Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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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:
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:
For the sake of completionism, here are the full rules for what happens when you are Invisible:
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.
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.
I respectfully disagree. I've been a faithful player of DnD since second edition, and I've participated in online discourse from the beginning (I started getting into rules tussles on dial-up bulletin boards, shoutout KOTR). WotC learned their lesson about trying to make a quick-play, rules-lite version of DnD when they made fourth edition and it flopped. Fifth edition is actually a pretty brilliant rules document. It manages to keep the game approachable and allows you to run a game without too much introductory knowledge, but when you have a rules conflict, you can usually find a clear, definitive answer, so long as you know how to look for it.
Also, everybody is a rules lawyer, they just don't know it. I've run and played in countless games in my life, maybe triple-digits at this point. I've never met a player who, at some point in the game, didn't go "wait, no, that attack should have hit because-" or "but I cast goodberry, so-" or something like that. People will inevitably argue to try to get the game to swing in their favor. Having a robust, scrupulously curated rule set helps resolve those arguments without creating resentment, and I legitimately believe that players appreciate that, even if the current narrative is "ugh, games should be easier!"
I mean, you have two assumptions there in the beginning: That the rules are written to be as precise as possible to hedge against player/DM argument, and that they were actually successful in this.
I don't think either of these things is inherently true. 4e wasn't maligned because it was rules-lite. It was maligned because every class was built on the same chassis and it played more like a hyper-balanced MMORPG than an TTRPG. 5e (and especially 5.5e) has tried to give enough room for role-play while also having specific rules tied to keywords. In fact, if you look at the examples of play in the PHB, in only one instance does a player mention using part of their action economy explicitly (instead of just narrating what they are doing), and that's probably because it's a rogue using cunning action to change a normal Action into a Bonus Action. And there are a couple fairly easy examples of them failing at writing the rules as they intended... like the fact that by RAW you can't actually cast any cantrip at all.
I think an equally valid (and probably closer to intent) reading of the Hide rules is to intentionally leave "circumstances to hide" (or remain hidden or be found) vague so that it is DM adjudication by default.
The Hide action has been one of the most debated subject ever since 5.5E was published not just here on D&D Beyond but on other forums such as EnWorld among others.
Subject line is a fairly straightforward question: "what does hide do?"
Everything after that seems to be an argument with a worst case hypothetical dm/party combination who are making strange bad faith rulings
What does hide do?
In 2024, It gives you the invisible condition.
In earlier editions, you did a stealth check against the enemy perception or passive perception to see if you could hide. If succesdful, i dont know if "hidden" was an actual condition or not. But if you were hidden, you could attack with advantage and that qualified you for Sneak Attack damage.
In earlier editions, rogues did one attack per turn, so advantage on that attack was important cause they had one chance to hit. Healing was also a bit more rare than it is now, so most rogues used a bow to stay away from melee. And then next turn, you did it all over again.
2024 saw some rules cleanup, but also some things were updated that may have been consistent from a computer program point of view, but certainly feels a bit weird for game play if the party and dm are all humans.
The old "hidden" condition that you got from a successful stealth check was not an official condition anywhere that i know of. It was just how we always played it. Do an opposed stealth-vs-perception check. If you succeed at stealth, you are hidden and can attack with advantage.
I think 2024 was trying to be more consistent. If you succed at stealth, you have the "invisible" condition. And invisible is an official condition. Which honestly is a bit pedantic.
But if you are writing software for a virtual table top, the moment programmer hit the part about the rogue, sneak attack, stealth, and hidden, theyd be looking up "hidden" and finding no definition and no defined condition to appy to the player. Well, hidden was defined as thats the condition you got, but i dont think the rules ever define it anywhere as an actual conditon.
So when the vtt programmers pushed for a better spec, the rules makers looked and probably started by defining "hidden" as a new condition but then realized its basically the already existing "invisisble" condition.
And rather than create a new term nearly identical to another term and plant the seeds for millions of player/dm arguments about whay the difference between these two identical conditions are, they just called it "invisible".
