Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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And this is why I have maintained that your position is not 'automatically wrong'. If I am running a Naruto style game and you want to use Stealth in the way that you are describing, I absolutely would allow it.
However, you are demanding that it be allowed in any game. If I am running a heist style game in which the players are suppose to be trying to think of clever ways to use their skills (e.g., what if I enter the room through the garderobe since there is a guard directly in front of the only door) rather than just going 'Welp, I rolled a 27, so I sneak past him', then no, I'm not letting you do it, and your statements to the contrary I am not 'breaking the rules' or 'making things up'.
And to clarify, I don't just decide the level of 'cinematic realism' and my players are forced to like it or lump it. It is a dialogue between us. If you are trying to push through your Naruto style play in the middle of my 'heist style' game you are undercutting what the majority of the other players agreed to try.
I think we have to concede that there must be other ways to "find you" besides the DC [Stealth Roll] Wisdom (Perception) check.
If you're hiding behind a low wall, and someone casts Scrying, it doesn't make sense that they would need to pass the check. It's magic intended to focus on an individual. If the sensor is on the same side of the low wall as the hidden character, then they should be spotted without a check.
If someone casts the Locate Creature spell, they should be able to find you without the check, because they can literally zero in on your location. Unless you are Peta in the Hunger Games and have painted yourself to blend in with the rocks so that even someone standing an inch away from you couldn't see you, the Locate Creature spell will find you, no check needed.
If someone casts the Locate Object spell for an object the hidden creature is carrying, the caster should be able to find them without a check. The spell zeros in on the location of the object with pinpoint accuracy. You can get right up on the person carrying the object, even if you were blindfolded. Therefore using this spell you should be able to find the hidden person without the Perception check.
Unless we are suggesting that a basic ability that every character has access to - the ability to Hide - can thwart a 2nd, 4th, and 5th level spell, then we have to assume that the Wisdom (Perception) check cannot be the ONLY way to Find a person who is hidden.
... I'm not convinced. Even if you know what square they're in, knowing what square you're in is not the same thing as 'finding' them. If you've got a box of junk and the locate object spell tells you what you're looking for is in the box, you still haven't 'found' the item, even though you've narrowed it down to less than 5'x5'x5'.
Especially with the locate spells - it does not zero in on the exact location. It gives you a direction. Getting the exact location with these spells requires telemetry. (Now, I would certainly give advantage on the roll).
And I am unconvinced by Scrying. It creates a sensor near them. You hear and see as if you were there, which means you're still just using your senses. Scrying an Invisible (as the spell) creature doesn't let you see them unless you can See Invisible somehow. It follows them around, so you'd know they were nearby. And.. it doesn't actually tell you where the sensor is, just that it's near the target, so you don't even get a location from it.
Does opening a door not make a sound louder than a whisper? (To the guy standing right next to it, at least). You keep introducing barriers where no barriers were implied by the discussion.
Consider: Thief with spider-climb creeps along the ceiling, unnoticed by the guard next to the door. (People don't look up very often, this is perfectly plausible, even in a heist-style game). He waits. Someone comes to enter the room, and presents credentials. The guard nods to him. The new person opens the door and walks in, and the thief quietly slips through the door (at the top) behind him before it closes. He hugs the ceiling on the other side until the person is done and leaves. Now he has full access to the room, and can rifle through the files without alerting the guard outside (because while it might be louder than a whisper to someone right there, the door and distance will muffle the sound, and the sound of files being flipped through isn't that much louder than a whisper).
'Cinematic verisimilitude' means that people would accept it in a movie, even though it almost certainly doesn't work in reality. For example, Batman's ability to just be gone when you turn your back (but you do have to turn your back or otherwise be distracted).
And if the answer is No because of a Silence spell, does that mean you can sneak past the guard with absolutely no cover?
You keep trying to avoid the actual question with distractions.
And once more, for clarity, yes, in your Naruto style game, knock yourself out. However, not everyone likes playing those. I know you invoked 'high fantasy', but it is more complex than that.
