D&D (2024) Playtest 6: Stealth Rules

[fluffybunbunkittens]

The same thing that makes them good rules for use at the table also makes them prime material for internet arguments: they’re very open to interpretation.

I think you could avoid a lot of that if WotC for once believed that less is more. 'Stealth is usually opposed by NPC passive perception. GM, let people use Stealth when it makes sense.' would look a lot more like a rulings guideline than two pages of spread-around occasionally-strict rules that... still just leads to weird jank.

 

[James Gasik]

4e once the PHB2 came out actually had pretty solid stealth rules to me.

the biggest things to me where:

• It was very clear on how perception worked against stealth. You had the passive perception at the start, and an enemy could make an active perception check as a minor action ("bonus action") to see a creature if it believed something was hiding there.
• Your stealth worked only against specific creatures that failed, not all or nothing.
• It actually gave specific penalties and told you when you needed to make a new stealth check. For example, you could move under stealth no more than 5 ft a round to maintain normal stealth. If you went faster than that on a turn, you had to make a new stealth check at a -5 penalty. Aka sneaking around was fine, but you were very slow, as you should be!

I don't know, I remember there being a very long, stickied post on the old WotC forums called "The Rules of Hidden Club" or somesuch, which laid out the Stealth rules in detail; they were fairly complex.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

So, how would we fix this?

Also: Are they trying to get rid of Passive Perception?

And: I don't know why they sometimes write rules with long-winded cagey sentences that mean things like "Doesn't stack with X ability" once you parse it out, when they could just write "Doesn't stack with X ability". Just call it out! There's nothing wrong with clarity!

 

[James Gasik]

I think the problem here is, for a game, Stealth should be pretty easy. Meet X conditions, hide. While hidden, roll Stealth vs. passive perception. Why passive? Because really, once people know you're around, finding you probably a foregone conclusion; there are only so many possible places one can be concealed in most circumstances.

We want to make Stealth more nuanced, by having situational modifiers, but the harder Stealth becomes, the more likely players will just want to not want to be trained in the ability- certainly, in D&D, the sheer amount of enemies with special senses that make Stealth difficult or impossible makes using the skill already a high bar.

Especially since, in many circumstances, you can't creep around with a light source handy (and "Dimvision" is just going to have you blunder into traps even if you have it).

And that's not even getting into fairly simple countermeasures- I once ran an adventure where the players were dealing with kobolds who had tossed caltrops all over the place, slowing the Rogue's progress to a crawl as he had to slowly sweep them out of his way without making any noise.

And of course, in real life, people are not as alert as they really should be; a lot of people can be snuck up upon in broad daylight because they lack situational awareness (also, facing is a thing).

So, like a lot of things in D&D, there's this tendency to make things harder than they really should be, because it's important to make the players feel challenged. Contrast and compare Persuasion or Deception; skills con men routinely use in real life to bilk people out of large amounts of money, but in D&D, every NPC acts super suspicious and skeptical of just about anything PC's say!

 

[Hriston]

Or lowers it in some cases.

I don’t think so. If a creature’s passive Perception is higher than your Stealth check, then presumably (and according to what it says in the new rule) it would immediately find you, unless, as @FitzTheRuke suggests, the intent is to remove passive Perception, but the new rule doesn’t say that.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I don’t think so. If a creature’s passive Perception is higher than your Stealth check, then presumably (and according to what it says in the new rule) it would immediately find you, unless, as @FitzTheRuke suggests, the intent is to remove passive Perception, but the new rule doesn’t say that.

It seems to me like it is trying to get rid of it. You'd roll against a static dc for your success, and yet they'd roll with their actual perception score to find you. I think the intent is to make it "easier" on the DM to not have to "look up" each and every creature's Passive Perception (though that Info is usually, IME, easily available as long as you know almost literally anything about the creature.)

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think the problem here is, for a game, Stealth should be pretty easy. Meet X conditions, hide. While hidden, roll Stealth vs. passive perception. Why passive? Because really, once people know you're around, finding you probably a foregone conclusion; there are only so many possible places one can be concealed in most circumstances.

We want to make Stealth more nuanced, by having situational modifiers, but the harder Stealth becomes, the more likely players will just want to not want to be trained in the ability- certainly, in D&D, the sheer amount of enemies with special senses that make Stealth difficult or impossible makes using the skill already a high bar.

