I can’t see a problem with that

Stealth has been a staple part of TTRPG’s since the early days of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. There is an entire class that is built around the idea of sneaking around and getting the drop on your enemies. Then why does it feel like it gets in the way sometimes?

In my session today I encountered a couple of different ‘stealthy’ scenarios.
The first was an argument for it: the party hid themselves in the brush nearby a wounded animal to lie in wait to see if the assailant would reveal themselves.
Our next example is a classic scenario where I described a potential enemy up ahead, and the party chooses to travel stealthily to pass by unnoticed. They succeed and circumvent the encounter leaving me with a sort of dilemma on how I should have handled it. I need to honour the success of the roll, but still wanted to provide them with more information.

At first glance they appear to be the player’s choices leading to rather polarising results and while it is important to give the players agency, their choices only feel impactful if they matter. And how do we make things matter? By introducing drama.
In our first example there was a hook, a question the players leveraged their stealth roll to answer. In the second scenario I did not ask a question, I gave them a statement.
Give the soldiers a prisoner they are escorting, make them emerge as the party is crossing the field, describe hints of the details you want them to find. Players are people, they will avoid their problems until you give them a reason to solve them.
Stealth wasn’t getting in my way, I was standing in its path.