Hiding and Blindness (updated)

[Ovinomancer]

I'm not trying to make a case for "never". Such cases are not pragmatic for human-moderated RPG. What my house rule is intended to lay out is what is "usually sufficient". Players can rely upon their character's ability to do or not do it, simpliciter.


Exactly! So my house rule is intended to tell players what they can always rely on. It should be rare - maybe never in our experience - that being unseen is not sufficient to hide.

That's not all your houserule is doing, and RAW  already allows that being unseen allows hiding.  After all "cannot be seen" meets tge writen criteria of "can't be clearly seen."

Besides, thus started with a correction as to what's RAW, which you asserted you had to be unseen to hide.  If you said that was RAW then whike proposing your houserule, I'm unckear how your houserule adds to that in this case.

I certainly agree that sometimes a character can hide when "not clearly seen" - sustaining the literal truthiness of that statement. Examples include the racial traits "Naturally Stealthy" and "Mask of the Wild", the class feature "Hide in Plain Sight", and the feat "Skulker". For characters that don't have those traits, they should know that they usually cannot try to hide if they are seen to any extent.

According to RAW, you can always hide when not "clearly seen." What constitutes not clearly seen is variable, but not the ability to hide when it obtains.

Our positions could be nearer than our debate belies. Say I am playing a character with Skulker and am in a dimly-lit environment. I can expect that usually I can take a Hide action, while Billy, not having Skulker or anything like it, cannot. Having taken that action, I am now unseen so far as creatures whose passive Wisdom (perception) is lower than my Dexterity (stealth) check result. A case where hiding indeed bestows unseen on a character. For me this sort of case falls under "exception-not-the-rule". If my permit to hide is that creatures around me are distracted... then as soon as they look my way I am not unseen. In such a case, I was unseen not because of what I did, but because of what they did. Hiding did not then bestow unseen.

That last is splitting hairs too fine.  Many times a condition of unseen can be removed by a change in circumstance.  If you are hiding behind the couch and I walk around it you're no longer unseen.  Pointing out that circumstances can change to remove unseen does not mean that you were never unseen.

Backing up to your first point here, there exist condition outside of unseen that can allow hiding.  Being in a crowd, for instance.  Possibly being behind 3/4 cover could be sufficient.  It is incorrect to say that unseen is a necessary requirement to hide as a general rule.  You can make it so, but I find doing so to be limiting.

For what it's worth, there's almost never a question of when hiding is possible in my games.

I want to make sense of this for my players. I want them to understand that if they start out unseen, they can hide. If they have something - a feat, a spell, whatever - that forms an exception: great! They can't rely on being hidden making them unseen: the two are not invariably connected.

RAW does this your second sentence already.  Your last is still incorrect -- if you are hidden you are unseen.  If you are unseen, you're not necessarily hidden.  If A (hidden) then B (unseen) doesn't imply if B then A, or B if and only if A.  You keep arguing the latter and it doesn't follow.

 

[Oofta]

Kidding aside, adventurers generally wear boots (even halflings, if you read Tolkien's letters), and peripheral vision is great for getting around in the dark at night. I don't think any of those things would slow down the average party.

There's a big difference between pitch black (ever been in a cave when they turn off the lights?) and varying degrees of dimness. I think 5E oversimplifies things a bit - I've walked through the woods at night with no light. As long as I stayed on a path I could move at full speed. Off the path and through the woods? I would have been tripping or walking into a tree branch on a regular basis unless I was going slow.

In a pitch black cave? Where I'm truly blind? It would be difficult to not walk into a wall, much less over the edge of a cliff without using a ten foot pole as a probe.

So wide open area with zero obstacles? No problem but extremely rare to the point of being practically non-existent for any significant distance. Walking around when it's not pitch black? Depends on how dark and the terrain.

In any case, I think it's a DMs call with too many variables to have a single hard and fast rule. YMMV.

