D&D 5E "when circumstances are appropriate for hiding"

[Rodney Mulraney]

Are you saying there are circumstances that are appropriate for staying hidden that are different (less strict) than circumstances appropriate for becoming hidden? We know distraction can momentarily keep you from being noticed, but are there other conditions that allow a hidden creature to remain hidden that wouldn't allow it to hide in the first place? To me, the rule-book is clear that you can't hide if you are "in the open" (i.e. unconcealed).

Yeah you dont need as much to stay hidden, since you can watch what you are hiding from and move appropriately, using your stealth skill. Otherwise youd have to retcon an entire PC path to contain an unbroken line of obstacles that would totally conceal you. Or change core rules that enable you to remain in stealth whilst not remaining totally concealed.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I don't believe you've met my 20 dex 8 con woodelf rogue. We played in a campaign that was very liberal on stealth rules. Basically I could get advantage anytime I wanted. I could also kite almost any enemies imaginable. I'll give you that the campaign wasn't a dungeon crawl but hardly anything could get next to me and I typically output more damage than my only other 2 allies combined. All that was thanks to the liberal advantage rules. That's the experience aspect.

Right... so I'm not sure what you were playing here, but it sounds like you were playing on an open-plain-thats-full-of-concealment-with-no-terrain with foes that were all slower-moving than you and could never succeed at perception checks, alongside some characters who were optimized to be useless in combat.

Is that about right?

I would contend that almost any vaguely combat focused character would have destroyed every fight much the same as you did.

Here's the math part:
Consider this a GreatWeapon Fighter at level 5 will do 4d6+8 = 22 damage. A rogue will do 5d6 + 4 = 21.5 damage and advantage can easily put me upward to 50% more DPR. And this is just looking at the levels that the fighter "catches up" with extra attack. Also, I find it funny that no one realizes that a rogue dual-wielding actually does less DPR than firing a longbow (woodelf) while having advantage.

You missed the great weapon fighter rerolling his dice, which brings the average up to 24. Then you also ignored any other benefits of being a fighter, all of which increase that damage through various short rest resources or potentially an always on crit rate boost. Finally you're assuming that advantage from stealth is 100% of the time, which is isn't true, even against foes with a +0 wisdom modifier and a DM who just uses passive rolls to defend against stealth and who never vetos hide attempts.

In short - the raw numbers show you losing, even before we add a bunch of variables that benefit the fighter.

 

[Rodney Mulraney]

FrogReaver ? how you getting such high basic dmg with a rogue? You are including sneak dmg right ?

Anyway to me the mechanics make perfect sense, and fluffing it up with perception is quite natural. That you claim to be confused by that is hardly an argument.

Yeah since this aspect of our disagreement is clearly stated as a DM adjudication thing. Then if you DM'd for me, I'd happily accept your ruling there, you are within 5e doing that. Also you would have to accept my DM rulling of doing it my way, since again its within 5e as well.

I feel we might be miscommunicating though, since hide/stealth mechanic that I am using the same argument for, is not a different thing, that is what I am talking about here still.

 

[Rodney Mulraney]

But who is claiming that hiding - peek - shoot is useless? you get advantage from being an unseen attacker if you do that. You are not immediately seen, unless your stealth/hide check was unsuccessful.

The idea is that you have succesfully hidden behind a tree or something, that is a given. If you think that is impossible, well you are wrong, and check the links I posted earlier to confirm that.

Now from that given point of successfully hiding, THEN what happens next is the issue:

1. You do not move, you just peek and shoot - win; you get unseen attacker for that.

2. You decide to move towards an enemy, who knows you hid behind that tree. You move out of hiding. Normally your stealth automatically breaks then, BUT if the enemy is sufficiently distracted you MIGHT not break your stealth and be able to get into melee range and attack with unseen attacker advantage.

This is all just fact.

Now the issue is the capitalised MIGHT, either you do break stealth or you do not; the fact here is that it is down to the DM's adjudication. There are supposed to base that decision off of how distracted the enemy is supposed to be.

FrogReaver as a DM says he would almost always break your stealth. I am saying as a DM it would be very much easier and more probable that I would not break your stealth.

Everything is good and right with the world, why are we even arguing ?

