D&D (2024) New stealth rules.

[Scott Christian]

If we want them to just focus on doing things and not burden them with rules, that would be good, wouldn't it? Skills are in the same class as spells. You need to know how skills work just as much as you do spells.

I think common sense can prevail here. Anyone who has played or watched play understands how skills work. And, like in 2014, the DM is the arbiter of when and which skills (and which ability bonus) are used. This is not that difficult to play one session and have an understanding that when your character wants to understand the religious symbols on the wall, they roll a religion check.

That said, there should be some basic definitions such as athletics are feats of strength such as... and then an example is given. But any more than that isn't needed.

Note: This is not saying there aren't problems with the way skills are implemented. It is saying that there is no need for a deep understanding of the mechanics behind the skills for a player making their first character. A brief explanation will do.

 

[Epic Meepo]

Nope.
And it doesn't need to be an enemy.
And you can stow a weapon with each attack.
And you can push or shove as part of an Unarmed Attack.
And allies can choose to fail saving throw.

Sooo...
When an ally leaves your space, you can reaction shove them 5' for a little speed extra boost.

Not sure it's the best use of your reaction, but it's there.

Slight tangent: I don't think Shove requires you to push the target directly away from you. So it sounds like you could use your Reaction to Shove an ally who leaves your space 5 feet straight up (in addition to any other vertical distance they get if they're jumping at the time). Under the right circumstances, that could actually be a very good use of your Reaction.

 

[WanderingMystic]

Then lets not burden the players at all. No rules for them! They don't need to know the mechanics of racial and class abilities. Just do stuff and let the DM sort it out.

So I used to play with a DM back in 2e and 3e who would not let us know our stats. We told him what our priorities were and described our characters to him and then he determined what they were.

 

[WanderingMystic]

That tells me next to nothing about how the skills work.

So I have to agree with @Maxperson on this one. The PHB should have a good description of what each skill can do. Now under the search, study and influence actions do give you some information about what those specific skills can do but your physical skills need more information

 

[mellored]

So I used to play with a DM back in 2e and 3e who would not let us know our stats. We told him what our priorities were and described our characters to him and then he determined what they were.

Sounds fun.
but also a big pain for the DM.

 

[Maxperson]

Sounds fun.
but also a big pain for the DM.

We tried that a few times during the 1e/2e era. The players generally didn't like it and it was a huge pain for the DM, and so those efforts fell apart before anyone ever hit level 2.

 

[Clint_L]

I’ve read and re-read the rule for stealth and it seems very clear to me. I will have no problem adjudicating it in game. Do people actually play by carefully parsing every word and seeing how far they can stretch the interpretation to come up with absurd results? Do any DMs engage with them? It seems exhausting and the antithesis of why I play games.

If a player tried to claim that stealth now makes them into the Invisible Man I would just say, “No, obviously not,” and move on. Expecting everyone to be playing in good faith is the baseline for any group I’m interested in joining.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I still can't believe stealth rules are so ambiguous that there's a thread 100 pages long of people who know D&D arguing over what they mean...before the rules have actually come out!

They aren't actually that ambiguous, people could have this same argument over any of a dozen things with the same logic. This is why we, as a community, have had to come up with the terms RAW (Rules as Written) and RAI (Rules as Intended) for the last few decades.

 

[Chaosmancer]

So the PHB has NO rules for using skills, as far as I can tell.

There is a one sentence description for all skills and the rules for the hide, search, influence and study actions. I've heard this is because players never initiate skills; they either take an action that uses a skill or the DM calls for a skill test. For example, a PC doesn't declare they are making a perception check to look for something. They can take the search action and the DM says the skill that is relevant. Likewise, a player doesn't declare he is making an open locks roll, the player says he's going to pick the lock and the DM tells them what skill to roll.

Honestly, I can see both sides of this. On the one hand, a lot of players declare what they want to roll vs what they want to do and the DM decides what is the appropriate roll. On the other hand, it would be nice to know what a skill can actually do. I wager it won't matter as the minute the DMG is readable, everyone is going to be reading it and know what the skills do anyway.

But these months in between are going to be agony.

And honestly, even if the rules don't say that, for example, Animal Handling allows you to lead a cow into a barn, or that it would be an athletics check to shoulder charge through a burning barn wall and out into safety.... do we need them to?

This entire argument is quite literally "but the rules don't say...." while everyone seems to agree on the intent of the rules.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The rules do support that. There are formulas for determining how Long Jumps and High Jumps work.

A character with a strength modifier of 1,261,392,003 could high jump to the moon.

And the rules cap strength at 30. So the rules do not support you in this.