Hide in Plain Sight

[Markn]

After reviewing the D&D3.5 FAQ regarding the question of spring attack, hiding and hide in plain sight ability I have a question (Posters may want to review the question posed on page 15 of the FAQ). Anyways, it states that "A character with hide in plain sight classs feature can make a Hide check even while being observed. This doesn't require any action to accomplish this. The character could attack a foe, then move to a place with sufficient cover or conealment to allow a Hide check, making the hide check as part of movement."

This sentence leads me to believe that you wouldn't be able to use the shadow of the person being attacked (otherwise the attacker could make a hide check while standing right beside his victime without the need to move) as concealment/cover to hide in. However, if you read the Hide in Plains Sight ability it states you can use any shadow but your own. How would you adjudicate this situation. Am I being to literal on what a shadow is? Can you use any persons shadow (other than your own)? How much light do you need to have a sufficient enough shadow to use?

To me, the answers to the above questions could make HiPS either extremely powerul or considerably weaker (though still not that weak!). Is there any precedent anywhere on these?

Thanks for your help, guys!

 

[Nail]

A few points:

• The FAQ is often either misleading or wrong. I sincerely wish this was not true.
• HiPS (Hide in Plain Sight) is an often debated ability on these boards. See if you can convince someone with the search feature to find you a couple o' threads.
• HiPS allows hiding in someone else's shadow. Yep, it's a powerful ability.
• Whether or not there is a shadow is (ultimately) up to the DM. Yep, it's arbitrary.
• For extra credit, answer the question: "Does True Sight allow you to see someone using the HiPS ability?"

Have fun.

if you read the Hide in Plains Sight ability it states you can use any shadow but your own. How would you adjudicate this situation?

 

[Thanee]

Anyways, it states that "A character with hide in plain sight classs feature can make a Hide check even while being observed. This doesn't require any action to accomplish this. The character could attack a foe, then move to a place with sufficient cover or conealment to allow a Hide check, making the hide check as part of movement."

That part is clearly wrong. The shadow only needs to be within 10 ft.

Hiding with the help of your opponent's shadow should be fine.

Shadow is meant more like darkness, I believe. No light is really required.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Markn]

Shadow is meant more like darkness, I believe. No light is really required.

Bye
Thanee

OK, so shadows are like darkness. If it's 12 noon, is there a sufficient enough shadow from someone to hide in? If you are in a room with torches/lanterns on all sides, is there enough shadow from someone to hide in?

Does the rogue get concealment when hiding in the shadow of a person? He would in any other parts of darkness (provided low light and darkvision are not used) so it would be difficult to argue against that.

The question then becomes do you treat PC/NPC shadows as any other darkness but only for characters with HiPS while other characters can not? If yes, then he may get concealment from attacks while in the shadow and any other benefits/penalties from being in darkness. If not, then it would be difficult to let someone use that shadow as a place to hide. HiPS seems to be a very fine line that is not followed through to its conclusion regarding the rules of darkness....

Anyway, since people don't seem to be disagreeing with the rest of the FAQ I would think that the rest of statement was correct.

Nail,

The true seeing questions seems obvious to me (although maybe I am not considering something). The second line states "The subject sees through normal and magical darkness..." Therefore, the recipient of True Seeing treats it as if there is no shadow and therefore without shadow HiPS does not work.

 

[Nail]

OK, so shadows are like darkness.

No.

Shadows are not "like darkness". They are shadows. There is no rule requiring the shadow to be especially "dark", "deep", or whatever. The only text we have is:

As long as she is within 10 feet of some sort of shadow, a shadowdancer can hide herself from view in the open without anything to actually hide behind.

The word "shadow" does not have a particular game-defined meaning. It's not in the glossary, for example. It simply is what it is.

...in any other parts of darkness (provided low light and darkvision are not used)

You've made a mistake here. Can you find it?

...The true seeing questions seems obvious to me (although maybe I am not considering something). The second line states "The subject sees through normal and magical darkness..." Therefore, the recipient of True Seeing treats it as if there is no shadow and therefore without shadow HiPS does not work.

Again: you've made a mistake here. In part, it's because you are treating the HiPS ability as allowing a particular shadow to provide concealment. The shadow is NOT providing the HiPS Shadowdancer with concealment. In fact, concealment has exactly nothing to do with the ability.

 

[boredgremlin]

I allways find this debate a bit silly. Sure you could hide in someones shadow. But for what? Like a half second i imagine. Once you vanish right next to him he gonna do one of two things.

1) start swinging like crazy where you were and hit you whether your hiding or not.

or 2) back away. Which will move his shadow and cause you to reappear.

Three other questions seem like simple common sense with people who like HiPS just twisting rules and ignoring common sense to make thier favorite power stronger.

