Stealth in Combat

[bardolph]

O.k., I think I understand how to use Stealth in combat under most circumstances now. So long as you have cover or concealment at the time you make an attack, you make a Stealth check to see if you have combat advantage against your target. Other Stealth checks may be needed in or out of combat to determine if various opponents can see you and/or are aware of you, but even if the target knows what square you are in, if you have cover or concealment you can try to succeed at a Stealth check when you attack to gain combat advantage. At least that is what I think right now. It would be great to get a full FAQ from WOTC on this to make completely sure that I am understanding it correctly.

Yeah, I think you hit it. Most of the time, you can just make a Stealth roll vs Passive Perception (of the target) to "backstab" or "snipe," and be done with it. And yes, this would also apply for shooting from behind an ally.

If the character does something that doesn't end in an attack, a Stealth roll would create a "condition" of "Hidden 21" (or whatever the roll was), and any creature with a Passive Perception that beats that number can target the character. Creatures who can't see the character can use a standard action to roll their perception against the original stealth check, and if they succeed, they can target the character.

 

[komi]

Creatures who can't see the character can use a standard action to roll their perception against the original stealth check, and if they succeed, they can target the character.

You can actually do this as a minor action (PHB p. 281). It's a special perception check for detecting unseen creatures. Other uses of active perception require a standard action.

 

[Zetesofos]

Stealth, I think we've all seen at this point, is a rather vague and wide arching concept in the D&D Universe. But, it also seems that stealth is being used for only a few given instances.

Among the various readings on the stealth skill, I would like to point out two things. Perhaps WotC missed this by not making these to things as keywords, but that is possible because these are ultimatly up to the discretion of the DM.

In any case, in stealth, two words that need to be noted are Hidden and Aware.

So far, most people, for the sake of combat, having been arguing that they can gain combat advantage by being Hidden. This, I see, is false. No where does the PHB say you have combat advantage against any character you are hidden against. What it DOES say is that you have Combat Advantage against any target that is not Aware of you.

Now, what's the difference between the two. Simple enough, I would think. Aware trumps Hidden. A creature can be Aware of another, and yet not know it's location because it is Hidden. However, if something is NOT Aware of a creature, it cannot simultaneously perceive it (as measured by perception).

Awareness is not covered in the PHB, to our problem, so it is left up to the players/DM to detirmine if something is aware or not. This is a vagueness that perhaps could never be written in stone, but, for the sake of combat, they do mention something.

"Distracted Creature:.....'In combat, creatures are assumed to be paying attention in all directions'..." This is what I would use as the best account of Awareness. In short, once you are in combat with another creature, it is considered to be aware of you, period. If you think some creatures are aware of you, and others are not, ask yourself why the others might not be Aware. Are they asleep (Unconscious); are they not looking your way (Restrained, Prone are possible).

For people who use stealth for combat (i.e. Rogues), this is what happens. You CANNOT use Stealth as a means to give yourself combat advantage if you have just cover or concealment. This means you cannot stand behind a crate, or attack around a pillar, these only provide 'cover' or 'concealment'. And likewise, because of these types of cover, you cannot attack through them. In combat, you must make your target unAware of you to gain combat advantage against them without any other modifiers. The closest thing outlined to this awareness involves Superior Cover or Total Concealment.

As writen "If you have superior cover or total concealment, a creature can't see you, and can't be sure of your exact location. If it's perception check beats your stealth check, it knows you are present..."

As this shows, if you can stealth while you have superior cover, or total concealment, and beat the perception of those observing you, you can then have the target lose Awareness to you.

Again, it seems that this point that Awareness is still vague, and requires agreement and trust between the players and the DM. However, this looks to be the case, and they are seperated into two cases. IN COMBAT and OUT of COMBAT.

OUT of COMBAT: Characters may use stealth to become and remain Hidden. OUT of COMBAT, creatures are not aware of any other creature that is hidden, based on the perception and senses of that sensing creature.

