate the king, and the whole world is chaos and anarchy with common wrestlers randomly tossing each other 30 feet across the room when they happen to get Nat 20s, random children turning invisible while playing hide-and-seek, and horses randomly leaping 20 ft in the air during eventing competitions.
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Imagine your DM ruled that every time you made a Deception roll, you had to come up with a lie so convincing that it made sense in 'reality'. That would pretty much render the Deception skill useless. The player is probably average - maybe even above average - at Deception. They are not Expertise + 20 Charisma good at Deception. Gatekeeping their skill based on player skill makes the skill pointless.
The same is true with every roll in the game. The reason we have die rolls in the first place is to eliminate the subjective DM adjudication and allow characters to have abilities that exceed those of the players. I don't know how to sneak into that castle. But my level 20 Rogue absolutely does. The DM doesn't know how to describe the castle in sufficient detail that a master infiltrator could exploit its vulnerabilities. But he knows enough to apply Advantage or Disadvantage to the roll without having to know every detail.
The same arguments being made about Stealth could be made about every roll in the game - and they'd ruin the game if accepted. If you don't want Stealth in your game, then just ban the skill. Don't try to 'soft ban' it by tricking players into characters that lose a vital part of their toolkit via arbitrary DM fiat.
Literally every single game I have played in has ruled it this way. You have to come up with a convincing lie (Deception), or a convincing argument (Persuasion); you have to explain where your character is hiding / how they are avoiding being noticed (Stealth); you have to describe how they use their muscles to do something to use Athletics, or how they use their agility to roll Acrobatics; you have to explain how they try to befriend or control an animal (Animal Handling); you have to explain how they look for clues (Investigation), or how they attempt to track something (Survival). etc... etc...
The most fundamental and most basic rule of the game is that you as the player describe or role-play what your character is doing, then the DM decides what the DC is and what roll you make to accomplish that. That's why it is a Role Playing Game, rather than a "I push the Deception button" game.
i.e. the game works as such:
DM: "You see an abandoned mansion before you, a light flickers in the upper right window."
Player: "I try to see if there is something or someone moving in the room with the light."
DM: "Roll Perception."
Player: "27"
DM: "You get a glimpse of the silhouette of a humanoid figure walking past the window."
It does not work as:
DM: "You see an abandoned mansion before you, a light flickers in the upper right window."
Player: "I rolled a 27 Perception, so is the evil necromancer in the mansion?"
DM: "Yes, the evil necromancer is in the basement holding a petrified hand and a magic crystal."
[Redacted]
It's not irrelevant to parse out the nuances of perception and hiding in a topic about the Hide skill and the Perception skill. You presumed that we're talking about zoned out car drivers or people ambling through a crowd. Sometimes we are. But sometimes we're not. The fact that car drivers don't account for their lack of perception when they feel like they're being alert is exactly why everyone else has to assume they're invisible. Because car drivers aren't taught that "being alert" isn't nearly good enough.
There isn't an exact crunch because it would be impossible to model it in a manner that is simple. That is why it is left to DM fiat. It is possible to sneak up on people who are trying to find you. You don't need cover for that. You just need to stay out of their line of sight (the IRL one, not the game mechanic). It's not that hard. Sometimes, it's as simple as just keeping yourself above them. That absolutely works. It is possible to sneak past a lone guard who is trying to look for you in an otherwise empty and well-lit corridor. That's doable so long as you can keep out of their vision. You don't need to be above them, even. Humans are so dependent on vision that this is possible. Guard with a dog, though? Much harder. Hiding scent is harder than hiding sound and hiding from eyesight.
Once again, DM fiat is necessary.
If you rule that the Stealth skill is useless, then just say that and be upfront about it to your Rogue players. That way, they can decide whether or not they want to play the class. If you're willing to grant them the class fantasy, talk it out and how you're going to rule it's going to work. This is part of what's hashed out in Session Zero.
Eh, the input needed for skill checks is a spectrum- some players or DMs prefer detailed narration, others prefer relatively general “I try to convince the guard these aren’t the constructs they’re looking for”. There’s pros and cons to either approach. Now, in either case much is still dependent on DM adjudication, so saying skill checks exist to take their judgement out of the equation doesn’t hold up.
