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## Angry Sober Review: 5e PHB

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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Wed Sep 09, 2015 6:16 am

> Vaegrim wrote:If you think I’ve read these rules incorrectly this is a great place to call me out on it!

You've got an impressive chunk of mind caulk put together. It is however completely bullshit. The mere existence of hidden objects on page 178 demands that we either abandon your idea that hidden is a condition that upgrades unseen to unheard or add additional crystal spheres to the model by claiming the hidden condition for creatures is fundamentally not the same as the hidden condition for objects, but we can do better. Let's start the quotes that do not fit with your system:

> 5e PHB wrote:Combatants often try to escape their foes' notice by hiding, casting the invisibility spell, or lurking in darkness.

That's right bitches! Lurking in darkness isn't the same thing as hiding. Just not being seen or heard is different from hiding. So hiding can't just be adding the "unheard" condition to the "unseen" condition you already have, it has to do something else. What that something else might be s anyone's guess. You took a stab at it, but you're obviously wrong.

> 5e PHB wrote:Until you are discovered or you stop hiding, that check's total is contested by the Wisdom (Perception) check of any creature that actively searches for signs of your presence.
> ...
> Signs of its passage might still be noticed, however, and it still has to stay quiet.

Look at those two bits together, emphasis added by me. You can be unseen and stay quiet and still get detected by "signs of passage (or presence)" and that ends your hiding state because you don't have a hiding value any more at that point. So you can keep the unseen and unheard conditions and still not be hiding anymore.

> Vaegrim wrote:You CAN still attack creatures that are hidden, so clearly you can be aware of a hidden creature.

I will grant you that point, but I will not grant you your next claim that we're left with anything in particular. I do not know how an opponent could be aware of you without having discovered you. That is the penumbra that has to exist for both those statements in the rulebook to be true.
Additional unanswerable questions exist. Here are some of them:

- When you give away your location by attacking from hidden (chapter nine) or knocking over a fucking vase (chapter seven), does that end hiding or just allow enemies to attack your square without guessing?
- Is being discovered and being detected the same thing?
- Are signs of passage and signs of presence the same thing?
- What is the procedure for "lurking" given that it is given as an alternative to "hiding?"

You put a lot of effort into putting together some sky castles, but you failed to successfully parse all of the stealth rules in the PHB because it is in fact contradictory gibberish without any true meaning or insight.
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Last edited by Username17 on Wed Sep 09, 2015 6:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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RelentlessImp
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Post by RelentlessImp » Wed Sep 09, 2015 6:18 am

Frank, unfuck your tags.
Also, here's a quote from elsewhere about 5E:

> Don't get pissed off that there's not one single book that has every one of the rules you want to use typed up in a nice, orderly easy-to-use fashion. That's not the job of the D&D designers.

Isn't that the only fucking job of the designers?
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus » Wed Sep 09, 2015 7:35 am

Or like an editor or layout person who would, you know, arrange stuff in some sort of coherent and useful fashion?
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Grek
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Post by Grek » Wed Sep 09, 2015 8:01 am

The DMG has 4 different editors listed. I can only assume these were the same people editing the PHB, since the PHB pdf I've got doesn't credit anyone for its creation. You'd think at least one of those four would have done something about the stealth rules.

> FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.

> Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.

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nockermensch
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Post by nockermensch » Wed Sep 09, 2015 2:08 pm

> RelentlessImp wrote:Frank, unfuck your tags.
> Also, here's a quote from elsewhere about 5E:

> > Don't get pissed off that there's not one single book that has every one of the rules you want to use typed up in a nice, orderly easy-to-use fashion. That's not the job of the D&D designers.

> Isn't that the only fucking job of the designers?

Do you have the page #? This is very sig-worthy.
@ @ Nockermensch

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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants » Wed Sep 09, 2015 2:10 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote:

> > 5e PHB wrote:...
> > Passive Perception. When you hide, there's a chance someone will notice you even if they aren't searching. To determine whether such a creature notices you, the DM compares your Dexterity (Stealth) check with that creature's passive Wisdom (Perception) score, which equals 10 + the creature's Wisdom modifier, as well as any other bonuses or penalties. If the creature has advantage, add 5. For disadvantage, subtract 5.
> > The mean of a no advantage roll is 10.5, the mean of an advantage roll is 13.82, the mean of a disadvantage die is 7.17. Disadvantage or advantage on actually rolling dice is worth about +/-3.3, why is it worth +/-5 on a passive roll? This isn't unclear or anything, it's just that the authors are obviously really bad at math.

