D&D 5E Rogue's Cunning Action to Hide: In Combat??

[Nefermandias]

I'm not saying impossible, and I'm not putting any limit on the number of attempts, the only thing I'm saying is that it should be harder, round after round, to pull off the same trick, especially if it's a silly thing like hiding in exactly the same place all the time.

That way, I'm not closing off any option, but the players should also expect that more experienced adversaries will be even harder to fool with easy tricks. And that should also encourage the players to be even more inventive and creative.

I'm just curious if you make it increasingly harder for fighters to hit the same opponent repeatedly? It stands to reason that the enemy would eventually pick up on the fighter's attack patterns.

 

[jayoungr]

If you hide behind a pillar or your Medium sized ally, your opponents shouldn’t have absolutely no idea where you are.

But you said "If you assume a successful hide check means your opponents have absolutely no idea where you could possibly be," which seems to indicate that you're starting from the opposite premise--?

"My familiar flies in and provides the help action to attack, I move in, cast Booming Blade, attack with my rapier at advantage, deal initial Booming Blade damage plus Rapier damage plus Sneak Attack, use my Cunning Action to disengage and move back. When the foe on his turn tries to close with someone, they then take the secondary Booming Blade damage."

How are you casting Booming Blade and attacking on the same round?

 

[Lyxen]

Who said they can’t remember where they were attacked from and allow it to occur round after round and do nothing about it? If you know the rogue keeps hiding behind the pillar, just walk around the pillar and put your sword through his gut! But when he is behind the pillar and sufficient quiet and varying the timing and height of his attacks (i.e. passed his Stealth check vs. your passive Perception), it’s going to be harder to avoid being hit by his arrow than if he were just standing out in the open.

But it's still going to be much easier than when he attacked you the first time and you did not even know he was there.

Once more, I'm not forbidding anything, I'm just ensuring that the narrative makes a bit of sense, and that, just as in real life, clever and inventive choices are rewarded, compared to simple repetition.

It only says that based on your assumptions of what’s happening in the fiction. Some of us have a different set of assumptions, which allow a rogue hiding in the same spot to make sense and not make the creatures they’re hiding from look like idiots.

And I'm sorry but that does not make any sense top me, which is probably a reason for which no one has ever put that kind of situation in any source of the genre. But of course YCMV.

Again, you’re assuming we’re all working from the same set of narrative assumptions. I agree that if you assume a successful hide check means your opponents have absolutely no idea where you could possibly be, then it would be stupid for you to be able to hide in the same spot more than once.

And that is exactly what being hidden does.

However, since certain rules (like the lightfoot halfling’s naturally stealthy) seem to indicate that it is possible to hide in the same spot more than once

I don't read that in that ability: "You can attempt to hide even when you are obscured only by a creature that is at least one size larger than you." It's just giving away more opportunity to hide, but once an opponent has seen the halfling disappear behind a companion once, and the halfling disappears again while there is no other concealement possible, there is a good chance that he will watch for the halfling exactly at the same place.

What gives you the impression that it's meant to hide in the same spot more than once ?

I find the natural conclusion to be that that isn’t an accurate narrative assumption. So I’ve adjusted my understanding of what’s happening in the fiction to account for what the rules seem to be implying. The rogue who hides behind the pillar gets the benefit of being hidden (advantage on attack rolls and attack rolls against them have disadvantage), so that benefit must come from the opponent not being able to get a clear shot at the rogue or see and read the rogue’s attack telegraphs, rather than having no idea where the rogue could possibly be.

The rules make it really simple: "When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it." That's really all they say on the subject.

So, from this, a DM would be perfectly right in saying that as soon as the rogue pops out from behind the pillar (or the halfling from behind his friend), he can be seen and therefore does not have advantage. Whereas when you fire from a dark area, where you can't be seen at all even while firing, you would have advantage (which, by the way, is where the second sentence "If you are hidden — both unseen and unheard — when you make an attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses." comes in effect to tell you that even if you were totally unseen, you still give away your position once the attack hits or misses (and therefore after you have rolled with advantage).

But most of us are not that harsh on rogues popping out from "concealement", because we also apply the reading from the section on hiding that says "You can't hide from a creature that can see you clearly", which is a bit more forgiving. But because that is plain english, it's also much fuzzier, what does "clearly" mean.

And this is where, once more, we go back to the devs intentions about stealth: "This more than almost any other part of the game, is going to rely on the Dungeon Master."

You should not make so many assumptions about the way other people play based on very little information.

What you see is all there is, and so far nothing has shown that there is not a mechanistic following of just the RAW behind some contributors implementations, with some slapped-on justification. Which, once more, is fine if that is what you are looking for in terms of D&D.

