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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 6960789" data-attributes="member: 12731">Thank you for providing your housrules.Or houserules and houserules - since the stealth rules are so... openended (or impossible to use as-is if you want to be less generous) I'd say they're your interpretations. Still, it's slightly off thread. Not that there's any problem with that, but almost all of this discussion revolves around real-world expectations, which I would guess apples mostly to the lowest levels (the levels where a pack of wolves, say, still present a challenge).If, on the other hand, you travel the underdark as you do when playing Out of the Abyss, there are plenty of instances where the terrain is essentially a long tube. A jacked frazzled tube with lots of cracks and fissures, sure, but still essentially a tube.Now, as I've said before (perhaps in another thread, since this one isn't primarily about the stealth part, but about the part that comes after initiative is rolled) a single monster lying in ambush down the tube do stand at least some chance of getting the drop on the adventurers in that their "point man", the warlock flying invisible imp, might miss it. But what then? If the monster detects the imp (which isn't unlikely), it's game over for the imp, sure, but the ambush is revealed.And if there are more than a single stealthy predator (and sadly too many MM entries have really <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Stealth scores) they WILL be detected.All I'm saying is that those of you that simply plop down enemies right within pouncing distance (so that initiative decides who gets jumped), that's okay, but that's not what the rules lead to, and more importantly, I hate that kind of gameplay as a player, so I tend to not overuse it as a DM.I don't want my players to spend time on precautions and being overly cautious, so I don't bend the rules to invalidate their standard procedure (either the imp or the monk going on point; the monk stands a very good chance of gliding out of any ambush and instead leading the monsters back into the rest of the party's warm welcome) Instead I want D&D to remain challenging and exciting even when the monsters don't just appear in the hero's face out of nowhere.Not only because "In your FACE" gets old, fast, but also because "keeping your distance" generally becomes an overpowering strategy.So, to loop back to this thread's actual topic, I'm convinced a party with three out of five characters having Speed 30 and primarily using axes (to throw and use in melee) will lack the immediate means to trivialise the MM content. This in turn means (much) less work for me as a DM, something good in itself.It also means the players get to enjoy D&D the way it was meant, where challenges labeled as deadly at some level still are, and where the resource management game really works (in that the party's resources actually dwindle, since monsters do get to do their thing, which often means "biting chunks out of the heroes" at melee range)So, again, let me ask you to focus on the thread's question: How do you tweak the rules to make players build more slow Dwarves with Axes!? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> (While still remaining as fun as possible to everyone)</blockquote>

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