Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Actually in 5.5e it is reasonable to assume that Total Cover does, in fact, block the Darkness spell. Per the rules for Area of Effects: "If all straight lines extending from the point of origin to a location in the area of effect are blocked, that location isn’t included in the area of effect. To block a line, an obstruction must provide Total Cover."
The 5e version of Darkness included the line "spreads around corners," but this was removed from the 5.5e version of Darkness. The word "spreads" is not really enough to override the rule of how AoE's, well, spread.
Many spells had that terminology - "spreads around corners" - in 5e, and it was removed from them in 5.5e (just look at 5e Fireball vs 5.5e Fireball)
I believe this was done intentionally to improve the benefits of being in Cover, as Total Cover not blocking spell effects made trying to be behind it pretty lackluster and pointless in 5e.
This has also been argued to death all over these forums and elsewhere, so I'm reticent to get into it again.. but heck, why not.
The Hide action does do more than simply giving you the Invisible condition. In fact, they added a (fairly weak) errata to the Hide action which cannot be seen in the tooltip popup, but can be viewed in the glossary.
The Hide action does indeed make you Invisible (which I personally think is very stupid), but it also allows you to "try to conceal" yourself, to "become hidden," and - most importantly - make a Stealth check, which in turn allows you to "escape notice". In fact, the Hide action and the Stealth skill are the only places in the rules where terms that imply going unnoticed ("conceal yourself", "become hidden", "escape notice") exist, and the Hide action is the only way that a player can actively choose to make a Stealth check.
If simply gaining the Invisible condition were enough to make you hidden and allow you to escape notice, it would say so, but it does not. If the Invisibility spell was intended to do those things, it would say so, but it does not. Conditions do what they say they do, and no more; the Invisible condition doesn't allow you to conceal your presence and go unnoticed any more than the Poisoned condition does. It doesn't even allow you to make a Stealth check; you need to Hide for that.
This does not make the Invisibility spell pointless by any means, as you still gain the potent benefits of the Invisible condition through it. It can additionally allow you to go out into the open when you are under the effects of the Hide action, which would normally cause you to "stop being hidden."
As to your final question, simply put, the game plays differently in combat - in initiative - than it does outside of it.
Correction: the way darkness works is heavily disputed.
So your argument is that we should ignore the words they actually chose to describe how magical Darkness operates? If you're not following the words, you're not using RAW.
Yes, I put a lot of weight on the words they chose to describe the spell. Those words have obvious mechanical implications and are easily interpreted 'technically', even if not predefined. And I'm using exactly what the spell description says to understand how it differs from regular darkness. Regular darkness does not 'spread'. Light can illuminate it, and to the extent you can see through regular darkness, it is because light is illuminating it.
DND is not a computer RPG. We can use words to describe things which don't have predefined technical meaning and aren't required to have things function in a rigid code framework.
And no, something spreading has to be a something, because something has to be doing the spreading. Regular darkness is not a something. (And evocation spells create energy; Darkness is not an illusion spell. Spell school means something).
Expecting Darkness to explicitly specify objects and creatures is not overly specified. That would be proper technical language if and only if your reading is correct. That it does not say that is evidence against your interpretation. (And indeed, literally every word choice and description in the spell supports my reading. You have to literally rewrite the spell in its entirety to get your reading).
Truesight foils regular and magical Darkness because it says it does. It's magic. It doesn't require light to work. You can't conclude anything about Darkness from Truesight working.
And if you insist on only implementing words that have a defined 'technical' meaning, then you can see through a fog cloud, too. It just says the area is heavily obscured, which if you're going to read that to mean you can only not see things in its area like you want to for darkness, then you can see things on the other side of the fog cloud without issue. (And we're back to indescribable again). (Similarly, an area of heavy foliage only heavily obscures what's in it. You can see through the physical foliage just fine to see what's behind it, no matter how thick it is, if you're going to be that limiting in your reading).
Explain the thought experiment scenario 2 in #3. How do you even describe what is going on if your interpretation is correct?
Oh boy, here we go again... Yep! While not an actual condition, "hidden" is a game state (as per the definition of a state machine) that you gain after succeeding on a DC 15 Stealth Check as part of the Hide Action.
What this game state entails exactly is what's heavily debated because the designers never bothered to formalize it clearly and explicitly.
But what makes the most sense imo is that enemies simply can't perceive you in any way unless they have a special sense like Truesight or if you do one of the things that are explicitly stated in the Hide action (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).
