What confuses a lot of people (because the Devs massively misworded things) is that you don't actually become invisible when using Hide, you simply gain the benefits of the CONDITION of invisibility. Your friends can still see you, you are not in fact invisible, you are however, "unseen" by the enemy. They should have created a new condition called "unseen" or "hidden" and it would have solved the huge mess that they've now created.
When taking the HIde Action, you are not turning invisible - you simply have the benefits of the invisible condition but only against those that can't see or hear you.
Hide: On a successful check, you have the Invisible condition.
Invisibility: A creature you touch has the Invisible condition until the spell ends.
The confusion is regarding Invisible and what exactly they mean by can somehow see you?
Just things like See Invisibility , Blindsight and Truesight specifically stating they can see it or there's other ways? Because a recipient either has a condition or doesn’t and some people now believe the condition doesn't make you unseen, and other think it does.
Right. If enemies can't see you because you are out of their line of sight, then you wouldn't be concealed from allies whose line of sight you are still in... maybe?
EDIT: To be clear, I'm not making the case for this. I'm trying to figure it out. Maybe you really do just poof out of existence, even for allies who have been watching you the whole time.
Having the condition from the Hide action and then casting Invisibility makes an interesting combination: you lose the condition but gain it again.
EDIT: Am I right? Or would you guys rule that it isn't lost in this scenario?
You would lose the condition, then immediately regain it, and would no longer be at risk of losing it from making noise (or otherwise being found). However, you would no longer be hidden, in the sense that people could know where you are / that you are there. Futher stealth rolls could help you move elsewhere quietly...
Having the condition from the Hide action and then casting Invisibility makes an interesting combination: you lose the condition but gain it again.
EDIT: Am I right? Or would you guys rule that it isn't lost in this scenario?
You would lose the condition, then immediately regain it, and would no longer be at risk of losing it from making noise (or otherwise being found). However, you would no longer be hidden, in the sense that people could know where you are / that you are there. Futher stealth rolls could help you move elsewhere quietly...
Thank you!
I agree with everything you said, and the argument is solid for me.
But just for the sake of fairness and honesty, I recall some recent debate about how useful hiding is after casting the spell: Invisibility spell and hiding
The confusion is regarding Invisible and what exactly they mean by can somehow see you?
Just things like See Invisibility , Blindsight and Truesight specifically stating they can see it or there's other ways? Because a recipient either has a condition or doesn’t and some people now believe the condition doesn't make you unseen, and other think it does.
The core problem is using the invisible condition in the first place, because being hidden is not a binary condition, it is a state relative to certain observers -- if I'm hiding behind a door, I'm not visible to people outside, but I'm perfectly visible to my allies in the room. However, if we just look at the RAW:
The invisible condition does not, in fact, specify that you cannot be seen. It does specify that you are concealed, but then goes on to state what 'concealed' means in that context, and that specification does not include any effect that actually means you cannot be seen. Note that this is a change from 2014, which did specifically state you could not be seen without unusual capabilities.
When the status effect is used outside of hiding, such as with invisibility and the invisible stalker, it is pretty clearly intended to mean that you the invisible creature cannot be seen without special senses. However, it is never actually specified as working that way.
The rules for hiding do indicate that a hidden character can be seen without special senses, it just requires 'finding' the character. What 'finding' means is unclear -- is it only the search action, or is the creature found when they lose the prerequisites for hiding?
There are two reasonably consistent ways of interpreting the 2024 hide rule... and most likely neither of them is the actual intent.
You must retain the prerequisites for hide, and if you no longer have them, you are revealed. This makes hiding almost totally useless (you can turn invisible... as long a no-one can see you anyway).
Once you are hidden, you no longer need to retain the prerequisites for hide, so you can just stand up, walk across the room through the field of view of a dozen enemies, and start dancing, and you won't be spotted unless someone takes the time to search for you.
Unfortunately, if we assume neither of the above is the actual intent, that leaves us trying to divine the actual intent.
From certain monsters that use stealth, it's clearly intended that a monster can leap out of the shadows and attack. This might indicate some sort of timing issue, where the invisible status is only lost at end of turn or some such.
The rules for hiding require that no creatures have line of sight on you, but also say that you can hide if you have 3/4 cover. However, given that 3/4 cover does not block line of sight, it isn't possible to actually hide in 3/4 cover unless you are also heavily obscured. This suggests that the intended test is actually somewhat more lenient than "no enemy has line of sight". This same issue arises with the halfling Naturally Stealthy trait.
Personally, I'm just using the 2014 rules. They aren't wonderful, but they can at least be used to make stealth function sensibly.
Having the condition from the Hide action and then casting Invisibility makes an interesting combination: you lose the condition but gain it again.
EDIT: Am I right? Or would you guys rule that it isn't lost in this scenario?
You would lose the condition, then immediately regain it, and would no longer be at risk of losing it from making noise (or otherwise being found). However, you would no longer be hidden, in the sense that people could know where you are / that you are there. Futher stealth rolls could help you move elsewhere quietly...
