Are you saying I'm not allowed to attack the guy I just saw go into the box, just because he's really, really quiet and still?
No, you are only unable to target him directly. You can attack him if you guess where he is. The whole point is "do you actually know where he is, or just think you know?" and the answer is "you are reasonably sure but have no way to confirm it unless you search for him or open the box". So it's up to you to wail on the box or open it.
In either case, there is no difference in game mechanics EXCEPT for one (that I can think of): If the hider can attack the observer, he'll get advantage (and potentially SA damage if that feature is available) on his attack if he is "hidden". The former camp says he can and is fine with it. The latter camp says you don't get adv on the attack because the target "knows" you are there and it doesn't sit well with them to give it advantage
It's more of a different argument that has some connection to "hiding or not". Personally i do not think either party in the "hiding" argument is directly related to any other in the "advantage or not".
The location of the hider is the secret. If the hider's location has already been given away then a Stealth check will not turn her presence in that location back into a secret. The secret has already been revealed.
No. The location of the one hiding might be a unknown or not. It has no bearing on your ability to perceive see or hear him. Being hidden allows you to make others lose track of you. The other way around is also possible. Neither are exclusive. Being hidden is not a function of "location unknown" any more than "having a full stomach" is. Both can let others see or hear you. Neither is required to hide.
If you have sufficient information to be sure of being correct about the creature's location then no guessing is involved in your attack. If you do not have to guess, the creature is not hidden.
You have to guess a location if you can't target by sight or by hearing. No matter if a creature has taken a hide action or not, if it's hiding or not. How accurate is your guess and what methods are using to reach that conclusion, if you have knowledge or not about position of said creature is irrelevant to the rule.
Perception breaks Stealth because it reveals location. If location has already been revealed, circumstances are inappropriate for hiding.
If you can quote where perception "breaks" stealth please. All i can see is that it either lets know others where you are (and might or might not make them discover you) or it lets you or signs of your passage be noticed. What this implies is purely dependant on situation since in a one of silence and in darkess it surely does not mean you can hear, see me or tracks that i'm leaving, but can fully expose the strange smell of my cologne. If you can pinpoint me with just that is a DM call, however. Being noticed and location known are vague because there might be situations where neither are enought to "be discovered".
There's no mention of circumstances being inappropriate for hiding because location is known. i think It's also factually untrue in real life as an all encompassing negation, but i might be wrong.
On the contrary, the rules say that noticing signs of a creature's passage will keep it from being hidden.
Citation please. There's no such a rule. There's a passage that say that an invisible creature can still be found by following traces. This applies to hidden creatures too. Nowhere is said what you are saying. It's not even implied.
You said the attacker would have to guess the target's location, which is the same as not being able to attack the target directly. If the attacker knows where someone is then she doesn't have to guess, she just attacks.
No. You are still not willingly trying to attack something by having arrows ricochet on a wall, or using explosive to blow off a side of a mountain and have him buried underground. The attack is still a direct attack, the targetting is just impossible to do directly. You want to hit the target, you are just unsure where it's at since it's unseen and unheard. remember, you can target directly if you can see or hear a target, but you can attack directly as long as there is "line of effect" (don't think it's an actual game term) - as long as you can strike directly
No deduction is required to be objectively correct in knowing the location of a creature you have just observed getting into a box from which there is no other exit. You do not have to guess, therefore the creature is not hidden.
Whether or not someone can objectively be correct about something he is observing while knowing he is objectively correct is important. Since the state of the one hiding is not fixed, objectivity cannot be reached if not in the fact that objective knowledge is out of grasp of the observer unless the observer is omniscient. Is the observer omniscient? My guess is no.
If no, then he cannot be objectively correct.
A DM, for purposes of the game, knows everything about Npc's. This knowledge however does not transfer to his npc's. If there's even a possible situation where the npc could have been wrong, it will not be factually correct until the situation has resolved.
More or less: if the guard does not know all the tricks of the rogue, the guard will not know that he'll capture the rogue until captured. The guard might think the rogue has no way to flee, the rogue might think he has no way to flee, an elephant might drop and kill the guard. Both the guard and the rogue are proven wrong. Poor elephant.
And there's still a mandatory correlation to be made between knowing a location and hiding that has to be proven before the statement can be even used.
You can know a creature's location without seeing it. That's why invisible creatures need to hide to keep their locations secret. It's irrelevant that certain spells require you to see your target.
