Li Shenron
Legend
It seems inevitable, every year or so I have to witness a game of D&D where the DM tries to use the RAW to adjudicate visibility, and ends up with unreasonable results...
I don't think that 5e rules for this topic are difficult, but they have 2 problems:
(1) they are scattered in at least 4 different places of the PHB:
(2) there is a key missing distinction between opaque concealment and simple lack of visibility
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For problem (1), I have distilled my own summary and attached it to my DM's screen, and it's really short... you can summarize the general situation in the following way.
First of all, remember that it's much easier to ask yourself the question "can subject A see target B?" directly, instead of trying to answer the wider question "can subject A see (anyone)?" or "can target B be seen (by anyone)?". Just focus on the A-to-B relation when it matters, and it will be easier to avoid pitfalls.
Then, consider the target first, which gives you only 3 possibilities:
a) the target B is not obscured (bright light and no cover)
b) the target B is lightly obscured (dim light, patchy fog, moderate foliage) = subject A has disadvantage on perception checks that rely on sight
c) the target B is heavily obscured (darkness, opaque fog, dense foliage) = subject A is effectively blinded
Blinded means: disadvantage on attacks, advantage on attacks against, auto-fail ability checks that requires sight, and generically can't see (some obvious things here such as can't read, but also cannot target with spells that specify "a target you can see"). Note that "unseen" is technically not a listed condition, but essentially "blinded subject" and "unseen target" are equivalent, as long as you stick to the A-to-B relation.
Hiding requires a voluntary action and possibly a successful check; the requirements are purposefully left open so that the DM decides when someone can try to hide; visibility is not the only factor because other senses can be used to detect a hidden target, so it is generally assumed that hiding means making yourself as undetectable as possible, at least unseen and unheard. Being hidden therefore implicitly makes the target unseen (or equivalently, makes the subject blinded against it) but in addition it also means that the subject doesn't know the location of the target. If the target is already hidden to the subject before the encounter, the subject probably isn't even aware that the target exists.
Beyond sound and vision, you occasionally need to use your reason to handle hiding... for example a target normally cannot suppress its own smell, so a hound or another creature with a significantly good sense of smell requires some DM's thinking on how to take that into account. Be reasonable: a human could detect another person by smell but normally wouldn't; a dog normally would.
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Problem (2) is more severe. IMHO it was a design mistake to lump together darkness or invisibility with opaque concealment such as smoke, dense fog, heavy foliage, or a giant octopus' ink spray. But they really are different cases:
- Everyone who is not blind in real life knows very well how mere darkness is not opaque: you can see out of it and you can see through it, you just cannot see into it.
- That's not the case with opaque concealment: you cannot see into it, through it, or out of it. If you have ever seen fog in your life, you know how it works.
So for example, if you are in your house at night with the lights on, you cannot see what is in the dark street outside (assume pitch black, no illumination), but you can see inside the windows of another house with lights turned on, on the other side of the dark street; someone in the dark street will see the interiors of both your and the other house. But if instead of darkness there is dense enough fog outside, you won't see either the street or the other house beyond it, and someone inside the fog won't see anything that is outside of it.
Unfortunately, both cases are treated simply as "heavily obscured" by the rules.
In early prints of the PHB, the text for heavily obscured said "a creature in a heavily obscured area effectively suffers from the blinded condition". This even lead Crawford to release some really bad sage advice as some point, with relation to someone being inside darkness and shooting arrow to a target outside the dark area with disadvantage because... blinded! The text was later errata-corrected to "a creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area", so the rule switched to the target's condition, not the subject wanting to see it. The problem is now that by RAW it sounds like you CAN see out of an opaque concealment area such as fog.
My opinion is that it's best to keep in mind the actual description of the situation, particularly when dealing with spells. Almost all spells* which create fog, smoke or similar, will say that the spell creates a heavily obscured area, but you will do your game a favor if you focus on what exactly the spell creates, and make it work appropriately. I am still seeing DMs claiming that it's just fluff text and only "keywords" as heavily obscured matter, or try to get away with the "it's magic" flimsy excuse (but then what, when it's not magic?). The problem is that this carries a serious risk of making your game look dorky, and doesn't do the gaming community a favor, particularly if you're playing with beginners and casual gamers... this was not the first time I've heard newbies at a gaming event commenting how D&D is "a stupid game for stupid people", when the DM ruled that monsters hiding inside (in this case) fog could see out of it with no penalties, because that's the RAW...
*Interestingly, one spell which does NOT explicitly mention a heavily obscured area is Darkness, which only talks about "magical darkness". However it does something even worse, by making it explicit that "a creature with darkvision can't see through this darkness", which seems to imply that this magical darkness behaves more like opaque concealment than natural darkness (I do not recommend to adjudicate the Darkness spell as creating opaque darkness). Even worse, the spell only mentions a creature with darkvision, but not a creature without it, so a strict reading of the RAW leads to even less reasonable adjudications.