I think FrogReaver is saying my DM adjudication is somehow wrong, but he has no basis for saying that. My decision seems more inline with official sources thoughts on the matter. FrogReaver is just claiming confusion as to how all the fluff works out... shrug...

 

[FrogReaver]

Right... so I'm not sure what you were playing here, but it sounds like you were playing on an open-plain-thats-full-of-concealment-with-no-terrain with foes that were all slower-moving than you and could never succeed at perception checks, alongside some characters who were optimized to be useless in combat.

Is that about right?

I would contend that almost any vaguely combat focused character would have destroyed every fight much the same as you did.


You missed the great weapon fighter rerolling his dice, which brings the average up to 24. Then you also ignored any other benefits of being a fighter, all of which increase that damage through various short rest resources or potentially an always on crit rate boost. Finally you're assuming that advantage from stealth is 100% of the time, which is isn't true, even against foes with a +0 wisdom modifier and a DM who just uses passive rolls to defend against stealth and who never vetos hide attempts.

In short - the raw numbers show you losing, even before we add a bunch of variables that benefit the fighter.

I love how as soon as someone mentions an experience that everyone assumes there must be something off about that experience. It's like clockwork. Kind of funny.

There was terrain but like I said it was more ruins and forest and such. Campaign wasn't really centered on splunking. Just FYI: there aren't many foes faster than a wood-elf rogue up to 105ft of movement per turn is hard to catch especially when I was not always but typically starting 60+ft away. One was a mage. Not significant damage unless aoe was needed. I can't remember what melee class the other was as this was the first 5e campaign I played in so it was a while ago.

I think the DM did stealth vs passive perception. I had like +10 or more in stealth. Most monsters only have around 11-15 PP at those early levels. I typically had to roll at worst a 5 or higher to beat their perception. Like I said it was basically advantage whenever I wanted it. Of course it would occasionly fail but it was rare.

I didn't include the GWF rerolling dice because (A) I didn't feel like writing decimals and (B) enough players take defense over the GW fighting style that I no longer just assume it anymore.

Also if you want to get that nitpicky look at level 7 or 9 instead of 5 (the fighters best level for comparison). In other words I was being kind to the fighter. Yes he has action surge and battlemaster dice but I didn't try to force him to compete with the levels of rogue where the rogue really pulls ahead. If you don't feel that's a fair trade we can look at a more detailed comparison from levels 3 to 9 or something. It's likely going to be less kind to the fighter though. Only thing that changes is adding in GWM or SS which is something I've been clear about since forever ago.

The numbers I showed had the rogue winning pretty handily at least until Battlemaster and Action surge are added in. Looking at 50% chance to hit and the rogue having advantage it's like 16.125 DPR vs 12.33 DPR (With your rerolls factored in). Now, adding in battle master dice and action surge gets the fighter close in daily DPR. He may even overtake the advantage rogue a little then. Though adding in crits helps the rogue a little more.

So without computing every detail what we have learned is that the advantage rogue stays up with the fighter in terms of DPR even when all the fighters damage features are accounted for. The rogue gets expertise in useful skills and can go arcane trickster for nice utility spells and more skills overall. The fighter gets no out of combat advantage. So basically what we are saying is that the advantage rogue is flat out better than the fighter because they do equal damage but the rogue has a lot more out of combat utility.

 

[Rodney Mulraney]

I love how as soon as someone mentions an experience that everyone assumes there must be something off about that experience. It's like clockwork. Kind of funny.

There was terrain but like I said it was more ruins and forest and such. Campaign wasn't really centered on splunking. Just FYI: there aren't many foes faster than a wood-elf rogue up to 105ft of movement per turn is hard to catch especially when I was not always but typically starting 60+ft away. One was a mage. Not significant damage unless aoe was needed. I can't remember what melee class the other was as this was the first 5e campaign I played in so it was a while ago.

I think the DM did stealth vs passive perception. I had like +10 or more in stealth. Most monsters only have around 11-15 PP at those early levels. I typically had to roll at worst a 5 or higher to beat their perception. Like I said it was basically advantage whenever I wanted it. Of course it would occasionly fail but it was rare.

I didn't include the GWF rerolling dice because (A) I didn't feel like writing decimals and (B) enough players take defense over the GW fighting style that I no longer just assume it anymore.

