D&D 5E Crawford on Stealth

[Uller]

Or we can just ignore him ☺

Way too many forumists place the blame for poorly written explanations on DMs instead of the rules designers.

I've asked this in the past of the people who say the 5e stealth rules are so terrible to provide an example of what they think good stealth rules look like. I've never had a problem adjudicating stealth at my table and I run it pretty much the way JC described in the podcast. My players get lots of opportunity for sneaking about and they get to make rolls that have a meaningful impact on the game. Monsters are able to sneak around too and get a reasonable chance of getting a jump on the PCs. My players seem happy with the rules. I'm happy with the rules.

So if you have an example of what well designed stealth rules look like, please provide a link. If the 5e rules are bad, I'd love to see what good looks like.

 

[Satyrn]

Thorgud is a barbarian clearly.

Why is it barbarian names are always the most gutteral sounds you can make? Grog, Thokk, Throgug, Korg etc.

Also they always have accents. Always.

Because, historically, the barbarians were German and Germans have accents and speak a most gutteral language.

 

[iserith]

Agreed -- I think.

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that Passive Perception for secret doors, traps, etc. is a just plain stupid idea -- if you want such things to have any variance, whatsoever. It's a good solution for things like stealth, where only one side actually is intentionally acting. Lying works similarly with passive Insight. Even then, it doesn't address a case like where a guard has reason to be intentionally searching, but rolls a 1, so gets a worse result than if he'd been just playing on his phone. In that case, the idea that the PP is the "floor" still sounds bad, but may be the least bad option -- the PP determines whether surprise occurs, but a successful intentional check could allow the guard to turn the situation around and trick the sneak, or otherwise be more prepared than just "not surprised".

For situations where the character needs to be intentional about an action, like searching for a secret door (unless you're an AD&D elf*), passive checks don't apply because the character isn't being passive. I don't understand the argument about repetitive searches down a hallway and the like. What I've done since 1E is to just roll one check per area (however you want to define that). That doesn't mean a check for every 5' section. It means you're just rolling the one relevant check. If there are more than one thing to find in an area, then you just need to know whether the character is working left-to-right or the other way around. The roll is for the first "thing". If they find it and want to keep searching, roll again. Actually, I grab a couple dice and just know what order they apply: red, purple, orange is my current standard and I don't ever remember needing more than two, let alone more than three. I also make the characters actually say what they're willing to move/touch, with the understanding that there is the potential for contact poison, tripwires, magic sigils, etc. If they want to ransack the room, then all secrets and traps are on the table. Passive Perception just doesn't provide enough benefit to justify using it for intentional activities.

* If you want to emulate the AD&D elf, I'd say add a racial ability that they can find secret doors using PP. I'd do it at disadvantage, but YMMV.

I think the issue is with conflating a "passive" check with not actively doing something. You are - in an ongoing fashion, fictionally speaking. I think it's helpful to look at it as a "mode," for lack of a better word. For example, when the PCs are entering the adventure location, I ask them what general task they are performing as they travel the area i.e. "what mode is your character in?" Some say they're staying alert for danger, one draws a map (because maps are worth coin back in town), another looks for tracks of the local denizens in order to avoid or ambush them, and so on. Since this is what they're doing "in general," whenever I need to resolve these actions (when there's uncertainty), I refer to the appropriate passive score. That "mode" can change when the players establish they want to focus on some other task. Want to toss this room for secret doors? Sure, but you're no longer alert to hidden dangers - make a Perception check to find the door.

With that in mind, a "floor" makes sense because for the given task you're undertaking, your passive score can be used to resolve the uncertainty. Searching for secret doors and searching for traps are, in my view, two different tasks. Your passive Perception score isn't going to catch them both, which is why you have fellow adventurers to help by doing the tasks you're not doing.

 

[raleel]

I've asked this in the past of the people who say the 5e stealth rules are so terrible to provide an example of what they think good stealth rules look like. I've never had a problem adjudicating stealth at my table and I run it pretty much the way JC described in the podcast. My players get lots of opportunity for sneaking about and they get to make rolls that have a meaningful impact on the game. Monsters are able to sneak around too and get a reasonable chance of getting a jump on the PCs. My players seem happy with the rules. I'm happy with the rules.

So if you have an example of what well designed stealth rules look like, please provide a link. If the 5e rules are bad, I'd love to see what good looks like.

While I'm not going to complain about the 5e stealth rules, I am pretty happy with the ones in Black Seven, a very small and cheap RPG that specializes in stealth games like Deus Ex and Thief. It runs stealth missions somewhat closer to a Skill Challenge I would say, and failed stealth checks don't automatically mean people are seeing you, but they will start looking for you.

The idea in the mechanics is pretty portable, and could be of use to some folks looking to give something different to their stealth rules

 

[Lanliss]

That is not correct. Every skill can be used passively. Only perception is used frequently.

