D&D (2024) Expert Classes - Rules Glossary

[OB1]

Honestly, I think all of the Skill actions (Hide, Jump, Study, Search, Influence ) in the Glossary need to be scrapped. Just go with DM rulings for all of these situations. It's messy, but it works. At most, return these guidelines to the DMG as helpful advice to DMs on how to rule.

 

[Xamnam]

Ok so, are we just going to assume that, given a few minutes of prep time, every PC is going to walk into the dungeon hidden with a natural 20 stealth check? (Again, strictly talking about the RAW here).

No, just a success, which for the new rules is a equivalent to rolling a 16 for this PC.

But also, I personally wouldn't ask them to roll the check until there is something that could potentially contest it. I never liked the idea that in a safe environment, you have a perfect idea of how stealthy you're going to be for the duration of the attempt, and can "retry" if you didn't start well enough. But that's beyond RAW.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Honestly, I think all of the Skill actions (Hide, Jump, Study, Search, Influence ) in the Glossary need to be scrapped. Just go with DM rulings for all of these situations. It's messy, but it works. At most, return these guidelines to the DMG as helpful advice to DMs on how to rule.

I think that Study action is definitely useful, to cover checking out monsters. 'leave it to DM' just means every table plays it differently, players cannot trust whether any skill is useful, and every DM has to become a game designer on the spot rather than getting support from the system.

Of course, the action they gave us does leave every detail about what you learn up in the air, and the Keen Mind feat that boosts it, is only of use to Wizards, because Int. So I more like the idea than the flimsy execution.

 

[Olrox17]

No, just a success, which for the new rules is a equivalent to rolling a 16 for this PC.

But also, I personally wouldn't ask them to roll the check until there is something that could potentially contest it. I never liked the idea that in a safe environment, you have a perfect idea of how stealthy you're going to be for the duration of the attempt, and can "retry" if you didn't start well enough. But that's beyond RAW.

I absolutely agree with you, and that would also be my ruling. I'm just suggesting that the RAW on hiding is pretty terrible right now, I'll have to advise WotC to scrap it and start over in my survey feedback. Harsh, but I just don't see this stuff working.

 

[Olrox17]

Honestly, I think all of the Skill actions (Hide, Jump, Study, Search, Influence ) in the Glossary need to be scrapped. Just go with DM rulings for all of these situations. It's messy, but it works. At most, return these guidelines to the DMG as helpful advice to DMs on how to rule.

I partially agree with you. While I do see the merit of having player-facing rules on those skill actions (especially because of how common they are in the average game), the current iteration isn't good, IMO, and needs to be scrapped.

 

[Charlaquin]

Look at pg33 ending the condition section in the hide action (quoted above in #74). "or you aren’t Heavily Obscured or behind any Cover." is pretty explicitly relative to the observer and makes a lot of sense. It makes sense because with the shift stealth ceases to become a spell slot free improved version of the scry spell & there needs to be more thought from the group put into things like approaching from stealth distractions & alternate more involved means of entry like this.

What on earth does the bolded mean?

 

[tetrasodium]

What on earth does the bolded mean?

If you recall scry & fry from the old days it has a lot of similarities. I find that in 5e there are a lot of players who tend to use stealth like a ten foot pole in tomb of horrors but with better range & capabilities. expertise stealth & 20 dex is basically at will undetectability against anything that doesn't amount to rocks fall levels of monster CR so they act like it. The entire group stays behind & mob goes to "scout" refusing to take ant action but continuing even when bob is told how he feels that he's over extended & too far from the group.

Everyone knows that bob is perfectly safe & in no danger from anything that doesn't allow them to call out the gm for being adversarial so it plays out like the extreme ends of old school scry & fry no matter what the GM tries to todo redirect the session held hostage. The new stealth rules give the GM lots of room to allow reasonable scouting with stealth and a significant number of ways to casually make clear to players that expecting to go further stealth based scry & fry is not an option without the GM coming off as adversarial just because there is an empty hall/multiple lookouts with multiple vantage points/a neatly trimmed lawn/etc where those sorts of things seem appropriate.

Now If sneaking through the grassy lawn & climbing in through the front window while guards are patrolling is going to fit the adventure then it's going to fit because the gm made it clear & allowed it not because the players decided to brute force it with bounded accuracy destroying abilities to avoid engaging in the adventure that would have allowed alternate ingress that wouldn't raise alarms

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Honestly, I think all of the Skill actions (Hide, Jump, Study, Search, Influence ) in the Glossary need to be scrapped. Just go with DM rulings for all of these situations. It's messy, but it works. At most, return these guidelines to the DMG as helpful advice to DMs on how to rule.

Isn't that how it worked in the 2014 PHB? And people complained that the rules were too vague and dependent on the DM.

 

[Charlaquin]

If you recall scry & fry from the old days it has a lot of similarities. I find that in 5e there are a lot of players who tend to use stealth like a ten foot pole in tomb of horrors but with better range & capabilities. expertise stealth & 20 dex is basically at will undetectability against anything that doesn't amount to rocks fall levels of monster CR so they act like it. The entire group stays behind & mob goes to "scout" refusing to take ant action but continuing even when bob is told how he feels that he's over extended & too far from the group.

Everyone knows that bob is perfectly safe & in no danger from anything that doesn't allow them to call out the gm for being adversarial so it plays out like the extreme ends of old school scry & fry no matter what the GM tries to todo redirect the session held hostage. The new stealth rules give the GM lots of room to allow reasonable scouting with stealth and a significant number of ways to casually make clear to players that expecting to go further stealth based scry & fry is not an option without the GM coming off as adversarial just because there is an empty hall/multiple lookouts with multiple vantage points/a neatly trimmed lawn/etc where those sorts of things seem appropriate.

This seems implausible to me. You know the GM determines when conditions are appropriate to hide, right?

 

[tetrasodium]

This seems implausible to me. You know the GM determines when conditions are appropriate to hide, right?

The PC survivability & ease of recovery does a lot to play into creating the problem since the PC is never at any real risk when they push too far. The fact that 29+014 conditions to hide are so deeply into "ask your gm" is what causes it to become adversarial when the gm pushes back on stealth needing more than a 27 or whatever if the player ignores the gm's warnings that can't csrry with any real risk.

The rules switching from "the gm can take away your cool toys when it shouldn't matter than you can roll a 27" to "the gm can empower your cool toys when it might be ok that you can roll a 27" no longer forces the gm into an adversarial position so they can actually use that leeway without being adversarial.