Some people read "an enemy finds" so broadly that they completely ignore the hidden state and the invisible condition and the need for a Perception check and say that they find you if you're near them or somewhere within their line of sight.
A lot of people here won't admit it, but the main problem is balance: if you read Stealth rules honestly, it's too strong (especially for a Rogue), and if you read them conservatively, it's completely useless.
Whenever I want to play a Stealt-based character, I always make sure to dip in Ranger and start with or quickly grab a Nature's Mantle.
This item ensure that you can play Stealth effectively even if your DM has a very restrictive reading of Stealth rules.
"With the Hide action, you try to hide 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." SRD 5.2.1 p183.
As far as I can tell, that's the most recent systems document. Nothing about Hide giving anything but Invisible. I'm sorry, if they want to change the rules, they need to actually change the rules and publish a real errata. Edit: That apparently is the rules glossary, there is no definition of Hide elsewhere.
But you do not stop being Hidden when you go out into the open. That is not an ending condition for Hide's Invisibility. You have to be found, which is only defined as 'a successful perception check'. You could hide, walk up to the guard, and dance a jig in front of them, and they'd see nothing so long as they couldn't beat your stealth roll. Not only does hide nowhere require you to stay behind cover, it would be completely non-functional if it did. (The only place i can recall which requires a hiding creature to end behind cover is the Thief Rogue's supreme sneak, which lets you stay invisible after making an attack - something that would normally break the invisibility - and it only requires you to be behind cover to achieve that specific effect at the end of your turn, not continuously). Any language about being discovered when you were in plain sight have been stripped from the 2024 rules, and quite intentionally.
And no, initiative is only different from not initiative because it allows for precise sequencing of actions. Rounds still tick normally out of combat. That we leave initiative when we don't need it is a matter of convenience (because precise sequencing doesn't matter), not a difference in world physics. Are you literally advocating that a pea soup fog (magical or not) denies you the ability to precisely locate other creatures out of combat, but if you shoot an arrow or swing your sword into the fog, suddenly you know where everyone is? I don't feel like that's a position that needs to be taken seriously.
Your interpretations are fair, but not concrete. Nor are mine. And we simply can't go down this rabbit hole again; there's literally a 62 page long thread about this on this forum, and that's just one of many, on this forum alone, let alone the rest of the internet.
The crux of my personal opinion - and why I run stealth the way I do - is simply that allowing the Invisibility spell to automatically grant the full benefits of the Hide action and a successful Stealth check is - to me - so OP, and horrendously spits in the face of any non-magical character trying to be stealthy. Gloomstalkers become even more broken to the nth degree, the Warlock One With Shadows invocation becomes a "nothing can ever possibly detect me" get out of jail free card, etc.
If you're cool with that, then, power to you.
To go back to Fog Cloud, it means that yes, hiding while in a Fog Cloud is useful. You go from "I can't see you but I can hear you" to "I have no freaking idea where you are".
Well, no. The way it's written tells you how hard it is to find you with a perception check, but leaves open the possibility that it's possible to find you in some other way.
In any case, we should probably just point to some prior threads on this. Here's one I created two years ago, but someone probably has a more complete list.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/rules-game-mechanics/205413-summary-of-issues-with-2024-vision-stealth-etc
It's not the full benefits: the Hide action lets you cast spells without Verbal components and remain invisible. Invisibility (as the spell) breaks when you cast a spell, no matter what. You're saying a 2nd level spell 'You take the Hide action without needing cover or concealment' would be broken, really? Like, 2nd level spells have Pass Without Trace, which gives your entire party +10 to Hide checks and cannot be tracked - a much stronger effect.
That same Warlock, for example, could literally just take the Hide action, and not waste an Invocation slot. He's still spending an action to do it.
Your interpretation makes Invisibility as a spell basically pointless. It's blur with terrible ending conditions.
And I wouldn't treat it as 'nothing can possibly detect me'. Three things make sense:
1. Treat it like Stealth with a fixed DC, modified based on what the invisible character is doing or how noisy they are.
2. Set the perception DC to be the spellcaster's save DC.
3. Literally have the target roll Stealth with proficiency, but using the spellcaster's casting attribute modifier instead of (or... in addition to?) their dexterity.
#2, despite being the cleanest, is arguably the least representative of what's going on. None of these are terribly satisfying, because a stealthy character who is also invisible (as per the spell) should really get a bonus on their stealth check.
