D&D (2024) New stealth rules.

[Chaosmancer]

At a high level, yes, I agree that the designers intended the 2024 rules to be able to resolve a character attempting to prevent enemies from locating them by sound.

Great so we should be able to stop here.

But since the subject effectively isn't discussed in the 2024 PHB, I have no idea how they intended the new rules to be used to resolve such attempts.

Do you want advice on that from the community? Or do you want to complain because WoTC left the specifics to the individual situation?

On the one hand, if they're keeping the 2014 assumption that creatures know the location of anyone they can see or hear, then active effort would typically be required to become or remain unheard. But the rules funnel attempts at "sneaking past a guard" to the Hide action, which only mentions keeping quiet as a requirement to keep the Invisible condition.

Which is clearly following an obvious pattern. The stealth skill covers it, so the hide action covers it. You don't need to roll a medicine check to stitch a wound, then a separate medicine check to make sure you sterilized the materials and disinfected the wounds. And the rules for the Help Action (which covers medicine) do not state anything about how the medicine skill is used. That is because if you are rolling the skill, the assumed check is against all aspects of the skill.

This is in tension with the Invisibility spell, which also provides the Invisible condition but with no requirement to remain quiet. How then would a character with the Invisible condition from the Invisibility spell go about becoming unheard? Do they need to successfully take the Hide action like they would in the 2014 rules, redundantly obtaining the Invisible condition, but this time able to lose the extra copy of the condition if they make noise above a whisper? That seems to be the most functional approach, but it's clunky at best, and in any event it's is a non-obvious reading of the rules. I can't imagine someone new to D&D who reads the 2024 rules casting the Invisibility spell expecting to need to follow it up with an action that on its face merely provides a more-limited version of the Invisible condition. So maybe the Hide action wasn't intended to be how one resolves attempts to become/remain unheard? Or maybe merely hearing a creature isn't enough to locate them in the 2024 rules? Or maybe something else? I just don't know how it was intended to be run from the PHB text we've seen so far.

It seems this comes from a very simple question. Well, two.

1) Is there a reason to suspect the invisible character makes noise? A wizard in light cotton robes with soft-soled shoes in a stone hallway... likely not a lot of reason to suspect they are making a lot of noise. A heavily armored paladin walking through crunchy leaf litter? Might be making a lot more noise.

2) Are they attempting to hide? Yeah, rolling stealth doesn't give them a new condition... but it is perfectly fine for that to cover "how noisy are you being" in regards to the invisibility spell. Because if you are not attempting to hide... then you are not being quiet. There isn't a new condition, because the entire thing is based on the specific circumstances. I wouldn't have a rogue moving invisibly through a fort full of screaming drill sergeants roll to see if he is too loud, but a large, armored bear squeezing through a passage? Yeah, that's a stealth check because there is a good chance that someone hears that. I'm resolving a question, not implementing a condition. Same as how I'd roll to see if a bard sang particularly well at the King's Banquet. There is no condition for that, I'm using the skill to resolve a question.

 

[Xetheral]

Great so we should be able to stop here.

I can't agree that there's nothing to discuss other than the designer's high-level goals for stealth. An essential part of analyzing and discussing new rules is examining how the designers implemented their intent.

Do you want advice on that from the community? Or do you want to complain because WoTC left the specifics to the individual situation?

Neither. If anyone has new information from the PHB or designer comments to contribute, or a new textual analysis that has been overlooked so far, great! But my purpose in this thread is analyzing and discussing the new rules in order to evaluate how useful they are. Hearing how different community members plan to run those rules at their tables is interesting and tangentially relevant to evaluating the new rules' utility (based on how much posters are planning to add or change), but I'm not trying to solicit advice. And at a conceptual level, I don't think the rules are insufficiently specific--indeed, based on what we've seen so far I think that they're simultaneously over-specific (by relying on a one-size-fits-all Condition) and non-specific (by not addressing aspects of stealth not covered by the Condition).

Which is clearly following an obvious pattern. The stealth skill covers it, so the hide action covers it. You don't need to roll a medicine check to stitch a wound, then a separate medicine check to make sure you sterilized the materials and disinfected the wounds. And the rules for the Help Action (which covers medicine) do not state anything about how the medicine skill is used. That is because if you are rolling the skill, the assumed check is against all aspects of the skill.

I've not seen the 2024 Help Action, but I think a more apt comparison would be if the explicit benefit of using medicine was providing a "Recuperating" condition, and yet that condition failed to address the full range of things one would expect medicine to be useful for.

It seems this comes from a very simple question. Well, two.

