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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KesselZero" data-source="post: 5927842" data-attributes="member: 6689976">Were you searching for traps at the time? There are no passive skills so the burden is on the players to be actively searching.This is BRILLIANT and I love it.There was a thread about this a little while ago. Back then I said I would rule that you can stack A&D but now I think I take it back. The RAW are a bit unclear but I think the intention is that since you can only have each once, they will cancel even if you have more advantages than disadvantages or vice versa.I'm torn on this issue. I've argued elsewhere that the 5e rogue is not supposed to be a consistent high-damage-dealer a la 4e. Rather I think this is a semi-return to pre-3e rogues who got high damage but only in rare situations, often based on the DM's judgment. The rogue definitely shouldn't be able to match the fighter hit for hit. The rules say that you make one Stealth check then use that number until you are spotted or leave stealth mode. So I would agree that the DM was mistaken to make the rogue roll a new Stealth check in this case.This is tricky because the kobolds weren't really surprised-- they saw three adventurers approaching them. They were tensed up and ready for a fight. So I don't think the -20 modifier would apply to them. If they just charged the three PCs they saw, there would be no surprise, though the hidden PCs would get advantage for attacking from hiding. If the kobolds were waiting for the party to actually start the fight, though, then that would give the hidden PCs a chance to get the jump on them. So I would have given the hidden PCs a free action each (and advantage on attacks), technically before the fight started, then had everyone roll initiative normally to start the fight proper. Although the kobolds didn't expect the two hidden PCs to hit them, they were ready for a fight and would just be saying "Okay, the fight's starting now," not "WHAT?! Where did this fight come from?!" I suppose you could also model this by rolling Init and having everybody but the two hidden PCs take the surprise penalty, but the rest of the PCs certainly shouldn't be surprised by their own companions. So I would say the surprise rules don't actually apply here.Tell your wife to prepare Comprehend Languages next time. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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