Also if you want to get that nitpicky look at level 7 or 9 instead of 5 (the fighters best level for comparison). In other words I was being kind to the fighter. Yes he has action surge and battlemaster dice but I didn't try to force him to compete with the levels of rogue where the rogue really pulls ahead. If you don't feel that's a fair trade we can look at a more detailed comparison from levels 3 to 9 or something. It's likely going to be less kind to the fighter though. Only thing that changes is adding in GWM or SS which is something I've been clear about since forever ago.

The numbers I showed had the rogue winning pretty handily at least until Battlemaster and Action surge are added in. Looking at 50% chance to hit and the rogue having advantage it's like 16.125 DPR vs 12.33 DPR (With your rerolls factored in). Now, adding in battle master dice and action surge gets the fighter close in daily DPR. He may even overtake the advantage rogue a little then. Though adding in crits helps the rogue a little more.

So without computing every detail what we have learned is that the advantage rogue stays up with the fighter in terms of DPR even when all the fighters damage features are accounted for. The rogue gets expertise in useful skills and can go arcane trickster for nice utility spells and more skills overall. The fighter gets no out of combat advantage. So basically what we are saying is that the advantage rogue is flat out better than the fighter because they do equal damage but the rogue has a lot more out of combat utility.

So the rogue does about as much dmg as the fighter and has less HP, but the rogue requires something to trigger sneak dmg... that is all I was saying earlier. I said DMs shouldnt "nerf" rogues if they are using hide mechanisms to get that sneak dmg, which I stand by. Rogue is essentially a martial class, without his sneak he has less health and significantly less dmg... he becomes unviable.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Now, that, to me, says that the design intent is to allow a rogue to hide every turn because the rule not only explicitly allows this but actually incentivizes it for rogues.

And that's why they put the language in there that suggests it's hard to stealth in combat.

Let's pretend for a moment that the designers very consciously wanted to discourage rogues from hiding every round, but they wanted to allow that, in some situations, it might be ok to use it in combat.

If that was their goal, can you suggest phrasing for a rule that would be cleaner design than just saying "it's hard to hide in combat" (which is effectively what they did)?

I suspect not (but am open to being proven wrong). Therefore my conclusion, based on the textual evidence, is that they wanted it to be possible but not frequent/constant.

 

[Harzel]

So the rogue does about as much dmg as the fighter and has less HP, but the rogue requires something to trigger sneak dmg... that is all I was saying earlier. I said DMs shouldnt "nerf" rogues if they are using hide mechanisms to get that sneak dmg, which I stand by. Rogue is essentially a martial class, without his sneak he has less health and significantly less dmg... he becomes unviable.

You seem to assume that combat strength is the only thing that contributes to viability. You are free to judge it that way, but I think there is a lot more to character viability than combat strength.

Also you refer to the rogue "without his sneak" as if someone had suggested that sneak attack should be disallowed. Since they haven't, this comment seems to be not very relevant.

As a more general comment, I sympathize with your desire to run your game "right" according to the rules. Sometimes when you bring a rules question to this forum you can get a pretty broad consensus (though very rarely unanimity ) on what is RAW and/or RAI. However, 5e leaves a lot up to the DM, so frequently you'll get a range of opinion. And then there are few subjects such as hiding in which the rules are heavily seeded with ambiguity, and so interpretations vary widely.

So, particularly with respect to running a D&D 5e game, and especially when it comes to hiding, it is not necessary that folks doing it differently from you be wrong in order for you to be right. You can let your rogues pop in and out of hiding all day long and that is fine. But a game in which conditions for being able to hide are ruled more strictly ruled can be just as RAW as yours, and even if their DPR is a little less, rogues are perfectly viable there.

Finally, IMO it is best to be very conservative about is claims of RAW-ness. Don't claim something is RAW unless it is stated unambiguously and not contradicted elsewhere. Otherwise, your ideas start to look like they are only supported by sketchy appeals to authority. If it's just your preferred interpretation, better to label it as such and move on to examining the consequences of its adoption.

 

[Harzel]

Retracted. Move along. Nothing to see here.

 

[Harzel]

Or change core rules that enable you to remain in stealth whilst not remaining totally concealed.

What rules would those be?