D&D 5E Boy, that escalated quickly...

[MurderHobo1]

I don't buy the Decker effect argument. We REGULARLY are waiting 5+ minutes just for our initiative to come around when resolving combat. It's a lack of player courtesy and arguably DM managing the players when someone is working the stealth component of exploring and the guy in plate insists on following 10 feet behind or moving ahead. I think the DM stating clearly that for stealth to work, the plate guy needs to stay at least x feet behind. I also think things like the DM asking, "Hey, aren't you good aligned? Why are you sabotaging your own group member by stampeding about while he's trying to stealth?"

 

[psychophipps]

Also be sure to keep the players styles of play in mind. If the player is obviously shooting for the sneaky git action, feel free the fudge information a bit to make sure they have a decent chance of success.
Hussar's description would make me tend to see him as a tactician like me. If you blow two hours planning on the first roll, any tactician-type player is probably going to be more than a bit ticked. Hannibal Smith loves it when a plan comes together, not when 2 hours of discussion and planning immediately turns into a Goat Rope.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

a Goat Rope.

Totally, totally misread that the first time. O does not equal A.

On the stealth thing, I'm going to totally side with the DM here. Some players are just pathologically unable to sit still for thirty seconds. I've seen it in far too many groups across all age groups. This is so much a player thing. They see someone move that figure forward ten feet and they HAVE to move their figure forward too.

 

[MurderHobo1]

Then kill the impatient player. "Sorry, you just stepped on a trap that doesn't activate until the second person steps on it. You fall down a very long pit into deep water. Are you wearing plate? Yeah, you sink. Sorry you're out of range of Player C's levitate spell. You're beginning to drown. Yeah, it'll take 5 mins to take off your armor. You're dead. Spend the rest of the game session rerolling a new toon and we'll figure out when we can get you back into the game. Maybe it'll be at the end of this one or maybe it'll be a couple of sessions."

There's ways of handling it. That's a dickish one. There's less dickish one's like "Dude. Chill out. He's stealthing. It's his job. Let him do it." If the guy is still a douche, delay his next level one or two sessions after everyone else and ask, "Get it yet?"

If a player can wait 5 minutes for his turn in combat, he can wait 2 minutes for someone to stealth. Anything else is rationalization or justification.

IMO.

 

[Sunseeker]

Then kill the impatient player. "Sorry, you just stepped on a trap that doesn't activate until the second person steps on it. You fall down a very long pit into deep water. Are you wearing plate? Yeah, you sink. Sorry you're out of range of Player C's levitate spell. You're beginning to drown. Yeah, it'll take 5 mins to take off your armor. You're dead. Spend the rest of the game session rerolling a new toon and we'll figure out when we can get you back into the game. Maybe it'll be at the end of this one or maybe it'll be a couple of sessions."

There's ways of handling it. That's a dickish one. There's less dickish one's like "Dude. Chill out. He's stealthing. It's his job. Let him do it." If the guy is still a douche, delay his next level one or two sessions after everyone else and ask, "Get it yet?"

If a player can wait 5 minutes for his turn in combat, he can wait 2 minutes for someone to stealth. Anything else is rationalization or justification.

IMO.

I did this last night, but I didn't have to be a dick about it. The player first taunted several of the "spirit bears" I had made up for this leg of my campaign. Think, ghost immunities on top of a dire bear on steroids. The party was well aware of how powerful they were, but this guy decided to engage them. He had a special perk that would send enemies into a rage (ala the barbarian rage table) but give them disadvantage on mental saves, since he was a charmer-type. Well he enraged them, then tried to charm them, well one still saved, after a short fight this bear crit on said player, absolutely eviscerating him. With him dead, the rage ended (and another player used Enthrall properly to get several of the enemies attention and run away, being enthralled, they followed), with the guy who antagonized the intelligent ancient spirit bears dead the rest of the party either ran of or surrender and the bears left them alone.

The guy'd been itching for a fight all night. He picked the wrong one. Hopefully he learns from this.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I think that the following are true about infiltrations in D&D

1. Too many DMs default to "you failed a roll, COMBAT!". This basically means that unless the entire mission is resolved for good or bad with that single roll, you are guaranteeing combat because the chance of rolling a string of successes is diminishingly small. This is largely encouraged by the system: skill rolls are almost entirely presented as success/failure.

2. D&D penalizes you for not taking a surprise round, and defines a surprise round as only being available if you detect your enemy before they detect you. So by even attempting a non-combat solution, combined with #1, you've only made your job harder.

3. D&D further worsens this by making small groups of monsters wet noodles and assuming that each worthwhile fight requires a small horde of monsters, and that a combat adventuring day requires multiple such hordes. So if a DM wants a mansion that is at all dangerous, he's forced to have it guarded by a large army. That means that the consequences of #1 and #2 are further compounded: you fail a single roll, lose surprise, raise the alarm and you're fighting every creature that you have bypassed on the way to where you are.

I think that a DM needs to recognize these things and actively work against them.

1. Instead of requiring multiple successes to pass a scenario, allow multiple attempts at success. Example:
a) The players are heading in the gate. 2 are dressed up as commoners bringing a wagonload of goods to the castle, the rest are hidden amongst the goods in back. The players have made some effort to forge a manifest.

Typical DM approach:
Roll for disguise checks - failure starts combat
then
Roll a deception check - failure starts combat
then
Roll for forgery - failure starts combat
then
All the players in the back of the wagon roll for stealth - failure starts combat

A better approach for a DM who wants to have players not just charge in:
Decide if you even need to roll for disguise checks - this might be necessary if the players are disguised as specific commoners, but if it's just generic stuff, there's no roll here.

