MOG Mechanics: Stealth (Less spam, more ninjas!)

[Man_Over_Game]

I hated a few things about 5E stealth, like the fact that it's impossible to perform melee attacks while stealthed (sorry, Assassin), it has no mechanical relevance to hide in a new hiding spot vs. hiding behind your goliath friend every turn, and it's REALLY hard to do any kind of stealth mission for any length of time, so I doctored up how stealth should work:

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The Rules:


You may attempt to Hide when you are Heavily Obscured from every enemy's detection (including from Full Cover)
If you move into an enemy's line of sight, you are still considered hidden until the end of your turn, when you are then revealed. You may not be revealed if you end your turn while in a location you could attempt to Hide in, and you take the Hide Action before your turn ends. This cannot be the same Hide action that you took to initiate your Stealth.

If you enter an enemy's line of sight while not Partially Obscured (I.E. dim lighting, fog, heavy rain), then they have Advantage with their passive Perception to detect you.

If you are spotted and are within 15 feet of where you were last seen, Perception Checks and Passive Perception made against your Stealth Checks have advantage until the end of your next turn.
If an enemy cannot hear you, their Perception checks and Passive Perception to detect you have Disadvantage.
Attacking is the exception; if you attack, you are immediately revealed to the target after your attack resolves.
If you are revealed to a creature, you are revealed to all other creatures that can communicate with it.

These abilities are subject to change to other abilities in-game, as in instances related to Wood Elves or the Skulker feat.

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This makes spamming stealth for Rogues harder, but makes sustained stealth much better.

It allows players to stealthily move around and engage in melee combat.

But most importantly, it leaves very little to guesswork, and everyone knows exactly how stealth is going to work.

With this, a Rogue could Action: Hide, move into a new location and Bonus Action: Hide and still be hidden despite moving into enemy's line of sight. The idea is that the Rogue timed their movements to move only when the enemy isn't looking or by creating a mild distraction away from their designation. A Non-Rogue can do the same, but since they cannot use the Hide action more than once per turn (except, I guess, without Action Surge), they'd have to move in much smaller increments.

You can also kill a target in melee and remain hidden, to run up and attack a second target, both attacks getting Advantage. You'd be revealed as soon as you attacked and failed to kill someone. Leaving a body may not reveal you, but it's definitely enough to raise the alarm, preventing Surprise on additional targets (think Far Cry style of stealth).

Needless to say, this makes Assassins REALLY fun.

[John Out West]

I've toyed around with stealth before. I generally laid out how each of the senses, including smell, can be used to detect and how you could avoid being seen. I also added in that failing a stealth check against passive perception only put the target on edge, and then a contest had to begin for perceiver and Stealth character.

Theres a lot of ways you can do this and i think you're solutions are fine, but I'd ask how, if at all, you'd plan to handle stealth assassinations. Realistically if i attack from stealth i can kill almost anyone in Real Life. In 5e, you could essentially stub their toe as the first attack of a 20 minute battle. This wasn't anything I could find a solution to in 5e or most HP based RPGs without heavily modifying or making my own RPG altogether.


Something to think about, and get back to me if you find a solution.

[Man_Over_Game]

I've toyed around with stealth before. I generally laid out how each of the senses, including smell, can be used to detect and how you could avoid being seen. I also added in that failing a stealth check against passive perception only put the target on edge, and then a contest had to begin for perceiver and Stealth character.

Theres a lot of ways you can do this and i think you're solutions are fine, but I'd ask how, if at all, you'd plan to handle stealth assassinations. Realistically if i attack from stealth i can kill almost anyone in Real Life. In 5e, you could essentially stub their toe as the first attack of a 20 minute battle. This wasn't anything I could find a solution to in 5e or most HP based RPGs without heavily modifying or making my own RPG altogether.


Something to think about, and get back to me if you find a solution.

Any major solution to that dilemma would dramatically shift the balance of 5e with players vs. monsters.

However, in the instance of player vs. mundane humanoids, my solution is pretty spot on, since it allows you to be able to have advantage to hit the first target, and upon killing them, be able to attack (maybe kill) a second target. This is a much more drastic change for the Assassin than most other characters, but it's still a step in the right direction. Most mundane humanoids don't have much HP, so a single attack with Advantage is usually enough to kill them.