I would argue at this point that you are considered IN COMBAT AFTER you take an action to start combat. I.E. any attack made out of stealth from out of combat DOES grant combat advantage. You could then make a stealth check to remain Hidden, but any other creature that wasn't attacked, and rendered senseless to your stealth, is now Aware of you.

IN COMBAT: In combat, characters may use stealth to become and remain Hidden once they have obtained cover or concealment. If at any point between the start and end of their turn, if they lose this cover or concealment, they immeditatly become unHidden. Note* Several Rogue utilities such as chameleon and shadow stride allow characters to remain hidden without cover or concealment, but only under other certain conditions.

Remember: Being Hidden does NOT grant Combat Advantage. Therefore, cover and concealment are not alone sufficient.

If a character obtains 'Superior Cover' or 'Total Concealment' it may attempt a stealth check to become Hidden and ALSO have the target lose Awareness of the character, IF it's stealth check is more than there perception check. If the character loses 'Superior Cover' or 'Total Concealment at any point between the beginning and end of it's turn, it is no longer Hidden, and subsequently, and creature that can perceive it is Aware of it.

That, I believe is the nuts and bolts of stealth. In the simplest form, for rogues and others using stealth to acquire combat advantage

Hidden does NOT give you Combat Advantage alone. This also makes sense when you see Rogue utility powers such as Hide in Plain Sightand Hide from the Light. These powers require a character to be hidden, and grant that character Invisibility, which DOES grant Combat Advantage. Obviously, if being hidden granted combat advantage by itself, these powers would be of no use.

For Rogues, I'm sorry to say, but you will not be sneak attacking from behind a 1 square pillar or from the corner of a wall once combat has started, as these at most only provide cover. Behind a large crate or barrel? This depends on the DM really, but I would rule that that these provide either 'cover' or 'Superior Cover' depending on the circumstance.

For example, you could duck behind a crate, and hold your hand above it to fire, but unless you can see your opponent (a stipulation of Combat Advantage, p 279), you can't sneak attack. If you duck partially so you can see, you might be prone, and take a -2 to attack.

So, complicated, mayhap, but I think that's the theory behind the whole thing. In the end, it's really common sense via annoying logic...maybe.

So, using stealth to attack would work in situations like sneaking up on a guard from a dimly lit wall, attacking through a thick fog bank that you can see through (Blind Fight perhaps), leaping from a tall ledge, or perhaps sending a phasing ammunition right through a wall you can see through.

Things that wouldn't work would be running behind an obstacle to fire at an enemy, using simple Shadow Walk to conceal yourself, or a thin mist for that matter, or attacking from behind an enemy (which doesn't work because it's cover for ranged attacks only, and besides cover is not sufficient in combat).

For rogues who want more combat advantage and therefore sneak attack, look to Hide in plain Sight to gain invisiblity, other forms of invisibility, bluff for combat advantage, your teammates to provide it via powers (a sizeable number), and of course, the all important Flanking.

As for stealth itself. Hidden =/= Aware.
(Targets that are NOT Aware of a character grant Combat Advantage to that character).

As for what Hidden and Aware mean exactly, that is up to you as a DM and a player. WotC can't define Everything.

 

[Mistwell]

Zetesofos, I think as this debate has evolved, your interpretation is in the vast (and shrinking) minority. I think people are (mostly) at the point where cover or concealment allows a stealth check as part of an attack, with a few stragglers. CustServ is also clearly with the majority on this one. The remaining debates seem to involve issues like using allies as cover, and what cancels stealth, and when passive/active perception checks are made.

That's not to say the majority cannot be wrong, just that the odds of your interpretation being correct seem pretty small at this point. I think an objective observer would bet on cover or concealment being the only requirement to make an attack from stealth, even if your target knows which square you are in.

 

[bardolph]

I like this but I want to clarify how you Hide. No enemies can have "unblocked line of sight to you." What exactly does this cover?

