D&D 5E Gloomstalker ambush ruling question

[DEFCON 1]

Hell... if I was DM I'd almost just do the whole thing narratively anyway. If it is expected that most of the "adventure" and combat is happening elsewhere or later on... then F-it... just let the Gloomstalker do their thing and pick off all the guards one at a time Rambo-style and not even bother rolling the dice. I mean, what do you lose if you do that? Only the possibility of the Gloomstalker being heard and the other guards coming running... which merely results in a "Orcs versus Party" combat. A combat the party could have done anyway if they didn't want to bother trying to be sneaky about it.

The whole point of this scene is to give the Gloomstalker their hero moment-- why screw with it by going through the dice motions just to see if he rolls a '1' and thereby ruining it? Especially if those 5 orc guards are not even close to being the real obstacles of the full adventure.

 

[Fenris-77]

I'd probably split the difference. I'd have the player roll for the stealth parts of the scene, but probably not for the hit and damage parts. Failing a stealth role still provides the player a ton of room to cleverly role play their way past failure, kind of like when you get noticed by a guard in Assassin's Creed. That's got narrative bite IMO and could make for a good nailbiter of a scene. Missing the damage roll by two and not killing the Orc just kind of sucks. If there was a leader type Orc I might get the Ranger to roll everything for that guy, maybe, but maybe not.

Giving characters their occasional hero moments is part of running a good campaign.

 

[Nebulous]

If no one notices the first orc, then combat is over and the GS can do it again on the next orc. Besides, if no one noticed, he could wait 30 seconds or whatever until doing the next one.

To me, that's cool and fun. Go with the Rule of Cool

That's what I would say. If no one else noticed then the next orc is an entirely new combat and rinse repeat.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Re: the stealth thing, that wouldn't need to be rolled either. It's at night. And the GS has a feature that makes them invisible to creatures that use darkvision. So the orcs couldn't see him anyway. Well, I suppose you could make a check due to noise, but I'd probably give advantage at that since vision is an important part of perception.

 

[Umbran]

I guess looking at the rules, the question is, who are the combatants. Only the GS and the orc in the tower, or also the orcs in the other towers?

I agree - this is the basic question.

Note that, if the other orcs are not in the initial combat, then the PC has to surprise each subsequent orc in turn. This may be difficult... because while the PC is sneaky... why is everyone assuming orcs die silently?

 

[NotAYakk]

This. Even if orc hear the battle and rush, but just see the corpse when they arrive, I would count them as surprised if Ranger attacks them and they failed their perception vs his stealth.

Surprise means "aren't even aware there is combat going on", not "cannot find the attacker". Seeing a fresh corpse full of arrows ... orcs aren't THAT dumb.

Note that, if the other orcs are not in the initial combat, then the PC has to surprise each subsequent orc in turn. This may be difficult... because while the PC is sneaky... why is everyone assuming orcs die silently?

They aren't. People are talking about giving the other orcs perception checks.

It may even depend on if the orc dies from 1 arrow, or 2, or 3. And some luck.

 

[Esker]

Re: the stealth thing, that wouldn't need to be rolled either. It's at night. And the GS has a feature that makes them invisible to creatures that use darkvision. So the orcs couldn't see him anyway. Well, I suppose you could make a check due to noise, but I'd probably give advantage at that since vision is an important part of perception.

Strictly speaking, being invisible just enables a hide roll in the absence of cover, and gives disadvantage on perception (by virtue of creating obscurement); it doesn't affect stealth checks (advantage on stealth and disadvantage on perception are similar, but not statistically identical if passive perception is used, since then disadvantage is a -5).

But I think @DEFCON 1 's approach is totally reasonable too: if this is just a minor obstacle on the way to something bigger, it might make for better storytelling to just handle this bit narratively. All of that is predicated on the assumption that the orcs are far enough away from each other that they can't hear each other dying.

 

[NotAYakk]

But I think @DEFCON 1 's approach is totally reasonable too: if this is just a minor obstacle on the way to something bigger, it might make for better storytelling to just handle this bit narratively. All of that is predicated on the assumption that the orcs are far enough away from each other that they can't hear each other dying.

We could make it a kind of challenge.

Make alternating stealth checks and attack rolls (with advantage). Stealth check DC goes up by a fixed amount each success.

Each successful roll (of either stealth or attack) represents a dead orc with noone else the wiser. A failure means they are alerted to the attack.

Orcs have a perception of 10. So start with that, and add (say) 2-5 DC each check (depending on how well commanded the orcs are and how paranoid they are).