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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5073673" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, its fine to give the developers credit for things, but I can point out dozens, perhaps 100's of instances like this where the developers didn't think everything through. In fact 4e rules are notoriously sloppy compared to almost any wargame you would care to mention. So I would give near zero credence to this line of logic.Lets suppose we take your logic at face value. Now, look at Fleeting Ghost. Are you going to assert that it allows a rogue to stand in plain sight and be hidden until the start of his next turn? The same logic which works for allies would have to apply here too, the character gets a stealth check and 'no condition has changed' from that point onwards. We KNOW for a fact that FG doesn't work this way since there are higher level rogue utilities that actually DO work this way and they wouldn't exist if FG already did that.Thus I (and I suspect practically everyone that has spent a good bit of time studying stealth in 4e) would say that you DO have to continually test your hidden status. If at any point you don't meet the requirements to remain hidden, you stop being hidden. This means for a character using the baseline stealth skill by itself allies will never give you a meaningful ability to hide. Coupled with certain feats or rogue utilities allies CAN provide an opportunity to initiate a hidden status that will last or do certain other things. Chameleon might work for this in some situations (it would have to involve movement on another creature's turn technically). Furthermore I'm not even convinced that allies can give you total cover. An ally is not blocking terrain or covering terrain. The rule is that allies give cover, but its a special rule and says nothing about TOTAL cover. My feeling is that you get only a limited amount of cover from allies. Remember, an ally is roughly the same size as you are and certainly doesn't even come close to filling its space. Its very similar to the situation of an obscured square like one containing a bush. No number of bushes will cause the granted concealment to become total concealment. (admittedly the DM may well feel justified in making exceptions for extreme cases and he could make a similar exception if you had MANY allies between you and the enemy).In other words you can get cover from allies and its a good idea to work to maintain that, which does require some tactics, but I don't think you can get total cover and I REALLY don't think you can remain hidden at all behind allies.</blockquote>

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