D&D 5E Crawford on Stealth

The main caveat I have with easing perception issues in RPGs is that the DM is the sole conduit of information to the player. The more you (reasonably) open that door, the more detail the players get about their world and circumstances. I've had DMs that horde perceptual information like gold and moving around in their world feels like looking through a straw ("I didn't hear you say you were [looking at something obvious]..."). So there's that.

But stealth and hidden information is a key part of the game. There needs to be reasonable challenges there without sending DCs into the stratosphere.

Fanaelialae said:

Regarding standing still to avoid detection while invisible, IMO that is a significant part of what the hide action is about.

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Exactly mate. Compare:

I'm not using Stealth. I'm just standing totally still to avoid detection while invisible.
I'm not using Athletics. I'm just competing in the track and field.
I'm not using Animal Handling. I'm just toilet training my dog.
I'm not using Deception. I'm just trying to convince the King of a whopper of a lie.
I'm not using Acrobatics. I'm just cartwheeling across a tightrope.
Im not using Intimidate. Im just threatening the merchant with a sword to his throat.

Players narrate the action. Its the DM that decides if there is a check involved, what the relevant Skill, Ability score and DC is if so, and if it takes an action or not.

Player (Steve): 'I move over to Bobs Rogue, and cast invisibility on him.'
DM: 'Cool mate, you chant your spell and Bob disappears from sight (checks initiative order). OK, the Orc goes next. It swings its axe at you Bob.
Player (Bob): But I'm invisible!
DM: I know, but you need to remember that this is all happening more or less simultaneously. You havent even had a second of time yet since becoming invisible, to try and move from and obscure your location, keep quiet, cover your tracks and so forth. Heck; the Orc was more or less swinging his axe at the the same time as you vanished. Now the Orc is just swinging it in wide arcs hoping to hit something. (Rolls attack at disadvantage due to the invisible condition). He misses. Bob its now your turn.
Bob: 'Now that I'm invisible, I back away into the corner and stand totally still, quieting my breathing'
DM: 'Righteo mate - you can freely move this turn without attacks of opportunity because you're invisible, and the rules say the Orc cant make attacks of opportunity against a creature he cant see. You back off into the corner and take the Hide action. You're a second level Rogue so its only a bonus action for you. Roll me a Stealth check.'
Bob: (rolls) With expertise thats a 17
DM: Nice. You're totally hidden from the Orc (passive perception 10). He roars in frustration, and turns his attentions to Steves Wizard! Also, Bob, you still have an action remaining seeing as youve only moved and used your bonus action so far. What do you want to do?
Bob: I quietly draw my potion of healing and drink it...

And so forth. I mean its not hard.

This is how I've run perception since 5E began. However, I thought I was houseruling it.

Note that all passive perception checks that utilize Darkvision are at -5 (Disadvantage) as Darkvision sees darkness as dim light, dim light is treated as lightly obscured, light obscurement grants disadvantage to perception checks relying on sight, and disadvantage on a passive check is at -5.

Regarding the rogue reliable feature: This sets a floor for all checks. Not all checks can be done passively, although it is possible for any skill to be used passively. Perception is the only skill that (now) explicitly can't benefit from the reliable talent.


Some other things I also use:

* DMs roll all stealth checks.

Distracted:
* You are Distracted when your focus is aimed at one thing or task.
* Generally, you will be distracted if you are using actions on your turn or as reactions.
* When distracted you have disadvantage (-5) on passive perception.
* DM decides when someone is distracted.
* Any charisma skill can be used to distract a target. If the target is not suspicious, the DC is 15. Once distracted, the target remains distracted as long as the 'distractor' continues to use an action to maintain the distraction.
* Distracted foes do not automatically spot someone hiding that loses concealment, but rather than have disadvantage on passive perception they gain advantage to spot that person. They automatically spot the hiding individual that has no concealment when the hider interacts with them or at the end of the current turn (if concealment is not restored).

Example of that last point: Timmy normally has passive perception 13. Bob is hiding from Timmy and has a stealth roll of 12. However, as Timmy is currently engaged in combat, his passive perception is at disadvantage and has dropped to 8, effectively. Bob decides to sneak up on Timmy and steps out from his cover as he approaches. Bob's effective passive perception to spot the hiding Timmy suddenly gains 10 (5 from losing disadvantage, 5 from gaining advantage) and rises from 8 to 18 - more than enough to spot Bob's 12 stealth. Timmy knows where Bob is when Bob loses cover. However, Bill is also hiding from Timmy and has a stealth roll of 19. When he takes the same tactic and Bill steps out of cover to sneak up on Timmy, Timmy does not know Bill's location. Bill's location will not be identified until the turn ends or Bill interacts with Timmy.

Hiding with Magic:
* If you're silent or invisible, you get advantage on stealth checks (assuming the impacted sense is involved in the check).
* If an enemy can't see (heavily obscured - such as when invisible) or hear you (you're not making any significant sounds - when motionless or silenced), you may spend half your movement to hide as a free action.

jgsugden said:

This is how I've run perception since 5E began. However, I thought I was houseruling it.

Note that all passive perception checks that utilize Darkvision are at -5 (Disadvantage) as Darkvision sees darkness as dim light, dim light is treated as lightly obscured, light obscurement grants disadvantage to perception checks relying on sight, and disadvantage on a passive check is at -5.

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Holy character sheet; you're right. I'm used to PF and 3.5 Darkvision

How on earth have I missed that for the last three years? The PCs in my campaign are 15th level and Ive only ever punished the human for dim light.

There you go.

