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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The point is that it’s entirely within a DM’s brief to decide something that is still nominally plausible doesn’t deserve a 1-in-20 shot to succeed and so simply disallow the roll without getting into the rabbit hole of whether there’s some theoretical chance X action could produce Y outcome.
The players get to dictate whether the NPC can hit them or not with an attack roll by their armor class. I don't see a difference in kind here. They want to hit me, I don't want to be hit, we use a roll to decide. They want to find me, I don't want to be found, we use a roll to decide.
If you don’t see the difference between an attack roll and a skill roll, there’s really nothing left to be said on the subject.
I don't see a difference between rolls which are contested by well-defined difficulty numbers. The game defines how hard it is for an enemy to notice you with a precise DC, just like the game defines how hard it is to hit you with a precise DC. The only normal DM intervention in such a situation is whether advantage or disadvantage applies.
The problem is that the difficulty number should not be well-defined, it just has too many possible variables.
The rules very clearly state otherwise in the case of ability checks:
"The Difficulty Class of an ability check represents the task’s difficulty. The more difficult the task, the higher its DC. The rules provide DCs for certain checks, but the DM ultimately sets them. The Typical Difficulty Classes table presents a range of possible DCs for ability checks."
This RULE explicitly states that although other rules may provide DCs for certain checks - it is ultimately the DM who sets them. You will note that in the case of attack rolls, the rules do not state this explicitly. For attack rolls, the DM decides whether 1/2, 3/4 or total cover is appropriate in the circumstances and whether the attack has advantage, disadvantage or is a straight roll.
However, in the case of ability check DCs, the rules are explicit that the DM can set them (RAW) even when a formula is specified elsewhere in the rules.
You may not like this, you may disagree with it, you perhaps want it to be played a certain way - but RAW, the DC for whether a character is noticed while hidden is entirely at the discretion of the DM and can be based on specific circumstances.
I'd suggest asking a DM that you plan to play with how they intend to run stealth in the game and how DCs to notice a character will be determined, perhaps discuss some examples, then decide if that is a DM you want to play with. However, I can guarantee that it will never work to go into a game as a player insisting on your interpretation of how a rule (any rule) should be played. Especially one that is open to as much potential misuse as the stealth rules.
I think this may illustrate the core of some of our issues. We seem to have very different expectations from the game.
I would, in no way, shape, or form even begin to entertain the idea that the player is dictating whether the NPC has hit them. The player can say what their AC is, but ultimately it is the DM who adjudicates and decides whether the player's character was hit or not, and if, for some incomprehensible reason, the DM were to say that the player is hit even though the roll is too low the player is, in fact, hit.
Now, we can get off tangent into how bad it is when a DM does something like that and I will say right now that I have no intention of following such a divergence beyond saying that it is not my position that this is a good and proper thing to do.
When you get down to it, the only thing a player really should be allowed to dictate is their character's intentions. Even a characters actions are circumscribed. Often it is by rules (e.g., you can't dictate that you run 40 feet since you only have 30 feet of movement) but it is also possible that a DM just decides that circumstances limit the available actions (e.g., your character cannot make a diving leap for the ledge while holding swords in both hands).
It feels a bit like you have a somewhat antagonistic view of the DM/Player relationship, as though a player is suppose to be trying to use the rules to 'defeat' the DM, leading to you wanting to curtail the DM's ability to say things like 'you can't use Stealth in that situation' and your desire to 'dictate' things to your DM.
And I would have said the opposite. Many of you seem to have an antagonistic view of the DM/player relationship where the DM is requiring the players to ask permission to do everything like they're the table dictator, rather than allowing them to be participants and collaborators in creating the story. In my experience, players who are regularly expected to ask permission become passive and disengaged.
The players don't dictate things to the DM, nor can the DM be defeated; the DM is just a referee. The dice dictate narrative outcomes, which was never the DM's to control in the first place. It is the table's job (as a whole) to incorporate the dice results into the narrative. Sure, the DM provides a 'shape' to the world, but the players provide goals and direction within that shape, and action towards those ends. The dice decide outcomes. All three are necessary for narrative (which emerges from play). There's no conflict here, because all are co-contributors in creating the narrative.
And to the degree the DM's discretion isn't needed is the degree to which players can simply act without having to ask permission. No DM is needed to adjudicate 'I walk up and swing at the monster with my sword' (the player knows how far he can move and how to roll an attack), and the only adjudication needed after the attack roll is whether the resulting to-hit number is sufficient to hit the AC of the monster. That's a simple yes or no answer, with no discretion, and then the player just rolls damage. Stealth is written the same way - defined target numbers, defined ending conditions; the only question the player has to ask is 'does the monster have enough perception to notice me?', which is a yes or no question that just involves checking the monster's passive perception. The only discretion involved in either chain of events is whether advantage or disadvantage attaches. The player gets to feel like they have real agency, because they are free to just act. The DM is not harmed by giving the player this agency - he has no stake in whether the player succeeds or fails.
