I consider 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons to be the best available rules system to play tactical battles between a group of fantasy heroes and monsters. But as I wrote yesterday, the D&D 4E rules aren't very explicit on role-playing and interactive story-telling. And some of the rules that make total sense in the context of a tactical tabletop game don't make sense at all in the context of a role-playing game outside a combat encounter.

The example I recently had problems with is the rule that unless a character or mob is both out of sight AND specifically making stealth skill checks to become hidden, everybody always knows the position of everybody else on a  battlemap. As I first played that wrong and then the group and enemies not seeing each other any more caused quite some chaos, I can say with confidence that this rule makes sense for a tactical tabletop game. But it would make no sense at all outside combat.

Imagine a tavern fight. The rules say that if for example there is a cook in the kitchen who is a possible combatant, the players would be aware of his presence, even if the kitchen door was closed. But if I used the same map of the tavern for a non-combat role-playing encounter in the tavern, it would feel strange if the players could sense the presence of the cook in the kitchen behind closed doors. I would not have any problem of them trying to listen for noises from the kitchen, if they were interested. But I wouldn't assume that the players always know the exact number of people in a building the moment they enter it.

That gets especially tricky if you plan an ambush. Rules as written would require you to roll a stealth check for every ambusher. That isn't all that obvious. On the one side you wouldn't think of let's say a skeleton as being a monster that is particularly stealthy (all those rattling bones). On the other side, being undead and presumably very patient, a skeleton hidden in a closet shouldn't make any noise at all. So what is the stealth skill of a skeleton in a closet, or the difficulty rating to detect it? The rules say to use its give dexterity modifier plus half level, but that results in a rather low value which would make an ambush from a skeleton jumping out of a closet practically impossible.

My solution to this would be to use the rules as written (group passive perception vs. single stealth skill check for the monster), but to give the ambushers a bonus to the skill check depending on the situation. A kobold hiding in the foliage next to the road probably wouldn't get one, but a mummy in a sarcophagus would. And I wouldn't hesitate to make that bonus a big one, if the whole scene depended on it. In the end the goal is a story-telling one. A failed ambush by kobolds who couldn't keep still while trying to hide next to the road makes a good story. The group hearing the mummy in the sarcophagus doesn't.

Given the typical tactics of the group I am playing with, with most players preferring to stay as far away from monsters as possible, I might need those rules more often. When I put a battlemap on the table with monsters on, and ask the players where they are on the map, their answer is always that they are on squares a good way away, outside the door, off the map (apart from the person who opened the door). I have a blank battlemap just for the purpose of displaying those off-map squares. Thus the question of how far the players went into the room before they noticed the monsters is an important one for my campaign.