1) Is there a reason to suspect the invisible character makes noise? A wizard in light cotton robes with soft-soled shoes in a stone hallway... likely not a lot of reason to suspect they are making a lot of noise. A heavily armored paladin walking through crunchy leaf litter? Might be making a lot more noise.

2) Are they attempting to hide? Yeah, rolling stealth doesn't give them a new condition... but it is perfectly fine for that to cover "how noisy are you being" in regards to the invisibility spell. Because if you are not attempting to hide... then you are not being quiet. There isn't a new condition, because the entire thing is based on the specific circumstances. I wouldn't have a rogue moving invisibly through a fort full of screaming drill sergeants roll to see if he is too loud, but a large, armored bear squeezing through a passage? Yeah, that's a stealth check because there is a good chance that someone hears that. I'm resolving a question, not implementing a condition. Same as how I'd roll to see if a bard sang particularly well at the King's Banquet. There is no condition for that, I'm using the skill to resolve a question.

I agree that if the designers intended to maintain the assumption that characters know the location of any creature in hearing range, then it would be workable to use the Hide action to resolve whether a creature who already has the Invisible condition from the Invisibility spell is heard. It worked in the 2014 rules and it could be made to work in the 2024 rules. But due to the lack of supporting text (and previously mentioned non-intuitive readings it would require) I'm not confident that either of those are intended by the new rules (although I think it's somewhat more likely than not). The revision to the Hide action to revolve around the Invisible condition is a big change, and it's unclear to me from the text how extensive the ramifications from that change are intended to be. That I can't tell from the text itself whether the 2024 changes to stealth are intended to be a (failed) clarification of the existing 2014 rules, or instead an overhaul to mechanically buff (or nerf!) stealth is, in my opinion, a black mark against the 2024 rules that weighs heavily against their usefulness.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I can't agree that there's nothing to discuss other than the designer's high-level goals for stealth. An essential part of analyzing and discussing new rules is examining how the designers implemented their intent.


Neither. If anyone has new information from the PHB or designer comments to contribute, or a new textual analysis that has been overlooked so far, great! But my purpose in this thread is analyzing and discussing the new rules in order to evaluate how useful they are. Hearing how different community members plan to run those rules at their tables is interesting and tangentially relevant to evaluating the new rules' utility (based on how much posters are planning to add or change), but I'm not trying to solicit advice. And at a conceptual level, I don't think the rules are insufficiently specific--indeed, based on what we've seen so far I think that they're simultaneously over-specific (by relying on a one-size-fits-all Condition) and non-specific (by not addressing aspects of stealth not covered by the Condition).

We don't need a dissertation on this though.

I've not seen the 2024 Help Action, but I think a more apt comparison would be if the explicit benefit of using medicine was providing a "Recuperating" condition, and yet that condition failed to address the full range of things one would expect medicine to be useful for.

Pick anything you want. Rolling an attack roll with a Longsword doesn't allow for a pommel attack. Animal Handling likely won't cover literally everything that could be done with an animal. I find the idea that the writers needed to add in a line telling people that successfully being stealthy includes being quiet to be a bit ridiculous. Because of course it does.

I agree that if the designers intended to maintain the assumption that characters know the location of any creature in hearing range, then it would be workable to use the Hide action to resolve whether a creature who already has the Invisible condition from the Invisibility spell is heard. It worked in the 2014 rules and it could be made to work in the 2024 rules. But due to the lack of supporting text (and previously mentioned non-intuitive readings it would require) I'm not confident that either of those are intended by the new rules (although I think it's somewhat more likely than not). The revision to the Hide action to revolve around the Invisible condition is a big change, and it's unclear to me from the text how extensive the ramifications from that change are intended to be. That I can't tell from the text itself whether the 2024 changes to stealth are intended to be a (failed) clarification of the existing 2014 rules, or instead an overhaul to mechanically buff (or nerf!) stealth is, in my opinion, a black mark against the 2024 rules that weighs heavily against their usefulness.

You are taking the text, reading it as literally as possible, to the detriment of the intent, then declaring the rules are poorer because they didn't tell you there is a difference between someone trying to hide, and a spell that makes you unseen. You are acting like this something that needed to be spelled out, or is unintuitive. But I guarantee you, you would have a hard time finding any examples of someone "loudly hiding".

Again, this seems to be an issue specifically you and no one else has. So, fine, you have an issue with the fact that the Hide Action doesn't specify the person hiding is also being quiet. I didn't need them to tell me that. Just like I don't need them to tell me that my character can eat a potato, even though it isn't in the book.

 

[SkidAce]

... like I don't need them to tell me that my character can eat a potato, even though it isn't in the book.