It will all be defined in a book just not released yet. Rules for the Hide action, Passive Perception score are defined in the PHB and guidelines to adjudicate various rules, in the DMG.
I would not bet on that, and it's bad design -- a player should be able to read the rules in the PHB and actually figure out how their abilities will normally work (though even a statement along the lines of "The DM will decide whether a situation permits you to become or remain hidden" would make the rules better).
To me that's what the PHB say when ""The Dungeon Master decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding. "
To me that's what the PHB say when ""The Dungeon Master decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding. "
That's what the 2014 rules say. It's not what the 2024 rules say. Honestly, the 2014 rules were mostly okay, they just suffered from a lack of clarity, and somehow they managed to make them worse in 2024.
@Sillvva, can you explain what is different about Invisibility and hiding in 5.5/5.24/5e but it's actually released in 2024? If I hide behind a pillar, become invisible, does walking out from my hiding spot make me lose the invisible effect?
The invisibility spell grants the invisible condition, nothing else. There are a couple ways of interpreting what the hide rules mean, but all of them are kind of bad.
Since hide requires heavy obscurement or 3/4 cover, your opponent can 'see' you when you no longer have one of those things. That makes hide almost totally useless.
Your opponent can 'see' you if they have an ability that sees invisible. This means hide is completely useless against anything with see invisibility, blindsense, or truesight, but you can otherwise walk through the middle of a room and remain unseen.
They expect the DM to figure this out on the fly, and give absolutely no guidelines for what it means. This means it will be the subject of perennial disputes.
What, if anything, passive score does is undefined.
If the 5.5e invisibility spell just grants the invisible condition and hiding just grants the invisible condition and they are intended to be treated identically then the designers missed a key difference between hiding (not being noticed) and the invisibility spell (being unable to be seen due to magic). Hiding and invisible are NOT the same thing and if the rules idiotically treat them as the same then I'll be house ruling it anyway.
If this kind of inconsistency made it into the 2024 rules then it makes it far less clear whether I want the books or not unfortunately. If folks can see these issues within moments of picking up the books then I don't see how the designers could have missed these issues. I also don't understand how this can be a recurring problem ... if they run into these issues repeatedly then they should simply have a few focus groups who look over the rules and point out these obvious issues.
@Sillvva, can you explain what is different about Invisibility and hiding in 5.5/5.24/5e but it's actually released in 2024? If I hide behind a pillar, become invisible, does walking out from my hiding spot make me lose the invisible effect?
We can't give a definitive answer on hiding right now. The only difference between Hiding and Invisibility is the methods for gaining and losing the condition. The condition itself is the same.
Once you're hidden
On a successful check, you have the Invisible condition. Make note of your check’s total, which is the DC for a creature to find you with a Wisdom (Perception) check.
How you lose the invisible condition
The [Invisible] condition ends on you immediately after any of the following occurs: you make a sound louder than a whisper, an enemy finds you, you make an attack roll, or you cast a spell with a Verbal component.
The main issue is that the book doesn't really describe any other way to find a hidden creature other than a perception check (search action) or passive perception. Simply losing cover or obscurement is not described as being found.
A suggestion I had posted to be passed up is to add this to the above
The [Invisible] condition ends on you immediately after any of the following occurs: you make a sound louder than a whisper, an enemy finds you, you make an attack roll, you cast a spell with a Verbal component, or you or an enemy ends their movement and you no longer have Three-Quarters or Full Cover or are no longer Heavily Obscured.
Or something to that effect.
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@Sillvva, can you explain what is different about Invisibility and hiding in 5.5/5.24/5e but it's actually released in 2024? If I hide behind a pillar, become invisible, does walking out from my hiding spot make me lose the invisible effect?
We can't give a definitive answer on hiding right now. The only difference between Hiding and Invisibility is the methods for gaining and losing the condition. The condition itself is the same.
Once you're hidden
On a successful check, you have the Invisible condition. Make note of your check’s total, which is the DC for a creature to find you with a Wisdom (Perception) check.
How you lose the invisible condition
The [Invisible] condition ends on you immediately after any of the following occurs: you make a sound louder than a whisper, an enemy finds you, you make an attack roll, or you cast a spell with a Verbal component.