Worse than the bad math is the idea that you get to automatically take 10 when not even trying, but you have to roll a d20 to try. So, unless you're searching against a really good hide check, you're actually more likely to fail when actively searching. In fact, the easier the person is to spot, the harder it is to actively find them relative to accidentally passively finding them.
This could be fixed by making passive a "take 5" or something.
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Blicero
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Post by Blicero » Wed Sep 09, 2015 3:12 pm

> nockermensch wrote:

> > RelentlessImp wrote:Frank, unfuck your tags.
> > Also, here's a quote from elsewhere about 5E:

> > > Don't get pissed off that there's not one single book that has every one of the rules you want to use typed up in a nice, orderly easy-to-use fashion. That's not the job of the D&D designers.

> > Isn't that the only fucking job of the designers?

> Do you have the page #? This is very sig-worthy.

It appears to be enworld: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread ... ance/page3

> The whole point of 5E is that you take the any and all of the rules you find throughout all the books and jury-rig together the game that you want to play. So if a Sage Advice clarifies a rule that you don't agree with... you don't use the Sage Advice. Same way that if a rule in the Combat section of the PH is one you don't like but there's an alternate in the DMG that you do... you use the one in the DMG.
> Don't get pissed off that there's not one single book that has every one of the rules you want to use typed up in a nice, orderly easy-to-use fashion. That's not the job of the D&D designers. It's your job as a player and DM to select and use the rules to create the game you want to play.

Last edited by Blicero on Wed Sep 09, 2015 3:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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mlangsdorf
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Post by mlangsdorf » Wed Sep 09, 2015 3:40 pm

So now D&D has the same design philosophy as GURPS? That's hilarious.
The difference being that GURPS has a single line editor that tries to keep the rules consistent and makes it obvious when you're using optional rules and alternative systems. As opposed to just throwing out a bunch of different systems with no indication as to what is core and what is optional.
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erik
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Post by erik » Wed Sep 09, 2015 4:47 pm

> mlangsdorf wrote:So now D&D has the same design philosophy as GURPS? That's hilarious.
> The difference being that GURPS has a single line editor that tries to keep the rules consistent and makes it obvious when you're using optional rules and alternative systems. As opposed to just throwing out a bunch of different systems with no indication as to what is core and what is optional.

Not weighing in one way or the other. Just noting that the 5e quote is just some random doofus not an official mouthpiece
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Vaegrim
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### I'm not sure I care anymore

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Post by Vaegrim » Thu Sep 10, 2015 4:29 am

So we're doing line by line replies now? Okay fuck it, let's do that.

> FrankTrollman wrote:That's right bitches! Lurking in darkness isn't the same thing as hiding.

It is different from hiding, you're just standing around in a Heavily Obscured area. Just standing in a Heavily Obscured area still makes you an unseen attacker, you're just not hidden. Trying to not be seen or heard is Hiding. Are you going to say the whole house of cards comes down because "lurking" is clearly a synonym of hiding and therefore not just a narrative flourish by obviously awful writers?

> FrankTrollman wrote:You can be unseen and stay quiet and still get detected by "signs of passage (or presence)" and that ends your hiding state because you don't have a hiding value any more at that point.

Yeah; since all hiding did for you was prevent people from knowing your location and they know it, you're not really hidden are you? I'll grant that there was probably some half-assed idea about following invisible footprints (see second sentence, first bullet, Invisible condition in Appendix A) or some shit (2nd level spell "Pass without Trace") that they completely failed to implement. But it's all just fluff since the RULE is opposed Stealth vs Perception check.

> FrankTrollman wrote:I do not know how an opponent could be aware of you without having discovered you.

Guard A: "Hey man, I just saw some asshole run behind those bushes!"
Guard B: "Really? I missed it completely! Well, if you're sure lets just start firing arrows over this 15 feet of shrubbery. We'll find the fucker eventually!"
Or how about the much more common scenario which is someone casts fog cloud at the entrance of a room, hides and steps into it. If you don't take the hide action and instead just move in, the rooms occupants will know what space you occupy.

> FrankTrollman wrote:When you give away your location by attacking from hidden (chapter nine) or knocking over a fucking vase (chapter seven), does that end hiding or just allow enemies to attack your square without guessing?

Hiding is just concealing your location by being unseen and unheard. There's no difference between "ending hiding" and them being able to attack your position. They know your position, that's all hiding was giving you! Hidden isn't listed in Appendix A because it's not a fucking condition.

> FrankTrollman wrote:What is the procedure for "lurking" given that it is given as an alternative to "hiding?"

Holy shit, that really was the hill you wanted to die on? The only other place in the book you can find the word lurking is the opening fluff paragraph for chapter two and you think it's a technical term? Considering the word doesn't describe an Action in Combat like Hide or Dodge, I have no reason to believe it doesn't mean just standing there. I can appreciate making a claim that this is a technical manual of rules, they shouldn't waffle on verbiage between narrative description and precise terminology. But we aren't arguing about how shitty their editor was, we agree on that. We're arguing if the rules exist at all.
I mean shit, you're using the fact that there exist hidden objects to claim that the rules for STEALTH are gibberish? What's the skill for concealing an object (somewhere other then on your person) in 3rd edition? You want some actually challenging questions?