The idea was that, if you are facing multiple enemies, you need cover/concealment against ALL of them. If you are behind a table but one of your enemies is ALSO there behind the table with you, your Stealth would be blown for everyone. Again, my assumption was that creatures would always communicate with each other when they spot a Hiding character.

However, I've searched around and saw some CSR posts that clarify that the Stealth rules are meant to be more generous than that.

You can actually do this as a minor action (PHB p. 281). It's a special perception check for detecting unseen creatures. Other uses of active perception require a standard action.

Even better.

 

[the_redbeard]

MEARLS HAS SPOKEN ... in this post on the WoTC forums.

Stealth in Combat
Hey all,

This is all unofficial advice, not official fodder for the FAQ. But, here's my view:

1. The game's math assumes that the rogue gets sneak attack with just about every attack he makes. If the rogues in your game are constantly gaining combat advantage, it really isn't a big deal.

2. You check to see if you are hidden from a foe when you attack, and lose hiding after completing the entirety of the attack action. You can't attack stealthily; you have to already be hidden when you attack.

So, stealth breaks *after* the attack.

3. Make your Stealth checks against passive Perception, unless a critter uses a minor action to make another Stealth check.

4. Remember that intelligent foes will share information. If one of the four hobgoblins spots a hidden PC, that guy can tell his allies where the PC is hiding.

5. I now have a meeting and have to run. But I think that covers most of it. And note I didn't go near warlocks. Yet.

And in response to a question by Machus regarding the rogue exploit, deft strike:

Mike, thanks!

There is another burning question derived from this for rogues, further interpretation from you may help yet again, and it's unrelated to Warlocks.

Given: A rogue has cover from, say, from behind a crate, and they have already made a stealth check and are hidden. There is an opponent nearby they want to attack from hidden to gain CA on.

If they use the Deft Strike at-will power that allows them as the attack, to also move 2 squares, if they move out of that cover (from behind the create), and stab their target, did they in fact lose CA/hidden status BEFORE they land the attack? Or are they able to make their melee Deft Strike attack with CA, and are then revealed after the attack (as you noted). The stealth rules mention if you lose cover/concealment you are seen automatically, is the counter-rule.

Deft-strike seems more like a lunge, and the move is part of the attack, so I would inerpret that to mean they can indeed use Deft and maintain CA until after they attack.

Your interpretation is correct. The Deft Strike movement is part of the attack, so you gain CA.

Remember that these are unofficial answers, but that is how I run it.

And again at the end of the thread:

One thing to keep in mind is that one of the big picture changes in 4e was to move stealth and hiding from spells to skills. In other words, the rogue or ranger are the best PCs for hiding, not the wizard with an invisibility spell.

The spell is still useful, but it is now much more limited and harder to use over and over again.

With that in mind, when you are DMing it's OK to be liberal with letting people use the skill. If a rogue wants to run from a hiding point, across a room full of monsters, and then hide again in a different cover position, that's OK. I've run it such that on a successful check, the creatures don't notice the rogue's movement, and it has worked out fine (my ruling being that since the player wanted to move stealthily, he was unnoticed while moving).

The interesting thing to me is that it makes creatures with high passive Perception scores valuable in encounters. I've been playing around with monster designs the promote a sort of "order of operations" for adventurers - take out this guy first, then this guy next - and high perception guys are an area I'm messing around with as "first step targets" to clear out space for the stealthy characters.

Happy skulking!

 

[ryryguy]

Yeah, I think you hit it. Most of the time, you can just make a Stealth roll vs Passive Perception (of the target) to "backstab" or "snipe," and be done with it. And yes, this would also apply for shooting from behind an ally.

If the character does something that doesn't end in an attack, a Stealth roll would create a "condition" of "Hidden 21" (or whatever the roll was), and any creature with a Passive Perception that beats that number can target the character. Creatures who can't see the character can use a standard action to roll their perception against the original stealth check, and if they succeed, they can target the character.

