DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Hall of Fame - Latest Top 10 completed games LMP: Lost Mines of Phandelver OOC thread

My ruling for the Goblins was you know they are there, as you saw them hide. So you get an Active Perception check versus their Stealth to spot them hiding. If you spot them and attack they have 3/4 cover for moderate foliage. If you don't spot them and choose to attack anyway, you have Disadvantage and they have 3/4 cover. Since you know they are there their Hiding gives them no Advantage on their attack as as soon as they pop out from cover you see them without needing any checks.

What some of you chose to do was to "Ready and Action" and wait for them to pop out of cover and shoot.

So my ruling then was that they get to pop out and shoot, your Readied Action occurs right after their attack, but before they can take their Bonus Action to try to Hide again.

In effect, for the first item bolded above my "DM's" call was to eliminate both the Advantage on the attack and the Disadvantage for trying to hide after.

IMO it is a different thing to try to hide once an enemy has seen you and knows you are there, but you step behind a tree, than it is when you are hiding behind the tree before the enemy knows you are present. Once the enemy has seen you, when you step behind the tree the enemy does not think "wow, I guess he's gone. No need to worry about him anymore" and then starts whistling a happy tune and bends over to tie his shoes. Rather the enemy keeps his eye on that tree and waits for you to show up again. It is a different level of hiding.

So for Lingo, I know why you are asking. If he doesn't have advantage he loses his Sneak Attack unless he attacks an enemy who is next to an ally. So because the Advantage/Disadvantage thing is critical to a pc feature I can go with doing it the other way (was trying to save dice rolling). The Goblins and Lingo would have advantage on their attacks but would have disadvantage to hide. (Which means Lingo needs to roll another d20 on his Hide attempt and take the lower of that roll of his prior roll).

The rest of the process is the same. Anyone trying to spot the Goblins or Lingo can make an Active Perception roll versus the Hide Check. If you fail, you can attack with disadvantage. If you succeed you can attack normally.

BTW, that last bolded question is unclear to me. A rogue gets no benefit for "Stealth". He gets a benefit for having Advantage. Stealth has no direct impact on the Sneak Attack as you get it even if you are standing right in the face of an enemy, but you have an ally next to you who is also attacking it.

So above that all the other bolded questions seem to suggest they are recommending a rogue does have Advantage on the attack and disadvantage to re-hide. But in the second bolded question he says the rogue has advantage if he is hidden ONLY until he leaves cover, then in the last one he says the rogue only gets a Stealth benefit if hidden. Taken together that implies as soon as the rogue leaves cover he is no longer hidden and thus gets no stealth benefit?

Nothing in that seems unreasonable to me <g>

I =might= give the player the choice of 'advantage on attack - disadvantage on hide' ... verses ... 'disadvantage on the attack - advantage on the hide' or maybe 'straight up attack and advantage on hide' ... guess it would matter what sort of 'cover' the rogue was working with <g>

Not an unreasonable view of the situation Zein ... IMHO <wink>

Zeim, Let me clear up something. It's easy for you to assume that my post was about Lingo, it wasn't. I was answering Gypsy's question about Jaliera, but that's an easy assumption to make. The characters are pretty similar.

The continues to be much debate, even between the authors of this version, about how it all should work. But I agree with MikeD, your approach is reasonable.

Your approach to the readied action is appropriate. I too would never allow a readied action to equate to a 4e immediate interrupt. Once a combatant starts their actions, nobody can suddenly jump in to stop them.

The last bolded statement is very important. Rogues gain their sneak damage by gaining advantage. The PRIMARY way that they gain advantage is by being stealthy - hiding. When they hide, the opponent doesn't know you are where you are so they don't anticipate the attack coming from where it comes, so the attack comes with advantage.

OK, but does it not seem to you that taking the second and 4th point listed together means they are saying a rogue loses his stealth as soon as he move from cover and therefore cannot sneak unless he attacks FROM cover?

Examples:

- A rogue is hiding behind a tree. He fires his bow at a passing wagon while still behind the tree. He gets his sneak.
- A rogue is hiding behind a tree. An enemy walks past the tree and the rogue stabs him as he passes the tree. He gets his sneak.
- A rogue is hiding behind a tree. An enemy is passing by 15 feet away. He runs out from behind the tree and stabs the enemy. He does NOT get his sneak as he has broken cover.
- A rogue is hiding behind a tree. As a wagon passes by he steps out from behind the tree to fire. He does NOT get his sneak as he has broken cover.

Is that how you interpret 2 and 4?

I don't know how you got that from what I said
Your last two bullets:

- A rogue is hiding behind a tree. An enemy is passing by 15 feet away. He runs out from behind the tree and stabs the enemy. He gets a sneak attack only if the enemy doesn't see him.
(Ex: he approaches quietly from behind)

- A rogue is hiding behind a tree. As a wagon passes by he steps out from behind the tree to fire. He gets his sneak attack only if the enemy doesn't see him
(Ex: he's behind them and the wagon is moving forward and that's where the occupants are looking)

In other words, I am going to be lenient with this rule as long as the player roleplays it properly. A stealthy character is not going to give it up easily. Additionally, I won't take away the one ability that the rogue class offers. It's too prohibitive. Odds are that if the rogue has successfully stealth, he's getting his sneak attack. There's very little that I'll do as a DM to take that away.

Look at point two and four in your link:




They state:

- Could a rogue hidden behind cover run to a target and sneak attack; are the hidden until after attacking or until after leaving cover? Answer: Hidden until leave.

- If a rogue attacks an enemy after emerging from a cover source, does he still gain benefit of stealth in the attack? Answer: Only if still hidden when making the attack.