But all of these are houserules, because the rules as written are completely nonfunctional for hiding.
They certainly are (nonfunctional, that is). I'm reticent to continue this debate here, because I simply can't be responsible for hijacking another thread into another multi-page "how's stealth work" debate thread. I will post one last link to one I was involved in a while ago where I believe I made rebuttals (though again, by no means concrete ones) to some of the points you're making. Could be worth a read, at least, as I recall some interesting points being thrown around. I believe I at least expand upon my whole "in/out of initiative difference" point there:
Divine Sense vs the Invisibility spell
Edit: I would particularly recommend perusing this comment of mine, which is where I somewhat address my opinion of how handling this stuff out of combat differs from in.
And my response would be that the two 'modes' are matters of convenience, not differences of rules. If you cast invisibility on yourself and then "sneak" across the courtyard (whatever that actually means in the rules), you're still following all the mechanical steps. But because nothing is interrupting you, and we don't care about the precise sequence of events, we just let you do everything at once. You can always go into initiative when the precise sequence of events matters. (If you want to cast invisibility, and then sneak across the courtyard, but the barbarian player says 'i run into the middle of the courtyard and yell out a challenge to the Duke', well, now we need initiative, because we need to know precisely where you are when the Barbarian starts yelling, even if combat isn't going to start immediately, or won't necessarily start at all).
How senses work shouldn't change between initiative and non-initiative.
Of course, it's also not clear to me that 'sneak' (= move silently?) across the courtyard even requires an action. The only stealth action is the Hide action, which makes you invisible. If we're saying stealth can let you move quietly as a separate thing, I would let a character move quietly with a stealth check as part of movement, because nowhere says that's an action. (Just like doing a flip over a table is an acrobatics check as part of movement, not a separate action - this example has been edited to be clearer).
Taking the Hide action when you're invisible is (normally) mechanically redundant in the rules.
Hey, that's fair. I could make a lot of arguments against/around that based on concepts found in the Running the Game chapter of the DMG, but at the end of the day it's truly just a matter of taste, style, and, ultimately, semantics.
I treated this glibly to simply agree with the comment on the rules around stealth being poorly written, but truly, this is kind of addressing the problem I have with those expressing your side of this debate:
While I very much appreciate you actually putting some thought into how this could be balanced rather than treating Invisibility as a "Super Stealth Mode(TM)" like most people I've seen express similar opinions, the fact of the matter is that in order to at all balance how you want stealth to interact with someone gaining the Invisible condition outside of taking the Hide action, you need to bend over backwards with homebrew rules.
Does turning invisible realistically make it so someone couldn't detect your presence? I can make many arguments for how it realistically can and would, and I can also make many arguments for how it realistically couldn't and wouldn't, all of them situational. However, D&D is not a realistic simulation, it's a game, with rules that do what they say they do. The Invisibility spell and Invisible condition do not in any way shape or form say that they conceal your presence, whereas the Hide action and Stealth skill does, at least, infer it (albeit poorly).
By the by I am happy to keep debating this but if you reply I might then private message you instead.
First of all, if you actually look at your invisible hyperlink, it does say 'concealed' as one of the features of being invisible, so you can infer it just as much from invisibility as the Hide action.
Second, i don't think 'detecting presence' should ever be 'automatic'. (If you're sitting in the middle of a blank room when someone opens the door, the perception DC to 'find' you is silly low, like 2, so virtually everyone finds you with passive perception. Blindness should impose a penalty to perception - a blind character might not 'find' you.) So knowledge of presence should be technically mediated by perception at all levels of awareness.
The further away you are, the harder it should be to notice you, even if you aren't actively hiding. The quieter you are, the harder it should be to notice you, even if you're not trying to hide.
Now, running awareness in a game should adhere to some rules of thumb, but those rules of thumb should generally be based on reasonable assessments of awareness. And perception should be worse in a distracting situation like a combat.
And one of those general rules is that only species with bifocal hearing can pinpoint location by sound. Humans don't have that. (You need both ears to face or be capable of facing in the same direction). The only reason we can pinpoint location by sight is we have bifocal vision, so we can determine distance.
(I'm fine with generally detecting someone unseen within 5' of you to some extent, at least if they're vigorously moving about, but that's not purely sound.)
Stealth should just make it harder to detect you, not be the only way to be undetected. Undetected should be the default assumption until you are detected. (There should also be a level of detection between 'know your exact location' and 'no idea you're there')