Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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So you can hear people with it, except for when you arbitrarily can’t?
You can always choose to end Hidden by making a noise louder than a whisper. So choosing to stop being Hidden is definitely a RAW thing. (By extension of the 'you can choose to end a spell effect' rule and 'you can voluntarily fail a save', I would also say you can generally choose to stop doing something, like hiding whenever you like, but that's not strict RAW. It is, however, perfectly in keeping with maximizing player agency. But intentionally triggering an explicit end condition is strict RAW).
DM Discretion/
It says the DM decides when circumstances are appropriate to take the Hide Action, not when circumstances are appropriate to remain Hidden. So once Hidden, no discretion is (directly) given.
And then the Hide Action rules itself gives two objective criteria and one criteria with discretion: 3/4 cover and out of line of sight is a discretionary call. The grant of discretion and the Hide Action rules need to be read together, and the Hide Action still preserves some discretion, but strictly limits it to 3/4 cover. If you have total cover or heavy concealment, there's no discretion given.
So I would interpret the discretion to be (Strict RAW) limited to 3/4 cover cases, or (looser) allow the DM to be more permissive than the Hide Action when they feel its appropriate, ie, allowing hiding without any of the listed conditions if they feel it makes sense. (For example, as I understand it, a crowd of people never provides more than 1/2 cover, no matter how many people are in the crowd. This doesn't make much sense, and a DM may well use discretion to say "yes, you can use the crowd of people to hide").
And this is reinforced by the change from the 2014 to the 2024 Hide Action rules. The entire purpose was to reduce DM discretion and make it more mechanical and more capable of being used in combat, and there are designers on record saying so (in their own personal capacities).
For the purposes of a RAW discussion, when discretion is directly implicated, the only possible answer is 'ask your DM'. But where explicit objective mechanics are given, the RAW answer is precisely what the rules say, with no assumptions about what a hypothetical DM thinks.
And I'll happily note that Acrobatics says it lets you "stay on your feet in a tricky situation", but I have yet to be allowed to roll Acrobatics instead of a dexterity save to avoid slipping. The brief skill descriptions are nearly worthless for understanding what skills actually do.
No it doesn't say that, it say The Dungeon Master decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding.
I wouldn’t go that far, but they’re clearly neither exhaustive nor always applicable as opposed to another mechanic.
Huh? You can hear them when your Passive Perception exceeds their move silently Stealth check. That's a classic D&D mechanic, and totally supported by the 2024 verbiage. Iirc, there's even a published 2024 adventure that calls for exactly that to sneak down some stairs while hidden(!).
I'm a big believer in "not too many rolls per situation/turn" so "just use their Hide check value as their move silently value" makes sense to me, at least when they're Hiding every turn. So Passive Perception gets to "defeat" Hide when the rogue is moving near a target. But not when they just pop out from cover to snipe! Wanna find the sniper? Gotta go Search for the sniper!
I freely admit that the above is some creative ruling (or extreme attention to detail) on my part --- or my DM's part, depending on context --- but no-one arguing "RPGs are not board games" should have a problem with that.
So, if said (non-caster) player were in the area of the silence spell, then you agree they could NOT (by RAW) become unhidden without attacking someone. Well, at least you're consistent.
I think the biggest problem with your argumentation (not necessarily your argument) is that you assume the same DMs that are saying "no" to "I hide at the end of this 120' well-lit hallway with one entrance that has two guards in front of it, so I'm allowed to just walk up and through the door" would also say "no" to "I hid in the alley and then move out into a huge crowd to sneak up on my target and shank them."
The text linked by Plaguescarred indicates the DM has discretion "for hiding", not for "taking the Hide action". There is a difference, and it's important. Around a corner at the far end of that 120' hallway above, the circumstances for hiding might be appropriate. But those are not the same circumstances for walking down said hallway in broad torchlight. Therefore, they cannot use the same check to both conceal their position at the end of the hall and also walk up to the door and through it. At best, it would take another check (with a modified DC and disadvantage in all likelihood), but most likely a DM would deem the circumstances impossible for hiding in the latter which means the player is automatically "found".
