D&D 5E Assassinate

[Majoru Oakheart]

So you guys are saying that if I am invisible, and thus it is *impossible* to see me... there is no effect on my Hide or their Perception checks...

Technically correct. Being invisible just lets you make stealth checks even when someone is looking directly at you. This is because "Stealth" is a combination of trying to move quietly and trying not to be seen.

By a completely by the book reading of the rules, if you walk into a room filled with an invisible person and they've never made a Stealth check, you immediately hear them or smell them or detect them in some way because they are currently making no attempt to be quiet.

I've ruled in the past that if someone says they are staying completely still while invisible and no one knows they are there that they won't be noticed. But if they make any attempt to move in any way, they must make a stealth check to avoid being heard. That isn't technically in the rules but seems like a pretty fair interpretation.

But if I am visible, and hiding in an area of Dim Lighting.... then they have a disadvantage on perception checks...

This is also correct. But kind of a weird situation. Dim Lighting gives disadvantage on perception checks because it's harder to see something than if it was bright out. Which makes sense. Though, I've always felt this shouldn't apply to people hiding who already are making a stealth check to avoid being seen. The fact that they get to stay hidden at ALL is the benefit they get from the dim light. I assume that the disadvantage only applies to things that aren't actually hiding but might be missed like secret passages and the like.

But, once again, a strict reading of the rules says that people in have disadvantage on their perception checks in dim light. Which means it does create the odd situation that it's better to be in dim light than it is to be invisible.

Keep in mind though, that being in Dim Light doesn't allow you to hide. It allows you to CONTINUE hiding if you're already hidden. To start hiding you must be completely out of sight. So you can hide when you are on the other side of a wall from someone and then creep into a room that has dim light all the way up to a person and attack. But if you are in that room you'd need to exit it, hide, and come back.

 

[Hriston]

I don't think it's a mistake. Saying that surprise ends when someone takes their turn on the first round adds a lot of complication to the game without really adding any benefit.

Contrast:
DM: "You are surprised by some enemies, they all managed to beat your Passive Perceptions with their Stealth checks. Roll for Initiative."
DM: "Alright, an Orc pops up over a barrel at the back of the room and attacks the fighter. He hits AC 19 and does 27 damage."
DM: "Now, the beginning of round 2. The fighter goes. You've just been hit by an Orc. You can see him behind a barrel. What do you do?"

vs

DM: "You are surprised by some enemies, they all managed to beat your Passive Perceptions with their Stealth checks. Roll for Initiative."
DM: "Alright, an Orc pops up over a barrel at the back of the room and attacks the fighter. He hits AC 19 and does 27 damage."
Fighter: "Hold on, I rolled a 22 for initiative. He went before me?"
DM: "Uhh...no, he goes at 19."
Fighter: "Then I assume he's doing an assassinate on me and that power only works if I'm surprised. I'm no longer surprised since I went before him."
DM: "Oh, right. I forgot I needed to check who went before the enemy in initiative. I just figured I didn't need to call out everyone's initiative in order since you were surprised and none of you could act. I guess the only way we'll really be able to tell who is surprised and who isn't is by wasting time calling out useless initiatives. Let's get to it then..."
DM: "Fighter"
Fighter: "I do nothing since I can't act this round."
DM: "Wizard"
Wizard: "I do nothing since I can't act this round."
DM: "Now the Orc goes. I guess he fires at the Rogue since the Rogue rolled lower initiative than the Orc. He hits AC 19 and does 27 damage."
DM: "Rogue"
Rogue: "I do nothing since I can't act this round."
DM: "Cleric"
Cleric: "I do nothing since I can't act this round."

It's really not as complicated as your absurd example makes it out to be. Any DM with a basic understanding of the rules would know whose initiative is before or after the orc's without this sort of belabored approach. If the DM really is this stupid there are probably many aspects to the rules that are best left ignored.

Unless I'm missing some sort of nebulous "benefit" that you get from making surprise end when someone takes their turn. Other than it being a matter of principle that the end of someone's turn HAS to be when surprise ends.

