Stealth, Perception and blindness

[Saeviomagy]

Now lets consider an adventurer is blind, but has fled the battle to wait for the blindness to wear off. A bandit is sneaking up on him, with total concealment due to the blindness. (If I understand it, the identical situation could occur at night without special vision, or with an invisible creature, or in dense fog, or any other situation with total concealment.)

The bandit makes a Stealth check to sneak. The adventurer makes a Perception check. If I understand it, if the bandit wins, the adventurer does not know that a bandit is present. If the adventurer wins, he knows the square the bandit occupies. There is no way for the adventurer to hear that there IS a bandit nearby but not know precisely where the bandit is, which I claim SHOULD be the most likely outcome. Or am I wrong again?

Part of this is caused by D&D's assumption that you're either in combat or out of it.

Specifically, if the player in question was out of combat and this scene occurred, either the bandit would take a surprise attack out of nowhere, or he would use his surprise action to maintain his stealth while moving into position and initiative would start. The player would then automatically know that something is going on (he rolled initiative) and would most likely start with perception checks to ascertain what.

In the situation you describe, this doesn't happen because there's an ongoing combat and the player never drops out of initiative. I guess you should probably rule that if someone is far enough out of a combat, he no longer has an initiative (but still acts once per initiative pass) and needs to reroll his initiative when he rejoins.

Or you can change the stealth rules to reflect the "something is up" state of alertness like others have posted.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Specifically, if the player in question was out of combat and this scene occurred, either the bandit would take a surprise attack out of nowhere, or he would use his surprise action to maintain his stealth while moving into position and initiative would start. The player would then automatically know that something is going on (he rolled initiative) and would most likely start with perception checks to ascertain what.

This should never happen. Initiative should never be rolled unless there is a reason that the PCs know about. I've seen this done too many times. If the enemies are using their "surprise round" action to stay hidden and they managed to beat all of the PC's Perception checks, then there IS no initiative.

The PCs roll initiative when the enemies take the first action that the PCs can perceive. Until the enemies decide to make an attack or fail a Stealth check, they can follow the PCs around all day long without initiative happening.

This is what makes Surprise rounds useful, they are almost always a free attack.

In the situation you describe, this doesn't happen because there's an ongoing combat and the player never drops out of initiative. I guess you should probably rule that if someone is far enough out of a combat, he no longer has an initiative (but still acts once per initiative pass) and needs to reroll his initiative when he rejoins.

The way this situation works is that as soon as the enemy makes a move and successfully hides at the end of it, the blind PC loses all track of it. If the enemy keeps succeeding in their stealth checks to stay hidden, the PCs only clue that there is an enemy there is that there was one before he became blinded or that he had heard an enemy over in that square over there but the noise suddenly went away and he has no idea where the enemy is now.

Or you can change the stealth rules to reflect the "something is up" state of alertness like others have posted.

Although, this isn't a bad rule to have. Maybe if the enemy succeeds by less than 5 then you know there is someone around, you just don't know where.