D&D 5E A Reliable Talent for Expert Stealth

I'm curious to hear from other D&D5 dungeon masters how you challenge high-level rogues in terms of going about undetected.

Shorthand: With Reliable Talent and Expertise, an 11th level rogue can easily have a Stealth check result range of 23-33, which is far beyond the capacity of any passive Perception in the Monster Manual and really beyond the capacity of most Perception checks -- if the dungeon master permits a roll -- representing a 'nearly impossible' DC /on average/.

To be clear, /negating/ this advantage would be easy. Denying the rogue a place to hide is not a solution. I'm specifically interested in hearing about scenarios where palatable, credible circumstances were engineered to challenge a rogue with a Stealth check result in the high 20s.

DMZ2112 said:

I'm curious to hear from other D&D5 dungeon masters how you challenge high-level rogues in terms of going about undetected.

Shorthand: With Reliable Talent and Expertise, an 11th level rogue can easily have a Stealth check result range of 23-33, which is far beyond the capacity of any passive Perception in the Monster Manual and really beyond the capacity of most Perception checks -- if the dungeon master permits a roll -- representing a 'nearly impossible' DC /on average/.

To be clear, /negating/ this advantage would be easy. Denying the rogue a place to hide is not a solution. I'm specifically interested in hearing about scenarios where palatable, credible circumstances were engineered to challenge a rogue with a Stealth check result in the high 20s.

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1) don't confuse DCs with contested rolls -- rolling a 33 is not a Nearly Impossible challenge, even if it's pretty much a de facto one.

2) You don't challenge a rogue with stealth challenges at this point, except on rare occasion and then well telegraphed. They are really, really good at sneaking. If you apply the stealth rules reasonably, this is just very awesome and not an "I win button." As you note, you have to have the right conditions to hide, so it's not an all-the-time thing or should even be assumed -- and I'm generous with hiding opportunities.

3) Why do you want to challenge to rogue straight at his skills? D&D in general encourages this (you go after the fighter with fighting, for example), but it's a bit of a dead end in challenge design. Let the rogue be awesome where they've invested their build choices. Instead of making stealthing the challenge, make the challenge one that stealth helps, but can't solve.


That said, rogue skill design is one of my biggest pet peeves about 5e. If you're going to do something as interesting as bounded accuracy, don't blow it up that badly and that quickly. Still, it's a minor problem -- you just look to challenge rogues in other ways than going straight at their skills.

You can arrange difficult circumstances and say they give a bonus to observer's perception checks. For instance, when trying to move quietly through dry leaves, you can give observers a +10 bonus to hear. With that mechanic, you can tune the difficulty as you like. It's not hard to come up with situational modifiers like that. Basically it gives the rogue a chance to hide in situations when an ordinary character would have no hope.

Ovinomancer said:

1) don't confuse DCs with contested rolls -- rolling a 33 is not a Nearly Impossible challenge, even if it's pretty much a de facto one.

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Maybe I'm not understanding you, but the situation seems /worse/ with contested rolls. Most monsters can't beat a 20, and the rogue will roll a 23 more than half the time and higher the other half.

2) You don't challenge a rogue with stealth challenges at this point, except on rare occasion and then well telegraphed. They are really, really good at sneaking. If you apply the stealth rules reasonably, this is just very awesome and not an "I win button." As you note, you have to have the right conditions to hide, so it's not an all-the-time thing or should even be assumed -- and I'm generous with hiding opportunities.

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While I do on occasion design encounters in which hiding is unhelpful or impossible, generally speaking I come down the other way, on this: it /should/ be assumed. Denying the opportunity to hide has to be pretty carefully gauged, at least in combat. The rogue is clearly designed with the expectation that they will at least have the chance to get sneak attack every round. Usually this is a matter of keeping enemies engaged, but not always. Negating the rogue's combat potency is a kick in the fork to the player's fun.

Not having to roll is also not fun, in my experience, which is where I'm coming from on this. I'd just like the rogue to be /capable/ of failure under normal circumstances, even if that failure is a rare occurrance.

3) Why do you want to challenge to rogue straight at his skills?

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I would have asked a different question if I had a problem challenging a rogue otherwise.

That said, rogue skill design is one of my biggest pet peeves about 5e. If you're going to do something as interesting as bounded accuracy, don't blow it up that badly and that quickly. Still, it's a minor problem -- you just look to challenge rogues in other ways than going straight at their skills.

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This is where my head's at just now. The rogue just... ignores bounded accuracy, after a point.

jaelis said:

You can arrange difficult circumstances and say they give a bonus to observer's perception checks. For instance, when trying to move quietly through dry leaves, you can give observers a +10 bonus to hear. With that mechanic, you can tune the difficulty as you like. It's not hard to come up with situational modifiers like that. Basically it gives the rogue a chance to hide in situations when an ordinary character would have no hope.

