D&D (2024) Thoughts on Stealth and D&D2024

[Imaro]

Do you have line-of-sight with 3/4 cover? Seems like the answer is "yes", but the conditions for taking the Hide action make it seem like 3/4 cover is okay.

The Hide action does not... it clearly states you must be out of an enemy's line of sight in addition to what you listed above.

 

[Imaro]

If line of sight is sufficient to see a creature with the invisible condition, then it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t end the effects of the invisibility spell, because the only effect of the invisibility spell being active is having the invisible condition. So, great, a creature finding me doesn’t end a useless condition. Whoopdeedoo.

Specific rules of the spell (what ends the condition it grants) override the general rules and the condition of Invisible grants the concealed effect so no, due to how the actual Invisible spell works, just having line of sight doesn't end the condition.

 

[Imaro]

For the sake of argument, let's pretend the wording of the rules was better and we all agreed what the Invisibility condition is, how it gets used, and how it interacts with every spell in the book.

Cool. Let's say I don't take the Hide action and I'm not Invisible. I walk through a room full of creatures, none of whom have line of sight to me during my movement. How do I determine if the creatures know I'm there?

Need more information... why does the room full of creatures lack line of sight?

 

[Imaro]

That’s not what I was asking for a citation for. You said when a non-magically invisible creature moves into another’s line of sight, they can be seen. Where is this written?

It doesn't have to state it explicitly... it's what having line of sight means. A line of unobstructed vision to a particular thing.

 

[Maxperson]

Stealth is the new ranger: something to complain about, disconnected from the actual rules.

I think people tend to make too much of the complexity of Stealth when discussing it, and I imagine in play they just roll Hide versus Seek.

2024 D&D has generally bad organization, with incomplete rules in 3 places between 2 books. But the actual rules are pretty simple and perfectly usable.

All that said,I still would not have used the Invisible condition to define "hidden." It's unnecessary and just invites confusion. And I think it is counterintuitive to say that if any single enemy finds you, thay all magically do.

The actual rules are not perfectly usable if you follow the RAW. They are only "perfectly usable" if you homebrew common sense into them.

If you hide you gain the invisible condition, which is the old school invisibility, since 5e and 5.5e use the common usage of words and invisible means that you are invisible, not simply hidden. You remain invisible unless you are found, and they tell us in the 5.5e rules that it takes an action to search and find someone who is hidden. That means that since you are old school invisible and if they don't find you, you can by RAW walk out from behind cover and invisibly walk around and not be seen.

Once you homebrew common sense in, almost no one will run it that way and if you walk out from behind the cover you will be seen, treating that instance of the invisible condition as normal hiding.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, it does. It says the Invisible condition ends if an enemy finds you. That is explicit. The invisible condition granted by the spell has a different rules for how and when the condition ends -- because it is a spell. Don't conflate the Hide action with the Invisible condition.

Find = use an action to search according to the rules shown in the early hiding threads. No action to find, no findy.

 

[Charlaquin]

It at least opens up an opportunity for a d20 test. It really isn't that difficult.

Again, where is that written?

 

[Maxperson]

Opaquely.

More clearly: see this thread on reddit:

• Vision Cone
  Now let's get the obvious out of the way. When you're outside of everyone's vision cone, you can stay stealthed as long as you want without any check -- everybody knows that. Now the weird part is when you're standing within someone's vision cone. Sometimes you need to do a stealth check and sometimes the game just rip you out of stealth and provides no explanation in the log whatsoever except that you have lost the condition "stealth". One key to determine whether you need the check is: obscurity.
  
  
• Obscurity
  It's simple, if you're heavily obscured, you don't need a check; If you're lightly obscured, then you need a check; if you're not obscured, you will immediately exit stealth without check. Even knowing that, it still sometimes feels funky and the reason is: unlike the Sharran equipments where you need to be obscured in respect to the world, stealth cares about your obscurity in respect to the creatures who are looking at you. As you can see in the screenshot, Karlach is standing barely 3m in front of the human guard and he doesn't notice the big burning lady crouching as tall as he is standing right in front of him.

The guy in that thread is ignoring that darkvision leaves your vision in dim light which equates to lightly obscured and disadvantage on vision related perception checks, unless 5.5e changes that. Does it?

• "Darkvision
  That's right, you might have noticed right after I mentioned "human" that one thing that possibly matters more than everything else in terms of stealthing is the ability Darkvision. It doesn't matter if you're 10km underground without light source and under the shades of all the rocks in the world, if there's an elf within 12m looking at you, they can see you clear as day and you won't be able to initiate stealth."

 

[Charlaquin]

Specific rules of the spell (what ends the condition it grants) override the general rules and the condition of Invisible grants the concealed effect so no, due to how the actual Invisible spell works, just having line of sight doesn't end the condition.

The concealed effect does nothing against enemies that can somehow see you. If we assume that enemies need special vision to see you, then being in an enemy’s line of sight when you have the condition must not be sufficient for the enemy to find you. Otherwise the condition is, in fact, useless

 

[Charlaquin]

It doesn't have to state it explicitly... it's what having line of sight means. A line of unobstructed vision to a particular thing.

If having line of sight to you is sufficient to see you, then the invisible condition’s only effect is to give you advantage on initiative.