Stealth - the low down UPDATED!

[Zurai]

And yet he isn't seeing both.

Right, but the rules don't care about that. The effect of both hidden status and invisible status is the same: combat advantage vs things that don't see you. The differences are what rules the creature follows to detect the hidden/invisible creature. They're different because a hidden creature can be seen, so the rules focus on seeing it. Invisible creatures, by definition, cannot be seen.

 

[alanpossible]

In the case of movement, I feel the most consistent ruling is a soft one. Through misdirection, or guile, or doing nothing to attract attention to yourself, you are able to move around behind cover and your enemies don't target you. It's not that they couldn't target you if something drew their attention to you, but that nothing draws their attention to you.

So then if one of their buddies goes 'Who's that' pointing you out (his passive Perception beat your Stealth) they can all immediately notice you and even attack you, at -2 and still yielding you CA.



Once you are noticed, any power that explictly grants a check should let you make one. Fleeting Ghost, for instance. Other than that, you should do something cunning that your DM can say 'yes, that works' to. Breaking LOS should in my view nearly always work, including teleporting to a square they aren't looking at (since you don't pass through the intervening space).

-vk

Sorry, I didn't make some of my points clear enough. I agree on both points...


I'm not sure about what you're saying about teleportation. By "not looking at" do you mean "don't have full line of sight to"?
Obviously full LOS would negate stealth. And I can understand how teleporting somewhere would introduce the "where the hell is that rogue? I think she's somewhere near the wall" situation which I think stealth is supposed to introduce.

 

[Novem5er]

I'm sorry, I have to step in and say something. Props to the OP for compiling all sorts of data/rules-interpretation... and I agree that Stealth could be clarified better in the PHB.

However,

To quote a single sentence of the PHB: Success: You avoid notice, unheard and hidden from view.

To me, this generally means that a stealthed player is not going to be attacked. This doesn't meant that the players crossbow is hidden from view (thus granting CA somehow). It means the player is hidden, and cannot be directly targeted.

Ex. The party is barricaded in a dungeon room and a group of orcs is beating down the door. The rogue decides to hide behind some crates. The orcs burst in, fail to notice the rogue, and thus do not target him. Simple.

Notice the rogue was hidden before any orc had a chance to notice him. If we switch it around some . . .

Ex. The party is camping in a dungeon room and the rogue is walking across the center of the room when a band of orcs burst in, surprising the party. The rogue isn't attacked in the surprise round, but he was still clearly visible and "noticed". On his first action, he takes a normal move towards some crates and THEN succeeds on a hide check. The orcs cannot see the rogue, and cannot directly target him, but since they saw him originally and he wasn't hidden as he moved, they know that he's "behind the crates", and can move to get LoS or perhaps target the crates with a Area attack.

However, if the rogue would have rolled Stealth as part of his move action (taking penalties for moving more than 2 squares, AND having cover or conceal during movement), the the orcs would not have seen him move towards the crates. They would have noticed the rogue originally, but would have lost track of where he went. Now, if the crates were the only logical hiding place, then an orc could move to investigate, but they wouldn't "know" the rogue was there.

The same would hold true for PCs trying to target stealthed monsters. A hidden monster cannot be directly targeted, but the PCs will be able to use the last known position (or movement) to guess where the monster is, then move to gain LoS or target an area with an appropriate power.

 

[alanpossible]

uh, and what about the fact that "In combat, creatures are assumed to be paying attention in all directions"? (P188)

The rogue somehow stealthily sneaks across the well lit room while in direct line of sight to the orcs and carefully takes cover behind some boxes....and nobody notices?
Maybe if they were distracted. But isn't that what the distraction ability of the bluff score is specifically for? (suggesting it isn't something that can be done as standard).

Or the fact that "If a creature has unblocked line of sight to you...the creature automatically sees you" (ie. no check)? The orcs have unblocked LOS as the rogue moves towards the crates. Only in the last square (behind the crates) does he have any cover.

I could accept your answer if the rogue only became stealthed in that last square when he gains cover. But then your interpretation is more-or-less the one presented here.

I'm not convinced it's quite as obvious as you seem to be making out.

 

[MarkB]

The thing is... imagine a waist-high crate located between an orc and a rogue, with the two latter being 10 feet apart. The rogue has cover from the orc due to the crate. However, how could the orc not see the rogue? The rogue crouches behind the crate and all, but the orc still see him, partly. However, the rogue benefits from CA against the orc since he can hide his hand crossbow and fire surprisingly at the orc.

There are some circumstances where VK's interpretation appears like the most plausible, IMO. The above is one of them. I like what it means in-game (easy to imagine the rogue using the cover to hide his shot, while still not being entirely hidden from view) and i like how it works mechanically (it's simple, the cover grants CA).

Sky

That's covered by the fact that the DM can rule that a particular circumstance does not allow a Stealth check. In your single-crate-too-small-to-provide-total-cover example, I would fully expect the DM to make that ruling. In that case, the rogue is not hidden and does not gain combat advantage.

If, however, there's a larger stretch of cover and the rogue has room to move, then it is more reasonable that he could change position, making a Stealth check as he does so, and if successful the orc is no longer sure which part of the cover he is crouching behind. He is hidden, and has combat advantage. The DM might even reasonably rule that he needs to move at least 3 squares to do this, thus automatically imposing a -5 to his Stealth check.

In fact, this is exactly where I would draw the line of DM adjudication when it comes to whether or not a Stealth check is possible. If it is reasonable (due to poor light and/or good cover) that the character could escape notice with a sufficient Stealth check, then he can make one, and the result if successful is that he both evades being seen and gains combat advantage.