Honestly, in 2024, it doesnt really matter to anyone but the rogues, and even rogues dont care about it that much. For one, rogues now can get the light/nicj/dual/2 wespon fighting combo and make like 3 dagger attacks in a turn. So if they miss the first, they got to more chances to hit and apply sneak dmg. And they still qualify for sneak if an ally is within 5 ft of your target, so advantage used to be important because you onlybhad one shot. But now you can have 3 shots and if one hits, you do sneak. Second of all, healing is everywhere, everyone can heal now. Healing is so common now that rogues dont care if they have low ac and low hit die, they just jump in and heal up after or even during since you can gulp a potion as a bonus action. Being hidden used to be the standard rogue strategy cause rogues were very brittle. But with all the ways to heal, no one worries about it.
Third, rogues are the only class who can hide as a bonus action. No player is going to waste their entire action to hide, when they could just attack 4 times and do massive damage. So only rogues really used it.
Finally, the only time other players consisderd doing "hide" was if they were sneaking up on the enemy and wanted to do a surprise round of combat. If the party was sufficiently stealthy, they could sneak up on the enemy and get an entire round of combat in before the enemy was allowed to engage.
Now, "surprise" has been nerfed to mean that you roll initiative at disadvantage. So you are likely to roll low initiative but you dont lose an entire turn, so hiding and stealthing are almost useless from a mechanical point of view for the non-rogues.
The only thing hide is used for by nonrogues is to sneak around, gather intel on a larger force. But a 3rd level warlock with an invisible imp familiar can already do recon for the party, automatically being invisible, and if its killed, one spell slot and its resummoned.
The only other benefit of hiding being invisible is that its clear you cant be targeted by spells or features that say "target a crrature you can see".
But i hardly see anyone use stealth checks to get the Hide condition in actual combat anymore. 2024 just nerfed it all, and buffed other things so its almost irrelevant.
Tldr: what does hide do?
Whatever it does, its not used in game much anymore...
What does hide do? It starts arguments on D&D forums.
I've come to the conclusion that, while you can have a reasonable (where 'reasonable' is defined as 'adjudicable with little work and not breaking verisimilitude') at-the-table interpretation of Hide without notably deviating from the written rules, it's not possible to also have a reasonable interpretation of magical invisibility at the same time.
What to do? The invisible gives a reasonable set of the mechanical advantages of not being seen, and all the adjudication can just be played by ear. Is it great? Not really, but it's what we've got.
And, of course, like many other things that have to be handled by at-the-table rulings, lots of people really want to argue that their rulings are RAW.
Also, I can't not comment on this.
I gotta disagree hard. 4e was a well-put-together set of rules, but wasn't rules-light in the slightest. It's the only version of D&D where there's some hope that there are formal answers to any given question on the rules. (Still won't answer all questions, because RPGs are too open-ended.)
5e still isn't light, but it's much looser, and relies on the DM to settle things a lot. (Pretty much any time you've got two abilities interacting, for instance.) It's written to be easy to read, and that does not lend itself to mechanical rigor. (Which doesn't stop people from trying.) And, given that there's a DM, that's a viable approach.
I've absolutely played with people for whom this is not true. But they tend to gravitate to other systems, because D&D, in all its incarnations, is too fiddly, and they tend not to like combat.
Games can be easier, but the things that make D&D D&D make for complexity, and you can't have both.
My answer is "more or less what it did in 5e, but slightly more."
The main use (and the place people want to argue the most about) is, inevitably, a rogue using it in a "hide -> attack from hidden" loop (or it's ever-popular variant, "attack from hidden -> hide") using cunning action, to get sneak attack more-or-less every round while avoiding getting attacked much. It's dependent on there being good cover around, preferrably a variety of good cover so you can change up your hiding location often. When a DM doesn't like it, they just give a fight with no reasonable cover, and you fall back to Steady Aim / Vex / whatever else.
I say it can do slightly more in 5.5 (5.24 :) because they got rid of the "so if you come out of hiding and approach a creature, it usually sees you" bit / made it synonymous with being "invisible." So you can do it with melee if your cover is close enough. Also you can use Nick to get a second attack without burning your bonus action. But you're still likely dealing with opportunity attacks, unless you're a swashbuckler or something...
Basically, it's fine and works fine, unless you or your DM hates rogues being sneaky in combat.