I could add a clause where attacks against surprised creatures are automatic criticals, but that heavily steps on the toes of the Assassin, but yet nothing else really fits. Advantage already improves your crit chance from 5% to 9.75%, and almost guarantees you a hit (and provides sneak attack damage for rogues). On the flipside, if the player party was surprised and had the same critical mechanic turned on them, they'd have a conniption over being killed in the first round of combat without being able to react.

With this, I feel that most players could assassinate most creatures much more easily, and without unbalancing a huge pillar of the game. With this, I think it makes stealth a niche option, but only a reliable option if you invest into it (as with a Rogue/Assassin).

For what you're looking for, though, what kind of solution is possible that your players would still think is fun if it was turned against them?

[John Out West]

Any major solution to that dilemma would dramatically shift the balance of 5e with players vs. monsters.

However, in the instance of player vs. mundane humanoids, my solution is pretty spot on, since it allows you to be able to have advantage to hit the first target, and upon killing them, be able to attack (maybe kill) a second target. This is a much more drastic change for the Assassin than most other characters, but it's still a step in the right direction. Most mundane humanoids don't have much HP, so a single attack with Advantage is usually enough to kill them.

I could add a clause where attacks against surprised creatures are automatic criticals, but that heavily steps on the toes of the Assassin, but yet nothing else really fits. Advantage already improves your crit chance from 5% to 9.75%, and almost guarantees you a hit (and provides sneak attack damage for rogues). On the flipside, if the player party was surprised and had the same critical mechanic turned on them, they'd have a conniption over being killed in the first round of combat without being able to react.

With this, I feel that most players could assassinate most creatures much more easily, and without unbalancing a huge pillar of the game. With this, I think it makes stealth a niche option, but only a reliable option if you invest into it (as with a Rogue/Assassin).

For what you're looking for, though, what kind of solution is possible that your players would still think is fun if it was turned against them?

Well the problem is that most enemies have a CR that doesn't necessarily relate to their race, so you will have CR10 humanoid enemies that have hundreds of hit points. I know no edition of any game where a dragon can be killed even with two surprise rounds.
I think what I did was made it so that, if you're in melee of an enemy who is unaware of your presence, and you can do a significant amount of damage to them, that they will be killed instantly. Probably a quarter of their health will kill them instantly.

I agree that the Assassin will be made obsolete, but i'll remind you that the assassin is based off of the already non-existence rules of stealth. It wouldn't take long to make something even better.

That being said, an enemy who is unaware of your presence is not an enemy who just saw you run out of the bushes and is surprised. In this case you have to be within melee of the enemy with the enemy having no idea that you are there. You cant charge at him or alert him in any way.

I think if you want Stealth to be part of your game in a meaningful way, then all encounters should start with the characters in stealth, until they are discovered in a way that alerts all other enemies in the encounter. Then it becomes a regular dungeon crawl/Fight Encounter. This is how i did it when i ran a ninja/horror campaigns. Stealth is great, but if one person sees one player for one second, the stealth game is over for the entire encounter/dungeon.

Of course, this means turning Stealth into its own pillar of gameplay. Adding enemies in overlapping guarding positions, placing warning bells that players can cut down or silence, lines of cover, windows, light/darkness, fog, noise distractions, wild animals, etc.

For me, I changed systems. I use Westbound (Westboundgame.com)which has humanoid characters at extremely low health when they're not actively defending themselves. For my players the experience is largely the same as normal, except now when I say that they hear a twig snap in the woods, they all spring to attention. If they are surprised it's largely their own fault, unless I forgot to describe something or give them an adequate description of the situation.

I'll note, adding a fourth pillar to any game creates more work for the DM, that is, until you get used to improvising it. I still haven't DM'ed enough stealth campaigns to know where windows/guard positions/lighting should be off the top of my head, but it was super fun to design stealth encounters that could turn into combat encounters at any second.

[John Out West]

I found this, something i wrote years ago when I was working on the stealth campaigns. Its old, so do not judge me.