Right, but the rules don't care about that. The effect of both hidden status and invisible status is the same: combat advantage vs things that don't see you. The differences are what rules the creature follows to detect the hidden/invisible creature. They're different because a hidden creature can be seen, so the rules focus on seeing it. Invisible creatures, by definition, cannot be seen.

The rules for detecting a hidden creature are very simple, though: You make a passive perception check when he hides, supplemented by an active check on your turn as a minor action if you choose to do so, each of which oppose his Stealth check. On a success, you detect him and he is not hidden. On a failure, you don't detect him and he gains the full benefits of a successful stealth check, which include not being seen or heard.

 

[Novem5er]

I think you misunderstood what I was saying.

In my first example, the rogue was visible and had no cover, but he moved normally (not stealthed) to reach cover and then rolled stealth. At the point that he was hidden, the orcs could not target him directly, but they know that he's in the area. They "saw" the rogue run across the room, then disappear from view behind some crates. Thus, they can move to reacquire Line of Sight, or they can target the general area with Area powers.

In my second example, I made the provision that the rogue could "roll stealth" as he was moving, IF he had cover or concealment during his move (he was standing in shadows, was standing behind crates already, etc). Note that Stealth is at a penalty while moving more than 2 squares and it has the requirement that a character MUST have cover/conceal to roll it. IF the rogue can successfully roll stealth as part of a movement action (because he has cover/conceal), then the orcs wouldn't know in which direction the rogue moved.

What I'm saying is that an orc could not just walk up to a hidden character and attack him with a -2 penalty. The orc might know that the character is "in the area" because he saw the character move in that direction, but he wouldn't know which square the rogue was, unless there were only ONE square that the rogue could possibly claiming cover. Thus, a lamp-post is not a very good hiding spot, especially if someone saw you run behind it.

 

[James McMurray]

he rogue somehow stealthily sneaks across the well lit room while in direct line of sight to the orcs and carefully takes cover behind some boxes....and nobody notices?

Of course they notice. He doesn't "avoid notice" until he makes his stealth roll. After that point they don't see him. They'll have a really good idea of where to go looking though, as as soon as they move around his cover the stealth will be blown.

Or the fact that "If a creature has unblocked line of sight to you...the creature automatically sees you" (ie. no check)? The orcs have unblocked LOS as the rogue moves towards the crates. Only in the last square (behind the crates) does he have any cover.

And he's only hidden in that last square.

 

[Kitsune]

People are making too much of rules that are meant to be abstractions, I think. If D&D was a world as clean as our grid mats, then of course people should have a good idea where a character was hiding at all times; it would be like trying to hide behind an ikea chair in an all-white, brightly-lit room. Where did he go? Gee, maybe behind the only piece of furniture in the room.

But that's not D&D. D&D's supposed to be adventurous and cinematic, where every place is lit by flickering torches, weird idols are littered all over the place, forests are full of thick trees, and there's generally a lot of shadowy corners and readily-available cover. If you come into a room full of bloodthirsty cultists that's dimly-lit and the air is filled with the ring of metal and the screams of the wounded, are you really going to be tracking the location of the little guy in the corner as if he had a green arrow hanging over his head?

The stealth rules are clear-cut.

Anyone who doesn't make the perception check doesn't see you, doesn't hear you, and doesn't know where you are. They know where you were, and would be perfectly justified in lobbing a fireball into the dark passage that you ducked into, but if you've moved out of that square, they have no excuse for having knowledge of your current location.

If you don't have any cover or concealment from a person, they can see you, regardless of how great your roll is. That only makes sense; you can't walk down an empty hallway and somehow not be in plain sight while doing so.

If the person's distracted, you can be stealthy even without cover. People are assumed to be looking all around themselves in a fight, which is fair, but when DMing I would be willing to accept a good argument as to why a certain person shouldn't be paying attention to the rogue. Crazed cultist leader performing ceremony to unleash unspeakable evils on the world, not watching his back as well as he should be, oops a dagger wound up in his kidney... I'd let a rogue try for stealth in that situation.

If you have perfect cover but they beat your stealth check, they know your general location despite not being able to see you. That's fair, and so is tossing a fireball your way if they think they can get you in the blast.


So a sneaky person has to find cover to hide and remain in cover to remain hidden, and that sounds fair to me without people automatically knowing the sneaky person's square. The rules already restrict the sneaker to sneaking from shadow to shadow every round if they want to stay sneaky. The rules already instantly strip away the sneaking the moment someone gets a clear line of sight to the sneaker. I see no reason to allow a player or NPC to have any knowledge of a sneaking person's location (assuming the sneaker moved away from the last place they were seen), or to target the sneaking person directly.

 

[James McMurray]

The FAQ has just been updated, and people using stealth officially cannot be seen, and use the rules for targeting things you can't see.

16. What are the benefits of being hidden?

There are several benefits of being hidden from an enemy - you have combat advantage against them and they will have a more difficult time targeting you. Page 281 of the Player's Handbook explains the rules for targeting creatures you cannot see.

 

[bardolph]

The FAQ has just been updated, and people using stealth officially cannot be seen, and use the rules for targeting things you can't see.

16. What are the benefits of being hidden?

There are several benefits of being hidden from an enemy - you have combat advantage against them and they will have a more difficult time targeting you. Page 281 of the Player's Handbook explains the rules for targeting creatures you cannot see.

Can you provide a link to this FAQ?

I find it hard to believe that WotC's official stance is that you have to beat the Stealth check BY TEN POINTS in order to target a hidden creature.