The benefit is you don't have sloppy game design where there are two types of surprise. One that has a specific mechanical effect spelled out in the appropriate section of the rules, and another that has no effect whatsoever unless an assassin happens to be nearby. This amounts to DMs adjudicating that people are surprised simply because there is an assassin present, because otherwise there would be no other reason to even consider the question. It shouldn't work that way. First you decide if someone is surprised. Then determine whether the assassin can derive any benefit.

 

[Hriston]

Read what you just wrote again. You are either saying that, once surprised, you are surprised forever (which is absurd), or you are saying that surprise does end, but only when you say it ends. Because the rules don't say what you say; they don't link the end of surprise to the end of one of the effects of surprise.



See, that's where you've gone wrong; right there!



"Only adults can vote, therefore 'adulthood' and 'voting' are synonyms". Nope.

"One of the effects of being surprised is that you can't act until the end of your first turn, and another effect is that you are vulnerable to Assassinate, therefore 'surprise' and 'not being able to act' mean the same thing"? Nope.

You keep ignoring all of the other effects of being surprised, leaving only 'cannot act', and then cite this as proof that 'surprise' only equals 'cannot act'. But 'vulnerable to Assassinate' is also an effect, therefore 'surprise' no more equals one effect than it equals the other.

You have no rules support for that equivalence, and yet the PHB does say, "Any character or monster who doesn't notice a threat is surprised", which seems to express equivalence. Certainly more so than the total absence of any rule which says that 'surprise' and 'cannot act' are interchangeable terms.

The rules tell us what happens if you're surprised. So when you are surprised, as per the rules, a certain thing happens that only happens before and during your first turn. That means that after your turn, the thing that happens if you are surprised isn't happening any more. That's what I'm saying.

If the intent was for Assassinate to operate independently of this, I would think it would have been easier to say you can auto-crit a creature that hasn't noticed a threat.

 

[Paraxis]

Are people still arguing the RAW of when surprise ends?

SURPRISE: If you're surprised, you can't move or take an action on your first turn of the combat, and you can’t take a reaction until that turn ends. A member of a group can be surprised even if the other members aren’t.

REACTIONS: Certain special abilities, spells, and situations allow you to take a special action called a reaction. A reaction is an instant response to a trigger of some kind, which can occur on your turn or on someone else’s.

A reaction is a type of action, being surprised prevents you from taking actions or moving, when your first turn is over you can now take a reaction and thus you can act, if you can take actions you are obviously not surprised.

I get that people seem to not like how surprise, initiative, and the assassinate ability interact and for those people houseruling a change seems like a great idea to fix it for their games, but trying to say the rules don't tell you when surprise ends is wrong.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Interesting. So if a person is wearing a cloak of invisibility and says they are standing as still as possible so the gobbos entering the room don't notice them, you require a stealth check. If that check is failed, the goblins know exactly where you are (accurately enough to target you with attacks). They suffer disadvantage to attack you though, because of all the invisibility.

That's what I'd rule, and what I think is intended by the rules. Stealth isn't your ability to remain unseen, it's your ability to remain undetected. Two separate tracks.

But... if you're wearing a cloak of elvenkind, and you hide behind a conveniently placed large planter with a ficus in the same room, you still have to make the same stealth check to be unnoticed by the goblins, but this time you get to make the check with advantage. If the gobbos notice you, though, they see you so they don't take disadvantage on their attacks due to the lack of all the invisibility. You might get cover/concealment from the ficus, though!

Bingo. Again, this is what I think is intended by the RAW.

That seems to heavily discount invisibility as a hiding tool. I'd rather keep the flavor and only call for a stealth check while invisible if you decide to move around.

I think it's fine to discount invisibility as a hiding tool - magic should be useful, but not auto-success. Invis falls into that camp in this ruling: you can stand in the middle of a brightly lit room and stealth, but by the same token, you still have to stealth, so if you're a Wizard with 12 Dex, you might want to consider using that on the rogue instead.

Where the bit of DM judgement comes is when you "stop hiding." A DM running with RAW is well within their rights to call for you to make a stealth check *every time you move*, even if you're invisible, because your footsteps/air movement/etc. all give someone a chance to notice you. This can result in a lot of rolls when scouting. Which would be a severe limitation on it - you only get so many rolls before you fail, and every bit of motion you do is a new piece from the Jenga tower.

So you guys are saying that if I am invisible, and thus it is *impossible* to see me... there is no effect on my Hide or their Perception checks...