Thank you!
I agree with everything you said, and the argument is solid for me.
But just for the sake of fairness and honesty, I recall some recent debate about how useful hiding is after casting the spell: Invisibility spell and hiding
The only thing the Hide action gives you, if you are already invisible, is the (very implicit) notion that people don't know where you are. Using the Hide action when already invisible is probably not worth the trouble (and a malicous DM might decide that the "newer" non-stacking invisible condition takes precedence, and the older magical one is lost).
So it's probably better to "just" use Stealth rolls to move quietly, and hope no enemy has a high enough Perception/Passive-Perception to beat you, and thus cause them to lose track of you. That's merely an implicit mechanic in the PHB, but pretty straightforward to assemble from RAW (debate and "debate" aside).
If instead of reusing the “invisible” condition for hiding, they just should have made a new condition known as “Unseen” and worded such that any creature that can not passively or actively notice a creature that is hiding, is not aware of the hiding creature unless the creature hiding does something to make an unawares creature notice.
The current change in invisibility and in the condition of the same name is not a good way to resolve a game feature that is just as complex as Surprise was in 2014 and latter.
And the “you ether have a condition or you don’t” has been proven by the invisible condition to be both correct and wrong at the same time, and rather than actually attempt to clarify that statement they just doubled down on the invisible condition.
I’ve stayed with the 2014 rules for hiding and hidden, and invisibly hidden creatures have to maintain a level of stealth in order to not notify another creature of the invisible creatures presence. ( you know something might be there, but can’t immediately pinpoint where or what it is.)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
What confuses a lot of people (because the Devs massively misworded things) is that you don't actually become invisible when using Hide, you simply gain the benefits of the CONDITION of invisibility. Your friends can still see you, you are not in fact invisible, you are however, "unseen" by the enemy. They should have created a new condition called "unseen" or "hidden" and it would have solved the huge mess that they've now created.
When taking the HIde Action, you are not turning invisible - you simply have the benefits of the invisible condition but only against those that can't see or hear you.
Having the condition from the Hide action and then casting Invisibility makes an interesting combination: you lose the condition but gain it again.
EDIT: Am I right? Or would you guys rule that it isn't lost in this scenario?
In my opinion, the Hide's Invisible condition ends on you immediately after you cast Invisibility. Then a creature you touch has the Invisible condition until the spell ends.
Yes, this is what happens in this scenario. Keep in mind that if you are casting Invisibility on yourself in this scenario, you become un-hidden but Invisible. Meaning, you have just given away your position audibly and all nearby enemies now know where you are -- they've just "found" you without having to make a Perception check. Although they cannot currently see you, they can continue to track your position audibly (and potentially attack you at disadvantage) unless you attempt and succeed on another Stealth check.
The rules for hiding do indicate that a hidden character can be seen without special senses, it just requires 'finding' the character. What 'finding' means is unclear -- is it only the search action, or is the creature found when they lose the prerequisites for hiding?
I strongly believe that the intent and the implication is that both of those methods will find a hidden character. If a character is successfully hiding, then they can be found with a Perception check. Also, if a character is no longer successfully hiding because they no longer have the prerequisites to be hidden, then they are automatically found. Not necessarily seen, but their location is found.
Remember, the Hide action begins with "you try to conceal yourself". When considering the entire text for the action as a whole, the implication is that becoming concealed means that you are concealing your location such that it becomes unknown, and this is accomplished by positioning yourself someplace where you cannot be seen and also remaining quiet. Whether or not you've actually accomplished both of these things is represented by the value of your Stealth roll.
It's important to remember that the value of your Stealth roll is ongoing. It's not a snapshot. The player is explicitly instructed to save and remember this value for later use. This represents the ability to remain concealed on an ongoing basis. It represents your ability to remain positioned in a location where you cannot be seen and also remaining quiet.
As a consequence of successfully doing these things on an ongoing basis, you "have" the Invisible condition. Having the condition is contingent on being successfully concealed. You do not ever gain or acquire the condition. You simply have the condition on a successful check. So, the implication is that this goes away as soon as your ongoing check is no longer valid. The Stealth check represents being concealed, so this Stealth check should no longer be valid when you are no longer concealed. The description explicitly lists some ways that this happens automatically, including "an enemy finds you". It is implied that an enemy finds you when you are no longer hiding / concealed.
You must retain the prerequisites for hide, and if you no longer have them, you are revealed. This makes hiding almost totally useless (you can turn invisible... as long a no-one can see you anyway).
I believe strongly that this is the intent but I really do not understand your conclusion. Why would this make hiding useless? It has pretty much the same benefits that it had in 2014.
We really have to let go of the idea of "turning invisible" as a reason for hiding. You don't really turn invisible. Really, having the Condition is just a description of something that happens when you hide. When hidden, you have the Condition. When not hidden, you don't have it. You never gained it. You simply have it under these circumstances.