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Those are some loud leaves, but I take your point. However, even with a massive +10 to the roll your average CR 11 monster has a check result range of 11 to 31 and is still /guaranteed/ to fail more than half the time -- regardless of the rogue's result. I'm terrible at probability math but I think the monster's actual odds are worse than 3:1 against.

DMZ2112 said:

Those are some loud leaves, but I take your point. However, even with a massive +10 to the roll your average CR 11 monster has a check result range of 11 to 31 and is still /guaranteed/ to fail more than half the time -- regardless of the rogue's result. I'm terrible at probability math but I think the monster's actual odds are worse than 3:1 against.

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75% success against a garden-variety monster, under adverse conditions, seems pretty reasonable to me. If you want to have a particularly alert guard, you can give it proficiency, or even expertise, in perception.

At high levels I rarely challenge the party with the same kind of challenges that I would at low levels.

At the point where reliable talent comes into play the test will not be "Can the rogue sneak in there?" but "What will they do when they get the secret-info/cursed-macguffin/item-that-is-way-bigger-than-expected/etc?

In the games I have ran, the "payment" the rogue pays for always being hidden is that the rest of the party gets beat down more than their fair share of the time. The party pays a price for a "never attacked because they are always hidden" character by having monsters instead attack wizards/sorcerers and other lightly defended characters when there is no rogue in their way. Not using the rogues ability of taking half damage once-per-round on attacks is leaving even more damage on the table to go towards other more squishier comrades.

If you have a second or third character in the party who leaves all the attacks to someone else (by flying/invisibility/etc) the damage on the characters left to sustain it can quickly grow out of control.

DS

DMZ2112 said:

I'm curious to hear from other D&D5 dungeon masters how you challenge high-level rogues in terms of going about undetected.

Shorthand: With Reliable Talent and Expertise, an 11th level rogue can easily have a Stealth check result range of 23-33, which is far beyond the capacity of any passive Perception in the Monster Manual and really beyond the capacity of most Perception checks -- if the dungeon master permits a roll -- representing a 'nearly impossible' DC /on average/.

To be clear, /negating/ this advantage would be easy. Denying the rogue a place to hide is not a solution. I'm specifically interested in hearing about scenarios where palatable, credible circumstances were engineered to challenge a rogue with a Stealth check result in the high 20s.

Click to expand...

Hmm, let's see. A hero of our story has spent class features and a feat on becoming the absolute best at stealth that they can be. They now can do legendary feats of stealth that mundane creatures just won't notice and only the best prepared or most lucky will catch.

Woo, sounds good!

In a practical sense, this means that the rogue will almost always surprise monsters (unless he's traveling with other, less stealthy people) and will almost always have advantage on the attack roll if there's a place to hide in combat. If the rogue is on his or her own, it will also mean that scouting around without being detected will almost always succeed.

Personally, if a rogue tries to hide in the same place twice in order to get advantage on an attack roll, I impart disadvantage on the Stealth check. That does not increase the challenge (which remains static) - it just increases the difficulty which may still be quite low, comparatively speaking. If the rogue's player thinks there's a risk of failure, he or she will try to find another place to hide which may or may not be possible, depending on the situation.

Monsters with keen senses may be of some use here, as this effectively increases the difficulty, so that could be tacked onto some monsters to give them an edge. Monsters with blindsight or tremorsense or the like are also something to consider.

You could also implement something like the Mark of Finding from the Eberron supplement. The way that works is that the NPC/monster imprints the rogue in its memory (range 30 feet, sight), then the following benefit is gained: "When your quarry is within 60 feet of you, you have a sense of its location: it can't be hidden from you, gains no benefit from invisibility, and your attacks against it ignore half cover." So you stick some monsters in your adventure with that ability, appropriately renamed, telegraph that they exist and play on. The challenge for the rogue is identifying and taking those monsters out before they can imprint and ruin his or her ability to hide. Increase the difficulty by having it such that if one monster of this kind imprints, they all imprint until the original one is taken out (or something like that). Then have that one monster dodge and play keep-away while the others pound the rogue.

I tend to cheat a bit and make a few more monsters show up if the encounter is not as difficult as expected. I do this only sometimes to make the fight more fun and not be a wipe out each time things go not as expected from what was designed. I also tend to let the player have the PC with the cool trick like this. I'm not sure how to directly counter the stealth problem.

You could try an adventure with more of a direct stealth mission. This may mean the fighter needs to be helped or keeps tipping off the guards. You could have a counterstealth adventure like the sniper movies where a master stealth tracks him down to be the backstabee instead of being the backstabber.

In the end, you have a player who designed a PC to be something cool to him and you should let him play it mostly, while still challenging him once in a while.