If one were to referee a situation in OD&D where a player character wants to try to be stealthy to either surprise and ambush an enemy, sneak past a sleeping guard or just move quietly through a corridor to negate any chance of being surprised then how would this work? Could we consider this to be subsumed into the surprise mechanic detailed in OD&D Book III “Underworld & Wilderness Adventures”? Here is what that book says regarding surprise:

“A Condition of surprise can only exist when one or both parties are unaware of the presence of the other. Such things as ESP’ing, light, and noise will negate surprise. If the possibility for surprise exists roll a six-sided die for each party concerned. A roll of 1 or 2 indicates the party is surprised.”

This doesn’t seem to strictly cover specific situations such as trying to sneak up on or past an enemy but we might consider the surprise mechanic as a way to subsume these things into an abstracted game like mechanic. This may even have been an intuitive way to see the surprise mechanic for OD&D gamers who came to the game prior to later editions which popularised ability checks.

OD&D Stealth, Sneaking, Moving Silently & their Relationship with Surprise

Players and referees alike who are more comfortable with the later basic editions of the game and beyond might expect this to come down to the afore mentioned ability check rolled on a d20. But OD&D never strictly included ability checks out of the box. Further, there is a major complication to handling stealth based actions using ability checks and that is the thief character class which was introduced in the first OD&D supplement “Greyhawk”. This class infringes on using ability checks to establish whether a player character can be sneaky, silent, climb a wall and so on as the thief has their own rule mechanics for handling this sort of thing.

The thief at 1st level can “move silently” and has a 10% chance to do so (1 in 100). This brings game balance into question if we allowed a 1st level fighter with a high dexterity to attempt to roll under that score on a d20. Even if they had a low average score of 9 they would get a 45% chance of being stealthy if we were to boil it down to an ability check. Even the lowest score of 3 would provide a 15% chance. This won’t do because it would mean that 1st level thieves are a lot worse at being stealthy than non-thieves!

There are alternative ways to test against a characters ability scores. One rather overcomplicated way was exampled in Dragon Magazine issue 1. The article was a contribution by a gamer and game designer named Wesley Ives, but again using this system in regards to any kind of stealth check disadvantages low level thieves.

Ability checks as we know them today used in OD&D are a bit of a wrong fit generally as the chance of success in OD&D is commonly boiled down to an X in 6 chance providing either a 16.67, 33.33, 50, 66.67, 83.33 or 100% chance of success or failure.

To make ability checks work better with OD&D you can divide ability scores into categories of low (3-8), average (9-12) and high (13-18) scores. It makes sense to then split high scores into 3 categories (low-high (13-16), mid-high (17) and exceptional (18). This categorisation lines up well with how the original game’s bonuses and penalties work.

Mapping ability checks to an X in 6 chance is a fine idea for some things and if you read Wesley Ives article in Dragon #1 he provides various suggestions as to what they can be used for (interestingly stealth is not included).

In regards to d6 ability checks relating to stealth; even with the lowest possible dexterity score of 3 the character would get a 16.67% chance to be stealthy if we used their dexterity score to measure their success or failure. It makes no sense that a very undexterous non-thief class would have a better chance than a 1st level thief of sneaking, moving silently etc.

Considering this, it seems to me that a dexterity check would be a highly inappropriate way of measuring success or failure when it comes to stealthy actions. Further, Men & Magic does not relate dexterity to this type of action. It says “Dexterity applies to both manual speed and conjuration. It will indicate the character’s missile ability and speed with actions such as firing first, getting off a spell, etc.” But it is important to recognise that dexterity is indeed the prime requisite for thieves so it stands to reason that dexterity is used to influence a characters ability to be stealthy or sneaky in some way. But what is suggestive of my research into this so far; is that dexterity does not seem to havre been a direct consideration in regards to a characters measure of stealth.

For the game to remain balanced and solve the problem of non-thieves trying to use some form of stealth; any character class who is not a thief should never have a better chance of sneaking than the thief does, but they should still be able to try! It would seem very limiting for a referee to say to their player “nope, you cannot do that because you’re not a thief” as we all know, players should be able to try almost anything!

Before I look at how this problem might be solved I’m going to complicate matters even further by introducing some other considerations outlined in CHAINMAIL which illuminate some stealth related abilities outside of the thief class:

Elves and halflings can become invisible. Halflings however can only do it in brush or wood. It’s the referees choice whether these traits would even make it over to OD&D but in the case of the halfling, Dr. Eric Holmes who edited OD&D into the first version of Basic D&D favoured this idea; bringing the halflings ability to hide into his version of rules.