Invisible creature have to hide their presence. In the rules it is EXPLICITLY written that they can hide at any time. Even if you know where they are. Therefore even with just this little line, everyone that says that location = impossible to hide has some explaining to do. Well, even more than explaining exactly when the location must be unknown before hiding exaclty became more than a ruling
Are you saying that a trail of footprints will reveal the location of an invisible creature but not the location of a visible creature? I don't think that makes sense.
I dunno what he means. I know what the phrase means. The phrase does not imply that loking at some footsteps will direcly allow me to see/hear or in any way perceive a person that might be hiding miles away. It simply might lead me to them. It is a way to discover them, not an automatic success.
That doesn't matter. There's no guessing involved when you know a creature's location. The requirement that some spells have that you see your target has nothing to do with your ability to make a weapon attack against a creature you know is there.
Knowing a creature is there does not make you able to see or hear them. The rule does not disallow attacking a creature that you can't see or hear. It simply disallow direct targetting. Your character has to take a guess. No matter what system or how much is he sure of where a creature actually is, unless he can see or hear them it has to target a location. Hiding or not hiding.
How is disadvantage against unseen targets evidence for not knowing a creature's location unless you see it? I'm not following the train of logic being used here. The fact that the location of an invisible creature is known unless it hides is enough to refute this.
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Knowing where a creature is does not make you able to distinguish how the creature is actually placed, what shape it has and many different features. You know where the creature is "more or less", enough to fight it by guessing the right place. In a fight, this means you can still follow footsteps, sounds, bloodmarks and so on, still sight is required to have perfect cognition of what is happening.
It is proof of abstraction, necessary for rules to work in a way that might provide enough realism while costing little in terms of time.
I have no idea how it relates to "DM knows location" and the fact that "DM knows location" does not mean "characters knows location"
How can you not know where it is if it isn't hidden? Also, the example assumes that there is no sensory information available from inside the box.
And because you have no informations about the contenents of the box is exactly why you have no idea what is happening in there.
A two-year old fully understands object permanence, whereas a person isn't capable of deductive reasoning until early adolescence.
Yes, a two years old knows that something that can no longer be perceived still exists. This gives no information about its current location, status (apart from ...presumed... existance but that is for another time) and situation, nor the ability to actually recieve information. Object permanence is the last thing you should mention when trying to prove your point. It actually helps "hiding does not require location" more than anything else. It only implies existance.
The person hidden in the box still exists. Even if he teleported 1000000 miles away.
Adding object permanence in a world where someone can literally wish something did not exist is another problem, since this ability might be challenged times and times again during life.
I haven't said it was. On the contrary, what I am saying is that knowing a creature's location (and retaining that knowledge) does not necessarily depend on being able to observe it in the present moment.
Right. If you have the ability to do so, you are right. A normal human assumes that a person going in the box will come out of the box eventually. Because of object permanence. Object permanence does not say that the human is actually right in thinking so. And if the person in the box was a D&D character, he would be able to hide in there, masking sound and whatever is appropriate. The human observer outside would not be none the wiser of what is going on in the box and would assume something. He would have NO KNOWLEDGE of what is going on or if there's still someone in there. The location would be a guess.
Not necessarily - there are other senses. If you can't see it but you can hear it and smell it, then you know its location.
This is a subtlety that I think is sometimes missed. In the game, Hiding involves all the senses. The Stealth skill covers knowing how to step lightly, avoid noisy terrain, mask your scent, stop your gear from rustling, take advantage of concealment and camouflage, etc.
Being unseen does not mean you are hidden; being unseen is the prerequisite for attempting to hide.
I agree... almost completely. I would say that it would be "possible to know its location", and in combat as long as there's no hide action that has been taken location has to be assumed as known, special situations and dm adjudication as obvious exceptions.
Even if i do not cover my tracks, as long as i'm far enough my location is still not known, and i'm still 100% hiding.I have left a track, something that can be used to follow me, but my location is still a guess for everyone involved.
Smell is usually not considered as viable for location, but enough for noticing if strong enough, even in combat. (i suppose, not really 100% sure about it but iirc there's something in the phb)
And again, i do not think that known location automatically means no stealth. Just that the vast majority of times you know the location of someone because you end up seeing them, removing advantages of being unseen - including hiding.
Strictly speaking, if it hasn't taken the Hide action, it's not hidden, period.
Only in combat. There's no action tracking when not needed outside of combat.
Even then,
for me it's not really that black and white. As hidden is "unseen and unheard" and such a status can be reached in other ways. HOWEVER you are not putting any effort into masking everything else that could give away your location and such a thing has consequences.
