D&D 5E Dealing with stupidly high rolls.

[Warmaster Horus]

I really don't understand how hide works...

You can only hide if you have no line of sight.

How is your rogue benefiting from his Stupid Stealth if he is out in front and can be seen? What is the point of his stealth roll?

There's a difference between having line of sight and having cover to hide behind. When I mention direct line of sight it assumes no intervening piece of cover. This does not mean that the hider need be completely obscured and can indeed observe those it is hiding from while still maintaining the ability to hide. So moving while maintaining cover (pretty easy for a Wood Elf in natural terrain) is what's meant here when moving in forward-scout mode.

 

[iserith]

The reason why Pass Without Trace doesn't bother me is because all it's doing it removing the bonus 10 points an enemy is getting to their roll from them using Passive Perception. The spell basically is saying that anyone under its influence will almost certainly go unnoticed by enemies just hanging around not actually searching for them.

In a lot of ways, PoT is basically just an alternative to "Group checks". The game wants a way for a group of characters to move around without being heard or noticed all the time. But every time they have to roll a check there is a HUGE chance that at least one PC is going to botch them-- rolling 1s, 2s, 3s, etc. And this is especially true of the PCs wearing heavy armor and who have to roll with Disadvantage.

Seeing as how this fact means that there will almost always be one or two PCs (or monsters) that will be heard in any group... the game tries to set up various reasons why Surprise and sneaking up on other groups actually can happen. One way is the "group check" in whatever form the DM runs it-- for instance if 50% or more of the PCs roll higher than any potential Passive Perception of the enemies who might hear them, then no one gets heard (regardless of how poorly any one of those individual PCs might have rolled.) Another way was to introduce Pass Without Trace, a spell that basically removed the '10' any enemy "rolled" due to using Passive Perception. This also fairly guarantees most PCs will probably succeed in their Stealth checks more often than not. The only difference being that rather than half the party needing to roll poorly in a "group check" for them to be heard... only a single PC (probably rolling with Disadvantage due to heavy armor) has to roll really poorly (we're talking down in the 1-3s) in order to miss the enemies' Passive Perceptions.

The only time where it becomes rather pointless is if the DM uses both PoT and group checks together... because then there is pretty much a 0% chance of the PCs EVER failing a Stealth check and being heard. In cases like this, you pretty much have to assume the DM will put at least a couple monsters "on guard" so that they can try to roll actual Perception checks in hopes of rolling high enough to notice one of them.

I don't use group checks for determining surprise. It's too big a benefit in my view to make it that easy to achieve. If a party wants surprise more often than not, make them work for it, I say! Spend some resources, make build choices to support the tactic, use some magic, etc. Same deal for just sneaking past things. If the PCs don't want to fight that monster up ahead and don't have a great chance to get past unnoticed, that's the time to doff the armor, spend Inspiration, bust out that guidance spell everyone's always talking about...

 

[Rod Staffwand]

I'm in agreement with iserith and others. Rolling a 33 on a DC10 skill check is just a success at a DC10 skill check. You do the thing, congrats! Obviously, if you can roll a 33 you have little to no chance of failing a DC10 skill check and the roll isn't even necessary. Again, congrats, you do the thing!

I don't worry too much about skills in 5e and players succeeding on them, even with regularity. If the game breaks because someone ALWAYS makes their stealth checks then you're not presenting enough variety in scenarios. Great, the party breezes through orc territory under cover of pass without trace. Now what? Maybe they need to find the hidden dungeon, or excavated the lich's tomb, or ascend the treacherous tower, or figure out how to ally with a mad dragon. My guess is that a party can't be great at everything. They will have trouble with some task or another, particularly if you throw curveballs at them to react to and don't bestow upon them additional capabilities not specified in the rules (such as giving increased results with higher checks).

BTW, for narration, I usually flavor success with a 25% chance or so is due to luck. Success with better than that is do to superior skill. Failure is do to lack of skill and luck if the chance is 25% or so and completely due to bad luck: a handhold crumbles under a climbing PC's hand, a sentry comes unexpectedly around a corner, and so on. I generally don't like to make PCs look like fools for failing checks unless they are obviously grasping outside their reach (which I tend to make clear).

 

[niklinna]

One of the things I do as a DM is wait on the roll until (or if) it matters. Example, the rogue wants to sneak up and try and untie the hostage being held by the orcs. I don't have them roll the stealth roll immediately. I wait until they're up close to the hostage and then roll. I know that's rat-bastard-DMing, but it keeps players on their toes. /evilDMlaugh

While I do have the reputation of a killer DM, I'm curious why you consider this rat-bastard DMing. I've done this for years with many different rpgs, ever since a player tried to screw with the system. The rogue rolled low as he went to sneak ahead, so he came back to talk with the party before heading out again (planning on making another check). After a lengthy argument, I decided to never call for a roll (or accept an early roll) until it was too late to change anything.