- If you stand in a fog cloud and shoot at someone outside? Are you considered blinded, because you're in the Heavily Obscured space, or not because your target isn't Heavily Obscured?
  Same question but now they're shooting at you; does he have disadvantage because you're unseen, or are you considered blind (and therefore grant advantage on attacks against you, cancelling out the whole thing) since you're inside the area?
  If hidden is just concealing your space, are "hidden" Wood Elves in Lightly Obscured natural cover considered unseen? What if they're revealed?
  Can you use the Search action to find a hidden target, if so do you need to play battleship like with attacks?

There are actual serious questions about how to play the game that Crawford and Mearls have just opted the fuck out of answering. You guys want to call THOSE out, I'm on board. But honestly, "lurking" is your bone of contention? That's just pedantry. For fucks sake, the Social Interaction rules ARE honest-to-god vaporware, Call that shit out!
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RelentlessImp
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Post by RelentlessImp » Thu Sep 10, 2015 4:57 am

> the Social Interaction rules ARE honest-to-god vaporware, Call that shit out!

They have been.
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Username17
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### Re: I'm not sure I care anymore

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Post by Username17 » Thu Sep 10, 2015 6:26 am

> Vaegrim wrote:So we're doing line by line replies now? Okay fuck it, let's do that.

We have to, because as you noted yourself, the stealth rules are not together or in order in the book. It's just a series of free floating thoughts.

> Vaegrim wrote:

> > FrankTrollman wrote:That's right bitches! Lurking in darkness isn't the same thing as hiding.

> It is different from hiding, you're just standing around in a Heavily Obscured area. Just standing in a Heavily Obscured area still makes you an unseen attacker, you're just not hidden. Trying to not be seen or heard is Hiding. Are you going to say the whole house of cards comes down because "lurking" is clearly a synonym of hiding and therefore not just a narrative flourish by obviously awful writers?

Well when you're lurking you also aren't making any noise. The point is that being unseen and unheard is a prerequisite for hiding, but hiding's stealth vs. perception is rolled only after those two conditions are fulfilled. You can remain unseen and unheard and still fail at hiding due to the signs of presence/passage discovery/detection/give away clauses.
The game has no procedures for determining when you aren't seen and heard to allow you to hide in the first place. And since the combat bonuses for being hidden aren't better than the bonuses for being unseen and unheard, I really couldn't tell you what a successful or unsuccessful hiding roll actually does.

> Vaegrim wrote: Yeah; since all hiding did for you was prevent people from knowing your location and they know it, you're not really hidden are you? I'll grant that there was probably some half-assed idea about following invisible footprints (see second sentence, first bullet, Invisible condition in Appendix A) or some shit (2nd level spell "Pass without Trace") that they completely failed to implement. But it's all just fluff since the RULE is opposed Stealth vs Perception check.

That's the problem though: the RULE is just a thing that determines when you can upgrade the unseen condition to the hidden condition. But the hidden condition has no effects in the rules. The unseen condition does. The unheard condition does (though not much). Having both of them together lets you attempt to hide, but successfully hiding does not have any specific effects at all.

> Vaegrim wrote: Or how about the much more common scenario which is someone casts fog cloud at the entrance of a room, hides and steps into it. If you don't take the hide action and instead just move in, the rooms occupants will know what space you occupy.

Sure. But what difference does it make that you are "hidden" at that point? That's the core issue of the rules here. If you asked random people to explain what they thought the hiding action was they'd probably say it was doing something to avoid being seen. But actually hiding is a restricted action you can only take if you already aren't seen. And what benefits it provides are unknown.
Being unheard is almost entirely magic teaparty. There are some things you can do that specifically make noise. But there's no procedure at all for not making noise. If you try to be quiet there is no roll to make or procedure to follow to succeed at doing that. If you try to hear someone who is trying to be quiet you are likewise out of luck finding a procedure to determine whether you succeed or fail.

> Vaegrim wrote: Hiding is just concealing your location by being unseen and unheard.

You keep saying that and you're still wrong.

> The Fucking Book wrote:An invisible creature can't be seen, so it can always try to hide. Signs of its passage might still be noticed, however, and it still has to stay quiet.

That's three things: Unseen, Unheard, and Undiscovered. And you have to have all those in order to attempt to hide. Although what actually happens

> Vaegrim wrote: There's no difference between "ending hiding" and them being able to attack your position. They know your position, that's all hiding was giving you!

