D&D 5E DM Help! My rogue always spams Hide as a bonus action, and i cant target him!

[Hriston]

This is true. RAW does say, however, that you can't hide if seen clearly, which means it's possible to hide during any condition where you aren't seen clearly. ANY amount of obscurement qualifies as not being see clearly. Seen clearly and obscured being mutually exclusive when using natural language.

The notion that something can't be seen clearly when lightly obscured isn't supported by the rules. If you're trying to see a hidden object in a lightly obscured area, and you hit the DC to find it set by the DM, you see it clearly.

Who ever side hiding was possible? Only the ATTEMPT to hide is possible. Success may or may not be possible.

Anyone who tries to hide is then hidden until found. You succeed or fail in preventing someone from noticing you, not in becoming hidden.

By RAW a roll is only called for if the attempt is uncertain. Are you really saying that one cannot try to hide when success is guaranteed?

An attempt to hide is always an attempt to hide from someone who might have a chance to and would otherwise notice you. Otherwise, what's the point?

 

[Maxperson]

The notion that something can't be seen clearly when lightly obscured isn't supported by the rules.

It is absolutely supported by the natural language provision, and not refuted by any rule in existence.

If you're trying to see a hidden object in a lightly obscured area, and you hit the DC to find it set by the DM, you see it clearly.

On the other hand, there is no rule that says that at all. You do not get to automatically see clearly anything you hit with the DC. You just get to discover it and ruin its hiding spot.

Anyone who tries to hide is then hidden until found. You succeed or fail in preventing someone from noticing you, not in becoming hidden.

This is false. If someone is looking at you when you use a special ability to hide, it's an opposed roll to see if you even enter hiding. If you fail the roll, you fail to go into hiding. Going into hiding is not an automatic thing, otherwise there would be no such thing as "trying to hide".

An attempt to hide is always an attempt to hide from someone who might have a chance to and would otherwise notice you. Otherwise, what's the point?

No, it's not always an attempt to hide when someone is around to notice you. PCs are free to hide while nobody is around for miles in every direction........by what I say. By what you said, someone would have to be able to spot the hider in order for the hider to try and hide.

 

[Hriston]

It is absolutely supported by the natural language provision, and not refuted by any rule in existence.

This provision of yours is not in the rules, and you have yet to produce a citation for its source. Whatever it was you heard or read, I don't think you're remembering it correctly.

On the other hand, there is no rule that says that at all. You do not get to automatically see clearly anything you hit with the DC. You just get to discover it and ruin its hiding spot.

How does not seeing it clearly help you discover the object? You can already see it un-clearly due to the dim lighting.

This is false. If someone is looking at you when you use a special ability to hide, it's an opposed roll to see if you even enter hiding.

I disagree with this on two counts. First, I don't believe there is any such ability, except if you count the ability to cast an invisibility spell and then hide, for example. This is mainly what we're disagreeing about in this thread. My position is that MotW, NS, HiPS, and Skulker do not grant the ability to "enter hiding" in a situation where someone sees you clearly and so knows where you are.

Second, assuming we were talking about a legal hide move, the contest decides if you are found, not if you can hide, which is decided by the DM when allowing the attempt. You are still hidden, for example, from anyone who isn't looking or whose Perception doesn't beat your Stealth, even though your roll failed against one opponent.

If you fail the roll, you fail to go into hiding.

There is no failure condition for the Stealth roll. It actually sets the DC that others roll against to determine if they fail or succeed at finding you.

Going into hiding is not an automatic thing, otherwise there would be no such thing as "trying to hide".

I've said several times in this thread that I think too much of a distinction is being drawn between "hiding" and "trying to hide". They're just two ways of saying the same thing, i.e. attempting to not be noticed. You can succeed or fail in the attempt with reference to specific observers, but it's the DM that allows you to hide in the first place, based on prevailing circumstances.

No, it's not always an attempt to hide when someone is around to notice you. PCs are free to hide while nobody is around for miles in every direction........by what I say. By what you said, someone would have to be able to spot the hider in order for the hider to try and hide.

