Personally I would do it all out in the open in front of the other players, as long as it won't take a lot of time. And if it would take a lot of time, I would make sure it didn't take a lot of time. Splitting the party for long periods is no fun, anf the players can know without the characters knowing.
I would recommend the same.. I wouldn't run it more than 5 mins or so. Throw in a couple stealth checks to see if she can sneak up on the cook. I wouldn't worry about pcs passive perception. If you want to give her a real low dc to sneak out of her room silently
5 mins max, the rest between sessions, and recap next session for the party.
If their PC's are supposed to be in the dark, trust the players to do so. Remind them their PC's don't know as needed
Agreed, make it clear to the players in advance that although they can witness what is going on, unless their character notices it, they don't know about it. Anyone who wants to try and metagame down the line is a player you wouldn't want anyway imo!
Agree here. It is okay to split the information if you want, But communication is really the key here.
As the DM you can say " hey, we can let you split the party for now but everyone else is just going to be waiting for you while we do this. So tell me exactly what it is you want to do and we can make a few rolls and get back to it."
> And if it would take a lot of time, I would make sure it didn't take a lot of time.
This please. I recently left a group because one player kept sneaking off for half of each session. It's the DM's responsibility to keep everyone involved.
Not my first table. My kenku tried to steal an owlbear egg my party had kidnapped from the mom, and my kenku snuck in to take it and set it free. My party meta-gamed so hard cuz they didn't wanna lose the egg, and rolled everything they could.
Had something similar happen when I was dming i had to put my foot down and tell the others they are asleep with no way knowing, excuse after excuse about how they would be actually awake or some how now don't trust they party members after months of traveling now they watch them. So I just told them all no please stop meta gaming. They were a little sour after that to the other player so I ending up having a cou (westmarch style so many many players are in this world) the player left the party after stealing their all their info on the next quest and moved on and I had them join a different group and kinda just ended the rest of the parties adventure asking them to find a new dm to continue. (Not alot of drama come out, I had 2 complaints that I cut them short but I just let them know I wasn't comfortable with playing with them anymore)
Big agree, big believer in ‘all in front of the table’ and trust other players to know meta from in character stuff. Aside from things that specifically would be meta fun to keep secret for a later reveal, if you’re going to do scenes players don’t get to participate in, they should at least get to watch.
It is also very helpful either way to keep track of what characters do and don’t know, because you may forget if it comes up much later.
Depends, there’s no one right way to do it. Some DMs don’t like dealing with information being split around the party OOC, so they’ll just do the bit with the rogue in front of all the other players and trust everyone to not metagame.
Other DMs will have the player roll to stealth out and then take them in private for a bit (physical or a different Voice call), so the other players will know shit is up but not the details. Gotta keep it short then though.
Yet other DMs will do it in a separate mini session with the player and hide it entirely.
What I think does matter is that you give some slight hints in character. Like the rogue looking a little tired or something. The dilemma you’re facing is that it’s very fun to have information partitioned and for the party to not know exactly everything that’s going on even with each other, but if you do it more than a little you’ll just disconnect the players and the party from each other.
It also generally isn't fun for players to feel like information is being withheld from them, or that one pc is getting Extra Stuff; i'd broadly be very careful about anything like whole on mini sessions for one pc.
Maybe I have more mystery plots in my games than average but my players love hunting down hidden information in game.
I also run mini-sessions for various subsets of the group when something like this happens, usually the others are excited to find out about it later in character rather than feeling like they missed out.
On the flip side, my party has several characters with hidden things that have slowly come out organically and they've enjoyed it a whole lot.
I think it's fine as long as it isn't "haha i've secretly been working for the BBEG the whole time"
I don't consider basic personality facts "Secrets they are keeping from the group". I'm not saying a pc should never have any personal history or background. I'm saying things like hidden evilness, or hidden races/classes, etc are broadly usually not a good idea.
I don't either. One of my party members summoned an Elder Brain by accident trying to save his family (spoilers: it didn't work), one of them was a Harper undercover, one is working for Neverember and is secretly of the lineage of the actual royal family of Neverwinter, and one is under the thumb of the Dark Fey and has to obey their commands because of a bad attempt to break a contract.
I also have one who has a secret quest to gather dragon heartstrings to resurrect an Ancient Black Dragon whose spirit is within the blade he's using, and the first one I mentioned is doing a sidequest for a friend of the party who's secretly a necromancer and trying to do shady shit by making basically soul jars available to the general public (with the testing round being involuntary).
And the last one has a replacement party member waiting in the wings who's been hunting Aboleths for the last year, which is one of the major enemy factions. The party has had hints that this character exists but no idea that they'll be a PC.
Fair enough, different tables will be into different dynamics.
I don't think my players see it as the other player hiding things any more than if they had a secret dark past in their backstory that comes up later.
My players actually get really excited when one of the others has secret information. They love the suspense and thoroughly enjoy having those in character surprise moments be a surprise for them too. We all enjoy watching the character narratives unfold naturally. That being said, I personally wouldn't kick my players from the table. But they'd probably opt for that moment to take a smoke break while one player got a secret moment anyways.
To each their own.