The rules I've created came from the desire to build a far east ninja campaign where the focus was on stealth instead of combat. The rules as they stand were not sufficient for such a campaign to function. I started by dissecting the current rules.

As it stands, the rules are:
1: That a characters speed is halved while sneaking around.
2: Stealth rolls are made against passive perception when the enemy is not actively searching, and is in contest with the Perception skill when actively searching.
3: Characters who are passively perceiving gain or lose a +5 bonus depending on if they are at advantage or disadvantage.
4: Stealth rolls are called based on DM judgement.

The last of these is the most troubling as it is too convoluted to stand as a rule. Therefore it was my first task to figure out when a roll should be called. There are a three senses your enemy has that you must overcome; Sight, Smell & Sound.

Sight: Light: In bright light, your enemy will be able to see you if he looks your direction. If you are beyond 60ft, you may do a stealth check VS his Passive or Active perception to try to maneuver around them.
In Dim-Light, targets have difficulty seeing at all. Roll a stealth check with advantage to maneuver around them.
In Darkness, targets cannot see at all and get no chance at perceiving you.

Sight: Obstructions: Also known as "Cover," having something between you and your target will make it more difficult to see you. If line of sight is obstructed by something that is only partially opaque or only partially obstructs his view, then you have advantage on Stealth Checks. If you're behind an object that completely obscures you, then you have automatically succeed stealth checks against sight based perception checks.

The first thing to note is that a character can use stealth in bright light while beyond 60ft of the perceiver, this decision was made because 60ft seems to be the standard for all sight, such as the extent of Darkvision.

Sound: When near your enemy, he has a solid chance of hearing your movement. When you are within 40ft of a target, he will have a chance of hearing your scratching clothes and soft footsteps.
While beyond 40ft, the target automatically fails on perception checks to hear a sneaking character. When within 40ft, they have Disadvantage, and while within 20ft, the listener has no disadvantage or Advantage.
Storms, Ringing Bells, Dogs Barking, loud conversations are all things that can give you advantage against a creatures ability to hear you.

Smell: Given the right situation, an enemy may be able to perceive you via smell. This is rare, as most creatures lack a delicate nose to pick up a creature. However, for those creatures that have such a power, your scent flows from you like an ever expanding aura. This aura moves out in a burst centered on you, and remains behind when you leave, creating a trail. The scent moves out in a 5ft radius every turn a creature is actively moving. If you are not moving, it moves 2.5ft every six seconds instead, or 5ft every 12 seconds.
Like the fog cloud spell, wind of over 10 miles per hour will move the smell 5ft per round, and a wind of 50 miles per hour will move the smell 25ft per round.
Particularly strong scents, such as sprayed perfume or a freshly stepped in doggy-doo may result in enemies being able to smell and perceive you.

With that we know when we can roll for stealth checks and under what circumstances. It should be said that, the contest will always be between the strongest sense of the perceiver, or the sense with the most advantage. Now I want to look at some specific rules. The PHB already states that you cannot stealth while in combat, or rather, an enemy is not surprised when it is attacked while in combat. Therefore, trying to stealth in after combat has began is essentially pointless.

Hiding In Combat: Hiding during a combat is difficult. If an enemy is aware of your presence in the battle, they will not be surprised when you jump from the shadow. If you can hide reasonably from an enemy during combat, you do not gain another surprise round or advantage, but rather are allowed to exit the combat.

When a sneaking character is detected in the traditional rules, the jig is up and all characters roll for initiative. This, however, leads to rather anticlimactic stealth adventures. Instead I offer that perceivers have two states; Unaware and Suspicious. An Unaware target uses passive perception when there is a creature who is using stealth near them, while a Suspicious character contests all stealth rolls with a perception check. When a creature fails to exceed a Unaware character's passive perception, The Unaware character becomes Suspicious of activity. The Suspicious character sees a shadow or hears a rustle in a bush. The character knows the direction of the strange activity, but does not know the extent of the danger. The Suspicious character will either stand guard or investigate, resulting in one of two statuses: Either they will investigate and see the cause of the disturbance, or investigate and return empty handed. If they return empty handed, they will remain suspicious of activity for as long as they feel endangered. If they find the cause of the disturbance, they may be brought to violence or relief, as they will either find a stealthy and threatening creature or the small rabbit that the creature planted before they snuck past.