So, the first point states as soon as they leave cover they are no longer hidden. The next one states that if they are not hidden they do not gain any stealth benefit.

So I would rule that as long as the rogue attacks WHILE hidden he gets to use stealth. If he comes out from cover to attack he loses his stealth benefit. In the example in the Z-Goblin Ambush thread, Lingo would gain stealth benefit when he fires from where he is, hidden under the wagon. But if he started the turn hidden, and then moves out from under the wagon into the open to fire, he loses his stealth benefit.

Also, to answer Gypsy's question about hitting an ally if she fired into melee, I think since the class has a benefit specifically for firing into melee that you have little chance of hitting an ally. Perhaps on a natural 1.

We don't always have to agree.

Rule 1: The GM is free to make what ever 'adjustment' is needed to make the game fun

Truism: No two GMs are the same.

Now in this particular instance ... looking at the last to 'controversial' examples, =I= think the 'sweet spot' in the adjudication is somewhere between the two examples.

Here is the 'deciding factor' IMHO. Can the stealthy rogue's 'stealth' when leaving cover (so taking penalties for moving and the like) 'beat' the target's passive perception? Or if the target is on alert for some reason, the target's active perception? Or if the rogue is having to move a lot ... or move through noisy terrain, perception with advantage (or maybe stealth with disadvantage ... see truism above <g> ) .... and so on.

It all goes back to rule 1 - the whole idea that there is not a separate rule of every conceivable situation (4e concept). There are 'broad' rules that the GM 'adjusts' to each particular situation as (s)he sees fit to support rule 1 <g>

Make sense?

Absolutely.

Brilliant discussion you guys are having, and I bet if it was on Reddit we'd be getting a thousand hits a day from gamers wanting an expert opinion.

Still, it's a tad unfortunate that the first encounter of the first adventure of the first publication of 5e is so perturbatory.

I wonder if WotC will clarify this in an errata or second printing.

I think this is more the fact that a bit of this is left open to DM interpretation and since we have two DMs here we have two slightly different interpretations. If Neptune or I were running this game alone we'd make a decision and move on and we'd not be having this in depth analysis.

The first answer to this is that Zeim and I are rules lawyers to the extreme. Our FTF group LOVED 4e because of all the strict rules. We are debating here because we're going to need to turn around and adjudicate for our pals who once spent 4 hours debating how far into the hall a fireball would extend if cast into a room that is smaller than the volume of the fireball. We have a physicist, an actuary and a bunch of IT sysadmins who snore during non-combat encounters. So, this is a selfish argument for us.

The second point is that the nature of this new version is that they WANT to be somewhat vague. WOTC's answer is "The DM gets to decide". Wait till we get to the discussion about the area affect of a cone! We presented that to them at Gencon and got a few different answers until someone came up with a brilliant idea.

This is probably why the DM Guide will be the last book published. Feedback is going to alter the way things are judged.

Actually Neil, I think it was exactly what we wanted based on the premise that this was to be a game to explore the new version <g>

Not that I want all that to get in the way of the adventure.

I'm a bit like you guys actually. I like to get my teeth into a rule set.

Based on this discussion, I Googled this encounter* and found quite afew players seem to have hit the curb at this point in the adventure.

I was thinking this might give a bad first impression, so they might change or clarify it some how.

*Interesting reading btw, recommend doing likewise. Some DM's interpretations were seriously OTT. TPK in the first encounter!

I saw a lot of the same sort of thing at GenCon. I think that the TPK thing is GMs familiar with previous versions missing the point of the new version ... that the GM is supposed to do what is needed to make the game fun for the players since a TPK is never fun for the players <wink>

Yeah, I started feeling that the game became more adversarial then story telling. I can honestly say that in 28 years of playing with my current FTF group, we have never had a TPK. Got close once in that we dragged our sorry butts out with a total of -7 hit points between us but only lost one player and it was our fault.

In the final battle of "Halls of the High King", a Moonshae module, a single PC, with about 10 hp left, survived the battle. Hundreds of bodies littered the battlefield. That was as close as I ever got to TPKing a party.

Years ago I used to play at conventions in CA with the creator of Arduin, Dave Hargrave. His favorite convention run was the Elimination Dungeon. It was designed to TPK by attrition. The goal as a PC was to be smart enough to survive. Quite the exercise, but not something I relish as a player or a GM other than once or twice a year at a con.

I =hate= killing players as a DM. Sure drop somebody below zero and let them be healed, but permanently killing? Nope. I feel like I failed in running the game when that happens. Now if a player of a 1st level pc decides he is going to charge headlong and attack an ancient red dragon, and after gently reminding him of the reality of the situation he won't change his mind, there is nothing I can do. But I won't do it gratuitously.

I don't mind if a player gets themselves killed by doing something really stupid. But I agree Zeim. In almost 30 years of running at GenCon I can count then number of players I have killed on one hand <g>

We needed you as our DM for the finals of the D&D Championship tournament last year!

Our DM made a bee-line for our cleric (my PC) and focused fire on him to insure we had no healing and then proceeded to TPK us there.

Well there is a reason I only ever judged D&D Championship sorts of games one time. It is designed to a grinder and I was always more about then fun of play for the players rather than the challenge of the players staying alive.

Oh I never run my games that way. Sure a threat of loss is always a nice thing to make it a challenge. But TPK, nah. PC death should be something planned and utilized for story purposes. Not just a waste because of die rolls.

BTW, the reason I am pushing the encounter in the Z-Ambush thread so much faster than the other group is that as of Sunday morning I am heading off to Barcelona for a week and I don't know how much posting I'll be able to get in. I wanted to do my best to wrap up the encounter before I go.