The main issue is that the book doesn't really describe any other way to find a hidden creature other than a perception check (search action) or passive perception. Simply losing cover or obscurement is not described as being found.
A suggestion I had posted to be passed up is to add this to the above
The [Invisible] condition ends on you immediately after any of the following occurs: you make a sound louder than a whisper, an enemy finds you, you make an attack roll, you cast a spell with a Verbal component, or you or an enemy ends their movement and you no longer have Three-Quarters or Full Cover or are no longer Heavily Obscured.
Or something to that effect.
You'd have to add something to the Invisibility spell to indicate that a creature affected by the spell is heavily obscured or something to that effect and can't be seen without the use of magic or similar abilities.
The problem really comes from having one Invisible condition that they try to apply to both Invisibility due to magic and the Invisible condition due to hiding. In the first case, the creature can not be seen even if they are standing in the open while in the latter case, a hidden creature standing in the open would be clearly visible, and no longer hidden.
Hiding and invisibility are not the same - so trying to simplify the rules by using the same condition for each (without giving it a lot of thought and including appropriate rules to distinguish the two) just causes confusion and unreasonable results which the DM has to house rule to fix. The DM could fall back on just stating that it is impossible to be hidden standing in the open but this is still likely to cause arguments at the table which could have been avoided if the rules were better written.
----
P.S. The exact same issue existed in the 2014 PHB in regards to darkness, dense foliage and heavy fog being treated exactly the same despite the fact that they are not. You can see through darkness to a region of light on the far side even if you can't make out anything in the darkness - while dense foliage and heavy fog will both block vision entirely. Unfortunately, the one line I have seen from the 2024 rules described darkness, foliage and fog as opaque instead of blocking vision entirely which really didn't fix the issue. Darkness is a distinctly different effect from the other two and in addition, magical darkness is a distinct kind of darkness that may require its own rules (though I haven't seen the text for the 2024 Darkness spell either).
[...] Hiding and invisibility are not the same - so trying to simplify the rules by using the same condition for each (without giving it a lot of thought and including appropriate rules to distinguish the two) just causes confusion and unreasonable results which the DM has to house rule to fix. [...]
Same opinion here.
If the book hasn't been released yet but is already sparking these kinds of debates (including your point, @David42), it might soon need updates with errata :(
@Sillvva, can you explain what is different about Invisibility and hiding in 5.5/5.24/5e but it's actually released in 2024? If I hide behind a pillar, become invisible, does walking out from my hiding spot make me lose the invisible effect?
We can't give a definitive answer on hiding right now. The only difference between Hiding and Invisibility is the methods for gaining and losing the condition. The condition itself is the same.
Once you're hidden
On a successful check, you have the Invisible condition. Make note of your check’s total, which is the DC for a creature to find you with a Wisdom (Perception) check.
How you lose the invisible condition
The [Invisible] condition ends on you immediately after any of the following occurs: you make a sound louder than a whisper, an enemy finds you, you make an attack roll, or you cast a spell with a Verbal component.
The main issue is that the book doesn't really describe any other way to find a hidden creature other than a perception check (search action) or passive perception. Simply losing cover or obscurement is not described as being found.
A suggestion I had posted to be passed up is to add this to the above
The [Invisible] condition ends on you immediately after any of the following occurs: you make a sound louder than a whisper, an enemy finds you, you make an attack roll, you cast a spell with a Verbal component, or you or an enemy ends their movement and you no longer have Three-Quarters or Full Cover or are no longer Heavily Obscured.
Or something to that effect.
That would still allow a Rogue to dip behind total cover while being watched, BA hide (becoming invisible), then run out and stab someone that was watching their covered position at advantage, so long as you still had some movement left.
That also means that if someone beat the perception check to find you that you would suddenly become visible to everyone, even if you were under the effects of Invisibility? Someone perceiving your location is as good as them casting Dispel Magic?
To me if you hide then move out of cover or obscurement in an enemy's line of sight, it finds you.
Unless i determine circumstances are appropriate for hiding, such as being distracted, in which case i'd rely on the enemy's Passive Perception Score or rule it can't find you.
To me if you hide then move out of cover or obscurement in an enemy's line of sight, it finds you.
