D&D 5E Stealth in 5E

[Rabbitbait]

How about: As soon as you break concealment, make another Stealth check. If you succeed, you remain stealthy until the end of your turn, at which point you lose stealth unless you've regained concealment. If you fail, you lose stealth immediately.

Nice. I like that. And with the advantage rules mixed in it will take different circumstances into account.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I like the idea that if you leave cover to sneak up on someone to stab them, there is a chance you might scuff your foot, step on a twig or do something else that alerts them at the last minute that someone is coming up behind them. That will add tension to the game, and tension is good.

Sure, I just don't necessarily want to roll Stealth twice to jump out from behind a rock and shank a dude. It'd be a little like having disadvantage -- roll twice, if any of the rolls are lower than the DC, you can't.

But hey, this is one of the cool things about 5e: my way or your way, it's not going to break the game either way.

 

[77IM]

Stealth checks in 5e finally clicked for me when I realized it was mostly about sound.

If someone can't see you (because of cover, obscurity, invisibility, or distraction) they still hear you just fine and know where you are. Only if you can beat their Perception with their Stealth are you quiet enough to be unseen and unheard -- hidden. If you become seen again, or make a sound (like attacking or casting or shouting), they once again know where you are and you're unhidden.

There are a lot of weird edge cases (can the creature smell you? if an ability lets you hide with only light obscurity are you still seen? how exactly do you distract someone?) but to me this is a major design feature of 5e -- I want a system that solves the typical case and lets me handle the weird edge cases instead of having strict rules for it.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I wouldn't be surprised if the DMG has a section saying "The stealth rules in the PHB are intentionally vague to give you more latitude. Here are a few ways you can run it..."

Mearls said exactly that in a recent interview

 

[Dausuul]

Stealth checks in 5e finally clicked for me when I realized it was mostly about sound.

Exactly. That's the key insight here, and why the word "hidden" was such a horribly poor choice. Stealth is 95% Move Silently and only about 5% Hide, but "hidden" focuses on that 5% of cases where you're on the border between concealed and non-concealed and trying to nudge yourself into the "concealed" category.

 

[fjw70]

5e hiding rules in a nutshell.


The rules have three undefined terms: Unseen, Unheard, and Revealed.


Here are examples of each term.


You are Unseen when you are invisible, have a distracted opponent, have total concealment, etc.


Your are Unheard when under a silence spell, out of hearing range, etc.


You are Revealed when you attack, become visible, make noise, etc.




Hiding is being Unseen and Unheard. Unseen is a prerequisite and a stealth check can be used to be Unheard.


Hiding ends when you are Revealed.


Some creatures have special abilities that modify these rules.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Stealth checks in 5e finally clicked for me when I realized it was mostly about sound.

If someone can't see you (because of cover, obscurity, invisibility, or distraction) they still hear you just fine and know where you are. Only if you can beat their Perception with their Stealth are you quiet enough to be unseen and unheard -- hidden. If you become seen again, or make a sound (like attacking or casting or shouting), they once again know where you are and you're unhidden.

There are a lot of weird edge cases (can the creature smell you? if an ability lets you hide with only light obscurity are you still seen? how exactly do you distract someone?) but to me this is a major design feature of 5e -- I want a system that solves the typical case and lets me handle the weird edge cases instead of having strict rules for it.

So the usual way 5e treats those edge cases:

• Scent or keen senses is handled by advantage on Perception (see, for instance, the Worg in the DMG rules). I would totally be into having keen senses or scent meaning that you need to meet more prerequisites to be able to be hidden (like, if the wolf can smell you, maybe you need to hide your scent with a Nature check or something as well). I mean, that's historically part of the reason we humans domesticated dogs, after all -- their hearing and smell make it harder for someone to sneak up on us. That'd nerf sneaking more than rolling twice, but really it would just reward intel-gathering and skill diversity -- you can't just show up and sneak past everything.
• Hiding with light obscurement seems to imply that characters who are able to do that are able to be unseen in light obscurement if they try to be. If you can Stealth in a special situation, it's a situation where you can choose to become unseen that most people can't be unseen in.
• Distraction seems to be handled with specific abilities or DM judgement calls. A distraction that allows you to hide is enough that you become, at least for a moment, unseen from the distracted character.

Though there is another one: if you are both Invisible and under the effects of Silence, do you need to make a Stealth check to hide, or are you just automatically hidden? What could give your position away? (Myself, I think yes -- your actions in the world are still visible, so dust kicked up by your footsteps and the way your weight displaces the blades of grass and suchlike would still be covered by Stealth)

 

[Sunseeker]

Fiddly and vague, two things I don't like in rules. Perhaps the DMG will clarify at greater length. Fiddly, vague and long, three things I don't like in rules. It makes sense from a normal perspective, I'll give it that. Sneaking around is hard. Still, I appreciate the understanding that this is by and large at DM discretion. In the clash of battle, how easily an opponent might see you slip into the underbrush or or if they might even hear you over the sounds of shouting, screaming and swords clashing. How well one might smell you in the rain (a light mist can do a lot of obscure the senses beyond sight alone), are all up to DM direction and I appreciate that, though I feel like if you are going to make rules so intent vague as to basically not have them, well, I don't like that.

However, as is the case with most pre-4th styled rules systems, these things are often easier at the table than the rules make them out to be, and I suspect this will be the case with Stealth.

One thing it does call into question is facing. I haven't seen rules for facing but the rules for Stealth basically imply that facing exists. An opponent whom who are substantially behind obviously does not know you are there, or if they know, will have an increased difficulty in tracking you if you move and may be unaware of your specific location at any time. I would almost be tempted to argue that we would need to count 180-degree or greater turns as part of the distance you can cover during your move action.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Though there is another one: if you are both Invisible and under the effects of Silence, do you need to make a Stealth check to hide, or are you just automatically hidden?

Yes you need to make a check, but not in order to hide. Because Stealth checks are not allowing you to go into Hiding or to become Hidden... but rather a measurement of how well you already are Hidden.

If you are Invisible and Silenced... it means you can pretty much walk anywhere and everywhere with the status of Hidden. You are unseen and unheard, thus Hidden. However... there's more to not being noticed by people than just that. Footprints, dust kicked up, objects/trees walked into and moved, temperature changes, vibrations through the ground... all these things can give your location away and make you noticed, even if you can't be seen and heard.

The Stealth check is a measurement of how well you did ALL the things necessary to not reveal your location. How unseen you are. How quiet you are. How well you avoided moving the environment around you. Did you not breath heavy on the person you were sneaking up on so that they didn't feel your breath upon their neck? The Stealth check measures all these things together at once. You roll higher than their passive Perception, you succeeded in not being noticed. And then on their turn, they can try harder to notice you by rolling an active Perception check.

At least, this is how I view and rule it.

 

[fjw70]

On the issue of being under an invisible and a silence spell my ruling would depend on the circumstances. If you are moving through water or leaving footprints in deep snow then I would say you are hidden since it is easy to tell which space you are in. If there is something minor that could possible identify the location of the hider (such as kicking up dust) I would probably say roll stealth with advantage. And if there were no significant extenuating circumstances then no roll would be required.