D&D 5E Invisible, hidden and within 5 feet of an enemy making a ranged attack

[Hriston]

Right. I don't want to attribute to you anything that you haven't said, and I think your position has strong RAW support.

I disagree with your premise that the designers' only possible reason for not explicitly addressing the interaction between hiding and adjacent foes vs shooting is incompetence.

Weird. In my post you just quoted, I say one of my premises is that the designers are competent. You then say you don’t want to attribute to me things I didn’t say but then go on to say my premise is the opposite, that they are incompetent, because obviously the rule doesn’t address this interaction. That isn’t the only possible reason for not addressing the interaction. It would have been trivial for them to carve out an exception for hidden creatures the way they did for creatures that are not within five feet, creatures that are not hostile, creatures that can’t see you, and incapacitated creatures had it been desirable to do so. All it would require is to insert a qualifier that says “who isn’t hidden”. The elegance of exception based rule design is that it doesn’t require things that aren’t exceptions to be addressed, so if it isn’t addressed, it can be assumed it’s not an exception.

The designers have explained on multiple occasions and in multiple venues that the design philosophy of 5E is deliberately looser than in the two prior editions, employing natural language and leaning on the DM's interpretative ability to judge corner cases and resolve odd situations and conflicts. This is a deliberate departure from 3E and 4E in terms of detail and precision. They believe this makes the game more accessible and helps keep the text more succinct. I think they're right.

This seems like a flimsy excuse for failing to write “who isn’t hidden”.

That being said, it being a simple error is also not outside the realm of possibility. I mean look what a mess we have to deal with in the vision and darkness rules.

That's a case where they made an error which they later admitted and made corrections to fix it. No such corrections have been made to the rule for ranged attacks in close combat.

 

[Hriston]

Here is what the rules say about hostile;

They also say this on DMG, page 244:

A hostile creature opposes the adventurers and their goals but doesn't necessarily attack them on sight.​

And the Conversation Reaction table on DMG, page 245, says that, by default, a hostile "creature opposes the adventurers actions and might take risks to do so." So in the case of a creature that's hostile to a ranged attacker, it isn't merely that the creature is "inclined to get in [the attacker's] way", but that the creature opposes the attacker's goal of hitting its target and any action the attacker takes to accomplish this goal, up to and including taking opposing action that puts itself at risk.