Unless i determine circumstances are appropriate for hiding, such as being distracted, in which case i'd rely on the enemy's Passive Perception Score or rule it can't find you.
That would make Invisibility entirely useless. You would basically be Invisible Boy from Mystery Men. "I'm invisible when no one is looking!"
I think they just made a terrible mistake with trying to roll hiding into the invisible rules. The more I hear about 5.24, the less likely I am to move to it....
Invisibility doesn't say you must be out of enemy's line of sight and that it ends if an enemy finds you.
The citation that Silvaa included states that the invisibility condition ends when someone finds you.
"The [Invisible] condition ends on you immediately after any of the following occurs: you make a sound louder than a whisper, an enemy finds you, you make an attack roll, or you cast a spell with a Verbal component."
I don't know for sure if they were citing the 2024 rules with that quote though and I don't have access to the 2024 PHB to check.
However, this raises another question. If you have the invisibility spell cast on you does it get "dispelled" when someone notices you? That would not make sense to me. Also, does that mean that the creature becomes visible?
From the sounds of it so far, the invisibility/hiding revisions are an epic fail, though I'll reserve my opinion until I see the actual rules. The problem with that is "Why would folks buy something so poorly thought out?".
P.S. Apologies if I misunderstood your comment ... I thought "doesn't say" was applying to both clauses of the sentence.
That would make Invisibility entirely useless. You would basically be Invisible Boy from Mystery Men. "I'm invisible when no one is looking!"
I think they just made a terrible mistake with trying to roll hiding into the invisible rules. The more I hear about 5.24, the less likely I am to move to it....
I agree that they shouldn't have done it this way as it's going to lead to a ton of confusion for new players who will assume that the Invisible condition has something to do with . . . well . . . invisibility. It doesn't.
The Invisible Condition is now being used to mean something a lot more like what we used to call "Unseen", such as in the sections on Unseen Attackers and Targets.
But your first statement above is a misunderstanding. The new Hiding rules and spells such as Invisibility will both make use of the Invisible Condition, but will do so in different ways. You will have the Invisible Condition temporarily, and this condition will end based on different requirements. In the case of Hiding, you will lose the condition when you are found, such as when you are in an enemy's Line of Sight or when you are found with a perception check. With a spell such as Invisibility you won't lose the condition unless you make an attack or cast a spell and so on. So, Invisibility will remain about as useful as it used to be and some of the problems with the old Invisible condition have been cleaned up. Mechanically, I think that this will all work pretty well but it still should have been done differently to avoid this confusion.
In the 2014 rules, being hidden specifically meant that you were Unseen AND Unheard and that your location was unknown. Until I really get a chance to read the new rules in full it's unclear to me if this concept has changed. For example, if you are found via a perception check, can this result in you remaining Unseen but the enemy heard you and therefore now knows where you are? With the new way that the Invisible condition is used (which means something very similar to Unseen), it's unclear if all of that still works the same way until we can really see all of the new rules.
A few more initial thoughts based on the limited information given in the Original Post:
It sort of seems like the designers are intending to remove the concept of being an Unseen Attacker to gain advantage on your attacks and instead you will now have to actually be Hidden to gain this benefit. I don't know this for sure since I haven't seen the new rules, but if you read between the lines that's what it seems like is happening to me.
I really dislike the arbitrary requirement of succeeding on a DC15 check to have any chance to Hide and I feel like this is going to be house-ruled away by a ton of tables right away. The main problem here is that this doesn't fully allow you to take advantage of a monster's weakness. If you know that a particular monster has very weak perception, then it should be good tactics to attempt to Hide from that monster and this should succeed more often than against a monster with higher perception. This DC15 requirement ruins this until you get to higher levels of play.
It's a little bit unclear to me, but my suspicion is that the Hide Action will only be applicable during combat. I suspect that the designers wanted to make it harder to Hide during combat when enemies with heightened senses have already been tracking your movements up until the moment when you duck behind something and attempt to Hide. Outside of combat, there might be certain situations where you can premeditate an ambush or a careful plan to sneak past some guards and so on. I have a feeling that in those cases you do not actually use the Hide action and therefore you will not have to pass the DC15 check in those cases -- making these situations more likely to succeed than attempts to Hide during combat. This would make some sense, but I wish they had handled it differently. If they wanted to make this distinction, perhaps they could have just required the Stealth roll to be made with Disadvantage during combat -- or, alternatively, an enemy's passive perception could be given Advantage (+5 bonus) during combat due to the heightened senses of combat. Again, I don't know yet if any of this is actually happening since I haven't yet seen the rules in full.