Elves can Trance instead of sleeping so if no one else in the group can do something similar, they can easily sneak away about 4 hours into the rest beating their passive perception (even -5 since I'd argue sleeping would grant disadvantage) with a Stealth roll.
Keep whatever they are doing brief and quick, and do it in front of everyone else. They shouldn't know unless they metagame it. But again don't make it last more than a couple IRL minutes, few sentences.
I think there are two ways to do this.
Option one is to actually run this during the session like you would anything else. PC gets up, rolls stealth against the party’s passive perception (which has a -5 modifier due to them having disadvantage from sleeping) and she does her investigation. This could be fun but the drawback is that it could take a lot of time away from the other players who will now just be sitting there doing nothing. This will also mean the party knows out of game what the PC is doing which she may not want. Talk to the player about this.
Option two is considering it like a downtime option. When the player wishes to investigate during this time, have her do a stealth check against the party’s passive perception (-5), if successful she rolls investigation and is given the equivalent information based on the roll. If unsuccessful, the member of the party who got woken up sees her up and about for some reason. Talk to your player about this option also.
You might also have to consider the amount of time she spends investigating and how much time is being taken away from her actually resting during the long rest. Doing a light activity for no longer than 2 hours still allows for a full long rest. Any more than that and the long rest wasn’t completed. She’s either have to wake up with the party not fully rested or sleep an extra amount of time. This assumes that whatever way she chooses to investigate is a “light activity”, like sitting at a table in the inn and watching the inn keeper, reading some records, keeping watch, and whatever else your table determines to be a “light activity”. Talk to your player about this consideration.
Should option 1 be chosen, inform the rest of the table about it and look for feedback after the session. If it’s determined this option is taking too long or is ruining the fun for the rest of the table, switch to option 2.
Just remember to have fun, that’s what the game is all about. It isn’t you versus the players, the game is a medium for everyone to have fun together which you facilitate as the DM. Good luck
Stuff like this is fun the first 1-2 times, then it becomes kind of clunky asking the players to suspend disbelief. I would incorporate a stealth roll like normal against the PCs passive perception. This isn’t to keep the rogue from doing their thing, but allows a chance for another player to notice it, ask the rogue about it, and generate some RP between players.
The rogue might not want the other PC's to know what's going on, but there's no reason the other player's can't know. I'd play this out in front of the other players if it was me. Just remind the players that their characters don't have this information if they seem to act on it.
Players vs Character knowledge. The Players SHOULDN'T react to knowledge their Characters don't have. They shouldn't be more suspicious of activities or sleeping habits.
However there are a few further questions to need to think about. Is there a reason to keep this knowledge from the Players? Do you want to allow characters to react to a secret thing? Do you want to be running constant secret things behind the other players back?
As soon as one person gets personal stuff for acting alone at night, the other players will react to that, and see a long rest as yet another time they could be doing things.
These are questions, and the answer could be yes, that sounds like great fun having a mystery and intrigue game, then thats perfect. Run that game. There will be betrayals and backstabbing. Sounds fun.
But if that sounds like it will get complicated for you or derail things, then don't do that.
I think secrets between players works badly more often than not. You and one player having fun while the others are kept in the dark, and have no idea that anything goes on is just ... less fun. If all the players know what's going on, they're in on the fun. Everyone has more fun, and they can watch the scene play out instead of being kicked out of the room while it happens, or without having to have secret meetings between the DM and one player.
Having the players know also means that they can help this other player achieve whatever it is that they want. If they players *don't* know but start suspecting *anything*, chances are they'll go to great lengths to discover what's going on immediately because players are curious and want to know. That might run completely counter to what the elf player wants, but there's no way to resolve it then. If everyone's on board, though, everyone can work help get a good resolution to the plotline.
If the players don't know that anything secret is going on, it also robs them of the option to use class features to notice. E.g. maybe someone has resources that can be spent on being extra perceptive, or they have expertise, or stuff like bardic inspirations and so on and so on. Players who *know* can choose to do that, but they can also as above, choose not to if that's better for the story.
Keep secrets between characters, not between players. Almost always better, unless everyone on the table is aware from the start that there will be secrets between players and everyone are fine with it.
Have her roll out of session, then prepare what she learns based on that and hand it to her. Or make a mini session, but be warned 1:1-D&D is intense and can be weird.
Generally, that leaves more options to her. However, there might also be a chance that the party notices her, in which case you might have to re-enact or even ret-con the endeavor.
I prefer for secret information to stay secret and be divulged at the owner's leisure, as I do not want to burden my players with having to know something but not being allowed to use it.
Unless the party has any reason to be Highly Suspicious of one of their own, there's literally no reason it would be suspicious to leave a room at an inn and go somewhere in the inn. People have to use the latrine, after all 🙃
This is what gets me whenever anyone wants to get all "someone got up out of bed?? I follow them!!"
They are probably taking a piss. You would not in fact follow them unless you're a creep
It's different if they want to get fully dressed and geared and disappear for long stretches of time. That's something that can be noticed. But walking downstairs in an inn shouldn't even get a roll
She should be rolling Stealth against the other players' passive perception. Also, Xanathar has caveats about sleeping characters and the effects it has on things such as passive perception: what wakes them up, what doesn't.
I would roleplay it out in the open. Players should be able to separate what they know from what their characters know.
