My presumption is that creatures are undetected until positively detected, which is mediated by perception (both passive and search actions).
Creatures are automatically detected when they take a wide variety of combat actions, including attacking, and once detected, remain detected unless they do something to change that fact. There is no listed combat action that can change your status from "heard" to "unheard".
A character who has never been detected at all cannot be attacked, except by accident.
My presumption is that creatures are undetected until positively detected, which is mediated by perception (both passive and search actions).
Creatures are automatically detected when they take a wide variety of combat actions, including attacking, and once detected, remain detected unless they do something to change that fact. There is no listed combat action that can change your status from "heard" to "unheard".
I mean, I agree, there's nothing that can change your status from 'heard' to 'unheard'. But that's because there is no status 'heard' in the rules. We're into houserules once we start dealing with hearing at all (except for deafness preventing you from hearing at all).
The word 'heard' occurs 5x in the SRD, two of which aren't about perceiving with hearing at all. One is about whether you've heard of something. The other is about the raven being able to mimic any sound it has heard. The three remaining occurrences are in item descriptions, two of which only tell you how far you can hear them (bell, signal whistle). Berserker Axe asks whether a creature can be seen or heard by you.
"Hear" occurs more often, such as bardic inspiration (which can be used on a creature within 60' who can see or hear you, suggesting hearing is not guaranteed at 60'). Most of the uses are in spell descriptions (which do not have mechanics for determining what is heard, but do say things like 'you can see through its eyes and hear through its ears as if you were in its space'... whatever that actually means). There are a bunch of things which ask you to evaluate what can be heard or if something can hear something else, but there's no rules for actually determining that.
In short, the rules never cover hearing besides telling you deafness means you can't hear anything.
A character who has never been detected at all cannot be attacked, except by accident.
The rules actually say you can attack a square. That's not an accident if you 'find' an undetected creature by hitting it that way. It would be insanely lucky. I mean, the DM shouldn't be doing such a thing, since he is omniscient in the context of the game, but a player might. Although I'd be super impressed if one did.
Creatures are automatically detected when they take a wide variety of combat actions, including attacking, and once detected, remain detected unless they do something to change that fact. There is no listed combat action that can change your status from "heard" to "unheard".
A character who has never been detected at all cannot be attacked, except by accident.
I mean, I agree, there's nothing that can change your status from 'heard' to 'unheard'. But that's because there is no status 'heard' in the rules. We're into houserules once we start dealing with hearing at all (except for deafness preventing you from hearing at all).
The word 'heard' occurs 5x in the SRD, two of which aren't about perceiving with hearing at all. One is about whether you've heard of something. The other is about the raven being able to mimic any sound it has heard. The three remaining occurrences are in item descriptions, two of which only tell you how far you can hear them (bell, signal whistle). Berserker Axe asks whether a creature can be seen or heard by you.
"Hear" occurs more often, such as bardic inspiration (which can be used on a creature within 60' who can see or hear you, suggesting hearing is not guaranteed at 60'). Most of the uses are in spell descriptions (which do not have mechanics for determining what is heard, but do say things like 'you can see through its eyes and hear through its ears as if you were in its space'... whatever that actually means). There are a bunch of things which ask you to evaluate what can be heard or if something can hear something else, but there's no rules for actually determining that.
In short, the rules never cover hearing besides telling you deafness means you can't hear anything.
The rules actually say you can attack a square. That's not an accident if you 'find' an undetected creature by hitting it that way. It would be insanely lucky. I mean, the DM shouldn't be doing such a thing, since he is omniscient in the context of the game, but a player might. Although I'd be super impressed if one did.