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<blockquote data-quote="Xetheral" data-source="post: 6988213" data-attributes="member: 6802765">One doesn't need to be in an encounter to hide, and having advance knowledge of future encounter parameters isn't guaranteed. At its most basic, whether or not the hiding character successfully evades notice--and for how long--directly contributes to encounter distance. That alone renders circular your requirement that encounter distance be determined prior to deciding if someone is in full view and thus whether or not they can hide. Additionally, the later actions of other PCs or NPCs may influence encounter distance, again preventing the DM from knowing the encounter parameters ahead of time.Out of curiosity, before allowing someone to hide outside of an encounter, do you really sit down and try to figure out what the parameters of future encounters will be in order to determine whether or not the character is in full view? Maybe I'm missing something, but that seems preposterous. Isn't it a thousand times easier to just let anyone hide anywhere so long as they aren't currently observed?In both cases hiding may be automatically lost depending on the movement of future opponents, so your approach doesn't save any work in the long run, it just adds a lot of it up front. I'm hard-pressed to see any advantage to your approach other than justifying what is turning into an ever-more-tortuous interpretation of Crawford's Sage Advice.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Xetheral, post: 6988213, member: 6802765"] One doesn't need to be in an encounter to hide, and having advance knowledge of future encounter parameters isn't guaranteed. At its most basic, whether or not the hiding character successfully evades notice--and for how long--directly contributes to encounter distance. That alone renders circular your requirement that encounter distance be determined prior to deciding if someone is in full view and thus whether or not they can hide. Additionally, the later actions of other PCs or NPCs may influence encounter distance, again preventing the DM from knowing the encounter parameters ahead of time. Out of curiosity, before allowing someone to hide outside of an encounter, do you [I]really[/I] sit down and try to figure out what the parameters of future encounters will be in order to determine whether or not the character is in full view? Maybe I'm missing something, but that seems preposterous. Isn't it a thousand times easier to just let anyone hide anywhere so long as they aren't currently observed? In both cases hiding may be automatically lost depending on the movement of future opponents, so your approach doesn't save any work in the long run, it just adds a lot of it up front. I'm hard-pressed to see any advantage to your approach other than justifying what is turning into an ever-more-tortuous interpretation of Crawford's Sage Advice. [/QUOTE]

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