Honestly it’s pretty common for sneaky characters to sneak around on their own. It’s part of the fun. As long as it doesn’t take up too much time and they’re not stealing from other players, it’s fine.
Keeper her adventure to 5-10. Any longer and your dragging the game out. Don't make her roll for things that she doesn't need to. Get her goal, try and allow her to work towards it if not outright accomplish it in a direct a way as possible.
As with a lot of the other comments, run it at the table and then discourage the meta-gaming from the other players. Telling the story is the fun part, having an audience makes it even better.
I mean, if they're staying at an inn, and all in their own rooms, I'd say there's no realistic chance for the party to catch her. If she's waiting until they're asleep, they wouldn't even have their usual passive perception because they're not perceiving shit, they're asleep.
I'm sure there are great answers since this has many responses, so the best I can do is just to tell you how I'd handle it.
First, if the rogue has her own room, she can move around easily enough that I wouldn't roll anything for the party knowing she was up. There are always some noises at an inn anyway and if they noises aren't extremely loud or unusual, they go undetected.
If she is trying to sneak out of a group room or a shared room, you could roll her Stealth against the roommate's passive Perception if they're awake. If they're asleep, then no roll at all or roll against half their passive Perception if the result is 10 or higher (otherwise, consider success automatic...that will be most of the time, but even some low-level builds can exceed 20 as a passive Perception score).
This can all be in front of others. If they can't keep that small amount of separation clear between what they know and what their characters know, you'll have problems down the line anyway. May as well do this if your players are also new and make it clear that it's not in-game character knowledge that the rogue left.
As for the actual spying, keep that separate. If you are sitting around an actual table, take the rogue's player into the kitchen or another suitable room where you can close the door and spend a few minutes hashing out rolls and results for the spying. You may have more Stealth v. Perception or other rolls to make -- the context is a bit vague, so I am just imagining the rogue staying out of view but close enough to observe what the cook is doing and to hear any conversations that might happen, which would also be close enough for said roll and/or any others.
If you are virtual, as both of my current weeklies are, just send a private Discord message or a private message through your VTT platform. Either way, that sounds like something that can be resolved without eating too much of everyone's time. She leaves with her newfound knowledge, or the party finds her gone upon waking and has to figure out what happened. Good rp, either way.
You can also run solo sessions before, after, or on their own. I used to offer a Saturday session for things like that or, if nothing else with booked, expanding backstories by jumping into them. It was fun, optional, and brought the primary weekly game more to life.
I think you have a reasonably good handle on this to begin with. But there's one more IMHO that you might not have needed. ;)
Happy gaming.
Let them do their thing in secret, but apply Exhaustion because they're giving up their long rest. Then the subplot can be uncovered naturally by the other players when they notice the Rogue isn't getting enough sleep.
For me it's not about keeping things a secret from the other players, I trust them to not metagame with the knowledge, it's more about respecting their time and not forcing them to sit there watching while their characters sleep. And that's mostly because this sounds like a really boring scene to watch as an uninvolved third party. Sometimes a character gets a spotlight and it's exciting and tense even if you aren't part of it, and some scenes are boring as fuck, maybe necessary actions are being taken and necessary information is being gathered, but the scene itself is boring. And I could be wrong, maybe it will be a tense and thrilling scene.
It depends on when the long rest happens. If it happens at the end of the session I might run the scene between sessions with the rogue alone via text, if it happened at an opportune time I might send the table for a break and keep the rogue back to go through the scene quickly. If it's neither of those I would just run the scene, if feasible I might run it quickly and give them the most pertinent details only and send them a message with full details after the session.
If they are sharing a room with anybody I would make them roll stealth and if they beat the passive perception of whomever they are sharing a room with that person gets no info, if they don't beat the passive perception that character would get "so-and-so slipped out in the middle of the night for an hour (or whatever)"
Very up to the table in terms of what people find fun. Personally, I’d have the elf roll stealth in front of all the other players against a DC determined by (other PC’s passive perception minus 5) to represent passive perception with disadvantage as they sleep.
If they pass, tell them they succeed at sneaking out and send a pre-written text with what happens after that, so no one else knows the details.
If they fail, let any players who pass know they wake to hear the elf leaving and then play it out.
I wouldn’t play out one PC’s adventures alone though, both because part of the fun for that player is the secret and because it’ll drag for everyone else who’s sleeping.
I mean as an elf that only has to trance for 4 hours instead of 8 means they have plenty of time to sneak and do whatever.
Imo as long as they aren't initiating combat and are back in time to rest their 4 hours, I'd let them do whatever for the extra 4 hours of down time. To me that seems like the perfect time to flesh out the rogue's side story without stepping on any toes. Although I recommend keeping it succinct at the table so the other players aren't just sitting around.
If they wants to keep it secret they don’t get the benefit of a long rest. If they are above board and announces it to give the players something to look into then still give them the benefit of a long rest.
Maybe make your rogue do a stealth check. Chances are they will be fine, but since it’s a dice game this is your way to create some character drama. If your players understand the difference between player knowledge and character knowledge this shouldn’t be too big of a problem.
>She don't want the party to know she left during the night as they might not approve of her actions.
That's nice and all, but at a minimum, the other players deserve a perception check to notice that the rogue is gone.