Volund said:

Your perception checks can never be worse than your passive perception.

I am surprised that his comments on perception checks didn't light up the forum yet. At around 22:00 he starts talking about how passive perception is always working in the background to notice things. He goes on to say that your Passive Perception is always your floor for perception checks. If your passive perception is higher than the DC for noticing something, your passive perception always notices it. Perception checks are for noticing things that have a higher DC than your passive perception. He specifically says that if DM's are using passive perception correctly, then they will tell players about things that they would notice automatically, and use perception checks for a chance to roll higher than their passive perception. I have never played in a game that handled perception this way. It's always like this:

"I'm looking through the bookshelf for that book we were trying to find." [17 Passive Perception]
Give me a perception check.
"12"
You don't find it.

Then another character with a passive perception of 13 rolls a 15 and finds the book. What?

You know the general location of invisible creatures!

JC says that being invisible and being hidden are not the same thing. Invisible creatures give themselves away by making noise and interacting with the environment. Invisible creatures need to use stealth or have some other cover to be hidden. A monster or PC might be distracted or lose track of an invisible creature, but if you know someone is likely to be invisible and are trying to find it, you have a general idea where it is. He says that the game mechanics make invisibility awesome enough on their own - advantage on attacks, disadvantage on attacks against you, can't be targeted by spells that target "a creature you can see" - so invisibility does not need any additional benefits. I wish the DM who hammered away at us last weekend with the unseen, completely silent, unfindable shield guardian hadn't made us swing randomly at thin air until we got lucky and found it because he said invisibility made it impossible for us to know where it was.

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I do it a hybrid like finding a secert passage you have to actively look preception and that passive preception is for things that you would notice because you are expecting notice chest was moved because of a dust streak or object moved in your home that type stuff.

Flamestrike said:

Holy character sheet; you're right. I'm used to PF and 3.5 Darkvision

How on earth have I missed that for the last three years? The PCs in my campaign are 15th level and Ive only ever punished the human for dim light.

There you go.

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You missed it because you need to go back and forth between pages to put it together. It should have been one extra line in the Darkvision description.

Uller said:

I think he was talking about noticing threats, not searching for a specific book (which at my table would be an investigation check anyway).

In that context, it makes sense. When a hiding character' stealth check fails to surpass an observer's passive perception, the observer notices the hider. Otherwise, on the observers turn, he has to take the search action for an active search.

As for rogues witg impossibley high passive perception...they spent the resources for it...a feat, high wisdom score, trained skill, expertise. So they will have lower ability at other things.

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That was my take on it as well. This whole discussion was very much in the context of someone sneaking up on someone else or a creature hiding in combat. They were vague enough on some statements that it could be taken the way @Volund heard it, but in context I think this was pretty much about stealthy creatures, not hidden objects. I may have to give it another listen.

Probably not too valuable, but I thought I should add how I handle Passive Perception:

Initially I considered handling it like how JC suggests, but I realized that even without Expertise, you end up inflating the DCs just to keep things you don't want your players to automatically know hidden. However, without passive checks, your players end up relying on chance in order to do anything, which is no fun either.

Instead I decided on a compromise: Passive checks (outside of hidden enemies in combat) give you a hint that maybe you should look somewhere, whereas the check gives you the information to figure out what.

eg, if you have a passive Perception of 20, and come across a DC 15 pit trap, I'll tell you that off the corner of your eye, something seems off about a given area. You may then perform your check, and if you succeed I'll detail how it looks uneven and has notable creases around it. If you fail, then I'll say "You can't quite put your finger on why it looks off, but it still gives you the heebie-jeebies," and let the players decide how to deal with what they know they don't know.

Really liked the podcast. Really cleared up a lot of the ad nauseum debates on hiding rules as intended.

raleel said:

I guess I wonder if this notion of the passive being the floor applies to every skill in the right circumstances. Passive nature - you can automatically identify any creatures that are identifiable with a roll below your passive skill, for example. If this is the case, then it seems that a character with a high enough passive investigation is immune to most illusions, provided he spends an action and his passive check is higher than the spell DC. I can see them being automatically immune outside of combat, because there is no action economy to deal with.

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A "passive floor" applies to every skill the DM chooses to let it apply to. Which for many DMs, is going to be few to none. Which is exactly how the game is meant to be played. DM decides how they are ruling something, the players say "okay", and the rules are applied.

If a DM wants to use "passive knowledge" checks for Nature, Religion, Arcana or whatnot... they can and they will. Many DMs however won't ever bother with that, because for many of us (because I'm including myself in this) we tend to just give rather basic information about all that stuff arbitrarily anyway without even bothering to roll. And it's only the really hard/obscure stuff that might have DCs in the 20s that we'd bother rolling for, in which case no "passive" number was going to hit it anyway.

And really more to the point... "passive" numbers for checks other than Perception or Investigation for me are not important... I'm more likely to care about whether a PC is proficient. If there's info to be learned and I have the thought to just give out it out arbitrarily, I'd rather ask for proficiency rather than who has a "passive number" of certain level. The numbers tend to be rather the same anyway, and I'd rather give info to the people who actually have studied the subject matter than the ones who have higher passive numbers just because their primary ability score happens to align with what I'm checking.

The amount of time it takes is exactly the same. The players asks a question about Nature, I decide there's a chance they'd know the answer without even rolling, and I ask "Are you proficient in Nature?" (as opposed to "What's your Passive Nature?"), they tell me the answer, and I give the info. And if they are not proficient in Nature (as opposed to having a too-low Passive Nature), then they roll a check.