D&D (2024) New stealth rules.

[Chaosmancer]

I think the high-ish DC is because if it was, say, 10, then Rogues with Expertise in Stealth would soon be doing it virtually at-will. DC 10 is likely a 85% chance for a 1st level Rogue with a +3 in Dex and +4 in Stealth. Then they hit Level 5, and now they probably have a +4 in Dex and +6 in Stealth. Already, they'd never fail it.

At DC 15, the 1st level Rogue has a 60% chance of success. Decently high, but with room to grow. Now it's an 75% at Level 5, and doesn't become automatic until Level 9.

I could also see an argument made that the DC benefits the player by reducing variance. A DC of 15 is higher than most monsters' passive Perception. A PC knows that even if they barely make it with a 15, they have a good chance of staying hidden, while with a 14 or lower, they know they failed, and can make alternative plans.

All that said, personally, as DM I think I'm going to stick with enemies' passive Perception as the DC. The new rule is streamlined, and may be easier for new players and DMs to handle, but I have 10 years of experience with 5e, and have had no issues with stealth. Or, at least, I'll ask Rogue players which way they want to go: the clear Yes/No of the 2024 Hide Action, or the more swingy Maybe? of the 2014 Hide rules.

I think it is also important to consider the Rogue's (or other character's) perception of their own roll.

Nobody is ever happy or satisfied with a 10 or 11 on their stealth check. Those sorts of rolls are always followed by grimaces of "well crap, I failed". You don't start getting into more hesitantly okay with it until you hit 13's. 15 is usually where people intuitively feel like they succeeded.

So, setting aside the actual math of success, emotionally, this fits with what people have come to expect from 5e DCs.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Looking at the text of the Invisible condition again, I see that the "can somehow see you" phrase helps in the framing of hiding vs spells, where being hidden may or may not, at any given point in time, mean an enemy can actually see you. (IE: This is separate from using See Invisible to "somehow" see you).

Basically, if we accept that the Invisible condition is retained even when you're in the open (for example, hiding in a crowd), the ability to target you based on sight does not have to involve having found you. If you are hidden in a crowd, the guard may not have found you, and can't identify you in particular, but there are spells that target people in an area that you can see — and despite being "Invisible", you can still be physically seen, and thus affected by such a spell, even if only due to randomly picking people out of the crowd.

This lends weight to the consideration that the Invisible condition can still apply even when you can be physically seen. At the same time, hiding can also be done such that you can't be physically seen, in which case you can't be targeted.

Basically, having the Invisible condition granted through Hiding means you may or may not be physically seen at any given time, and this can change from moment to moment. The "can somehow see you" phrasing means you have to evaluate whether you can be physically (or via some alternate sense) seen for the purpose of certain actions.

However, that also applies to the third section, where you may or may not get advantage on attack rolls (or disadvantage attack rolls against you) based on whether you can somehow be seen.

So, going back to the guard at the gate scenario: If you walk up to him while having the Invisible condition, you are still physically visible, which means he can "somehow see you". That means you do not get the benefits on attack rolls or being targeted by spells, though you retain the advantage on initiative. On the other hand, if you snuck up behind him (or walked past him and then turned around and attacked from behind), he would not see you, and you regain those roll advantages and targeting restrictions.

Being Invisible in that scenario is the "don't notice me" type of invisibility, which meshes with the "awareness" aspect that I detailed in my post about "find".

It also means that the See Invisible spell doesn't matter with respect to the Invisibility granted by Hiding. You'd still need line of sight to see someone, and if you have line of sight, the Invisible (Hidden) target can "somehow be seen", so adding See Invisible on top of that doesn't change anything. See Invisible just makes it so that you can somehow be seen regardless of secondary effects which may prevent that, such as the transparency effect of the Invisibility spell, but not things like total cover.

It's taken a bit to really fit everything together, but it's really making sense now, as written.

Agreed, and I think the crowd example really brings some of this together.

If you Jason Bourne and hide in a crowd, the evil wizard can't target you with Magic Missile, because he doesn't know where you are. You are physically capable of being seen, but you can't be picked out of the crowd because you have blended in. But if he wanted to fireball the whole crowd, well, not much you can do about that.

 

[Maxperson]

So just to be clear, your view is that it is better to encourage inaccurate descriptions of the rules history of D&D, than to mention 4e D&D?

You were technically correct, and we all know that's the best kind of correct! It didn't change the point of what I was saying at all, though.

 

[FrogReaver]

I mean, that is the same as it ever was. In 2014 being invisible didn't make you hidden, and so people still knew where you were, per RAW.

Now hiding and invisible do basically the same thing, and not being aware of where you are isn't really part of that. Which, to a degree, actually helps things. Take a scene from John Wick 2 or 3, where both people know the other person is in the room, but don't know exactly where. Then a sound is made and they orient on it.

Invisible and silent isn't much different than hidden in a room, but they know you are somewhere in the room. The only "trick" is the concept of someone being completely unaware of your prescence, but that is a narrative function, not a rules function. And looked at from this angle, these rules are even better.

View attachment 375276

Everyone in the room knows Batman is here. They don't know where he is, because he is hidden, technically invisible to them. Mechanically, he is getting the same benefits as if he came upon them in an alley and they were not aware of his presence, so there is no need to have a mechanic for them being completely unaware of his existence in the space.

