D&D (2024) New stealth rules.

[MarkB]

It's reasonable in the abstract that someone hiding stops being hidden if they leave cover or concealment. But I'm not sure it's a reasonable interpretation of the new rules, since it makes the Hide action practically useless.

Out-of-combat, a creature in 3/4 cover might (depending on how the requirements are interpreted) be able to become unseen by taking the Hide Action. But creatures in total cover or heavy obscurement gain literally nothing by taking the Hide action. It doesn't help them become unseen (because they already are); stay unseen (because under this interpretation one loses the Invisible condition if one leaves cover or concealment); or become or remain unheard (because the 2024 Hide action rules don't provide any such benefit). And the same is true in-combat if the 2024 rules still provide the "Attacks Affected" benefit of the Invisible condition to anyone who is unseen, the way the Unseen Attackers rule does in the 2014 rules.

There's a range of possibilities in between "total cover / concealment" and "no cover / concealment". If half cover or lightly obscured terrain allows you to maintain the invisibility once you have it then you have options such as sneaking through undergrowth, or peeking over a low wall to take a shot.

 

[FrogReaver]

Sure! I take the phrase "The Dungeon Master decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding" to mean the process of hiding as a whole, from the initial action that allows you begin hiding to the things you do while attempting to remain hidden, such as sneaking past a guardian.

My problem there is that there is no attempting to remain hidden in 2024 rules. There’s the hide action and the invisible condition.

I see the final line as a mere reminder that you start the process of hiding by taking the Hide action.

I mean, once you assume there’s some process of hiding that includes the hide action and the ongoing invisible condition I think that falls into place.

My issue is the initial assumption of a hiding process that includes anything more than ending when the invisible condition is granted at the conclusion of the hide action. I don’t see any justification for that idea in the rules - even if it would make things work a little better.

But I also see how someone can read the final line as the primary one, with the rest of the lines describing only that the DM determines the circumstances to begin hiding. And the descriptive terms that come before that are goals someone might set that would inspire them to start hiding.

Either way, we're probably just spinning our wheels. I'm hoping the DMG will shine a light on the true intent.

Probably. I appreciate the explanation though. I don’t have hopes the DMG can do anything more than contradict the PHB, which would be an improvement I guess, IMO of course.

 

[Pauln6]

Why should those things be adjudicated differently? In all three cases, if done successfully, the enemy is unaware of the target. The same condition applies. Having three different conditions is needlessly complex.

Not quite the same condition. An evil enemy can still target the 'innocent ' couple in frustration because they can still be seen.

 

[Kinematics]

Really high level - what happens when a pc walks around a corner and there is a creature with the invisible creature condition in the hallway in front of him (the hallway has no cover, no gasses or anything else obscuring view and good lighting).

Does the pc immediately see the creature. Does the pc not see the creature. Is it a different answer depending on if the condition was applied by the invisible spell or hiding and if so what is the rules justification for that difference?

Assuming you meant "condition" in the first paragraph.

Based on my own view of how things work, the possibilities I see are:

Scenario A:
1: The NPC gained the Invisible condition by Hiding. The NPC has not done anything else that affects recognition.
2: The PC sees the NPC.
3: The PC has "found" the NPC, ending the NPC's Invisible condition.

Scenario B:
1: The NPC gained the Invisible condition by Hiding. The NPC has also donned a disguise.
2: The PC sees the NPC.
3: Due to the disguise, the PC has not "found" the NPC, so the NPC still has the Invisible condition.
4: The PC makes a Perception check against the Stealth check the NPC made.
5: If the PC beats the NPC's Stealth check, he "finds" the NPC, ending the Invisible condition.

Scenario C:
1: The NPC gained the Invisible condition by casting the Invisibility spell.
2: The PC does not see the NPC.
3: PC makes a Perception check (possibly via passive Perception) to notice details about the presence of the NPC, such as the sound of shoes scraping against the floor, or resisting the psychic influence of the psychic shroud from that version of the spell, or whatever. DC set by the GM if the NPC did not Hide, or against the NPC's Stealth check value if the NPC did Hide.
4: If the PC succeeds on the Perception check, he "finds" the NPC, which would cancel out any benefit from Hiding, but not from the Invisibility spell. As such, advantages from being Invisible remain, but the PC knows the NPC is there, and may take further measures to try to counter the invisibility (eg: casting See Invisible, using Stonecunning to gain Tremorsense, etc).

 

[FrogReaver]

Assuming you meant "condition" in the first paragraph.

Based on my own view of how things work, the possibilities I see are:

Scenario A:
1: The NPC gained the Invisible condition by Hiding. The NPC has not done anything else that affects recognition.
2: The PC sees the NPC.
3: The PC has "found" the NPC, ending the NPC's Invisible condition.

