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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DM decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding and it can definitely be used to avoid combat, or sneak past enemies if as DM i determine they're too distracted to see or hear you as i explained in Post #27 it's very circumstantial.
In fact Stealth is most often used this way by my party either to avoid combat or ambush enemies before it. In combat it's much more rare we see anyone Hiding unless it's a Rogue like i said.
You can gerenally attack while behind cover with Advantage, giving away your location when the attack hits or misses. But moving up to an enemy in combat to melee attack it is unlikely as there's no Facing rules but Line of Sight used to determine this, neither do i think walking in plain sight of enemies are circumstances appropriate for hiding but that's just me and other DM are free to adjudicate the rules as they see fit.
There's also
3: Once you hide, the circumstances under which you can be automatically found have to be judged by the DM.
It's at least as valid a reading as the two you present, and it's the only one that works in practice.
No, that's a house rule with no textual justification. It's the way it worked in 2014, and it's the way most people will actually run it, but it's not actually RAW.
It's all dependent on what "finds you" means, and that is undefined. Any reasonable reading of that is as valid as any other. There is no RAW definition.
There is a raw definition. It's right there in the 2nd paragraph of the Hide Action. "Make note of your check's total, which is the DC for a creature to find you with a Wisdom (Perception) check." There is no other defined (in the text) method to find you, which means there is no other method in the text to find you. Rules only do what they say they do.
(Sage Advice adds another way, which is effectively errata).
It's not murky. Some people just don't like it. That's not the same as the text being unclear.
This is a general problem with the alternate interpretation: it doesn't allow the dice to control the narrative. If the creature can't make the perception check, they simply fail to look at you. The DM doesn't get to go 'but they're looking at you'. The dice already decided they weren't. Just like the DM isn't entitled to say 'you miss' when you roll a hit on an attack roll - the dice decided that outcome. This is exactly why we roll dice, so we don't have disputes about what happens, because the dice control that. This is also literally the only way to handle questions of facing when the rules don't explicitly have facing, because most creatures don't actually have eyes in the back of their heads (and even when they do, they might not be looking right at you).
I mean, similarly, if someone is spider-climbing across a 20' ceiling, while nothing is blocking line of sight to him, people don't look up as a general rule. He might as well be behind total cover, because as long as he doesn't make an obvious sound or have something fall out of his pocket, they're never even going to think to look there. (The number of Spider-Man comics where Spider-Man hides by just jumping up and sticking to the ceiling is... large. And heck, they use that in the first Sony Spider-Man movie, at least.)
There's plenty of space for, in addition to Perception / the Search action, a DM to make rulings on "finding." Like if you tap someone on the shoulder (for some reason), or sit in their lap (the standing example for reductio ad absurdum), or walk through a spotlight in the prison yard...and just about any other example of DM fiat that could never fit into an explicit mechanic.
"Find" isn't a glossary entry. Per the DMG, "Rules Rely on Good-Faith Interpretation", which means DM rulings are also explicitly RAW. There's not some gaping hole here. It's "advice" all the way down.
Sure, and all those are house rules. There's no space in the rules for other methods, because there's no text for other methods. The rules only include what they include. Some of those house rules are more reasonable than others, but...
Walking through a spotlight seems ruled out as an unintentional move, because their stealth check is good enough to mean they walk around it or it was elsewhere when they covered that ground. However, if they intentionally and knowingly walk into the spotlight, then I would take it as they're no longer even trying to hide. You don't need a ruling on what 'find you' means for that, because they have chosen to not be hidden. Similarly, sitting in someone's lap sounds a lot like choosing to not be hidden, rather than being found. Just like if I sneak up on you and tap you on the shoulder, I am intentionally choosing to stop sneaking. You have not found me, I have revealed myself.
And "find you" is literally defined right there in the Hide Action. No, it's not a glossary term, but its defined within one paragraph of where it comes up as something which ends Hidden. It doesn't need to separately be in the glossary when it is right in the Hide Action text that's in the glossary, and that is literally the only rules that use it. "Hidden" is also not a glossary term, but no one would contest it is a game term (i hope).