It allows you to make Stealth checks. If you weren't impossible to see, you couldn't make Stealth checks. People automatically fail any check they make to see you.

But if I am visible, and hiding in an area of Dim Lighting.... then they have a disadvantage on perception checks...

Right. It goes from

They Can See You (you can't hide) < They Can't See You Well (you can hide, they get Disadvantage to detect you visually) < They Can't See You At All (you can hide, they automatically fail to detect you visually).

Where some of the weirdness comes in is that "failing to detect you visually" is not the same as "you are hidden from them."

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Are people still arguing the RAW of when surprise ends?

SURPRISE: If you're surprised, you can't move or take an action on your first turn of the combat, and you can’t take a reaction until that turn ends. A member of a group can be surprised even if the other members aren’t.

REACTIONS: Certain special abilities, spells, and situations allow you to take a special action called a reaction. A reaction is an instant response to a trigger of some kind, which can occur on your turn or on someone else’s.

A reaction is a type of action, being surprised prevents you from taking actions or moving, when your first turn is over you can now take a reaction and thus you can act, if you can take actions you are obviously not surprised.

I get that people seem to not like how surprise, initiative, and the assassinate ability interact and for those people houseruling a change seems like a great idea to fix it for their games, but trying to say the rules don't tell you when surprise ends is wrong.

I didn't house rule, I interpreted the rule, I am not even the only DM that interpreted that the word surprise has the exact same meaning as the word surprised used in every day life... stop making it sound like we are stupid or willfully making the game worse... it is at best unclear and at worst purposefully written so it could be interpreted either way...

 

[Ovinomancer]

That's what I'd rule, and what I think is intended by the rules. Stealth isn't your ability to remain unseen, it's your ability to remain undetected. Two separate tracks.



Bingo. Again, this is what I think is intended by the RAW.



I think it's fine to discount invisibility as a hiding tool - magic should be useful, but not auto-success. Invis falls into that camp in this ruling: you can stand in the middle of a brightly lit room and stealth, but by the same token, you still have to stealth, so if you're a Wizard with 12 Dex, you might want to consider using that on the rogue instead.

Where the bit of DM judgement comes is when you "stop hiding." A DM running with RAW is well within their rights to call for you to make a stealth check *every time you move*, even if you're invisible, because your footsteps/air movement/etc. all give someone a chance to notice you. This can result in a lot of rolls when scouting. Which would be a severe limitation on it - you only get so many rolls before you fail, and every bit of motion you do is a new piece from the Jenga tower.



It allows you to make Stealth checks. If you weren't impossible to see, you couldn't make Stealth checks. People automatically fail any check they make to see you.



Right. It goes from

They Can See You (you can't hide) < They Can't See You Well (you can hide, they get Disadvantage to detect you visually) < They Can't See You At All (you can hide, they automatically fail to detect you visually).

Where some of the weirdness comes in is that "failing to detect you visually" is not the same as "you are hidden from them."

I'm just having an issue where invisibility is strictly worse than a cloak of elvenkind when hiding stationary behind a ficus. As mentioned upthread, how is being completely unseen worse than being camouflaged? Similarly, how is it that you have disadvantage to detect someone hiding without any assistance in dim light because it's hard to see in dim light, but no additional difficulty detecting them merely because they can't be seen at all? If this is true, you're valuing dim lighting as being superior for avoiding detection than being invisible altogether. Can't follow you down that road, man.

 

[epithet]

...
I think it's a mistake conceptually to separate mechanical surprise (not being able to move or act on your first turn) from the fictional state it is modeling. They are both surprise. One is not the result of the other. Being surprised by a threat has an in-game mechanical expression that we can also call surprise.

I completely disagree with your take on this issue. In my mind (and game,) the "mechanical" inability to move or act on your first turn is 100% the result of the "fictional state" of being surprised (as is the mechanical auto-crit of assassinate.) This is what I was referring to earlier when I distinguished a role-playing game like D&D from the tactical simulations it grew out of. The mechanics of the game must serve the fiction of the role-played narrative, not form an unnecessarily restrictive framework into which the role-playing is forced to awkwardly fit.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm just having an issue where invisibility is strictly worse than a cloak of elvenkind when hiding stationary behind a ficus. As mentioned upthread, how is being completely unseen worse than being camouflaged?