As for the elves, we can safely override their CHAINMAIL invisibility by reinterpreting the elf as described in Monsters & Treasure. The sensible approach to take is that all preceding rules apply unless specifically amended later and in the elves' case, Monsters & Treasure says: “Elves have the ability of moving silently and are nearly invisible in their grey-green cloaks.“

This piece of text implies that an elf earns the move silently ability regardless of their class so could we just make a roll as a thief would? Well, this would mean that introducing thieves into the game suddenly limits this elven ability. Pushing the limitation of the elves to one side for now lets look at what it says about elven thieves in Greyhawk.

This supplement tells us that that elves gain a 10% bonus to their Move Silently ability. This could be considered a racial trait perhaps? If we look at it this way we could say that elves gain an inherent 10% chance to move silently and if they become thieves they will be able to refine this skill further. But this wouldn’t work too well because as we have already said it invokes a limit to the elves abilities as they were originally described before Greyhawk and if we give them the 10% chance we are essentially saying elves gain one of the thief ability bonuses but not the rest. I think the aim when attempting to reconcile the various rules across all supplements is to look for a way they might work in harmony without having to change anything. As it appears so far thieves moving silently and elves moving silently seems unbalanced. I will return to this topic shortly.

Greyhawk also says "Elven thieves work in all three categories at once (fighter, magic-user, and thief) unless they opt to never be anything other than in the thief category. I almost read this incorrectly, thinking that elves begin the game with all the1st level thief abilities regardless of whether they ever bother to pursue a career as a thief. But the text does not say "Elves work in all three categories..." it says "Elven thieves" do.

Looking at the thieves ability to hide in shadows and how this compares with the elves and halflings invisibility: we could quite easily come to the conclusion that both elves and halflings get a separate “hide” ability that works similar to “hide in shadows”. Halflings must be in brush or wood to hide and taking the ability at face value success would be automatic. This actually works fine because halflings can only hide in brush or wood but the thief can hide in shadow, which is far more flexible.

Elves ability to hide is a bit less clean cut than the halflings. The text in Monsters & Treasure tells us that it is their camouflage cloaks that give them this ability. The cloaks are described as “grey/green” and common sense would tell us this is appropriate for vegetation, such as brush or wood, just like the halflings, but the grey also implies they can hide in rocky terrain or shadow (like thieves do).

This is all a bit fiddly and confusing! Bringing the thief class into OD&D is troublesome because of the various iterations of the fantastical creatures from their inception in CHAINMAIL through to their further descriptions in Men & Magic and Monsters & Treasure. In other words, as new things come into the game some older things are overwritten and need to be reinterpreted in a way that makes sense. Can all this be squared up fairly and logically? Looking at what Gary says in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons can be helpful here as we can see how the elf and halfling are handled a few years later, in regards to moving silently and hiding/becoming invisible.

The AD&D description of the elf in the Player’s Handbook tells us that “If alone and not in metal armour (or if well in advance — 90’ or more — of a party which does not consist entirely of elves [...] an elven character moves so silently that he or she will surprise (q.v.) monsters 66 2/3% (d6, 1 through 4) of the time unless some portal must be opened in order to confront the monster. In the latter case the chance for surprise drops to 33 1/3% (d6, 1-2).“

From this text we have a differentiation between the thieves’ ability to move silently and the elves’ ability to do so and we can also extend this to include their “near invisibility”. We can say that because elves are nearly invisible as well as silent they can gain surprise on a 1 through 4 instead of 1 through 2. Taking this approach not only lines up with Gary’s approach post 1979, it also stops the thieves’ abilities from infringing the elves’ abilities. As for halflings, they cannot hide in shadows at all but they can hide in brush or wood only, so no infringement there, this just means that halflings make even better thieves due to this complimentary ability.

With all this said though, do we need to turn to AD&D for reconciliation? There is a magic-item listed in Monsters & Treasure that adds a whole new perspective to this confusing topic and may help clean it up without needing to look for answers outside the OD&D rulebooks. The item in question is  the Elven Cloak and Boots and the text tells us that "Wearing the Cloak makes a person next to invisible, while the Boots allow for totally silent movement." Surely, this is the very grey/green cloak described in Monsters & Treasure and the implication at the very least is that elves who are randomly encountered during an adventure would be presumed to wear the cloak and boots. But there is nothing to suggest that a player beginning the game as an elf would inherit such wonderous items automatically. But there is a very good reason why they shouldn't: It would be pointless having a 1st level elven thief begin the game with a 20% chance to move silently if they already have a cloak which allows them to accomplish this task automatically. So logically we can probably conclude that an elf does not begin the game with these items.