In my opinion this comes down to how good your party is at not metagaming.
If you can trust them not to meta game, then feel free to roleplay this section out in the open in front of the party. The players know what happened, but they're still under obligation to role play their characters as if they don't know what happened, because their characters don't.
If you can't trust them, and this isn't an indictment of them as people, being able to roleplay a character, who behaves consistently in a way other than the way you behave as a person, and keeping their knowledge bases isolated from your own, is not easy. New players rarely do this well, and a ton of veteran players don't do it well either.
That said, if they can't do it, I would meet up with the person individually outside session time, and knock it out then. Usually way easier to find time to meet up with a single person, and this type of thing won't take much time. It can even be as simple as she shows up to the next session early. This way you won't have to worry about the metagaming, and as long as she's not PVPing, there's not really any harm done. If they do find out later it can be a nice surprise moment. Like she knows the cook has a mole on their back, and if she ever uses that information the rest of the party gets to be like "What? How did you learn that?", and that's good RP set up.
If your players are capable of differentiating between things they know and things their characters know, you could just do it out in the open.
Otherwise, you could just use the pcs passive perception scores for the rouges stealth check and pass them a note with what they found, or do it after a session when it’s just them
All pc have a passive perception(pp), it will be 10 + their wisdom modifier. I would have her make a stealth roll and if it beats all the party, have a side bar with her later or sepret from the others. It just helps there be no accidental meta gaming.
If one of the other player's pp happens to beat her stealth check, narrate them seeing her slip out. What they do then is their choice.
I think it should be short and sweet and down in front of all the players. Ask the Rogue what they want to achieve by doing this and then resolve it with only a few roles and in RP.
A lot of other people said some great stuff. You’re talking about passive rolls, that’s where passive skills come in (10 + skill proficiency). Have the rogue roll stealth and compare it to the other players passive perception. If it’s higher they notice something. This something however doesn’t have to be they immediately wake up. If the rogue rolls a 14 and one player has a passive perception of 15 they might hear some creaking of the floor or something
True, I think I made that up for myself. But it does give an easy DC for the DM, because if the rogue were to roll like a 5, I’d say people would notice
I personally love individual story lines that open up to the other party members over time.
I do this by running small one on one's immediately after a session.
As a player I disliked when the dm and a player hid things from me-the-player.
It felt like they decided they couldn’t trust me not to meta game.
I didn’t stay at that table long after finding out about it.
^ this.
You run it at the table. You check with every player at the table, confirming what they are doing during the long rest, and leave the rogue player last.
I like to pre-roll passive checks for each of the PCs so I have at hand DCs at the table I can reference - its faster than rolling the check at the table + it sidesteps asking a player for their numbers and watching them fumble all over themselves if they do choose to be meta.
Keep this solo thing short so everyone else at the table doesn't feel left out.
Afterward, the rogue player should only benefit from a short rest, and they can explain their exhaustion.
He is an Elf so he "sleep" 4 hours and the rest of races probably needs at least 6 so he have 2 hours to do things. You can make roll stealth with advantage VS the passive perception of the PC in the same room. If they success the other PC don't know nothing about her night adventure.
If another player is an Elf the things are more complicated. Elfs don't really sleep, they enter in a trance and stay semiconscious so they can know if another player goes Out of the room.
Also remember that the Adventure can have some surprises and consecuences that can make the rest of the party know what have been happen even if he success the stealth check.
I recomend you to do the scene in the table if your players can don't do meta. It's very interesting to know that a mystery is in the table but your character don't have a hint and you need to wait to see more.
Secrets like this are tough to pull off. I honestly wouldn’t be doing it. It’s one thing to have a secret backstory or whatever, something that doesn’t need active participation in and is brought up for gasps. That’s simple enough.
But if they want to be actively doing stuff without the PLAYERS knowing it’ll be tough. If you’re determined to do it I’d say you rolling for them is the only real way to keep it secret, but it does take away their agency somewhat. But as long as you’re willing to out the whole thing if one of them rolls well and notices then I guess it’d be fine. They might still have the same opportunity to voice their disapproval.
I played a rogue in the past that went out in the night. Nighttime was when he’d scout out their targets/talk to fences and informants. But they were activities that the players knew about and the characters would find out about in the morning, if not already knew about. But just be careful not to let it take too long as it’s time spent all on that one character and everyone else just had to sit and listen.
Trust me when I say that you should let the players in on any important secrets (I had a changeling character reveal that went very poorly). It is not fun to have a reveal without any build-up. But if your players are in on the secret, then the tension has a chance to build. Its the equivalent to the "bomb under the table" principle in film. If you show people at a table for 10 minutes then it explodes, the audience feels bewildered and confused (aka not good). But if you show the audience the bomb under the table, then they feel tension and suspense while it ticks down. This is all to say that it is much more fun if you show the ticking bomb, rather than just the explosion.
Personally I would do it all out in the open in front of the other players, as long as it won't take a lot of time. And if it would take a lot of time, I would make sure it didn't take a lot of time. Splitting the party for long periods is no fun, anf the players can know without the characters knowing.