I think that the authors were just trying to be clever by basically saying:
"While successfully hidden, you have the invisible Condition."
Instead of saying:
"While successfully hidden, you experience the following effects:
Concealed. You aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen unless the effect’s creator can somehow see you. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying is also concealed.
Attacks Affected. Attack rolls against you have Disadvantage, and your attack rolls have Advantage. If a creature can somehow see you, you don’t gain this benefit against that creature.
. . ."
Another important thing to keep in mind is that having the Invisible Condition is not the ONLY thing that happens on a successful Stealth check. What really happens on a successful Stealth check is that you successfully become "concealed". In this context, this means that you've successfully concealed your location from being known. This happens because you now have the Invisible Condition AND you've successfully demonstrated the ability to remain quiet (via the successful Stealth roll).
So, why are we calling that result useless? There are many mechanical benefits to being hidden.
The rules for hiding require that no creatures have line of sight on you, but also say that you can hide if you have 3/4 cover. However, given that 3/4 cover does not block line of sight, it isn't possible to actually hide in 3/4 cover unless you are also heavily obscured. This suggests that the intended test is actually somewhat more lenient than "no enemy has line of sight".
My take on this is that this was an attempt to clean up a pretty big flaw that existed in the 2014 rules. In the 2014 rules, 360-degree awareness was the standard assumption so that if there was any line of sight at all between two creatures then they would be seen. So, a creature would attempt to Hide behind total cover. The problem is that you couldn't really actually make a ranged attack from behind total cover because that total cover would be in your way. So, the common house rule became that a creature could "pop out" from behind total cover and make their ranged attack as an unseen attacker without giving up their location until the attack was resolved. This was a contradiction because as soon as you "pop out" you are no longer behind total cover and therefore you could be seen.
Now, in 2024, I believe the idea is meant to be that if you are already successfully hidden and continue to remain successfully hidden on an ongoing basis, you can now quietly reposition yourself into a 3/4 cover position and still remain successfully hidden so that you can actually make your ranged attack from a hidden position without firing directly into the wall that is providing your cover. Of course, as worded, the 3/4 cover alone might be enough to allow you to become hidden in the first place without being noticed as represented by rolling well on the Stealth check, but that's just sort of a flaw in the current wording. In my opinion, although not explicitly suggested, I think that it would be totally reasonable for a DM to declare that the Stealth check should be made at disadvantage if you ONLY have 3/4 cover available and you have no way to really become fully unseen. Like, if you are trying to hide behind a thin tree trunk or something. Remember, above all else, "The Dungeon Master decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding", so there is flexibility built into the rules.
From certain monsters that use stealth, it's clearly intended that a monster can leap out of the shadows and attack. This might indicate some sort of timing issue, where the invisible status is only lost at end of turn or some such.
Interestingly, I remember that there were a couple of clear examples of this is the free rules when this topic was discussed previously, but now while I am going back to try to look at them, I cannot find them. For some reason I specifically remember the Panther and the Tiger having something called "Pounce" and "Prowl" which made it seem like it was intended to be run in the way that you are describing. However, when I look up these monsters now, I do not see anything like that written.
Is it possible that these monsters were quietly updated via errata without any officially published announcement on that subject? I no longer see any monster in the free rules which appear to be intended to remain stealthy while out in the open. Are there any obvious examples in the Monster Manual that you can share?
In my opinion, if the descriptions for these monsters have been changed in this way, then that makes me believe pretty strongly that the concept of moving around out in the open while remaining hidden is not the interpretation that is going to be officially supported if and when we eventually get some official clarification on the topic.
I believe strongly that this is the intent but I really do not understand your conclusion. Why would this make hiding useless?
Because it literally does nothing. If you have the prerequisites for the hide action, no enemy has line of sight on you -- which means you are already unseen. Adding invisible when already unseen doesn't do anything.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that having the Invisible Condition is not the ONLY thing that happens on a successful Stealth check. What really happens on a successful Stealth check is that you successfully become "concealed". In this context, this means that you've successfully concealed your location from being known.
No, it doesn't. In this context, it means you can't be targeted by abilities that require the attacker to see the target. We know this because immediately after the . it explains that this is what it means.
My take on this is that this was an attempt to clean up a pretty big flaw that existed in the 2014 rules. In the 2014 rules, 360-degree awareness was the standard assumption so that if there was any line of sight at all between two creatures then they would be seen. So, a creature would attempt to Hide behind total cover. The problem is that you couldn't really actually make a ranged attack from behind total cover because that total cover would be in your way. So, the common house rule became that a creature could "pop out" from behind total cover and make their ranged attack as an unseen attacker without giving up their location until the attack was resolved. This was a contradiction because as soon as you "pop out" you are no longer behind total cover and therefore you could be seen.
That's not even the way the 2014 rules worked. The 2014 rule is "The DM decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding" and "You can’t hide from a creature that can see you clearly". "Clearly" is not defined in the text, but the normal meaning of the word would say that a creature that is lightly obscured or behind half or 3/4 cover is not in fact 'clearly' visible.