You seem to be misunderstanding what I'm saying. Maybe I don't write as clearly as I think I do. I'm not saying (and didn't say) you can't begin hiding when no one's around to spot you. In fact, that's mostly how characters begin hiding in my games, which is something I can't imagine you haven't caught on to if you've been following the thread. The point I'm trying to make is that while you can (and often should) begin hiding when no one's around, the desired result of that effort is to keep your location unknown from an observer that has yet to arrive on the scene. That's who you're hiding from. When you hide, you're always hiding from someone, even if they aren't there yet.

 

[Hriston]

You do realize that any game with multiple sessions is an ongoing story, right? Even ones with adventures that are completely unrelated. So the normal use of campaign will always fit the ongoing story.

Not if it isn't a campaign to achieve some goal or a series of military operations, and it doesn't need to be either of those for the specialized PHB definition to apply. That's why the PHB usage of campaign is jargon. It means something that doesn't follow from its natural language meaning. An ongoing story doesn't need to have a single goal, if it has one at all. If the goals change, we don't say we're playing a new campaign, whereas if a politician, for example, is campaigning for reelection, and then once reelected begins campaigning to pass a piece of legislation, we would say that's a different campaign.

 

[Hriston]

Me too i prefer to handle it this way than to make a PC waste an action only to tell him after that it automatically fails because he was lightly obscured.

Agreed. Not only is that a gotcha, but I think part of the DM's responsibility to determine if conditions are appropriate for hiding is to telegraph that information to the players to prevent gotchas from happening.

 

[Maxperson]

Not if it isn't a campaign to achieve some goal or a series of military operations, and it doesn't need to be either of those for the specialized PHB definition to apply. That's why the PHB usage of campaign is jargon. It means something that doesn't follow from its natural language meaning. An ongoing story doesn't need to have a single goal, if it has one at all. If the goals change, we don't say we're playing a new campaign, whereas if a politician, for example, is campaigning for reelection, and then once reelected begins campaigning to pass a piece of legislation, we would say that's a different campaign.

The DMG uses a different definition of campaign. It's just a series of adventures.

"An adventure typically hinges on the successful completion of a quest, and can be as short as a single game session. Longer adventures might embroil players in great conflicts that require multiple game sessions to resolve. When strung together, these adventures form an ongoing campaign. A D&D campaign can include dozens of adventures and last for months or years."

 

[Caliban]

The DMG uses a different definition of campaign. It's just a series of adventures.

"An adventure typically hinges on the successful completion of a quest, and can be as short as a single game session. Longer adventures might embroil players in great conflicts that require multiple game sessions to resolve. When strung together, these adventures form an ongoing campaign. A D&D campaign can include dozens of adventures and last for months or years."

That's why Hriston says it's jargon. Because D&D has its own meaning for the word, instead of the normal definition.

Why this is significant in any way, I couldn't begin to tell you.

 

[Maxperson]

That's why Hriston says it's jargon. Because D&D has its own meaning for the word, instead of the normal definition.

Why this is significant in any way, I couldn't begin to tell you.

Different from the PHB, different from the normal definition. Substitute "cities visited" for "adventures" and you have a political campaign. Substitute "commercials" for "adventures" and you have an ad campaign. D&D uses the normal definition. [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] has disingenuously been using only the military definition for campaign, rather than the one that applies to to D&D, ads, and politics.

 

[Hriston]

That's why Hriston says it's jargon. Because D&D has its own meaning for the word, instead of the normal definition.

Why this is significant in any way, I couldn't begin to tell you.

It's a counter example to Max's unsupported assertion that natural language meanings prevail in all circumstances. Additionally, the term campaign is bolded in the rules text, just like the terms lightly obscured and heavily obscured. I believe this convention is used in the text to denote terms of jargon.

 

[Maxperson]

It's a counter example to Max's unsupported assertion that natural language meanings prevail in all circumstances. Additionally, the term campaign is bolded in the rules text, just like the terms lightly obscured and heavily obscured. I believe this convention is used in the text to denote terms of jargon.

They've said that 5e is written in natural language. They did not say that only some portions are written in natural language.