Stealth?

[Aussiehams]

G'day all.

I was wondering how many tables use stealth in their games? Most of the games I play we want to find and fight monsters, and most encounters are level appropriate.
Even multiple hard encounters seem manageable if we play smart, so avoiding winnable fights seems counter productive.
I can see it being useful in information gathering and such, and RP, but that's about it.
Surprise doesn't seem very powerful, so do most groups do a lot of stealth stuff in the combat pillar?

[diplomancer]

Surprise removes around 30% of opponents combat effectiveness, probably more with good tactics.

Also, avoiding fights can also be quite valuable, depending on the situation, especially if the DM is playing the monsters smart (i.e, they will run, get greater numbers, and then pounce on you).

Pass without trace might be the most relativelt powerful spell in the game. I might not always pick it, but I always want someone in the party to have it.

[Aett_Thorn]

Stealth has saved our butts many, many times in the past. It has also allowed us to take on more powerful monsters than we might have been able to without it, by getting in a "surprise round" before the big bad notices us.

If your DM isn't giving you decent challenges, then it might not be as worth it, but if you're looking at usually having at least one character go down in the big bad fight, making sure you get the first shot in can be quite good.

[Sigreid]

We use stealth all the time to start fights. Works better than running face first into the enemy.

[caden_varn]

Stealth is nice in theory, but it depends on how the table plays it. If everyone needs to succeed it is a lot less useful, as chances are good that someone in a group of 4+ will roll low, and that's before you take account of the unskilled low dex oaf with disadvantage from heavy armour. SO chances of stealth being successful are very limited.

I think the idea is supposed to be that if at least half the party make their roll, stealth (or any group activity) is successful, but my table normally forgets this.
Not sure of the exact rule as I don't DM D&D these days.

Making stealth worthwhile has been an ongoing problem throughout my 30 years of gaming - the problem of multiple people needing to roll high on stealth, vs only one person needing to roll high on perception. I've yet to see a great answer to this, although I've seen a few decent attempts where designers have at least thought about the problem.

[diplomancer]

Even the fact that the opponents cannot take reactions is very powerful if there are casters protected by martials, as you can simply walk up to the casters and start beating them up (though remember that this works only if opponents are surprised AND you've rolled higher initiative than they)

[stoutstien]

I think stealth IN combat is often overlooked outside of rogues. Sometimes hiding from a foe opens up tons of tactical options. Had a party of 3 lv 2 characters take out 2 ogres this way.

[Catullus64]

I tend to find reconnaissance to be the primary value of stealth in a dungeon-y situation. Your more stealth-inclined members can scout out unexplored areas, identify foes, and return to the rest of the party to formulate a plan of attack. It's often better to lure enemies into territory you control and are familiar with than to fight them in their own chosen location.

That's to say nothing of how often Stealth comes up outside of a dungeon environment. Maybe it's just the games I run and the scenarios I present, but players seem to want to respond to a lot of scenarios with stealth, whether it be shadowing people, eavesdropping on conversations, breaking into people's houses to gather information, etc. Stealth may be a secondary concern to the Combat pillar, but I would argue it to be one of the most important skills for the Exploration and Interaction pillars.

[Tanarii]

My rulings for scouting and surprise are:

1) if you want count as a separate group for making stealthy checks, you must remain 60ft ahead of the main party. This distance is based roughly on how sound drops off over distance. Stealth checks to hide sound become necessary at roughly 60ft from enemies, so allies another 60ft beyond that are effectively undetectable by sound unless they're being particularly noisy. (Originally I only required 30ft separation but that was too close for tactical/support purposes.)

2) attempts to surprise must be on purpose, ambush attempts as a group. Starting distance for attempted ambushes (succeed or fail) is typically 30ft for the primary ambush team making the stealth checks, 90ft for the rest of the party. Otherwise default combat is 60ft start for the entire party, no checks needed.

This has made ambushes not only possibly, but a tactical choice about how ou want to deploy your team. Unless the scouts are ambushed or literally stumble across enemies, they almost always detect something, signal the team to halt, and fall back to confer. Then the team decides if they need more info (scout goes in to to get closer), proceed in ambush formation (which may include additional semi-stealthy characters up front), or goes in as an entire team with no intent to achieve surprise.

Basically, PCs generally try to act something like a recon patrol when on the move. Edit: occasionally a table comes together that doesn't have an effective scout. That rarely ends well.