Next, the inclusion of three-quarters Cover in the rules for Hiding is interesting, but it seems to be a bit clumsily written. My suspicion is that this was meant to solve the debate about "popping out" to make an attack from behind total cover, and whether or not that would ruin your Hiding status. Now, you can quite explicitly Hide behind total cover and then lean your head and your bow out to the side so that you can see and aim at your target, maintaining the necessary three-quarters Cover, and attack from a Hidden position. The problem is that we now have this issue where you can just hide behind three-quarters Cover and somehow not be within an enemy's Line of Sight? Based on the old rules, this makes no sense. An enemy could always see you behind three-quarters Cover. A lot of other rules and core mechanics would have to have changed throughout the book for this portion of the new Hiding rule to really make any sense as written.
Lastly, once again, it's unclear how the old concept of Hiding meaning "unseen and unheard" actually works with these new rules. The new rule mentions that you lose the Invisible condition "when you make a sound louder than a whisper". How does that make any sense at all? If I am behind something and you hear me, I am now visible to you? If the concept of Hiding is still going to involve being both unseen and unheard then this whole thing will need to be rewritten unfortunately.
If enemies will find you as soon as you walk into their "Line of Sight", the Hide action would be completely useless and totally unusable. I've stated why in my post.
If enemies will find you as soon as you walk into their "Line of Sight", the Hide action would be completely useless and totally unusable. I've stated why in my post.
I think that most people are disagreeing with this. Hiding has never worked this way, and it has always had its uses. It doesn't make any sense to be able to walk around in the open and enjoy the benefits of being Hidden . . . when you are no longer hiding.
Being Hidden is not the same thing as being Invisible. It means that you are hiding. People cannot see you because you are hiding, not because you are an invisible creature. If you walk out into the open you will be automatically found unless the entire rest of the books (including the DMG) has changed really dramatically.
The problem is that we now have this issue where you can just hide behind three-quarters Cover and somehow not be within an enemy's Line of Sight? Based on the old rules, this makes no sense. An enemy could always see you behind three-quarters Cover.
The idea (probably) is that you can just duck, or be in the shadows just right (or wearing camo a cloak of elvenkind), to (essentially) break line-of-sight with only 3/4 cover...and then "pop out" to still-3/4-cover for attacks.
And in combat, in 2024, you can sneak out entirely to get close, because they are presumably distracted fighting other people / taking other actions. If they weren't distracted, they'd have an action free to do the search action... if they didn't search before (nor ready it to use it as a reaction, which seems a waste?), then they won't have the opportunity to take it on your turn, when you are presumably moving stealthily to avoid their gaze as you close the distance.
Leaving only the case of "they were already looking there and you walked out from cover" as the odd case, but wouldn't "already looking there" have been covered by taking the search action while you were still in cover, thus breaking your hide before you strode out? (Meaning the search action would break your hide even when you're still behind total cover.)
I could see some sort of "if you start hidden, make another stealth roll to beat their passive perception" rule for sneaking near someone, outside of combat. Hell, maybe it doesn't require starting hidden...and maybe it's part of some separate "sneaking around outside of combat" rule already, that hasn't been shared?
If enemies will find you as soon as you walk into their "Line of Sight", the Hide action would be completely useless and totally unusable. I've stated why in my post.
There's basically five different options for how visible you are
Heavily Obscured/Full Cover: vision checks to find you are impossible.
3/4 Cover: you can be found by vision checks, but may take the hide action.
Lightly Concealed: vision checks to find you are at disadvantage. You cannot take the hide action, but unknown if you are revealed.
1/2 Cover: You cannot take the hide action, but unknown if you are revealed.
Clear View (no cover or concealment): You cannot take the hide action, but unknown if you are revealed.