 

[clearstream]

So this is where I have landed currently -

Unseen, but not Unheard
Being unseen has offensive and defensive benefits, giving advantage or disadvantage depending on who sees whom. When you can’t see your target, you still know its location from the noise it makes, allowing you to target it with ranged and melee attacks.
You stop being unseen if you show yourself, such as to aim a ranged attack at a target, unless you are concealed by magic or for some reason unobserved.

Why this? I found in extensive play in the Underdark, where for a great many encounters the environment was either dark or dimly lit, and where drow added in magical darkness for good measure, that players needed a clear distinction between being unseen and being hidden: it had to be clear that hidden was a different thing from unseen. Players also wanted to know when they could attempt a hide check, simpliciter. At higher levels it also became important to be clear on what something like Greater Invisibility does. Additionally, two Warlocks with Devil's Sight and a drow Monk were often in a position where they could see creatures that could not see them, due to differences in vision ranges.

Unseen and Unheard: Hiding
Being hidden has a defensive benefit, forcing attackers to choose the square they think you are in when they attack you: automatically missing if incorrect. You become hidden, i.e. unseen and unheard, by taking the Hide action: you can try to hide if you are—
• Heavily-obscured by such things as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage;
• Concealed by an object that blocks vision entirely such as a creature two sizes larger than you;
• Unobserved such as when a creature is distracted;
• Unseen such as through an invisibility spell or a class ability.
You stop being hidden when you are in a creature’s field of vision under circumstances that would prevent you attempting to hide from it, or make sounds that it can hear, or attack it.

Why this? While characters are hidden they are always unseen. (Being hidden means you are unseen and unheard.) One option is to have two sets of stacked benefits - stating that being hidden gives you advantage/disadvantage etc depending on who sees whom and it makes attackers have to guess your square. Alternatively, one could say that the first part is attached to being unseen, and the second part is attached to being hidden (i.e. also unheard). I preferred that: it feels more elegant... less redundancy in the system.

Blinded
Attackers have advantage on their attack rolls against blinded creatures that they can see. Each foot of movement while blinded costs 1 extra foot of speed. To Dash you must make a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (DC 12) or fall prone, unless you are in contact with a sighted guide.

Why this? Again over a great many encounters involving questions about vision and stealth etc, I found a lack of mechanical difference between fighting in say a dense fog cloud versus fighting in a perfectly clear, well-lit room. That's because the advantage from attacking creatures that can't see you is cancelled out by the disadvantage of not being able to see them. Firing arrows into a fog cloud cast by an annis hag, for instance. There was narrative dissonance, and as a DM I was denied a chance to make combat slightly more varied. What the house rule does is only give advantage to attackers that can see their blinded (or effectively blinded) target. Similar dissonances arose over pursuits through darkness and so on. No one wanted anything clunky slowing down the action, so this came out as a good compromise.

 

[clearstream]

In any case, I think it's a DMs call with too many variables to have a single hard and fast rule.

Isn't it all a DM's call? Every part. Sticking someone with a short sword has as many variables, very different from flailing them, yet both are summarised to an attack roll.

Game rules are constitutive. They're limitations accepted as a group in order to create an interesting experience. Hard and fast rules, covering common situations, help maintain the flow, and enable and validate player actions... their leverage over the shared narrative. In order to be robust, they should have care in construction, feedback, playtesting, thought given to how they impact the gestalt of other rules. They should buttress rather than dissipate suspension of disbelief. They have value.

Your examples absolutely chime for me - my similar experience is from larping in pitch-black WW2 tunnels. We don't need a realistic simulation; we just need rules that are resilient, work well with other rules, and give a decent narrative feel and fair mechanical benefits or penalties.

./mini rant ends

 

[Oofta]

Isn't it all a DM's call? Every part. Sticking someone with a short sword has as many variables, very different from flailing them, yet both are summarised to an attack roll.

Game rules are constitutive. They're limitations accepted as a group in order to create an interesting experience. Hard and fast rules, covering common situations, help maintain the flow, and enable and validate player actions... their leverage over the shared narrative. In order to be robust, they should have care in construction, feedback, playtesting, thought given to how they impact the gestalt of other rules. They should buttress rather than dissipate suspension of disbelief. They have value.