[Contrast]

Surprise doesn't seem very powerful

What?

You get an entire round when the enemy stands around twiddling their thumbs before they actually start doing stuff.

In my experience most combats in 5E only last 2-4 rounds in the first place. Getting a free round is insanely good.

[JakOfAllTirades]

Our Rogue has an insane Stealth skill and uses her bonus action to hide almost every round in combat. It's scary effective... arrows just appear out of nowhere and do massive sneak attack damage. Sometimes with extra poison damage. And the bad guys keel over dead.

[GlenSmash!]

What?

You get an entire round when the enemy stands around twiddling their thumbs before they actually start doing stuff.

In my experience most combats in 5E only last 2-4 rounds in the first place. Getting a free round is insanely good.

Yup, a free round with my GWM Barbarian and my party's Assassin Rogue pretty much amounts to 2-4 dead dead mooks before the enemy can counter. This tips numbers into our favor so action economy is more often than not on the party's side.

[sithlordnergal]

Stealth? What's that?

In all seriousness, I never bother with stealth, even against overwhelming odds. Even as a Rogue I have never once used the Bonus Action Hide ability simply because I don't see it as worth the effort. I'm better off repositioning myself or something.

The one time I did do a stealth mission I was playing a Wild Magic Sorcerer/Lore Bard. Very first encounter my Wild Magic went off big time and I began to glow like a blindingly bright torch and had music playing around me.

Another time we had snuck into an Orc stronghold, and I was a Fighter/Wizard. I ended up getting mostly surrounded and had to use Thunderwave...which ended up alerting every orc in the tribe to our location and turned what should have been many small battles into one big one. But we won in the end.

EDIT: ...You know, I just had a thought. That explains why I've never really believed all those people complaining about how powerful stealth is...I never use it, and my party never sends out a scout anyway. Even if we are being stealthy, we'll generally break stealth to try and talk our way through encounters instead of killing them.

[Spiritchaser]

In the campaigns I DM, the players have:

Consistently used stealth to attempt to generate surprise. It doesn’t always work, but over the course of a day it works enough to save on long or short rest cool down abilities and spell slots. That makes for an easier day.

Consistently used stealth to pick their fights, or at least to pick where and when they happened. Not as big an edge as a surprise round, but potentially big, and it saves resources throughout the day, meaning they can go further, or harder when needed.

Used stealth and an inside man, and a reckless plan to gank the Big bad right to hades, at a time of the party’s choosing when he was alone and vulnerable. That upended the campaign for a session or two since he wasn’t “supposed” to die that soon, or indeed be killable by such a low level party. Lots of fun

Used stealth to listen, quietly to all manner of interesting conversations and follow all manner of interesting people to interesting places. It’s hard to put combat value on this but it saved a lot of other skill rolls and hard thought.

Used stealth to vanish out of a situation that would have meant almost certain death for one player. I say almost because it’s hard to guess what else he might have come up with, possibly something... but in a standup fight he was done.

Used stealth during combat to protect vulnerable party members or increase mobility. This actually happens less than I’d have expected, but it still happens... much more in one campaign than in others, because of one particular player.

Used stealth to pilfer keys, steal treasure, rescue a prisoner without drawing a sword (mostly anyway)

Without stealth these campaigns would look very different.

[Hail Tempus]

What?

You get an entire round when the enemy stands around twiddling their thumbs before they actually start doing stuff.

In my experience most combats in 5E only last 2-4 rounds in the first place. Getting a free round is insanely good. And if you roll high enough in initiative, you can take two turns before the other side has a chance to act.

Stealth is certainly a benefit to martials, but it's also a boon to casters. A group of enemies surprised around a campfire are easier to target with an AOE if they don't get a chance to move first.

[Aussiehams]

Interesting to hear.
We usually have mellee orientated heavy armor wearers, or other non stealthy PCs, and are very reluctant to split the party so I guess that's why we don't use it.

And I was thinking surprise for one isolated PC isn't that powerful, if the rest of the group is hanging back to let them do their stealth thing.

[Aussiehams]

Do people find they stealth more in Milestone leveling? We have a bit of a clear the map mentality, and like the XP, so avoiding winnable combats seems somewhat counter productive.