 

[Nefermandias]

But you said "If you assume a successful hide check means your opponents have absolutely no idea where you could possibly be," which seems to indicate that you're starting from the opposite premise--?

@Charlaquin was just making the point that you don't have to completely vanish from existence for you to be considered hidden by the game rules. You can still be considered "hidden" behind a single pillar in the middle of the room, even though your opponent is going to likely guess that you are still there.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

without math, we don’t know who wins.

Also, the rogue has feats too. Depending on campaign, Sentinel or Mage Slayer boosts the Rogue significantly, and skulker and sharpshooter can make a sniper permastealth rogue untouchable in a game where great distance is regularly possible. (Ditch sharpshooter otherwise)

An Arcane Trickster Rogue with any optimization should be right up there with the fighter with a top shelf feat at all tiers.

So without any real optimization, just picking feats I like, (Piercer, Crossbow Expert, Sentinel) a level 11 Rogue can do 3d8+6d6+4 with advantage or use the bonus action for hand crossbow for another 1d6+4, at-will. Some rounds will add 1d8+6d6+4 as a reaction.

With Shadowblade, that’s another d8. Hideous Laughter or Hold Person will allow you to double tap with advantage and is often a better action that dealing damage in the round where you use it.

Of course, Rogue/Fighter really goes wild. Gaining a fighting style, action surge, bigger ranged weapon dice, and second wind, is well worth delaying sneak attack dice by one die. I wouldn’t go past level 5 in fighter, though.

 

[Nefermandias]

How are you casting Booming Blade and attacking on the same round?

You make a melee weapon attack as part of the spell casting when you cast Booming Blade.

 

[Mistwell]

But you said "If you assume a successful hide check means your opponents have absolutely no idea where you could possibly be," which seems to indicate that you're starting from the opposite premise--?


How are you casting Booming Blade and attacking on the same round?

Booming Blade causes you to make an attack "You brandish the weapon used in the spell’s casting and make a melee attack with it against one creature within 5 feet of you. On a hit, the target suffers the weapon attack’s normal effects and then becomes sheathed in booming energy..." etc..

 

[Oofta]

Yes, that's the most obvious application for Naturally Stealthy. That's why I was really shocked with OP's DM ruling on that situation. Even more shocked with so many people here defending that position.

Is anybody defending the OP's DM's position that a rogue can never get advantage from hiding?

We may be quibbling about details and how often, but that's all I've seen.

 

[Lyxen]

I'm just curious if you make it increasingly harder for fighters to hit the same opponent repeatedly? It stands to reason that the enemy would eventually pick up on the fighter's attack patterns.

I'm not using it for standard attacks because the body of knowledge for hand to hand fighting is extremely large and most fights are over in much fewer exchanges than it would take to exhaust the knowledge of any reasonably trained fighter, but you are absolutely right, I also do use it for repetitive specific manoeuvers, for example if you are trying round after round to use the same trick of grappling or knocking down your opponent with your shield.

I've done quite a bit of martial arts, including kendo, plus quite a bit of fencing, and when an opponent is very strong in one area, you will probably fall for it once unless warned, but after that you will integrate the countermeasures in your fighting style. After that, good fighters are not one-trick ponies and they have many things up their sleeves. Even in judo, which is well known for the fact that most fighters have one really strong move that they will always try to use, good combattants need to have much more than this to succeed. And they will prod along different axis until they find an opening, that they will exploit as much as they can, and then shift to something else.

For good examples of this, read the Amber series, Corwin in particular uses a trick against Eric, and is surprised that, when he tries it a second time a bit later (so a few rounds later), it still works, but then Eric changes tactics to prevent this and Corwin does not try again. Corwin also uses another kind of trick against Benedict, leaving an opening which almost costs him his life, but when he does it again, it's because there is another trick about the environment that Benedict does not know about, and that is all what Corwin (who had no hope otherwise against Benedict) needed and hoped for.

This is what I'm looking for in fights, inventive fighting, using the environment, not always repeating the same tactic round after round just because it's technically advantageous. It's boring narratively, and it breaks immersion, at least for our groups.

 

[Lyxen]

@Charlaquin was just making the point that you don't have to completely vanish from existence for you to be considered hidden by the game rules. You can still be considered "hidden" behind a single pillar in the middle of the room, even though your opponent is going to likely guess that you are still there.

I would just add that it's not even being completely out of sight, even without special powers, you can hide as long as you are not seen "clearly", which might mean that some bits might still stick out (but be mistaken for something else ?), or that there could be traces in the fog or darkness.