What games are you thinking of?
I've literally never seen stealth present any kind of serious rules issue outside the last two editions of D&D, and really the issues 5E has a vastly worse than 4E had. And I've played dozens of RPGs, and in virtually all of them stealth comes up sooner or later, and it pretty much always comes up in the context of combat.
I think the real problem is that 5E has quite dodgy Stealth rules AND expects people to keep "going back into Stealth" like some sort of video game, in the middle of combat, often repeatedly. That's bad design. That's not an inherent problem with stealth rules, that's an inherent problem with how they wanted 5E to work.
[Note: I know you missed the age of the post but I'll respond anyways.]
Re-reading the thread to that point, I think I was referring to the the "going back into Stealth" problem as well as the "I'm playing a 3e Halfling with a +40 Stealth modifier at level 7" problem (yes, I think 3e Stealth was measurably worse with than 5e Stealth because 3e opposed skills were badly implemented). I think that's why I mentioned 4e's Hidden Club, because hidden in 4e was really badly written. The point being, letting the rules and dice
alone decide whether or not stealth is possible or works or to what degree is the problem. You need the DM to be able to say, "No, that's stupid and doesn't work. He knows you're still there."
The games I'd been playing at that time would've been 5e and Savage Worlds. In SW, and most other TTRPGs (including AD&D), with a successful roll you're stealthed until you do something suitably obnoxious, and then the game assumes that you're out of stealth for the rest of the encounter. Most games don't try to define criteria for when you can stealth or hide, which 4e and 5e do. They let the GM handle that narratively. And the benefit of being stealthed in combat is typically a modest bonus to the first action or first turn. But, still, the game doesn't let stealth dominate play by letting it continue or repeat endlessly. You have stealth, you use it for a one-time bonus, and then you're back to normal combat. I could imagine a scenario in SW like a well camouflaged and prepared long range sniper being able to avoid detection repeatedly, but that's fairly difficult to set up.
The other games I'd been playing about that time would've been 13th Age and Dungeon World, and I don't remember specific stealth or hiding rules even existing in those games? I might be misremembering, but they're both very generic resolution system games.
It also puts a ton of weight on the stealth rules to work with the surprise mechanic, which produces further bad situations because I guess just having a surprise round (which would be vastly less confusing and easier to explain than the current setup, even if the current setup technically has a lower word-count than that would).
I don't think I've played a campaign that has used 5e's surprise rules. Everyone just still uses the surprise round. Surprise is rare, and the surprise round is a very easy concept to grasp. The "you lose surprised on your turn" mechanic is fiddley, and 5e D&D is supposed to be anti-fiddley. I think initiative and surprise were things that Crawford or Mearls had a particular love for, but the most basic surprise round is good enough and easier to play with. The 5e version means that surprise sometimes does nothing even when the DM has already determined that surprise has happened because one side rolled high. That's stupid.
I feel like the whole stealth/surprise situation in 5E illustrates a serious weakness in the Jeremy Crawford school of D&D design, which is the apparent strong belief that if you can say something with less words and make people work it out, that's always better than having a clearer but lengthier set of rules on something.
No, I disagree. In fact, I think the exact opposite is true. I think Stealth and Hiding are where 5e D&D avoided it's own design decision and chose to create a more complex system than necessary. The reason players think they even have the option of re-hiding is because the game spends too much time talking about how to hide, and then it gives you options like Rogue Cunning Action, Halfling Naturally Stealthy, Wood Elf Mask of the Wild, etc. Just
stop making more rules that tell the player they can unrealistically hide from a creature in plain sight in combat.
Okay, we already have: "If an attacker can't be seen by their target they have advantage on their attack rolls against that target. A character does not need to be hidden; the target must simply be unable to see their attacker."
And we already have: "A character can make a Stealth check to hide from other creatures. A hidden creature is trying to avoid being discovered (seen, heard, etc.). The DM is the judge of when a creature is hidden or when hiding is possible."
Now add: "A hidden character must break stealth to make an attack, cast a spell, or perform any other action the DM determines is too loud or visible to maintain stealth. When a character breaks stealth, creatures that can observe or hear their actions automatically discover them."
Then add: "When a hidden character has been discovered, the discovered character has advantage on attack rolls against each creature that just discovered them until the end of their next turn."
Finally add: "You cannot easily hide from a creature that has already discovered you. Hiding prevents someone from discovering you; it doesn't cause them to forget that you exist. Merely being quiet and behind an obstacle is not enough if they saw or heard you in that location already. They must also be unaware of your location or have lost track of your location for hiding to be successful. For example, you can hide from a pursuer during a chase that has lost sight of you, but 'hiding' behind the same crate that you were just discovered behind two rounds ago is not hiding at all."
And that's it.
The advantage of stealth should be either:
- You're not discovered and can escape or bypass or spy on a threat safely.
- You get advantage on one round of attack rolls.
And that should be it. #1 should be the primary use of stealth because that's
really powerful! Combat, however, should be about combat. You want to stand behind a pillar and plink away with a bow? Great, you've got partial cover. You're not
hidden. The NPCs understand object permanence. Your peek-a-boo tactics from the same 5' square can't confuse them. Running behind a different pillar isn't confusing, either. The characters you're hiding from have to believe that
there's not a person where there actually is one. You've got to jump behind a pillar, then stealthily cross the room, and
then you are hidden again.
So I've got to give him that it wasn't as obvious that this was going to be an ongoing problem, back then.