[HappyDaze]

My rulings for scouting and surprise are:

1) if you want count as a separate group for making stealthy checks, you must remain 60ft ahead of the main party. This distance is based roughly on how sound drops off over distance. Stealth checks to hide sound become necessary at roughly 60ft from enemies, so allies another 60ft beyond that are effectively undetectable by sound unless they're being particularly noisy. (Originally I only required 30ft separation but that was too close for tactical/support purposes.)

2) attempts to surprise must be on purpose, ambush attempts as a group. Starting distance for attempted ambushes (succeed or fail) is typically 30ft for the primary ambush team making the stealth checks, 90ft for the rest of the party. Otherwise default combat is 60ft start for the entire party, no checks needed.

This has made ambushes not only possibly, but a tactical choice about how ou want to deploy your team. Unless the scouts are ambushed or literally stumble across enemies, they almost always detect something, signal the team to halt, and fall back to confer. Then the team decides if they need more info (scout goes in to to get closer), proceed in ambush formation (which may include additional semi-stealthy characters up front), or goes in as an entire team with no intent to achieve surprise.

Basically, PCs generally try to act something like a recon patrol when on the move. Edit: occasionally a table comes together that doesn't have an effective scout. That rarely ends well.

Those distances are incredibly short. It is easy to hear whispers at 30 feet and normal conversation at more than twice that distance. Don't let the silly-short distances that spells dealing thunder damage can be heard be your gauge--a sound loud enough to hurt somebody can only be heard 100 feet away? I can clap my hands and be heard more than 100 feet away, and a gunshot can be heard for miles (yet the sound itself causes no significant damage unless you're stupid enough to discharge it right near someone's ear).

[Tanarii]

Those distances are incredibly short. It is easy to hear whispers at 30 feet and normal conversation at more than twice that distance. No it isn't.

[Sigreid]

Those distances are incredibly short. It is easy to hear whispers at 30 feet and normal conversation at more than twice that distance. Don't let the silly-short distances that spells dealing thunder damage can be heard be your gauge--a sound loud enough to hurt somebody can only be heard 100 feet away? I can clap my hands and be heard more than 100 feet away, and a gunshot can be heard for miles (yet the sound itself causes no significant damage unless you're stupid enough to discharge it right near someone's ear).

For the thunder damage spells, if you want logic to go with it, the frequency that can be heard is heard out to 100'. The damage may be being done by frequencies outside the range our ears work in.

And you ay be able to hear whispers from 30' if there's no environmental noise and you're listening intently but you're unlikely to be able to know what is said.

[Tanarii]

And you ay be able to hear whispers from 30' if there's no environmental noise and you're listening intently but you're unlikely to be able to know what is said.Even that would be hard. But yeah, in a total silent dungeon, with enemies that are likewise lurking in total silence and not creating ambient, it's reasonable to assume detection distances increase significantly.

But with any reasonable ambient noise a normal (but not loud) conversation and someone generally moving around can easily be missed at 60ft. Moving from 120ft to 90ft, there's no reason characters moving around somewhat quietly and not speaking, but not very stealthily, should need to make a stealth check against unaware enemies. One for moving from 60ft to 30ft (which is what the surprise check effectively represents IMC) is fair game, I figure.

IIRC the DMG screen sets a surprise encounter distance at 2d6x5, and a normal encounter distance at 2d6x10. So my default encounter distances are in line (30ft vs 35ft, 60ft vs 70ft). And my 60ft behind ruling for seperate parties actual puts non-stealth characters in an ambush further away than the average for non-surprise situations (90ft instead of 70ft). Given I start an attempted ambush at surprise range for the ones trying to achieve stealth, success or fail, that seemed like a fair trade-off.

All this assumes no open line of sight without cover of course.

[HappyDaze]

Even that would be hard. But yeah, in a total silent dungeon, with enemies that are likewise lurking in total silence and not creating ambient, it's reasonable to assume detection distances increase significantly.

But with any reasonable ambient noise a normal (but not loud) conversation and someone generally moving around can easily be missed at 60ft. Moving from 120ft to 90ft, there's no reason characters moving around somewhat quietly and not speaking, but not very stealthily, should need to make a stealth check against unaware enemies. One for moving from 60ft to 30ft (which is what the surprise check effectively represents IMC) is fair game, I figure.