In my earlier example I mentioned running a 'heist style' game. In all honesty I was doing that as a lazy shorthand. The fact is that the players I regularly run do not want to play in a 'Welp, I got a 27' style of game. They want to have to put in some effort trying to come up to a solution to that guard at the end of the hall. We all agree that the world is a high fantasy world with dragons and wizards, but we don't want people capable of doing utterly implausible things just because they rolled well on a skill. They enjoy the challenge of trying to figure out how to change the situation from implausible to plausible. That is our style of play.
And you are insisting that what we are doing is wrong and that we are ignoring rules or making up new ones.
Don't forget Tremorsense; "pinpoint the location of creatures and moving objects within a specific range" is pretty good example of "finding."
In point of fact, Naruto pretty much never does Invisibility-tier stealth without it being an overtly supernatural phenomenon. They’re all Arcane Tricksters, Gloom Stalkers, etc, not Thieves.
But people wouldn't accept that in some movies. That's my point. It's a flexible line.
And if you want to say 'if any movie would accept it, it qualifies as cinematically plausible' then you just turned 'cinematic verisimilitude' into a meaningless metric.
Hey, I want to make a Strength(Athletics) check to fly. We are suppose to have cinematic verisimilitude, right? Well, the protagonist did that in Mashle.
Which is why the DM should be in control of whether it's possible, and what the DC is if it is possible. However, the general verisimilitude level of D&D is superhero level, if you can accept someone being hit by a giant and not dying, Batman level stealth should not be a stretch.
Part of the issue here is that we’re basically conflating two different scenarios. Out of combat/initiative stealth is basically just another “can I try this?” skill check moment, and thus open to players describing a course like “I wait until they’re distracted to move into their blind spot”.
The Hide Action exists for attempting Stealth during the 6 second intervals of combat turns, where players don’t have the same option to finesse most actions into a favorable position. It’s if not an explicit fact of the game then certainly an implicitly standard expectation that during combat characters don’t need to justify their awareness of anything they can draw an unobstructed line to from themselves. Ergo, there’s no logical basis for why they cannot “somehow see” a character who succeed in a Hide Action but then came out from behind cover, given that players do not get to narrate enemy/NPC behavior and being on the turn order clock means they don’t have the luxury of picking their moment they would enjoy in other contexts.
If sneaking past a guard at a door is supposed to be a challenge, no one is making a 27 stealth roll, because a guard at a door is not a challenge beyond level ~4. And despite a 25 being a possible result, no PC is going to plan on that working.
If we assume a silence spell which covers the door but not the guard (so he doesn't notice he can't hear anything), and the door opens inward (so the guard can't see the door move, because the door is not Hidden, although opening inward is the normal way to hang a door), and the PC beats his perception (even giving him advantage), then yes, i don't see a problem with sneaking past that guard, even in your heist game. Maybe he's tired, or bored, or daydreaming. Maybe he's worrying about something. People are not automatons who are perfectly attentive. In fact, they are generally inattentive, especially at boring jobs where nothing happens 99% of the time. Being attentive is exhausting.
I would even accept that in a heist movie. You've managed to cast silence precisely in a way that won't give the game up and without being noticed, and then brought in a stealth specialist to get in.
By 7th level, the wizard just casts dimension door from outside the building into the room, based on nothing but the blueprints. He's in a heist campaign, so he probably has decent Dex and took stealth proficiency. Telling the Rogue he can't just sneak past a lone guard at that point is basically telling the Rogue player that he should have been a wizard.
A 27 stealth check is a supernatural-tier phenomenon.
It is not, however, an overtly supernatural effect, unless you're using overt supernatural effects to achieve that roll.
The Hidden condition is itself the justification for why they cannot be aware of something they can draw an unobstructed line from themselves.
The rules are not a physics simulator - creatures don't actually have 360 degree perfect awareness. Hidden vs. perception is how you determine where their attention is or is not. (Non-hiding characters draw attention by making noise, which is why the fiction that creatures are aware of things all around them is okay). And that is the logical basis for why the rules DO NOT say a creature stops being hidden when they leave cover or concealment.
There's nothing overt about a creature failing to notice you. That's a relatively mundane event in everyday life.
"The rules provide DCs for certain checks, but the DM ultimately sets them."
