Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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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.
There are people in this very thread who have explicitly said that the moment you are out of appropriate cover/concealment, you are found. There's never any sneaking up behind someone. And that I vehemently disagree with, and do not think the rules support.
I am willing to concede that the rules aren't perfect, and that 'sneaking' straight down a brightly lit hallway towards a guard who has nowhere to face but where you are is a little silly. But allowing that is better than not allowing stealthy characters to ever leave cover while being hidden, which is nonsense. (And if you have to go that extreme to argue against my position, then I might suggest that's a non-argument, and covers very little or even no actual play, whereas the rogue leaving cover in a noisy distracting battlefield to shank a guy could happen multiple times per session.)
If you really want the 'impossible to sneak down' hallway, just give the guard a magic item that lets them see invisible.
And I disagree. "Hiding" is taking the Hide Action. Hidden is the consequence of having taken the Hide Action, and is different than 'Hiding'. (Hiding is the process of making your position unknown, Hidden is the condition of having your position be unknown. These are related but disjunct states).
And again, I'm far more concerned about situations which regularly occur at tables, not contrived situations solely introduced as a motte so as to push the bailey position that Hidden is impossible outside of cover.
I think passive perception is always on, and discovers Hidden characters (given sufficient passive perception) as soon as Hidden characters are in line of sight or earshot, as appropriate.
Creatures can also have blindsight, See Invisible, or Truesight (all of which ignore the invisible condition, RAW), or Tremorsense (which certainly lets them know where the hidden character is, although since it is not sight, I am unsure if the Hidden character is "found" from it, RAW). These things become increasingly common at high CR.
And RAW, once one enemy finds you, Hidden ends, so they all know where you are.
I don't think a wizard is terribly good at stealth unless they invest in it. Invisibility is a nearly useless spell, because it doesn't give you a stealth check, so everyone immediately knows where you are from sound (passive perception > non-existent stealth DC), even if they can't see you. The only thing Invisibility is actually good enough at to be worth a 2nd level spell slot is casting it on a grapple specialist. Nor does invisibility help you hide, RAW, because it does not put you in cover or make you heavily obscured, so it doesn't let you take the Hide Action when you otherwise couldn't, nor does it give you any bonus to your Hide Action stealth check, and it gives you the exact same Invisible condition that Hide does (with only the ending conditions being different). And the difference in ending conditions doesn't matter, because your Hidden stealth check has the same ending conditions with or without the spell, and the stealth DC is just as easy to beat with or without the spell. So Hidden ends in the exact same ways, and then they know where you are, even if they can't actually see you because of the spell.
And if you agree with the camp that as soon as you leave appropriate cover or obscurement, Hidden ends, then that applies even if you have the invisibility spell cast on you, because the spell neither provides cover nor heavily obscured.
Finally, I would point out that Rogues are in a really bad spot in terms of being able to actually contribute in play. Not letting them make use of stealth regularly and in aggressive ways makes the class almost worthless at the table. They deal bad damage. Their ability to deal with traps and locks is easily substituted. Stealth is the only thing that gives them a reason to exist, and if you heavily constrain it, then it might as well not exist. So no, i'm not going to say the wizard can stealth better than a rogue can (he can't), but the wizard does so much else, and all the rogue really has going for him is stealth. Stealth has to be good enough to make giving up wizard spellcasting feels like you got something for it. You say its without resources, but it's not: the resource spent was the entire class choice, and that's huge.
I have some catching up to do with this thread, but I'd like to begin this post with a way of explaining this mechanic that maybe people have not considered and which I hope will clear some things up for people:
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First, you are not hiding when you take the Hide action. That's not the thing that you are actually doing when you take the Hide action. Likewise, having made a successful Hide action does not mean that you are hidden.
Instead, with the Hide action, you try to conceal yourself. The activity of concealing yourself is not the same thing as hiding, strictly speaking, although the concepts are related.
Being hidden, on the other hand, is a game state whereby your location is unknown because you are currently unseen and unheard -- as described in the rules for Unseen Attackers and Targets.