Is it possible that these monsters were quietly updated via errata without any officially published announcement on that subject?
On checking, they seem to have updated to have hide as a bonus action instead of hide as a part of their multiattack, and they seem to have outright removed the extra damage for attacking with advantage (or rather, they just grant the extra damage all the time), which does seem to indicate that they rethought stealthy pouncing monsters somewhat.
I believe strongly that this is the intent but I really do not understand your conclusion. Why would this make hiding useless?
Because it literally does nothing. If you have the prerequisites for the hide action, no enemy has line of sight on you -- which means you are already unseen. Adding invisible when already unseen doesn't do anything
Of course hiding does something. The result of successfully hiding is that your position is concealed. If an enemy doesn't know where you are you cannot be targeted. Also, it enables you to be able to attack as an Unseen Attacker from behind 3/4 cover when normally you would be seen behind 3/4 cover. It's one of the main ways to become an Unseen Attacker.
Or maybe you just thought you were locating yourself in an Unseen position, but whether you actually did or not is in doubt -- let's roll a check to see if you are actually Unseen. Upon confirmation, while you are Unseen you have the Invisible Condition, which is just a short way of explaining what benefits you are actually receiving while Unseen. Like I said before,
the authors were just trying to be clever by basically saying:
"While successfully hidden, you have the invisible Condition."
Instead of saying:
"While successfully hidden, you experience the following effects:
Concealed. You aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen unless the effect’s creator can somehow see you. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying is also concealed.
Attacks Affected. Attack rolls against you have Disadvantage, and your attack rolls have Advantage. If a creature can somehow see you, you don’t gain this benefit against that creature.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that having the Invisible Condition is not the ONLY thing that happens on a successful Stealth check. What really happens on a successful Stealth check is that you successfully become "concealed". In this context, this means that you've successfully concealed your location from being known.
No, it doesn't. In this context, it means you can't be targeted by abilities that require the attacker to see the target. We know this because immediately after the . it explains that this is what it means.
What?? No, no, no, I'm not talking about what the authors happened to call one of the clauses within the Invisible Condition itself. That's just a title for the rule which follows it. The title itself has no mechanical meaning. They could have written it like this:
Diddlysquat. You aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen unless the effect’s creator can somehow see you. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying is also concealed.
. . . and the rule would function in exactly the same manner. It doesn't matter what they happened to call a clause which really doesn't have much at all to do with what the word "concealed" actually means. In that context of those rules within the Invisible Condition, yes that's what the word concealed means.
What I am talking about is the fact that the Hide action begins like this:
With the Hide action, you try to conceal yourself. To do so, you must . . .
The entire action is describing an effort to become concealed in a different context. The context here can be seen by looking at the whole text for the Hide action in its entirety. This text talks about a prerequisite for being Unseen by enemies, but also discusses various ways that you might lose this version of the Invisible Condition due to being heard. So, the context here is that on a successful check, you are both unseen and unheard, which in most cases makes it impossible for an enemy to know your location. Your location has become successfully concealed. You started off by trying to conceal yourself. And now you have done so -- and that success is ongoing. At some moment later on if you make a loud noise, you are no longer successfully concealed and therefore you lose the Condition and your location becomes known.
The important thing is that having the Condition and then not having the Condition are not really the results. They are just descriptors of what is happening while you become successfully concealed and then when you are no longer concealed, which is the actual result of the Hide action.
My take on this is that this was an attempt to clean up a pretty big flaw that existed in the 2014 rules. In the 2014 rules, 360-degree awareness was the standard assumption so that if there was any line of sight at all between two creatures then they would be seen. So, a creature would attempt to Hide behind total cover. The problem is that you couldn't really actually make a ranged attack from behind total cover because that total cover would be in your way. So, the common house rule became that a creature could "pop out" from behind total cover and make their ranged attack as an unseen attacker without giving up their location until the attack was resolved. This was a contradiction because as soon as you "pop out" you are no longer behind total cover and therefore you could be seen.
That's not even the way the 2014 rules worked. The 2014 rule is "The DM decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding" and "You can’t hide from a creature that can see you clearly". "Clearly" is not defined in the text, but the normal meaning of the word would say that a creature that is lightly obscured or behind half or 3/4 cover is not in fact 'clearly' visible.
It looks like we're talking about two different things here. Yes, the restriction against being able to hide was that you can be clearly seen. But I'm talking about what it means to be Unseen in 2014. Unseen doesn't mean "can't be clearly seen". Unseen means "cannot be seen" or "are not seen". So yes, perhaps it might be possible to Hide somewhere where you could still be seen if the DM allows it, but eventually you're going to want to attempt to become an Unseen Attacker. The rules for that existed in the Combat chapter in a section called "Unseen Attackers and Targets" which said this:
When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it. If you are hidden--both unseen and unheard--when you make an attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses.
