D&D (2024) New stealth rules.

[Micah Sweet]

Citation needed. Invisible grants you advantage on your attack rolls, disadvantage on attack rolls that target you, and you're not eligible to be targeted by effects requiring line of sight. That's it. It's a general set of rules that covers all kinds of situations where you aren't visible.

But, notably, the condition doesn't actually say that you're not visible.

 

[CrackedParrot]

The only "houserule" they will need on the spot is if you stop attempting to hide, or have nothing to hide behind, and enemy can find you.

That's it. And as has been pointed out in this thread REPEATEDLY, nothing actually states that the only possible way to find someone is to take the search action. In fact, we KNOW it cannot be the only way because we know of other conditions or situations which would break the stealth without the enemy needing to take the search action.

Even though I know this will only be used as a "see, this is totally broken" let me show you what I mean.

View attachment 375145

A is a Wizard
C is a bat that is the Wizard's familiar.

B attempts to hide from the Wizard. Per the rules they can, because they are not in line of sight of the wizard and they roll a 17. The wizard, getting a sense of danger from their familiar who sees a knife being drawn, uses their bonus action to use their familiar's senses.

B cannot hide from C. They don't have cover, so they cannot hide from them and C absolutely sees them.

By the current interpretation that you absolutely need to take the search action to find a creature that hid from you, and the fact that the wizard only used their bonus action... suddenly C stops being able to see the creature that hid, who is now completely invisible to them. Which is nonsense, because the wizard can now "somehow see" them and has found the intruder. And even if you want to argue that because it is the invisible condition and B miraculously became transparent from their hide action.... Bats have blindsight and can see them anyways.

And no one who is approaching gameplay in good faith would ever state that using their familiar doesn't let A see B.

B can only attempt to hide if it is outside of an enemy's line of sight. C can see B, so B cannot attempt to hide.

I think it is a bit more interesting if C had previously hid and thus has the Invisible condition. Does the DM tell B that they cannot take the hide action because they are not out of line-of-sight from all enemies, or does the DM let B waste their action and get an automatic fail? If the DM tells B about an invisible creature, it gives away that C is present at all.

I suppose that the Invisible condition does not make a creature undetectable, so B immediately knows that an invisible creature C is in the hallway, even if B can never see C.

 

[MarkB]

The only "houserule" they will need on the spot is if you stop attempting to hide, or have nothing to hide behind, and enemy can find you.

That's it. And as has been pointed out in this thread REPEATEDLY, nothing actually states that the only possible way to find someone is to take the search action. In fact, we KNOW it cannot be the only way because we know of other conditions or situations which would break the stealth without the enemy needing to take the search action.

Even though I know this will only be used as a "see, this is totally broken" let me show you what I mean.

View attachment 375145

A is a Wizard
C is a bat that is the Wizard's familiar.

B attempts to hide from the Wizard. Per the rules they can, because they are not in line of sight of the wizard and they roll a 17. The wizard, getting a sense of danger from their familiar who sees a knife being drawn, uses their bonus action to use their familiar's senses.

B cannot hide from C. They don't have cover, so they cannot hide from them and C absolutely sees them.

By the current interpretation that you absolutely need to take the search action to find a creature that hid from you, and the fact that the wizard only used their bonus action... suddenly C stops being able to see the creature that hid, who is now completely invisible to them. Which is nonsense, because the wizard can now "somehow see" them and has found the intruder. And even if you want to argue that because it is the invisible condition and B miraculously became transparent from their hide action.... Bats have blindsight and can see them anyways.

And no one who is approaching gameplay in good faith would ever state that using their familiar doesn't let A see B.

The wizard's familiar is also a creature, and is presumably also an enemy of B. Therefore B cannot even attempt the Hide action, because an enemy can see it.

Now, if C starts out on the wizard's shoulder, and then flies around the corner only after B has successfully hidden, then you have more of a conundrum.

 

[Argyle King]

So, per the definition put forth that invisible means "impossible to see" neither of those are invisible. Nice swerve from my "no living creature" to "infrared light" though. Kind of helps prove my point when you don't even attempt to find a creature that is impossible to see.



And listening and hearing are defined differently. Doesn't mean the rules can't lump them into the same thing since they are close enough.



Except multiple people have offered extremely common sense interpretations, despite your claim that there is "no way" to interpret it any differently.



Sure it isn't immune. But did a fighter ever once find a line of people standing around the entire globe? Have you ever stuffed an entire army into 8 spaces, and had them all attempt to grapple one character? Looking at Mirror Sphere, I don't see how dealing yourself psychic damage can cause you to eat yourself unless you start activating other weird abilities. But even then... did it ever actually happen at the table?

Do ANY of these bizarre what-ifs actually happen at any actual table during natural play? Or do they all have to be engineered to occur?



And yet, for not being difficult to fix, people are losing their minds and declaring the ruleset untenable, a travesty of design that could not possibly have happened if anyone put any effort into the rules!!

And it took me all of 30 seconds to understand the intent, and see that it works perfectly fine, as long as you approach playing the game in good faith, and not via whatever this thread is that insists that every word must have one, and only one, possible definition and interpretation and it must be ridiculous.

A lot of things in D&D don't exist in real life. That doesn't mean you cannot use what we do know and extrapolate information.