Why are Rogue players incapable of understanding common sense? Why is a specific conversation necessary to explain how "Hey the game is going to follow a reasonable expectation given reality, unless something is explicitly magical in nature." applies to rogues?
When you make a deception roll, you're expected to specify what you're trying to deceive people about, and the DM will set the DC or rule automatic success/failure depending on how plausible it is. Deception is not the skill to come up with the lie, deception is the skill to sell the lie.
Outside of combat, this is also how stealth works: you tell the DM what you're trying to do, and the DM sets a DC depending on how plausible it is. The problem is that the hide action does not give the DM discretion to set difficulty, the only tool they have is declaring automatic failure.
This is what I would call a red flag. You need to communicate to your players what is and what is not going to happen going forward. Establish expectations. Set boundaries. Make sure everyone is on the same page. Your common sense isn't the same as other people's common sense. It's called common sense, but anyone who's been around enough knows that that's an oxymoron. If everyone thought the same way, Session Zeros would not be necessary.
Specific conversations that are particularly necessary are core fantasies and expectations about classes and class functions. It would suck to take a sea-themed subclass with underwater-specific powers and then have the campaign not be anywhere near any kind of body of water. If the campaign is going to take place in Avernus, players need to know that so they know how to build a Draconic Fire Sorcerer, if they want to bring that kind of thing against demons and devils.
Regardless of the semantics of your initial analogy, the point remains that there’s no reason to assume combatants in an encounter will be inattentive, particularly since neither attentiveness nor facing for LoS are elements that are mechanically tracked in 2024. And since I expect most players will be quite confident of their own characters’ vigilance during combat, there’s no reason the DM can’t assert the enemies are equally vigilant short of “but then the players don’t get a special advantage”.
You’ll probably note how I’m focusing exclusively on combat here, and there’s a simple reason why- there’s no reason to delve into the mess of the 2024 Hide rules at all outside of combat. As you have correctly pointed out, there’s all kinds of factors that can hypothetically influence detection, and in cinematic circumstances such as basically everything aside from combat, that and a skill check is all you need.
Combat, however, works to a different paradigm, which is why it has so many specific rules without room for player improv. Ergo, things like character awareness in combat should ideally run on a single universal baseline rather than just whatever justifies what you would like to attempt.
Guidance for it currently isn't clear or concise, but it also isn't auto-failure.
Here's an example.
If a Rogue is trying to sneak across a courtyard with no clear cover and a few guards patrolling it, the basic skill check is DC 15 for Hiding, and then we compare that to the guard's passive Perception. Since they have no knowledge that they're under invasion, I would rule that a passive check. But if the courtyard is very wide and very sparsely covered, I'd give the guard Advantage, which increases their passive Perception by +5. I would communicate that difficulty to the player, to tell them that they don't think it's impossible, but it'll be tougher than usual.
If the guards are alerted and they're trying to find the Rogue, then I'll roll a Perception check for each of them, with Advantage on top, against the Rogue's Stealth check. Not impossible, but potentially quite tough.
If the Rogue asked me about trying to sneak his way past an entire platoon doing marching exercises in the same courtyard while guards are looking for them, in broad daylight, I'd just tell them it's impossible unless they had magical Invisibility.
I would say you still need to tell that to your players. Specifically. In combat. You can rule it that way. A Rogue coming up to a guard and ganking them is resolved using combat rules. I will also point out that a Halfling can also use the Hide action specifically while only being obscured by a Medium creature (which can be their mount or their ally), so that's at least one hard-coded instance of a player being able to use the Hide action, in the best lighting conditions, in combat, against alert and attentive combatants.
I might also suggest that you should also tell your players that you're not sympathetic to improvisation of actions in combat. That's a thing that works for some people, but your swashbucklery Fighters might need to know that beforehand.
I am NOT saying you can't rule things the way you want. I'm saying you need to tell the people involved before it comes up in play.
In full fairness (and I'm more or less in your camp about what can and cannot be done) people can be protective of, what to them, feels like having key abilities 'stripped'. (i.e. the rules say X, but the DM is saying Y).
There is justification in fiction of characters like Batman who seem to appear and disappear almost at will by using nothing more than high Stealth, despite the situations often being almost ludicrous (how, exactly, did he sneak away from Commissioner Gordon when there were no windows and only one door out of that room?). I think from my use of the word 'ludicrous' you can see how I feel about such feats, even in fiction.
