D&D (2024) Thoughts on Stealth and D&D2024

[James Gasik]

In a previous post I said that in the end, it comes down to what the DM wants stealth to be able to do. Do you want Elder Scrolls-esque "stealth mode" letting you creep past enemies or do you want players to remain perfectly still in the shadows and pray nobody looks too closely at them.

WotC didn't make clear which of these two approaches their Stealth rules allow for. Maybe it's one, the other, or something in the middle.

But it really doesn't matter. Because no matter what the rules say, the DM is going to rule with what they want to allow in their game. So some 5e games are going to have Ninjas slow walking past people on open ground and some are going to have people cross "Stealth" off their character sheets, same as they always have.

A few years back, on these forums, I got into a heated argument spirited debate about AD&D Thieves. Someone claimed that in their games, Thieves were constantly leaping in and out of shadows, backstabbing everything and murdering monsters wholesale. And I pointed out "yeah, by the rules, not going to happen" and produced the actual text of how these abilities actually (didn't) work that way.

Because in his game, Thieves were allowed to be backstabbing machines, and in the games I played, I stopped even writing Backstab on my character sheet and stuck to using a Shortbow. Because if the rules get in the DM's way, the rules are going to change.

 

[ezo]

In the 2014 rules you could do that with the Skulker feat, and wood elves could do it with light obscuration due to natural phenomena, which… I guess you could argue shadows are?

Correct, but the point is hiding when you are not capable of being seen makes no sense. Trying to be quiet? Sure. But hiding? No.

Return to ye ol' good days of AD&D when it was actually "Hide in Shadows". The point was for a Thief to be able to move in a shadowy area while under observation and NOT be noticed.

Nothing there says a pc or creature with 2 forward facing eyes can see all around the simultaneously, they do have multiple lines of sight, but how many are available to process at any given time is not stated. Try again, no colored home brew needed to cloud the discussion.

So... you're back to this again? Well, have fun.

 

[FrogReaver]

Nope, that was not my conclusion to the rules and I also don't think that is RAI because its silly. But I am not interested in repeating the same arguments and points. The fact that this is the second big discussion definitely proves thouth that they utterly failed in making these rules clear.

Renaming the "invisible" condition to "concealed" condition or something similar and a better wording for the "concealed" bulletpoint could've already helped to clarify, but they should've just not mash "hidden" and "invisible" together. It was a stupid move.

I don't think renaming or better wording the condition would have helped. The major problem was the overload of a single condition to try and cover 2 different but sometimes similar things. They tried to handle this by placing the differences in whatever ability granted stealth/invisibility. Had they done a better job there, it might have worked. But the easiest thing to do would have been to keep them separate. Trying to combine them is always going to seem like a half brained idea.

At the end of the day there are just different expectations around actual invisibility and stealth/hiding.

 

[Selas]

RAW the rules are wonky, but most here have a pretty good idea of what the RAI is. Honestly, just apply some common sense, use the RAI and save yourselves a lot of headaches. For the most part, its rules lawyers that care about RAW

 

[ezo]

RAW the rules are wonky, but most here have a pretty good idea of what the RAI is. Honestly, just apply some common sense, use the RAI and save yourselves a lot of headaches. For the most part, its rules lawyers that care about RAW

Ok, so explain, please, what in your view the RAI are here?

EDIT: a "step-by-step" approach would be most helpful I think.

 

[Maxperson]

So it doesn't say you can't determine facing so I guess we can?

Where is the rule stating you have simultaneousl line of sight in all directions?

It's the part where they don't bother with facing at any point. So you are able to draw line of sight to you in every direction and no on can hide from you if you have line of sight to them, even if one is in front of you and one is in back.

See, the in a game like D&D, you only have the abilities that the game writes down for you or the DM assumes/grants to you. The latter all all homebrew, though, and not RAW. The DM may reasonably assume that you can't see in two directions at once, but the game doesn't write down that you don't, because no facing rules.

 

[FrogReaver]

RAW the rules are wonky, but most here have a pretty good idea of what the RAI is. Honestly, just apply some common sense, use the RAI and save yourselves a lot of headaches. For the most part, its rules lawyers that care about RAW

I think RAI has some fairly large holes, especially line of sight, leaving cover/obstruction and coming out into the open, etc. But everyone’s always done stealth however they wanted anyways, so probably doesn’t really matter what the RAW or RAI actually are.

 

[James Gasik]

And even if 2024 5e does use facing, it's left silent as to when/why/how one would change facing. Is it set at the end of the turn? Does this mean that if an enemy behind you moves away, you can't make an opportunity attack against them? Should you be treated as Blinded from the rear? Can I use my Shield against back attacks?

Oh and can someone explain how a bullseye lantern works in 5e?

 

[Maxperson]

Since I am the referee most of the time and there is no trophy or sponsorship contracts at the end of the rainbow; I go with logic and reason.
In fact...a player declares their intent to hide...i look at the map and say....ok, you're pretty sure you are hidden.

I think most of us here do that when faced with written rules that don't work or make sense if you follow them. This discussion, though, is about the written rules of 5.5e.

 

[Epic Meepo]

RAW the rules are wonky, but most here have a pretty good idea of what the RAI is. Honestly, just apply some common sense, use the RAI and save yourselves a lot of headaches. For the most part, its rules lawyers that care about RAW

I agree with your statement in general.

The challenge posed by poorly worded Stealth rules, in particular, (as @James Gasik pointed out in post 531) is that the RAI could realistically be one of two things: stealth is an easy-to-use, ninja-like Elder Scrolls "stealth mode" tactic; or stealth is a difficult-to-use "cower in the dark and hope no one sees you" tactic.

Ultimately, the DM decides which of those two paradigms applies at their table. But to me, ninja-stealth-mode D&D and cower-in-the-dark D&D don't even feel like the same game. The combat tactics they each support are so different from one another, I find it hard to identify a single, baseline 2024 ruleset.