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.
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.
The way they play in Critical Role is not by the book.
The point has already been made in this post several times.
In any case I wasn’t referring to CR, but the point has been made. Even my IRL buddy who’s been playing tabletop (pathfinder currently) for years has this rule. He told me stories going back 10 years I’ve known him (before CR) about nay 1 and nay 20 hijinks.
He never told me it was a house rule. I always thought nat 1 was auto fail every time.
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.
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.