D&D 5E Difference between being hidden and being unseen

[SkidAce]

Hidden is position....elegant.

 

[Oofta]

I like to think of it this way. Something can be unseen but giving away it's exact position, hidden means you may or may not know something is out there but not exactly where.

So for example, if I'm blinded I may still be able to hear you walking around on a hard floor, you may be making other noise or maybe I'm just bumping into you. An unseen creature could also just be out of your visual range, so if your human PC is in a dark room with only a candle there could easily be creatures attacking from the darkness that you can't see. If you can't hear or otherwise detect them they'll be hidden.

Hidden means you aren't clearly seen and your enemy doesn't know where you are, if they even know you're out there at all.

There are all sorts of ways to implement and run this in-game, it's designed to be flexible and open to ruling. Some people would say that unless you take the hide action you can never be hidden for example, which I disagree with. In my games the enemy has to have some way of detecting the unseen person or they are hidden. Distance, ambient noise and other environmental factors come into play. I also don't allow someone to be hidden if their position is obvious (you can't become hidden behind the sole tree on an open plane).

I don't want to get into the whole hiding thing, my best advice is to discuss hidden vs unseen with your DM. If you are the DM, try to be consistent on your rulings and do what makes sense to you.

 

[Hriston]

What’s the difference between being hidden (e.g.succeeding on a hide check) and not being seen (which grants advantage on attacks)? I notice they changed the wording of the Alert feat recently from hidden to unseen. What is the difference between the two?

I think that's a good change considering it's being unseen that grants advantage on attacks, and that the feat would otherwise offer no benefit against an unseen but unhidden attacker, making it better to be attacked by someone who was hidden rather than someone who wasn't.

The difference, of course, is that when you are hidden, no one who loses a contest of their Wisdom (Perception) against your Dexterity (Stealth) knows where you are. To be unseen, on the other hand, you merely need to be in a heavily obscured area or behind an obstruction of some kind, or have a spell like invisibility cast on you.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

When something is hidden, you have no way of knowing whether it's there or not. For all you can tell, it may have teleported away. It is necessarily also unseen, because if you could see it, then it would no longer be hidden.

When something is unseen (but not hidden), everyone still knows exactly where it is, because invisible creatures are constantly emitting a high-pitched ping to everyone around them (unless they spend an action to suppress it, at which point you have an opposed check of Stealth v Perception).

 

[Sword of Spirit]

The DM’s Screen includes a few rules that ought to have been in the DMG. One of those gives distances for seeing, hearing, and encountering people based on factors such as terrain, and whether they are trying to be quiet or not.

Basically the distance you have to be away from someone before they can’t hear you is based on which of the following three states you are in: acting normally; being very loud; or trying to be quiet.

The strongest interpretation to me is that if you are unseen and outside that area you are automatically hidden, because you cannot be seen or heard, while inside that are you need to get yourself unseen and make a Hide check. This probably still means you need to take an action to Hide if you want to move closer and stay hidden, but it does make it a bit easier to get yourself hidden if you can somehow prevent pursuit.

In case anyone is wondering, the distance for “trying to be quiet” is 2d6 x 5 feet.

 

[Oofta]

When something is hidden, you have no way of knowing whether it's there or not. For all you can tell, it may have teleported away. It is necessarily also unseen, because if you could see it, then it would no longer be hidden.

When something is unseen (but not hidden), everyone still knows exactly where it is, because invisible creatures are constantly emitting a high-pitched ping to everyone around them (unless they spend an action to suppress it, at which point you have an opposed check of Stealth v Perception).

I was playing beat saber on my vive over the weekend (e.g. distracted and blind to the outside world). I never really had a hard time knowing when someone else walked across the room since we have a hard floor or roughly where they were. I even knew when the cat followed my wife in because it rubbed up against my leg. I will agree I had no clue about the cat until it rubbed me, but then again cats are naturally stealthy.

No "pinging" was necessary, just shoes and a hard floor. Had I had my noise cancelling headphone on I probably would have been clueless.