So, how well you could be seen at the moment that you became hidden doesn't really matter. What matters is that a creature "can't see you" at the moment "when you make an attack". So, unfortunately, when you "pop out" to fire your bow . . . at the moment that you are firing your bow you can be seen. This prevents you from being an Unseen Attacker. Of course, nobody played that way, but that was a flaw in the 2014 rules that the designers were clearly trying to clean up in the 2024 rules. They didn't do a great job of writing it very clearly, but to me it's pretty obvious that that's what they were trying to do with the whole 3/4 cover thing.
Of course hiding does something. The result of successfully hiding is that your position is concealed. If an enemy doesn't know where you are you cannot be targeted. Also, it enables you to be able to attack as an Unseen Attacker from behind 3/4 cover when normally you would be seen behind 3/4 cover. It's one of the main ways to become an Unseen Attacker.
No it doesn't. 3/4 cover does not block line of sight, so it's not actually possible to hide behind 3/4 cover unless there's some effect blocking line of sight (is this the intent? Obvious not. But it's what they wrote).
In any case, the effect of hiding is not that your position is concealed. The effect of hiding is that you gain the invisible condition.
It looks like we're talking about two different things here. Yes, the restriction against being able to hide was that you can be clearly seen. But I'm talking about what it means to be Unseen in 2014. Unseen doesn't mean "can't be clearly seen". Unseen means "cannot be seen" or "are not seen". So yes, perhaps it might be possible to Hide somewhere where you could still be seen if the DM allows it, but eventually you're going to want to attempt to become an Unseen Attacker. The rules for that existed in the Combat chapter in a section called "Unseen Attackers and Targets" which said this:
When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it. If you are hidden--both unseen and unheard--when you make an attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses.
So, how well you could be seen at the moment that you became hidden doesn't really matter. What matters is that a creature "can't see you" at the moment "when you make an attack". So, unfortunately, when you "pop out" to fire your bow . . . at the moment that you are firing your bow you can be seen.
If they were trying to change that, they would have just changed "when a creature can't see you" to "when a creature can't or hasn't seen you". In any case, it isn't fixed or even changed by the 2024 rules, because the moment you pop out of cover your enemy has line of sight on you, as (absent obscurement that only one side can see through) line of sight is reciprocal.
I do believe that being hidden is more than simply being invisible, although I'll concede the designers could have been a little more helpful in that regard. If your Stealth ability skill check result is the DC for a creature to find you, that implies quite heavily that, without a successful check, the creature has not found you. And if the creature has not found you, they don't know where you are. That's how finding someone works. Again, some explicit description would have been helpful here, but this doesn't seem like a particularly big leap in logic to me.
I do believe that being hidden is more than simply being invisible, although I'll concede the designers could have been a little more helpful in that regard. If your Stealth ability skill check result is the DC for a creature to find you, that implies quite heavily that, without a successful check, the creature has not found you. And if the creature has not found you, they don't know where you are. That's how finding someone works. Again, some explicit description would have been helpful here, but this doesn't seem like a particularly big leap in logic to me.
Except the logic breaks down when a character can then stand in the open and be “invisible” so long as an enemy doesn’t beat their stealth roll. It rather defeats the point of the Invisibility spell if its effect can be substantially replicated by a skill check.
Except the logic breaks down when a character can then stand in the open and be “invisible” so long as an enemy doesn’t beat their stealth roll. It rather defeats the point of the Invisibility spell if its effect can be substantially replicated by a skill check.
A few thoughts on this, because I'm not sure how your reply represents a breakdown in logic.
This does support my point that being hidden is more than simply being invisible.
I think the invisibility spell is still more versatile because it places fewer limits on what you can do while retaining the condition.
It's definitely a change from 5e, but I think it's logically consistent. It gives players and DMs more tools to work with when monsters or PCs hide in and out of combat.
I do believe that being hidden is more than simply being invisible, although I'll concede the designers could have been a little more helpful in that regard. If your Stealth ability skill check result is the DC for a creature to find you, that implies quite heavily that, without a successful check, the creature has not found you. And if the creature has not found you, they don't know where you are. That's how finding someone works. Again, some explicit description would have been helpful here, but this doesn't seem like a particularly big leap in logic to me.
Except the logic breaks down when a character can then stand in the open and be “invisible” so long as an enemy doesn’t beat their stealth roll. It rather defeats the point of the Invisibility spell if its effect can be substantially replicated by a skill check.
If a DM rules they're just "in the open" with no distractions, thus anyone can "find" them automatically, the condition will end. That's a particular situation.
"Sniping in combat" or even "sneaking up and stabbing in combat" are also particular situations, that the Hide mechanic facilitates. Sure, make another stealth roll each move/dash, to make sure you stay unheard (thus unfound)...but it's real easy for a DM to assume all the combatants aren't just...staring at the trees in case someone pops out (because they are busy doing shooting/stabbing/dodging/blocking of their own).
Who knows how Hide exactly is intended to work by WoTC they have yet to clarify many questions.
Hide: On a successful check, you have the Invisible condition.
