Can you roll skill checks (stealth) for groups of creatures or do you need to do individual rolls?

[David Richards 595]

I was in a game last night where our group setup camp with one of us keeping watch while the others slept. While we were sleeping we got ambushed by 8 goblins who used stealth to sneak up on us as the person keeping watch failed their perception check.

My question is should a stealth check have been rolled for each goblin using stealth or can you roll a stealth check for a group?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

[Pizza Lord]

You can do it either way. Generally speaking, while it sucks that a PC might get a bad roll and thus endanger the party, that's just how it is. In most cases, you are going to have 4 people in a group making Perception checks against one group, so the odds are almost always in the PC's favor (yes, the sleeping ones get Perception checks too, though at a penalty).

It is perfectly fair for a GM to just roll once for a group of similar creatures, assuming the modifiers are all going to be the same (ie. one group isn't walking over crackly leaves or something). If there is a different modifier for one of the creatures then you would either roll separate for that one or just use the lowest modifier. So technically there isn't anything wrong with a bunch of creatures all with a +2 to Stealth just getting one lump roll for a situation, rather than a GM having to roll 8, 10, or 20 times.

Does this mean that all of creatures can get a really good roll? Yes, but they could also have all gotten a really bad roll. So, nothing was really done wrong, sometimes things just don't work out in the PCs' favor. It's one of those things, like getting hit by a critical or having gear sundered. It's not unfair, it just seems that way because the PCs are players and when bad things happen, they're the ones you care about.

[David Richards 595]

Thank you for your quick response. I didn't know about sleeping characters getting a perception check and after looking it up even with the penalty it could have made all the difference. Thanks again.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

IMO if you're going to roll just once for the group you should be applying a -1 or -2 penalty for every member after the first.

[Khudzlin]

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

IMO if you're going to roll just once for the group you should be applying a -1 or -2 penalty for every member after the first.

Seems fair. After all, a group is only as stealthy as its least stealthy member.

[deusvult]

I'm a fan for just giving npcs a "take 10" on stealth checks. I don't do it all of the time, but I do use this approach often.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Thinking about it a bit more, the right thing is probably to treat the group as one larger creature according to the usual algorithm (double the number of creatures => move up one size category) and applying the RAW penalty for that.

Stealth wrote:

Creatures gain a bonus or penalty on Stealth checks based on their size: Fine +16, Diminutive +12, Tiny +8, Small +4, Medium +0, Large -4, Huge -8, Gargantuan -12, Colossal -16.

I.e. -4 every time you double the group size.

[Khudzlin]

So a group of 8 would have -12? That seems harsh.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Khudzlin wrote:

So a group of 8 would have -12? That seems harsh.

That's -1.7 per extra goblin, which is in the middle of my "-1 or -2 per extra member" original suggestion that you liked. ;-)

Since goblins are Small to begin with, it means they end up with a Huge -8 instead of a Small +4. Seems fair to me---certainly better than rolling once with that Small +4 and no adjustment for group size.

[Khudzlin]

Well, I liked the idea of giving a penalty for bigger groups, but I hadn't done any math (shame on me, I guess ;-)).

[Pizza Lord]

As long as you do the same thing with the PCs I suppose. Assuming 4 medium sized PCs, if you're willing to tell one of them "Okay, you count as Large because there's 1 other person within hearing/visual distance and then Huge because there's 2 more, so that's a -8 to your Stealth... also you're only getting the lowest guy's Stealth modifier." I just don't think that's gonna be widely accepted.

[j b 200]

It's fine to just roll once for the group, you do it for Initiative all the time.

[Gallant Armor]

I would add that a group would have a minimum stealth check of 1+lowest stealth modifier, any penalties shouldn't push the check below that.

[GinoA]

Yeah, those house rules treating the group as larger creature seem kind of crazy to me.

Roll individually or take 10. Keeps thing simple and avoids all these weird edge cases. Goblins sneak up on longshanks. It's what they do.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Pizza Lord wrote:

As long as you do the same thing with the PCs I suppose. Assuming 4 medium sized PCs, if you're willing to tell one of them "Okay, you count as Large because there's 1 other person within hearing/visual distance and then Huge because there's 2 more, so that's a -8 to your Stealth... also you're only getting the lowest guy's Stealth modifier." I just don't think that's gonna be widely accepted.

Generally the PCs are required to roll individually, so this wouldn't arise. If the same thing were done with the goblins, there wouldn't be a problem.

[Claxon]

The technically correct way is to roll for each individual.

And it's important to do so because 1 poor roll on the part of the goblins alerts the party and increases the chance of success. If more than 1 goblin rolls poorly it makes no difference, the outcome is the same.

So in order for the goblins to actually stealthily approach the group requires all 8 of them to roll well, this is unlikely unless they all take 10 (which they probably should). However, take 10 has a higher chance for being detected than rolling well does.

Basically rolling once means a much higher chance of complete goblin surprise, which is pretty unfair to players.

Either have individuals take 10 or roll individually. Any time I have a large group doing something they use take 10, and in a situation like this I just use the lowest stealth modifier + 10 as the DC in a mixed group of NPCs.

[Tarantula]

There wouldn't be any point to the teamwork feat stealth synergy if you could roll once for a group.

[Tweedle-Dum]

we can assume that all the Stealth results are being modified by distance (etc) from the stealthed creature and the detecter... so it is not likely to detect ALL the hiding creatures at once - even if they took 10 on their rolls.

Guard has a Perception check of 20...

Goblins have a (take 10) Stealth of 20...

so the first goblin will be detected when he gets to 10 foot from the Guard - who would NOT have detected the goblins that are 20 feet away.