When the dice are in play, the dice control the narrative, not the DM. This is a cooperative game, and the players have all implicitly agreed to let the dice decide the fate of the story. That applies just as much to the DM as to the players. I'd guess you'd all cry bloody murder about a DM who decided that hits actually miss, and that they were playing the game wrong. Same principle applies here. Whatever needs to be true narratively for the player to be unfound, is true. The dice have decided it. If the player's desires make any such narrative impossible, then they have chosen to stop hiding, they are not found, they reveal themselves. (As a DM, I would probably ask a player doing such a thing: "How do you do this while trying to stay hidden?" If they have a clever enough response, I might allow it. And indeed, asking players to describe how a scene plays out when they're the active party, including what the other creatures are doing, is a good way of cooperatively telling the story).
No it doesn't. The invisible condition makes it impossible to see you. The only requirement for line of sight is that there is no effect that blocks vision between the observer and the target, it does not require the target itself to be visible.
I disagree. I would say being 'seen' and having 'line of sight' are equivalent things. If those aren't equivalent, you can still draw line of sight to things while you are blinded. Similarly, if I cast the Fear spell, and my buddy casts Invisibility on me, and assuming the targets are unable to leave the room, are you saying they don't get Wis saves to end the effect every turn, because I'm in line of sight even though they can't see me?
And indeed, the rules never actually define 'line of sight' as a term. It's used as a shorthand for 'can see something', nothing more, and inconsistently at that. So if you can't see something, you can't draw line of sight to it.
So, what are you basing your claim on?
Yes, you can draw line of sight while blinded. You can draw line of sight between two objects that don't even have senses.
Dictionary definition of line of sight.
According to what?
According to the DMG. To determine whether there is line of sight between two spaces. Spaces do not have senses, nor are they visible.
Sage Advice disagrees with that: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/sae/sage-advice-compendium#SAC-Adventuring9 And they're actually pretty explicit here: "No. If you can’t see something, it’s not within your line of sight."
And the Hide Action conflates seeing and line of sight right in the first paragraph, and treats them as identical.
I can only conclude the DMG is wrong if it says otherwise. No one seems to have told the other writers that.
(Also, for some reason that part of the DMG does not appear to be in the SRD, strangely enough, which is where I searched earlier. "Line of sight" only occurs in 6 places: 3 spells, the Frightened condition, the Hide Action, and a monster stat block. Weird omission for what feels like a basic definitional rule.)
(And none of those statements talk about line of sight between spaces. They universally talk about line of sight to a creature.)
Okay, so they're redefining line of sight as "visible" (the DMG is using it correctly, Sage Advice is using it incorrectly). Standard English is that Line of sight means either
And then line of sight can be described as either obstructed (something that blocks vision is on that line) or unobstructed (nothing that blocks vision is on that line); if not specified, it means unobstructed line of sight.
So you think a fear spell still denies the target a save if you're invisible but there's no obstruction between you?
And how do you explain the Hide Action using Line of Sight and "whether it can see you" to mean the same thing?
An enemy finds you if the DM say so. Perhaps you made a noise louder than a whisper and it heard you walking up to it. Or if you prefer, the enemy's Passive Perception beat your Stealth DC with some circumstantial bonus to the check. It may not even rely on a Wisdom (Perception) check because it determine it's not easy to miss you walking within sight uncovered since afterall the DMG also state "If the task is trivial or impossible, don't bother with a D20 Test." This is all rules a DM can use.
Just as much as a DM can say "sure the enemy is too distracted to see you move towards it, go ahead and make your attack roll with Advantage."
Would you accept this logic with an attack roll?
Yes.
"You can't not hit that" and "You can't hit that" are both 100% legit if the circumstances are appropriate.
This:
is not the paradigm D&D works under.
OK, I suppose it's technically true, but the players (in D&D, specifically the DM), are the ones who decide whether or not the dice are in play in the first place. Once you decide that the dice shall determine, then they determine. But the dice are never mandatory.
There are games where the narrative is ultimately controlled by the mechanics and not the players, but they (usually, perhaps always) operate at a different narrative level.