Scenario B:
1: The NPC gained the Invisible condition by Hiding. The NPC has also donned a disguise.
2: The PC sees the NPC.
3: Due to the disguise, the PC has not "found" the NPC, so the NPC still has the Invisible condition.
4: The PC makes a Perception check against the Stealth check the NPC made.
5: If the PC beats the NPC's Stealth check, he "finds" the NPC, ending the Invisible condition.

Scenario C:
1: The NPC gained the Invisible condition by casting the Invisibility spell.
2: The PC does not see the NPC.
3: PC makes a Perception check (possibly via passive Perception) to notice details about the presence of the NPC, such as the sound of shoes scraping against the floor, or resisting the psychic influence of the psychic shroud from that version of the spell, or whatever. DC set by the GM if the NPC did not Hide, or against the NPC's Stealth check value if the NPC did Hide.
4: If the PC succeeds on the Perception check, he "finds" the NPC, which would cancel out any benefit from Hiding, but not from the Invisibility spell. As such, advantages from being Invisible remain, but the PC knows the NPC is there, and may take further measures to try to counter the invisibility (eg: casting See Invisible, using Stonecunning to gain Tremorsense, etc).

Is there a rules reason you believe the PC can see the NPC in scenario A but not in scenario C?

For scenario B what is the rules basis for a disguise granting/maintaining invisibility from hiding or independent of it even after being seen/found?

 

[Xetheral]

We don't know the bolded part yet. It could very easily be that silence is part of becoming hidden by using stealth and is mentioned in the general stealth rules. If it is, then it would apply to the hide action as well and wouldn't need to be repeated there. The general stealth rules could also clarify other areas of debate we are seeing in this thread.

It's possible that there is indeed text located elsewhere in the book that indicates that successfully hiding makes one unheard. Indeed, that was more-or-less the case with the 2014 rules, where the text defining being hidden as "unseen and unheard" was in the combat chapter.

If so, that would be an improvement over the rules we've seen that seem to me to be problematic under every interpretation suggested so far. But it would still be a giant step backwards from the 2014 rules, as they would have somehow managed to not solve one of primary issues with the 2014 rules (that they were scattered throughout the book) while introducing new issues such as making hiding binary (which is going to be unacceptably ridiculous for some fraction of the playerbase), making hiding depend on the definition of an "enemy" (the same), conflating hiding with magical invisibility (saving at most a paragraph of space at the cost of either widespread confusion or radically changing magical invisibility and/or its counters), and putting hiding out of the reach of low level parties (even if they kept the 2014 group check rules, it's going to be very difficult for a typical low level party to hit DC 15, unless they're permitted to reroll).

The stealth rules in general were one of the pain points in the 2014 rules (as evidenced by the number and length of threads on related topics in the last decade). That they not only failed to fix that issue but instead made it actively worse makes me despair for the rest of the new rules.

 

[OptionalRule]

Oh yeah.... this is gonna be great.

 

[Kinematics]

Is there a rules reason you believe the PC can see the NPC in scenario A but not in scenario C?

For scenario B what is the rules basis for a disguise granting/maintaining invisibility from hiding or independent of it even after being seen/found?

Basically, because there are two basic ways I can see where someone can become "invisible", in the sense that they could gain an advantage in combat.

1. People are physically unable to see you. You can be optically transparent, have a psychic shroud, fire a gun through a portal in a separate room, or have some object blocking line of sight.
2. People are unable to see you as an enemy. The household servant, the face in the crowd, the wallflower at the party, the bum passed out in the alley, the squirrel in the tree, etc.

The rules dance around the ability to "somehow see" an Invisible person, in such a way that it's clear they're not restricting it to only a single method, such as the See Invisible spell. Therefore it should not be uncommon to be able to see an Invisible target.

The rules for hiding do not say you lose the Invisible condition when you are "seen", but when you are "found". As long as an enemy does not recognize you as an enemy, you remain "invisible" to them.

The rules for using a Disguise Kit in 2024 are vague at best, from what I've been able to gather. In 2014, it explicitly allowed you to change your appearance, and use your proficiency bonus on the roll to do so if you had proficiency in the kit. But we also know that there were movements to shift from making skill checks with toolkits directly, and instead use standard skills in conjunction with the toolkits, such as Sleight of Hand for lockpicking.

So it seems to me that that clearly fits the same sort of conditions to Hide: Be out of sight of an enemy, and make a Stealth check. If you slip into a side room and use a Stealth check with a Disguise Kit, that seems to lead to exactly the same mechanical benefits as you'd get for staying out of sight, for as long as you are not "found".

In this case, being found out would be someone seeing through the disguise — making a Perception check that beats your Stealth check. Otherwise, "These aren't the droids you're looking for."

As for why I don't think you can see the NPC in scenario C, I'll admit that that is not guaranteed. Using the Invisibility spell could literally be, "These aren't the droids you're looking for." Or it could be One Ring invisibility, or psychic static, or a number of other things. It's an Illusion spell, after all, and those are tricky to handle.