(And I disagree the DM can declare the player is hit when the dice say they are not. The DM is not allowed to overrule the dice any more than the other players are. Nor does he gain anything by doing so. I roll my dice in the open as a DM.)
Since no one said such thing this is therefore a straw man fallacy that no one need.
There's no requirement for the players to ask permission to take an action. It's just up to the DM how to resolve their action. Players can absolutely declare that they are attempting to hide. What they cannot do is make a roll and declare that they are hidden.
Or that they have the final say on what circumstances can end their being hidden.
That's still asking permission, because the DM can respond 'yes' or 'no' on whether they can even do it, with no objective criteria once you ignore those set out in the rule.
And I disagree. If they meet the conditions to take the Hide Action, they can just make a roll, and if successful (and no enemy has sufficient passive perception), they are Hidden. There's no discretion in the Hide Action rules (excepting only for whether or not a creature can see the character who wants to take the Hide Action if they're in 3/4 cover). And once they are hidden, there's no discretion in the Hide Action rules on whether they remain hidden. Either an ending condition is met or it is not. (And staying Hidden is not a skill check, so once successfully Hidden, even the rules don't give the DM explicit permission to end Hidden on their say so).
Once we start talking about the permission the DM has to override the rules, we're outside the realm of RAW. (Even if the permission to do so is RAW, the specific override will not be, because it is not written in the rules. And this was an uncontested presumption in 3.x rules discussions, that the rules would be discussed solely as written, even though the DM could change things - no discussion could validly depend on highly variable DM houserules. The caveat that the DM can alter the rules is true of literally everything in the game, towards any end; to have a rules discussion, we must assume they have not exercised that power).
And when they're using it to override clear and explicit rules, I'd expect the DM to render such changes in session zero, not in the middle of play. The player needs reasonable expectations of how the rules function to make decisions and exercise narrative agency. Violating those reasonable expectations is usurping player agency. (And 'reasonable' here is 'the rule functions as written', whether that's in the official text, or in the DM's publicly presented houserules).
When I DM, my house rules largely aim to increase the clarity of reasonable expectations players have, so they are less dependent on me making a decision in the moment, not more.
If you all want to discuss your favorite houserules, be my guest. But that's hardly a discussion of the printed rules and mechanics. And you should stop insisting your houserule is the rules as written. (Yes, the game lets the DM decide things work differently than the rules. No, your idiosyncratic way you think it should work differently is not in the rules).
RPGs are not board games. There are many things you cannot do without the DM, and this is working as intended.
And it's still a useless basis for a RAW discussion of what the rules actually say.
And in this case, the rules do give objective criteria for which no DM discretion is needed to assess them. Overriding those is explicitly changing RAW.
Passive Perception has no impact on the Hide check. That's kinda a big deal, in terms of speeding up play. Neither you nor the DM has to indentify the highest Passive Perception to figure out if you succeed; you just have a static DC --- and when the DM has an enemy Hide, they don't have to ask for Passive Perceptions and "give away" that someone is Hiding. That's mostly why it became a static DC. And the only Perception that matters for Searching for you is the one spending the action.
(RAW still supports "moving silenty" which, in combat, would usually be a Stealth roll against the Passive Perception you're trying to sneak past; I wouldn't bother with that in combat, at least when you're re-Hiding every round. The DM choosing to let Passive Perception "find" you (if it beats your Hide) when you actually close to melee would be a fine option, though, if they care to add the complexity.)
So what exactly is Passive Perception for if not detecting someone/thing that’s hidden or obscured without calling for a roll?
@Squirrelloid
You might have missed it, but I brought up the fact that "choose to stop being hidden" is not among the list of things that stop you from being hidden. You have, in a previous post, said that you could choose to stop being hidden. How do you square that logic within the arguments you've been making?
And do you also feel that the 5e Hide rules, which specifically call out the DM's discretion on whether or not hiding can actually occur, are simply not RAW because it requires the DM to make a judgement call?
No impact on the Hide check, but it is the measure of how perceptive the creature is when they're not explicitly taking a search action. (You can still successfully pass the Hide check, but it seems to me you're just immediately found if an enemy has higher passive perception).
And the DM should never need to ask for passive perception during play - they should ask at the start of the session and write it down.
It's got a whole Glossary entry; I'm sure you can come up with uses. And I just suggested one: hearing someone trying to sneak past you.
(If you're about to tell me that the Hide Action is the sum total of the Stealth rules, I'll happily pre-empt with: "Escape notice by moving quietly and hiding behind things." And Chapter 1 describes the impact of travel pace on Stealth checks.)
Hopelessly muddled, just like it was in 2014?