I think it's pretty clear that you can remain hidden in situations (1) and (2), the argument is about the other three situations. I would probably allow it in (3) and (4) but not (5) outside of special conditions. Sillvva would make the check once per turn at end of turn (so you can move from cover to cover without being revealed, and even if someone runs up next to you, their initial attacks against you will be at disadvantage because it doesn't terminate until end of turn). You are, I think, proposing that you can remain hidden in all of those states. I'm not sure what other participants in this thread are proposing.
The interaction between passive perception and hiding should be made explicit (in general when passive perception applies should be made more explicit).
Invisibility doesn't say you must be out of enemy's line of sight and that it ends if an enemy finds you.
The citation that Silvaa included states that the invisibility condition ends when someone finds you.
"The [Invisible] condition ends on you immediately after any of the following occurs: you make a sound louder than a whisper, an enemy finds you, you make an attack roll, or you cast a spell with a Verbal component."
Both the Hide action and the Invisibility spell grant the Invisible condition, but the spell doesn't come with the same parameters as the action and it's much more stable way to become Invisible.
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To me that's what the PHB say when ""The Dungeon Master decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding. "
That's what the 2014 rules say. It's not what the 2024 rules say. Honestly, the 2014 rules were mostly okay, they just suffered from a lack of clarity, and somehow they managed to make them worse in 2024.
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ModeratorThe 2024 rules do say that exact line on page 19.
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@Sillvva, can you explain what is different about Invisibility and hiding in 5.5/5.24/5e but it's actually released in 2024? If I hide behind a pillar, become invisible, does walking out from my hiding spot make me lose the invisible effect?
If the 5.5e invisibility spell just grants the invisible condition and hiding just grants the invisible condition and they are intended to be treated identically then the designers missed a key difference between hiding (not being noticed) and the invisibility spell (being unable to be seen due to magic). Hiding and invisible are NOT the same thing and if the rules idiotically treat them as the same then I'll be house ruling it anyway.
If this kind of inconsistency made it into the 2024 rules then it makes it far less clear whether I want the books or not unfortunately. If folks can see these issues within moments of picking up the books then I don't see how the designers could have missed these issues. I also don't understand how this can be a recurring problem ... if they run into these issues repeatedly then they should simply have a few focus groups who look over the rules and point out these obvious issues.
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ModeratorWe can't give a definitive answer on hiding right now. The only difference between Hiding and Invisibility is the methods for gaining and losing the condition. The condition itself is the same.
Once you're hidden
How you lose the invisible condition
The main issue is that the book doesn't really describe any other way to find a hidden creature other than a perception check (search action) or passive perception. Simply losing cover or obscurement is not described as being found.
A suggestion I had posted to be passed up is to add this to the above
Or something to that effect.
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You'd have to add something to the Invisibility spell to indicate that a creature affected by the spell is heavily obscured or something to that effect and can't be seen without the use of magic or similar abilities.
The problem really comes from having one Invisible condition that they try to apply to both Invisibility due to magic and the Invisible condition due to hiding. In the first case, the creature can not be seen even if they are standing in the open while in the latter case, a hidden creature standing in the open would be clearly visible, and no longer hidden.
Hiding and invisibility are not the same - so trying to simplify the rules by using the same condition for each (without giving it a lot of thought and including appropriate rules to distinguish the two) just causes confusion and unreasonable results which the DM has to house rule to fix. The DM could fall back on just stating that it is impossible to be hidden standing in the open but this is still likely to cause arguments at the table which could have been avoided if the rules were better written.
----
P.S. The exact same issue existed in the 2014 PHB in regards to darkness, dense foliage and heavy fog being treated exactly the same despite the fact that they are not. You can see through darkness to a region of light on the far side even if you can't make out anything in the darkness - while dense foliage and heavy fog will both block vision entirely. Unfortunately, the one line I have seen from the 2024 rules described darkness, foliage and fog as opaque instead of blocking vision entirely which really didn't fix the issue. Darkness is a distinctly different effect from the other two and in addition, magical darkness is a distinct kind of darkness that may require its own rules (though I haven't seen the text for the 2024 Darkness spell either).
Same opinion here.