Really? Because according to chapter 9, when you attack while hidden you give away your location. But it doesn't say you stop being hidden. So you can actually be unseen and unheard and not hidden, and you can be unseen and unheard and hidden and still have enemies know what your location is. So what exactly does being hidden do? There is no answer in the book, and everything you've said about that part of the subject is just shit you made up.
Yes, I agree that the rest of the rules are an incoherent pile of D&D flavored ramble text. But we're specifically talking about the hiding rules, which gives a procedure whose requirements and outputs are undefined. The die roll and the numbers are clear. But when you are allowed to make that die roll and what would happen if you succeed or fail on that die roll are not defined in the book. Inputs and outputs are undefined, only the procedure of converting one to the other gets addressed in any real way.
You have done some impressive glosses, but you are fucking wrong.

> Vaegrim wrote: I'll grant that there was probably some half-assed idea about following invisible footprints (see second sentence, first bullet, Invisible condition in Appendix A) or some shit (2nd level spell "Pass without Trace") that they completely failed to implement.

That's the part where you lost the argument. Your entire mental construct requires that the third part of the hiding requirements not be there, thereby allowing you to imagine the die roll as a means of determining the dispensation of the third aspect. But it factually is there. Not as an output, but as an input. And input which in your admission is half-assed and not implemented successfully.
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Windjammer
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Post by Windjammer » Thu Sep 10, 2015 11:32 am

@Vaegrim: well done. I honestly don't care about the details of whether 'lurking' is well defined or used colloquially et al, sc. the details that now inform a rather secondary (and predictable) argument on some pedantic side show to demonstrate the important issue of who's got the longer legalese.
You showed something more significant than exegesis on marginalia, and that is: to at all arrive at a reading of the 5e stealth rules that approximates coherence or intelligibility, the reader has to read the prerequisite entry in reverse order and supplement it with other, non indexed, portions of the same book. That's really well demonstrated.
The other thing you mentioned, how Crawford and Mearls's own rulings on Twitter contradict each other is another datum that this forum benefits from hearing. Thanks.
Finally, I haven't bought or read 5e, and will decline to play it even when offered; mostly because I agree with this forum's take on it. But your post has added something to the reasons behind that decision.
Last edited by Windjammer on Thu Sep 10, 2015 11:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DrPraetor
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Post by DrPraetor » Thu Sep 10, 2015 9:51 pm

> RelentlessImp wrote:Frank, unfuck your tags.
> Also, here's a quote from elsewhere about 5E:

> > Don't get pissed off that there's not one single book that has every one of the rules you want to use typed up in a nice, orderly easy-to-use fashion. That's not the job of the D&D designers.

> Isn't that the only fucking job of the designers?

Wow, where did they say *that*? I've gone straight from contempt for their opportunism to admiration of their chutzpah.
Their job is to take your money, and give you nothing. Because suck it.
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erik
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Post by erik » Thu Sep 10, 2015 11:15 pm

Dr. Praetor, check the remainder of this page of the thread. It was a forum nobody who said it.
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Post by Mistborn » Fri Sep 11, 2015 12:31 am

I think I can sort of see what the developers wanted to do with the hiding rules. Like I think the idea was that you can only enter stealth if noone has line of sight to you, but once you're in stealth they need to beat your hide check in order to spot you. Unfortunately they were too incomponent to write that in a coherent matter.
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Post by Insomniac » Fri Sep 11, 2015 4:03 pm

The thing that gets me is Magical Items. They couldn't commit themselves to a base level of magical item possession for foes, purchase options and creation guidelines. They were horrified of screwing the pooch on the RNG/Bounded Accuracy concept they married themselves to so they just decided to do nothing. It's like, they make noises with the mouth holes and there are some words babbled on a paper, but they don't really have a magical item system.
They wanted to avoid Magical Christmas tree so they burned down the forest.
So yeah. Good job, idiots. It's not like you had 11 years to gussy up 3.5 or anything and 30 months from 4E to 5E to make it happen.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sat Sep 12, 2015 6:17 am

> Lord Mistborn wrote:I think I can sort of see what the developers wanted to do with the hiding rules. Like I think the idea was that you can only enter stealth if noone has line of sight to you, but once you're in stealth they need to beat your hide check in order to spot you. Unfortunately they were too incomponent to write that in a coherent matter.