The activity of trying to conceal yourself, as described in the Hide action, is -- to paraphrase -- "while unseen (behind cover, etc.), try to become and remain quiet enough to be unheard". A successful ability check means that you have successfully concealed yourself. Note that this doesn't say that you are trying to hide or that you have successfully hidden. Instead, you've successfully concealed yourself. Now, in that first initial moment when you concealed yourself, by definition, you are also hidden at that moment, because being hidden simply means that you are currently unseen and unheard. In addition, the Hide action states that a successful ability check will allow you to remain quiet on an ongoing basis. But a successful check does not cause you to remain unseen. Whether or not such a creature continues to remain unseen on an ongoing basis is up to that creature. The remaining quiet part is covered by the ability check. The remaining unseen part depends on whether or not you move and how and where you move as well as how enemy creatures might also move.
So, later on when the text says that you have the Invisible condition "while hidden", this is not talking about anything related to the previous paragraph. In this case, it is making a reference to what being hidden actually means -- the game state whose mechanics are defined elsewhere. It's quite literally saying that you have the Invisible condition "while unseen and unheard". The unheard part is automatic with the ongoing ability check success. The unseen part depends on the current (not initial, but current) situation. This is a condition of continuing to have the benefit of successfully concealing yourself. It's a conditional benefit. The condition which must be met is that you have such benefits while hidden. Not while concealed as per the Hide action. But while hidden, as per what the term hidden means in the rules.
Next, when the text provides the DC for a creature to be able to find you with a Perception check, it's never saying that that's the only way to find a creature. It's saying that IF a creature uses that method, then that's the DC. A creature can also be found via the Passive Perception mechanic, via simply seeing a creature whose location is obvious, via special senses, or perhaps via some other method.
Lastly, when the text declares that certain specific events cause a creature to "stop being hidden immediately", it's never saying that these are the only ways that a creature stops being hidden. Again, being hidden is defined elsewhere -- it's just being unseen and unheard. If you aren't those things then you simply aren't hidden. Again, none of that has to do with the Hide action which gives you a method of concealing yourself. It has to do with what being hidden means in the game. (Again, see Unseen Attackers and Targets for those details.)
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Ok, with that done, I'm going to respond to a few comments from earlier in the thread:
In the case of the hiding mechanics, this is backwards. The way it works is that you have the Invisible condition because you are unseen. It's not that you are unseen because you have the Invisible condition. In that second case, if the only reason that you might be unseen is because you have the Invisible condition -- then you just wouldn't have the Invisible condition in that situation because you only have it while hidden.
As for the fantasy regarding sneaking up behind people . . . I've mentioned this a couple of times already but it's important enough that I'll mention it again. The DM can always decide that a particular attack has advantage based on evaluating the situation in the current scenario. Just because the hiding mechanics do not allow for sneaking up behind people does not mean that it cannot be done at all. Just apply these other rules for those situations:
I think this is reading too much into text that does not actually say what you want it to say.
Another possibility is that this text was simply never cleaned up during rules development phases when there likely was going to be hiding rules more along the lines that you are claiming but then they were changed to what they are now for the official 2024 release. There is some other evidence of this in a few places. For example, there were a handful of monsters that had some special traits that they could Hide and also Dash and they were meant to be able to run across a large distance to attack you while hidden. All such monsters were completely rewritten prior to the official 2024 release. Some other folks in this discussion can likely remember which monsters those were and possibly even post the text of the old / test version of those monsters if people are curious.
For this, take a close look at the rules for Unseen Attackers and Targets.
As a 3rd level rogue/thief, you can take the Hide action as a Bonus Action. The DM will generally describe the scene. You can ask him to clarify if there are certain objects or barriers nearby which maybe don't show up on the map, depending on how you're playing. If you describe that you're intending to try to Hide behind one of these things, the DM determines when circumstances are appropriate for Hiding and will hopefully agree that it's possible to Hide there. According to the Hide action, it must be something that will provide you with three-quarters cover or full cover or a heavily obscured area, as determined by the DM. Then, you move to that location and take the Hide action and make your Stealth check.