So with that out of the way we can return to the topic at hand: how to handle non-thieves trying to be stealthy in some sense. It helps to look at how Gary saw the thief abilities in 1979. In the AD&D Player’s Handbook he said “Moving silently is the ability to move with little sound and disturbance, even across a squeaky wooden floor, for instance.” There is an implication here that a referee may only make a roll if the thief is trying to move silently in a situation where it might be very difficult. Sneaking past drunk and sleeping guards would be easy, so perhaps no dice rolls would even be necessary here for a thief? Any good thief, even of the lowest level of experience would not be worth their salt if they had a 90% chance of failing to sneak past a few sleeping and very drunk guards!

Hiding in shadows is a bit more tricky. The AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide says “this is NEVER possible under direct (or even indirect) observation [...] if a hidden thief attempts movement while under observation, the proverbial jig is up for him or her [...] Unobserved attempts to hide in shadows must [...] stand the hazard of the dice roll.”

But in the case of a non-thief they wouldn’t even be able to attempt to hide in shadow. They would need a “proper” place to hide to stand any chance of becoming “invisible” to the enemy.

I think based on my discussions above that a non-thief should be able to attempt to hide and at the very least move quietly. It would appear if a non-thief tried to sneak up on some unsuspecting monster they would need to be:

Unobserved.
Able to move quietly enough to remain undetected.

What gives the thief the great advantage here would be that a thief could remain unobserved simply by remaining in shadow, and would be able to move silently even if the terrain would make it difficult to do so. The latter is of course subject to a die roll to check their success.

Let us imagine a magic-user wants to sneak up on a group of lizard people basking in a swamp. The magic user is making their way within spell range through the jungle so a sleep spell can be cast. So they only need to get within 240’ of the lizard people without being detected. The referee needs to establish two things.

Is the magic-user unobserved?
Can the magic-user move within range without being heard?

Reason would have it that a magic-user not trained in the art of moving silently could never move without making a sound, but this doesn’t mean they cannot be quiet enough to fool a group of unobserving lizard people. An appropriate check then might be a hear noise check on behalf of these lizard people.

CHAINMAIL mentions a special ability to “detect hidden or invisible enemies” and the following monsters have this ability:

Superheroes, wraiths, dragons and rocs.

So we could rule that these types simply cannot be snuck upon. This also implies that characters can never gain surprise when encountering them either.

Underworld & Wilderness Adventures tells us that humans when listening at doors have 1 in 6 chance of detecting sound and demi-humans have a 2 in 6 chance. There are no other examples given but it stands to reason the Gnomes who are similar to dwarves (and grouped with them in CHAINMAIL) would also have a 2 in 6 chance to detect sound. However this line of inquiry seems to be a dead end as this form of detecting sound should be restricted to listening at doors only. My inclination here is that thieves have the hear noise ability, which again is a potential infringement on using listening checks to gauge non-thieves’ ability to hear noise. BUT on closer inspection a human who is not a thief only has a 1 in 6 chance of detecting sound at doors, a human thief can hear noise at 1st level on a 2 in 6. Demi-humans can detect sound at doors on a 2 in 6. As thieves who are demi-humans only a halfling gains a bonus to this ability but at the very least there is no instance where a thief would have less chance of hearing noise than another player character class. Therefore, if we used the listening at doors mechanic to check if a noise can be heard for none thieves at a minimum they gain no advantage over the lowest level thieves.

So at the very least it would not hurt to throw a die on behalf of monsters to see if they can hear a non-thief attempting to sneak up to them, or by them. For the thief they would have a big advantage. First they would be able to attempt silent movement, and if they fail to do this then a listen/hear noise check can be rolled to see if a monster hears the thief. If they do not then the thief is still able to be sneaky.

To me this approach makes a great deal of sense. It allows non-thieves to try their hand at stealth without infringing on the thieves’ abilities.

Holmes Basic, popularly considered to be a relatively legitimate edit of OD&D relates the thief’s ability to hear noise with the universal ability to listen at doors. It says “The thief's ability to hear noise at closed doors, secret panels, etc. is rolled on a six-sided die like anyone else, but his ability improves as he advances in experience.”