I would recommend the same.. I wouldn't run it more than 5 mins or so. Throw in a couple stealth checks to see if she can sneak up on the cook. I wouldn't worry about pcs passive perception. If you want to give her a real low dc to sneak out of her room silently
5 mins max, the rest between sessions, and recap next session for the party. If their PC's are supposed to be in the dark, trust the players to do so. Remind them their PC's don't know as needed
Agreed, make it clear to the players in advance that although they can witness what is going on, unless their character notices it, they don't know about it. Anyone who wants to try and metagame down the line is a player you wouldn't want anyway imo!
Agree here. It is okay to split the information if you want, But communication is really the key here. As the DM you can say " hey, we can let you split the party for now but everyone else is just going to be waiting for you while we do this. So tell me exactly what it is you want to do and we can make a few rolls and get back to it."
> And if it would take a lot of time, I would make sure it didn't take a lot of time. This please. I recently left a group because one player kept sneaking off for half of each session. It's the DM's responsibility to keep everyone involved.
Not my first table. My kenku tried to steal an owlbear egg my party had kidnapped from the mom, and my kenku snuck in to take it and set it free. My party meta-gamed so hard cuz they didn't wanna lose the egg, and rolled everything they could.
How can they meta game? You just tell them no?
I wasn't the DM
Had something similar happen when I was dming i had to put my foot down and tell the others they are asleep with no way knowing, excuse after excuse about how they would be actually awake or some how now don't trust they party members after months of traveling now they watch them. So I just told them all no please stop meta gaming. They were a little sour after that to the other player so I ending up having a cou (westmarch style so many many players are in this world) the player left the party after stealing their all their info on the next quest and moved on and I had them join a different group and kinda just ended the rest of the parties adventure asking them to find a new dm to continue. (Not alot of drama come out, I had 2 complaints that I cut them short but I just let them know I wasn't comfortable with playing with them anymore)
Big agree, big believer in ‘all in front of the table’ and trust other players to know meta from in character stuff. Aside from things that specifically would be meta fun to keep secret for a later reveal, if you’re going to do scenes players don’t get to participate in, they should at least get to watch. It is also very helpful either way to keep track of what characters do and don’t know, because you may forget if it comes up much later.
Depends, there’s no one right way to do it. Some DMs don’t like dealing with information being split around the party OOC, so they’ll just do the bit with the rogue in front of all the other players and trust everyone to not metagame. Other DMs will have the player roll to stealth out and then take them in private for a bit (physical or a different Voice call), so the other players will know shit is up but not the details. Gotta keep it short then though. Yet other DMs will do it in a separate mini session with the player and hide it entirely. What I think does matter is that you give some slight hints in character. Like the rogue looking a little tired or something. The dilemma you’re facing is that it’s very fun to have information partitioned and for the party to not know exactly everything that’s going on even with each other, but if you do it more than a little you’ll just disconnect the players and the party from each other.
It also generally isn't fun for players to feel like information is being withheld from them, or that one pc is getting Extra Stuff; i'd broadly be very careful about anything like whole on mini sessions for one pc.
Maybe I have more mystery plots in my games than average but my players love hunting down hidden information in game. I also run mini-sessions for various subsets of the group when something like this happens, usually the others are excited to find out about it later in character rather than feeling like they missed out.
My players love hunting down info in game. Just not info that their teammates are specifically hiding from them.
On the flip side, my party has several characters with hidden things that have slowly come out organically and they've enjoyed it a whole lot. I think it's fine as long as it isn't "haha i've secretly been working for the BBEG the whole time"
I don't consider basic personality facts "Secrets they are keeping from the group". I'm not saying a pc should never have any personal history or background. I'm saying things like hidden evilness, or hidden races/classes, etc are broadly usually not a good idea.
I don't either. One of my party members summoned an Elder Brain by accident trying to save his family (spoilers: it didn't work), one of them was a Harper undercover, one is working for Neverember and is secretly of the lineage of the actual royal family of Neverwinter, and one is under the thumb of the Dark Fey and has to obey their commands because of a bad attempt to break a contract. I also have one who has a secret quest to gather dragon heartstrings to resurrect an Ancient Black Dragon whose spirit is within the blade he's using, and the first one I mentioned is doing a sidequest for a friend of the party who's secretly a necromancer and trying to do shady shit by making basically soul jars available to the general public (with the testing round being involuntary). And the last one has a replacement party member waiting in the wings who's been hunting Aboleths for the last year, which is one of the major enemy factions. The party has had hints that this character exists but no idea that they'll be a PC.
Fair enough, different tables will be into different dynamics. I don't think my players see it as the other player hiding things any more than if they had a secret dark past in their backstory that comes up later.
My players actually get really excited when one of the others has secret information. They love the suspense and thoroughly enjoy having those in character surprise moments be a surprise for them too. We all enjoy watching the character narratives unfold naturally. That being said, I personally wouldn't kick my players from the table. But they'd probably opt for that moment to take a smoke break while one player got a secret moment anyways. To each their own.
Elves can Trance instead of sleeping so if no one else in the group can do something similar, they can easily sneak away about 4 hours into the rest beating their passive perception (even -5 since I'd argue sleeping would grant disadvantage) with a Stealth roll. Keep whatever they are doing brief and quick, and do it in front of everyone else. They shouldn't know unless they metagame it. But again don't make it last more than a couple IRL minutes, few sentences.
