D&D 5E (2024) New stealth rules.

[Nefermandias]

See, I've always used spells outside of the box to accomplish interesting things. Spells are more than the narrow visions that are in the descriptions. Skills aren't as powerful as a spell, but they are along the same lines.

This is fair. I too try to encourage my players to find creative ways to use their character's abilities.

My only gripe is when people try to "Stealth" the problem or "Intimidate" the problem without even trying to engage with the fiction. That's why I believe that moving the detailed skill descriptions to the DMG was a net positive.

 

[Maxperson]

The Invisible condition is simply the mechanical benefits from being unseen.

How one gains and maintains the condition is explained elsewhere.

No it isn't explained elsewhere. The invisibility spell for example, gives no conditions to overcome it, leaving us with the extraordinarily vague, "somehow see you."

 

[Maxperson]

This is fair. I too try to encourage my players to find creative ways to use their character's abilities.

My only gripe is when people try to "Stealth" the problem or "Intimidate" the problem without even trying to engage with the fiction. That's why I believe that moving the detailed skill descriptions to the DMG was a net positive.

Yeah. I had to train my players not to say things like, "Can I roll a perception check?" or "Can I roll a persuasion check?" I need something roleplayed to adjudicate, because many things will not even need an ability check.

 

[pemerton]

THAT is actually, in my opinion, the greater problem presented by the 2024 rules. Hidden actually makes more sense than the spell does. I would home rule that the Invisibility granted by the spell is your typical fantasy invisibility, aka translucent. I would add text to the spell that says, "a creature using normal vision cannot perceive you," or something like that.

As I posted upthread, nothing in the 4e Invisibility spell says that the target can't be seen, either, but it is very strongly implied by (i) tradition, (ii) the flavour text, and (iii) other parts of the rules that reference magical invisibility.

I suspect, without knowing obviously, that these new rules will be similar in this respect.

So I think it's less of a house rule and more just common sense inference in the context of rules that are not drafted by technical experts in drafting complex rules.

 

[MerricB]

As I posted upthread, nothing in the 4e Invisibility spell says that the target can't be seen, either, but it is very strongly implied by (i) tradition, (ii) the flavour text, and (iii) other parts of the rules that reference magical invisibility.

I don't think there's much implication going on here.

Flavour text says what goes on. Rules then back it up. Yes, not everything is in the spell description, but it's definitely there. "You can't be seen by normal forms of vision" is pretty clear.

 

[Kinematics]

So, something in another thread made me realize something.

First, here's the definitions for Hidden and Invisible from the Expert Classes playtest:

HIDDEN [CONDITION]
While you are Hidden, you experience the following effects:
Concealed. You aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen
Surprise. If you are Hidden when you roll Initiative, you have Advantage on the roll.
Attacks Affected. Attack Rolls against you have Disadvantage, and your Attack Rolls have Advantage.
Ending the Condition. The Condition ends on you immediately after any of the following occurrences: you make a sound louder than a whisper, an enemy finds you, you make an Attack Roll, you cast a Spell with a verbal component, or you aren’t Heavily Obscured or behind any Cover.

INVISIBLE [CONDITION]
While you are Invisible, you experience the following effects:
Unseeable. You can’t be seen, so you aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying also can’t be seen.
Surprise. If you are Invisible when you roll initiative, you have Advantage on the roll.
Attacks Affected. Attack Rolls against you have Disadvantage, and your Attack Rolls have Advantage.

And here's the Invisible condition as presented in UA5:

INVISIBLE [CONDITION]
While Invisible, you experience the following effects:
Concealed. You aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen.
Surprise. If you are Invisible when you roll Initiative, you have Advantage on the roll.
Attacks Affected. Attack rolls against you have Disadvantage, and your attack rolls have Advantage. If a creature can somehow see you, as with magic or Blindsight, you don’t gain this benefit against that creature.

First, there's obvious similarities in the mechanics in the EC playtest, with the main notable difference being that Invisible explicitly said you can't be seen (Unseeable), while Hidden uses the simpler Concealed.

One clause in Hidden that disappeared is the one for Ending the Condition, which got moved to the Hide action. And that is where I think the problem happened.

Basically, they merged Hidden and Invisible, because mechanically they are basically the same thing. However there were slight differences. The ending conditions for Hidden got moved to Hide, while the "can't be seen" aspect of Invisible got moved to the Invisibility spell.

Except it didn't.

Worse, for all the complaints about it in later playtests, most spells didn't show up in the playtests, Invisibility obviously being one of those we never saw.

So what happens when players complain about the incompleteness of the Invisible condition? Those complaints can be discarded, because that segment of the rule was already moved to the Invisibility spell. They just hadn't shown the Invisibility spell in a UA, so the complaints were working off of incomplete information, and could just be put in the, "They'll understand when they see the full rules" bin.

Except somewhere along the way it failed to actually get moved into the Invisibility spell. Maybe the editor forgot, or they failed to save, or it got overwritten by an older copy, or whoever handled it got fired and so the discontinuity was lost, or something.

Regardless, it's clear from the transition from EC to UA5 that stuff was shuffled around, and the unique aspects of Hidden and Invisible were supposed to be moved to the actions that created those conditions, leaving the Invisible condition with the generalized form of the common mechanics.

Thus we can see that not only is it an error, but how and when the error happened, and why it wouldn't be caught in playtesting.

