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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6686281" data-attributes="member: 5143">Let me be more clear then.  I use "Full Cover" as shorthand for anything that blocks people from seeing you.  If a barrel is big enough and you can somehow completely crouch behind it without your feet, arms or any other part of your body sticking out at all, then you are officially "unseen" and can hide.  Most barrels aren't that big.  Generally you need a wall or a really big column or something.  My general guideline is that it has to be at least 5 feet by 5 feet to be considered an obstacle big enough to hide behind.  This tends to rule out most 2 foot wide barrels.  But whether you can be seen or not is always a DM call.The same thing is true of a smokey room.  In most smokey rooms you can still make out the outline of someone within the smoke and although you can't see them clearly, you can still see them.  The rule is that you can't be seen at all in order to start hiding.  Obviously, this is going to be another one of those situations where the DM needs to rule on just HOW smokey this room is.  If you can barely see your hand in front of your face, you have absolutely no chance of seeing someone 30 feet away from you on the other side of the room, so they should be able to hide.  The Heavy Obscurement condition simulates this by making you unable to see anyone more than 5 feet away from you, thus allowing them to hide.The rules say that as soon as you no longer have cover or obscurement then hiding ends.  That means if you leave that column, hiding ends immediately unless the room has dim light, the entire room is engulfed in fog or you keep moving from barrel to box to chair if they have no gap between them.  This is a key part of the stealth rules working correctly.  Otherwise you get weird situations where someone can "Hide" while you are looking at them and there's no good reason they can't see you.There is a provision in the rules that says the DM can rule you can still hide without cover or obscurement if he/she rules that the enemy is "sufficiently distracted".  Which means you might be able to throw a rock or something and have the enemy look in that direction long enough for you to run from one hiding spot to another.  But otherwise, any attempt to move "out in the open" immediately ends hiding.And this is exactly why it's key that someone have "Total Cover"/"Total Obscurement" to hide.  The enemy has to not be able to see you at all.  If you stand behind a barrel and crouch, the enemy is almost definitely going to be able to see the top of your head sticking out or possibly your arm or leg or weapon or something.  Barrels are generally good enough to get "cover" but not enough to make you completely unseen.  Once again, depending on the size of the barrel.But, mostly I agree with this.  The idea is that you duck behind something.  The enemy loses sight of you.  They don't know your precise location anymore.  Are you going to attack from the left side of the huge barrel or the right side?  No idea.  They also don't see enough of you to know precisely WHEN you are going to break cover and attack.  That ambiguity is enough for the attacker to get Advantage on their attack.I'd allow it outside of combat.  If someone was sneaking around without any combat happening, I'd allow them to continually move from cover to cover as long as the enemies weren't looking precisely in their direction.  The key thing is that the enemy doesn't see you.  Outside of combat the enemies might be reading a book or staring intently as a game board or just watching in a different direction.  They don't know you are there and therefore have no reason to look in your direction.In combat, movement only happens on your turn.  So you can't adjust your position as someone comes walking around.  Almost everything is happening nearly simultaneously anyways so you don't have time to realize someone is walking around and adjust your position since you are doing whatever actions you declared during your turn at the same time.You can only ready a reaction to something you can perceive.  Readying an action doesn't allow you to see something you couldn't already see.  If the person made a Stealth check, they can sneak attack you, regardless of whether you readied an action or not.This would go in this order:1. Enemy moves partially into view but cannot be seen since they are hidden and still have cover from the pillar(You are looking for them but you fail to see them because their Stealth check beat your Passive Perception).2. Enemy fires while hidden, you get sneak attacked.3. Enemy is now no longer hidden and can be seen since attacking ends Hiding.4. Your readied attack goes off and you attack them(with them having a cover bonus so -2 to your attack)5. They then move back behind the pillar and can no longer be seen6. They make another Stealth check to hide</blockquote>

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