General: The Results of Failure: When you roll a stealth check and fail, the results can vary depending on the level of risk you are taking. A Low-Risk scenario will result in your target becoming suspicious of activity, and most likely give away your position. A High-Risk scenario will result in the target spotting you and becoming immediately alert of danger. When an enemy is alerted of danger, roll Initiative without a surprise round. (assuming they wish to fight)

Movement: Speed is halved while sneaking. If you are standing still, you have advantage on stealth Sight & Sound based rolls. You can sneak at your normal speed at disadvantage.

Stacking Advantage: When using stealth, at times you may be at advantage against a perceiving foe. If at any time you have two advantages, or your foe has disadvantage while you have advantage, you may consider it an automatic success.

General: Active Perception & Distraction: A target who is actively perceiving & is doing so diligently will have advantage while trying to perceive you. However, most targets will be casually perceiving, and most will be distracted themselves with books, conversation or other oddities. Those who are casually perceiving do so with their passive perception, and those who are distracted roll at disadvantage.

General: Deception & Suspicion:
A target who is not distracted can be made distracted.
If a target becomes suspicious of an activity if it lacks subtly, you may roll your Deception against his Insight in such a case. However, suspicion to force an enemy to search for you may be exactly what you want if you wish to simply slip past him.
While Suspicious, a target will be actively perceiving, and have advantage on search & Perception checks.
A Charmed creature will perceive at disadvantage as if distracted.
A Frightened creature is distracted easily by any sound or sight.
A Incapacitated creature automatically fails all perception checks against stealth.

[Lord Von Becker]

Okay, this looks cool. I'll note that Advantage does not almost guarantee a hit against peer AC - you 'normally' have slightly better than 50/50 odds to hit, and Advantage makes it more like 75/25. (This does mean that in practice, Disadvantage is roughly twice as powerful as Advantage. And also that shield walls with the Protection style are really ludicrously powerful in melee. But I digress.)
Anyway, I plan to bookmark this for my own use. Congrats!

[Man_Over_Game]

Okay, this looks cool. I'll note that Advantage does not almost guarantee a hit against peer AC - you 'normally' have slightly better than 50/50 odds to hit, and Advantage makes it more like 75/25. (This does mean that in practice, Disadvantage is roughly twice as powerful as Advantage. And also that shield walls with the Protection style are really ludicrously powerful in melee. But I digress.)
Anyway, I plan to bookmark this for my own use. Congrats!

Interesting note on advantage/disadvantage.

I always assumed it roughly equated to being nearly the same. Normally, a d20 averages to a 10.5, Advantage averages out to a 15 (+4.5), and Disadvantage averages out to 7 (-3.5): https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/14690/how-does-rolling-two-dice-and-taking-the-higher-affect-the-average-outcome

I'm glad you found this useful! Let me know if you notice any kinks with it, I'm always looking to improve it.

[KyleG]

Would things be resolved differently if the idea was to incapacitate and bind/gag them sort of thing? Or if you managed to enter their sleeping changes (with any number of ways that could have gone wrong) and attempting to kill them in their sleep? And im talking at this stage about fairly low level characters, politicians with no "adventurer/villain" skills.

[Man_Over_Game]

Would things be resolved differently if the idea was to incapacitate and bind/gag them sort of thing? Or if you managed to enter their sleeping changes (with any number of ways that could have gone wrong) and attempting to kill them in their sleep? And im talking at this stage about fairly low level characters, politicians with no "adventurer/villain" skills.

I'd probably make those things inherent to specific weapons/actions rather than actions through stealth. For example:

Strangulation rules: You may attempt to Strangle someone as part of a Grapple attempt by imposing Disadvantage to your initial attempt to grapple. You can continue to strangle the creature during the same grapple by using your action, causing the creature to gain one stack of Exhaustion. Rather than dying from this Exhaustion, they fall unconscious. If they are no longer grappled, they lose one stack of Exhaustion made by strangulation at the start of their turns. Strangled creatures do not make noise.