IIRC the DMG screen sets a surprise encounter distance at 2d6x5, and a normal encounter distance at 2d6x10. So my default encounter distances are in line (30ft vs 35ft, 60ft vs 70ft). And my 60ft behind ruling for seperate parties actual puts non-stealth characters in an ambush further away than the average for non-surprise situations (90ft instead of 70ft). Given I start an attempted ambush at surprise range for the ones trying to achieve stealth, success or fail, that seemed like a fair trade-off.

All this assumes no open line of sight without cover of course.

So open LOS with no cover and the maximum starting distance for your encounters is 120 feet? That's ludicrous. Ranged weapons and spells can greatly exceed that, and if you can see them to target them after the encounter has started why do they mysteriously 'zone in' to the encounter to well short of what you can see?

[HappyDaze]

And you ay be able to hear whispers from 30' if there's no environmental noise and you're listening intently but you're unlikely to be able to know what is said.

It doesn't matter if I can make out what is being said. What matters is that I'm alerted to their being someone there so I'm not surprised.

Besides, what is the 'ambient noise' of your typical dungeon? If there is noise, then there is likely activity and people are on guard. If ambient noise is very low, then any sound will carry in stone-walled tunnels and a whisper or a footstep will give your presence (not your specific location) away well before they are within 30 feet.

[Sigreid]

It doesn't matter if I can make out what is being said. What matters is that I'm alerted to their being someone there so I'm not surprised.

Besides, what is the 'ambient noise' of your typical dungeon? If there is noise, then there is likely activity and people are on guard. If ambient noise is very low, then any sound will carry in stone-walled tunnels and a whisper or a footstep will give your presence (not your specific location) away well before they are within 30 feet.

I'd expect ambient noise of an inhabited dungeon to be similar to any other inhabited "building". People at home have no particular reason to sit quietly on high alert

[MrStabby]

Stealth is nice in theory, but it depends on how the table plays it. If everyone needs to succeed it is a lot less useful, as chances are good that someone in a group of 4+ will roll low, and that's before you take account of the unskilled low dex oaf with disadvantage from heavy armour. SO chances of stealth being successful are very limited.

I think the idea is supposed to be that if at least half the party make their roll, stealth (or any group activity) is successful, but my table normally forgets this.
Not sure of the exact rule as I don't DM D&D these days.

Making stealth worthwhile has been an ongoing problem throughout my 30 years of gaming - the problem of multiple people needing to roll high on stealth, vs only one person needing to roll high on perception. I've yet to see a great answer to this, although I've seen a few decent attempts where designers have at least thought about the problem.

I see this as a feature, rather than a bug.

If you are the PC that invested in stealth, you want to be the one that is actually stealthy and doing the stealthy stuff. If your being stealthy doesn't actually make you more stealthy than anyone else in the party then it doesn't help you to be awesome.

A set of rules that say that you cannot muffle the sounds of your allies by being extra quiet seems to be a pretty good set of rules. Likewise having a second guard being a second chance to hear someone seems to be pretty reasonable as well. Now I get that maybe the listening shouldn't scale quite so well so I am happy to do perception as a group check to be alerted (but will revert to an individual check if it might result in the surprised condition).






Generally I think stealth is pretty powerful but only if you think of it as one tool in your toolbox and don't try and use it to solve every situation. Picking up when it is worth a bit of a scout ahead and when it is too risky is a big part of the game. This is important only if you actually use the information gathered to make decisions though. Doing things like saving your big spell still the reinforcements from the next room turn up for example or knowing where to drop a wall spell to keep enemies out... or even just using a scout to direct a fireball to hit enemies round a corner from the caster.

[Tanarii]

So open LOS with no cover and the maximum starting distance for your encounters is 120 feet? That's ludicrous.
No. That's not what I posted at all.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

I usually get pass without trace my characters(and stealth expertise if I can).

To be able to start battles in the right placement is good enough.
Getting suprise is just a bonus.


Last game we ambushed the enemies on the same trees they used to ambush us. Non got high enough perception to notice the other.

When our three archers notice the three archers what was on the same trees aiming on our half orc barbarian that was our bait as we aimed the half orc ranger that was their bait things got weird and we moved to diplomacy win with the encounter.
(When everyone roll 30+ with pass without trace and everyone roll no more then 11 on perception).

In the game I am running the enemies use a lot of stealth and so do my players as I run it with combat as war mindset.