Your average D&D game tends to take place in a world with some pretty fantastic things going on. People learn how to immolate buildings just by studying really hard. Impossibly large creatures take to the air and do things that are biologically impossible. There are massive underground constructions that often don't seem to have very solid reasons for existing. With all that suspension of disbelief, why not suspend disbelief and allow nigh-superhuman fears from skills?
My answer as a DM, because that's not the world I want to construct. I want magic to be magic and skill to be skill. Someone might be really good, but it still has to be believable in my world. A person with a massive Stealth skill cannot simply dance between two alert guards when that person has no cover and a person with a massive proficiency in Smith's Tools can't craft a suit of plate armor out of bar stock with three swings of their hammer.
But just because I don't want to construct the world that way doesn't mean other people might prefer something a bit more 'fantastic'. The real solution is that people at the table need to be sure everyone is at least roughly on the same page as far as these types of things go (which is something a Session 0 document should be covering).
All of which, for a short answer, boils down to 'you're deciding something is 'common sense' in a world where the impossible happens daily and twice on Sundays.'
I will vociferously disagree with Rogue players who want to take the stance that the RAW 'guarantees' they can do something, but won't say it is simple 'common sense'. Rather it is matter of things such as game balance, the agreed upon level of disbelief, and other such factors and that my interpretation of the rules disagrees with theirs, though I might still be able to see how they came to such an interpretation.
Sneaking past supposedly alert people is the fantasy. Blank hallway? No apparent means of egress? No problem. We have film, book, and folk tale examples. (And are those guards really hyper-alert? Guard duty is really boring. Real life actually favors the stealthy character in many use cases).
Certainly in combat, we seem to pretend creatures are far more alert than they'd actually be. Tunnel vision is likely in a combat situation, especially one that happens at close range. The guy in your face is taking up most of your attention. You're not looking over your shoulder because that's how you get stabbed.
And a skill check in the 25-30 or higher range is in magical/mythic territory.
People seem to think they're much better at perceiving things than they actually are. The reality is that we're generally more unaware of our surroundings than we are aware of them, especially when there are concrete things we're focusing on. It's the same principle in play during a magic trick - distract attention while the 'real magic' is happening elsewhere. (And adjudicating how much attention a character is actually paying is what the perception skill is for.)
As far as game balance goes... i don't even know what that means in this context. Stealthing is the stealth character's time to shine - they're not stealing that spotlight from someone else. Thus, there's no possible 'balance' concern, because the only balance that matters is player participation/contribution. Indeed, stealing away the stealth fantasy ruins balance, because it steals that character's time to shine. The game guarantees wizards their spells and fighters their attacks - they don't have to depend on the DM to play out their fantasy. A reading of the rules which holds the Rogue fantasy hostage to DM fiat is manifestly unfair and unbalanced against the Rogue.
And if the DC was actually dependent on the difficulty of what you're attempting, that argument would be meaningful. As long as the DC for the hide action is 15, the hide action can't do anything that is inappropriate for a DC 15 skill check.
The “balance/overpowered” aspect is the idea that very nearly from the start Rogues would have the equivalent of a high tier magic item at will. With a +3 DEX mod and expertise for +7, it’s already roughly 2 in 3 odds in favor of making the roll with a Bonus Action at 2nd level. By 7th level it would only take the prof for them to be objectively unable to fail the DC test, and if they have expertise they’d have a minimum of 19 as a score to beat to be found under the interpretation that they’re now literally unfindable without a Search Action. Note that the magic items with similar effects are all Legendary- admittedly they aren’t 1-to-1 comparisons, but it’s the same ballpark.
I, for one, find the idea that a 2nd level build can emulate an effect that seems to be classed as Very Rare to Legendary when coming from magic items is probably not the result intended by the designers.
The quality of your stealth is your roll. Ignore the DC (it's silly anyway, since hiding is fundamentally an opposed roll, not a flat DC). If you roll a 30, you haven't just passed a DC 15.
And this is why it should always be perception vs. stealth, with at best advantage. If they can beat your perception with advantage, it shouldn't matter that it's a featureless room, you're just that much stealthier than their awareness.
