D&D 5E Can a Player gain an advantage from a Passive Skill that required no effort or cost?

[Tonystar73]

This actually is one of those cases where it seems reasonable. most of those abilities are not as strong as existing options given to the paladin and are stronger for a cleric than a paladin because of how other class features work with them. Casting spells through the duplicate for example is not as strong because of 1/2 caster spell slots. Advantage gained from those abilities seems in line with Oath of Vengeance or Oath of Ancients. Your player might not be completely insane. of course the final arbiter is you as the DM.

Putting aside if i accept it or not for the moment... Do you think that what he has put is balanced when comparing to other Paladin Sub classes?

 

[Tonystar73]

Curious - why don't they simply play a Cleric of Trickery? They can pick up a feat for Heavy Armour if they need it and it comes free with a little bit or rogue/bard (skills).

As it stands, it seems like the like the flavour & utility of the Trickery features -- but want to have the Paladin's smites, auras and the like?

It's a shame Paladin of Treachery didn't make it to XGTE - I reckon that've been right up their shadowy alley. The UA is still out there - perhaps you can use it as a guide? https://media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/downloads/UAPaladin_SO_20161219_1.pdf

The Problem extends much deeper than being a choice of making a new sub class or just being a cleric. That conversation is gonna be a different topic altogether...

 

[Tonystar73]

...I would suggest to the player that they deliver to me a detailed concept of this new "oath" and what it is about and what makes it different from the other oaths and one clear statement of why they want it - all from a description within game kind of perspective with not one single game mechanic element. After that i would either say "that doesnt fit" etc or i would go design a new oath mechanic set myself and offer it to him.

I actually had intended to try and work on an Oath path of my own, however i'm very limited on time with work and havent been able to make a start on it. So one of my players volunteered there help by putting together a Oath path. We had discusses to a degree what the oath would kind of portray but never the full abilitys. So when he came back with the proposed idea, thats when the arguement over this 3rd ability came in.

 

[Tonystar73]

The general rule is that, in order to help someone do something, you have to actually be able to do something that would significantly help them in whatever the task is. The specifics are left up to the DM, but a couple of examples are that you usually can't have someone help you pick a lock (because you can only fit one set of tools in there at a time), and you may not be able to help analyze an obscure magical phenomenon if you aren't proficient in Arcana.

Honestly, I would probably say that you can't help someone sneak around in most cases, but if you could then it would be by walking ahead of them and pointing out where they should avoid stepping, or acting as a spotter so they would know when to duck. It's definitely not something you could do from around a corner, as you send someone off to scout ahead.

This is kind of the problem i have with the mentioned skill that my player proposed for this new paladin oath. He argued that anyone else could help in a stealth check, but he gets it without passively being present... Which seemed completely wrong to me...

 

[5ekyu]

I actually had intended to try and work on an Oath path of my own, however i'm very limited on time with work and havent been able to make a start on it. So one of my players volunteered there help by putting together a Oath path. We had discusses to a degree what the oath would kind of portray but never the full abilitys. So when he came back with the proposed idea, thats when the arguement over this 3rd ability came in.

then my advice would be to reset back to "give me concept and i will write it up" and toss the current one. Your shortcut did not work out so learn from it.

 

[redrick]

Agree with [MENTION=6774924]secondhander[/MENTION]. I can't think of an application where the "Help" action would apply to a Stealth skill check. Help is when two people work together to accomplish the same goal. Instead of each rolling, you grant Advantage to the character you are helping. So, sure, one character could Help another character to move silently, but that wouldn't mean that they are themselves actually moving silently. (I could carry you on my back — as long as you don't cough, sing, or have a line of sight with the people we are hiding from, nobody will know you are there. I, on the other hand, am still making hella noise.) Sneaking generally requires that all parties be silent, so you would use the group check mechanic for this. (Which is still super forgiving — the group check allows a group to succeed if half of the participants succeed. The difference is that everybody uses their own modifiers, so you can't grant advantage to the Rogue with +7 to Stealth.)

 

[Satyrn]

Agree with @secondhander. I can't think of an application where the "Help" action would apply to a Stealth skill check.

I can think of some.

Say the rogue is hiding himself, setting up to ambush some approaching enemy. I'd give the rogue advantage if the fighter was there to move some furniture or draw the curtains to help obscure the rogue before scurrying away down the hall.

But that doesn't really help with the OP's issue. I don't like the feature because it doesn't explain what's happen9ng to give the advantage. Is the target suddenly more shadowy, are people just less apt to see him, or what?

 

[machineelf]

This is kind of the problem i have with the mentioned skill that my player proposed for this new paladin oath. He argued that anyone else could help in a stealth check, but he gets it without passively being present... Which seemed completely wrong to me...

Exactly. The whole reason I brought up the issue that I brought up earlier is because, it is hard to imagine how one character can "help" another character sneak without being part of that sneaking action themselves. In other words, two players could sneak together, and you could run it as a group check, and it would essentially do the same thing as a "help" action to sneak (or close to it). But both have to be participating in the sneaking.

But for your player's paladin to just bestow sneak advantage magically on another player and let them go off on their own to sneak is definitely not just fluff. They are getting an ability that other people couldn't do normally.

 

[redrick]

I can think of some.

Say the rogue is hiding himself, setting up to ambush some approaching enemy. I'd give the rogue advantage if the fighter was there to move some furniture or draw the curtains to help obscure the rogue before scurrying away down the hall.

But that doesn't really help with the OP's issue. I don't like the feature because it doesn't explain what's happen9ng to give the advantage. Is the target suddenly more shadowy, are people just less apt to see him, or what?

I don't know that I'd consider that the Help action. That's just changing the surroundings to create an advantage. But, once the curtains are drawn or the furniture is moved, anybody could take advantage of it.

However, it does get me to thinking that one could Help another to hide by creating a distraction. The Fighter could bang on some pots and pans while the Rogue is sneaking away. This would use the Fighter's action, and most certainly give advantage to the Rogue. Very helpful indeed!

That being said, neither of these cases would match the feature that the OP's paladin is wishing to create. I can't speak to balance of Paladin subclasses, but if the player is arguing that this feature should be a freebie because it's just a refluffling of an existing feature that the paladin already has, I would say that this player is wrong.

 

[Satyrn]

That being said, neither of these cases would match the feature that the OP's paladin is wishing to create. I can't speak to balance of Paladin subclasses, but if the player is arguing that this feature should be a freebie because it's just a refluffling of an existing feature that the paladin already has, I would say that this player is wrong.

I agree.



Totally aside: Rather than moving furniture around, the fighter also could stand where the enemy's gonna be and say "Nope, can still see you, tuck your elbow in."