Secret extra Lightly Obscured rule in the DMG

[HP Dreadnought]

Anyway, I'll be house-ruling that rule away, in part due to the unneeded extra complexity, but mostly out of spite for where they put the rule...

Wow! That will teach them. I hope the Hasbro shareholders don't find out about this. . . the stock would go into free fall! Somebody not using a rule because he doesn't like where it is located?!!?

LOL!!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I seem to have wondered on to the WoW boards... Oh wait, no, that's fanboi gang-banging from 4E fans, not WoW. Sad.

 

[Ziana]

The numbers aren't the problem, it's knowing where someone is I'm worried about. I admit this can happen in other cirucmstances, but I suspect that fighting in a completely lightly obscured area will produce a lot of cases where one PC can see an enemy, so the enemy's fig is on the table, but another PC can't (due to distance), but of course they can, because they can see the fig right there.

Total Concealment nicely reflects the simulated reality. If you've ever been in a thick forest or a field with head-high grass, it's easy to lose track of where someone is, even though they're just a short distance away.
The -5 penalty will account for the difficulty in targetting for the most part, whether the players are trying to RP how hard it is for them to spot the target or not.

 

[RefinedBean]

This is why Halflings always use the Buddy System, people. It's wicked easy to get lost, and then BAM, the Points of Light setting kills you.

In all honesty, the rule isn't that bad...but heck, I completely missed it in my reading of the DMG. Must have been more than five squares away from me.

 

[erik_the_guy]

The books aren't as well written as in 3e, there is a fair bit of discrepancy between the core rulebooks. I'm guessing its because they are on a schedule and a budget.