[RPG] Group hide and seek

dnd-5eskillsstealth

How should one manage a group trying to elude detection by another group in D&D 5e?

For a one-on-one situation, stealth opposed to perception works well. However, if everyone rolls stealth/perception, the seekers' top roll will often exceed the hiders' worst roll, making it impossible for the hiders to succeed if the two groups are large (e.g. 10 hiders and 10 seekers).

A group check for the hiders seems like a reasonable solution in a passive perception case (i.e. if at least half the hiders beat the top seeker's passive perception, they elude the seekers). However, I don't know how this would work if the seekers were actively searching. There do not seem to be any rules for "opposed group checks".

My intuition suggests that in a hide and seek situation, the hiders' job becomes harder as their group size grows, while the seekers' job becomes easier as their numbers grow.

Best Answer

Seekers

People on watch for eight hours or so are not hyper-vigilant all the time - they chat, warm their hands at the fire, go for a leak etc. Unless there is some reason that seekers are actively looking for the hiders (e.g. a recent alarm) then this should be a passive Wisdom (Perception) check so in effect the hiders are rolling against a fixed (but unknown) DC.

If there are multiple seekers then they should us the Working Together rules on p. 175 of the PHB; this gives advantage to the person with the best Wisdom (Perception), +5 on passive or 2 rolls on active checks. Don't forget that there are lots of ways that this advantage can be cancelled: dim light being the most often overlooked.

Hiders

The needs of your scenario should dictate if you use group checks or not. That is, is it more interesting/fun for the characters to succeed or fail as a group or individuals.

Group checks (PHB p.175) make things much easier for the hiders. For example, for 4 characters all needing to roll an 11 or more a group check will result in success 68.75% of the time whereas individual checks will have no one detected only 6.25% of the time (http://anydice.com/program/8892). Notwithstanding, bigger groups make both more difficult, however, for group checks it is a slow decline while individual checks fall off a cliff.

Helping someone sneak is problematic, I can see arguments both ways. Obviously, calling out instructions would be counter productive but relying on others to watch the guards while you only watch for their hand signals would really help. My personal feeling is if the players can tell you how teamwork gives them advantage then let them have that advantage. (I am assuming that it is usually the players that are hiding, not the monsters).