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<blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 6374982" data-attributes="member: 6688937">I hope I'm not being too pedantic to point out that at least IME, different fields can and do use widely varying style guides.&nbsp; Additionally, this PHB seems to be written in a much more casual style than the previous two. Which, I believe, is intentional. While I may have yearned for more stringent and clear rules in the past, I've come to appreciate the impact of that as a design goal. It seems to me a high cost for little gain (although there is gain, and cost is in the eye of the beholder, in this case.)I think that is at least part of it. Given the casual tone of the work, my interpretation of &quot;hide&quot; as denoting the action rather than the state seemed imminently natural and obvious to me. Especially so given the rest of the content in that &quot;Hiding&quot; sidebar on p.127, which begins with &quot;When you try to hide...&quot; and proceeds to delineate the relevant procedures for doing so, and when that gets blown. The discussion brought up here hadn't occurred to me until I read it here.I think stealth and hiding are actually very difficult to model well in a system like D&amp;D. I mean &quot;Hidden&quot; functions well as both a relationship (A is hidden from B) and a condition (A is hidden in the chest), but relationships and conditions tend to use (slightly) different mechanics to resolve, and hiding seems to be a special case even there. There is, for example, no analogous discussion about the relationship between Charisma(Deception) and Wisdom(Insight) or Intelligence(Investigation). Given that, the lack of specificity may, in fact, be intentional. It allows the DM to rule more clearly through fictional positioning, rather than mechanical constructions (which would then also have to be described.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ratskinner, post: 6374982, member: 6688937"] I hope I'm not being too pedantic to point out that at least IME, different fields can and do use widely varying style guides. Additionally, this PHB seems to be written in a much more casual style than the previous two. Which, I believe, is intentional. While I may have yearned for more stringent and clear rules in the past, I've come to appreciate the impact of that as a design goal. It seems to me a high cost for little gain (although there is gain, and cost is in the eye of the beholder, in this case.) I think that is at least part of it. Given the casual tone of the work, my interpretation of "hide" as denoting the action rather than the state seemed imminently natural and obvious to me. Especially so given the rest of the content in that "Hiding" sidebar on p.127, which begins with "When you try to hide..." and proceeds to delineate the relevant procedures for doing so, and when that gets blown. The discussion brought up here hadn't occurred to me until I read it here. I think stealth and hiding are actually very difficult to model well in a system like D&D. I mean "Hidden" functions well as both a relationship (A is hidden from B) and a condition (A is hidden in the chest), but relationships and conditions tend to use (slightly) different mechanics to resolve, and hiding seems to be a special case even there. There is, for example, no analogous discussion about the relationship between Charisma(Deception) and Wisdom(Insight) or Intelligence(Investigation). Given that, the lack of specificity may, in fact, be intentional. It allows the DM to rule more clearly through fictional positioning, rather than mechanical constructions (which would then also have to be described.) [/QUOTE]

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