Invisibility: A creature you touch has the Invisible condition until the spell ends.
The confusion is regarding Invisible and what exactly they mean by can somehow see you?
Just things like See Invisibility , Blindsight and Truesight specifically stating they can see it or there's other ways? Because a recipient either has a condition or doesn’t and some people now believe the condition doesn't make you unseen, and other think it does.
Right. If enemies can't see you because you are out of their line of sight, then you wouldn't be concealed from allies whose line of sight you are still in... maybe?
EDIT: To be clear, I'm not making the case for this. I'm trying to figure it out. Maybe you really do just poof out of existence, even for allies who have been watching you the whole time.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
You would lose the condition, then immediately regain it, and would no longer be at risk of losing it from making noise (or otherwise being found). However, you would no longer be hidden, in the sense that people could know where you are / that you are there. Futher stealth rolls could help you move elsewhere quietly...
Thank you!
I agree with everything you said, and the argument is solid for me.
But just for the sake of fairness and honesty, I recall some recent debate about how useful hiding is after casting the spell: Invisibility spell and hiding
The core problem is using the invisible condition in the first place, because being hidden is not a binary condition, it is a state relative to certain observers -- if I'm hiding behind a door, I'm not visible to people outside, but I'm perfectly visible to my allies in the room. However, if we just look at the RAW:
There are two reasonably consistent ways of interpreting the 2024 hide rule... and most likely neither of them is the actual intent.
Unfortunately, if we assume neither of the above is the actual intent, that leaves us trying to divine the actual intent.
Personally, I'm just using the 2014 rules. They aren't wonderful, but they can at least be used to make stealth function sensibly.
The only thing the Hide action gives you, if you are already invisible, is the (very implicit) notion that people don't know where you are. Using the Hide action when already invisible is probably not worth the trouble (and a malicous DM might decide that the "newer" non-stacking invisible condition takes precedence, and the older magical one is lost).
So it's probably better to "just" use Stealth rolls to move quietly, and hope no enemy has a high enough Perception/Passive-Perception to beat you, and thus cause them to lose track of you. That's merely an implicit mechanic in the PHB, but pretty straightforward to assemble from RAW (debate and "debate" aside).
If instead of reusing the “invisible” condition for hiding, they just should have made a new condition known as “Unseen” and worded such that any creature that can not passively or actively notice a creature that is hiding, is not aware of the hiding creature unless the creature hiding does something to make an unawares creature notice.
The current change in invisibility and in the condition of the same name is not a good way to resolve a game feature that is just as complex as Surprise was in 2014 and latter.
And the “you ether have a condition or you don’t” has been proven by the invisible condition to be both correct and wrong at the same time, and rather than actually attempt to clarify that statement they just doubled down on the invisible condition.
I’ve stayed with the 2014 rules for hiding and hidden, and invisibly hidden creatures have to maintain a level of stealth in order to not notify another creature of the invisible creatures presence. ( you know something might be there, but can’t immediately pinpoint where or what it is.)
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
Or they could have just defined a condition called "hidden" which is how most people think of it anyway. 🤷🏻♂️
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I think they intended the Hide's Invisible condition to only ends if an enemy finds you, meaning allies finding you don't end the condition.
YES!!
Yes, this is what happens in this scenario. Keep in mind that if you are casting Invisibility on yourself in this scenario, you become un-hidden but Invisible. Meaning, you have just given away your position audibly and all nearby enemies now know where you are -- they've just "found" you without having to make a Perception check. Although they cannot currently see you, they can continue to track your position audibly (and potentially attack you at disadvantage) unless you attempt and succeed on another Stealth check.
I strongly believe that the intent and the implication is that both of those methods will find a hidden character. If a character is successfully hiding, then they can be found with a Perception check. Also, if a character is no longer successfully hiding because they no longer have the prerequisites to be hidden, then they are automatically found. Not necessarily seen, but their location is found.
Remember, the Hide action begins with "you try to conceal yourself". When considering the entire text for the action as a whole, the implication is that becoming concealed means that you are concealing your location such that it becomes unknown, and this is accomplished by positioning yourself someplace where you cannot be seen and also remaining quiet. Whether or not you've actually accomplished both of these things is represented by the value of your Stealth roll.
It's important to remember that the value of your Stealth roll is ongoing. It's not a snapshot. The player is explicitly instructed to save and remember this value for later use. This represents the ability to remain concealed on an ongoing basis. It represents your ability to remain positioned in a location where you cannot be seen and also remaining quiet.
As a consequence of successfully doing these things on an ongoing basis, you "have" the Invisible condition. Having the condition is contingent on being successfully concealed. You do not ever gain or acquire the condition. You simply have the condition on a successful check. So, the implication is that this goes away as soon as your ongoing check is no longer valid. The Stealth check represents being concealed, so this Stealth check should no longer be valid when you are no longer concealed. The description explicitly lists some ways that this happens automatically, including "an enemy finds you". It is implied that an enemy finds you when you are no longer hiding / concealed.