If you DO decide to roll, then the commoners are probably recognizable by the guards, who know why they are there and what they're doing. Wave them through on a success.

Failure or generic disguises lead to suspicion. The guards ask questions. A success on deception, persuasion or the forgery here means the characters are waved through. The guards are satisfied by the explanation enough that the paperwork is irrelevant, or they're show the paperwork first and it comes out good.

Paperwork is bad? Try to talk your way through. Deception check bad? Show them the paperwork!

A failure on both leads to the guards investigating the wagon, at which point we're looking at a group stealth check, probably with advantage, because the hiding places were established up front and some care taken.

Success on that one might still lead to the players being denied access... but maybe it just leads to the guards taking the wagon up to the house themselves! Failure here is probably the trigger for combat, depending on whom is found. Most likely though, the guards are not keen to pick a fight, because fighting means dying. Dying for money isn't a guard's job, and nor is arresting criminals. So they'll withdraw, tell the characters to wait while they get permission from the house, and contact the city watch/guild heavies/angels of justice. Or maybe the wagon gets directed to wait in the on-site wagon crushing machine.

All in all, the characters are now likely to succeed at their plan. Instead of having to succeed 4 checks, which has a 31% chance, even if each check has a 75% chance of success, they now need to succeed at 1. Tension will be heightened with each failed check as they get deeper into it, and finally: They can try another plan even if they completely fail!

2. Make surprise rounds easier to get by allowing them even when both sides are aware of each other, as long as they're not expecting an attack at that moment. This encourages diplomacy followed by combat instead of just attacking on sight.

3. Change the focus of combat so you don't need to flood the infiltration site with goons. NPC guards should be focused on delay tactics until their offsite and inactive forces arrive, and the focus of the players should be to get what they want and get away before that happens. Neither should be focused on killing the other.

 

[Rhenny]

Failure or generic disguises lead to suspicion. The guards ask questions. A success on deception, persuasion or the forgery here means the characters are waved through. The guards are satisfied by the explanation enough that the paperwork is irrelevant, or they're show the paperwork first and it comes out good.

Paperwork is bad? Try to talk your way through. Deception check bad? Show them the paperwork!

A failure on both leads to the guards investigating the wagon, at which point we're looking at a group stealth check, probably with advantage, because the hiding places were established up front and some care taken.

Success on that one might still lead to the players being denied access... but maybe it just leads to the guards taking the wagon up to the house themselves! Failure here is probably the trigger for combat, depending on whom is found. Most likely though, the guards are not keen to pick a fight, because fighting means dying. Dying for money isn't a guard's job, and nor is arresting criminals. So they'll withdraw, tell the characters to wait while they get permission from the house, and contact the city watch/guild heavies/angels of justice. Or maybe the wagon gets directed to wait in the on-site wagon crushing machine.

All in all, the characters are now likely to succeed at their plan. Instead of having to succeed 4 checks, which has a 31% chance, even if each check has a 75% chance of success, they now need to succeed at 1. Tension will be heightened with each failed check as they get deeper into it, and finally: They can try another plan even if they completely fail!

Good method. Chris Perkins uses this on many skill checks in his streamed games. Basically, it is setting tiers to land on if a failure occurs. Instead of falling 150' to his doom after the first failed DEX or Strength check, the PC gets a chance to catch himself on the edge of the cliff. If that fails...he falls about 20 or 30 feet and sees a tree root sticking out from the side of the cliff so he has a chance to grab it. By this point, the PC may take some damage, but at least he won't die. Then of course, he has to figure out how to get back up the cliff, but that's the fun part.

I'm a total fan of the DM working with the PCs to give them chances to succeed. The game is generally more fun when the PCs succeed. Of course, sometimes there is success at a cost, but that's fun too.

 

[psychophipps]

I did this last night, but I didn't have to be a dick about it. The player first taunted several of the "spirit bears" I had made up for this leg of my campaign. Think, ghost immunities on top of a dire bear on steroids. The party was well aware of how powerful they were, but this guy decided to engage them. He had a special perk that would send enemies into a rage (ala the barbarian rage table) but give them disadvantage on mental saves, since he was a charmer-type. Well he enraged them, then tried to charm them, well one still saved, after a short fight this bear crit on said player, absolutely eviscerating him. With him dead, the rage ended (and another player used Enthrall properly to get several of the enemies attention and run away, being enthralled, they followed), with the guy who antagonized the intelligent ancient spirit bears dead the rest of the party either ran of or surrender and the bears left them alone.

The guy'd been itching for a fight all night. He picked the wrong one. Hopefully he learns from this.

Sometimes you get the bear, and well...sometimes the bear has you starring in a Snuff Film...

 

[Hussar]

I think it's fair to say that any encounter within 100 feet of another encounter is likely to get chained together. They're just so close together that, unless there are specific reasons why not, any disturbance in one will likely tie into another. So if your adventure map has several encounters within a 200 foot diameter circle, you're very likely to see chained encounters.

 

[Al2O3]

I think it's fair to say that any encounter within 100 feet of another encounter is likely to get chained together. They're just so close together that, unless there are specific reasons why not, any disturbance in one will likely tie into another. So if your adventure map has several encounters within a 200 foot diameter circle, you're very likely to see chained encounters.

That is one thing I like about the Starter Set adventure. In several places where encountered could be linked there are explicit reasons given why they will not (e.g. waterfall drowning out the sound, some monsters always making a lot of noise so others ignore fighting in that area etc) or possibly that fighting in one area will attract the attention of a specific area. It also has places where it says that guards are lazy and don't really pay attention.

All of those things (from Cragmaw places) could be good to take inspiration from to avoid large encounters. Maybe one patrol stays away to prevent a two-front assault or similar.