Here is an interesting item that came up on Facebook site:
"How would you all deal with a character with a practice perception of 31 at level 9?
Anyone curious this is why is so high: 10+5+5+8+3=31 ...
wis 16 +3, trained in perception +4, rogue to specialize in it +4, observant +5, and a sentinel shield giving advantage for +5."
Question: Can you add modifiers like this? I ask because in our game the DM did not allow similar. Situation - I cast Pass Without Trace which provides +10 to Stealth. When I attempted to add it to my normal +6 for Stealth, to give me +16, the DM said the rule stated I could take the higher of the two, but not both. He enforced that on all 7 of us affected by that spell when I cast it.
I am curious what the rule as written is since I am now confused. I, as you can guess, much prefer +16 over +10.....
Everything in the game stacks, unless we're talking about two instances of the same thing. From the DMG errata:
Combining Game Effects (p. 252). This is a new subsection at the end of the “Combat” section: Different game features can affect a target at the same time. But when two or more game features have the same name, only the effects of one of them—the most potent one—apply while the durations of the effects overlap. For example, if a target is ignited by a fire elemental’s Fire Form trait, the ongoing fire damage doesn’t increase if the burning target is subjected to that trait again. Game features include spells, class features, feats, racial traits, monster abilities, and magic items. See the related rule in the “Combining Mag
As long as it's not a calculation or otherwise limited within the spell or ability, it will stack.
Since pass without trace says that you have a bonus to dexterity (stealth) checks (along with each creature that you choose within 30 feet of you), each creature that is affected by the spell will get a +10, meaning that you should have had a +16. The DM could have given the enemies advantage to find you, which would have made the effective increase only +5 but your bonus would have still been +16 and their passive perception would have been 5 points higher (for example, a goblin has a 9 passive perception and 14 when they have advantage on their passive perception). Since there is no such thing as a critical failure or critical success in D&D per RAW, you would auto succeed with a +16 against a normal goblin's passive perception even if they had advantage. That doesn't mean that another creature couldn't detect you and sound an alarm or that one of the Goblins wasn't particularly perceptive or wasn't actively rolling to find something that was just bugging it (akin to feeling like someone was watching you and trying to find what it was).
Tldr: pass without trace gives a +10 bonus to your dex (stealth) checks and doesn't change the bonus to +10 (how your DM was reading it) according to RAW.
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Here is an interesting item that came up on Facebook site:
"How would you all deal with a character with a practice perception of 31 at level 9?
Anyone curious this is why is so high: 10+5+5+8+3=31 ...
wis 16 +3, trained in perception +4, rogue to specialize in it +4, observant +5, and a sentinel shield giving advantage for +5."
Question: Can you add modifiers like this? I ask because in our game the DM did not allow similar. Situation - I cast Pass Without Trace which provides +10 to Stealth. When I attempted to add it to my normal +6 for Stealth, to give me +16, the DM said the rule stated I could take the higher of the two, but not both. He enforced that on all 7 of us affected by that spell when I cast it.
I am curious what the rule as written is since I am now confused. I, as you can guess, much prefer +16 over +10.....
Gray Mouser
Everything in the game stacks, unless we're talking about two instances of the same thing. From the DMG errata:
As long as it's not a calculation or otherwise limited within the spell or ability, it will stack.
Since pass without trace says that you have a bonus to dexterity (stealth) checks (along with each creature that you choose within 30 feet of you), each creature that is affected by the spell will get a +10, meaning that you should have had a +16. The DM could have given the enemies advantage to find you, which would have made the effective increase only +5 but your bonus would have still been +16 and their passive perception would have been 5 points higher (for example, a goblin has a 9 passive perception and 14 when they have advantage on their passive perception). Since there is no such thing as a critical failure or critical success in D&D per RAW, you would auto succeed with a +16 against a normal goblin's passive perception even if they had advantage. That doesn't mean that another creature couldn't detect you and sound an alarm or that one of the Goblins wasn't particularly perceptive or wasn't actively rolling to find something that was just bugging it (akin to feeling like someone was watching you and trying to find what it was).
Tldr: pass without trace gives a +10 bonus to your dex (stealth) checks and doesn't change the bonus to +10 (how your DM was reading it) according to RAW.