Your examples absolutely chime for me - my similar experience is from larping in pitch-black WW2 tunnels. We don't need a realistic simulation; we just need rules that are resilient, work well with other rules, and give a decent narrative feel and fair mechanical benefits or penalties.

./mini rant ends

I think there are different categories of rules and rulings.

For example we have clearcut rules. I would assume that most people have a pretty good idea of how AC works for example. Some people might have house rules that override how it works but it's straightforward and clear.

Other rule have some room for interpretation that don't seem to be intentional. See the Leomund's Tiny Hut thread for an example. When I see things like that I make a ruling that makes sense and we move on.

Then there's the third category. Rules that were left intentionally vague. Stealth is one of the best examples of this. Personally I'm glad they left the rules vague because it lets me work out with my group what's going to be most fun. I'm okay with some ambiguity as long as the DM is consistent and logical in their enforcement of their rulings.

So to answer your question, for me I don't want hard and fast rules for things (like stealth) that were left intentionally vague. I think there are far, far too many variables at play and when put to the test you'd have to have pages of legalize to quantify all the possibilities. For me, I'd rather go over general method for my rulings in the session 0 and think about edge cases as they come up.

There's nothing wrong with what you're trying to do, I just don't see a need for it for me or my group. D&D isn't a board game, making judgement calls about what works is just part of the game for that third category of rules.

 

[clearstream]

I think there are different categories of rules and rulings.

For example we have clearcut rules. I would assume that most people have a pretty good idea of how AC works for example. Some people might have house rules that override how it works but it's straightforward and clear.

Other rule have some room for interpretation that don't seem to be intentional. See the Leomund's Tiny Hut thread for an example. When I see things like that I make a ruling that makes sense and we move on.

Then there's the third category. Rules that were left intentionally vague. Stealth is one of the best examples of this. Personally I'm glad they left the rules vague because it lets me work out with my group what's going to be most fun. I'm okay with some ambiguity as long as the DM is consistent and logical in their enforcement of their rulings.

So to answer your question, for me I don't want hard and fast rules for things (like stealth) that were left intentionally vague. I think there are far, far too many variables at play and when put to the test you'd have to have pages of legalize to quantify all the possibilities. For me, I'd rather go over general method for my rulings in the session 0 and think about edge cases as they come up.

There's nothing wrong with what you're trying to do, I just don't see a need for it for me or my group. D&D isn't a board game, making judgement calls about what works is just part of the game for that third category of rules.

I don't know that stealth was intentionally left vague, notwithstanding Crawford's face-saving on the matter. I think they just couldn't yet find the right mechanics. Along with resting/resource-recovery, it is one of the harder mechanical problems to solve in RPG.

Which is what makes it interesting to work on, and helpful to see what guidance groups with a lot of experience on the matter might have to offer. It may be true that all DM's are despots. Perhaps some are modest despots... if you see what I mean? What I might do next is collate together the interpretations, house rules and rulings of others on this subject, to see if there is anything between those that can lead to progress. [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]'s focus on "not clearly seen" shed some interesting light: it seems likely that others' thoughts will, too.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't know that stealth was intentionally left vague, notwithstanding Crawford's face-saving on the matter. I think they just couldn't yet find the right mechanics. Along with resting/resource-recovery, it is one of the harder mechanical problems to solve in RPG.

Which is what makes it interesting to work on, and helpful to see what guidance groups with a lot of experience on the matter might have to offer. It may be true that all DM's are despots. Perhaps some are modest despots... if you see what I mean? What I might do next is collate together the interpretations, house rules and rulings of others on this subject, to see if there is anything between those that can lead to progress. [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]'s focus on "not clearly seen" shed some interesting light: it seems likely that others' thoughts will, too.

You mean my focus on what the rules say? I'd strongly suggest that you take time to closely read the rules again, absent your assumptions. Try to take them at face value and work through play with them. I've had lots if hiding in my games with many situations and have not ever needed to adjust the rules or had a situation where players were uncertain about them once I actually read them and just used them as is.

