How lovely, our first nightmare with hiding in combat!

[Li Shenron]

Just wanted to share yesterday's game with the family...

We're playing an old edition module converted to 5e, and we had a big fight in a very large room against 5 hobgoblins, 1 hobgoblin captain and 4 goblins.

The PCs are all 3rd level humans, except one of them is a centaur, but uses human stats for simplicity: Fighter(Battlemaster), Cleric(Life), Druid(Moon) and Rogue(Swashbuckler).

The PCs had previously managed to spy into the room unnoticed, and they could see 3 hobgoblins and 2 goblins busy with food, gambling and bickering, plus a few more figures farther away sleeping (2 hobgoblins and 2 goblins). The hobgoblin captain was not in sight, he was one room further.

The PCs discussed shortly about tactics, and decided to let the Druid sneak into the room and cast Entangle on the awaken monsters. I went easy with this and allowed the tactic for the Druid to possibly get the benefit of surprise, but the Druid failed the Stealth check, and so everyone just rolled initiative. Only the sleeping monsters counted as surprised and skipped the first round (this was planned in any case).

Here's a short summary of what happened during the combat, which lasted about ~10 rounds:

- the Druid went first anyway and targeted all the awaken monsters with Entangle, affecting two of them who wasted a few rounds before getting free
- the Cleric cast Blindness on the nearest hobgoblin, who could do absolutely nothing because of that, and was killed swiftly by the Rogue's arrows
- all the monsters were armed, even the sleeping ones had weapons within reach, so there was no further delay in their actions besides surprise for the sleeping ones
- the hobgoblins tactic was to charge into melee and stick together to gain the damage bonus from fighting alongside each other
- the goblin tactic was to shoot arrows from behind, move behind some cover (furniture or junk) and use their bonus action to hide in order to attack with advantage, rinse and repeat [edit: actually I did not grant advantage... they went to total cover and could not be targetted from range, but no advantage to their own attacks]
- the Rogue tactic continued to be about staying behind, shooting arrows and use sneak attack essentially all the time, while the Fighter, Cleric and Druid formed a line to protect the Rogue
- the Fighter had a hard time with bad rolls and had to deplete all the short-rest resources i.e. Second Wind, Action Surge and 4 superiority dice for Precision Attack (the hobgoblins have very high AC 18) plus a magic potion to revive the Cleric who dropped to 0 HP
- the Druid fought in melee for a while, until all monsters got free from the Entangle, then dismissed it in order to cast Moonbeam (they both require concentration), and spent the rest of the combat directing the latter
- the Cleric also attacked in melee all the time after Blindness, except for casting a Cure Wounds
- the Hobgoblin Captain entered the battle 2 rounds after the beginning; here I went very easy and make him waste another two rounds throwing javelins at the isolated Rogue (bad tactic, since he would have got a HUGE damage bonus for targetting someone in melee with his allies) while moving around the Entangle and closing to melee; I did however let him use the leadership feature, which doesn't say which action it uses so I went with no action required

The messy (but fun!) part came when the party finished off the hobgoblins and finally their captain, and only the goblins remained. The Druid still had the Moonbeam on and directed it to one goblin at a time, while the rest of the party tried to close up with the goblins, particularly to negate their half-cover AC bonus.

Here is where I certainly didn't follow the rules correctly, but just tried to have things keep going... I had the goblins keep using their bonus action to Hide every turn. To avoid too many rolls, I used the PC's passive perception to determine which goblin managed to hide successfully, but rolled separate Stealth checks for each. As long as they succeeded, I had them practically change position to a different location within reach, then popup again next round, shoot and hide again. We were using minis, so I'd removed a goblin until next round to represend its hiding. Once they failed their Stealth check however (some PCs spent their action to actively use Investigation as a second chance) and a PC moved up to them, I did not let them use Hide anymore, although they could still use a bonus action to Disengage instead.

I know this is largely a loose adjudication of the rules... mostly I was thinking that in order to Hide these goblins need to stay on the move so that the PCs would lose track of their position, and decided that this essentially required them to split their move, as in "attack, move+hide+move" or alternatively "merge" the move with the hiding, to represent the fact that they have to anyway jump behind something solid in the room (turned tables, sacks of food, tapestries... the room had enough junk everywhere).

When they failed at hiding and a PC moved close, I decided that they couldn't try to hide on the spot and then move while hidden, but they needed to move away first, at least a little bit, and thus they would have provoked an OA, so a better decision for them was to disengage instead. All in all, I definitely think that any attempt at hiding may require a Stealth check and therefore it is always gated behind DM's adjudication on whether there are suitable condition to be granted such check in the first place.

It was definitely unorthodox, and still quite complicated to run, but the result was actually quite a lot of fun... the Druid kept throwing around the Moonbeam randomly trying to guess a goblin's location, the Rogue (thanks to better passive perception) sometimes was the only one not fooled by the hiding and tried to at least pinpoint the location to others, and the goblins felt pretty pesky but not terribly threatening, it felt like hunting and swatting mosquitoes, although they also got some OA against the Fighter when he moved to attack a goblin without knowing that another had managed to hide just near him.

So, how would you have run this scenario differently?

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

Here is where I certainly didn't follow the rules correctly, but just tried to have things keep going...

