Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Not if you can hear them, which is usually the case.
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D&D 5E DM Help! My rogue always spams Hide as a bonus action, and i cant target him!
- Thread starter Klaudius Rex
- Start date
Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth
Then why do invisible creatures have to stay quiet? By your reasoning they could try to hide and then stay hidden forever while making as much noise as they want.
So what keeps you hidden when you stop being quiet and come out into the open?
"Unseen and unheard" is an incomplete list of qualities you have when hidden. It appears in the text to differentiate hiding from simply being unseen, but it is not exhaustive. When hidden, you are actually undetected in any way whatsoever. Furthermore, it is clear from the fact that you give away your position when you attack from hiding that your position was necessarily unknown before the attack.
It makes sense to me, and I haven't ignored any part of the context of Crawford's answer. To me, he's saying that a wood elf can hide in lightly obscuring natural phenomena and escape notice even when a potential observer looks right at the elf, like E.T. in a closet full of toys. What specifically do you think I've ignored?
But what is happening in the fiction if a person is looking at an elf through the snow, and then - at the gaming table - the player of the elf declares "I hide" and rolls a DEX check and gets a result higher than the observers passive Perception?
I think it is possible that the snow swirls around the elf, making him/her vanish from sight. Another possibility is that, at the behest of the elf, the snow briefly flurries into the eyes of the observer, rendering him/her a non-observer. But then I'm puzzled why it is a DEX check.
Even if it's camouflage - eg the elf's skin changes colour (not something I've ever heard suggested, but at least a logical possibility) - that doesn't explain why it would be a DEX check. (I assume that noone thinks that the elf is applying greasepaint to him-/herself, or rapidly changing clothes, and that that is why it's a DEX check.)
I gather that [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] thinks that none of these scenarios is a possibility within the fiction - though I'm yet to get a reply myself to that question. To my mind, it seems to depend not on the wording of the rules - which are not specific enough on these issues - but rather on how one envisages things taking place in the fiction.
(In post 407, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] says "It's a hide check, so yes it would be a dex check", but that doesn't really answer the question: it doesn't tell us what is happening in the fiction.)
I've been assuming that ((at least in this discussion, which is about whether or not things are hidden or perceived) by "knowing the location" is meant something along the lines of "knowing in virtue of perceiving", not simply "knowing in the sense of believing because told by someone else who is reliable". There's a whole literature on this (it's modern version begins with the famous 1963 paper by Gettier), and on whether we should call the second sort of thing "knowledge" at all (in a 1912 book that predates the modern iteration of the discussion, Bertrand Russell called the second sort of thing "probable opinion").
I don't really think it's that big a deal if two people who (most likely) have never met, and certainly aren't going to be playing D&D together, have different views about when an elf can and can't become hidden in a snow storm.
This has been a subject of disagreement - in part because of ambiguous rules wordings, but in part also because people have different views about what is happening in the fiction - going back to the thief ability to hide in shadows.
Consider, for instance, the rules text from Gygax's PHB (pp 27-28) and DMG (p 19):
Hiding in shadows is the ability to blend into dark areas, to flatten oneself, and by remaining motionless when in sight, to remain unobserved. It is a function of dress and practice. . . . [It] cannot be accomplished under direct observation. . . . Success makes the thief virtually invisible until he or she moves.
[T]this is NEVER possible under direct (or even indirect) observation. If the thief insists on trying, allow the attempt and throw dice, but don't bother to read them, as the fool is as obvious as a cool pile in a ballroom. Likewise, if a hidden thief attempts movement while under observation, the proverbial jig is up for him or her. Naturally, a creature closely pressed in melee is not
likely to bother with looking for some thief not directly in the line of sight, but if vision would normally extend to the thief's area of activity, then observation rules apply. Unobserved attempts to hide in shadows must likewise stand the hazard of the dice roll. A score greater than the required number shows that the character's ability is not on a par with his or her intent, and although he or she THINKS hiding has been successful, the creature looking in that direction will note a suspicious outline, form, or whatever.
[T]this is NEVER possible under direct (or even indirect) observation. If the thief insists on trying, allow the attempt and throw dice, but don't bother to read them, as the fool is as obvious as a cool pile in a ballroom. Likewise, if a hidden thief attempts movement while under observation, the proverbial jig is up for him or her. Naturally, a creature closely pressed in melee is not
likely to bother with looking for some thief not directly in the line of sight, but if vision would normally extend to the thief's area of activity, then observation rules apply. Unobserved attempts to hide in shadows must likewise stand the hazard of the dice roll. A score greater than the required number shows that the character's ability is not on a par with his or her intent, and although he or she THINKS hiding has been successful, the creature looking in that direction will note a suspicious outline, form, or whatever.