I believe strongly that this is the intent but I really do not understand your conclusion. Why would this make hiding useless? It has pretty much the same benefits that it had in 2014.
We really have to let go of the idea of "turning invisible" as a reason for hiding. You don't really turn invisible. Really, having the Condition is just a description of something that happens when you hide. When hidden, you have the Condition. When not hidden, you don't have it. You never gained it. You simply have it under these circumstances.
I think that the authors were just trying to be clever by basically saying:
"While successfully hidden, you have the invisible Condition."
Instead of saying:
"While successfully hidden, you experience the following effects:
Surprise. when you roll Initiative, you have Advantage on the roll.
Concealed. You aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen unless the effect’s creator can somehow see you. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying is also concealed.
Attacks Affected. Attack rolls against you have Disadvantage, and your attack rolls have Advantage. If a creature can somehow see you, you don’t gain this benefit against that creature.
. . ."
Another important thing to keep in mind is that having the Invisible Condition is not the ONLY thing that happens on a successful Stealth check. What really happens on a successful Stealth check is that you successfully become "concealed". In this context, this means that you've successfully concealed your location from being known. This happens because you now have the Invisible Condition AND you've successfully demonstrated the ability to remain quiet (via the successful Stealth roll).
So, why are we calling that result useless? There are many mechanical benefits to being hidden.
My take on this is that this was an attempt to clean up a pretty big flaw that existed in the 2014 rules. In the 2014 rules, 360-degree awareness was the standard assumption so that if there was any line of sight at all between two creatures then they would be seen. So, a creature would attempt to Hide behind total cover. The problem is that you couldn't really actually make a ranged attack from behind total cover because that total cover would be in your way. So, the common house rule became that a creature could "pop out" from behind total cover and make their ranged attack as an unseen attacker without giving up their location until the attack was resolved. This was a contradiction because as soon as you "pop out" you are no longer behind total cover and therefore you could be seen.
Now, in 2024, I believe the idea is meant to be that if you are already successfully hidden and continue to remain successfully hidden on an ongoing basis, you can now quietly reposition yourself into a 3/4 cover position and still remain successfully hidden so that you can actually make your ranged attack from a hidden position without firing directly into the wall that is providing your cover. Of course, as worded, the 3/4 cover alone might be enough to allow you to become hidden in the first place without being noticed as represented by rolling well on the Stealth check, but that's just sort of a flaw in the current wording. In my opinion, although not explicitly suggested, I think that it would be totally reasonable for a DM to declare that the Stealth check should be made at disadvantage if you ONLY have 3/4 cover available and you have no way to really become fully unseen. Like, if you are trying to hide behind a thin tree trunk or something. Remember, above all else, "The Dungeon Master decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding", so there is flexibility built into the rules.
Interestingly, I remember that there were a couple of clear examples of this is the free rules when this topic was discussed previously, but now while I am going back to try to look at them, I cannot find them. For some reason I specifically remember the Panther and the Tiger having something called "Pounce" and "Prowl" which made it seem like it was intended to be run in the way that you are describing. However, when I look up these monsters now, I do not see anything like that written.
Is it possible that these monsters were quietly updated via errata without any officially published announcement on that subject? I no longer see any monster in the free rules which appear to be intended to remain stealthy while out in the open. Are there any obvious examples in the Monster Manual that you can share?
In my opinion, if the descriptions for these monsters have been changed in this way, then that makes me believe pretty strongly that the concept of moving around out in the open while remaining hidden is not the interpretation that is going to be officially supported if and when we eventually get some official clarification on the topic.
Because it literally does nothing. If you have the prerequisites for the hide action, no enemy has line of sight on you -- which means you are already unseen. Adding invisible when already unseen doesn't do anything.
No, it doesn't. In this context, it means you can't be targeted by abilities that require the attacker to see the target. We know this because immediately after the . it explains that this is what it means.
That's not even the way the 2014 rules worked. The 2014 rule is "The DM decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding" and "You can’t hide from a creature that can see you clearly". "Clearly" is not defined in the text, but the normal meaning of the word would say that a creature that is lightly obscured or behind half or 3/4 cover is not in fact 'clearly' visible.
On checking, they seem to have updated to have hide as a bonus action instead of hide as a part of their multiattack, and they seem to have outright removed the extra damage for attacking with advantage (or rather, they just grant the extra damage all the time), which does seem to indicate that they rethought stealthy pouncing monsters somewhat.
Of course hiding does something. The result of successfully hiding is that your position is concealed. If an enemy doesn't know where you are you cannot be targeted. Also, it enables you to be able to attack as an Unseen Attacker from behind 3/4 cover when normally you would be seen behind 3/4 cover. It's one of the main ways to become an Unseen Attacker.
Or maybe you just thought you were locating yourself in an Unseen position, but whether you actually did or not is in doubt -- let's roll a check to see if you are actually Unseen. Upon confirmation, while you are Unseen you have the Invisible Condition, which is just a short way of explaining what benefits you are actually receiving while Unseen. Like I said before,
the authors were just trying to be clever by basically saying:
"While successfully hidden, you have the invisible Condition."
