D&D 5E Stealth, Spot and Listen: Now with Poll!

[Chris_Nightwing]

The fundamental hide/seek check is indeed an ability check. Dexterity vs. Wisdom is the most frequently appropriate, but I can see Intelligence also playing a role on both the hiding and seeking side of things. If I'm trying to sneak up on someone, that's Dex vs. Wis, but if I'm hiding from someone searching a room I could see that being Int vs. Int, or if I'm a smuggler with a secret compartment in my ship I could see Int vs. Wis. It's all a bit tricky really.

Introducing skills, I would prefer a 1-v-1 setup for simplicity, but I don't want perception made so powerful. I would opt for an awareness skill, used when you are relying on your natural senses passively, and a search skill for when you're actually thinking about what you're looking for. Insight, for reading people and their intentions, would remain separate, naturally. Stealth would be a single skill. The only difficulty with this setup is that passive senses are wisdom, and active ones are intelligence anyway, so the skills become rather hard-coded to those abilities.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I feel like I agree with everything you've said up until the conclusion, when I suddenly disagree

I mean, it sounds like you favor a version which is pretty similar to 3e or 4e, in that it's opposed checks.

Fine!

If you want to let characters specialize at all (I do! I do!), which sort of rules widget do you favor for letting them express just how stealthy -- or Holmesian (detective, not author) -- they are?

A designer cannot punt on this question: elves, goblins, halflings, and the giant eyeball-men of Rigel Nine will need some way to reflect their special talents at Hide and Seek.

I think the first way to deal with this if you're not having skills is to rely on those ability score bonuses. Halflings are more agile than humans, so they get a DEX bonus. Dexterity is often used in remaining unseen and unobtrusive, so Halflings are automatically better than humans at this. Elves have keen senses, so they get a WIS bonus. Wisdom is often used in detecting hidden things, so Elves are automatically better than humans at this.

If that's not quite enough, then you can always have specific special abilities called out for each race. So, in addition to or alongside the DEX bonus, halflings have a special "Unobtrusive" ability that, say, lets them become hidden whenever they aren't being directly observed by another creature, until they do something other than move. And elves have a special "Aesthetic Sense" ability that, when they use it, automatically reveals hidden things within their eyesight. Or whatever.

And then you can also always add the skills module, in which you can specify some bonuses.

Personally, I think the skills system isn't a great place to house Stealth and Perception rules, just because these two skills overwhelm most of the other skills you could have -- they quickly become much more valuable than most of the rest of the skills, simply because of their utility and constant use. They're already yet another benefit for high DEX and a penalty fierce enough to dissuade a Wisdom that's too low (though being flexible with the ability mod used in the check certainly helps that). Sneaking and surprise and preventing those things are just too important.

But that's just me. I like the idea of ability checks picking up most of the slack, and I don't mind a few extra racial powers to convey these abilities to people who don't use skills.

 

[Lackhand]

Ah! So, "anything not skills-as-they're-building-them" based.

I strongly agree, but it looks like we're in the minority, based on my cunningly-worded poll.

C'est la vie!

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Ah! So, "anything not skills-as-they're-building-them" based.

I strongly agree, but it looks like we're in the minority, based on my cunningly-worded poll.

C'est la vie!

Your poll doesn't have an option that clearly reads, "No Skills. Dexterity vs Wisdom, possibly modified by race and class features."

But that's my vote.

 

[Lackhand]

Your poll doesn't have an option that clearly reads, "No Skills. Dexterity vs Wisdom, possibly modified by race and class features."

But that's my vote.

I dunno -- do you really think there's no space for feats there? Because to me, the space between feats and class features is minimal.

But you're right, I really blew the poll options.

Planning is fundamental!

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I dunno -- do you really think there's no space for feats there? Because to me, the space between feats and class features is minimal.

But you're right, I really blew the poll options.

Planning is fundamental!

I wouldn't say that there is no place for feats, but I'd prefer them in a merely situational capacity. Feats granting static bonuses are generally a bad idea.