I think it is hard to claim or to expect that there aren't quite a few places that there will be dissociation (undesirable as it may be)
Generally when I post I try to be sincere, because it's a strained enough medium as it is without too much irony or double meanings.
But in this case I was being a bit sarcastic - I'm in the camp that thinks the whole "dissociated mechanics" panic is nonsense (see eg
this old and epic thread). But there are better and worse metagame mechanics, and ones that do or don't make sense within the bigger system. I think that 5e's stat check system is generally meant to be non-metagame - the stat checks correlate, at least broadly, to actions the character is performing in the fiction; and the correlation is meant to be reflected in the stat being checked. (So eg a DEX check should involve somehow being quick or nimble or . . . )
So I don't think it's that good a fit, in 5e, for the DEX check associated with a wood elf hiding in snow to correlate to something, in the fiction, that doesn't involve being nimble (like, say, suddenly conjuring a curtain of snow or rain).
Which takes me to the following:
An ordinary person in heavier snow (i.e. enough to provide heavy obscurement) can't be seen, and is thus eligible to take the hide action under my interpretation of the hiding rules.
I was merely trying to answer your question regarding what is happening in the fiction at my table when a wood elf takes the hide action while being observed. Does my answer make sense to you? (I can't tell from your response.)
It doesn't quite make sense, not because it's incoherent or contradictory - not at all! - but because I feel it's incomplete. I can't work out what your mental picture is, and so I can't quite construct my own clear mental picture.
In the ordinary case, the person who steps out his/her front door into the heavily obscuring snowstorm is ipso facto unable to be seen - because the snowstorm makes vision impossible (let's bracket the case of the person 1" away, say a prone character above whom the person in question is standing - that's a corner case I wouldn't expect the rules to handle smoothly without some common-sense adjudication). So attempting to hide just means making no noise.
But the elf who is being observed through the lightly obscuring snowstorm, and
then, subsequently to being observed, decides to hide - what does s/he do? Turn sideways and disappear behind the snow? I can't quite see how it works. Whereas the idea that, if
unobserved, s/he can then step out into the snow and no one looking for him/her (who fails the WIS check) will see him/her - that I can make sense of. Because nature cloaks the elf, the lightly obscuring snow is enough to conceal her from casual sight (ie anything short of a successful WIS check vs the DEX check).
I guess I'm drawing a distinction between
not being noticed, or easily able to be noticed and
vanishing while under immediate observation. Which is my attempt to make sense of the words on p 60, that you can't attempt to hide from a creature that can see you clearly. I think if you've spotted the elf, you can see him/her clearly enough that the lightly obscuring snow won't help.
Actually, I hadn't made up my mind, and think that I still haven't.
<snip>
Somehow, I find your and @
Hriston's explanations quite intuitively convincing and yet intellectually, I can't quite make sense of it.
OK, sorry to have wrongly imputed an opinion to you.
As I hope comes through in my posts, I'm not 100% sure what the best way to think about it is. My thinking on these issues is heavily influenced by 4e (which I know some will say is a problem!), but 4e doesn't approach all these things in quite the same way as 5e (eg it is more likely to "solve" the issue by giving a "fiat" ability that allows becoming invisible, or allows an already-hidden character to remain hidden despite breaching the normal requirements - it doesn't rely as heavily as 5e does upon using the basic stat/skill mechanics to handle these somewhat supernatural/fey cases).
Wood elf in snow storm, being directly observed. Observer turns away. I assume you will now allow the elf to attempt to hide. If so, let's say the elf rolls well enough to beat the observer's passive Perception, but does not move from her location. The observer now turns back and looks at the location where he last saw the elf (fully expecting her to be there). I assume you will rule, though, that the elf is now hidden.
That seems right. I think [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] agrees (Hriston, I got you wrong once upthread - sorry if I've done so again!).
This is similar (I think) to the case where the elf, who is not observed, steps out of his/her front door into a lightly obscuring snowstorm and the observer sees the front door open but doesn't see the elf, because nature is cloaking him/her.
I think this is what the elf's ability permits that a normal person can't succesfully attempt.
Wood elf in snow storm, being directly observed. Observer does not turn away. My understanding is that you will not allow the elf to attempt to hide (or will rule that the attempt automatically fails). Yet there is nothing to prevent the elf in the fiction from taking exactly the same actions (whatever they were) that the elf did in (1), so I assert that she does so.
At this point Observer #1 and Observer #2 have exactly the same (external) stimuli impinging on their senses. And yet their perceptions are different. Since they have had different experiences, this is by no means impossible, but I wonder if you could just briefly explain the perceptual psychology of what has gone on here.
I think this is helping me make sense of [MENTION=6701422]Plaguescarred[/MENTION]'s reference to camouflage, upthread (although, judging from post 441, we are still seeing the ingame situation and its rules/mechanical correlate a bit differently).
In the two scenarios, the observers have the same immediate stimuli but different histories. This goes back to [MENTION=413]Uller[/MENTION]'s example of the keys: when I can't see my keys hidden among clutter on the bench, and then suddenly notice them, nothing has changed about the external stimuli. But something has changed in my perceptual cognition. (I'm a philosopher but not a scientist or psychologist, so I'm not going to try and push the analysis any harder than that.)
So observer 2 has a different cognitive/perceptual history from observer 1 - s/he has not only had the elf in sight the whole time, but has knowingly done so, and been able to keep track of him/her.
I don't doubt that a good stage magician can put down some keys and make them disappear in the clutter - but at least to my amateur understanding, the magician does this by distracting me, by making me take my eyes off the keys even for a split-second. In terms of the 5e hiding rules, this would be an example of distraction, as mentioned on p 60. In practical D&D terms, perhaps the elf is a wizard and has his/her familiar make a noise or otherwise engage in some performance that distracts the observer, allowing him/her to make the check - in those circusmtances maybe the familiar should make a CHA check (vs WIS/insight, and if the check fails the opposed WIS/perception check has advantage).
But without that distraction, the chance to establish the camouflage isn't there, because of observer 2's different perceptual history and hence different cognitive state, when compared to observer 1.
As an aside, I have another separate, but related, issue. In (1), while the observer is turned away and before the elf has tried to hide, I think it can be reasonably said that the observer "knows the location of" the elf - he believes her to be at a certain place and he is objectively correct. However, if we accept that knowing the location of a creature means that it cannot be hidden from you, then as soon as the elf has succeeded at hiding the observer no longer "knows the location of" the elf, because if he did, then she would not be hidden. This despite the fact that the elf's location has not changed and nothing relevant in the observer's brain has changed. Again, I am not claiming that this is impossible, but it seems that it must involve an interesting definition of "hidden" and/or "knows the location of". I would be interested to see definitions that help this make sense.
There have been a couple of posts on this. I posted on it at 413 upthread, contrasting "knowing" in the sense of "believing based on inference eg from memory, or from a reliable informant" vs "knowing in virtue of perceptual access". Observer 1 was
perceiving, then turns away and therefore ceases to perceive, then turns back and still believes (and believes truly) on the basis of memory, but no longer has immediate perceptual access.
I think this is important, not primarily from the rules terminology point of view but from the point of view of making sense of the fiction. It's like playing an "eye spy" or "Where's Wally" game (I have young-ish children and so do that from time-to-time) - you can find the blue plastic astronaut in the photo filled with all sorts of paraphenelia, and then look up to tell someone else that you found it, and then look back down and remember more-or-less where you saw it but still have some trouble picking it out.
Of course, practice makes it easier to re-establish the perceptual access on the basis of these sorts of reliable memories - in mechanical terms, this is what I take a good WIS and/or proficiency in Perception to correspond to.