The problem goes way beyond simply being unable to write that in a coherent manner. The problem is that not all of the portions pertaining to stealth were actually going for that. I don't know if we're looking at different authors writing in different concepts of hiding, different concepts of hiding being agreed upon by the design team at different stages of writing, or people just writing whatever the hell they felt like off the top of their heads; but in any case there was never any attempt to go through what everyone had written and make sure it was all on the same page. And of course I mean that both literally in the sense that what little explanation hiding gets is scattered in little chunks across several pages in different chapters, and metaphorically in the sense that the different little chunks are in no sense compatible.
Take the idea that you hide while not being observed and then you stay hidden until someone makes a perception test or you give away your position. Call that the "submarine theory" of stealth. That would be a reasonable place for hiding to start, and some of the book seems to be written that way. But there's also that bit that casually talks about "coming out of hiding" to approach an enemy. That bit seems to imply that you have to be out of potential line of sight the entire time you keep your hiding thing going.
I really can't tell if I'm looking at two people writing contradictory ideas and never hashing out which version to use, or the entire team changing their mind and then not bothering to go back and edit out sentences consistent with old versions, or just writers who don't know what they want filling the page with garble text. All of those catastrophes would seem to produce similar outputs, outputs that are pretty much what we have.
The real damning thing is that while all of this contradictory gibberish was being written, no one actually wrote a sentence to tell you what being hidden actually does. You're just supposed to intuit an effect because you understand hiding "in your gut" or something. Unfortunately you can't really make a good "common sense" case for what hiding does until you determine what hiding requires. Upgrading partial cover or concealment to being completely unseen would be a pretty logical thing for it to do, but some of the book is written as if being completely unseen is already a prerequisite of hiding and then by definition successfully hiding would have to do something else.
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Vaegrim
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### Do you want me to stop or not?

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Post by Vaegrim » Mon Sep 14, 2015 3:43 am

So rather than pick at each time you wildly switch between claiming the inputs and outputs are undefined, or insisting that a particular sentence is clearly an input or output; I'll just respond directly to the questions about what the system actually is:

- What is the prerequisite of attempting the hide action? You have to be unseen by the people you're hiding from.
  What is the effect of being hidden? Attackers from whom you are hidden don't know what space to target.
  What does taking the Hide action mean? It's trying to keep from betraying your location to observers who can't see you by staying quiet.
  When do you stop being "hidden"? When either you stop satisfying the prerequisites of hiding, your stealth roll is beaten by an observer, or an observer learns your location through some other means (you attack them, they use magic to know your location, they trip over you)

I was going to do yet another point-by-point rebuttal, but I have to agree with part of your last point Frank. Even if I can tease out rules, any consistency is obviously accidental. There was no clear vision by an editor of what the hiding action required, what it accomplished, and when it ended.

> PHB pg. 165 wrote:Always on the lookout for danger, you gain the following benefits:
> - You gain a +5 bonus to initiative.
> - You can’t be surprised while you are conscious.
> - Other creatures don’t gain advantage on attack rolls against you as a result of being hidden from you.

Clearly at least one writer was fooled into thinking that hiding is what makes you unseen. Some author also thought that Creatures one size larger than their opponent automatically succeed on checks to escape a grapple. But they don't, the third bullet point of the Grappler feat just does nothing. And neither does the third bullet point of the Alert feat actually do anything.
I stand by my claim that cowardly authorial hedging is not rules. Writing "The DM decides when circumstances are appropriate" doesn't make the inputs for hiding undefined, because it's true for literally every action in the game. If you think there's an alternative answer, I want to hear it. I'm interested in hearing it because I feel like the game is playable. I'd like to see a rules cyclopedia that consolidates this stuff, or a "tomes" edition failing that. While I see an system that ISN'T contradicted by the text, I'm not going to accept that the answer is undefined just because the authors didn't realize what they wrote.
I think that's where we differ. My impression is that you won't accept "last working system standing" as a valid answer. If that's true, we're just talking past each other and I'll stop shitting up Capn's review. But if you either believe that there are other systems not excluded by the text, or believe the system I've outlined IS excluded; I ask that you continue to indulge me and lay out that counterpoint.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Mon Sep 14, 2015 6:03 am

> Vaegrim wrote:I think that's where we differ. My impression is that you won't accept "last working system standing" as a valid answer. If that's true, we're just talking past each other and I'll stop shitting up Capn's review. But if you either believe that there are other systems not excluded by the text, or believe the system I've outlined IS excluded; I ask that you continue to indulge me and lay out that counterpoint.

I think that's fair. I think the system you've outlined is contradicted by the text. I think the text basically presents three or four concepts of hiding and that each of them are contradicted by one or more of the sentences written in light of one of the other concepts. At core there is (at least):

- Hiding requires you to be unobserved and makes you unseen.
- Hiding requires you to be unseen and makes you unseen and unheard.
- Hiding requires you to be unseen and unheard and makes your location unknown.
- Hiding requires you to be unseen and unheard and is agnostic as to whether your location is known or not. No idea what hiding actually does in this one.
- Hiding requires you to be unseen, unheard, and your location unknown, and I have no idea what hiding actually does in this one either.