1) Shadows. A shadow is a area with less light then the area around it. Thats why it appears shadowy. Less light= darkness. Why? Because both shadows and darkness are relative descriptions of a dim lighting condition. Therefore anything that penetrates darkness must penetrate shadows.

2) people saying seeing in the shadow wont reveal the hider. Thats just dumb. Of course its gonna reveal him. He is still right there, just hiding magically in the dark, with an ability that is dependent on darkness. He isnt invisible, just hiding really well. This power should have included some descriptive text like "the character wraps the shadows around themselves making light deflect away from them". That would have solved this pretty well and not let rules lawyers argue semantics over common sense.

3) True seeing must work to reveal the hider because he is hiding with a quasi magic ability, which true seeing pierces, and in darkness which true seeing also pierces. So it trumps both of the features of HiPS.

 

[Thanee]

OK, so shadows are like darkness. If it's 12 noon, is there a sufficient enough shadow from someone to hide in? If you are in a room with torches/lanterns on all sides, is there enough shadow from someone to hide in?

You just need some spot where it is dark, this can be in a dark cavern with no light, or during the day, standing close to a tree. That's how I see it, anyways.

You don't hide inside the shadow; as I envision it, you use some sort of magical power (supernatural ability) to conceal yourself (similar in effect but not equal to becoming invisible), drawing energy from the nearby shadow, which must be within 10 ft. in order to have your magic work.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Abraxas]

1) start swinging like crazy where you were and hit you whether your hiding or not.
or 2) back away. Which will move his shadow and cause you to reappear.

If the hiding character is stupid enough to stand in one spot you could swing like crazy and possibly hit (50% miss chance) and if he isn't stupid and moves you have to guess which way to move away that takes you out of range.

2) people saying seeing in the shadow wont reveal the hider. Thats just dumb. Of course its gonna reveal him. He is still right there, just hiding magically in the dark, with an ability that is dependent on darkness. He isnt invisible, just hiding really well. This power should have included some descriptive text like "the character wraps the shadows around themselves making light deflect away from them". That would have solved this pretty well and not let rules lawyers argue semantics over common sense.

A character using HiPS isn't hiding in the dark.
He doesn't have to be in the shadow.
If the ability had included your descriptive text it might work like that but it doesn't.
The ability allows the character to hide without actually having concealment or cover.
The presence of shadow is merely the trigger.

Non-personal Shadow Present w/in 10ft
Yes - Can use HiPS
No - Can't use HiPS

Whether or not someone else can see through the shadow does nothing to this ability.

The DM and players should sit down and agree on how much shadow is needed for shadow based HiPS ability.

 

[Markn]

No.

Shadows are not "like darkness". They are shadows. There is no rule requiring the shadow to be especially "dark", "deep", or whatever. The only text we have is:

The word "shadow" does not have a particular game-defined meaning. It's not in the glossary, for example. It simply is what it is.

This is not entirely true...If you look under Vision and Light (Light sources) in the PHB you will see that outside of a light sources range it becomes shadowy light. I would consider the description for shadowy light to be the closest thing we have for describing shadow. The only exception is that the shadow of someone does not take the whole 5' square like most other kinds of shadow.

As far as low light and darvison penetrating shadow I guess you will have to point that out to me. I don't see the error. The only thing I can MAYBE see is that low light does not penetrate darkness BUT if the darkness takes up 5' or less then low light will still see through it as normal light which is what my original intent was.

Now, to review True Seeing again, I will reverse my stance. Since I stopped at the second line last time I did not read the whole thing. Near the end it states that True Seeing does not help against someone who is hiding. HiPS for an assassin is a supernatural ability and as far as I can tell supernatural abilities are meant to explain things that exist in the game but don't exist in our world but are not magical in nature - in other words it gives a scientific explanation for something that exists that is not magical in nature. Since HiPS is an example of that, Tue Seeing would not help in locating the person.

Thanee

You have a nice knack for avoiding the tough questions...
BTW, after reviewing the FAQ it appears to be answering the question for the ranger version of HiPS only. It seems to make complete sense to me and in the case of the ranger anyways seems to revalidate the underlined portion from your original response. However, that description does apply to the Assassin or the Shadowdancer. However, extrapolating from that explanation - "The character could attack a foe, then move to a place with sufficient cover or conealment to allow a Hide check" it could conceivably be change to - The character could attack a foe, then move IF NECCESSARY to a place within 10' of a shadow to allow a hide check.. I think in terms of actual game play, the assassin would only need to move after his attack if 1) He killed his opponent 2) there is no shadow around.

 

[Parlan]

If HiPS is combined with Spring Attack, I would prolly allow it, but add the Sniping -20 modifier. No it's not a ranged attack, but that seems to be fair- it's possible to pull the trick off, but the HiPS dude must be REALLY good at hiding!

Actually, I guess that would be better justified by calling it a -20 for a "Nearly Impossible" task.