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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 7528946" data-attributes="member: 71699">I'm sorry if I came across as facetious. Seriously, I think there are two important things to keep in mind here. One is specific trumps general: a class could have a feature that said "You can try to hide whenever you feel like it" and that would trump any general rule about that. In the case of the halfling though, you must be "obscured" which seems to reference heavily obscured: it seems to say - being small and quick, a halfling can become unseen by ducking behind a larger creature. Rather than saying - a halfling can hide even when it is in plain sight. Ranger "Hide in Plain Sight" is a misnomer, when you consider the terms of the feature. They have to spend 1 minute camouflaging themselves, then they can try and hide only if there is a surface to press themselves against. It seems to say - a ranger can make themselves unseen by using camouflage. Again, it doesn't seem to say that a ranger in unmitigated plain sight can hide, notwithstanding the misleading title.All I'm saying here is that the strong wording for invisibility - "always" - and its inclusion as a concrete example in the call-out text on hiding, makes it plausibly considered a strong hint about what is expected to happen.I think we do disagree about this, because I can't find anywhere in RAW where being hidden produces being unseen. Only the converse, where being obscured allows becoming hidden. And where being hidden ends as soon as not obscured, if anyone looks your way (5e D&D doesn't use facings so this is a matter of being otherwise distracted per the text).From experience, I believe the rules have two key shortfalls for play at the table, that can be helped by working out and playtesting some house rules. One is that a DM can't use dense fog or whatever to create a fight that feels different from fighting in broad daylight (because of advantage and disadvantage cancelling). Another is that running blindly is exactly the same under RAW's mechanics as having full sight. A third is that although the reasoning for unseen and hiding are stitched through the system and emerge in several places, they're not spelled out crisply so that players can feel certain what to expect.In each case, a DM can certainly make stuff up. Absolutely, the goal shouldn't be to make rules for every little detail. Yet darkness, fog, vision and hiding are common parts of the narrative that players ask to leverage. So this isn't a case of the flight speed of a swallow, European or African, loaded or unloaded. It's something I find my players are always looking to me for clear guidance on, and anecdotally read other people in the community with similar concerns.</blockquote>

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