On the one hand, this is the ability to be "virtually invisible" and "to remain unobserved" even when "in sight", provided the thief remains motionless. On the other hand, it is "NEVER possible" under observation.
How to resolve the apparent contradiction? This seems to be left up to each table - my preferred reading is that a thief who enters the shadows while under observation cannot successfully hide, but one who is already in the shadows and remaining motionless can remain hidden, even if a would-be observer's gaze falls on him/her, provided that the d% roll is successful.
Now, relating this to the current discussion (and I'd be curious to hear [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION]'s views on this - I suspect that, like me and perhaps some others here, Hrisotn is fairly familiar with the AD&D hide in shadows rules): it's one thing to say that an elf who is concealed in a snowstorm is hard for an observer to spot (ie is entitled to make a DEX check to remain hidden although the storm is not heavy enough to conceal ordinary people); it's a different thing to say that an elf who is being observed through a snowstorm can suddenly - by magic, as it were - render him-/herself invisible.
Which takes us back to the question - what form does that magic take? and why is it modelled, mechanically, by a DEX check?
I think the Sage hints at an answer to the first question - nature itself conceals the elf - but other things are unasnwered, like "Does nature answer the elf's call at will?" and if so, why a DEX check?
I mentioned JRRT's elven cloaks upthread. In the case of these, the wearer doesn't get to choose - the cloak conceals him/her, and then once s/he choose to become visible the jig is up (until the observers look away). I am guessing that this might be how [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] envisages the elf's ability working: as soon as it starts snowing the elf becomes hidden (though we may not actually roll the DEX check until later on when we need to know whether or not another can spot him/her). And if the elf subsequently, or nevertheless, comes under observation, then s/he is not hidden to that observer until something happens that makes the observer (even momentarily) lose sight of her. And the mere continuation of snow falling wouldn't be such a "something".
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Context man, context! You really need to learn it. Since A) I have repeatedly said that making noise while hiding reveals you and ends hiding, my statement about B) making a single roll that determines their quiet level for the entire hide duration need to be C) taken in freaking context!
My reasoning is clearly(with context) not saying that they can make as much noise as they want to make.
I seriously question whether you are having the same conversation as the rest of us sometimes.
Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth
There's nothing about being hidden that requires you to change your location, in my opinion. In fact, changing location can involve complications that might end up getting you noticed. I'm not sure what kind of strange results you mean.
The invisible character, for example, can become hidden without changing location because there is no limit to that character's potential location from the point of view of an outside observer. The observer has no idea that the invisible character has used up its entire movement and is standing in the same position in which it last appeared. At that point, locating the invisible creature is guesswork for the observer, even though some guesses might be better than others.
Likewise, a wood elf hiding in falling snow doesn't need to move from the spot in which she is hiding. Provided that the falling snow covers a large enough area, however, she is free to move about without becoming unhidden.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
There is no answer for what's happening in the fiction in the rules. The rules set the mechanics. i.e. you can slip into hiding while being observed if you are a wood elf and it's snowing. You make a stealth dex check. The fiction is up to the DM or player, depending on your style of play. You could say the elf fades into the snow and you no longer see him. You could say it was a swirl that came up obscuring the elf from view. You could say Frosty the Snowman blessed him with camouflage. The fiction isn't for me to answer.
Ah, the dread dissociated mechanics!
I can't precisely remember the situation, but it involved a Dark Sun templar NPC using a psionic attack on a PC to render himself invisible to that PC. But there was no movement (maybe the templar had been prone and had spent his move action standing up? this was a 4e game, and so the move rules are a bit more restrictive than 5e).
I just remember that, at the time, the rules generated the sort of flavour we see in LotR (esp the movies), where Frodo turns invisible and everyone wonders where he's gone; whereas, in the fiction as it was unfolding at the table, it felt a bit more like the templar had put on a fake moustache and was then expecting everyone not to recognise him.
It wasn't a big deal, and maybe the real solution was for me to narrate the psionic invisibility with more verve.
Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth
I re-read your post to see if there was some context to your comment that I'd missed . The context was that of you denying that there was any ongoing effort involved in staying hidden. My assertion is that there is such an effort and that making an effort to stay quiet is part of that. It seems that now you agree with me.
Harzel
Adventurer
Aw, c'mon. The context was that he was talking about the mechanics, not the fiction. Furthermore, the context makes it very clear that he is talking about the hider remaining silent while hidden. And he even said that he agreed with you. All he was saying is that, mechanically, the initial stealth roll covers what you are calling the 'ongoing effort'.
