So, the last few days I’ve been reading the new Stealth rules with all the attention I gave to the AD&D initiative rules, and similarly getting very frustrated.
The words “incomplete and half-baked” keep coming to mind.
The rules for entering Stealth have this massive hole where you apparently can do it if you have three quarters cover, but not if any monster has line of sight to you. Which, to me, is a contradiction.
Meanwhile, the rules for coming out of stealth make it seem like a creature has to actively look for you - the word “find” is very poorly defined.
Then I read the rules in the DMG on passive Perception, and I get even more confused. The implication is that the DM can just arbitrarily decide that passive Perception works and the monster/PC doesn’t need to call for a check…
It’s an area where I’d argue that the new organisation of the rules make it worse. In 2014, the hiding rules started off by explaining that most of them were up to the DM’s judgement before setting out some procedures to use. In 2024, there’s a similar sentence, but immediately the reader is sent to the glossary where the rest of the text is. And so if you look in the glossary first, you’ll never see that caveat.
I don’t think either version of the rules define stealth well, but I have the strong suspicion that I’m a lot, lot harder on Crawford and the designers because it has been insisted that this is not a new edition. My expectation is that unclear rules will be fixed, based on extensive real play of them.
Not… whatever this is.
The words “incomplete and half-baked” keep coming to mind.
The rules for entering Stealth have this massive hole where you apparently can do it if you have three quarters cover, but not if any monster has line of sight to you. Which, to me, is a contradiction.
Meanwhile, the rules for coming out of stealth make it seem like a creature has to actively look for you - the word “find” is very poorly defined.
Then I read the rules in the DMG on passive Perception, and I get even more confused. The implication is that the DM can just arbitrarily decide that passive Perception works and the monster/PC doesn’t need to call for a check…
It’s an area where I’d argue that the new organisation of the rules make it worse. In 2014, the hiding rules started off by explaining that most of them were up to the DM’s judgement before setting out some procedures to use. In 2024, there’s a similar sentence, but immediately the reader is sent to the glossary where the rest of the text is. And so if you look in the glossary first, you’ll never see that caveat.
I don’t think either version of the rules define stealth well, but I have the strong suspicion that I’m a lot, lot harder on Crawford and the designers because it has been insisted that this is not a new edition. My expectation is that unclear rules will be fixed, based on extensive real play of them.
Not… whatever this is.
