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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6394982" data-attributes="member: 42582">What Vic Ferrari says seems to me obviously wrong, because there is the notion of "distraction", which permits a creature to remain unperceived, and therefore to remain hidden, even if not obscured.There is also the passage in the Exploration rules that says you can remain stealthy as long as you don't come out into the open, which might be read as implying that any cover or obscurement is sufficient to remain hidden (as per the 4e stealth rules).For me, the most natural reading of the rules is along the lines Dausuul has sketched, but I aslo agree with him 100% that those rules are poorly written and presented. (For instance, I have had posters argue that a wood elf rogue hiding behind a wall, in fog, becomes harder to detect if the wall is disintegrated because now the fog imposes Disadvantage on the relevant Perception check. It seems to me that nothing but poorly-written rules could lead to that conclusion, which surely has no grounding at all in the fiction of the situation.)How am I meant to know which rules are deliberately ambiguous, which are errors (like Grappler) and which are just poorly written (like the Magic Missile example)?The Stealth rules certainy don't come out and say "You know what, let the DM decide". In fact there are mutiple column inches of rules text, which turns on technical mechanical notions like heavy vs light obscurment, disadvantage to checks, etc.For me, the clear contrast is with the Hermit background's insight feature, which I regard as both a good rules and a clearly-written rule. It does come out and say that a decision abou the meaning and implications of the feature have to be worked out between player and GM.The Stealth rules could have been written that way, but weren't.</blockquote>

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