-

With all that said, there's still other elements of uncertainty, such as the ranger's Nature's Veil, which gives the Invisible condition until the end of the ranger's next turn. Can the ranger be seen while that's up? I honestly don't know. It's neither the Invisibility spell (though the version in Tasha's says you become magically invisible, so maybe?), nor does it use a Stealth check for a Perception DC.

It could be that if you "magically" turn invisible, that will include the "can't be seen" rider. That would be something to include in the Invisible condition itself, rather than in the Invisibility spell or other features.

 

[Clint_L]

Cool. Then end this 120 pages of confusion and explain to us how it works.

Apply common sense.

 

[Argyle King]

Well, you are the first person I've ever met who would have someone roll a clearly impossible check for no other reason than to win an argument on the internet.



And one of those things that it has established, not for invisibility, but for stealth, that ends the condition of invisibility is perfectly capable of handling this interactions. The intended solution is obvious, you just want it to be broken so you can say it is broken.

You asked how I would approach a player's attempt. I answered.

To elaborate further: the check is not impossible; it is simply beyond their capabilities and is likely a poor choice of what to do. That's not much different than a player saying that they want to attempt to bash down an adamantium door by slamming their head against it. I would advise against it, but I wouldn't outright deny a player from trying it. I'm never out to kill players, but I believe in allowing them to have trouble and hardship when they insist upon wanting it.

As for hiding and the Invisible condition, I had been basing my assessment on what was written. Since then, I've learned from other community members (who have access to the entirety of the PHB) that (based upon what those community members have expressed) there are not other parts of the book to clarify extra criteria for how hiding and the Invisible condition works.

Many of the things that you, others, and even myself have suggested are reasonable. None of those things are part of the PHB. As part of the target audience is newer players and newer DMs, so those solutions may not be as obvious to someone sitting down to a D&D table for the first time.

Broken is debatable. Either way, it could have been written better.

 

[kilpatds]

I cannot wait to see 5E24s take on the invisible stalker.

This is actually my biggest issue: naturally invisible creatures.

I play a lot of AL/"pick up D&D", and have hit way way WAY too many DMs that believed "invisible == hidden". Which means that the invisible creature is basically completely impossible to fight absent specialized magic (that no one has). The DM objects if you target a specific square. The DM objects if you fireball an area. etc, etc.

How, invisible DOES equal hidden. Invisible stalkers are gonna suck under way too many DMs.

 

[Charlaquin]

So, something in another thread made me realize something.

First, here's the definitions for Hidden and Invisible from the Expert Classes playtest:



And here's the Invisible condition as presented in UA5:


First, there's obvious similarities in the mechanics in the EC playtest, with the main notable difference being that Invisible explicitly said you can't be seen (Unseeable), while Hidden uses the simpler Concealed.

One clause in Hidden that disappeared is the one for Ending the Condition, which got moved to the Hide action. And that is where I think the problem happened.

Basically, they merged Hidden and Invisible, because mechanically they are basically the same thing. However there were slight differences. The ending conditions for Hidden got moved to Hide, while the "can't be seen" aspect of Invisible got moved to the Invisibility spell.

Except it didn't.

Worse, for all the complaints about it in later playtests, most spells didn't show up in the playtests, Invisibility obviously being one of those we never saw.

So what happens when players complain about the incompleteness of the Invisible condition? Those complaints can be discarded, because that segment of the rule was already moved to the Invisibility spell. They just hadn't shown the Invisibility spell in a UA, so the complaints were working off of incomplete information, and could just be put in the, "They'll understand when they see the full rules" bin.

Except somewhere along the way it failed to actually get moved into the Invisibility spell. Maybe the editor forgot, or they failed to save, or it got overwritten by an older copy, or whoever handled it got fired and so the discontinuity was lost, or something.

Regardless, it's clear from the transition from EC to UA5 that stuff was shuffled around, and the unique aspects of Hidden and Invisible were supposed to be moved to the actions that created those conditions, leaving the Invisible condition with the generalized form of the common mechanics.

Thus we can see that not only is it an error, but how and when the error happened, and why it wouldn't be caught in playtesting.

-

With all that said, there's still other elements of uncertainty, such as the ranger's Nature's Veil, which gives the Invisible condition until the end of the ranger's next turn. Can the ranger be seen while that's up? I honestly don't know. It's neither the Invisibility spell (though the version in Tasha's says you become magically invisible, so maybe?), nor does it use a Stealth check for a Perception DC.

It could be that if you "magically" turn invisible, that will include the "can't be seen" rider. That would be something to include in the Invisible condition itself, rather than in the Invisibility spell or other features.

This makes a lot of sense. I actually like the change of moving the criteria to end the condition to the hide action instead of being part of the condition itself, and it would have made sense to do the same with the unseeable clause to sources of invisibility. But, obviously that didn’t end up happening, and the fact that it didn’t shows why this might actually be a less clean approach than it seems at first blush.

Another potential fix, in light of this:
• Keep the current invisible condition as-is, but change its name to “hidden.”
• Add an explicit clause to the hidden condition that the DM determines if a creature can see you.
• Add the invisible condition back in, and give it the unseeable effect, as well as giving the creature the hidden condition (in much the same way that many conditions have the effect of giving the creature the incapacitated condition.