Complete Guide to the Stealth Skill in D&D 5e
Stealth competes with Perception for the top spot among skills, both being called for fairly regularly and both having major effects on how your party will fair during an adventuring day. Funnily enough, both skills relate to each other, one being used for hiding while the other is for finding. There are a lot of mechanical details to iron out here, so let’s not waste any more time.
Using Stealth with the Hide action:
The Hide action can be taken by any character, and you make a Stealth check when doing so. This check will set the DC necessary for a creature to spot you. If the creature isn’t actively searching, they will compare their Passive Perception to your Stealth roll, and if they are actively looking for you, they will make a Perception check. The good news is that most monsters have a very low Passive Perception, usually never above 15, making it very easy to sneak up on them if you get the opportunity.
Do note, you can only take the Hide action if you actually have something to hide behind, are invisible, or under heavy obscurement (such as from a Fog Cloud or Darkness spell). No matter how high you roll, you cannot hide in plain sight unless you have a feature that says you can. Being invisible or in heavy obscurement also does not automatically make you hidden, your location is known unless you take the Hide action. This means you can still be targeted with attacks, but they will be at disadvantage.
Rogues get to take the Hide action as a bonus action, but this is not exclusive to that class. Any member of the Goblin race can do the same, which is extremely useful for spellcasting classes that are fine with casting a big concentration spell, then hiding for the majority of the combat to ensure that their concentration stays secure.
What does Hiding do for you?
A hidden creature cannot be targeted by attacks or spells from creatures that they are hidden from. You can still be effected by area of effect spells and abilities such as a Fireball. The creature also cannot be targeted or effected by spells and abilities that require the user to see their target, which is most spells and abilities.
All Heavy Armor and some Medium Armor will impose disadvantage on Stealth checks while being worn. This makes classes like Paladins quite bad at Stealth without some serious help from the party, so let’s talk about ways to ensure we succeed at Stealth.
Why Pass Without Trace is the best 2nd level spell in the game (A.K.A., why surprise is busted):
Pass Without Trace is a 2nd level spell available to Rangers, Druids, and Earth Genasi (a big selling point of that race). It grants a +10 bonus to the Stealth checks of your allies and lasts for an hour. This is an immense boost, especially considering how low the threshold that we need to hit so commonly is. A player character that needs a 15 to successfully Stealth against an enemy wearing heavy armor with a -1 Stealth modifier has basically no shot of succeeding that check. Turning that -1 into a +9 gives over a 50% shot at that check, even when factoring in disadvantage. In truth, that character with that bad of a Stealth modifier shouldn’t ever exist, as any character can take proficiency in Stealth through their background, and I would argue that every character should do so. Even just grabbing proficiency plus Pass Without Trace will basically guarantee that any character can sneak up on almost any enemy.
So what’s the big deal? Surprise, that’s the big deal. Sneaking up on an enemy and beginning combat unexpectedly grants a surprise round, where your party is able to act and take actions while the enemy spends the entire turn realizing that they are being attacked. The theory of action economy states that when evenly matched, the side that takes the greatest number of meaningful actions will win the majority of the time. Getting an entire turn more than your opponents is back breaking to them, basically guaranteeing your victory in nearly any circumstance.
The obvious problem is that surprise is so difficult for a party to achieve. For one Rogue, sure, no problem at all with their minimum 25 Stealth check. The problem is that the Artificer Armorer sounds like a one man band every time they take a step, breaking stealth for the whole party. Pass Without Trace fixes this issue, allowing the entire party to participate in Stealth and benefit from surprise rounds. I often praise spells like Web for their ability to disable opponents for a round or two, giving the party a chance to get the upper hand in a combat. No spell in the game can more reliably disable the entire enemy team for a whole turn.
Granted, Stealth isn’t a possibility in every encounter. Enemies can and often do wait to ambush the party, in which case having a high Perception is desperately needed in order to avoid the enemy getting a surprise round. The opportunity for Stealth will vary from table to table, as some DMs prefer to have monsters set in their locations, and others will already have it planned that the wolves are going to encircle the party camp at midnight. Still, even if you can only Stealth for 30% of encounters, it is still worth investing just a bit into this skill, and especially Pass Without Trace.
In Summary:
Every character should take proficiency in the Stealth skill, no matter their build or Dexterity score. Each party should try to have at least one member who can cast Pass Without Trace. Even if no one wants to play a Druid or Ranger, the Earth Genasi provides an easy and low cost way to get the spell once per day for free, and then additional casts with spell slots if you have them. Surprise rounds are busted, and you should seek to take advantage of them whenever possible. Hiding in combat isn’t just for Rogues, casters may want to consider the Goblin race for its ability to Hide as a bonus action as a means for protecting concentration.
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