I know that the changes of One D&D (or however it will be named) are still in development and might change in the future, but I still wanted to address some issues with the 6th playtest version of the PHB.
To begin with, I would like to remind that mechanics of stealth have always created a lot of confusion (for instance, passive vs active Perception debate) and there are numerous occasions where DM ruling is necessary, as the rules don’t provide sufficient guidance. Now, this could be taken as a signal that stealth needs further clarification, and I was very hopeful about the upcoming edition. Unfortunately, it seems that D&D One is moving in the opposite direction by creating even more conflicting/confusing mechanics and offering less guidance.
Firstly, the Stealth mechanics seems to be dumbed down to two sub-mechanics: Hide action and Invisible condition. If the character succeeds at hiding, they gain the Invisible condition until they make an attack, create noise, or are otherwise detected. There are several issues with this design move, but I would only highlight the issue with invisibility - this solution effectively equates invisibility with hiding, removing the need for invisible creatures to hide. Since hiding and invisibility provide the same condition, the invisible creature gains nothing by trying to hide.
There have been numerous discussions about detecting invisible creatures, by stressing that invisibility does not equate being undetectable and the invisible creature can give away its presence or location by making noise or leaving tracks. Now, the invisible creature can no longer hide as hiding would provide the same condition it already has…
The Invisible condition stresses heavily on the unseen part of hiding but seems to forget that in 5 edition hiding used to mean, that you are both unseen and unheard. An invisible creature could try to hide to gain the benefits of both being unseen and unheard to move to a new location (another somewhat confusing concept) without being noticed. It has limited utility in combat (invisible creature already has advantage on attacks), but at least hiding at some independent effect and benefit in addition to being unseen. If being hidden is equated with being invisible, many hearing-related items and effects become pointless, like boots of elvenkind. What benefit would a creature with Invisible condition gain from such boots?
Secondly, Hide action deserves similar expansion like the new Influence or Study actions. Instead of trying to concentrate hiding even further into a single check and single condition, it would be much more helpful to provide various specific uses for Hide action under different conditions. The Influence action has been turned into a kind of minigame on its own, even though I’ve never heard of any problems with running social interaction in games that would warrant a separate action for interacting with NPCs. On the other hand, there are numerous issues with stealth and hiding in the 5 edition, which would clearly warrant an extended explanation to hiding. There are numerous ways how stealth and hiding could be improved. Currently, there isn't even a movement speed penalty to hiding.
Stealth and hiding deserves more, not less attention in the following edition.
I didn't even notice this change; in the earlier playtests there was a separate Hidden condition which made more sense.
This is definitely a step in the wrong direction, as it just makes no sense at all, as it only makes you unseen, but you're already unseen in order to trigger the action, so WTF is the point of it? Unless you interpret it as meaning you can freely wander about in full view of enemies until they can beat your Stealth roll, which is completely nonsensical. The purpose of hiding is supposed to be to become unheard, so that you can relocate to a new position without the enemy knowing where you are.
OneD&D needs to majorly overhaul the stealth rules, ideally in its own, dedicated section so it's actually possible for players to understand it. They should do this with two simple mechanics:
Sight. If a creature can see you, it knows your precise location and may freely target you with effects as normal. If you are unseen by a creature, it has disadvantage on any attack rolls made against you, and you have advantage on attacks you make made against it.
Sound. If a creature can hear you, it knows your general location (the space you occupy) and can move towards you and try to attack as normal. If you are unheard and unseen by a creature, it is unaware of your general location, and must guess, or act on the basis of where it last heard or saw you.
The purpose of hiding is therefore to become unheard while unseen, enabling you to break creatures' awareness of your general location. For example, if you hop over a wall and then Hide, an enemy only knows where you crossed the wall, it will have to guess whether you stayed there, went left, or went right, giving you a decent chance of remaining hidden from it. If you move into a room with two entrances/exits and Hide, the enemy only knows you went into the room, not where in the room you might be, or if you might have used the second exit. And so-on.
That's it; two simple rules, and some good examples and you've got a stealth section people can actually understand. Group it with the rules for dim light/darkness, blinded/deafened and special forms of sight, and you've got yourself a useful section.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
One other thing - hiding actually implies staying in one place unseen and unheard while stealth implies moving from place to place unseen (unrecognized) and unheard.. personally I would like to see stealth become a 2 step process - first hide (including things like the wood elf’s ability to fade into lightly obscured terrain) to get the unseen and unheard and then the stealth check vs passive/active perception contest to stay unseen and unheard. Simply making it clear that it is a two step process helps.
Honestly I don’t think the system needs overhauled so much as it just needs a few examples of how to use the mechanics in play. A lot of the issues I see either come from people applying assumptions about how things like invisibility work or from people arguing over the exact meaning of “hide” and suchlike, as illustrated above. A few play examples would help at least make sure people are working off the same baseline before they start talking about how to change it.