However, since physical invisibility is an obvious implementation that makes sense both from an historical viewpoint, and from a mechanical (Illusion) viewpoint, it tends to be treated as such by default.

So Scenario C really should be, "the Invisibilty spell that makes the user transparent", rather than merely "the Invisibility spell".

 

[FrogReaver]

Basically, because there are two basic ways I can see where someone can become "invisible", in the sense that they could gain an advantage in combat.

1. People are physically unable to see you. You can be optically transparent, have a psychic shroud, fire a gun through a portal in a separate room, or have some object blocking line of sight.
2. People are unable to see you as an enemy. The household servant, the face in the crowd, the wallflower at the party, the bum passed out in the alley, the squirrel in the tree, etc.

The rules dance around the ability to "somehow see" an Invisible person, in such a way that it's clear they're not restricting it to only a single method, such as the See Invisible spell. Therefore it should not be uncommon to be able to see an Invisible target.

The rules for hiding do not say you lose the Invisible condition when you are "seen", but when you are "found". As long as an enemy does not recognize you as an enemy, you remain "invisible" to them.

The rules for using a Disguise Kit in 2024 are vague at best, from what I've been able to gather. In 2014, it explicitly allowed you to change your appearance, and use your proficiency bonus on the roll to do so if you had proficiency in the kit. But we also know that there were movements to shift from making skill checks with toolkits directly, and instead use standard skills in conjunction with the toolkits, such as Sleight of Hand for lockpicking.

So it seems to me that that clearly fits the same sort of conditions to Hide: Be out of sight of an enemy, and make a Stealth check. If you slip into a side room and use a Stealth check with a Disguise Kit, that seems to lead to exactly the same mechanical benefits as you'd get for staying out of sight, for as long as you are not "found".

In this case, being found out would be someone seeing through the disguise — making a Perception check that beats your Stealth check. Otherwise, "These aren't the droids you're looking for."

This sounds to me like speculation and logical leaps rather than any specific rules leading you to your ideas on disguise utilizing the invisible condition or the hide action.

As for why I don't think you can see the NPC in scenario C, I'll admit that that is not guaranteed. Using the Invisibility spell could literally be, "These aren't the droids you're looking for." Or it could be One Ring invisibility, or psychic static, or a number of other things. It's an Illusion spell, after all, and those are tricky to handle.

However, since physical invisibility is an obvious implementation that makes sense both from an historical viewpoint, and from a mechanical (Illusion) viewpoint, it tends to be treated as such by default.

I don’t know why it matters what kind of invisibility it fictionally is. The spell definitely does just what it says and no more. The condition definitely does just what it says and no more. The hide action definitely does what it says and no more.

So Scenario C really should be, "the Invisibilty spell that makes the user transparent", rather than merely "the Invisibility spell".

IMO. If we add words and effects to the spell, condition or action we can make them say or do most anything we want (like the bolded above). I don’t understand why you think an assertion like that provides a rules basis for your beliefs on how these things work RAW.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

No it does not. Hiding gives the invisible condition, however that condition breaks when an enemy finds you. The spell does not break when an enemy finds you. So, explicitly per the rules of hiding that govern how you have the invisible condition, being in their line of sight, ie finding you, ends the condition. Meanwhile, the spell ends under different conditions.

Why do you think being in line of sight of a person means they find you? Cite a rule to back this up instead of making up rules.

It doesn't need to state that you cannot be seen with normal vision, because there are many different types of invisibility. For example, we know for a fact, per RAW, that there exists an ability that makes you invisible by merely creating psychic static. The Soul Knife's Psychic Veil: You can weave a veil of psychic static to mask yourself. As an action, you can magically become invisible, along with anything you are wearing or carrying, for 1 hour or until you dismiss this effect (no action required). This invisibility ends early immediately after you deal damage to a creature or you force a creature to make a saving throw.

That is still being invisible. The person doesn't see you. But last two bullet points of invisible condition do nothing if you can "somehow" be seen. If normal vision is sufficient to "somehow" see you (and nothing in the rules say it isn't) then these two bullet points effectively do nothing.

Can you be seen with normal vision in this instance? Yes, the eye picks up the light that bounces off your body. However, the mind cannot perceive your form. Invisibility the condition granted through abilities such as this do not rely on not being found. Note that nothing in the ability states that it breaks if you are found.

No, they don't see you. Whether the light enters their eye or not is completely immaterial.

While hidden, you are effectively for all purposes, invisible. There is no difference in this image if the man is hiding, or if he were wearing a cloak of invisibility, or if you were simply unable to mentally register his presence. The effect, the condition, is the same.

Indeed. So why the hell you think the invisibility gained by hiding ends when you enter someone's field of vision?