It's not worse. In fact, it's better - enemies can't detect you visually at all. They auto-fail any checks to see you or what you're doing. They cannot see you at all.

It's just that this doesn't mean they're not aware of you.

One way to parse it: a Stealth check does not represent you trying to be unseen. Stealth doesn't affect who can see you. In old-school D&D terms, Stealth is like a Move Silently check, NOT a Hide in Shadows check. There is no "Hide in Shadows." You're either seen, or not. Stealth is a check to remain unnoticed. Invisibility automatically means you can't be seen, but being unseen doesn't mean they don't know you're there.

If you turn invisible and run up behind a ficus and try to hide, there is no chance whatsoever of you being seen. There is a chance that you bump the ficus or that an enemy hears your footsteps or that a dog smells you. A Cloak of Elvenkind might help that because it cushions your movement, softens your footfalls. Invisibility doesn't help with that because all it does is make you invisible. If you bump a ficus (blow a Stealth check), you'll still be invisible, you just won't be hidden.

Similarly, how is it that you have disadvantage to detect someone hiding without any assistance in dim light because it's hard to see in dim light, but no additional difficulty detecting them merely because they can't be seen at all? If this is true, you're valuing dim lighting as being superior for avoiding detection than being invisible altogether.

Again, two separate axes.

Dim light gives disadvantage on Perception checks "that rely on sight."

Can Be Seen | Can Be Noticed
Normal: Yes | Yes
Normal + Stealth: Yes | No (which is why this situation isn't something the RAW really allows for, IIRC)
Dim Light/Cover: Maybe | Yes
Dim Light + Stealth: Maybe | No
Darkness/Invis: No | Yes
Darkness + Stealth: No | No

It's a prerequisite to "cannot be noticed" that you also "cannot be seen," but there's no check involved in being seen or not, merely in being noticed.

 

[Ovinomancer]

It's not worse. In fact, it's better - enemies can't detect you visually at all. They auto-fail any checks to see you or what you're doing. They cannot see you at all.

It's just that this doesn't mean they're not aware of you.

One way to parse it: a Stealth check does not represent you trying to be unseen. Stealth doesn't affect who can see you. In old-school D&D terms, Stealth is like a Move Silently check, NOT a Hide in Shadows check. There is no "Hide in Shadows." You're either seen, or not. Stealth is a check to remain unnoticed. Invisibility automatically means you can't be seen, but being unseen doesn't mean they don't know you're there.

If you turn invisible and run up behind a ficus and try to hide, there is no chance whatsoever of you being seen. There is a chance that you bump the ficus or that an enemy hears your footsteps or that a dog smells you. A Cloak of Elvenkind might help that because it cushions your movement, softens your footfalls. Invisibility doesn't help with that because all it does is make you invisible. If you bump a ficus (blow a Stealth check), you'll still be invisible, you just won't be hidden.



Again, two separate axes.

Dim light gives disadvantage on Perception checks "that rely on sight."

Can Be Seen | Can Be Noticed
Normal: Yes | Yes
Normal + Stealth: Yes | No (which is why this situation isn't something the RAW really allows for, IIRC)
Dim Light/Cover: Maybe | Yes
Dim Light + Stealth: Maybe | No
Darkness/Invis: No | Yes
Darkness + Stealth: No | No

It's a prerequisite to "cannot be noticed" that you also "cannot be seen," but there's no check involved in being seen or not, merely in being noticed.

I might agree with your logic here, except for the fact that stealth isn't broken up into sight/sound/scent/whatever. The same Dex 12 Wizard attempting to hide in dim light gets an advantage over attempting to hide while invisible -- because dim light somehow makes him less noticeable in all ways over being invisible. To whit, this argument insists that dim lighting not only makes it more difficult to see you, it also makes it more difficult to hear you, smell you, intuit your existence, and/or guess about your being. Similarly, the cloak of elvenkind does the same thing for hiding behind a ficus -- it enhances your total stealth ability moreso than invisibility does, meaning you're altogether less noisy, smelly, possessing of a detectable aura of presence, etc.

I have trouble with that. Invisibility should be at least as good as adaptive camouflage or dim lighting.