Grapple enhancement: If you would have advantage to your attack roll, you would also gain advantage to an Athletics check made to grapple someone (which becomes applicable through Stealth, and cancels out the Strangulation Disadvantage).

Additionally, with RAW, sleeping characters are considered Unconscious, and melee attacks on Unconscious characters makes a critical hit, doubling all dice roll damage (including sneak attacks and most poison damage).

You could just add a caveat that lethal poisons deal double damage when applied through a critical hit (and so deal x4 damage).

[Lord Von Becker]

Those strangulation rules make sense, but I'd swap the "can't kill them" for "if this would kill them, you can choose to knock them unconscious instead".
I'd also say that it's a separate condition from Exhaustion, so it can also be used for drowning. Call it Suffocation, maybe?
(I haven't looked at the existing drowning rules, but I think they're more forgiving.)

[Man_Over_Game]

Those strangulation rules make sense, but I'd swap the "can't kill them" for "if this would kill them, you can choose to knock them unconscious instead".
I'd also say that it's a separate condition from Exhaustion, so it can also be used for drowning. Call it Suffocation, maybe?
(I haven't looked at the existing drowning rules, but I think they're more forgiving.)

That's fair. Making 6 turns of doing nothing but strangling someone is pretty long as it is for an adventuring game.

For Suffocation in general, though, I guess you could make it a DC Saving Throw equal to the number of times they've rolled the check, making another check each time they take damage (similar to Constitution). So after turn 10 (one minute), or turn 5 and taking 5 hits (and being at effective turn 10), they're starting to fail, with their strength getting worse and worse.

That doesn't help much with strangulation with your hands, though. Players don't want to have to take 15 rounds for one guard.

[Mith]

What I would look at doing with strangulation rules/stunning tools is that a creature is a strangle hold must make a Con save equal to your STR modifier plus number of rounds of being strangled if using bare hands. A sap (1d4) can be used to add 1d4 to the DC, though any blunt trauma would do. Maybe a monk can count their martial arts die. If I allowed these class feature interactions, I would have something like rogues force a save for every two SA dice, Barbarians in rage force Disadvantage on the save.

The victim make a save each turn or after each hit. A failed save earns one level of Pain (your temporary Exhaustion rules).

So a Fighter with two attacks could Strangle on the first attack, strike with the other, than action surge to land two more attacks. If they have two more attacks. This means the victim rolls a DC 5, 6, 7, 8 all at once. If they make those saves, the Fighter can bump the saves up to DC 10 and 11 on his next turn. Any ally can also join in on the piniata party and help raise the DC.

[Man_Over_Game]

What I would look at doing with strangulation rules/stunning tools is that a creature is a strangle hold must make a Con save equal to your STR modifier plus number of rounds of being strangled if using bare hands. A sap (1d4) can be used to add 1d4 to the DC, though any blunt trauma would do. Maybe a monk can count their martial arts die. If I allowed these class feature interactions, I would have something like rogues force a save for every two SA dice, Barbarians in rage force Disadvantage on the save.

The victim make a save each turn or after each hit. A failed save earns one level of Pain (your temporary Exhaustion rules).

So a Fighter with two attacks could Strangle on the first attack, strike with the other, than action surge to land two more attacks. If they have two more attacks. This means the victim rolls a DC 5, 6, 7, 8 all at once. If they make those saves, the Fighter can bump the saves up to DC 10 and 11 on his next turn. Any ally can also join in on the piniata party and help raise the DC.

I do like the use of Pain in this example (it suits), but I wrote it this way so that each of my mechanics are modular but still have cross-interaction if someone decided to use several at the same time.

I feel like with your example does seem a little bit hard to track, though.

First, you can attempt a strangle hold by using an attack from your Action to have the target make a Constitution Saving Throw against your Strength Modifier. If you're using a Sap, add 1d4. If you're a Monk, add your Martial Arts die. If you're a Rogue, add 1/2 of your Sneak Attack Dice (rounded up). If you're a Barbarian, the target has Disadvantage to Save.
Whenever the creature takes damage or you attempt to strangle them further, increase the DC by 1.