You are clinging to the option I bolded, but it's trivially easy to find statements that are incompatible with that one. You handwave away the idea that statements about "signs of presence" and "signs of passage" actually mean anything, but those statements are in the book. It really says that, several times. You very definitely have a third leg leg in your hiding requirements in several passages of the book.
And that's the problematic bottom line. The only real synthesis statement you can make is the last one. It makes a lot of statements about hiding in the game confusing or meaningless, but it isn't actually contradicted anywhere. I mean, as you pointed out Always On The Lookout For Danger wouldn't make a whole lot of sense because being hidden already requires you to have advantage on attack rolls for other reasons (being unseen, for example). But you could imagine a synthesis where since there are abilities for Elves and Halflings to become "Hidden" when they otherwise wouldn't be unseen, you could say that it had some (edge case) effect even so. Similarly, an attack from hiding lets enemies know your position but doesn't say that you lose hiding, but we could assume it did if we accepted that having your location unknown was a global requirement of hiding. That kinda "works" in that none of the statements in the book fully contradict it - they only imply that it's bullshit.
But the real problem here is that if hiding does in fact require you to be unseen, unheard, and have an unknown location, hiding doesn't do anything for normal characters. You already have the undetected trifecta that the game recognizes before you even roll the die. And then there's nothing for a failed or successful die roll to do. There are abilities you can have that give you specific other requirements for hiding, and if you have those abilities it's clear you can use those to roll a dexterity (stealth) check against passive perception to get advantage on an attack. But if you don't have one of those abilities, hiding doesn't seem to do anything at all. You'd have advantage on your next attack just by fulfilling the requirements to attempt to hide in the first place.
There's also the stealth versus perception test at the beginning of combat to determine if anyone is surprised. And that one doesn't seem to part of the same thing.
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CapnTthePirateG
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Post by CapnTthePirateG » Sat Sep 19, 2015 11:49 pm

The stealth discussion is concluded, but this stupid book is still here, so I'm gonna try to finish this review in one setting and then hopefully someone else can do the DMG.
Chapter 8: Adventuring
Random grab bag of stuff. We get preferred units of time, movement rules, travel pace, special movement, a section on marching order that only serves to take up space, and more attempts at having rules that don't actually function. Want to navigate? Why, make Wisdom(Survival) checks "when the DM calls for it". When might this be? Who the hell knows! Rules for tracking and foraging are supposedly in the Dungeon Master's Guide (which notably wasn't out when this book was released). We get some special senses and movement, food and water, and the social interaction rules.
So, Vaegrim earlier in the thread wanted to make a comment about how these rules don't exist, so I am going to sum them up here.
There are NPCs. They are friendly, indifferent, or hostile.

> Mearls and co wrote: Friendly NPCs are predisposed to help you, and hostile ones are inclined to get in your way.

That's it. You'll note there is no actual description of how far they're willing to go (will they sacrifice their lives? Give you money? Bear your children? Or just step out of the way at the supermarket?) or what they're willing to do. But how do we change this, you ask?
Well...
a) Magic Tea Party (literally, there is a page and a half given to roleplaying and different styles), and
b)Ability Checks! What ability checks? We don't know. We're given two examples - a rogue with Deception trying to convince a guard to let them into the castle, and a cleric with Persuasion negotiating for a hostage - but here's the actual advice:

> Mearls and co wrote: Pay attention to your skill proficiencies when thinking of how you want to interact with an NPC, and stack the deck in your favor by using an approach that relies on your best bonuses and skills.