The DC is what the rules say to do. Yes, you can just ignore the DC, but then you aren't using the 2024 stealth rules -- the argument is about what the 2024 stealth rules actually say, not about what your personal house rules for stealth say. And, well, difficulty of stealth is in fact dependent on factors other than the perception skill of adversaries.
Or maybe more creatures should have better perception checks. Nor is a 19 that amazing.
A 19 against even a +5 perception with advantage has better than 50% odds of being seen. (231 in 400 chance they spot a 19). That's not very good odds for sneaking down that featureless hallway. (7 in 20 chance they get spotted without advantage).
That same +9 stealth has only a 1 in 4 chance of rolling a 25 or better, which is almost unfindable by a +5 perception. (25 itself can be spotted on a natural 20 with +5). But that also means they're being almost mythically stealthy. Sneaking down a featureless hallways or "disappearing" from a featureless room seems appropriate at that point.
Now, how attentive is +5 perception for a 7th level challenge? Ultimately the Rogue ends up with +5 dex +12 expertise = +17 before magic items at ~17th level. What does a CR17 monster have for perception? Adult Red Dragon: +13. Adult Gold Dragon: +14. Dracolich: +14. Death Knight: +3 (someone should have taken proficiency). Dragon Turtle: +1. Goristro: +7. Sphinx of Valor: +12. So the Rogue who specialized in stealth has a small edge against creatures with good perception, and trivially sneaks around monsters which aren't very perceptive. That feels about right to me. (And keep in mind that several of those have blindsight - no playing out the Bilbo Baggins the Burglar fantasy of sneaking into a dragon's lair and making off with something from its hoard, because blindsight renders hiding moot within its area).
Except whenever stealth actually matters, the enemies aren't trying to beat a DC15 perception check, they're trying to beat your stealth roll. That's what the 2024 rules tell you to do. So despite being in the rules, the DC15 is meaningless, because whenever stealth is meaningful, the actual DC is 'whatever beats the enemy perception roll'.
Literally the only effect the DC15 has is you can't even force the enemy to make a perception check unless you roll a 15 or better. But otherwise its an opposed roll.
I mean, I can't believe we're having this conversation. The Hide rules explicitly say "On a successful check, you have the Invisible condition. Make note of your check's total, which is the DC for a creature to find you with a Wisdom (Perception) check." It's explicitly an opposed check, so how well you roll absolutely does matter. It's not just passing a DC15.
The point you are missing in the context of this discussion- admittedly, one that I could have been clearer about- is the action economy advantage this creates. If mid-combat essentially any Rogue can find cover and become invisible functionally indefinitely and the only way to break the effect is a Search Action, then you’re effectively forcing at least one enemy to forgo attacking to make the attempt per round if they want to clear the effect, whereas it only takes a Bonus Action to be guaranteed to Hide per the RAW DC. Given the premium action economy represents in 5e, that’s enough of an ask that I expect most DMs to go without, especially when half the time my 7th level Rogue will be scoring higher than 19 on their rolls whereas enemy Perception bonuses are in the +4-7 range for CRs near that level per the current MM, with advantage granting mechanics for Perception checks having been largely if not completely phased out, making its application to counter Hide homebrew, not RAW.
Except it doesn't at least not in most D&D games / settings. In most D&D games and settings the PCs are not just regular people. Levels 1-4 they stand out as exceptional in small towns and villages, levels 5-10 they are stand out as exceptional in cities and counties, levels 11-14 they stand out as exceptional in entire countries or continents, and levels 14+ they are the most powerful people on the planet.
A group certainly can play a high-fantasy game where every priest in every tiny town is a level 12 cleric capable of reviving the dead. But at least in my experience that usually isn't how the game is played. A level 1 Rogue can pretty easily get a 20+ stealth check, ergo, a 20+ stealth check is not particularly exceptional. Even a regular highway bandit can get a 20+ stealth check without much effort. At a DC 15 even a commoner can beat that more than 25% of the time.
If skill checks can perform supernatural feats then the entire world would be filled with supernatural things happening all the time. A random 15 year old street urchin could easily assassinate the king, and the whole world is chaos and anarchy with common wrestlers randomly tossing each other 30 feet across the room when they happen to get Nat 20s, random children turning invisible while playing hide-and-seek, and horses randomly leaping 20 ft in the air during eventing competitions.