Taking tokens off the board?

[Bizorro]

With this much argument I'm guessing this is basically down to house rules. However PHB2 says this about Invisible Creatures and Stealth: If an invisible creature is hidden from you, you can neither hear nor see it, and you have to guess what space it occupies. If an invisible creature is not hidden from you, you can hear it or sense some other sign of its presence and therefore know what space it occupies, although you still can’t see it. [Remember that PHB2 also says being hidden makes you effectively invisible to your enemy (p. 222)]

This seems to pretty strongly state that unless a creature is hidden from you, you definitely know where it is—even if you can't see it. It seems to me a reasonable abstraction to let the player know where the creature is even though they can't target it, unless the creature specifically hides itself.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

I take hidden creatures off the battlemap. It's by far easier for the players if they are not tempted with char vs player knowledge.

This seems to pretty strongly state that unless a creature is hidden from you, you definitely know where it is—even if you can't see it. It seems to me a reasonable abstraction to let the player know where the creature is even though they can't target it, unless the creature specifically hides itself.

And that's how it is. Except the targeting part, you can't target the creature but you can target the square(s) it occupies and if you would hit the creature due to your attack result you hit it indeed.

 

[Bizorro]

Okay Black Knight, that seems like a good option to offer to my DM. It's also much less work for him if he only has to mentally track the few monsters that are hiding instead of everyone outside our LoS.

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying about targeting, though. I think I meant "can't target it directly". I get that you can basically try to attack any enemy no matter how well they're hidden as long as you can guess where they are, have an attack that can reach them, and are willing to accept the penalties.

 

[mneme]

I'm with BKI, etc (though I should use coordinates; I've mostly just ballparked where hidden creatures were in my head). A creature that's hidden from all players has its token leave the board (another approach, btw, would be to drop tokens in the overall area where it -could- be face down -- with the obverse side showing which squares actually have creatures in it. That might be faster than marking down locations on graph paper).

But a creature actually has to beat everyone's passive perception with a stealth check for that benefit.

Now, that said, at what point is a creature simply out of earshot and eyeshot -- not hidden, just undetectable? Is "no LOE, no LOS" sufficient? (eg, around a corner, not just invisible or in the shadows) How about no LOS/LOS to any square that has LOS or LOE to he characters? Does it matter if the barrier is a door vs two corridors?

 

[Bizorro]

I think the rules are a little ambiguous here. For instance, you obviously don't know the positions of creatures behind a door before an encounter begins. And once an encounter starts, if a creature runs into a new room and shuts the door behind it, I wouldn't expect to know the layout of that room or where he was.

It seems to me that if a creature is in the same room with you and has moved out of your LoS/LoE, he should stay on the grid. It's enough that you can't directly target him, and you cover or concealment from each other.

Actually, how would things work for monsters going into Stealth? For the PC, you can have Stealth against some of the monsters but not all of them, but that doesn't really work from the other end. The DM can't hide his monster from some of the players and reveal him to the others. Is that why you said the monster has to beat everyone's Perception check while a PC can beat some checks and not others and still have some Stealth?

 

[mneme]

Actually, by the rules, you need stealth from all enemies to have stealth from any enemies. People usually ignore this, and it even makes sense to dial it up for intelligent enemies and down for unthinking ones.

But yes; one assumes that PCs can communicate and are communicating, so if any PC knows where an enemy is, their mini should stay on the board.

 

[Festivus]

I will say that this is one area where running an online game in MapTool has an advantage over in-person gaming. If the board and tokens are electronic, the DM can hide the token from the players' view but the DM can still see exactly where it is on the board.

This works in pen and paper too. I usually have a copy of the encounter area behind the DM screen and can easily know where something was (I usually use a sticky note or a pencil mark on the map)

 

[Samir]

Actually, by the rules, you need stealth from all enemies to have stealth from any enemies.

The new stealth rules on PHB2 pg. 222 contradict this. You can be hidden to a single enemy, which can vary in usefulness depending on how well the monsters you're fighting cooperate with each other.