Get that?
The problem with this outlook is that it basically devolves arguing with the DM until you can use whatever skill you're good at. This isn't even limited to charisma checks, the book outright states you can use any ability score at the DM's discretion. So if you have craft(basketweaving), you get to argue for 5 hours that you can hand out decorative gift baskets to convince NPCs to do your bidding.
This would be a bigger problem if the book didn't emphasize that you don't actually make checks if the DM wants to just magic tea party it. In fact, magic tea party is the default ruleset.
Remember the three pillars of the game from the introduction? Exploration, social interaction, and combat? This book costs $50 and doesn't provide rules for 1/3 of the game.
Starring Wally as Mike Mearls
The rest of the chapter is the totally realistic healing rules grognards demanded during the playtest, the rest times (in which we learn a short rest is an hour), and various downtime activities such as crafting nonmagical fluff items, practicing a profession, resting to heal up, research, and training to learn to use new tools. Most of this is magic tea party disguised by gold rates. And that's the chapter!
Chapter 9: Combat
There's really not too much different from 3.5, however, the first thing that really jumps out at you is the lack of "if your DM allows it" after every sentence. Certain actions no one ever used (such as total defense) have been renamed, actions are the usual standard/move/swift but they now have new names to disguise them, the search rules are a paragraph of using either intelligence or wisdom, aid another is advantage instead of +2, yadda yadda yadda. Grappling was mentioned earlier in this thread and doesn't really care about, trip attacks and knockback are combined into one attack which causes a strength opposed roll, etc. The underwater combat rules are one paragraph for what weapons you can use, and strangely no rules for how to move underwater at all.
New to this edition is that everyone gets Spring Attack for free.
And this brings us to Part 3: The Rules of Magic!
Chapter 10: Spellcasting
We get the traditional explanation of how spellcasting works. There are, however, a few big differences.
The first is that all the former preparation casters work someone like Dungeons and Dragons online, where they get to rechoose spells known each day but use their spell slots like 3.5 sorcerers. The rituals from 4e reappear in the form of ritual spells, where you can cast the spell out of combat (takes 10 minutes longer) but you don't expend a spell slot. You will always do this. The last major difference are the concentration rules.
Each spellcaster can concentrate on one spell at a time. Many (but not all!) of the spells require you to concentrate to keep them going. Now, concentration doesn't eat actions but will end if you die, take damage and fail a constitution check, or cast another spell that requires concentration. Most actually decent incapacitating spells require concentration, as do most buffs. Now, every spell that requires concentration calls this out in its spell entry, and this ends exactly like Pathfinder's "fixing" wizards by nerfing glitterdust - not well at all. Yes, web might require concentration, but animate dead does not, so you can have a big army of friendly skeletons at pretty much no cost.
Now I can see where they're coming with this. Until 4e (maybe even then), D&D has always had this weird delusion that wizards are balanced by being extremely easy to kill...and handled out powerful defensive spells that made them more durable than the fighter. The problem here is that any kind of actually useful spell you'd want to use in a fight - remember, the 3e paradigm of status effects > damage is very much in play here - is usually tagged with concentration, so you can't really defend yourself. Ok. But where this mechanic really falls flat is in the individual spell tags. Animate dead and contagion (to use a few examples) are really powerful in combat and bypass concentration entirely, making this limit more of an annoying hindrance than an actual hard cap on spellcaster power. Furthermore, the designers couldn't be troubled to actually mark concentration spells in the spell list, so you are once again stuck dumpster diving through the entire spell section. Speaking of,
Chapter 11: Spells
It's the big list of spells for all classes. Now, I'm not going to go through all the spells one by one because that would drive me absolutely insane, so I'm just gonna point out some observations.
First, some 4e core powers made it over to the spell list in 5e. Granted, most of them are on the warlock list, but I find it strange that anyone actually cared about them enough to include given the boringness that was 4e powers. Did we need a power that began as a half-assed attempt at summoning from the cleric list ported into this edition with real summoning spells? No. Did anyone actually give a shit about the named "deals damage" powers from 4e introduced for that edition? No. Is this solely in here to attempt to pander to the 4e fans in a desperate, failed attempt to reunite the fanbase? Yes.
Spells are basically what you would expect to see from Mike Mearls ripping off Pathfinder. Save or dies have basically been nerfed at this point to deal damage or have some dumb limitation (flesh to stone requires concentration for a minute, wheres actual medusas instant stone you) and usually give a save every round. That said, this is just like spellcasting in every other edition of D&D, where you grab the same 5 good spells, cast them over and over, and ignore the large percentage of the spell list that is pure, unadulterated, useless crap. That being said, casters still do crazy shit like planar binding armies of demons, animating armies of the dead, abusing illusions, dumpster diving through the monster manual to steal abilities, and so on. The end result is exactly the same as Pathfinder - they nerfed some spells, but spellcasters are still Better Than You.
Appendices:
There are some appendices explaining conditions, deities, the multiverse, some stats for animal companions/familiars, and an appendix for suggesting reading. This is a pretty amusing list - note that a lot of the more modern literature can't actually be emulated in the game. Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy is cited as an example, but you will never be able to play as a Mistborn or someone with abilities approximating one. The rules don't support it.
This lady was an inspiration to the game designers, but can't actually be played in the game at all
Other notable reads are things like Game of Thrones, at least 50% of which is social interaction that the rules don't support, the Drizz't series (only supported because it is literally D&D fiction), and a lot of the old sci-fi fantasy stuff from the 80s that the rules don't actually support or hint at. Sure, you can use these books to come up with a world idea and loot character ideas from some of them, but many of these books can't be emulated in D&D at all. N.K Jemison's Inheritance Trilogy is in there, but that book is literally about commanding captive gods to do your bidding and ascending to godhood, and there are no rules in this book to do that! Half of the supposedly inspirational fiction cannot be emulated with the rules in this book!
And with that this fucking book is finally over.
Final Thoughts
This book fails on pretty much every level, and there are no ideas that can be salvaged from this book. There is no original or interesting fluff. There are no new mechanical ideas. The authors did as little work as possible for 2 years and tried to pass it off as a finished product while trying to incorporate as many legacy shout-outs as they could. The rules for anything not directly related to making an attack roll are an incoherent mess. If someone told me that Wizards had to quickly make a new edition to not lose the rights to D&D and this is what they put out, I would believe them.
I'd be willing to speculate that the reason we have seen no new material for this system outside of web articles is that the system in this book is close to collapsing under its own weight (see: concentration) and that the designers don't trust themselves not to break it in half.
Now I want to make a comparison to 4e. This edition comes out on the losing end. Yes, 4e failed at pretty much every one of its initial goals, from making more interesting combats to making out of combat magic usable to making skill challenges a valid way of life - but virtually everything in 4e was the designers' earnest attempt to fix a problem. Sure, nerfing everything down to 2[w]+int and slide 1 square is boring, but it was an attempt to fix the legitimate problem of class balance in 3.5. No, skill challenges never worked, but it was an attempt to make every class having something useful to do besides killing things. Was a lot of 4e dreck? Absolutely. But the designers of 4e at least had the courage to try new things and fix some of the problems of older editions.
5e is desperately running back to the ostrich hole, sticking its head in the sand, and singing "la la la" while denying the existance of Paizo.