Whatever DC the DM sets in the circumstances is, by definition, RAW. The DM adjudicates how the world and circumstances interact with the rules, the characters and their abilities. Assigning a DC to a task is not "making up whatever they want" ... it is the DM running the game and it is part of their job. If a DM decides that every character can Misty Step once/day because of their game world circumstances that is a house rule. If a DM decides that the difficulty for a specific task is trivial or impossible or somewhere in between, that is RAW - just based on the above statement.
YOU may not like how some DMs choose to run Hiding and Stealth ... but that doesn't automatically mean that the DMs involved aren't running the game using Rules As Written.
On to your examples since they specify situations and circumstances where a DM could make a ruling. Here's how I would rule.
1) (And I don't know why a busy street would be impossible to Hide on? It is only enemies you care about finding you. The bystanders are (generally) not enemies, and it doesn't matter if they see you. Tailing someone down a busy street should make it easier to hide relative to a deserted street, not harder.)
If the person hiding is a wanted fugitive whose poster has been circulated then everyone could be an enemy and walking down a street without a disguise or something covering their features even with stealth would not likely succeed in hiding them. If the character took actions to hide their appearance then they would NOT be invisible but they aren't likely to be noticed so I'd allow the stealth check to see if they pass unnoticed. They would not be "invisible". They could not stand in front of a passersby waving their hands and expect to go unseen.
On the other hand, if the character is tailing someone down a crowded street then the crowd are not enemies, they amount to terrain or environment that will provide light or heavy obscurement for the person trying to hide and thus a stealth check is perfectly ok - however, again - the character is not "invisible" - they can't walk directly in front of the creature they are following without possibly being noticed if that creature is paying attention. For an alert opponent, the DC for noticing the "hidden" character standing in front of you, would be zero in my game.
Stealth is still extremely useful, it just isn't an at will invisibility spell on a die roll of 15 or more. In most of the games I run, Hidden and Invisibility spell are not the same even though both provide the invisible condition. Hidden is unnoticed (and considered unseen unless noticed) while Invisibility is unseen. This is based on the "until an enemy finds you" in the RAW for the HIde action which is present for Hide but not for the Invisibility spell.
2) (And I would go further and say you simply shouldn't invest in stealth with a DM who isn't going to let you use Hide in a way that allows you to actually do things.)
That would be your decision. Personally, I love stealthy characters (as both a player and a DM) and there is a lot they will get away with on a successful stealth roll depending on the circumstances. However, when I am running a game, I make sure folks know that stealth and invisibility are not exactly the same. When I am running it, Stealth will not allow you to blatantly walk past alert guards. On the other hand, another party member could distract the guards while the stealthy character tries to stealth past. Or maybe an arcane trickster could use a mage hand to tap the guard's shoulder and slip past on the other side. Lot's of possibilities honestly.
Yeah. And that is why, in 2024, they removed the
"In combat, most creatures stay alert for signs of danger all around, so if you come out of hiding and approach a creature, it usually sees you. However, under certain circumstances, the DM might allow you to stay hidden as you approach a creature that is distracted, allowing you to gain advantage on an attack roll before you are seen."
part from the 2014 rules, and replaced it with the Invisible Condition. People understand invisible (generally) --- it means "I can't see that token on the map" (and "I attack it with disadvantage if I can target it").
This change was to make melee sneak attacks from hiding regularly possible. Without a "can I try this?" being necessary. Hide (Stealth) to hide, Search (Perception) to find. Rogues can Hide as a bonus action, people with Observant can Search as a bonus action.
So, the guard is not bored. Apparently the commander knows their job and regularly rotates people to prevent that from happening. As a player you want to try and generate the situation with your actions to where Stealth becomes plausible. You don't get to just declare the situation based on wishes and what-ifs.
And if you generate such a situation, that still doesn't invalidate my point. My point is solely concerned with you demanding that if I don't allow you to use Stealth in an Implausible situation I am somehow 'doing it wrong'.
And stop talking about Dimension Door and the like. We aren't talking about those things.
We are talking about the situation where the DM says 'it is implausible for you to do that' and you insisting that you be allowed to do it anyway.
That’s one interpretation of skill rolls, but not absolute RAW. It’s a question of if a table is going to indulge scenarios like “I Persuade the king to give me his kingdom” or “I flap my hands and fly back up to the ledge”.