There's also the point you've glossed over which is that any and all rogues will automatically succeed on this check by the time they get reliable talent. Ruling that the invisibility granted by the Hide action is "always on" until someone searches for you is giving something that would cost any other class (a significant chunk of) resources (at lower levels). Saying that a wizard can do this and do it even easier because they can be out of cover to do so (therefore, it's fine) is disingenuous. It costs the wizard (or whoever) a level 2 spell slot each time they do it.
Incorrect. Please read the rules of Hiding since they do NOT correspond to your statements above which I can only assume are how you wish they worked.
I've cited this before but I will do so again.
Hide 2024: "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."
Being Hidden ENDS if an enemy finds you. Your statement appears to be that the only DC applicable to this is the stealth roll made by the player and that NO circumstances of any sort can affect this DC - including apparently standing immediately in front of the guard and waving at them. The character remains hidden if the guard can not succeed at the perception check specified in the stealth rules no matter what the circumstances.
However, the role of the DM is to assess and adjudicate the effect of every circumstance on the outcome of player actions. The DM may well decide that the original stealth roll made when the character had 3/4 or more cover and was not being observed is inappropriate if the character is standing in the open in daylight in front of a hostile creature. In this case, the DM may assign any appropriate DC they see fit for the perception check, including automatic success - which allows the enemy to find the character - and thus ends the Hidden condition.
The rules even explicitly prevent such arguments from players by stating: "The rules provide DCs for certain checks, but the DM ultimately sets them."
Please keep in mind that this is entirely RAW. Your opinion on the application of stealth in a game is actually not RAW since it tries to over ride the rule that explicitly states the DC is up to the DM.
I think you should also stop insisting that YOUR house rule, that noticing a hidden creature is always determined by the DC mentioned in the rule on hiding when the rules explicitly state otherwise, is also the only way to play. You can certainly choose to play that way, but it is a house rule or perhaps more accurately an interpretation of RAW that some folks agree with and others do not.
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Finally, there are many different views of the DMs role within the game.
1) For some, the DM creates the world, the NPC, the lore, the plot lines, the events that are happening in the game world and then the players role play the interactions of their characters with the game world, npcs and other characters subject to the DM adjudicating their actions consistent with the game rules and the world narratives.
This is a DM driven story line where character backstory is factored in by the DM into the world building. The players never ask permission to do things - they state what their character would do and the DM adjudicates success or failure often (though not always) based on a die roll.
Honestly, this is the traditional view of a DM that is common in most of the games I have played.
2) For others, the DM may just be the lead architect. The DM perhaps engages the players in naming locations or npcs. Perhaps adventures are created in collaboration with the players who are involved directly in both world building and story creation which becomes a joint responsibility. I suspect the DM is still more responsible for encounter creation but I've only played this style of game once and found that for me it tended to break the 4th wall. In this type of game, the player might end up deciding whether or not they would remain hidden - which is much easier to decide if you have a fixed DC unaffected by circumstances. It doesn't make sense to me as a DM but if everyone is creating a collaborative story then it could make sense to create a circumstance where the the rogue rolls a 25 on their stealth check and then subsequently just narrates slipping past the guards since it is unlikely that any of these guards have a passive perception high enough to even notice this rogue passing in front of them just a few feet away.
Games like this tend to run a bit more on "rule of cool" than RAW since the interest is more a shared interesting narrative for the characters than a more "realistic" resolution of character actions within a game world.
However, play style and preference for a specific type of game don't change the rules as written which is what we are discussing here. It is completely RAW for a DM to set the DC to notice a "Hidden" character since they do not have any effect that is making them impossible to see ... they are using their skills to make themselves difficult to notice (effectively invisible until someone notices them) and circumstances can modify the assigned DC at the DMs discretion.