B/X says regarding the thief’s ability to hear noise “may apply to listening at doors or hearing something coming from any direction (such as a wandering monster).”

All this seems to suggest that the ability to hear noise whether listening at a door or not is the same skill. If a thief is no better at listening at a door than they are listening in any other manner then why would the other classes be any different? Why would the monsters be any different? I don’t think they would BUT what we are essentially dealing with here is a reverse form of surprise and I am sorry to say I have lead you astray!

Putting the above in context, surprise can be considered a subsumation of many things, with the ability to sneak up on a monster as being one of them. I’ll give a few examples:

Let’s use the same scenario as before: there are 6 lizard people basking in a swamp and the magic-user of the party who happens to be human is wanting to sneak into range and cast a sleep spell. A roll can be made for the lizard people to check if they are surprised. If the lizard people are surprised then the magic-user has made it to within spell range of the lizard people. The magic-user cannot be surprised because they are already aware of the lizard people. If the magic-user fails to surprise the lizard people then they will be spotted at from 4d6 * 10 feet according to the encounter distance rules from Underworld & Wilderness adventures. This of course should be adjusted dependant on how far away the magic-user is when they begin their approach and how close they want to get to their foes.

What if a thief tries this same feat (not to cast a sleep spell but just to be sneaky and gain surprise)? The thief will first try to move silently. They have a 10% chance to do so but fail the check so they will not be able to strike silently from behind but they still have a chance to surprise if the d6 roll is adequate.

If an elf tries this same task then, if taking the AD&D interpretation there is no check for them to move silently, instead they have a 1 in 4 chance to surprise and this roll represents their ability to become “near invisible” and “move silently”. If we interpret the elf (and I'd recommend this way) as I have discussed: as being in possession of an elven cloak and boots or not, then if they have these items they will move completely silently and nearly invisible or otherwise they would be subject to the usual surprise check.

If you prefer Gary's AD&D elf as a way to reconcile the confusion then to solidify all this it might make sense to refer to the elves’ abilities in a different way. You could refer to it as “quiet movement” or “camouflage” or something along those lines just to prevent the mix-up between the thieves' ability and the elves.

Another way of interpreting elves could be taking the text at face value with the benefit of Greyhawk hindsight "Elves have the ability of moving silently" could simply be taken as: all elves begin the game with the thieves' move silently ability and increase this skill with each new level of experience as any thief would. But! we are still faced with the anomaly of having elven cloaks and boots that suspiciously grant these feats to the elves.

Personally I lean towards elves not being able to move silently or hide without their elven cloaks, which player character elves do not start the game with.

Another thing I almost missed was the text describing the halfling in CHAINMAIL which indicates that the halflings ability to hide in brush or wood means that they "make excellent scouts" if this skill is carried over to OD&D in the same way then there is an implication that they can move undetected. What good would a scout be if they couldn't? Although I believe elves shouldn't, perhaps halflings should begin the game with the Move Silently ability regardless of whether they are thieves or not? This would make sense.

So I suppose we can conclude this topic. If one were to referee a situation in OD&D where a player character wants to try to be stealthy to either surprise and ambush an enemy, sneak past a sleeping guard or just move quietly through a corridor to negate any chance of being surprised then how would this work?

Boiling everything I have covered down, "stealth" would work in the following way:

The character(s) being stealthy cannot be surprised by any enemy they are attempting to sneak up on but they can gain surprise by a normal surprise roll on a d6. If they succeed then they have successfully ambushed or snuck past the enemy. If they were sneaking up a corridor then we simply presume they were and the surprise roll is what indicates whether they were detected. Thieves who successfully move silently and remain unseen will be able to strike silently from behind (backstabbing), which grants them a +4 to hit bonus and does plenty of extra damage! I don't suppose they have to backstab but they would certainly gain surprise if they are not seen. Elves who have the luxury of elven cloaks and boots are nearly invisible and completely silent and elves without these items who are not thieves are subject to the normal surprise check.

The debate however is still out for the halflings, they can hide in brush or wood but can they move silently as a thief might? It seems we have a mystery on our hands... My thought on this at the moment are that for sure we know they can hide in brush or wood, but apart from a very early reference in CHAINMAIL which uses this ability to justify them as good scouts, can we really conclude that this is enough to confirm they can move silently as a thief would? We could simply conclude by saying that a halfling thief would make a good scout but a halfling fighter? Not so much!

Let me know what you think of all this in the comments.