What does Hide do? And how to read and understand the rules.

We've hijacked a completely unrelated topic for this issue, so let's tackle this here. Also, let's discuss how we read the rules in order to best understand them in the 2024 books.

You can see what the Hide action does by clicking the tooltip, but I'm going to quote it here, just to make it easier:

With the Hide action, you try to conceal yourself. To do so, you must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity (Stealth) check while you’re Heavily Obscured or behind Three-Quarters Cover or Total Cover, and you must be out of any enemy’s line of sight; if you can see a creature, you can discern whether it can see you.

On a successful check, you have the Invisible condition while hidden. Make note of your check’s total, which is the DC for a creature to find you with a Wisdom (Perception) check.

You stop being hidden 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.

What does this mean? This means that, while you're Heavily Obscured or behind Three-Quarters or Total cover, you may spend an action to roll a Dexterity (Stealth) check. If you meet or exceed that check's DC, which is set at 15, you have the Invisible condition. In addition, the result of your check is set as the DC for a creature to find you with a Wisdom (Perception) check. So, for example, if you roll a 22 on your Dexterity (Stealth) check, the DC for a creature to find you with a Wisdom (Perception) check is a 22. You remain hidden until one 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

For the sake of completionism, here are the full rules for what happens when you are Invisible:

While you have the Invisible condition, you experience the following effects.

Surprise. If you’re Invisible 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.

So, that's what the Hide action does. There has been some disagreement on the purpose or additional value of the Hide action, whether it provides you with any benefits besides rendering you Invisible, and how someone could "find" you. This is where I think it's valuable to understand how we read the rules.

Historical context is important, so let's talk historical context for a second. The first edition of Dungeons and Dragons was published in 1974, fifty years before the publication of the most recent rules base. It has gone through five "official" editions, though each edition (except the appropriately-maligned fourth) has had one or more major rules overhauls, often referred to as "advanced" or "half" editions (Such as our current rules, colloquially referred to as either the 2024 rules or 5.5e). This is because Dungeons and Dragons was a game with complex rules made for nerds by nerds. In each edition, since its inception, an enormous portion of game time and free time has been consumed by players bickering over pedantry, arguing about the difference between "a sword" and "the sword" in some rule or another. This wasn't helped by the fact that early editions of the games were, by all accounts, kuh-ray-zee convoluted and hard to understand. This means that one of the core focuses of each new rule set is making it more easily understood and adjudicated than the previous. The most recent edition has some gaps, but in general, it is carefully crafted to ensure that the rules always say exactly what they do and, more importantly, they only say what they do. The rules as written are written to ensure there is as little ambiguity as possible.

So, with that in mind, let's take a look at the Hide action. The very first line tells you exactly what you're doing when you take the Hide action: "With the Hide action, you try to conceal yourself." Conceal is the key word here, it means very simply "to keep someone or something from being seen." So, if we are using the dictionary definition of "conceal," we know that the intent of the action is to try to keep yourself from being seen. But we need to be careful, because DnD sometimes assigns different meanings to different words. We've all experienced the confusion of learning that "concentration" isn't the same as "Concentration," for instance, or that an "Attack action" is not the same as an "attack." In this case, though, the Hide action is its own illumination, as a successful Dexterity (Stealth) check made as part of the Hide action will give you the Invisible condition, which has a clear definition of Concealment: "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."

Okay. So we know that with the Hide action, if you make a successful Dexterity (Stealth) check, you won't be affected by an effect that requires you to be seen unless the effect's creator can see you through other means. This is helpful. But what is just as helpful is what is unsaid. The Hide action does not say is that it makes you imperceptible. This means that while you cannot be seen, you can still be perceived via sound, smell, touch, taste, or any extrasensory perception a creature might possess. What does this tell us? This tells us that the purpose of the Hide action is never to make us imperceptible to any sense except traditional sight. If you are trying to stay especially quiet during a tense moment, can you do that with a Hide action? No. Might your DM still require you make a Dexterity (Stealth) check to stay quiet? Yes. Might they require you spend an action to do so? They might, or they might not. However, even if your DM has asked you to spend an action to make a Dexterity (Stealth) check to remain quiet during a tense moment, that action is not a Hide action.

"But wait," you say. "What about that line that reads 'Make note of your [Dexterithy (Stealth)] check’s total, which is the DC for a creature to find you with a Wisdom (Perception) check'? Doesn't that mean that a Hide action is what we would use to confound any attempt to perceive us? Doesn't that mean that the only way to not be perceived is via a Hide action?"

No. This is another time where understanding the Hide action will make us better at understanding the rules in general. Remember that one of the ways you can "stop being hidden" is if "an enemy finds you." As being "found" is one of the ways you could stop being hidden, and as there are no other established rules on how you could be "found," the rule for the Hide action must establish how you could be "found." In this case, you can be "found" if an enemy meets or exceeds your Dexterity (Stealth) check with their own Wisdom (Perception) check. So we learn, when reading a rule, if there is no previously established precedent for how something can be done, the rule will always establish that precedent. If the precedent already exists, the rule will simply refer to that precedent. For instance, in the Haste spell, it reads "When the spell ends, the target is Incapacitated and has a Speed of 0 until the end of its next turn, as a wave of lethargy washes over it." The rules for what can cause the spell to end are already well-established, so it does not take the time explaining what could cause it, but the Incapacitated condition does not reduce your speed to 0, so the spell establishes that consequence in the text. It also bears mentioning that, when we look at the Hide action, it is clear that you can be found with a Wisdom (Perception) check, but it does not mention a Search action. This means that you can be found with a Wisdom (Perception) check, but that the Wisdom (Perception) check does not necessarily require a Search action.

