Your assumption seems to be that the moment someone moves out of cover they are no longer hiding- this is not correct. Per RAW as well as likely the intention of the character hiding.
I strongly disagree with this interpretation of the RAW as well as this belief of what the RAI actually was with this new design for all of the reasons already mentioned in this thread.
If an enemy is in an open space in combat, and it is assumed that combatants are generally aware of their surroundings due to the heightened state of combat, and there is no one else in the area, then it is totally unrealistic and unreasonable for a person to be able to "sneak up" on that enemy all the way into melee range without being noticed, abstraction or no abstraction. This is the entire reason why sneak attack is designed to gain its benefits when that enemy is currently engaged in / distracted by a melee encounter. In that case, there is a defined reason why an enemy might be distracted enough to not notice another person sneaking up from behind.
Coming out of hiding is coming out of hiding. The concept of being hidden means something specific. It means that you are actually hidden. The 2024 rules use the term "concealed". This means something specific in this context. It means that you are actually concealed. You don't get to be concealed if you are no longer concealed -- that would make no sense.
If an enemy is in an open space in combat, and it is assumed that combatants are generally aware of their surroundings due to the heightened state of combat
This is just not in the RAW anymore, like I've already wrote in the post. I find it extremely unrealistic and unreasonable that a creature in combat would notice something coming from behind in any circumstances, even when a Wizard is eletrifying it with magic. Haven't you played a first-person game before? Being backstabbed is so common in any PVP game when players can't see from the sky. In reality, this would be more common since real fights in reality are much louder than the games. Especially when a Fireball blows up right in their faces or Fighters swinging Greatswords on their neck.
Until I actually see the book, I'll obviously have to defer about whatever other rules may or may not exist in the new book.
What seems to be implied here is that the Facing Rules, which used to be an optional variant in the DMG, are perhaps going to become the new standard? This would be a pretty dramatic core mechanic change if that were true. If that's not true, then anything that's not otherwise obscured or concealed and is within your Line of Sight as determined by the Line of Sight rules can be seen.
People aren't swiveling their heads in a 360° 24/7. In fact they rarely do it ever. It is not only plausible but normal to be able to sneak up on people while out in the open enough. You factor in distractions, lighting, how much attention they're paying, and their very narrow cone of awareness, often the thing that would most likely to give you away would be sound, not sight.
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I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
What seems to be implied here is that the Facing Rules, which used to be an optional variant in the DMG, are perhaps going to become the new standard?
My guess is that the whole point of having an invisible-while-sneaking option, defeatable with a Perception check, is to avoid needing facing rules.
It would explain a form of invisibility that's defeatable with a simple perception check (the DC of which is the value of the stealth check you made), rather than "are you within their primary vision arc?"
It would explain re-using the invisibility condition (to reduce argument about just how unseen you are when they aren't looking for you)
It would explain the DC 15 to initially hide (a default moderate difficulty to lose someone's gaze in the first place, triggering the invisibility state)
It would explain the "extra" notes about DMs determining if hiding is appropriate ("he's not in combat, and has no other direction to look, you can't really sneak in from there" or whatever)
People aren't swiveling their heads in a 360° 24/7. In fact they rarely do it ever. It is not only plausible but normal to be able to sneak up on people while out in the open enough. You factor in distractions, lighting, how much attention they're paying, and their very narrow cone of awareness, often the thing that would most likely to give you away would be sound, not sight.
The vast majority of hiding opportunities in D&D involve your character being on the same side of the map as everyone else. In that situation, there's no way you're going to walk out of cover and not just be immediately noticed. Yes, there are situations where it's reasonable to be unseen in plain sight, but they're definitely the exception, not the rule.
The concept of "invisible-while-sneaking" only makes sense if you are concealed. The rules for the Hide Action go into quite a bit of detail about what it means to be concealed for the purposes of stealth.
aaand I would suggest that the rules for stealth are to cover the exception.
Also I would like to point out that people do NOT always see or even if they see they don't process everything in their visual field. This is just not how vision/perception and attention work. I remember seeing a really great documentary on this where they showed experiments where a person would talk to a stranger, then they would interrupt the stranger for a moment and swap another person, and that person would continue the conversation and the stranger would go on without any idea that they are talking to someone completely different.
