I have been playing since the 70s and overall I’m very happy with 5e except the surprise and stealth rules. I have seen your official responses and group checks etc. and it seems that this was a miss for this edition. What problems are you running into?
— Dan Dillon (@Dan_Dillon_1) June 25, 2019
I’ve read your tweets about group checks and while I think they work for other things they don’t really jell with RAW since there is no individual DC just a group success or not. e.g. how do you really compare with PP? When the party sneaks and the DM uses a group Dexterity (Stealth) check, you take the result of the check and compare it to all observers’ passive Perception scores. They notice or fail to notice the party as a whole.
— Dan Dillon (@Dan_Dillon_1) June 25, 2019
So by result you mean average of all rolls? That’s not a group check. RAW: If at least half the group succeeds the whole group succeeds. Seems like we have to create an awful lot of rules to make this work. Also says that group cks. don’t come up very often. I do not mean average. If half the group exceeds the observers’ passive Perception the entire group goes unnoticed.
— Dan Dillon (@Dan_Dillon_1) June 25, 2019
So then RAW “A member of a group can be surprised even if the other members are not” doesn’t exist either? My concern is that is a far distance from the rules as written for surprise. No mention of group checks or a threat means the whole side. It does. If members of a group have different passive Perception scores.
You might surprise the minions but not the master, for example.
— Dan Dillon (@Dan_Dillon_1) June 25, 2019
“Threat” means any threat, but if you use group checks for stealth the group essentially sneaks as a unit.
Even still circumstances could reveal some of the group, but not others, even if they have a high Dexterity (Stealth) check.
— Dan Dillon (@Dan_Dillon_1) June 25, 2019
So if I am understanding this: Only monsters can be selectively surprised by having different PP scores but PC’s in the “group check surprise method” all succeed or fail together? Not sure what you mean by selectively surprised. PCs can be individually surprised as well.
— Dan Dillon (@Dan_Dillon_1) June 25, 2019