As long as one remains in the shadows then hiding = invisibility in colloquially terms makes sense. The problem comes when coming out of the shadows and standing directly in Front of their face. Hiding shouldn’t allow this. Actual invisibility should. Seems like it would be rather difficult to model that with a single invisibility condition. Maybe there’s some way to do so but it’s not obvious.

 

[Chaosmancer]

There are still some issues with the requirements to try to hide, they just haven't been the focus of the conversation. In particular, the fact that hiding is now binary (one now has the Invisible condition or doesn't have the condition, rather than potentially being hidden from some people but not others) means that the requirement to be out of all enemies' lines of sight creates weird edges cases.

For instance, what does the DM tell a PC who tries to hide while in LOS of an enemy they don't know about? How do you tell them they can't try to hide (or tell them they failed even if they rolled high enough) without giving away the enemy's presence? The obvious method would be to not inform them whether or not they have the Invisible condition, but that has two flaws: (1) it doesn't work if the Invisible condition provides transparent invisibility; and (2) the rest of the party can test whether or not the PC has the invisible condition by trying to cast a cantrip requiring a visible target on the PC.

Rogue: "Okay, I think I have hidden, but I can't be sure. Warlock? Light me up"
Warlock: Casts two eldritch blasts and deals 15 damage to the rogue. "Nope, you must still be visible because I could target you. There must be a hidden enemy capable of seeing you. "

Who actually plays with these people?

I don't think we need the rules to specify that you can be hidden from some people and not others. In any narrative situation where that matters, you shouldn't need to use such tortured exactitudes.

 

[mamba]

So, going back to the guard at the gate scenario: If you walk up to him while having the Invisible condition, you are still physically visible, which means he can "somehow see you".

bad news for the Invisibility spell…

 

[Yaarel]

The Invisible condition is a "transparency" of a sort. The observers might be looking right at the invisible one but, like at someone wearing camouflage, the observers dont recognize what they are actually looking at.

For the Hide action, the requirement for this sotospeak camouflage to activate is at least 3/4 cover.

Once the observers loose track of the invisible, it might be possible for the invisible to move around by evading the lines of sight of searchers.

Perhaps an invisible in these changing circumstances, such as moving among searchers, needs to make a new Hide action each round at the start of the each turn. While Invisible, the invisible can do the next Hide action while out of the lines of sight, thus the requirement of 3/4 cover is not currently necessary.

A DM is free to assign a circumstantial Advantage or Disadvantage to the Stealth Dexterity checks, depending on the plausibility of a particular scenario.


Note, the Invisibility spell can grant the Invisible condition while in plain sight, regardless of line of sight, cover, or obscurement. No ability checks are necessary.

 

[Chaosmancer]

As long as one remains in the shadows then hiding = invisibility in colloquially terms makes sense. The problem comes when coming out of the shadows and standing directly in Front of their face. Hiding shouldn’t allow this. Actual invisibility should. Seems like it would be rather difficult to model that with a single invisibility condition. Maybe there’s some way to do so but it’s not obvious.

It is pretty simple in my mind. Whether or not the text explicitly states it in 100% unambigious clear language... if you don't have the conditions needed to hide, you are no longer invisible. Rushing from cover into a pitch black room? Okay, you are still invisible. Crawling on the ceiling behind someone who doesn't turn around and look up? Okay, you are still invisible.

The spell says you have the condition. Period. No other conditions needed to maintain it, except the spell remains active.

And, technically, this can be supported in the rules. Hiding stops working if a creature (referred to an an enemy) finds you, the invisibility condition does not end this way, it only loses the benefits against a creature that can somehow see you. If you stop interpreting that as requiring a search action only, and instead look at it as requiring a perception check, then this falls together. Every skill check in 5e (and this is still 5e and these rules are still in the book) is only rolled if the outcome is uncertain. If the outcome is not uncertain, then a roll is not needed because the check automatically succeeds or fails.

You immediately fail an athletics check to jump to the moon. You immediately succeed a perception check to see someone standing in an empty hallway directly in front of you.

Why doesn't this work for invisibility the spell? Because it doesn't need any other conditions to function. It just grants you the status of not being seen. Yes, nothing states that the spell makes you translucent, but we know that is the intent, and that it is also still flexible enough to cover other thematically appropriate versions of invisibility, such as a psychic shroud or being covered in wind spirits. Because at the end of the day

Whether it is from cover or being translucent, the invisible condition looks the same to an observer. The only difference is, if you stop trying to hide, the enemy can find you without any real effort, because you have stopped attempting to hide from them.

 

[Eric V]

Nope.

But let me be clear as well, do you plan to say anything about 2024 d&d that doesn’t somehow tie back to 4e or some other non-d&d game?

What are you, the thread police?

The history of the game, specifically stealth rules, was brought up. @pemerton correctly pointed out the fact that it's most similar to the 4e stealth rules, so not such a huge departure, historically speaking.

At least he's on topic; what do you think you're contributing with this?

 

[Iosue]

bad news for the Invisibility spell…

I think the Hide rules are clear enough, but if someone says the Invisibility spells no longer provide pure invisibility, ie, complete transparency, I’d agree with that. The spells would appear to grant less “Invisible Man” invisibility, and more like Predator invisibility.