 

[clearstream]

You mean my focus on what the rules say? I'd strongly suggest that you take time to closely read the rules again, absent your assumptions. Try to take them at face value and work through play with them. I've had lots if hiding in my games with many situations and have not ever needed to adjust the rules or had a situation where players were uncertain about them once I actually read them and just used them as is.

Yes, your focus on "not clearly seen" helped draw my attention to cases - such as with Skulker - where a character might be not-unseen but able to take the hide action. In such cases, I believe that successfully hiding makes them unseen. Those cases aren't intended to be usual so far as I can see, but if you think so - all power to you. I need to make a tweak and then it feels like I will have a resilient set of guidelines. I'll then cast the net wider and see what others have proposed to deal with these similar instances.

"Not clearly seen" is hedging language that includes a spectrum from unseen to, to some extent, seen. It applies precisely to my guidelines, as there are indeed cases across that spectrum where hiding is possible. The usual case, that characters without extenuating abilities can rely on, is unseen. A direct question then - do you concur that if a creature is in a situation that it is seen, such as in a dimly lit room with other creatures that can see it, and has a feat like Skulker; upon successfully hiding (beating all their passive or active perceptions) it becomes both unseen to those other creatures and its location is no longer known by them? Or do you think something else happens?

 

[Oofta]

I don't know that stealth was intentionally left vague, notwithstanding Crawford's face-saving on the matter. I think they just couldn't yet find the right mechanics. Along with resting/resource-recovery, it is one of the harder mechanical problems to solve in RPG.

Which is what makes it interesting to work on, and helpful to see what guidance groups with a lot of experience on the matter might have to offer. It may be true that all DM's are despots. Perhaps some are modest despots... if you see what I mean? What I might do next is collate together the interpretations, house rules and rulings of others on this subject, to see if there is anything between those that can lead to progress. [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]'s focus on "not clearly seen" shed some interesting light: it seems likely that others' thoughts will, too.

There was a podcast on this back in 2017 that talks about how they left the rules vague on purpose. You seem to be what appears to be one of the vocal minority that doesn't like that decision, but I for one think it was the right one.

One of the biggest barriers to entry and smooth game flow with 3.x D&D was the over-reliance on trying to define rules for all situations. It doesn't work. Feel free to come up with your house rules, but they will never be able to cover every situation that arise in my games.

 

[clearstream]

There was a podcast on this back in 2017 that talks about how they left the rules vague on purpose.

I've heard all that and don't believe for a second that if they'd had clearer rules they wouldn't have published them. In the end however, it doesn't matter what their motives are, nor do I need to second-guess them. As a DM, having just run numerous encounters where the rules in question played an important part, I'm happy to pull together some guidelines.

You seem to be what appears to be one of the vocal minority that doesn't like that decision, but I for one think it was the right one.

In looking at other DM and player's questions about vision and hiding, I found them numerous enough to easily justify contributing. But again, all I wanted here is help to make these guidelines as good as they can be, not approval to write and submit them. That sounds blunt, but you know - you're the one with that Disclaimer. If it means anything, if I am enjoying what I am doing why are you raining on my parade?

One of the biggest barriers to entry and smooth game flow with 3.x D&D was the over-reliance on trying to define rules for all situations. It doesn't work. Feel free to come up with your house rules, but they will never be able to cover every situation that arise in my games.

Honestly, this fact was acknowledge in every edition of D&D. There would be rules - as clear, well-tested, and resilient as the designers could craft - and these rules would inevitably not cover everything. The thing with vision and hiding is that it can come up a lot, especially in the Underdark. For some campaigns, it is core gameplay. I think WotC can do better in this area, and again, am happy to spend time mulling over what I've experienced, what others have written or told me about, and attempting to craft something that could help DMs.

Are you asserting that you won't use them in order to... what? Discourage me from writing them? Isn't that at odds with your Standard Disclaimer?