If the target fails, they are afflicted with Pain (which then requires reference to the added Pain rules).

It's a bit much. While I agree it'd be interactive, I feel like both examples (yours AND mine) are a bit rules-heavy for 5e's design scheme. I'll try to come up with something neater a bit later that encourages those kinds of features without going overboard.

[Dragons_Ire]

These are really cool! I will be testing these in my primary campaign, along with your rules for ability checks and initiative. I will let you know how it goes!

I may also use some elements of your adrenaline surges when creating future bosses, hehehe. :smallbiggrin:

[Mith]

I do like the use of Pain in this example (it suits), but I wrote it this way so that each of my mechanics are modular but still have cross-interaction if someone decided to use several at the same time.

I feel like with your example does seem a little bit hard to track, though.

First, you can attempt a strangle hold by using an attack from your Action to have the target make a Constitution Saving Throw against your Strength Modifier. If you're using a Sap, add 1d4. If you're a Monk, add your Martial Arts die. If you're a Rogue, add 1/2 of your Sneak Attack Dice (rounded up). If you're a Barbarian, the target has Disadvantage to Save.
Whenever the creature takes damage or you attempt to strangle them further, increase the DC by 1.

If the target fails, they are afflicted with Pain (which then requires reference to the added Pain rules).

It's a bit much. While I agree it'd be interactive, I feel like both examples (yours AND mine) are a bit rules-heavy for 5e's design scheme. I'll try to come up with something neater a bit later that encourages those kinds of features without going overboard.

That was more pulling ideas out of my head. I do agree its a mess, I just like the idea of having tools and each martial class features interacting with this rule. It more started with "if a sap gave you a bonus to your success, other things should be showing up as well." Just having the sap be a light easily concealed tool works well enough. Although, maybe you want a Garrote to give Disadvantage to the save?

Just STR modifier would work and have attacks trigger another save. Although writing this makes me wonder about STR mod + proficiency? Could do an Athletics check, but that means your having a chance for a Barbarian to show up with a DC 19 check to start with, and at a normal attack bonus. If that succeeds, they then roll another check if the Barb punches them. If this was the system used, I wouldn't have scaling DC, since the Disadvantage on saves will take over and be hard enough as is.


The general thought with class feature interactions goes:


-If you can use tools to club your victim to add a penalty, Monk martial Arts Dice should apply to this as well, and better simply because I like the idea of a Flurry of Blows pummelling someone down into the ground under a strangle hold.


-In a similar vein, I would want Rage damage dice and Sneak Attack Dice to apply, but in different ways. I like that the SA precision fiction can force multiple rolls with one blow. If they can do a Stranglehold with SA, a high level Rogue could force multiple rolls on their first attack. Rage giving Disadvantage is something different that maybe would wand to change.


-The Fighter has more attacks than the Rogue, so can actually make a comparable number of saves. With a tool, they could even place such a penalty on the save as well. Sort of a medly of Monk/tool style and Rogue style Strangleholds.


Personally, I would probably go with the "Skill check style, with either Barbarian Rage or Garrotte causing a Disadvantage on the Save (Rage Advantage on Athletics checks transfer into Disadvantage on the Saving throw). Taking damage causes you to make a save, a critical hit means two saves.

This means that strangling someone takes time, but an overwhelming assault piles on all the whelm real quick.

[Man_Over_Game]

One concern I had was the fact that it's difficult to implement things that would make sense to apply to Strangulation all at the same time (Martial Arts die, Rage damage bonus, Sneak Attack), which is actually why I had Pain scale with your overall damage (which was an easy transition for everyone).

However, a similar approach could be used, I think. Something like:

When you make a melee weapon attack with an Unarmed Strike or a weapon with Light and Finesse with your Action, you can attempt to Strangle the target. The target takes no damage from your attack, but instead must make a Constitution Saving Throw against the damage they would have taken. The target has Advantage on their initial Saving Throw if they were aware of you when you attempted to Strangle them. [Insert a bunch of rules that causes other damage to force new rolls, or something]