Oh my gods, six pages. Thank you all for taking the time to respond.
You are not wrong, but this is not in line with your original proposal. You said that high-level rogues should have
the chance to sneak when no one else could. I agree with that idea, but that is not what this is. This is a high-level rogue
having a chance to be detected when anyone else would be detected as a matter of course. To actually get to the point where such a rogue feels challenged, the monster would require a truly ridiculous bonus to their roll, well in excess of +10.
I hope I didn't shut you down, Ovinomancer; I have a tendency to speak in absolutes that is easily interpreted as a lack of interest in discussion. I'm not certain, I just project confidence.
Good. Yes. That is actually more helpful than it seems. Forest for the trees, and all that.
Is that not this thread?
I will cop to the fact that my issue is far more combat-focused than I thought when I wrote the post. I am much less concerned with someone being Solid Snake /in general/ than I am with someone being Solid Snake /during their initiative phase/. And it's not that the rogue often succeeds at hiding in adverse conditions -- that would not be a problem -- it's that they /always/ succeed, which I see as being just as little fun as never succeeding. That might be an exaggeration, but I do believe that it is uncertainty that drives entertainment in tabletop roleplaying, to a large degree.
What I have taken to doing is assigning each encounter a 'clutter value,' which I report to rogue players at the beginning of the encounter. The clutter value is an abstraction of how much junk is lying around in the encounter area that the rogue can use for cover. It directly translates to the number of times the rogue can hide before the enemy starts getting advantage on their Perception checks because the rogue is reusing hiding spots.
This worked fine until Reliable Talent. After Reliable Talent the enemy can roll for advantage until they are blue in the face and they still won't ever see the rogue. It's irrelevant.
I accept as logically valid the argument that this is fine. Logically valid or not, I do worry that it is less fun to succeed all the time than it is to have even a 5% failure chance.
That's a great idea. I will remember that.
Eloquently said.
Yeah... these two things are in no way linked. I am a game designer. Game designers are full of s**t.
Minimum. And that minimum value is still out of range for 90% of the Monster Manual.
You are entitled to your opinion, but in the opinion of nearly everyone I've discussed this with, that is not how D&D5 was designed. The rogue class depends on sneak attack every round, with exceptions being the rarity.