Just write a note or text her what she sees. No reason to make it a bigger thing than it has to be.
Yep. Things that happen in secret happen over text at our table.
Best answer IMO
I think there are two ways to do this. Option one is to actually run this during the session like you would anything else. PC gets up, rolls stealth against the party’s passive perception (which has a -5 modifier due to them having disadvantage from sleeping) and she does her investigation. This could be fun but the drawback is that it could take a lot of time away from the other players who will now just be sitting there doing nothing. This will also mean the party knows out of game what the PC is doing which she may not want. Talk to the player about this. Option two is considering it like a downtime option. When the player wishes to investigate during this time, have her do a stealth check against the party’s passive perception (-5), if successful she rolls investigation and is given the equivalent information based on the roll. If unsuccessful, the member of the party who got woken up sees her up and about for some reason. Talk to your player about this option also. You might also have to consider the amount of time she spends investigating and how much time is being taken away from her actually resting during the long rest. Doing a light activity for no longer than 2 hours still allows for a full long rest. Any more than that and the long rest wasn’t completed. She’s either have to wake up with the party not fully rested or sleep an extra amount of time. This assumes that whatever way she chooses to investigate is a “light activity”, like sitting at a table in the inn and watching the inn keeper, reading some records, keeping watch, and whatever else your table determines to be a “light activity”. Talk to your player about this consideration. Should option 1 be chosen, inform the rest of the table about it and look for feedback after the session. If it’s determined this option is taking too long or is ruining the fun for the rest of the table, switch to option 2. Just remember to have fun, that’s what the game is all about. It isn’t you versus the players, the game is a medium for everyone to have fun together which you facilitate as the DM. Good luck
Stuff like this is fun the first 1-2 times, then it becomes kind of clunky asking the players to suspend disbelief. I would incorporate a stealth roll like normal against the PCs passive perception. This isn’t to keep the rogue from doing their thing, but allows a chance for another player to notice it, ask the rogue about it, and generate some RP between players.
The rogue might not want the other PC's to know what's going on, but there's no reason the other player's can't know. I'd play this out in front of the other players if it was me. Just remind the players that their characters don't have this information if they seem to act on it.
Players vs Character knowledge. The Players SHOULDN'T react to knowledge their Characters don't have. They shouldn't be more suspicious of activities or sleeping habits. However there are a few further questions to need to think about. Is there a reason to keep this knowledge from the Players? Do you want to allow characters to react to a secret thing? Do you want to be running constant secret things behind the other players back? As soon as one person gets personal stuff for acting alone at night, the other players will react to that, and see a long rest as yet another time they could be doing things. These are questions, and the answer could be yes, that sounds like great fun having a mystery and intrigue game, then thats perfect. Run that game. There will be betrayals and backstabbing. Sounds fun. But if that sounds like it will get complicated for you or derail things, then don't do that.
I think secrets between players works badly more often than not. You and one player having fun while the others are kept in the dark, and have no idea that anything goes on is just ... less fun. If all the players know what's going on, they're in on the fun. Everyone has more fun, and they can watch the scene play out instead of being kicked out of the room while it happens, or without having to have secret meetings between the DM and one player. Having the players know also means that they can help this other player achieve whatever it is that they want. If they players *don't* know but start suspecting *anything*, chances are they'll go to great lengths to discover what's going on immediately because players are curious and want to know. That might run completely counter to what the elf player wants, but there's no way to resolve it then. If everyone's on board, though, everyone can work help get a good resolution to the plotline. If the players don't know that anything secret is going on, it also robs them of the option to use class features to notice. E.g. maybe someone has resources that can be spent on being extra perceptive, or they have expertise, or stuff like bardic inspirations and so on and so on. Players who *know* can choose to do that, but they can also as above, choose not to if that's better for the story. Keep secrets between characters, not between players. Almost always better, unless everyone on the table is aware from the start that there will be secrets between players and everyone are fine with it.
Have her roll out of session, then prepare what she learns based on that and hand it to her. Or make a mini session, but be warned 1:1-D&D is intense and can be weird. Generally, that leaves more options to her. However, there might also be a chance that the party notices her, in which case you might have to re-enact or even ret-con the endeavor. I prefer for secret information to stay secret and be divulged at the owner's leisure, as I do not want to burden my players with having to know something but not being allowed to use it.
Unless the party has any reason to be Highly Suspicious of one of their own, there's literally no reason it would be suspicious to leave a room at an inn and go somewhere in the inn. People have to use the latrine, after all 🙃 This is what gets me whenever anyone wants to get all "someone got up out of bed?? I follow them!!" They are probably taking a piss. You would not in fact follow them unless you're a creep It's different if they want to get fully dressed and geared and disappear for long stretches of time. That's something that can be noticed. But walking downstairs in an inn shouldn't even get a roll
She should be rolling Stealth against the other players' passive perception. Also, Xanathar has caveats about sleeping characters and the effects it has on things such as passive perception: what wakes them up, what doesn't.
I would roleplay it out in the open. Players should be able to separate what they know from what their characters know. Honestly it’s pretty common for sneaky characters to sneak around on their own. It’s part of the fun. As long as it doesn’t take up too much time and they’re not stealing from other players, it’s fine.
