D&D 5E Adjudicating "bursting in"

[cmad1977]

Really if skip the rolls and just make the call.
Are the bad guys snoozing/gaming/drinking? Probably surprised.
Are they alert/aware of danger? Probably not surprised.

All this is thrown out the window when the rogue sneaks up to the door, rolls a 2 on their stealth check and the drunk enemies passive perception is high enough to detect them.

 

[jayoungr]

It seems to me this is covered just fine with the surprise rules. Ask the PCs to make a Dexterity (Stealth) check while they're outside the door and compare the results to the passive Perceptions of the monsters to determine if the monsters are surprised when the PCs burst in or if they hear something outside the door.

What if the PCs weren't making any particular effort to be stealthy, though? You're essentially retroactively granting them the opportunity to stealth any time they want to. Seems a bit excessively powerful, on the face of it.

 

[discosoc]

Surprising something by bursting into a room basically requires two things. Sneaking up to the door without being heard or seen, and then bursting through the door in a way that allows everyone to act.

As a GM, I usually rule this so that the person actually doing the bursting gets a surprise round (assuming they did sneak up ok), and everyone else just starts combat "hidden" because they are in a different room.

 

[Hriston]

What if the PCs weren't making any particular effort to be stealthy, though? You're essentially retroactively granting them the opportunity to stealth any time they want to. Seems a bit excessively powerful, on the face of it.

The premise is that the PCs are trying to catch their opponents off guard. That, to me, implies an attempt to sneak up on them. I'd ask them how they approach the door, and if they tell me they're being cautious or that their intent is to surprise the room's occupants, I'd ask for a check. If they flat out tell me they aren't making an effort to be stealthy, then there's no way they could surprise their opponents. They would find the occupants on guard, or if they linger too long outside the door, someone might come out to see who it is "sneaking around" out there.