In another example they played footage of a basketball game and asked the audience to count how many times a basketball was bounced. In the footage a man in a gorilla suit came out, got the ball and scored a basket. Yet because the audience had their attention on counting 95% OF PEOPLE DID NOT NOTICE THE GORILLA Even though it was in plain sight, in the centre of field of vision, interacting with the object they were focused on, and being viewed on a television (rather than having to focus on a full 360 world).
This seems counter intuitive but we (and other animals) only have the mental bandwidth to process a small amount of sensory input (which is also competing with internal stimuli such as our thoughts and feelings for attention). If our attention is not drawn to a thing (e.g. by sound, sudden movement etc) we often do not actively notice it. This is also why you can receive an injury during action and not notice it until things have calmed down or you look- because attention has been focused elsewhere. You can train your attention to focus on certain things (learning to drive is as much about learning to read traffic movements and actively pay attention to potential dangers as it is learning the coordination to drive a car).
aaand I would suggest that the rules for stealth are to cover the exception.
The rules for stealth are expected to cover both the common case and the exception, and if something is noted as "DMs discretion" it should be the exception.
I think what I meant is that stealth in D&D usually does not involve the entire party on one side of the map- rather individual characters trying to sneak apart from the rest of the party (who would otherwise give away positions in previous rules). Though halflings hide well even among their party this is a rule exception.
I am not sure why you are objecting to rules to be unseen in plain sight other than maybe initial gut reaction to the way they are worded, because its not unusual for things to go unnoticed in plain sight at all. This gives a game system way of representing this via skills and using hide/perception/search actions. Its abstracted and poorly worded but not unplayable or as unrealistic as you seem to think it is.
That said, without examples of play or rules clarifications either of us could be correct. My interpretation though allows for stealth gameplay, yours does not, which means we are stuck with the old rogues suck and mages rule for stealth situation again like in basic D&D onwards if you are correct.
I think what I meant is that stealth in D&D usually does not involve the entire party on one side of the map- rather individual characters trying to sneak apart from the rest of the party
The hide action is a combat action, it does not tell us how sneaking works outside of combat (the way it works outside of combat is 'the DM decides whether stealth is possible'). The specific issue at hand is: while in combat, the rogue hides behind some convenient visual obstacle, then steps out and runs through the middle of the battle. How far does he get before he's spotted?
If an enemy is in an open space in combat, and it is assumed that combatants are generally aware of their surroundings due to the heightened state of combat
This is just not in the RAW anymore, like I've already wrote in the post. I find it extremely unrealistic and unreasonable that a creature in combat would notice something coming from behind in any circumstances, even when a Wizard is eletrifying it with magic. Haven't you played a first-person game before? Being backstabbed is so common in any PVP game when players can't see from the sky. In reality, this would be more common since real fights in reality are much louder than the games. Especially when a Fireball blows up right in their faces or Fighters swinging Greatswords on their neck.
1st person videogames have incredibly narrow fields of view for the player compared to reality. Human beings have relatively narrow fields of view compared to other animals (since both our eyes are on the front of our faces) and we have approximately 180 degrees of vision without moving our heads at all, if we do move our heads it's more like 270 degrees, we move our torsos it's 360 degrees. A horse has 340 degrees of vision without moving it's head and can easily see 360 degrees with only small movements. In contrast a console game typically has 60 degrees field of view, and a PC game typically has 90 degrees field of view.
Hence it is much much easier to avoid being seen by someone in a multiplayer videogame than that same person IRL, and almost impossible to sneak up on a horse.
I think what I meant is that stealth in D&D usually does not involve the entire party on one side of the map- rather individual characters trying to sneak apart from the rest of the party
The hide action is a combat action, it does not tell us how sneaking works outside of combat (the way it works outside of combat is 'the DM decides whether stealth is possible'). The specific issue at hand is: while in combat, the rogue hides behind some convenient visual obstacle, then steps out and runs through the middle of the battle. How far does he get before he's spotted?
In my opinion, since you are in a fight, the participants are paying attention for threats all around them including the rogue crossing from the tree to the rock and firing their bow along the way.