If the book hasn't been released yet but is already sparking these kinds of debates (including your point, @David42), it might soon need updates with errata :(
That would still allow a Rogue to dip behind total cover while being watched, BA hide (becoming invisible), then run out and stab someone that was watching their covered position at advantage, so long as you still had some movement left.
That also means that if someone beat the perception check to find you that you would suddenly become visible to everyone, even if you were under the effects of Invisibility? Someone perceiving your location is as good as them casting Dispel Magic?
To me if you hide then move out of cover or obscurement in an enemy's line of sight, it finds you.
Unless i determine circumstances are appropriate for hiding, such as being distracted, in which case i'd rely on the enemy's Passive Perception Score or rule it can't find you.
That would make Invisibility entirely useless. You would basically be Invisible Boy from Mystery Men. "I'm invisible when no one is looking!"
I think they just made a terrible mistake with trying to roll hiding into the invisible rules. The more I hear about 5.24, the less likely I am to move to it....
Invisibility doesn't say you must be out of enemy's line of sight and that it ends if an enemy finds you.
The citation that Silvaa included states that the invisibility condition ends when someone finds you.
"The [Invisible] condition ends on you immediately after any of the following occurs: you make a sound louder than a whisper, an enemy finds you, you make an attack roll, or you cast a spell with a Verbal component."
I don't know for sure if they were citing the 2024 rules with that quote though and I don't have access to the 2024 PHB to check.
However, this raises another question. If you have the invisibility spell cast on you does it get "dispelled" when someone notices you? That would not make sense to me. Also, does that mean that the creature becomes visible?
From the sounds of it so far, the invisibility/hiding revisions are an epic fail, though I'll reserve my opinion until I see the actual rules. The problem with that is "Why would folks buy something so poorly thought out?".
P.S. Apologies if I misunderstood your comment ... I thought "doesn't say" was applying to both clauses of the sentence.
I agree that they shouldn't have done it this way as it's going to lead to a ton of confusion for new players who will assume that the Invisible condition has something to do with . . . well . . . invisibility. It doesn't.
The Invisible Condition is now being used to mean something a lot more like what we used to call "Unseen", such as in the sections on Unseen Attackers and Targets.
But your first statement above is a misunderstanding. The new Hiding rules and spells such as Invisibility will both make use of the Invisible Condition, but will do so in different ways. You will have the Invisible Condition temporarily, and this condition will end based on different requirements. In the case of Hiding, you will lose the condition when you are found, such as when you are in an enemy's Line of Sight or when you are found with a perception check. With a spell such as Invisibility you won't lose the condition unless you make an attack or cast a spell and so on. So, Invisibility will remain about as useful as it used to be and some of the problems with the old Invisible condition have been cleaned up. Mechanically, I think that this will all work pretty well but it still should have been done differently to avoid this confusion.
In the 2014 rules, being hidden specifically meant that you were Unseen AND Unheard and that your location was unknown. Until I really get a chance to read the new rules in full it's unclear to me if this concept has changed. For example, if you are found via a perception check, can this result in you remaining Unseen but the enemy heard you and therefore now knows where you are? With the new way that the Invisible condition is used (which means something very similar to Unseen), it's unclear if all of that still works the same way until we can really see all of the new rules.
A few more initial thoughts based on the limited information given in the Original Post:
It sort of seems like the designers are intending to remove the concept of being an Unseen Attacker to gain advantage on your attacks and instead you will now have to actually be Hidden to gain this benefit. I don't know this for sure since I haven't seen the new rules, but if you read between the lines that's what it seems like is happening to me.
I really dislike the arbitrary requirement of succeeding on a DC15 check to have any chance to Hide and I feel like this is going to be house-ruled away by a ton of tables right away. The main problem here is that this doesn't fully allow you to take advantage of a monster's weakness. If you know that a particular monster has very weak perception, then it should be good tactics to attempt to Hide from that monster and this should succeed more often than against a monster with higher perception. This DC15 requirement ruins this until you get to higher levels of play.