Sent from my GT-I9506 using EN World mobile app

Sorry, I forgot to add my mental clause of "As far as I remember".

 

[Mistwell]

I've asked this in the past of the people who say the 5e stealth rules are so terrible to provide an example of what they think good stealth rules look like. I've never had a problem adjudicating stealth at my table and I run it pretty much the way JC described in the podcast. My players get lots of opportunity for sneaking about and they get to make rolls that have a meaningful impact on the game. Monsters are able to sneak around too and get a reasonable chance of getting a jump on the PCs. My players seem happy with the rules. I'm happy with the rules.

So if you have an example of what well designed stealth rules look like, please provide a link. If the 5e rules are bad, I'd love to see what good looks like.

I think there are two basic approaches to stealth rules in RPGs: 1) a simple rule that covers most instances with general guidelines and leave it up to the DM to adjudicate based on a variety of environments and awareness and visibility conditions and noises and obstructions, or 2) a complex rule with a mini-book in the rules detailing how specifically to adjudicate stealth under all the different circumstances you can imagine.

5e took the first route. Some people prefer the second route.

People will argue there is some reasonable compromise between the two, but I'd argue they are incorrect. When you get specific rather than general and try to cover some corner cases but not all of them, the questions pour in, answers are given, more questions are asked, more answers given, and slowly you evolve that mini-book anyway. There really isn't some mysterious middle ground in there to the approaches as it's either "fairly simple for most cases with guidelines left to the DM" or inevitably over time "so highly detailed such that you'd have to consult the rules when it comes up to really know".

Crawford addresses this issue in the podcast starting at the 42:45 point [partial transcript]:

Greg Tito: It's very hard for you guys to design the rules in which all corner cases are done. So this makes sense that a DM has to make that call.

Jeremy Crawford: I mean, we could do it. And actually, sort of pulling back the curtain a little bit, I had a far more complex version of the stealth rules written in the lead up to 5th edition. And I gutted them for the simple rules we have now. Because we decided they were just too complex. They were trying to account for all of these corner cases.

And this is a case where we didn't want corner cases making the simple thing no longer simple. And what I mean by that is while we like to be clear and we like to give as many tools to our players and DMs as possible, we'd never want to go down a road where in the process of accounting for corner cases we've made the non-corner case a drag. We want to make sure the thing you're doing most of the time, the thing that's going to come up in your D&D sessions over and over and over again, we want that to be painless and fun.

The last thing we want to do is make that thing that might come up once every twenty sessions make the thing you do all the time extra complicated, just so that once every twenty session thing would have a rule. We'd rather say we're going to make the thing you do session after session after session fun and straight forward, and we're going to rely on the DM to handle that one in twenty case.

 

[ProphetSword]

I think there seems to be a basic confusion about what "Passive" and "Active" mean in 5e terminology. Passive means you don't roll for the check, and active means that you roll. They don't necessarily signify that the character isn't doing something or being passive. This is clearly stated in the first sentence under "Passive Checks" on page 175 of the PHB.

For example, someone asked this question, found here:
http://www.sageadvice.eu/2015/07/17/active-and-passive-perception/

Question: if PCs suspect ambush, should DM use passive or active Perception?

Jeremy Crawford: I usually don't ask for a Wisdom (Perception) check unless a character is actively trying to perceive something.

There's a case to be made for not allowing Passive Perception at all, if the characters aren't paying attention to anything. It's the DM's call.

 

[robus]

Really liked the podcast. Really cleared up a lot of the ad nauseum debates on hiding rules as intended.

Yeah but now we're fighting over passive perception

 

[iserith]

I think there seems to be a basic confusion about what "Passive" and "Active" mean in 5e terminology. Passive means you don't roll for the check, and active means that you roll. They don't necessarily signify that the character isn't doing something or being passive. This is clearly stated in the first sentence under "Passive Checks" on page 175 of the PHB.

For example, someone asked this question, found here:
http://www.sageadvice.eu/2015/07/17/active-and-passive-perception/

Question: if PCs suspect ambush, should DM use passive or active Perception?

Jeremy Crawford: I usually don't ask for a Wisdom (Perception) check unless a character is actively trying to perceive something.

There's a case to be made for not allowing Passive Perception at all, if the characters aren't paying attention to anything. It's the DM's call.

To be even more clear, there isn't such a thing as an "active check" in D&D 5e terminology. It's just an ability check, a passive check, a group check, or a contest. All of those mechanics require the PCs to be doing something with an uncertain outcome, so at no point is the character fictionally passive. At a minimum, the assumption is that a PC is observing the environment for danger (unless they're not!) and, since that is an ongoing effort, a passive check is the go-to mechanic to resolve any uncertainty as to the outcome of that effort.

 

[robus]

As an aside (a while ago) I tried to come up with some table of abilities vs modes of use to try and challenge myself to think more outside of the box. It started a short discussion, but given some of discussion here it seems like it might be worth linking to:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?501086-Abilities-and-their-modes-of-use