So I’m a long time fan and playing my first campaign. First big quest and we’re in a fortress.
Pretty spent after an encounter and some traps. We see a sleeping BBEG in the way of our finish.
Cast pass without a trace to sneak past. Fighter in heavy rolls a nat 1 on his disadvantage.
So it’s 1 + 1 dex +10 pass without a trace = 12
BBEG passive perception is 10. We sneak past.
WTH? I mean sure my PC is happy but I feel somehow disappointed in our DM giving us a pass.
I’ve DMd before and would’ve definitely woken up the boss.
I feel like DM gave us the pass cause it could’ve been a TPK.
Thoughts?
Edit:
Thank you everyone for your thoughts.
I was caught up in the homebrew rule of auto fail nat1s that is NOT in the PHB.
Rules as written we earned that easy win by taking advantage of the bosses low perception and spending a spell slot on pass without a trace.
By the rules, if the entire party is rolling for stealth, only half of them are required to succeed. It’s called a group check.
If your fighter was the only one with a bad roll, and your table doesn’t use crit fail/crit success on skill checks (which is a homebrew rule, albeit fairly popular), then the result is probably legal.
Yeah you’re right. Its a legal call. I just fell for the homebrew rule since all my podcasts use it.
I’ve never listened to any RPG podcasts but this is surprising given that I always see comments talking about how much it breaks the game. Do you think it’s because they’re making an entertainment broadcast rather than just playing a game, so they care more about crazy shenanigans rather than their individual experiences?
I’m a casual D&D fan since my only exposure is from Not Another D&D Podcast but I think it adds to the overall story telling experience. Super charges the lows and highs if it’s a 1 or 20 especially on an important role. Does it break the game? Eh, not that I can tell and I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of the podcast. Though this is my opinion and not based on D&D rules, history, etc.
I also highly recommend Not Another D&D Podcast if you like silly shit mixed with crass humor, some good emotional content, and players fucking with their DM.
One thing the other comments aren’t mentioning that is relevant: this wasn’t free. A second-level spell slot was expended by someone to make this happen, and since this is your first big quest, it’s likely that it was a significant resource investment because you’re a low level.
That’s just Pass without trace for you. That spell is so poorly balanced, it’s effectively an auto success on group stealth checks. Just a few things to note here when it comes to RAW:
- There are no crit fails on skill checks
- For a group stealth check it doesn’t matter if one party member fails it. It’s still a success.
Nat 1s aren’t an automatic failure on a skill check in 5e. Your DM played it correctly. Don’t try to attribute their actions to going easy on you. They played it by the book.
Seems fine to me. RAW disadvantage gives you -5 to a passive check, so a sleeping creature which normally has 10 passive perception would have an effective 5 instead. With the help of one of the strongest stealth spells in the game you rolled 12, beating their perception easily.
A natural 1 isn’t an auto-fail unless it’s an attack roll, so unless there were other alarms or noisemaking devices you cleared the encounter. You don’t have to fight everything of you don’t need to, if you’re using xp levelling you’ll generally still get full xp for clearing an encounter without combat.