By the way, the combatant who focuses on what the opponents sword is doing to the exclusion of everything else (as suggested as a possible justification in a previous post) is likely a dead combatant. In my, admittedly somewhat limited experience (martial arts rather than fencing), you pay attention to everything you need to, including the background and behind you as much as possible if it contains threats - if your attention is caught on one thing like counting bounces of a basketball then you've already lost.
So to my understanding here there are the steps in a clear cut way:
Get out of sight following the Hide rules
Roll higher than beat DC 15 stealth to just misdirect or confuse enemy of your location, the total score is how well you did this
Note that stealth score let say 17 and obtain Invisible condition (u can take it as when beating DC 15 enemy kind of lost you completely see it as misdirection)
Get out of the Hiding Requirement location and trigger the following before you are free to move in the area undetected
Any Enemy can beat your total stealth with a Passive Perception bringing attention to your location again
Someone with see invisibility will notice you (magic trumps skills?)
If above does not happen then enemy have to use Action Search to actively find you
Lastly you attack and reveal yourself unless you got something preventing that
I consider that a solid hiding/stealth rule in any book and flavor wise is more fun that before, since you have to beat so many things to actually Hide in plain sight and given the caveat that DM can straight out say you cant hide at the moment or simply add that extra +5 to Passive Perception its fair. Come on, a Stealth specialist wont find it hard to get over 20 total stealth to beat everyone passive If fail, well Enemies got their luck too.
Who has not played hide and seek and while searching actively someone still sneak scare you???
Any Enemy can beat your total stealth with a Passive Perception bringing attention to your location again
I don't think that part is explicitly a rule. But it's a fine option for a DM ruling in a non-combat situation, for example. (But, we haven't seen the whole book yet, nor the DMG.)
I mean the enemy notice you but its up to him to either speak about it and let other know or just fake ignorance, Its up to the RP and situation.
Oh, yeah. Just, I expect (from what we've actually read) that the enemy doesn't get to use passive perception to notice you without the DM's call. It seems like the right mechanic for "you aren't looking for them, but you aren't exactly distracted either." To me, that rules out regular combat situations, but would work fine for guards in a big space.
So to my understanding here there are the steps in a clear cut way:
Get out of sight following the Hide rules
Roll higher than beat DC 15 stealth to just misdirect or confuse enemy of your location, the total score is how well you did this
Note that stealth score let say 17 and obtain Invisible condition (u can take it as when beating DC 15 enemy kind of lost you completely see it as misdirection)
Get out of the Hiding Requirement location and trigger the following before you are free to move in the area undetected
Any Enemy can beat your total stealth with a Passive Perception bringing attention to your location again
Someone with see invisibility will notice you (magic trumps skills?)
If above does not happen then enemy have to use Action Search to actively find you
Lastly you attack and reveal yourself unless you got something preventing that
Steps 1, 2, and 3 are pretty clearly correct. Step 4 is what everyone is arguing about.
There is a non-trivial argument for interpreting the text as "you lose the condition when you no longer have the prerequisites". I don't believe it's the intent, but it could be.
Passive perception is not addressed. It does exist and is presumably used for something, but nothing ever tells use for what.
See Invisibility working does seem correct for RAW. It's also kinda dumb and means a ton of monsters are completely immune to stealth because they have blindsight or truesight.
The text never defines 'find'. The search action is definitely a way of achieving it, but is not clearly the only way.
It seems unlikely that the list of effects that reveal you is intended to be exhaustive.
Passive perception is not addressed. It does exist and is presumably used for something, but nothing ever tells use for what.
See Invisibility working does seem correct for RAW. It's also kinda dumb and means a ton of monsters are completely immune to stealth because they have blindsight or truesight.
(Complete conjecture on my part) I kinda think the best way to rule blindsight/truesight vs a hidden person is giving them the passive perception check when the hidden person leaves cover.
The way I see Passive Perception is a Constant check against certain things and stealth is one of them, Its either I notice the presence or don't. The Invisible Condition gained through Hide is more perception kind as I don't notice u but u are not translucent as a Invisible provided by spell is more like I can notice you but cant actually see you?
