Nah, the rules as written make sense, and they work fine.It bothers me that the ambiguity of the rules as written requires this level of effort to try and make sense of.
Nah, the rules as written make sense, and they work fine.
It only becomes a problem when DMs think their only means of shutting down a blatantly exploitative player is to read rules at them.
The 5e rules are not written with punctilious rigor in mind, so such a rigorous analysis as we see in this thread is bound to collapse. In 5e, the DM is supposed to adjudicate stealth pretty much every time. Mearls has indicated this in nearly those exact terms, so I'm a little mystified why the discussion continues as if a closer reading of the rules can eventually result in perfect, DM-proof, algorithmic clarity.
I do agree that the rules would be better with the addition of your passage.The problem is that if they wanted it to be a DM adjudication, they should have just said so in the book. They gave a bunch of rules that seem like they're supposed to tell you how stealth works, but those rules don't actually end up making much sense when you try and parse them out.
The other issue is that if they wanted it to be DM adjudicated, they should have told us at least the general role they want stealth to have in the game. This is particularly important because hiding is a key rogue class feature. It would be great if they said something like, "hiding is always up to the DM. However, we assumed that in most cases a character can attempt to hide if they have some cover. If you want to make hiding more difficult, consider giving rogues or other stealthy characters [some other thing] to compensate." That would be clear, effective writing. Instead, the book leaves it very unclear how they imagined stealth working in the game.
The stealth rules are pretty hopelessly fubared IMO. My solution is to rewrite them entirely:
1) Out of a fight, you can attempt to stealth anywhere, anytime you like. You just need to provide a convincing reason for why/how this could work. The target number will be the enemy's passive perception with situational modifiers. Trying to hide in plain sight is possible, but extremely difficult. If you are hidden and a fight begins, you remain hidden until something happens to reveal you.
2) In a fight, you can attempt to hide using the hide action. For this to work, you must be heavily obscured or in 3/4 cover. Anything else will automatically fail unless there is a really good reason otherwise. This targets the enemy's passive perception. While you are hidden, enemies are assumed to know your general location, but not precisely enough to target you with an attack. They can definitely fling a fireball in your general direction though.
3) Once you are hidden, you remain hidden until something happens that reveals you. Enemies can use their action to actively look for you. If one enemy sees you, they can use their action to aid another. You can move and remain hidden as long as you remain at least lightly obscured or stay within some level of cover. Attacking or moving out of cover/concealment reveals you immediately. You can attempt to move from one area of cover to another while remaining hidden, but doing so will require a new stealth check with situational modifiers based on the difficulty of the maneuver.
My logic for this approach is that the hide action represents you ducking out of sight. At that point, if you succeed, then your enemies can't follow your movement, letting you stay hidden in places you couldn't hide in directly. If enemies really want to try and find you, they can look for you, or just move into a place where they can see you.
By my rules, you can hide behind a chair before the fight starts, but not while the fight is going on. However, you can hide behind a wall, scurry across the room behind cover, and then roll behind a chair and stay hidden. To me, that feels about right and matches the tone I want. YMMV though.
I really like this; I was working on something similar myself. The thing I would change would be coming out concealment reveals you automatically--I want to allow rogues to gain advantage on attacks from hiding (otherwise, what's the point?), so I'd say they're revealed after an attack from hiding, (allowing a jump from concealment to backstab or whatever), just as though they were hiding before combat started. Do you think this OP's them? Maybe an exception if they pop out from the same 3/4 cover or obscurity they hid behind/in, to accommodate for common sense?
Also, as regards being able to hide in combat with at least 3/4 cover or heavy obscurity, this would be what is affected by Skulker/wood elf/lightfoot halfling.
The problem is that if they wanted it to be a DM adjudication, they should have just said so in the book. They gave a bunch of rules that seem like they're supposed to tell you how stealth works, but those rules don't actually end up making much sense when you try and parse them out.
The other issue is that if they wanted it to be DM adjudicated, they should have told us at least the general role they want stealth to have in the game. This is particularly important because hiding is a key rogue class feature. It would be great if they said something like, "hiding is always up to the DM. However, we assumed that in most cases a character can attempt to hide if they have some cover. If you want to make hiding more difficult, consider giving rogues or other stealthy characters [some other thing] to compensate." That would be clear, effective writing. Instead, the book leaves it very unclear how they imagined stealth working in the game.