As far as shooting breaking hiding it does if the monster has a line of sight to you. The whole point of a rogue getting to use bonus action to hide is to move, attack, move to a place with where they can’t see you, and then use the bonus action to hide.
It’s not up to discretion IMO, it’s the rule. You are not hidden until you take the hide action when a visibility condition grants you a chance to do so, like behind an object, heavily obscured, etc.
I think you group is confusing being out of line of sight with being hidden. If you duck behind a post, the enemy still knows where you are they just can’t see you. Hidden is a specific condition from taking the hide action.
Otherwise you waste a primary rogue ability.
Simple, state, if you are not active in combat and participate in the fighting, you do not get any experience points. In fact I would go as far as anyone who does not role play their PC properly and if you cannot play as a group (Party), your conduct will be graded as so and XP will be reduced.I am playing at a role-playing club, where we are currently running a long event which is basically a series of dungeon crawls with many players and multiple DMs. Only rule, players need to be back at base by the end of the session. Then the next session can be a different mix of players with a different DM. The format doesn't exactly inspire loyalty and team spirit, but lately I've been more and more running into extreme cases of self-preservation being players biggest concern. e.g. player A moves away from the monster and moves behind player B's character, hoping that the monster is attacking B rather than A; then B does basically the same thing, moving behind A, and player A starts shouting at player B. Today I was a player, playing a barbarian, we got into a fight, and at the end of the first round I found myself alone in the room with all the monsters, every other player in the group had moved out of the room and was hiding behind a corner or something.
Okay, not very nice, but as a player I can still live with that. However I'm going to be DM in that campaign too, and I was wondering how I should handle it as a DM. Should I have the monsters pursue the fleeing characters, as to the monster they sure look weaker than the tank guy in front? Should I have other monsters sneak up from behind? Should I rule differently than my fellow DMs on rogues attacking with advantage from hiding (the rule says it's DM's discretion whether shooting around a corner breaks hiding or not, and I'l inclined to break hiding if the monster knows somebody is behind that corner). How do you handle players that play their characters as extreme cowards rather than heroes? I mean, one player like that could be a fun running gag, but if they all do it, it gets kind of annoying fast.
I think I didn’t explain it well enough. The hiding part was completely within the rules: Player moves away, around a corner to break line of sight, the uses a bonus action to hide. The question is about what happens next round, when he pops his head around that same corner again and uses a ranged weapon to fire into combat. What the players think is that they were effectively hiding, and thus they get advantage on their attack roll, for attacking while hidden. And they believe they can repeat that every round.
My take is that yes, they are hidden while out of sight around the corner. But unless they have a way to fire through walls or around corners, they have to move into line of sight again to fire into combat. Even if they were well hidden before, moving into line of sight breaks the hidden status, and thus the attack has no advantage. Note that I might allow for advantage if the player is hidden around the corner before the monster arrives, and thus the monster doesn’t expect an attack from around the corner. But once the monster has seen the player moving out of sight, it will still be wary of him coming back, and thus not be unprepared for such an attack.
I think I didn’t explain it well enough. The hiding part was completely within the rules: Player moves away, around a corner to break line of sight, the uses a bonus action to hide. The question is about what happens next round, when he pops his head around that same corner again and uses a ranged weapon to fire into combat. What the players think is that they were effectively hiding, and thus they get advantage on their attack roll, for attacking while hidden. And they believe they can repeat that every round.
My take is that yes, they are hidden while out of sight around the corner. But unless they have a way to fire through walls or around corners, they have to move into line of sight again to fire into combat. Even if they were well hidden before, moving into line of sight breaks the hidden status, and thus the attack has no advantage. Note that I might allow for advantage if the player is hidden around the corner before the monster arrives, and thus the monster doesn’t expect an attack from around the corner. But once the monster has seen the player moving out of sight, it will still be wary of him coming back, and thus not be unprepared for such an attack.
I see it a little differently. Combat is fast-paced and chaotic. Combatants have a low-level sense of where their opponents are, but it's not like they have beholder eyes simultaneously tracking each enemy at all times. It's more of a gestalt awareness thing--as you dance sideways to dodge the fighter's sword coming at your head, you catch a glimpse of the monk circling behind you in your peripheral vision, and your brain puts "monk, behind me" on its mental map for the next few seconds.
If you don't see somebody for a little bit, however, your map goes stale. You can't keep staring at the place where they went out of sight, waiting for them to re-emerge; you're busy trying to not get killed by their friends! (Or you would be, if the friends weren't trying to hide behind each other.) When they pop out again, they get a momentary advantage. That's what the Hide action represents: You get behind cover and you wait a few seconds for the enemy to be distracted.
The rogue's special talent is to time this move when the enemy is already distracted. They have a knack for evading that gestalt awareness, which is why they don't have to burn an entire round hiding.