I pretty much like this interpretation. I agree 95% with the second paragraph (the active Perception check is a minor action not a standard action).

Regarding the first paragraph, I differ slightly: the stealthed attacker doesn't roll a new Stealth check vs. target's passive Perception; instead the target gets an active Perception check against the original Stealth check.

(edit) Ninja'd by Mearls (via redbeard)! He seems to have close to the same interpretation, though he also has the attacker roll Stealth against passive Perception rather than what I was saying. Mathematically I'm not sure it makes much difference (I'm not thinking too hard about it). Maybe it's better aesthetically to have the stealthed attacker roll because he's the acting character.

This part of his quote still seems slightly ambiguous:

2. You check to see if you are hidden from a foe when you attack, and lose hiding after completing the entirety of the attack action. You can't attack stealthily; you have to already be hidden when you attack

This could support the "Stealth check when moving to hide, then another Stealth check when attacking from hiding", which I like. But I think it could be read to mean "Stealth check when moving to hide, then if you win you're stealthed until your attack resolves." Well, I like the first one so that's how I'll choose to read it. <shrug>

I'm not going to argue that this is RAW or RAI; I think the rules are just not entirely clear on this point, with that unfortunate business about "targets who are not aware of you" being open to multiple interpretations. I think my interpretation feels fair, does not obviously or grossly conflict with RAW, and is workable at the table - in most cases, the stealther makes one check, and his eventual target makes one check, so just two die rolls.

(Thanks for posting that, redbeard.)

 

[the_redbeard]

I'm not going to argue that this is RAW or RAI; I think the rules are just not entirely clear on this point, with that unfortunate business about "targets who are not aware of you" being open to multiple interpretations. I think my interpretation feels fair, does not obviously or grossly conflict with RAW, and is workable at the table - in most cases, the stealther makes one check, and his eventual target makes one check, so just two die rolls.

(Thanks for posting that, redbeard.)

Minor correction to this last bit:
Until the perceiver takes a minor action, the only die rolls are from the stealther. This is per the PHB and Mearls's post.

I disagree with other parts of your interpretation, but I'm not going to argue. The 'discussion' seems to have the eyes of the designers and hopefully we'll have more clarifying information.

 

[ryryguy]

Minor correction to this last bit:
Until the perceiver takes a minor action, the only die rolls are from the stealther. This is per the PHB and Mearls's post.

Yeah I'm actually shifting to that POV...

I disagree with other parts of your interpretation, but I'm not going to argue. The 'discussion' seems to have the eyes of the designers and hopefully we'll have more clarifying information.

No need to argue about it, but I'm just curious, what do you disagree with? Is it my idea that the stealther has to win one check to hide in the first place, then win another to keep the stealth and combat advantage when he attacks? (Leave aside whether the second check is made by the stealther or the target.) Is it your idea that the first stealth check is sufficient - there is no second check required?

If that's the difference, like I said it seems like part of Mearls' post could be read to support either interpretation. Though like you, I don't really want to argue about it. (Silly enough arguing about ambiguous rules in the book without arguing about ambiguous forum posts by a designer!)

(edit) Bah, I did not read your post closely enough I guess, I see that you do indeed say there is only one roll required. No biggie, but what else did you disagree with then? There wasn't much else to my interpretation to disagree with.

 

[threegee]

As for stealth itself. Hidden =/= Aware.
(Targets that are NOT Aware of a character grant Combat Advantage to that character).

As for what Hidden and Aware mean exactly, that is up to you as a DM and a player. WotC can't define Everything.

Great post. A bit novel in your approach, but I can find no obvious flaws in your logic.

Of course, there is every indication that the designers did not really intend the rules as they were handed unto us, but those are the breaks. I think at this point, I can sensibly houserule as needed, but that is a topic for a different board. Meanwhile, lets hope Mearls posts more.