> OgreBattle wrote:"And thus the denizens learned that hating Shadzar was the only thing they had in common, and with him gone they turned their venom upon each other"
> -Sarpadian Empires, vol. I

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souran
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Post by souran » Sun Sep 20, 2015 2:42 am

> FrankTrollman wrote: But the real problem here is that if hiding does in fact require you to be unseen, unheard, and have an unknown location, hiding doesn't do anything for normal characters. You already have the undetected trifecta that the game recognizes before you even roll the die. And then there's nothing for a failed or successful die roll to do.
> -Username17

I have never played 5E and I have only read the free rules. However, is it possible that the "intent" of hiding rules is that you must start from the unseen/unheard/unknown location and that then what "hiding" does is let maintain those conditions as you move away from the location/effect that is providing those conditions.
To keep your analogy we can call this the "metal gear solid (or maybe dishonored)" version of hiding where once you have the "trifecta" secured you can then move around with it until you do something distinctly non-stealthy?
Also, the fact that people can detect stealth characters from signs of their passage seems to imply that a person attempting to track another person prevents the subject from stealthing. That seems really wierd.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sun Sep 20, 2015 7:13 am

> souran wrote:I have never played 5E and I have only read the free rules. However, is it possible that the "intent" of hiding rules is that you must start from the unseen/unheard/unknown location and that then what "hiding" does is let maintain those conditions as you move away from the location/effect that is providing those conditions.
> To keep your analogy we can call this the "metal gear solid (or maybe dishonored)" version of hiding where once you have the "trifecta" secured you can then move around with it until you do something distinctly non-stealthy?

Short answer: yes and also no. Longer answer: I am almost positive that at least one member of the design team spent at least part of the time they were writing these rules under the impression that this is how hiding was supposed to work. The rules for determining surprise at the beginning of combat are pretty much exactly that - you make your stealth check before your opponent could detect you and if you succeed you surprise your opponent. But... there's also this gem:

> PHB D&D5 wrote:In combat, most creatures stay alert for signs of danger all around, so if you come out of hiding and approach a creature, it usually sees you. However, under certain circumstances, the Dungeon Master might allow you to stay hidden as you approach a creature that is distracted, allowing you to gain advantage on an attack before you are seen.

So at least one of the members of the writing team disagreed and was pretty sure that if you left an area where you had total concealment that you were automatically and instantly spotted unless you gave the DM fellatio.
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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants » Mon Sep 21, 2015 3:21 pm

> CapnTthePirateG wrote: (flesh to stone requires concentration for a minute, wheres actual medusas instant stone you) and usually give a save every round.

Does this spell really take ten rounds to pull off and offer ten saves? Why would anyone ever cast a spell that has less than a 1% chance of working?
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Aharon
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Post by Aharon » Mon Sep 21, 2015 3:50 pm

> RobbyPants wrote:

> > CapnTthePirateG wrote: (flesh to stone requires concentration for a minute, wheres actual medusas instant stone you) and usually give a save every round.

> Does this spell really take ten rounds to pull off and offer ten saves? Why would anyone ever cast a spell that has less than a 1% chance of working?

On the first failed save, the target is restrained (speed 0 and can't benefit from bonuses to speed, attackers have advantage, attacks others with disadvantage, disadvantage on dex saves), after three failed saves, it's petrified. If you continue to concentrate, it stays petrified.
It doesn't give a save every round, if I read that correctly. It's still worse than other SoD spells (Contagion=>Slimy Doom is lower level and stuns, which is a stronger condition than restrained).
On the other hand,, some monsters (like most outsiders) are immune to being stunned, so restraining them isn't that bad an option.
(Undead, interestingly, aren't immune to disease across the board any more, so you could theoretically give Slimy Doom to a Lich)
Last edited by Aharon on Mon Sep 21, 2015 4:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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