Totally agree. The whole point of a roll is that you do it when success is uncertain, but consequences are. If you fail the roll, you have failed the action when it matters, and will incur the consequences. You haven't realized that you're going to fail so you can back out and prevent those consequences. If the player wants to roll for sneaking right away, with the idea that they'll know whether to proceed, you can say they tripped over a rock and onto a pile of logs, loudly enough to draw attention from far away (or a patrol that happens to be passing close enough).

Or you can try this approach:

Player: "I try sneaking toward the camp to see how quiet I am". (Fails roll.)
DM: "Okay, you step on a twig and it snaps loudly. The camp is 500 yards away though, so nobody heard it."

Player: "I try sneaking toward the camp to see how quiet I am". (Succeeds on roll.)
DM: "Okay, you take a few quiet steps toward the camp. It's still 499 yards away."

Maybe then they'll get the point.

 

[Shiroiken]

I think you have to be really careful that the rogue doesn’t turn into a one man band by exploring 50 ft ahead of the party at all times. It may make tactical sense but it’s isnt good for storytelling, suspense or teamwork if every encounter is vetted by the rogue before being encountered by the party.

Nonsense. The scout (rogue, ranger, whatever) is doing his job, and taking significant personal risk to do it. In the game I'm playing in, while exploring a cave network, we had two scouts with darkvision (tabaxi rogue and teifling warlock) who moved ahead to search different passages, while we waited behind. Using the two of them, we were able to find the quickest/safest path to the ghoul king, where we faced him and his allies with most of our resources intact. Afterwards, we used the information they had gathered to explore the rest of the network in relative safety. It wasn't boring, and it allowed a greater sense of suspense and teamwork, since we never knew if the scouts would be killed before returning, and the scouts actually got a moment to shine!

Also sneaking a party in and out of a dungeon may feel like an achievement to you but presumably quite a lot of effort has gone in for there to be interesting and exiting things to do inside. Not to mention the skills other party members have put their effort in. Don’t worry Frodo, you passed your stealth checks. You reach the crack of doom without incident.

From an RPG perspective, Gandolf was a horrible player who chose to trek across the wilderness, rather than use the Giant Eagles to fly to Mordor (or at least chose not to explain why the DM didn't let him do that).

 

[TheSword]

Nonsense. The scout (rogue, ranger, whatever) is doing his job, and taking significant personal risk to do it.

Woah, you can disagree with my opinion. But saying it is nonesense is going a bit far. The principle of not splitting the party is a fairly well established one. It create whole chunks of play time where a slice of the party (normally 75%) is left twiddling their thumbs while the DM and rogue go exploring the dungeon. You're group may be cool with that, but other groups might not, ours would certainly get tired of it. Though it depends of course on the tactical situation, the size of the dungeon and how succinct the DM and scout player is. I said that you needed to be careful with it, not that it couldnt be done.

The aim of D&D isnt to achieve the objective using the least resources... its to have fun doing it. If your group gets satisfaction that way cool, but the journey is just as important as the destination to me.

From an RPG perspective, Gandolf was a horrible player who chose to trek across the wilderness, rather than use the Giant Eagles to fly to Mordor (or at least chose not to explain why the DM didn't let him do that).

It makes for a better story is the reason why... Tolkein doesn't need to come up with a reason. Its called a 'temporary suspension of disbelief', you accept that it wasn't an option and don't worry about it.

We've just completed the first part of Cubicle 7's Mirkwood campaign book, travelling through the forest was dangerous, nerve wracking, spooky and ultimately fatal for some of the travels. Of course we could have just gone round... but then that wouldnt have been very interesting. Arduous journey's are part of what makes Tolkein, Tolkein.

 

[5ekyu]

With MAD. (Mutually Assured Destruction)

Personally, I'm starting to lean towards the d20 being the problem, and not the solution. Your chance of absurd success is just as high as your chance of abysmal failure. (5%). Low modifiers make the game unrealistically(IMO) swingy. Players don't really even have skill in anything, their entire existence is decided by complete RNG. That's not really a game. And it's definitely not a game where characters are supposed to be the ones who actually have the skills to pay the bills.You're never really going to have bounded accuracy until you have bounded dice, which probably means getting rid of the d20.