To attack, just make sure that you are still behind three-quarters cover and make your attack. Since that attack is an attack from a hidden position where you are currently unseen (and unheard), you get advantage on that attack. However, as soon as your attack hits or misses, you've given away your position (presumably, you've made some noise when you made the attack). After that, in order to "go back and hide again", you would actually have to repeat the whole process -- while positioned in a location that the DM deems is appropriate for Hiding, you would have to take another Hide action (as a Bonus Action in your case) to become hidden again.
This just isn't correct.
Dice rolling is only used to determine results when the outcome is uncertain:
Here is the description of the Perception skill:
And here is how it is used within a Search action:
When you are located somewhere out in the open near enemies, your location is obvious. No ability check required. It's an auto-success. You are found because you are not hidden.
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Ok, that's enough for now. I hope some of that was helpful. I'm hoping to get caught up on the most recent discussion soon.
To me sneaking past enemies is typically not something you do in combat against foes aware of your presence but more during exploration when unaware of you.
The notion of stabbing people in the back to empower the Rogue already exist in Sneak Attack to strike subtly and exploit a foe’s distraction by definition.
And somehow, the rules don't actually say any of this. You're just imagining this into the very sparse text that actually exists.
No, you gain the Hidden (pseudo) condition immediately upon successfully making the Dexterity (Stealth) check, which gives you the Invisible condition. And it's the Invisible condition which makes you unseen. (That's what Concealed does in the Invisible condition). Nothing else in the text of the Hide Action makes you unseen.
And the fantasy is sneaking up behind people unnoticed. It doesn't have to be attacking them (although it could be). And being handed advantage is not the fantasy, that's just a consequence of the fantasy. The fantasy is to do it while you're still hidden from them. You are explicitly denying the fantasy when you say they stop being hidden.
Now, I fully agree the DM can apply disadvantage or advantage to checks, including the perception check to find you. (That's a +5 to passive perception for advantage).
You do realize they used the same phrasing in Spell Subterfuge, which was just published this past September, 2 years after the PHB came out. It is unbelievable this text is an accident, as we have it twice, not just once, two years apart. This text is clearly intentional.
And it is not reading too much into the text. If you have to be behind cover anyway, it would just say "You do not stop being Hidden when you _______". There'd be no purpose in requiring you to be in some state in the future if you already had to continuously be in that state at the moment you triggered it. At best that would be deliberately misleading.
This is evidence that cannot be ignored or explained away. It is inconceivable we'd have this text on your interpretation, yet we have it twice, in books with different lead designers. It is the only text in the game outside the Hide Action which directly talks about Hide's Invisible condition in a way that lets you examine how and when the character can benefit from it. And it does not require the character to currently be somewhere that would have allowed them to take the Hide Action in the first place - indeed, it assumes they are not in such a state, and permits them to move to such a place after the event that would normally end Hidden.
The existence of this text strictly rules out your interpretation of the Hide rules.
And the outcome is always uncertain, because they don't know where a Hidden character is, so there's no reason for them to be looking where the Hidden character is. 360 degree line of sight is a fiction. The reality is creatures have a much narrower field of vision than that. Where a creature is actually looking is uncertain, and perception vs. stealth resolves that uncertainty. (And even if you look towards something, it doesn't mean you see it. A 6-second combat round is a really short time period during which they are doing stuff as well as looking around, and if you're frantically looking around you are not looking very well, which is why the game requires a full action to carefully look and get a roll).
So no, just because someone leaves cover doesn't mean it is certain they will be seen. The stealth check includes the creature's skill in knowing when to move - they choose the moment when their target is distracted. They move into it's blind spot. They do so quietly, to avoid drawing attention towards them.
We've all seen that moment in the movie when the guard looks another direction and the main character chooses that moment to cross open ground, and remains undetected. Saying you can't do that in a D+D game is nonsense.
Like this is a successful stealth check, including crossing the bridge up until they attack the captain. They're in plain sight, but the captain isn't looking at them. https://youtu.be/JaTAjmSppvA?t=41 (They even kick the door open, but the Captain doesn't hear it because he has music on - it's not louder than a whisper from where the Captain is).