Okay, so how do we become imperceptible to senses other than sight? Buckle up, folks: the rules don't say. There are no rules established for how you render yourself imperceptible to sound, smell, taste, touch, or any other extrasensory perception that may exist. There are some effects that may achieve these goals; a Silence spell will keep you quiet while you're in its radius, for example. And there are some extrasensory perceptions which outline their own limitations; Tremorsense, for example, does not work if you and your target are not touching the same surface and Divine Sense can only detect those creature types which it lists. But in general, there are no broad rules for checks or actions that can allow you to remain unheard, scentless, tasteless, intangible, or immune to extrasensory perception.

"Woe unto me!" You cry! "How will I ever adjudicate these additional senses without an action or a skill check to satisfy them?"

Fear not, friend, for we can actually look to the Hide action again for a clue. Most importantly, we can look to one of the other ways you might "stop hiding" after you have become hidden: "You make a sound louder than a whisper." There is no further explanation on how you as a player prevent your character from making a sound louder than a whisper. But there also doesn't need to be. How do you prevent your well-hidden character from shouting across the room to their teammates? How do you prevent them from throwing a bottle at the ground and creating a loud, smashing sound? How do you prevent them from belching loudly? You simply don't do it.

That's right, folks, there's room in this role-playing game for role-playing. If you are hidden and you want to remain silent, you simply remain silent. Will it always be that simple? Absolutely not, but those complications are the DM's purview. If you are hidden, and you see someone sneaking up on one of your friends, you might have to break your silence to shout a warning. If you're precariously balanced behind a crate full of potions, your DM might have you make a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to make sure you don't stumble and cause the crate to rattle. If you ate a half-gallon of beans before ducking behind the nearest wall, you might need to make a Constitution check to avoid ripping a particularly gnarly fart. But that's the point of the game. If you want to stay silent, and all other things are equal, your DM doesn't need to ask for a check: you are silent.

Apply this to the other senses. If you want to be unsmellable, take a long, hot bath with an unscented soap. If you're attempting to remain concealed from a creature with a particularly strong sense of smell, your DM might ask you to take extraordinary steps to prevent them from smelling you, but that's the game, baybee! If you want to be intangible... well... that's tricky, but not impossible in a world of high magic. If you want to be untasteable... I'm sorry you found yourself in a situation where this was necessary. And if you want to be imperceptible to some extrasensory perception, simply understand its limitations and work with that. You can't solve these problems by taking a Hide action, but there are lots of things you can do! Explore! Be creative! Role-play!

I want to add one more post-script, which is with regards to what qualifies as being "found" with regards to the Hide action. There is no other related ability which specifically uses the word "find" or "found" when it discusses detecting other creatures. So, for example, Tremorsense mentions that it can "pinpoint the location of creatures" that are touching the ground and Divine Sense says you "know the location" of certain creature types. This is another reason that studying the Hide action is so valuable, because it lets us examine these grey areas in the rules. As a general rule, if a rule intends to interact with another rule, it will mention it specifically. So, for instance, if Tremorsense intended to allow a creature to find a creature who has been made Invisible with the Hide action, it would say "this allows the creature to find hidden creatures," or at least either Tremorsense or the Hide action would jive linguistically (the Hide would say you stop hiding if "an enemy pinpoints your location" or Tremorsense would say you can "find creatures"). The absence of this connective tissue implies, at least to me, that Tremorsense doesn't allow you to foil a Hide action on its own, and I think that stands up logically: if you're playing a game of Hide and Seek, you don't "find" someone by knowing they're in the closet, you have to open the closet and expose them. However, the failure of other, much more obvious methods of "finding" a hidden character, such as with the Search action, to specifically use the term "find" (although the Search allow you to "detect... concealed creatures," which at least references the Invisible condition) means there's some space to apply an interpretive lens to the situation. Personally, again, I believe knowing the location of a hidden creature doesn't necessarily count as "finding" them, but that's anything but a closed topic.

There's also the question of the Hide action's purpose, and if the wording of the action serves that purpose. Largely, the Hide action serves as a tool for characters to gain an advantage in combat, by rendering them momentary Invisible. However, this Invisibility ends as soon as the character is "found," so the question arises: When is a character considered "found"? Are you "found" when you break cover to fire a crossbow at an enemy on the other side of a wall? Are you "found" when you leap from the bushes to stab someone in the back? If either of these things are true, how can you benefit from the Invisibility provided by the Hide action? Are you, then, not "found" if you climb out of the bushes and wander into a big, open field full of enemies, so long as none of those enemies' Wisdom (Perception) check to "find" you exceeds your Dexterity (Stealth) check? Truly, Hide is a wonderful teaching tool, because it teaches us how the DnD rules are created incredibly deliberately, but also how many gaps remain.

This got long. If anybody quotes this whole text to respond to me, I'm putting this here so everybody else knows what a silly person they are.

Quote from RWinnie >>

This means that one of the core focuses of each new rule set is making it more easily understood and adjudicated than the previous. The most recent edition has some gaps, but in general, it is carefully crafted to ensure that the rules always say exactly what they do and, more importantly, they only say what they do. The rules as written are written to ensure there is as little ambiguity as possible.

I think this is slightly off. I suspect they have plenty of market research saying that most players, especially the newer ones who blew up the game in the last dozen years or so, are very turned off by pedantry and rules lawyering. They want breezy and light writing, and they want a DM who makes rulings to keep things smooth.

Some of their editing is a little too precious with words, though, and they really should have cross-referenced the rules around hiding and invisibility and such better.