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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seusomon" data-source="post: 4397494" data-attributes="member: 68641">Hi Phesic -There are dozens of threads here and on the WotC site, where confusion and disagreement about stealth are quite apparent. Here are a few of the issues I recall coming up in those threads (apologies if I misunderstand or mischaracterize any of these issues):1. A character needs concealment or cover to make a stealth check. Allies provide cover against ranged attacks. Can I stand behind an ally and use stealth to hide from my enemies and make sneak attacks against them?2. I hide behind a tree. As long as I am in that single square, I have cover and concealment. If I move out, I am immediately spotted. Can I pick my nose using stealth as a free action, declare that my enemies are now "unaware" of me, and use sneak attack? Can I do this repeatedly, round after round, standing in the same spot, sneakily picking my nose?3. Is the enemy's perception check active or passive? When and why? If the enemies make active perception checks, we have maybe 20 goblins all trying to spot me while I pick my nose behind the tree. This happens every round. And maybe my allies are making stealth checks too. Isn't this a bit much?4. Making an attack means my enemies are no longer unaware of me. What do I need to do, stealthily, to make them unaware of me again. Do I need to change location, do any action at all with a successful stealth check, or just wait for my next turn?5. What does "unaware of me" actually mean? That my enemies do not know that I exist? That they do not know my general whereabouts? That they do not know my exact location? That they do not know the details of what I am doing this moment? The answer to that question has a big impact on how useful stealth is to establish combat advantage by the "enemies unaware of you" criteria.6. If you pass a stealth check against one enemy, but fail against his buddy, do you assume the buddy lets him know what's up and ruins your combat advantage?...and so on.The official replies haven't been entirely consistent with each other, or with the RAW. We get the impression that rogues are supposed to be using stealth  -> enemies unaware -> combat advantage -> sneak attack almost all the time, but that's a chain with a number of links to it, and a common-sense approach would often result in at least one of those links breaking fairly regularly.There's also a confusion about stealth making the enemy "unaware of you" and the rules about unseen adversaries. Unaware = unseen = invisible?In a rules set where almost every condition is very clearly and unambiguously defined, both in terms of its causes and its consequences, we are having to guess our way through the condition "hidden"/"enemy unaware of you", both in terms of how you get that condition and in terms of what you can actually do when you have it, without losing it.</blockquote>

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