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I know that the changes of One D&D (or however it will be named) are still in development and might change in the future, but I still wanted to address some issues with the 6th playtest version of the PHB.
To begin with, I would like to remind that mechanics of stealth have always created a lot of confusion (for instance, passive vs active Perception debate) and there are numerous occasions where DM ruling is necessary, as the rules don’t provide sufficient guidance. Now, this could be taken as a signal that stealth needs further clarification, and I was very hopeful about the upcoming edition. Unfortunately, it seems that D&D One is moving in the opposite direction by creating even more conflicting/confusing mechanics and offering less guidance.
Firstly, the Stealth mechanics seems to be dumbed down to two sub-mechanics: Hide action and Invisible condition. If the character succeeds at hiding, they gain the Invisible condition until they make an attack, create noise, or are otherwise detected. There are several issues with this design move, but I would only highlight the issue with invisibility - this solution effectively equates invisibility with hiding, removing the need for invisible creatures to hide. Since hiding and invisibility provide the same condition, the invisible creature gains nothing by trying to hide.
There have been numerous discussions about detecting invisible creatures, by stressing that invisibility does not equate being undetectable and the invisible creature can give away its presence or location by making noise or leaving tracks. Now, the invisible creature can no longer hide as hiding would provide the same condition it already has…
The Invisible condition stresses heavily on the unseen part of hiding but seems to forget that in 5 edition hiding used to mean, that you are both unseen and unheard. An invisible creature could try to hide to gain the benefits of both being unseen and unheard to move to a new location (another somewhat confusing concept) without being noticed. It has limited utility in combat (invisible creature already has advantage on attacks), but at least hiding at some independent effect and benefit in addition to being unseen. If being hidden is equated with being invisible, many hearing-related items and effects become pointless, like boots of elvenkind. What benefit would a creature with Invisible condition gain from such boots?
Secondly, Hide action deserves similar expansion like the new Influence or Study actions. Instead of trying to concentrate hiding even further into a single check and single condition, it would be much more helpful to provide various specific uses for Hide action under different conditions. The Influence action has been turned into a kind of minigame on its own, even though I’ve never heard of any problems with running social interaction in games that would warrant a separate action for interacting with NPCs. On the other hand, there are numerous issues with stealth and hiding in the 5 edition, which would clearly warrant an extended explanation to hiding. There are numerous ways how stealth and hiding could be improved. Currently, there isn't even a movement speed penalty to hiding.
Stealth and hiding deserves more, not less attention in the following edition.
I didn't even notice this change; in the earlier playtests there was a separate Hidden condition which made more sense.
This is definitely a step in the wrong direction, as it just makes no sense at all, as it only makes you unseen, but you're already unseen in order to trigger the action, so WTF is the point of it? Unless you interpret it as meaning you can freely wander about in full view of enemies until they can beat your Stealth roll, which is completely nonsensical. The purpose of hiding is supposed to be to become unheard, so that you can relocate to a new position without the enemy knowing where you are.
OneD&D needs to majorly overhaul the stealth rules, ideally in its own, dedicated section so it's actually possible for players to understand it. They should do this with two simple mechanics:
Sight. If a creature can see you, it knows your precise location and may freely target you with effects as normal. If you are unseen by a creature, it has disadvantage on any attack rolls made against you, and you have advantage on attacks you make made against it.
Sound. If a creature can hear you, it knows your general location (the space you occupy) and can move towards you and try to attack as normal. If you are unheard and unseen by a creature, it is unaware of your general location, and must guess, or act on the basis of where it last heard or saw you.
The purpose of hiding is therefore to become unheard while unseen, enabling you to break creatures' awareness of your general location. For example, if you hop over a wall and then Hide, an enemy only knows where you crossed the wall, it will have to guess whether you stayed there, went left, or went right, giving you a decent chance of remaining hidden from it. If you move into a room with two entrances/exits and Hide, the enemy only knows you went into the room, not where in the room you might be, or if you might have used the second exit. And so-on.
That's it; two simple rules, and some good examples and you've got a stealth section people can actually understand. Group it with the rules for dim light/darkness, blinded/deafened and special forms of sight, and you've got yourself a useful section.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
One other thing - hiding actually implies staying in one place unseen and unheard while stealth implies moving from place to place unseen (unrecognized) and unheard.. personally I would like to see stealth become a 2 step process - first hide (including things like the wood elf’s ability to fade into lightly obscured terrain) to get the unseen and unheard and then the stealth check vs passive/active perception contest to stay unseen and unheard. Simply making it clear that it is a two step process helps.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Honestly I don’t think the system needs overhauled so much as it just needs a few examples of how to use the mechanics in play. A lot of the issues I see either come from people applying assumptions about how things like invisibility work or from people arguing over the exact meaning of “hide” and suchlike, as illustrated above. A few play examples would help at least make sure people are working off the same baseline before they start talking about how to change it.