For those rogues and thieves in the party, Break & Enter: Book 1 presents some options for finally showcasing your stealth. No longer do you have to just sneak by a guard or hide in a box while waiting for that patrol to pass. You can just kill the guy and get on with the adventure.

The premise of this supplement is to add a new mechanic called Stealth Encounters to your D&D 4E game. The gist is that characters who remain hidden (a new condition defined in the book) can attack and kill an unaware opponent (also defined in the book) with relative easy. The HP of unaware opponents is disturbingly low, but represents a well placed attack on a completely unsuspecting foe. It also seems incredibly fun and rewarding when it works. I’m not sure how it will play out when it doesn’t.

The book gives you all the rules you need to understand, create, and run Stealth Encounters. I won’t go into detail on all the mechanics here as that would spoil the book. Needless to say, groups may find themselves sneaking around alarms, hazards, guards, and traps to reach a destination and if that doesn’t work, quickly eliminating the threat. The only drawback I can see right now is that the guardian NPCs you face also have reduced HP even when they realize you are sneaking up on them. I don’t quite understand why that is the case other than it does reduce the combat time if you do fail those stealth rolls. Who doesn’t every once in a while?

The book provides a number of examples of alarms, guardians, traps, etc. and also a handy and relatively painless conversion chart so you can roll up any threat you want out of the hundreds of dangers available in the D&D Compendium. I like this premise and hope to implement it in my campaign as the sneakier people tend to have a hard time using the stealth rules to really shine. This should add some balance, but could also become very unbalanced if all combat is soon resolved in two or three rounds. We’ll see how it goes. As with most things, moderation and proper implementation will likely be the key.