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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6395117" data-attributes="member: 42582">A few weeks ago my D&D group wasn't quorate, and so those of us who could turn up played a session of Burning Wheel instead.I had built a PC for one of the players, a necromancer-assassin with Stealth skill. During the course of the session, the character in question tried to hide from a wizard's familiar in the course of breaking into said wizard's tower. The player declared, as his PC's action, that he wanted to hide in a dark corner of the laboratory, behind some benches. I took the view that neither the PC nor the famiiar had any situational advantage, and so the player rolled his PC's Stealth, I rolled the Observation check for the familiar (which, per the rules, for a character like the familiar with no Observation training is a raw Perception check with every success by the Stealth character counting as two for purposes of the opposed check).This was easy enough to do. But the rules for Stealth skill in Burning Wheel don't take up any more column space than the rules for Carpentry skill or Chess-playing skill. And becoming hidden and the consequences of being hidden are both simple matters of fictional positioning. Here are the relevant rules (Revised Character Burner, p 262):Steathy is the ability to use camouflage, natural surrounding, shadow, light and a quiet step to move undetected. . . . [T]he sneaking character gain<s> advantage dice for darkness, rain or covering noise - and increased obstacles for bright light, absolute quiet or impediments like dead leaves.</s><s></s><s></s><s>And the core rules for the system state, without ambiguity, that while players may lobby for advantage dice the ultimate decision about advantages and disadvantages is in the hands of the GM (as adjudicator of the details and consequences of the various characters' fictional positioning).</s><s></s><s>5e is different. It draws a mechanical distinction between "hidden" and "invisibible" - whereas BW doesn't (it's version of invisibility, called Chameleon, simply grants bonus dice to Stealth checks). It distinguishes different degrees of obscurement and makes those differences relevant to hiding (eg via that Wood Elf racial ability). It establishes mechanical consequences for being hidden that go beyond the fictional state of affairs that those who are looking around for you can't see you or hear you (eg advantage on attacks, which activates a key rogue class feature).</s><s></s><s>If Stealth in 5e was simply a matter of adjudicating whether the hiding character is sufficiently obscured to make the check, it would be very simple. But so many other mechanical elements, spelled out in great detail across various pages of the rulebook, are intended both to feed into that determination, and to follow from it.</s><s></s><s>For me, at least, this is when a system for action resolution goes beyond just making it work among a group of adult friends. It implies to me that the designers had something in mind, that they thought (for instance) that it was significant to distinguish between different degrees of obscurement, and to give Wood Elves a racial advantage for hiding in conditions that normal people can't hide in. This is when I prefer that the designers be clear about what they had in mind.</s></blockquote>

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