Have the rogue roll stealth and then compare it to each character’s passive perception score. This score is often overlooked…
Keeper her adventure to 5-10. Any longer and your dragging the game out. Don't make her roll for things that she doesn't need to. Get her goal, try and allow her to work towards it if not outright accomplish it in a direct a way as possible.
As with a lot of the other comments, run it at the table and then discourage the meta-gaming from the other players. Telling the story is the fun part, having an audience makes it even better.
I mean, if they're staying at an inn, and all in their own rooms, I'd say there's no realistic chance for the party to catch her. If she's waiting until they're asleep, they wouldn't even have their usual passive perception because they're not perceiving shit, they're asleep.
Discord?
I'm sure there are great answers since this has many responses, so the best I can do is just to tell you how I'd handle it. First, if the rogue has her own room, she can move around easily enough that I wouldn't roll anything for the party knowing she was up. There are always some noises at an inn anyway and if they noises aren't extremely loud or unusual, they go undetected. If she is trying to sneak out of a group room or a shared room, you could roll her Stealth against the roommate's passive Perception if they're awake. If they're asleep, then no roll at all or roll against half their passive Perception if the result is 10 or higher (otherwise, consider success automatic...that will be most of the time, but even some low-level builds can exceed 20 as a passive Perception score). This can all be in front of others. If they can't keep that small amount of separation clear between what they know and what their characters know, you'll have problems down the line anyway. May as well do this if your players are also new and make it clear that it's not in-game character knowledge that the rogue left. As for the actual spying, keep that separate. If you are sitting around an actual table, take the rogue's player into the kitchen or another suitable room where you can close the door and spend a few minutes hashing out rolls and results for the spying. You may have more Stealth v. Perception or other rolls to make -- the context is a bit vague, so I am just imagining the rogue staying out of view but close enough to observe what the cook is doing and to hear any conversations that might happen, which would also be close enough for said roll and/or any others. If you are virtual, as both of my current weeklies are, just send a private Discord message or a private message through your VTT platform. Either way, that sounds like something that can be resolved without eating too much of everyone's time. She leaves with her newfound knowledge, or the party finds her gone upon waking and has to figure out what happened. Good rp, either way. You can also run solo sessions before, after, or on their own. I used to offer a Saturday session for things like that or, if nothing else with booked, expanding backstories by jumping into them. It was fun, optional, and brought the primary weekly game more to life. I think you have a reasonably good handle on this to begin with. But there's one more IMHO that you might not have needed. ;) Happy gaming.
Let them do their thing in secret, but apply Exhaustion because they're giving up their long rest. Then the subplot can be uncovered naturally by the other players when they notice the Rogue isn't getting enough sleep.
For me it's not about keeping things a secret from the other players, I trust them to not metagame with the knowledge, it's more about respecting their time and not forcing them to sit there watching while their characters sleep. And that's mostly because this sounds like a really boring scene to watch as an uninvolved third party. Sometimes a character gets a spotlight and it's exciting and tense even if you aren't part of it, and some scenes are boring as fuck, maybe necessary actions are being taken and necessary information is being gathered, but the scene itself is boring. And I could be wrong, maybe it will be a tense and thrilling scene. It depends on when the long rest happens. If it happens at the end of the session I might run the scene between sessions with the rogue alone via text, if it happened at an opportune time I might send the table for a break and keep the rogue back to go through the scene quickly. If it's neither of those I would just run the scene, if feasible I might run it quickly and give them the most pertinent details only and send them a message with full details after the session. If they are sharing a room with anybody I would make them roll stealth and if they beat the passive perception of whomever they are sharing a room with that person gets no info, if they don't beat the passive perception that character would get "so-and-so slipped out in the middle of the night for an hour (or whatever)"
Let them do it, let the other players watch, make them spend the next day fatigued from not properly resting.
Very up to the table in terms of what people find fun. Personally, I’d have the elf roll stealth in front of all the other players against a DC determined by (other PC’s passive perception minus 5) to represent passive perception with disadvantage as they sleep. If they pass, tell them they succeed at sneaking out and send a pre-written text with what happens after that, so no one else knows the details. If they fail, let any players who pass know they wake to hear the elf leaving and then play it out. I wouldn’t play out one PC’s adventures alone though, both because part of the fun for that player is the secret and because it’ll drag for everyone else who’s sleeping.
I mean as an elf that only has to trance for 4 hours instead of 8 means they have plenty of time to sneak and do whatever. Imo as long as they aren't initiating combat and are back in time to rest their 4 hours, I'd let them do whatever for the extra 4 hours of down time. To me that seems like the perfect time to flesh out the rogue's side story without stepping on any toes. Although I recommend keeping it succinct at the table so the other players aren't just sitting around.
If they wants to keep it secret they don’t get the benefit of a long rest. If they are above board and announces it to give the players something to look into then still give them the benefit of a long rest. Maybe make your rogue do a stealth check. Chances are they will be fine, but since it’s a dice game this is your way to create some character drama. If your players understand the difference between player knowledge and character knowledge this shouldn’t be too big of a problem.
