D&D (2024) New stealth rules.

[Argyle King]

Hide Action: DC 15 stealth check while heavily obscured or behind 3/4 cover, and out of enemy line of sight. On a successful check, you have the invisible condition.

My reading of these rules is that in order to take the Hide Action" a PC must...
1. Be heavily obscured or behind 3/4 cover...
2. Out of enemy line of sight.
3. Make a DC 15 Stealth check

It is taking (and maintaining this action) that bestows the invisibility condition so the moment you are no longer hiding... you also no longer have the invisible condition.

Edit: in other words if you break any of the hide action conditions you are no longer successfuly hidden and thus no longer have the invisibility condition.

I can see (no pun intended) how that ruling would make sense.

However, that is not how the current rules are written. The three conditions you listed are what needs to occur for a PC to gain the Invisible condition.

Once the Invisible condition is gained, the Invisible condition lists the things that cause the condition to be lost.

 

[Charlaquin]

Hide Action: DC 15 stealth check while heavily obscured or behind 3/4 cover, and out of enemy line of sight. On a successful check, you have the invisible condition.

My reading of these rules is that in order to take the Hide Action" a PC must...
1. Be heavily obscured or behind 3/4 cover...
2. Out of enemy line of sight.
3. Make a DC 15 Stealth check

It is taking (and maintaining this action) that bestows the invisibility condition so the moment you are no longer hiding... you also no longer have the invisible condition.

Edit: in other words if you break any of the hide action conditions you are no longer successfuly hidden and thus no longer have the invisibility condition.

Maintaining the conditions that are required to take the hide action is not listed as a requirement to maintain the invisible condition. That’s an assumption you’ve made, and it is not supported by the text. It would be a reasonable ruling, but the fact that such a ruling is required speaks to a fault in the text.

 

[Argyle King]

That "unless they somehow can see you" basically closes the door on the arguments on this.

"I charge towards the guards"

"They start shooting you with their bows"

"But how, I'm invisible because i successfully hid!"

"The guards can see you, thus, by RAW, you aren't invisible any more."

I'm sure some will try to rules lawyer their way around the wording, but it very much seems that if a foe can see you, you lose the Invisble status.

Are the guards able to see invisible creatures?

 

[Charlaquin]

Does this solve things? Paraphrased description of the Invisibility condition from the new PHB:

Specifically, the inclusion of some language that if you can be seen (you're dancing in front of a guard in broad daylight, you're standing in front of a creature with darkvision or blindsight, etc.), then obviously you don't get the benefits of being invisible; would that fix the problems?

I thought so, and argued for that interpretation over several pages in this thread. The problem is that the sole effect of the invisibility spell is granting the invisible condition for the duration, so if we interpret the invisible this way, the invisibility spell would not prevent the subject from being seen without the aid of special senses.

 

[mamba]

It is taking (and maintaining this action) that bestows the invisibility condition so the moment you are no longer hiding... you also no longer have the invisible condition.

you are not maintaining actions, you take them once and then they have a result.

Do you keep on repeating the DC 15 check all the time in your idea of maintaining the action?

 

[Charlaquin]

That "unless they somehow can see you" basically closes the door on the arguments on this.

"I charge towards the guards"

"They start shooting you with their bows"

"But how, I'm invisible because i successfully hid!"

"The guards can see you, thus, by RAW, you aren't invisible any more."

I'm sure some will try to rules lawyer their way around the wording, but it very much seems that if a foe can see you, you lose the Invisble status.

The problem with this interpretation is that the invisibility spell doesn’t have any effect other than granting the invisible condition. So if the invisible condition doesn’t prevent you from being seen without the use of special senses, neither does the invisibility spell.

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, and how many action movies do we have, where some grunt walks down a hallway... then the hero steps out of a dark nook, or flips down from the ceiling, having completely hidden from the grunt?

Technically, the darkness could count as being obscured, and maybe people would say that being in the rafters of a hallway counts as cover, but these could also be argued as not counting as those things, yet in the scene, the character is literally not visible until after the grunt passes.

Speaking of hiding in plain sight, when I was a teen we were staying in a hotel. I was bored and exploring and found a ladder that appeared to go up to the roof so of course I had to check it out. It was locked, of course but as I was at the top of the ladder someone entered the stairwell and walked within 5-10 feet of me and didn't notice.

So it's not just action movies that people don't pay much attention to their surroundings under normal circumstances.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

Specific counterplay does not negate the obvious. In most editions, invisibility has a 100% chance of making you unseen in any conditions. Stealth has required dozens of hoops to jump through, plenty of rolls and a much higher chance of failure. There are very few examples where regular stealth is better than magic, and those exceptions prove the rule.

There are too many instances of scent, tremorsense, see invisibility, blindsense, blindsight, truesight etc that counter in part or totally Invisibility, Stealth, or both to call them "Specific" counterplay. This is nothing niche in any way, shape or form and assuming it is, especially for previous D&D editions (see my highlight above) is not, in my opinion, a correct approach.
On top of that, Invisibility is NOT a 100% chance of being unseen in "any conditions", because environment is a thing. Do you think invisibility makes you undetectable on a swamp, or on sand? Depending on the DM, flor could counter it even it has been debated to death.
They are two different things.

 

[Imaro]

I can see (no pun intended) how that ruling would make sense.

However, that is not how the current rules are written. The three conditions you listed are what needs to occur for a PC to gain the Invisible condition.

Once the Invisible condition is gained, the Invisible condition lists the things that cause the condition to be lost.

No on a successful check... while meeting those criteria... you have the invisible condition. The minute you no longer meet those criteria or if you fail your check you don't have the invisible condition.

 

[Argyle King]

No on a successful check... while meeting those criteria... you have the invisible condition. The minute you no longer meet those criteria or if you fail your check you don't have the invisible condition.

While I believe that makes sense, that's not currently how the invisible condition is stated to work.