Either way you are right Invisible condition does not elaborate on how to detect a person directly but the form how its gained do. We all agree its not well defined but it can be inferred more or less how it work and to me its an improvement to the previous condition, the crux is now the special situations that the rules clash but that is to be seen in the future with more ppl playing and maybe sage advise.
Let the Theories and research continue!!
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I strongly disagree with this interpretation of the RAW as well as this belief of what the RAI actually was with this new design for all of the reasons already mentioned in this thread.
If an enemy is in an open space in combat, and it is assumed that combatants are generally aware of their surroundings due to the heightened state of combat, and there is no one else in the area, then it is totally unrealistic and unreasonable for a person to be able to "sneak up" on that enemy all the way into melee range without being noticed, abstraction or no abstraction. This is the entire reason why sneak attack is designed to gain its benefits when that enemy is currently engaged in / distracted by a melee encounter. In that case, there is a defined reason why an enemy might be distracted enough to not notice another person sneaking up from behind.
Coming out of hiding is coming out of hiding. The concept of being hidden means something specific. It means that you are actually hidden. The 2024 rules use the term "concealed". This means something specific in this context. It means that you are actually concealed. You don't get to be concealed if you are no longer concealed -- that would make no sense.
This is just not in the RAW anymore, like I've already wrote in the post. I find it extremely unrealistic and unreasonable that a creature in combat would notice something coming from behind in any circumstances, even when a Wizard is eletrifying it with magic. Haven't you played a first-person game before? Being backstabbed is so common in any PVP game when players can't see from the sky. In reality, this would be more common since real fights in reality are much louder than the games. Especially when a Fireball blows up right in their faces or Fighters swinging Greatswords on their neck.
Until I actually see the book, I'll obviously have to defer about whatever other rules may or may not exist in the new book.
What seems to be implied here is that the Facing Rules, which used to be an optional variant in the DMG, are perhaps going to become the new standard? This would be a pretty dramatic core mechanic change if that were true. If that's not true, then anything that's not otherwise obscured or concealed and is within your Line of Sight as determined by the Line of Sight rules can be seen.
People aren't swiveling their heads in a 360° 24/7. In fact they rarely do it ever. It is not only plausible but normal to be able to sneak up on people while out in the open enough. You factor in distractions, lighting, how much attention they're paying, and their very narrow cone of awareness, often the thing that would most likely to give you away would be sound, not sight.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
My guess is that the whole point of having an invisible-while-sneaking option, defeatable with a Perception check, is to avoid needing facing rules.
The vast majority of hiding opportunities in D&D involve your character being on the same side of the map as everyone else. In that situation, there's no way you're going to walk out of cover and not just be immediately noticed. Yes, there are situations where it's reasonable to be unseen in plain sight, but they're definitely the exception, not the rule.
The concept of "invisible-while-sneaking" only makes sense if you are concealed. The rules for the Hide Action go into quite a bit of detail about what it means to be concealed for the purposes of stealth.
aaand I would suggest that the rules for stealth are to cover the exception.
Also I would like to point out that people do NOT always see or even if they see they don't process everything in their visual field. This is just not how vision/perception and attention work. I remember seeing a really great documentary on this where they showed experiments where a person would talk to a stranger, then they would interrupt the stranger for a moment and swap another person, and that person would continue the conversation and the stranger would go on without any idea that they are talking to someone completely different.
In another example they played footage of a basketball game and asked the audience to count how many times a basketball was bounced. In the footage a man in a gorilla suit came out, got the ball and scored a basket. Yet because the audience had their attention on counting 95% OF PEOPLE DID NOT NOTICE THE GORILLA Even though it was in plain sight, in the centre of field of vision, interacting with the object they were focused on, and being viewed on a television (rather than having to focus on a full 360 world).
This seems counter intuitive but we (and other animals) only have the mental bandwidth to process a small amount of sensory input (which is also competing with internal stimuli such as our thoughts and feelings for attention). If our attention is not drawn to a thing (e.g. by sound, sudden movement etc) we often do not actively notice it. This is also why you can receive an injury during action and not notice it until things have calmed down or you look- because attention has been focused elsewhere. You can train your attention to focus on certain things (learning to drive is as much about learning to read traffic movements and actively pay attention to potential dangers as it is learning the coordination to drive a car).