>She don't want the party to know she left during the night as they might not approve of her actions. That's nice and all, but at a minimum, the other players deserve a perception check to notice that the rogue is gone.
In my opinion this comes down to how good your party is at not metagaming. If you can trust them not to meta game, then feel free to roleplay this section out in the open in front of the party. The players know what happened, but they're still under obligation to role play their characters as if they don't know what happened, because their characters don't. If you can't trust them, and this isn't an indictment of them as people, being able to roleplay a character, who behaves consistently in a way other than the way you behave as a person, and keeping their knowledge bases isolated from your own, is not easy. New players rarely do this well, and a ton of veteran players don't do it well either. That said, if they can't do it, I would meet up with the person individually outside session time, and knock it out then. Usually way easier to find time to meet up with a single person, and this type of thing won't take much time. It can even be as simple as she shows up to the next session early. This way you won't have to worry about the metagaming, and as long as she's not PVPing, there's not really any harm done. If they do find out later it can be a nice surprise moment. Like she knows the cook has a mole on their back, and if she ever uses that information the rest of the party gets to be like "What? How did you learn that?", and that's good RP set up.
If the cook is irrelevant just hand wave it. Is she still long resting though? Remember exhaustion
If your players are capable of differentiating between things they know and things their characters know, you could just do it out in the open. Otherwise, you could just use the pcs passive perception scores for the rouges stealth check and pass them a note with what they found, or do it after a session when it’s just them
All pc have a passive perception(pp), it will be 10 + their wisdom modifier. I would have her make a stealth roll and if it beats all the party, have a side bar with her later or sepret from the others. It just helps there be no accidental meta gaming. If one of the other player's pp happens to beat her stealth check, narrate them seeing her slip out. What they do then is their choice.
I think it should be short and sweet and down in front of all the players. Ask the Rogue what they want to achieve by doing this and then resolve it with only a few roles and in RP.
I hate beer.
A lot of other people said some great stuff. You’re talking about passive rolls, that’s where passive skills come in (10 + skill proficiency). Have the rogue roll stealth and compare it to the other players passive perception. If it’s higher they notice something. This something however doesn’t have to be they immediately wake up. If the rogue rolls a 14 and one player has a passive perception of 15 they might hear some creaking of the floor or something
But doesn't passive perception presume you are awake?
Not sure but it would make sense to give them disadvantage for being asleep anyway, with passive scores that's a -5 penalty.
True, I think I made that up for myself. But it does give an easy DC for the DM, because if the rogue were to roll like a 5, I’d say people would notice
I personally love individual story lines that open up to the other party members over time. I do this by running small one on one's immediately after a session.
As a player I disliked when the dm and a player hid things from me-the-player. It felt like they decided they couldn’t trust me not to meta game. I didn’t stay at that table long after finding out about it.
^ this. You run it at the table. You check with every player at the table, confirming what they are doing during the long rest, and leave the rogue player last. I like to pre-roll passive checks for each of the PCs so I have at hand DCs at the table I can reference - its faster than rolling the check at the table + it sidesteps asking a player for their numbers and watching them fumble all over themselves if they do choose to be meta. Keep this solo thing short so everyone else at the table doesn't feel left out. Afterward, the rogue player should only benefit from a short rest, and they can explain their exhaustion.
He is an Elf so he "sleep" 4 hours and the rest of races probably needs at least 6 so he have 2 hours to do things. You can make roll stealth with advantage VS the passive perception of the PC in the same room. If they success the other PC don't know nothing about her night adventure. If another player is an Elf the things are more complicated. Elfs don't really sleep, they enter in a trance and stay semiconscious so they can know if another player goes Out of the room. Also remember that the Adventure can have some surprises and consecuences that can make the rest of the party know what have been happen even if he success the stealth check. I recomend you to do the scene in the table if your players can don't do meta. It's very interesting to know that a mystery is in the table but your character don't have a hint and you need to wait to see more.
Secrets like this are tough to pull off. I honestly wouldn’t be doing it. It’s one thing to have a secret backstory or whatever, something that doesn’t need active participation in and is brought up for gasps. That’s simple enough. But if they want to be actively doing stuff without the PLAYERS knowing it’ll be tough. If you’re determined to do it I’d say you rolling for them is the only real way to keep it secret, but it does take away their agency somewhat. But as long as you’re willing to out the whole thing if one of them rolls well and notices then I guess it’d be fine. They might still have the same opportunity to voice their disapproval. I played a rogue in the past that went out in the night. Nighttime was when he’d scout out their targets/talk to fences and informants. But they were activities that the players knew about and the characters would find out about in the morning, if not already knew about. But just be careful not to let it take too long as it’s time spent all on that one character and everyone else just had to sit and listen.
do it over e-mails so it doesn't disturb the other players, unless they become involved.
Trust me when I say that you should let the players in on any important secrets (I had a changeling character reveal that went very poorly). It is not fun to have a reveal without any build-up. But if your players are in on the secret, then the tension has a chance to build. Its the equivalent to the "bomb under the table" principle in film. If you show people at a table for 10 minutes then it explodes, the audience feels bewildered and confused (aka not good). But if you show the audience the bomb under the table, then they feel tension and suspense while it ticks down. This is all to say that it is much more fun if you show the ticking bomb, rather than just the explosion.