However, even with that, there are times that D&D specifies that things work in-game differently than they would in real life. Other examples include (but are not limited to) that I believe magical fire should still generally function like fire once conjured into existence; D&D rules don't always agree with that.

The Mirror-Sphere example is from actual play. You force the opponent to hit itself with an attack. If the attack has an additional effect, such as swallowing a target, that also applies.

There are other examples of odd interactions like that from D&D (and especially editions which placed more importance on defined conditions and keywords*).

*Which isn't necessarily a bad way to approach creating a set of rules, but it requires putting more thought into how the rulings interact with each other than what the stealth rules we are currently discussing appear to have been given.

As for my comment about interpreting it, that is based upon looking at the set of rules currently given as a whole entity.

As it stands, hiding grants the Invisible condition.

The Invisible condition is coded into the game with sub-conditions attached to how the condition is gained and sub-conditions attached to how the condition is lost.

Inside how the game works, if you rule that guards can see Invisible things, that changes how in-game invisibility is defined. It also changes how vision works in-game.

The intent isn't clear due to previous rulings that go against what may make sense enough to figure out in 30 seconds. So, without the option of spending some piety points for glitter and increased visibility, what we're left with is parsing out how the game is coded.

Do I think the interpretations in this thread defy what makes sense? Yes, and I have said that multiple times. However, what may make sense to me is not always how the game is written.

It could be easily fixed by adding a "hidden" condition. Maybe the DMG will do that; maybe there will be errata; maybe 6th Edition.

 

[Micah Sweet]

These stealth rules actually make perfect sense if their goal was to emulate stealth in Skyrim. You go behind some rocks or into a dark corner, press the crouch button, and then as long as you stay crouched and your stealth skill check is high enough, you don’t attack, cast a spell, or make too much noise, NPCs just won’t notice you’re there at all.

The problem is stealth in Skyrim is famously absurd, and people actively make fun of the idea of others treating D&D stealth as if it worked that way.

Has WotC succeeded in the 4e-hater's dream of making D&D more like a video game?

 

[Charlaquin]

Has WotC succeeded in the 4e-hater's dream of making D&D more like a video game?

In this case? I definitely think so

 

[CrackedParrot]

If you have to invent all these unwritten procedures to make sense of the stealth rules, the stealth rules are written poorly.

The stealth rules are not necessarily poorly written. So far, we only have the 2024 Player's Handbook. From the context of the player, they can look for creatures who had previously taken the Hide action by doing a Search action. When the player hides, they have the Invisible condition until an enemy beats their Dexterity (Stealth) result with a Wisdom (Perception) result. The player does not need to know how the DM runs actual monsters; they just need to know the mechanics of how the contest works.

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide can define additional rules on how the DM should initiate Wisdom (Perception) checks for both the players and monsters. It might recommend using Passive Perception to speed along gameplay, or it might recommend making players and monsters taking explicit turns taking the Search action. That side of how the game is actually run has not been revealed yet.

 

[CrackedParrot]

That’s not the worst. The worst is a situation where the PC goes somewhere there are no enemies around and repeatedly rolls stealth checks until they get a 15 plus, and then walks straight through a maximum security area (describing themselves being super, super quiet about it, of course!) completely undetected. Or, if you favor the “the invisible condition isn’t actual invisibility” interpretation, the worst is a situation where the player casts the invisibility spell and tries to sneak through a maximum security area, only to be told, “sorry, the spell doesn’t actually make you invisible, it just gives you advantage on attacks and initiative rolls.”

The whole purpose of a stealth check is to determine how stealthy the PC is in a scenario. The player says they try to sneak into the maximum security area, and the DM askes them to make a stealth check. There isn't a scenario where the PC goes around a corner and repeatably attempts to "stealth" until they magically turn invisible; the PC instead attempts to sneak into an area with a single dice roll.

The maximum security area is considered "maximum security" because it employs guards proficient in Perception who diligently take the Search action. The PC cannot simply safely walk in with impunity because the guards are actively searching for threats. If the PC's stealth roll on their initial Hide action is higher than all the guards' perception rolls on their Search actions, then the PC sneaks in. Otherwise, the PC is detected and loses the Invisible condition.

This works in a very similar manner when the PC casts the Invisibility spell on themselves. The DM askes for a Stealth roll, the guards make a Perception roll, and the PC is either undetected or detected. The only difference is that the Invisible condition granted by the Invisibility spell is not automatically lost when the PC is detected; the PC remains to be invisible and can try to run past the guards, avoiding opportunity attacks due to not being seen.

 

[Thommy H-H]

And you would do the same with the invisibility spell then, since it grants the same condition as hiding and nothing else?

It isn't the same condition - the Invisible condition granted by the Hide action is contingent on other factors, such as not making noise. So no, I would not necessarily rule it the same way because it's a different situation.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The thread is about stealth and says you need to have cover of concealment to hide and gain the invisible condition. You lose the condition if you no longer meet the conditions to hide. I would just say that the spell grants you the full cover condition.

Honestly, it is things like this that mean we will stick with 2014.

What, people beating their faces bloody against a brick wall, loudly proclaiming they have no choice to do anything else, because there is no possible way to interact with the wall in any other possible manner?

The rule set you are using isn't going to change that.