I'm thinking of running my upcoming game with 2d10 instead of 1d20. Snake-eyes is the new fail number.

Its the DC or more appropriately the chance of success assigned.

Your 2d10 can be "just as swingy" if DCs were adjusted to make the odds of success roll out similarly to how they did in 5e.

The same effects you are trying to get with 2d10 can be achieved with just altering the DC and the twp natural roll exceptions.

Now, maybe, in your mind, the assessments of modifiers you do in rpgs are accurate to within 2% and the 5% jumps from 1d20 are not precise enough - but for me 5% is enough, if even smaller than i feel is needed.

So i prefer easy linear "if i give +2, i add 2 more successes in 20" math on the fly system die rolls and dont prefer "if i give +2 it might give almost 4 more successes in 20 or maybe barely 1" ... One of those gives consistent, easy figuring on the fly, the other does not and so the same cover might be huge or trivial.

Bell curve reshuffle the prior DC odds at the expense of consistent modifiers.

I prefer to take the DC changes directly... And keep the consistent modifiers.

 

[5ekyu]

Totally agree. The whole point of a roll is that you do it when success is uncertain, but consequences are. If you fail the roll, you have failed the action when it matters, and will incur the consequences. You haven't realized that you're going to fail so you can back out and prevent those consequences. If the player wants to roll for sneaking right away, with the idea that they'll know whether to proceed, you can say they tripped over a rock and onto a pile of logs, loudly enough to draw attention from far away (or a patrol that happens to be passing close enough).

Or you can try this approach:

Player: "I try sneaking toward the camp to see how quiet I am". (Fails roll.)
DM: "Okay, you step on a twig and it snaps loudly. The camp is 500 yards away though, so nobody heard it."

Player: "I try sneaking toward the camp to see how quiet I am". (Succeeds on roll.)
DM: "Okay, you take a few quiet steps toward the camp. It's still 499 yards away."

Maybe then they'll get the point.

I go differently.

Extended tasks (sneak up to the camp thats 500' away) are resolved with three-way tosses similar to desth saves. Get to three wins to make it there, three fails get spotted, 1 and 20 can double, etc.

So in this generic defined approach each roll would be for say about 150ish ft of travel. Success means advance without notice (plus likely some info). Failure means no advance and change in circumstances for the worse (maybe you were not heard but a patrol came out or a gang to have a smoke.)
That failure makes futher advance harder **unless** you can change up things.... Draw them away with some trickery... wait it out (spend time resource).... Work back and wide out to come in differently (spend earned success resource - distance) etc

So, instead of a "one roll at crisis point" drama of "the roll" the task plays out as a series of steps, choices, checks, consequences, new choices etc.

Its just as unreasonable, uninformative and unfulfilling to me to say roll once at crisis as it is to say roll once at start.

Is it so much not bad ass gm fu to have the mountain climb not include "got a little ways up be its not good climbing... Work back down?" Or the stealth same thing... Little in, little out... Dance.

 

[5ekyu]

Nonsense. The scout (rogue, ranger, whatever) is doing his job, and taking significant personal risk to do it. In the game I'm playing in, while exploring a cave network, we had two scouts with darkvision (tabaxi rogue and teifling warlock) who moved ahead to search different passages, while we waited behind. Using the two of them, we were able to find the quickest/safest path to the ghoul king, where we faced him and his allies with most of our resources intact. Afterwards, we used the information they had gathered to explore the rest of the network in relative safety. It wasn't boring, and it allowed a greater sense of suspense and teamwork, since we never knew if the scouts would be killed before returning, and the scouts actually got a moment to shine!

From an RPG perspective, Gandolf was a horrible player who chose to trek across the wilderness, rather than use the Giant Eagles to fly to Mordor (or at least chose not to explain why the DM didn't let him do that).

As a gm, i do not feel cheated when pcs do good and players make good decisions and somehow dont follow my numbered room script.

I love it.

The joy i seek is not in room 7, 9 and 13 but in the playing of the game not how much it follows my script.

If some element of those rooms intrigues me... It will be used later in some other set.

 

[5ekyu]

"Of course we could have just gone round... but then that wouldnt have been very interesting."

If my players looked at dangerous and unknown and potentially lethal option vs safe option with neither being better for mission and chose the former, well, i would be wondering about them.

See, usually its like "we have to hurry so take the Blood Pass to save two days." Or something like that that makes them take risks... Not the "fun of seeing Rogelle die".

Part of that would be bourne out by say choosing the long way that is safe not being more boring. If its safe, its like 5m narration... then to other fun stuff.