D&D 5E EB's Storm King's Thunder - OOC (FULL)

[FitzTheRuke]

That's how I would do it. If you're moving Stealthy in Exploration Mode, and you run into some Monsters, the DM switches to Combat-mode and may give you Surprise. Usually the DM will tell you "there's monsters, what do you do?" If you rush them, then you're in the open. If you say, "I sneak up on them." or "I hide." (like most people probably would) then you start out behind some sort of cover, and hidden. (Hiding or moving forward either stealthily or not might be considered what you do in the surprise round, so you don't do that and THEN get a surprise round as well.)

(And to answer your question, Yes. A non-rogue who uses an action to hide one round, would get advantage on their attack the following round - if they are still hidden. If the monster moves into unobstructed line-of-sight of them, then hiding ends.)

 

[Searinox Nagharha]

Reading in pure delight. Love a good discussion

 

[jmucchiello]

(Hiding or moving forward either stealthily or not might be considered what you do in the surprise round, so you don't do that and THEN get a surprise round as well.)

But why not? If you hide and sneak forward and they still are unaware of you, why would surprise no longer be possible? They don't know we switched from explore mode to combat mode.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

But why not? If you hide and sneak forward and they still are unaware of you, why would surprise no longer be possible? They don't know we switched from explore mode to combat mode.

Absolutely, you're right.

It's up to the DM. (S'why I said "might" be considered what you do). Because you only get one round of surprise, it depends on if the DM decides to 'zoom in' to combat rounds *before* you move up and/or hide, or *after*. There's lots of reasons why a DM might go either way.

The tricky part of situations like the one we've found ourselves in, is figuring out exactly how to switch between Exploration and Combat modes, and deciding just how far away from each other the PCs and the Goblins ought to be when that happens. On top of the usual tricks to that, PBP makes it hard to make that distance very far, or the maps get so small no one can tell where their character is!

(BTW... I hope no one thinks I'm criticising EB's DMing or anyone's playing - It's ABSOLUTELY not my intent. Nor am I speaking with any authority - I'm just interested in what everyone thinks about the subject.)

 

[EarlyBird]

I think they shouldn't have made some things so ambiguous. When I first picked up the PHB I was like "Look! Only ten pages on Combat, nice."

Now I regret that a little.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'm not sure that they meant for it to be that ambiguous. I think that they thought it was very simple and didn't realise that it could be interpreted so wildly. Many of the interpretations have to do with biases that are brought over from other editions or other games, that then influence how people want it to work.

 

[jmucchiello]

Well, it is extremely difficult to write rules unambiguously because the writers are suffering under all the baggage of the playtest. Last week, the rule was X. Last month, the rule was Y. Two months ago, it was a combination of Z and X. Before that it was just Z and before that it wasn't even a rule. Divesting yourself of all those extraneous versions of the rules (and 4e, and 3.5e and 3e and....) is very hard.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

It's true. It's hard for us who played the playtest, I can only imagine how it was for them. I can't remember what the rule was, but I recently found myself being *sure* that the 5e rule for something was X, because I'd been doing it that way for years and years, and it turned out that I'd kept the rule from the playtest and it had never been a thing in 5e. I was so sure it a 5e thing, and I was wrong. What was it again? I can't remember.

 

[EarlyBird]

Gettin old are we? haha

I did that - Remeber when I kept trying to Dodge and up Zander's AC - Playing old 3.5 style. LOL

 

[tglassy]

So, I’ve done some experimenting, and I think the enworld dice roller is broken when rolling 4d6b3. I’m going to try an experiment.

[roll0]
[roll1]
[roll2]
[roll3]
[roll4]
[roll5]