Well, as we know full well, stealth values are relative to each table!

As a general rule, I find 'keeping things going' trumps everything else, as said things-that-are-to-be-kept-a-going are typically player attention, investment and of course, entertainment.

I mean, I'm sure there's folks that would love to invest their time in playing hide & seek with a bunch of goblins in exact accordance to the rules, but at least for us, the gist of the experience would be enough. You managed to streamline play while keeping the experience* - that's a sign of awesome DM'ing, in my book.

What I really like about the way you ran your goblins is the mental image of them hiding, being found, freaking out then cheesing it to a new hiding place - while the poor adventure's desperately try to catch the little gits!

If it was our table, the most significant change would depend on how much time we had left in the session. If catching the goblins wasn't integral to the grander scheme of things (and assuming I was DM'ing) I'd have run it as a group skill check or had the players describe their methodology of goblin capture and discerned a time and level of success - no rolls required. Simply to save time and have things move forwards.

Of course, if the table expressed a deep seated desire to play hide and seek with goblins, who am I to say otherwise? Dice/roll away! That or take them to the nearest kindergarten.

*...annoyance. Frustration. The occasional satisfaction of violent goblin murder.

 

[Imaculata]

Sounds like you and the players had fun, so I think given the situation this was fine. But beware when the players use this ruling against you.

 

[DEFCON 1]

That sound kind of like how I run hiding in combat. The only things I do that sound like you didn't do (or else did do but just didn't mention it) are that any person who can get around the cover and regain line-of-sight automatically "finds" the goblin and thus can attack normally... and that the PC are allowed to reserve their actions to attack the goblins when they pop their head out to attack. The goblins attack first, but any PC with a reserved action can then attack back and there is not Ad/Disad or hiding bonuses applied since they can see each other (although the goblin probably still would have a cover bonus to AC.)

I also require for my own personal houserule that any PC or monster that enters obscuring terrain to hide *must* move at least 10 feet away from where they entered it while still obscured in order to then attack with Advantage due to hiding (assuming of course their Stealth check was high enough to do so.)

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I honestly don't see what here is not in accordance with the rules (other than not giving the goblins advantage when attacking from hiding). I run it all the time like that.

 

[Psikerlord#]

My general rule for hiding in combat - I dont allow it. Hide before, sure, get your ambush round. But after that, generally cant hide anymore.

 

[Ancalagon]

To me, the big factor in allowing the goblins to "shoot and hide" or not is two fold:

1: Terrain/lighting: A goblin can't shoot, hide behind a barrel, and then shoot again. The characters may not be able to see the goblin hidden behind the barrel, but they know he's there - behind that barrel! The goblin must be able to *re-position* between each shot so the PCs don't know where he is. If there was a pile of barrels, or darkness, that would work

2: Isn't hiding an *action*? You can't take two actions per turn, unless you have a class or racial feature that allows you to hide as a bonus action. So it would work like: Round 1: pop from cover, shoot, pop back under cover. Round 2: hide and sneak to a new position. Round 3: repeat (... I think)

Popping in and out of cover is very valid though, even if stealth isn't involved.

edit: Re-reading your post, it sounds like what you did is pretty darn close to what I posted... either way, it sounded like a fun battle!

 

[jaelis]

Yes, this sounded like it went pretty fine, what was the nightmare part?

It's not quite clear how much "furniture and junk" there was to hide behind, so I'm not sure I'd have done it quite the same way. And it sounds a little like you let the goblins stay hidden even when a character moved into line of sight? I wouldn't have done that (but would have given the goblins advantage on their attacks).

And I'd probably also have had the goblins run away after the hobs were killed But none of that is very important, it seems like it all worked out fine.

 

[cooperjer]

I didn't see an error in the use of the hiding rules when each goblin uses it's bonus action to hide and compare that value to the passive perception of the characters. As others said, regarding line of sight, I interpret that when a model moves around an object and line of sight exists then the hidden character is no longer hidden, unless there is something obscuring it such as heavy shadows, a curtain, etc. I don't require a character to move any distance to hide once it's line of sight is broken. I've convinced myself that a creature can hide behind a barrel or turned over 5-ft table because the opponent is not sure where the hidden creature will pop out from to attack. This gives my rogue players a way to use their skills as they perceive in their minds eye, it also helps goblins feel more sneaky.

 

[guachi]

I like what you did with the goblins. 5e rules and monster stats encourage the tactics you chose. People complain about monsters being dull and bags of hitpoints but goblins and hobgoblins are neither. And that's a good thing as PCs are highly likely to meet both.

For new players, it's a good introduction to the differences between the two. Armored, disciplined hobgoblins up front and spastic, cowardly goblins in the back. When I've run goblins I've also had them darting in and out of cover. So many goblins hiding and disengaging it's hard to keep track of them all. I always try to have them use their full movement to enhance the sense of chaos.

Also, your use of the PCs' passive perception as the DC to Hide was appropriate.

An oddity of the rules, if I'm understanding them correctly, is that a tie on opposed ability checks means the status quo is unchanged. That is, if a a PC has a passive perception of 13 then a Stealth check of 13 by a monster to hide from a non-hidden state isn't a success as the monster will stay in the non-hidden state.