Nothing in the text of Invisible makes you unseen either. The rules text for concealed tells you what it does
That's all it does. Because it provides an explicit definition, any common language understanding of those words is not relevant.
In general the core problem with the rules for hiding is that they're incompetently written. It's not even clear what they're intended to do.
@Squirreloid
These posts are getting long and cropping quotes seems to always end in frustration, so I'll just reply.
All I'm saying is that the built in DM fiat way of reading the Hide rules (everything, not just the action) allows for both. It allows for situations where someone can be snuck up on as well as not "sneak" down that hallway. One DM ruling one way or the other has no bearing on how YOU would run YOUR game because hiding relies on the DM, just like it did in 2014. As that is one way to interpret the rules and allows for any of the rulings people have said they would prefer, it is the "best" way to interpret them. Does it get rid of the "mother may I?" that you feel was meant to be excised from the hide rules? No. Is that a problem with the rules? Not necessarily. There are several places where DM fiat still exists as the main way to resolve things. Perhaps they started writing the hide rules to try and get rid of it, but determined that it was too strict one way or the other if they did and left the "DM determines whether circumstances are appropriate for hiding" there as a safety valve.
And always-on stealth is way more consequential to the rogue class than you seem to imply. Getting Sneak attack is already easy enough. Your interpretation allows for sneak attack in almost any situation (provided they hid out of sight in a dark alley at some point before attacking... even if it was days ago) without any external help.
I also wanted to point out that the Assassin subclass has a built-in way of, at least in terms of mechanical consequences, sneaking up on someone and stabbing them in the back during the first round. To give that ability to all rogues at (nearly) all times with a simple (as in always successful) Hide action is giving the subclass less reason to exist. In fact, I think in my homebrew rewrite of the hide and stealth rules (that explicitly allows for stealth-into-melee as long as it's done within a turn), I may make that just a feature of said subclass.
In short, your interpretation allows for some fairly nonsensical things. The other interpretation may have some DMs step on the supposed fantasy of some rogues that want to always be able to sneak up on someone, but it also still allows for other DMs to allow it. I see that as the superior interpretation.
My interpretation is still the only interpretation that makes sense of the text of Supreme Sneak (Thief 9, PHB) and Spell Subterfuge (Feat, AU). That's gives us both confirmation of my understanding of RAW, and that RAW is also RAI (because the developers intentionally kept the same phrasing for two rules published 2 years apart).
As far as I can tell, your argument just boils down to 'strict RAW leads to some ridiculous results in highly contrived scenarios'. Well, that doesn't stop it from being strict RAW. And 'the rules are not a physics simulator' is probably enough of an out for the super-contrived scenarios that are actually nonsensical.
(2024 Assassin is just bad, i see no reason to try to salvage that subclass by reinterpreting the rules in a way that harms a subclass people might actually play, the Thief.)
And the rogue needs sneak attack in every situation. If they aren't getting sneak attack, they basically don't have a class.
I disagree. They give you a definition, and you have to understand the language used in that definition. And part of that definition is "can somehow see you", which means they can't normally see you. They need something which explicitly lets them "see" invisible creatures. So the understanding of the words used in the definition is incredibly relevant, and those words are largely not terms of art, but colloquial English, so you need to use common language understanding. Your assertion to the contrary doesn't even begin to make sense.
I'll certainly agree the Hide Action could be better written. But it's pretty clear what they intended to do. Supreme Sneak and Spell Subterfuge confirm my understanding of how they work, and make sense under no other understanding.
Edit: For my interpretation to be wrong, the text of the Hide Action would need to include: "you enter a space which is not heavily obscured or provides 3/4 or better cover." as a way Hidden ends. It does not say that. Rules do only what they say they do. Hidden gives 4 explicit conditions that end it, and no others. 'Find you' is defined in only one way in the text (and, as errataed by Sage Advice, a second way, where the enemies have sight that ignores Invisible). The rules give no other ways to find you, and no other ways for Hidden to end.