Right, but you then referred me to the DMG advice on how to interpret the rules, which misses my point. I’ve already interpreted the rules in accordance with that advice, and arrived at the conclusion that is contrary to the one the text describes. I am saying “probably that text should be fixed, since it’s leading to a wrong conclusion.”
To clarify, the rules as they are means yes it's opposed Stealth vs Perception, my preference in how the rules should have been is that the DM takes the situation and comes up with a DC same as other skill checks. Look at the situation and make a call on how easy/hard the task is which gives you a DC. Tailing someone through a crowd might be Easy so DC 10, moving silently over creaky floorboards might be Medium so DC 15, moving from one area of cover to another during a guards momentary distraction might be Hard so DC 20, etc... You'd probably also adjust it based on Perception so maybe it's actually 22 instead of 20 for sneaking past the guard because they have that +2 to Perception.
I would argue that it does work as you describe here, kind of. The hide action doesn’t work that way, but tailing someone through a crowd isn’t necessarily a hide action. I’d argue it’s a unique action the DM must adjudicate as per the basic gameplay loop.
Sneaking past a guard I think is something more likely to be handled by the hide action than tailing someone through a crowd.
Maybe tailing someone was a bad example because there's two components, you seeing where they are so that you can follow them and not lose them, and remaining unnoticed yourself. I was talking more the second part. But the broader point is that not all stealth tasks are the same difficulty, hiding under a desk that completly blocks line of sight vs hiding behind a curtain that doesn't go all the way to the ground. Getting spotted isn't just a question of a creatures Perception, the tasks are just not the same difficulty so a purely opposed roll isn't ideal.
For a long time I have had the feeling that one root cause of this long-term issues with stealth is the inability of both designers and gamers to separate the concept of detection from the concept of physical barrier.
Not with natural language, anyway. You’ve got to define your terms to achieve technical clarity.
I agree. As I said above, the invisibility spell needs a line that says you are translucent.
I think it’s fine to leave that up to inference. The bigger problem IMO is that the hide action doesn’t say you lose the invisible condition if an enemy gains line of sight to you.
This is actually debatable. If you lose it immediately, you can't actually use it in combat.
