D&D (2024) New stealth rules.

[Incenjucar]

This awkward rule reeks of being the pet preference of someone who is either not subject to being questioned or someone who is utterly exhausting to argue with. There's no way the entire team is simultaneously unaware that this would create years of forum arguments.

 

[Charlaquin]

Here's another thing I realised last night, btw: the Invisible condition says nothing about awareness. Everyone's arguing about people magically turning invisible because they crouched behind a bush once, but all Invisible actually does is make you ineligible to be directly targeted by certain spells and causes attacks against you to have disadvantage. The guard you're dancing in front of still knows you're there, they just have a harder time hitting you (for, like, one round).

That made sense in the 2014 rules, when there were rules for the benefits of hiding that were distinct from the benefits of being invisible - you might be invisible, and therefore have advantage on attacks against creatures that can’t see you, and those creatures might have disadvantage on attacks against you, but that didn’t mean they weren’t aware of your location, which would require hiding (which would be easier to do than normal, since you needed to be unseen to hide). But now, the benefits of hiding are that you become invisible. So if becoming invisible doesn’t also mean enemies don’t know your location, then there’s no rules mechanism for how you can make your location unknown to enemies.

The Invisible condition is a replacement for the general vision rules, not magical invisibility. It's literally "not visible", that's all.

Whether or not it’s magical is kind of incidental to the actual question - can you be seen by creatures that lack any special senses while you have the invisible condition? If yes, that makes the invisibility spell pretty strange, since it doesn’t do the one thing you would expect magical invisibility to do. If no, that makes the hide action pretty dumb, since special senses shouldn’t be required to see a creature that is just hiding. Especially if they aren’t concealed or covered in any way, which the hide action does not say you need to do to retain the invisible condition.

 

[Charlaquin]

This awkward rule reeks of being the pet preference of someone who is either not subject to being questioned or someone who is utterly exhausting to argue with. There's no way the entire team is simultaneously unaware that this would create years of forum arguments.

I’d bet a very small amount of money it was Jeremy Crawford, who got sick of being asked questions about how invisibility and hiding interact with each other and decided “screw it, let’s just make them the same thing.”

 

[Thommy H-H]

That made sense in the 2014 rules, when there were rules for the benefits of hiding that were distinct from the benefits of being invisible - you might be invisible, and therefore have advantage on attacks against creatures that can’t see you, and those creatures might have disadvantage on attacks against you, but that didn’t mean they weren’t aware of your location, which would require hiding (which would be easier to do than normal, since you needed to be unseen to hide). But now, the benefits of hiding are that you become invisible. So if becoming invisible doesn’t also mean enemies don’t know your location, then there’s no rules mechanism for how you can make your location unknown to enemies.

In the 2014 rules, the only effect - in a combat situation - that your location being unknown had was to grant Surprise at the start (which is now rolled into Invisible), and that thing about saying a creature had to target a space, and would miss automatically if the target wasn't there.

In a non-combat situation, awareness is a matter of DM ruling, in the same way that attitude is. You would rule on whether a guard reacts to a PC sneaking around based on the situation at hand. In a fight though, the (momentarily) Invisible PC is assumed to be detectable in some other fashion.

I feel like this rule is a simplification of a whole bunch of barely-used and confusing vision rules from 2014, and while it might seem counterintuitive, when you actually play out its effects in a game situation, it's not a lot different from before, there's just less DM fiat over who can see what.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I'm starting to think that this rule is a deliberate attempt to make stealth in 5.5 like stealth in a CRPG. You press the icon for "stealth mode", your character crouches and is now undetectable by enemies even though on the screen it looks like you're clearly in their line of sight. If you're spotted your character stands up and stealth is over.

This seems to be what 5.5 is going for. The only thing missing is a rule that you come out of hiding if you end your move within 20' of an enemy and in their line of sight.

 

[CrackedParrot]

But why can she not see B directly? He's crouching ten feet from her in an otherwise-empty corridor. Did hiding really make him literally invisible?

How is he unseen? She's got her crossbow trained on that corner ready to shoot him the moment he turns it. How does he get right in her face before she notices him?

Mechanically, A is simply unable to see B. Narratively, the players and DM need to figure something out that doesn't sound absurd or break immersion. Perhaps B is in the rafters, hiding inside shadows, or is able to temporarily distract A.

I agree that mechanically it sounds really frustrating to think that people are literally turning invisible, but think of it more like Batman or Spider-Man sneaking up on someone, even from the front. They will figure out some way to get past A because of their incredible skill at Stealth. Mechanically, it is so much simpler to say that Batman was Invisible rather than having a whole separate condition.

Whether or not it’s magical is kind of incidental to the actual question - can you be seen by creatures that lack any special senses while you have the invisible condition? If yes, that makes the invisibility spell pretty strange, since it doesn’t do the one thing you would expect magical invisibility to do. If no, that makes the hide action pretty dumb, since special senses shouldn’t be required to see a creature that is just hiding. Especially if they aren’t concealed or covered in any way, which the hide action does not say you need to do to retain the invisible condition.

I would just shrug and say that a person who cast See Invisibility or True Seeing happens to be using Divination magic to notice non-visual queues which happens to include stealthy people. Anyone can detect a sneaking person by succeeding on a Search action, but it happens automatically for creatures with special senses.

I personally would add a house rule where creatures are constantly doing a no-action-required Search using their Passive Perception score simply to allow for creatures like dogs with enhanced Perception to smell to automatically detect invisible creatures. I would hope that something like that would be included in the Dungeon Master's Guide later. If a PC with a high Passive Perception encounters an Invisible creature, I would hope the DM would either just tell them directly or at least tell them to make a no-action-required Perception check.

 

[mellored]

The Invisibility spell may have a secondary effect in addition to the Invisible condition,

It doesn't.
The spell just gives the invisible condition. Same as the hide action.

Except the hide action list a few more ways to end the condition. Walking in front of someone is not one of them (though it should be).

 

[mellored]

There will be many ways for an enemy to find you: Tremorsense, Blindsight, divination spells and magic items.

Those rules say they can find hidden creatures. Yes.

Removal of concealment And popping out in front of them without even bothering to hide anymore.

That's not in the rules.

It should be, but it not.

 

[Thommy H-H]

Tbh I think some of you just aren't clear on what kind of activities make "a sound louder than a whisper". How are you walking right up to someone without them hearing you?

 

[MarkB]

Tbh I think some of you just aren't clear on what kind of activities make "a sound louder than a whisper". How are you walking right up to someone without them hearing you?

Stealthily. Haven't you ever been surprised to find a friend or work colleague right behind / next to you, even when they weren't deliberately sneaking?