I respectively disagree, your view is biased by the fact you have been playing for so long when D&D was a niche hobby. 5e expanded the game to the masses by limiting technical language and letting DMs interpret the rules in the context of the situation and what is fun for their table. 5e has flourished specifically because there are 101 different ways to play it, and nobody has to read the rule books to start playing. Geez I know a dozen 5e DMs who have only even googled snippets from the DMG, and dozens of players who have looked at less than 20% of spells in the game.
From 2024 rules:
"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."
Used to be there was a feat that allowed you to remain hidden if you missed on an attack roll. Guess thats gone now.
Also, if an arrow gives your position away, then any spell that describes any sort of visible effect from you to the target (a beam of energy, a beam of lightning, a mote of fire, etc) should ALSO give your position away, even if you cast it with subtle.
That seems to be a gaping hole in the rules that greatly favors casters over melee builds
Yes...
It's part of Skulker.
Note: it's not an "arrow" that gives away position, it's any attack roll. That includes spell attacks. Furthermore, if you have the Invisible Condition from the spell, "The spell ends early immediately after the target makes an attack roll, deals damage, or casts a spell." So that's any spells, or any form of damage, even.
(I'm only replying here because you directly replied to me.)
" if you have the Invisible Condition from the spell,"
Sure, but the invisible condition from hiding doesnt turn off from damage. If you cast a subtle spell that uses a saving throw, youre still hidden. Even if it creates a beam of energy that goes directly from you to the target, youre still hidden.
Yeah, it's a cool trick for the right kind of sorcerer, with proficiency in stealth...
I think it's fine. It also worked in 2014.
The original question which started in a different thread came from the relationship between the Hide action and moving silently.
The PHB say regarding to the concept of Hiding
"sneaking past" implies moving without being perceived, in my reading of the text. The check you make to find a character is a perception check (Passive or Active), which implies all the senses, not just spotting trough sight.
If a rogue were to sneak past a blind person (without the Blidnsight feat), what action would the rogue have to take not to be heard? I say Hide, personally.
However, if it is decided Hide does nothing more then grant the invisible condition, then
I think I would say a custom Hide(move silently) action would be admissible. I also think it should require expending an action, not being a free action, or consuming half of your movement speed.
Also, if a rogue were to sneak past a blind enemy WITH the Blidnsight feat, if Hide only provides the Invisible condition, that means it is impossible to go undetected while in 10 feet of that enemy. Which is certainly a possibility as well.
Hold on. That's wrong. It doesn't make any sense. Take another look at the Hide action:
The Hide action IS making a Stealth check. If you take the Hide action, you do not need to take a a second, Stealth action to make no sound - you already did as part of the initial Hide Action.
"Hide" is not the only application of Stealth. "Moving quietly" isn't an action because it's something you might do with many different actions --- maybe you want to Dash quietly, or Climb quietly, or place a bunch of caltrops quietly... It's just a Dexterity (Stealth) check to beat the hightest relevant Passive Perception.
Hide definitely conceals you. In combat (especially doing a hide/attack loop), I'd never call for extra Stealth checks to move in and stab someone. That's just reasonable, to not stack multiple of the same skill check into a turn. But Hide doesn't make you perfectly silent in all things. Sometimes you're gonna want to sneak past someone with a high Passive Perception, and make a second Stealth check to be quiet enough (this is a matter of DM discretion). That's not a big deal. I'm pretty sure they've even published an adventure that calls for exactly that...first a Hide, then a DC-whatever Stealth check to sneak up some stairs...
I'm objecting to the interpretation put forward that if you take the Hide action, which - as part of the action - has you make a Stealth check, that you're still loud unless you immediately make a second Stealth check. That's stacking checks for the same thing, which increases the chance for failure.
Can you have a check for hiding in a room and a second check for sneaking up some stairs, yes, those can be considered different things. But should the DM require you make a stealth check to Hide, then, without you doing anything, require you to make a second stealth check to also be quiet? No.
But an archer can never do the same thing. If they take the skulker feat it says :"Sniper. If you make an attack roll while hidden and the roll misses, making the attack roll doesn’t reveal your location."
So you stay hidden if you miss with an arrow, but the caster can throw a fireball, which causes a beam of energy from caster to target, does damage, and the caster stays hidden?
Its just yet another example of where martials get shortchanged and casters get a free pass.