I don't think that 5e rules for this topic are difficult, but they have 2 problems:
(1) they are scattered in at least 4 different places of the PHB:
- Chapter 7, "Hiding" textbox
- Chapter 8, "Vision and Light" section
- Chapter 9, "Unseen attackers and targets" section
- Appendix A, "Blinded" condition
(2) there is a key missing distinction between opaque concealment and simple lack of visibility
------------------
For problem (1), I have distilled my own summary and attached it to my DM's screen, and it's really short... you can summarize the general situation in the following way.
First of all, remember that it's much easier to ask yourself the question "can subject A see target B?" directly, instead of trying to answer the wider question "can subject A see (anyone)?" or "can target B be seen (by anyone)?". Just focus on the A-to-B relation when it matters, and it will be easier to avoid pitfalls.
Then, consider the target first, which gives you only 3 possibilities:
a) the target B is not obscured (bright light and no cover)
b) the target B is lightly obscured (dim light, patchy fog, moderate foliage) = subject A has disadvantage on perception checks that rely on sight
c) the target B is heavily obscured (darkness, opaque fog, dense foliage) = subject A is effectively blinded
Blinded means: disadvantage on attacks, advantage on attacks against, auto-fail ability checks that requires sight, and generically can't see (some obvious things here such as can't read, but also cannot target with spells that specify "a target you can see"). Note that "unseen" is technically not a listed condition, but essentially "blinded subject" and "unseen target" are equivalent, as long as you stick to the A-to-B relation.
Hiding requires a voluntary action and possibly a successful check; the requirements are purposefully left open so that the DM decides when someone can try to hide; visibility is not the only factor because other senses can be used to detect a hidden target, so it is generally assumed that hiding means making yourself as undetectable as possible, at least unseen and unheard. Being hidden therefore implicitly makes the target unseen (or equivalently, makes the subject blinded against it) but in addition it also means that the subject doesn't know the location of the target. If the target is already hidden to the subject before the encounter, the subject probably isn't even aware that the target exists.
Beyond sound and vision, you occasionally need to use your reason to handle hiding... for example a target normally cannot suppress its own smell, so a hound or another creature with a significantly good sense of smell requires some DM's thinking on how to take that into account. Be reasonable: a human could detect another person by smell but normally wouldn't; a dog normally would.
------------------
Problem (2) is more severe. IMHO it was a design mistake to lump together darkness or invisibility with opaque concealment such as smoke, dense fog, heavy foliage, or a giant octopus' ink spray. But they really are different cases:
- Everyone who is not blind in real life knows very well how mere darkness is not opaque: you can see out of it and you can see through it, you just cannot see into it.
- That's not the case with opaque concealment: you cannot see into it, through it, or out of it. If you have ever seen fog in your life, you know how it works.
So for example, if you are in your house at night with the lights on, you cannot see what is in the dark street outside (assume pitch black, no illumination), but you can see inside the windows of another house with lights turned on, on the other side of the dark street; someone in the dark street will see the interiors of both your and the other house. But if instead of darkness there is dense enough fog outside, you won't see either the street or the other house beyond it, and someone inside the fog won't see anything that is outside of it.
Unfortunately, both cases are treated simply as "heavily obscured" by the rules.
In early prints of the PHB, the text for heavily obscured said "a creature in a heavily obscured area effectively suffers from the blinded condition". This even lead Crawford to release some really bad sage advice as some point, with relation to someone being inside darkness and shooting arrow to a target outside the dark area with disadvantage because... blinded! The text was later errata-corrected to "a creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area", so the rule switched to the target's condition, not the subject wanting to see it. The problem is now that by RAW it sounds like you CAN see out of an opaque concealment area such as fog.
My opinion is that it's best to keep in mind the actual description of the situation, particularly when dealing with spells. Almost all spells* which create fog, smoke or similar, will say that the spell creates a heavily obscured area, but you will do your game a favor if you focus on what exactly the spell creates, and make it work appropriately. I am still seeing DMs claiming that it's just fluff text and only "keywords" as heavily obscured matter, or try to get away with the "it's magic" flimsy excuse (but then what, when it's not magic?). The problem is that this carries a serious risk of making your game look dorky, and doesn't do the gaming community a favor, particularly if you're playing with beginners and casual gamers... this was not the first time I've heard newbies at a gaming event commenting how D&D is "a stupid game for stupid people", when the DM ruled that monsters hiding inside (in this case) fog could see out of it with no penalties, because that's the RAW...
*Interestingly, one spell which does NOT explicitly mention a heavily obscured area is Darkness, which only talks about "magical darkness". However it does something even worse, by making it explicit that "a creature with darkvision can't see through this darkness", which seems to imply that this magical darkness behaves more like opaque concealment than natural darkness (I do not recommend to adjudicate the Darkness spell as creating opaque darkness). Even worse, the spell only mentions a creature with darkvision, but not a creature without it, so a strict reading of the RAW leads to even less reasonable adjudications.
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