It's a little bit unclear to me, but my suspicion is that the Hide Action will only be applicable during combat. I suspect that the designers wanted to make it harder to Hide during combat when enemies with heightened senses have already been tracking your movements up until the moment when you duck behind something and attempt to Hide. Outside of combat, there might be certain situations where you can premeditate an ambush or a careful plan to sneak past some guards and so on. I have a feeling that in those cases you do not actually use the Hide action and therefore you will not have to pass the DC15 check in those cases -- making these situations more likely to succeed than attempts to Hide during combat. This would make some sense, but I wish they had handled it differently. If they wanted to make this distinction, perhaps they could have just required the Stealth roll to be made with Disadvantage during combat -- or, alternatively, an enemy's passive perception could be given Advantage (+5 bonus) during combat due to the heightened senses of combat. Again, I don't know yet if any of this is actually happening since I haven't yet seen the rules in full.
Next, the inclusion of three-quarters Cover in the rules for Hiding is interesting, but it seems to be a bit clumsily written. My suspicion is that this was meant to solve the debate about "popping out" to make an attack from behind total cover, and whether or not that would ruin your Hiding status. Now, you can quite explicitly Hide behind total cover and then lean your head and your bow out to the side so that you can see and aim at your target, maintaining the necessary three-quarters Cover, and attack from a Hidden position. The problem is that we now have this issue where you can just hide behind three-quarters Cover and somehow not be within an enemy's Line of Sight? Based on the old rules, this makes no sense. An enemy could always see you behind three-quarters Cover. A lot of other rules and core mechanics would have to have changed throughout the book for this portion of the new Hiding rule to really make any sense as written.
Lastly, once again, it's unclear how the old concept of Hiding meaning "unseen and unheard" actually works with these new rules. The new rule mentions that you lose the Invisible condition "when you make a sound louder than a whisper". How does that make any sense at all? If I am behind something and you hear me, I am now visible to you? If the concept of Hiding is still going to involve being both unseen and unheard then this whole thing will need to be rewritten unfortunately.
If enemies will find you as soon as you walk into their "Line of Sight", the Hide action would be completely useless and totally unusable. I've stated why in my post.
I think that most people are disagreeing with this. Hiding has never worked this way, and it has always had its uses. It doesn't make any sense to be able to walk around in the open and enjoy the benefits of being Hidden . . . when you are no longer hiding.
Being Hidden is not the same thing as being Invisible. It means that you are hiding. People cannot see you because you are hiding, not because you are an invisible creature. If you walk out into the open you will be automatically found unless the entire rest of the books (including the DMG) has changed really dramatically.
The idea (probably) is that you can just duck, or be in the shadows just right (or wearing
camoa cloak of elvenkind), to (essentially) break line-of-sight with only 3/4 cover...and then "pop out" to still-3/4-cover for attacks.And in combat, in 2024, you can sneak out entirely to get close, because they are presumably distracted fighting other people / taking other actions. If they weren't distracted, they'd have an action free to do the search action... if they didn't search before (nor ready it to use it as a reaction, which seems a waste?), then they won't have the opportunity to take it on your turn, when you are presumably moving stealthily to avoid their gaze as you close the distance.
Leaving only the case of "they were already looking there and you walked out from cover" as the odd case, but wouldn't "already looking there" have been covered by taking the search action while you were still in cover, thus breaking your hide before you strode out? (Meaning the search action would break your hide even when you're still behind total cover.)
I could see some sort of "if you start hidden, make another stealth roll to beat their passive perception" rule for sneaking near someone, outside of combat. Hell, maybe it doesn't require starting hidden...and maybe it's part of some separate "sneaking around outside of combat" rule already, that hasn't been shared?
There's basically five different options for how visible you are
I think it's pretty clear that you can remain hidden in situations (1) and (2), the argument is about the other three situations. I would probably allow it in (3) and (4) but not (5) outside of special conditions. Sillvva would make the check once per turn at end of turn (so you can move from cover to cover without being revealed, and even if someone runs up next to you, their initial attacks against you will be at disadvantage because it doesn't terminate until end of turn). You are, I think, proposing that you can remain hidden in all of those states. I'm not sure what other participants in this thread are proposing.
The interaction between passive perception and hiding should be made explicit (in general when passive perception applies should be made more explicit).
Both the Hide action and the Invisibility spell grant the Invisible condition, but the spell doesn't come with the same parameters as the action and it's much more stable way to become Invisible.