I can’t behind that. You are acknowledging that the rules are clunky to use, but that consolidating them would have no benefit.I'd even go so far as to say the game probably doesn't even need to do that. Because at the end of the day... when a DM picks up their copy of the PHB, they either are going to spend the 10 minutes flipping back and forth in the book reading the various applicable bits about skill checks and cover and concealment and line of sight and invisibility etc. etc. and then cobbling together what they think the process is meant to be... or they won't bother and they'll just run stealth however they want. And in both cases... every single DM will find the rules or lack of rules wanting in some form and fashion-- each one with something completely different than any other DM-- and they will eventually jerry-rig their own set of rules for how they think Stealth checks and hiding should go. And this would be true even if WotC DID put all the rules together in one place in the PHB-- plenty of DMs would still find them lacking and just create new ones for themselves anyway.
That's what I think the real issue is... this idea that if we and WotC could just find that one magical "set of instructions" on how it should work that every single DM would get on board and we'd all use the same system happily. And I just don't think that's true. So it doesn't really matter and we shouldn't break our brains trying to figure it out. Heh heh... I bet WotC could just actually write in the book "Stealth Rules: Do whatever the heck you want, we don't care."... and that would be embraced by the community just as much as any attempt at creating a unified set of rules.![]()
sure it might not be a magical cure all, but better organization is always useful in a rules document