Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth (He/him)
When you say that I don't speak for standard 5e, are you just saying I don't work for WofTC?
No. I'm saying you don't get to decide for us what "standard 5e" is, and you don't get to tell us we aren't playing "the real D&D" if we don't play according to your personal understanding of the rules, which in my opinion is deeply flawed.
When I said "creatures PP is always operational as long as they are conscious", well again, you keep saying you watched the podcast but you deny that? That is a quote from that podcast from Crawford. Now your denial of that statement is completely correct, there are situations when a pcs PP does not contribute to noticing stuff, as outlined in teh PHB. However I suspect Crawford is aware of that, and since he said that and we assume he knows the rules, denying that statement of his is a bit pedantic. Although I agree it needs to be mentioned for people who have not yet read the rule books.
It isn't pedantic because it bears directly on this particular exchange we're having. Let me recount for you, since you seem to have forgotten. You said it's possible to sneak past unalert creatures while in the open as long as you beat their passive Perception, as if being unalert somehow makes you blind. In response, I said I require you to be heavily obscured or concealed to sneak past unalert creatures, the same as any other attempt to escape notice, but that because the creature is not alert, I don't consult its passive Perception and the attempt auto-succeeds. You responded that conscious creatures' passive Perception is always on even when not alert. I replied no, that isn't true. If a creature's attention is otherwise occupied with a task like tracking or foraging, its passive score is not in effect when it comes to noticing hidden/sneaking/stealthy threats. The game (and Jeremy Crawford) describes passive Perception in terms of "always on" with reference to combat, because creatures are assumed to be alert in combat, the exception being DM-ruled distraction. Also to make it clear you don't have to take the Search action to be alert in combat.
Sneaking up on things, heavily obscured; that is fine, but it seems to me that RAI do not require such strict conditions.
What's your evidence? You seem to be speaking on behalf of "standard 5e" again.
So I said I agree "pretty much" with your OP on hiding. Now you want to say hiding and stealth are basically the same, this is new and I do not agree with that.
But I don't think you've named one application of the Stealth skill that isn't an attempt to avoid notice. If that isn't hiding, I don't know what is. If you see a distinction between hiding and sneaking being made in the rules, however, I'd be very interested in having you point it out to me.
But in your OP, I just don't agree with this;
"I would add to the top two above circumstances the requirement that the area or object must be of sufficient size to create uncertainty as to your precise location, or you must not be observed entering the area or getting behind the object by the creature from which you are hiding, whereas invisibility creates its own uncertainty as long as the invisible creature is free to move."
This contradicts hiding clarifications in the podcast.
What clarifications does it contradict? I admit this is my houserule, but it isn't in contradiction to anything of which I'm aware. It's meant to preserve the situation presented in the rules for attacking from hiding that when you are hidden, your location is unknown.
And again I think your confusion is thinking hiding and stealth are synomins, which you then go into attempting to justify from supposed prose in various books.
At the risk of being accused of pedantry again, I'm going to repeat what I explained up-thread. Hiding is an action. Stealth is a skill. They are not synonyms in my opinion. The terms I would say are mechanically synonymous are hiding and sneaking. If you think the rule-book makes a distinction between the two, I would encourage you to point out where you're reading that. By the way, all the terms I listed as synonyms for hiding I found in one book, the PHB.
It doesnt matter how we individually fluff up in our minds what different things means, it only matters if it effects mechanics. Which it seems to me that this is basically emerging into mechanics, like this;
You require concealment (or some other special condition) to stealth past things.
I do not. I merely require that the players are sufficiently low perceptual footprint (stealth check beats PP).
Up-thread you said this was true of creatures that are not alert. Now it seems you allow sneaking past alert creatures while in the open as well. If this is correct, and given the extra requirement of not being clearly seen that hiding entails, why does anyone try to hide in your games when it's much easier to avoid notice by sneaking in the open?