Explaining room to a stealthy?

[szalon]

Hi there,

I have a question, as a few friends and I are starting a table (And we are all very new.) I was talking to a buddy tonight trying to get scenarios straightened out, and trying to digest the rulebook, but we got stuck on something when we asked the question:

If we have a Rogue in a party of 4 who decided to stealth into a room to see what was happening, would the DM explain to him (thus the entire party) what the Rogue sees, or is the party supposed to be ignorant to what the DM is telling the Rogue? What is to stop the Rogue from sneaking through the whole dungeon? Is there a point where the DM would say: "That's it, you hit a black wall and feel you can go no further."?

In the rule book, it said that if the Rogue whispers, his stealth is broken (I believe), but if the DM is explaining what the room looks like, then the Rogue would not have to whisper anyway, correct? Or does the DM whisper to the Rogue "This is what you see: X Y Z..." and it's up to the Rogue to run back to the party and explain to them what he witnessed.1

Or are we just over complicating this?

Sorry, I know this is probably miniscule and has been addressed, but this forum is very..vast...

Thanks for any pointers!

[Gavran]

You're overestimating the power of Stealth. Stealth training doesn't mean you can't be found all the time if you don't want to. I recommend reading this (http://community.wizards.com/content/forum-topic/2739081). You either need to block line of sight or be in complete darkness to even have a chance of hiding from something, and then it's Perception vs Stealth.

Basically, monsters are what stops the rogue from sneaking through the whole dungeon (along with traps, locked doors, puzzles, etc).

Whether you want to tell the whole party or not is up to you. It's an immersion thing mostly, nothing wrong with either choice. Passing notes is a good way to keep stuff secret.

[Daracaex]

Yeah, the thing stopping a character from scouting a whole dungeon in advance of his party is flubbing a stealth check and getting massacred by encounters meant for four. :smalltongue:

Also, whether you should just say the descriptions of what the character sees out loud or not depends entirely on how good the group is at separating their meta-knowledge and character knowledge. If they can reliably act in a way that doesn't take advantage of knowledge they shouldn't have, it should be fine to just announce everything to the rest of the party.