Welcome to our new blog series "Ask a DM" where a couple of our very own Dungeon Masters move aside the DM screen and answer your questions about DMing. Today, our DM David (Twitter: @thatdaveguy_) will be answering two excellent questions submitted by a couple of our friends on Twitter. Let's jump right in! Question One: I have started running [D&D] 5e about two years ago, roughly at the house before starting to run Tier One Adventurers League. We were not using minis but I am moving that way now. Trying to work out the halfling rogue's sneak attacks, move, hide, and attempt again was a pain. Help! Question by Benjamin (Twitter: @baedenfield1) So sneak attack only works once per round. It's important to remember that when a player character roles to attempt to hide, their stealth check is opposing a target's passive perception. The way I think about it is, the rogue attempts to hide usually at the end, or start of their turn, right? This means they're going to try and get advantage on their next attack roll. If they're successful with this attack, it means sneak attack, but if the target noticed them, i.e. the Rogue rolled lower than the targets passive perception, then they don't get advantage unless, they have an ally within five feet. Now, you could rule that as soon as combat begins the rogue has a disadvantage on stealth checks when trying to hide, and this would give the illusion of combat being chaotic and not really having the state of mind to try and find a good hiding spot. But that's completely up to the DM and how they want to run the game. The great thing about being a rogue is the ability to get that sneak attack roll and, even if you don't, you're hidden. As a player of a rogue, you're always looking for that loophole, that chink in the armor that lets you get the advantage on your attack, even if it means moving around the battlefield so you do get advantage. This means as the DM, you're trying to be creative about where the bad guys are being positioned, and as soon as one gets taken down by a sneak attack, it's all hands on deck. That can also mean giving the rogue opportunities to hide, maybe putting up several obstacles or objects that they can use to hide behind and get as many sneak attacks in that combat as possible. Your rogue's player will thank you! Question Two: How do you determine when to let the players roam versus keeping to the story path? Strict vs. open world play. Question by John (Twitter: @johnmcm92753321) This is a good question. It's a tough one because it depends on the players equally as much as the DM. What I mean by that is it's important as a DM to discuss with your players what kind of game they want to play. If they want to play a sandbox style game, then you need to prep an open world style game. Now this doesn't mean knowing everything about the entire world day one, but it does mean having a general idea of where things might be, what might be in the area and the lore surrounding the environment. What's great about this and really about world building in general, is that your players can even give you ideas of what could be in the area. For example, if one of your players is a ranger that heralds from one of the areas that the party is about to visit, maybe they can tell tales of great beasts of the area, or giants that roam the mountains. Likewise, if they want to play something a little bit more linear, point A to point B to point C type style of gameplay, then you can mind map that out just as much as you would the sandbox style. I think the challenge comes in when we try to mix the two, which happens pretty frequently if you think about it. It's a big world, and the players probably want to explore as much as possible, but there's also this quest, a narrative that's being told and that involves their characters. Which means that there needs to be incentive for them to be involved in the narrative.
I think a lot of the challenge of DMing comes from this idea of not really knowing where the players are going to go or this idea of needing to prep the entire world on day one. In my experience I haven't found that to be true. Session zero is important in this case, talk with your players to know what they want out of the campaign. It's okay to have zero idea of where the campaign is going at day one, but you should have at least a story idea by session four or five, that you can begin to weave into the narrative. Use characters backstories to engage them in the overarching story. If your Big Bad is Tiamat, then you need to have some plot points connecting directly to the characters, or at least their ideals. That's it for today's questions. If you have anything to add to our advice or if you have questions for a future Ask a DM, please mention it down in the comments an we will see you next time!
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