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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Uller" data-source="post: 7318560" data-attributes="member: 413">I will confess I do this.  I try to make a conscious effort not to and I remind my players frequently that they can just narrate what they do and I'll find the rules that make it happen. But some players enjoy playing through the rules as an interface to the game.  It's like their controller...invoke a certain sequence of rules to make something happen and they expect the result to be reasonably predictable and that's not unreasonable, I think.I go off the rails as DM because I'm trying to run so many things and trying to keep them all within the same rules the PCs must follow.  So sometimes I let myself get a little too bogged down by them.As for the subject at hand...i think one area where I am going awry is applying in combat rules to out of combat.  I tend to look at what happens just before combat starts as a sort of "round 0".  In the witches example I imagine the witches are just hanging out doing whatever it is witches do on their down time...boiling eye balls and exchanging potion recipes when they hear someone fidgetting with their door.  They knew the PCs were around (because of a hag's eye that the PCs eventually disposed of).  So someone coming in through their locked door was likely a danger.  So I gave them a round to act before the door opened.  That seems fair.  Now...it strikes me that as some folks play the game (invisibility is not stealth...which is how I tended to do it but am now questioning)...a character becoming invisible is not hidden and automatically detected but one ducking behind a desk and "hiding" gets a stealth check to avoid detection.  That strikes me as wrong in a narrative sense.  And as you implied...rules should support narrative.Ron and Harry are snooping in Snape's office.  They hear someone opening the door and only have a moment to react.  Ron ducks under the desk.  Harry activates his invisibility cloak.  Ron gets a stealth check and Harry doesn't because Ron used the hide action and Harry used his action to become invisible.  So when Snape enters the room he automatically knows someone is there because of Harry?  Harry would have been better off hiding first then on his next turn activating hus cloak.  That seems off because Harry and Ron both effectively did the same thing from a narrative POV...they made themselves difficult to detect.I think what you and others have touched on makes sense.  The entire universe and everything in it is initially hidden.  Those things revealed by the senses become unhidden automatically.  When it is unclear if a character senses something a stealth vs passive perception or a perception check is called for.  If a character is not hidden and wishes to become hidden he must create circumstances that make hiding possible and then actively try to hide or he must sufficiently break contact so that hiding becomes automatic (get out of sight and hearing range and move away).</blockquote>

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