The rules for stealth are expected to cover both the common case and the exception, and if something is noted as "DMs discretion" it should be the exception.
I think what I meant is that stealth in D&D usually does not involve the entire party on one side of the map- rather individual characters trying to sneak apart from the rest of the party (who would otherwise give away positions in previous rules). Though halflings hide well even among their party this is a rule exception.
I am not sure why you are objecting to rules to be unseen in plain sight other than maybe initial gut reaction to the way they are worded, because its not unusual for things to go unnoticed in plain sight at all. This gives a game system way of representing this via skills and using hide/perception/search actions. Its abstracted and poorly worded but not unplayable or as unrealistic as you seem to think it is.
That said, without examples of play or rules clarifications either of us could be correct. My interpretation though allows for stealth gameplay, yours does not, which means we are stuck with the old rogues suck and mages rule for stealth situation again like in basic D&D onwards if you are correct.
The hide action is a combat action, it does not tell us how sneaking works outside of combat (the way it works outside of combat is 'the DM decides whether stealth is possible'). The specific issue at hand is: while in combat, the rogue hides behind some convenient visual obstacle, then steps out and runs through the middle of the battle. How far does he get before he's spotted?
1st person videogames have incredibly narrow fields of view for the player compared to reality. Human beings have relatively narrow fields of view compared to other animals (since both our eyes are on the front of our faces) and we have approximately 180 degrees of vision without moving our heads at all, if we do move our heads it's more like 270 degrees, we move our torsos it's 360 degrees. A horse has 340 degrees of vision without moving it's head and can easily see 360 degrees with only small movements. In contrast a console game typically has 60 degrees field of view, and a PC game typically has 90 degrees field of view.
Hence it is much much easier to avoid being seen by someone in a multiplayer videogame than that same person IRL, and almost impossible to sneak up on a horse.
In my opinion, since you are in a fight, the participants are paying attention for threats all around them including the rogue crossing from the tree to the rock and firing their bow along the way.
By the way, the combatant who focuses on what the opponents sword is doing to the exclusion of everything else (as suggested as a possible justification in a previous post) is likely a dead combatant. In my, admittedly somewhat limited experience (martial arts rather than fencing), you pay attention to everything you need to, including the background and behind you as much as possible if it contains threats - if your attention is caught on one thing like counting bounces of a basketball then you've already lost.
So to my understanding here there are the steps in a clear cut way:
I consider that a solid hiding/stealth rule in any book and flavor wise is more fun that before, since you have to beat so many things to actually Hide in plain sight and given the caveat that DM can straight out say you cant hide at the moment or simply add that extra +5 to Passive Perception its fair. Come on, a Stealth specialist wont find it hard to get over 20 total stealth to beat everyone passive If fail, well Enemies got their luck too.
Who has not played hide and seek and while searching actively someone still sneak scare you???
I don't think that part is explicitly a rule. But it's a fine option for a DM ruling in a non-combat situation, for example. (But, we haven't seen the whole book yet, nor the DMG.)
I mean the enemy notice you but its up to him to either speak about it and let other know or just fake ignorance, Its up to the RP and situation.
Oh, yeah. Just, I expect (from what we've actually read) that the enemy doesn't get to use passive perception to notice you without the DM's call. It seems like the right mechanic for "you aren't looking for them, but you aren't exactly distracted either." To me, that rules out regular combat situations, but would work fine for guards in a big space.
Steps 1, 2, and 3 are pretty clearly correct. Step 4 is what everyone is arguing about.
(Complete conjecture on my part) I kinda think the best way to rule blindsight/truesight vs a hidden person is giving them the passive perception check when the hidden person leaves cover.
The way I see Passive Perception is a Constant check against certain things and stealth is one of them, Its either I notice the presence or don't. The Invisible Condition gained through Hide is more perception kind as I don't notice u but u are not translucent as a Invisible provided by spell is more like I can notice you but cant actually see you?
Either way you are right Invisible condition does not elaborate on how to detect a person directly but the form how its gained do. We all agree its not well defined but it can be inferred more or less how it work and to me its an improvement to the previous condition, the crux is now the special situations that the rules clash but that is to be seen in the future with more ppl playing and maybe sage advise.
Let the Theories and research continue!!