D&D 3E/3.5 Hide in 3.5

[Usurpator]

I am reading the new PHB and just saw that Hide skill now requires cover or concealment to attempt a Hide check.

A torch now provides 20 feet of bright light, and another 20 feet of shadowy light, which gives a creature concealment. A creature in an area of bright light can only hide if it has cover.

Additionally, a creature can't hide within the visibility range of a creature with darkvision unless it has cover.

Invisible creatures get +20 on their Hide check, +40 when immobile.

That makes hiding much, much harder than before. Maybe even too hard, seriously hampering roguish types, what do you think?

BTW. There are now only two types of concealment, normal (20% miss chance) and total (50% miss chance).

 

[kreynolds]

That makes hiding much, much harder than before. Maybe even too hard, seriously hampering roguish types, what do you think?

I think it makes sense. In 3.0, it was implied that you couldn't hide in a brightly-lit empty room, but there no rules to back it up.

 

[the Jester]

Great, they finally quantified exactly how hiding works. I like this- besides, you couldn't hide in an area of bright light before, either. Now it's explicit what the hide in plain sight does and how it works: I bet it simply lets you hide without cover or concealment.

 

[Otterscrubber]

These changes make perfect sense to me.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Excellent news, a nice simple ruling.

Also nice that they reduced the complexity of concealment.

Cheers

 

[Shard O'Glase]

since there is no facing I hate this rule.

Before I could abstractly say even though there isn't cover mr x could sneak up on mr Y. Now mr Y can never be snuck up unless he's standing right next to some cover.

Sure it makes sense if I'm a guard in a cover free hallway that is well lit no one can sneak down the hallway without me seeing them. But sorry if the guard is out in the open and holding a torch I should be able to sneak up closer than 20 on them.

Lame, lame rule.

 

[Nail]

Shard-

Don't be so hard on it. Sneaking up "behind" someone sounds like a "situational" modifier to me, one that only comes about in certain circumstances, adjudicated by the DM.

In general, you can't hide in plain sight....but in a specific circumstance.......

 

[Shard O'Glase]

sneaking up behind someone happens everytime someone with an int stat above 3 tries to sneak up on someone. unfortuantely there's no behind because they play this abstract like. which is why they should of kept the skill abstract.

Mixing hard rules with abstract concepts is a bad idea IMO.

 

[billd91]

Why would invisible creatures get a bonus on their hide check? They already can't be seen by anyone without some kind of ability to detect invisibility. And they shouldn't get an invisibility bonus against someone who CAN see invisible because that factor is taken out of the equation.
Is this implying that creatures who don't have a power to see invisibility, with a sufficiently high spot roll, can still SEE them?

 

[Shard O'Glase]

even in 3e it was a spot 20 check to notice the presense but not location of an invisible person, spot 40 to nail there location down to a square.

So even invisible it was sometimes better to hide for rogues or both. With the +20 bonus it makes a hiding invisible rogue even harder to notice the precense of than before in 3., since its no longer the best score but a +20 to the already liekly high hide roll. At lower hide levels it may be easier to pinpoint a invisble hiding type, though. +20+roll+skill may be less than 40.