I found out over the course of several game sessions that our DM is very strict if i try to hide or stay hidden with my character especially in combat scenarios.My Char: Wood elf ranger stealth prof. and mask of the wild.Lately i had a Scenario with my char being invisible (pot) and in stealth but he still ruled some mob stumble over me and allowed it to hit me although with disad.I could not use mask of the wild once yet, he strictly disallows going into hiding when there is the slightest chance any mob see me.I end up using hit and run tactics a lot (35' movement helps a lot) but tbh. had i known he is so uncomfortable with stealthy chars i might have in a char with more AC instead. What else can i do?
One of the situations was a mass combat where the Party was had some cover by a room inside a stalagmit. The DM would not allow that i hide/stealth before taking a look out. He said the mobs would instantly notice me because they look at the entrance. So, since stealth is not equal to invisibility i can live with that ruling.
But the in Initial postings Situation my char was not moving, hiding and invisible but several derro were swarming the place so he ruled one of them stumbled over me.
Since when in such a Situation, i should be able to evade the contact, no? The derro were actively searching for the group or an attacker (and lateron i learned that they had alarms there notifying them of invisible People (but not dispelling the invisibility)) i should mention that for clarity.
I think
Mask of the Wild is supposed to really give you more opportunity for hiding. It mentions heavy rain, snowing, foliage which normally are definitely not something you can hide behind/within! And they do not provide
cover so your hiding here is merely about
concealment. IMHO the DM should let these conditions easily grant you a chance of hiding (you still have to pass a Stealth check) outside of combat, for defensive purposes (not being found) or offensive purposes (i.e. ambush > get the benefit of surprise).
But hiding in combat is always more problematic, because the monsters are already watching you, and that raises the question whether you should or should not even try to get out of sight.
The general problem IMHO comes from two points of confusion:
1)
Hidden is not the same as
unseen is not the same as
covered is not the same as
concealed
-
hidden means your enemy doesn't know
where you are (if you start the encounter hidden, it also doesn't know you're there at all)
-
unseen it means your enemy cannot target you with spells and has disadvantage on attacks, and you have advantage to attack him
Hidden and unseen are more like the
results. Hidden is a stronger condition: you can be unseen but not hidden (example, you are invisible but you're making noise enough to be pinpointed, or you're standing over sand/mud and they can see your footprints, or it's raining and they can see your outline).
Cover and concealment are more like the
cause. If you move behind total cover, and such cover is not transparent, you are certainly unseen. But you also cannot be targeted, not even at disadvantage. Are you hidden tho? What causes most problem IMO is in the next bullet:
2) Moving into a hiding position is not the same as vanishing is not the same as being already hidden
Being already hidden is easy. But
becoming hidden, or
hiding, is about getting yourself into the condition by which the enemy does not know where you are.
So some DMs interpret this as, if you
move behind cover/concealment, the enemy first
sees you moving there and therefore of course it knows where you went. So
at best what you can do is, if the cover/concealment is large enough, make the enemy not know the
exact spot behind or inside it where you are now.
With concealment it makes sense: you jump into a large bush or move behind a large curtain > you succeed your Stealth check > if the enemy tries to shoot arrows at the bush or to pierce the curtain with a sword, he has to
guess the exact spot because you're hidden. Even if you fail the Stealth check, you're still unseen, so he has disadvantage.
With cover it's more pointless... you don't even need to hide in order for the enemy to be unable to know exactly in which spot you are behind such cover. (In some uncommon situation, you might want to hide anyway so that if the enemy
follows you behind cover, it won't find you, perhaps you've hidden behind some other object that was behind the cover itself).
HOWEVER... other DMs interpret the whole thing differently, such that a successful Stealth check for hiding would mean that the enemy totally fails at noticing that you went behind the cover, so from his point of view you just
vanished. That's quite different! It might be a moot point if there is clearly only one possible place you could go, but that's not always the case.
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In addition, what makes many DMs cringe, is the fact that most players investing in Stealth seem to be wanting to use it
offensively rather than defensively, and most importantly they want to use it
repeatedly during a fight. IOW, they want to keep hiding + attacking with advantage. And in order to pull it off, they leverage the confusion around
cover, which is easier to get compared to concealment.
However, cover in 5e is mostly meant to provide a bonus to AC, not really to provide the
unseen condition and thus advantage to attacks. If you stay behind cover and attack at range, you're not hiding, you're sniping. It's already a VERY GOOD position for you, because you can at least gain the AC bonus, but also in many cases you can use a minimum of movement to step into total cover where the enemy cannot target you, so essentially you can easily popup + attack + pullback, and stay untargettable (including unseen, but better)
outside your turn. I don't think that a sniper should
also be allowed to be considered unseen while attacking, as long as he pops up to attack, I rule that he is visible. And I wouldn't allow him to use the Hide action to gain that condition at next attack either, but I can see how DMs who marry the "vanish" interpretation could allow this.
I think it's good for a DM to generally adopt a "rule of thumb" such as keeping an eye on how often a sniping PC gains advantage, which is not supposed to be something you have every round of combat. If a sniper has advantage every turn, then you're clearly doing something wrong, unless you are fine with the idea that all the special abilities which grant advantage on attacks will be little worth, and players will be discouraged to play melee characters.
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Going back to your case specifically, I think the mob situation was quite chaotic and probably the mob should not have been able to pinpoint you easily even after noticing your presence. Perhaps the DM could have granted 2-3 derros in the mob an attack against you, just by chance as they all swing their weapons around and keep bumping into you.
I did not quite understood the stalagmite case, so I can't comment on that.
In general, I think your DM could probably consider adding some natural element that would let you use
Mask of the Wild, even tho in an underground adventure it's less expected than outdoor. While on your part, I would not insist on using hiding in combat for offensive purposes. Stealth is already one of the most useful skills in the game when limited to ambush and defense.