Especially since, in many circumstances, you can't creep around with a light source handy (and "Dimvision" is just going to have you blunder into traps even if you have it).

And that's not even getting into fairly simple countermeasures- I once ran an adventure where the players were dealing with kobolds who had tossed caltrops all over the place, slowing the Rogue's progress to a crawl as he had to slowly sweep them out of his way without making any noise.

And of course, in real life, people are not as alert as they really should be; a lot of people can be snuck up upon in broad daylight because they lack situational awareness (also, facing is a thing).

So, like a lot of things in D&D, there's this tendency to make things harder than they really should be, because it's important to make the players feel challenged. Contrast and compare Persuasion or Deception; skills con men routinely use in real life to bilk people out of large amounts of money, but in D&D, every NPC acts super suspicious and skeptical of just about anything PC's say!

Yeah, I almost feel that the natural state of most normal people should, in the very least, be at disadvantage (so -5 to their passive scores). People really don't try to live up to their full potential, most of the time. (Though I also believe that modern people are generally a lot lazier than people of the past, but then again, people really haven't changed a whole lot.)

 

[Stalker0]

So, how would we fix this?

Hiding and Stealth
As an action, make a Dexterity (Stealth) check, DC 15 (keep track of your result as it is the DC to find you, see Maintaining Hiding or Stealth below). On a success, you are Hidden against all creatures you had heavy concealment, 3/4 cover, and/or total cover against. If a creature was not aware of you when you became Hidden, you gain Stealth against that creature.

Hidden Condition

• This condition applies against specific creatures. It is possible to have this condition against one creature but not another.
• Have advantage on attack rolls.
• Creatures have disadvantage on attacks against you.
• Effects and spells that require sight cannot be used against you.
• Creatures cannot track your movement and must guess what square you are in to attack you, unless they are alerted to your location through other means.

Stealth Condition

• This condition applies against specific creatures. It is possible to have this condition against one creature but not another.
• A creature is completely unaware of your presence. They cannot attempt to find, attack, or use effects that directly target you.
• Gain advantage on attack rolls.
• Gain advantage on Initiative rolls.
• Creatures cannot use reactions against your effects.
• If a creature is alerted to your presence through other means, you lose Stealth and gain Hidden instead.
• Any effect that removes the Hidden condition also removes Stealth.

Maintaining Hiding or Stealth
You can maintain the Hidden condition against a creature until immediately after one of the following conditions:

• You are in a creature's line of sight and no longer have concealment or cover.*
• You make a sound louder than a whisper or cast a spell with a verbal component within hearing range of the creature.*
• You make an attack roll.
• A creature spends an action to search for you and succeeds on a Wisdom (Perception) check, DC = to your Dexterity (Stealth) check.

*If movement caused you to lose the Hidden condition, you may still get advantage on one attack made before the end of your turn.

Distraction and Concealment
For purposes of Hiding and Stealth, a DM may rule that you have total concealment against a creature that is distracted by other means.

 

[Stalker0]

Yeah, I almost feel that the natural state of most normal people should, in the very least, be at disadvantage (so -5 to their passive scores). People really don't try to live up to their full potential, most of the time. (Though I also believe that modern people are generally a lot lazier than people of the past, but then again, people really haven't changed a whole lot.)

Yeah this is also the reality that we humans are a LOT better at hiding than we are at finding. Stealth is so OP in real life that all military units utilize the ambush whenever possible, and we have entire special forces operations designed to maintain stealth as much as possible.

But again stealth and ambushes are already so powerful in dnd you don't want to make them any stronger than they already are.

 

[Hriston]

It seems to me like it is trying to get rid of it. You'd roll against a static dc for your success, and yet they'd roll with their actual perception score to find you. I think the intent is to make it "easier" on the DM to not have to "look up" each and every creature's Passive Perception (though that Info is usually, IME, easily available as long as you know almost literally anything about the creature.)

It says a creature can "find you with a Wisdom (Perception) check" which immediately ends the Invisible condition. A passive check is a "kind of ability check".

The issue here, IMO, is the 2014 Hide action merely references " the rules for hiding", meaning the rules in the Hiding sidebar. The playtest version of the Hide action replaces that reference with some rules about setting the DC at 15, what degree of cover is needed, and gaining the Invisible condition, but it's unclear to what extent these rules override the Hiding sidebar for which no playtest version has been provided so is still in use for the purposes of this playtest.