Instead of saying:
"While successfully hidden, you experience the following effects:
Surprise. when you roll Initiative, you have Advantage on the roll.
Concealed. You aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen unless the effect’s creator can somehow see you. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying is also concealed.
Attacks Affected. Attack rolls against you have Disadvantage, and your attack rolls have Advantage. If a creature can somehow see you, you don’t gain this benefit against that creature.
. . ."
What?? No, no, no, I'm not talking about what the authors happened to call one of the clauses within the Invisible Condition itself. That's just a title for the rule which follows it. The title itself has no mechanical meaning. They could have written it like this:
Diddlysquat. You aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen unless the effect’s creator can somehow see you. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying is also concealed.
. . . and the rule would function in exactly the same manner. It doesn't matter what they happened to call a clause which really doesn't have much at all to do with what the word "concealed" actually means. In that context of those rules within the Invisible Condition, yes that's what the word concealed means.
What I am talking about is the fact that the Hide action begins like this:
The entire action is describing an effort to become concealed in a different context. The context here can be seen by looking at the whole text for the Hide action in its entirety. This text talks about a prerequisite for being Unseen by enemies, but also discusses various ways that you might lose this version of the Invisible Condition due to being heard. So, the context here is that on a successful check, you are both unseen and unheard, which in most cases makes it impossible for an enemy to know your location. Your location has become successfully concealed. You started off by trying to conceal yourself. And now you have done so -- and that success is ongoing. At some moment later on if you make a loud noise, you are no longer successfully concealed and therefore you lose the Condition and your location becomes known.
The important thing is that having the Condition and then not having the Condition are not really the results. They are just descriptors of what is happening while you become successfully concealed and then when you are no longer concealed, which is the actual result of the Hide action.
It looks like we're talking about two different things here. Yes, the restriction against being able to hide was that you can be clearly seen. But I'm talking about what it means to be Unseen in 2014. Unseen doesn't mean "can't be clearly seen". Unseen means "cannot be seen" or "are not seen". So yes, perhaps it might be possible to Hide somewhere where you could still be seen if the DM allows it, but eventually you're going to want to attempt to become an Unseen Attacker. The rules for that existed in the Combat chapter in a section called "Unseen Attackers and Targets" which said this:
So, how well you could be seen at the moment that you became hidden doesn't really matter. What matters is that a creature "can't see you" at the moment "when you make an attack". So, unfortunately, when you "pop out" to fire your bow . . . at the moment that you are firing your bow you can be seen. This prevents you from being an Unseen Attacker. Of course, nobody played that way, but that was a flaw in the 2014 rules that the designers were clearly trying to clean up in the 2024 rules. They didn't do a great job of writing it very clearly, but to me it's pretty obvious that that's what they were trying to do with the whole 3/4 cover thing.
No it doesn't. 3/4 cover does not block line of sight, so it's not actually possible to hide behind 3/4 cover unless there's some effect blocking line of sight (is this the intent? Obvious not. But it's what they wrote).
In any case, the effect of hiding is not that your position is concealed. The effect of hiding is that you gain the invisible condition.
Given that the hide action refers to the invisible condition, we may assume that concealed has the same meaning as it has in the invisible condition.
If they were trying to change that, they would have just changed "when a creature can't see you" to "when a creature can't or hasn't seen you". In any case, it isn't fixed or even changed by the 2024 rules, because the moment you pop out of cover your enemy has line of sight on you, as (absent obscurement that only one side can see through) line of sight is reciprocal.
I do believe that being hidden is more than simply being invisible, although I'll concede the designers could have been a little more helpful in that regard. If your Stealth ability skill check result is the DC for a creature to find you, that implies quite heavily that, without a successful check, the creature has not found you. And if the creature has not found you, they don't know where you are. That's how finding someone works. Again, some explicit description would have been helpful here, but this doesn't seem like a particularly big leap in logic to me.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Except the logic breaks down when a character can then stand in the open and be “invisible” so long as an enemy doesn’t beat their stealth roll. It rather defeats the point of the Invisibility spell if its effect can be substantially replicated by a skill check.
A few thoughts on this, because I'm not sure how your reply represents a breakdown in logic.
It's definitely a change from 5e, but I think it's logically consistent. It gives players and DMs more tools to work with when monsters or PCs hide in and out of combat.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
If a DM rules they're just "in the open" with no distractions, thus anyone can "find" them automatically, the condition will end. That's a particular situation.
"Sniping in combat" or even "sneaking up and stabbing in combat" are also particular situations, that the Hide mechanic facilitates. Sure, make another stealth roll each move/dash, to make sure you stay unheard (thus unfound)...but it's real easy for a DM to assume all the combatants aren't just...staring at the trees in case someone pops out (because they are busy doing shooting/stabbing/dodging/blocking of their own).