The Hide Skill Blows

[Username17]

Mod Edit: I have such a strong dislike for the way the hide skill reads that I thought this deserved it's own topic. - fbmf

Under 3.5 D&D rules, the Hide skill does nothing, so not having it is meaningless. If you have full cover or full concealment, your opponents cannot see you, and if you have no cover or concealment you cannot use the Hide skill. Many times in this scenario there is an ass-whupping lynch mob on the other side of a stone wall, where with sufficient move silently you can counter-ambush them or avoid them entirely.

But Hide is a skill that only has any effect if the DM house-rules Andy Collins' bullshit as bullshit. And a lot of DMs are willing to do that, making Hide be a key skill in sneaking up on enemy positions like it was in 3rd edition. But under the base 3.5 rules, it doesn't keep people from seeing you - so since it doesn't do anything else, it's a waste of skill points.

-Username17

[Fwib]

Isn't the point of hide to be able to sneak out of total cover/concealment and yet stay unobserved? I know that isn't a lot, but it isn't nothing.

[edit] and it also helps stop enemies seeing right through your invisibility. (assuming they don't have see invis anyway)

[RandomCasualty]

1145369168[/unixtime]]Under 3.5 D&D rules, the Hide skill does nothing, so not having it is meaningless. If you have full cover or full concealment, your opponents cannot see you, and if you have no cover or concealment you cannot use the Hide skill.

Well, hide is used for hiding behind normal (not full) cover/concealment. And that can be pretty useful sometimes.

Honestly the main thing that fucks it up is that most things have darkvision, which means the number one area you'd be hiding in (shadowy concealment) is almost never useful. Still, using limited cover in a jungle or something is viable. And if you want to be able to still see your opponent while using cover you need hide. Since ducking behind full cover means that you can't even see your opponent, so you've got no idea what he's even doing.

[fbmf]

Galahad Knight and I once had what the the HR department of my old office called "a professional difference of opinion" on this very topic over on Nifty. The thread went to five pages, but from it I learned to hate 3.5 Hide.

Game On,
fbmf

[Book]

The Hide skill used in conjunction with the Darkstalker feat (LoM) is pretty much a mandatory optimization for high level Rogues. That way blindisght, scent, tremorsense, etc. doesn't do jack squat against you.

[RandomCasualty]

Honestly the biggest problem I have with hide is not hide itself but all the special senses that creatures have, that more or less make hide useless.

There just isn't any great way to negate darkvision. It pretty much means that anyone hiding in shadows gets detected, automatically. I always thought that darkvision should only go to 10' of clear sight and the other distance should give normal concealment to anything beyond that. This makes hiding rogues have a lot more of a chance. It's a slight nerf to dark vision missile attackers, but I don't think it's all that bad.

Tremorsense should be beatable by move silent checks and simply going real slow.

Blindsight and blindsense are the real problems too, though I think they could have special magical powers for high level rogues to evade those senses as well.

[Book]

RC, I refer you back to my prior post. The feat takes care of those senses.

[RandomCasualty]

1145396270[/unixtime]]RC, I refer you back to my prior post. The feat takes care of those senses.

Yeah, you actually posted between the time I started writing my post and when I actually finished it, so I didn't see what you wrote up above.

Though still, I'd like to see ways to beat tremorsense and darkvision built right into the system. Especially dark vision, since dark vision is so common.

[Book]

Over on the WotC boards, people still go crazy-nuts over the Hide in Play Sight ability (Ranger, Shadowdancer, etc.). And yet there are still a ton of people who still can't figure out the nuances of how it exactly works. Or how it can somewhat be duplicated via finessing the Hide skill.

[Username17]

Here's the deal with Hide in Plain Sight: It's such a late ability that it doesn't matter what it does. Here's the deal with Hide:

Hide is a skill, and all it does is prevent people from seeing you. How it does that is completely unclear. People will seriously talk about walking around where people "aren't looking" and such bullshit, as if that had any relevence to D&D at all. There's no facing, you're "looking" in every direction if it's ever important. But what is clear is that if you are hiding and someone doesn't have any Spot skill (because ythey are, forexample, a Dwarven Fighter like Andy Collins' character), they don't see you.

And because it's not clear, and it completely fvcks Andy Collins' character when it works, it's been subject to a bunch of nerfs. The crap in The Complete Adventurer make the skill unusable. If you move out of a "hiding place" - you automatically aren't hiding any more. If you make an attack, you aren't hiding any more.

The very instant a shambling mound is in a position where you can draw a line from every corner of your square to every corner of one of the squares the shambling mound occupies without passing through a tree, you see it automatically and you roll initiative. Not because you gain any special bonus to Spot, but because it can no longer hide at all.

It takes a fvcking feat to attempt to hide with a -10 penalty and a move action after using a ranged attack from hiding. And that's called "sniping"! Ha! That's not sniping, that's you automatically being seen and identified after getting off single arrow and then having to spend a fvcking feat to have small odds of getting away afterwards.

---

After all the nerfs, the only thing that Hide does is allows you to remain in the bushes and observe your enemies or shoot a single arrow at them during a surprise round. That's it. You can't even remain hidden at that point because it's a surprise round and you don't have a move action to spend.

And Hide in Plain Sight is not really any better. It still only lets you get off one attack before normal combat starts. After that single attack, you're still "seen" by everyone without a die roll..

And of course, a Ring of Invisibility or a casting of improved invisibility is available long before you can get your hands on HiPS, so you don't care. The fact that you no longer need thick bushes to stand in in order to get your first shot (or, you know, a fvcking silent image to stand behind that doesn't even require a Hide check) is not meaningful.

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And why is it like this? Mostly it's because having a Spot Skill was a dumb idea. Very few characters can have Spots that are reasonably level appropriate. And if people can use Hide to fire arrows from concealment and have that actually work and be repeatable, then basically Hide is just like Flight - an automatic counter to almost all dumb brute monsters without "wings", and then almost every character is essentially a Dire Bear. As threatening as they are, killing them is basically just a matter of time for a Ranger or Rogue.

Hide rules in which people can actually hide involves Andy's character automatically dying, and there's nothing he can do about it. So he wrote new rules where both Hide and Spot do nothing at all (his character doesn't get them anyway and doesn't care).

And that's before we get into discussions of things like Scent and Tremor Sense that negate Hiding against specific monster types under certain circumstances. Those aren't even really part of the problem (for one thing they normally have a range that's pretty short and within melee distance anyway).

---

I can see the point. If Skills are allowed to be real class features, noone is ever going to take Profession: Retail or Craft: Tailoring. They just aren't going to do it. Ever. But on the other hand, if characters are not allowed to have class features out of their skills, the "skill monkey" classes are hosed.

As things currently stand, there is no skill (except Jump) in the PHB that I personally don't apparently have 10 ranks in and some of the feats that improve its effectiveness of it. Simple everyman abilities are way out of reach of what any low-to-midling level character can do with skills. Look across the bay and watch the ships come in? That's a -528 to your Spot check, so you automatically fail. Sneak up on a friend on the street while he isn't looking? There's no intervening cover, you automatically fail.

D&D can't decide whether skills should be bullshit "proficiencies" or real character abilities, so it plays them both ways. And that means that you can find rules that invalidate any use of any skill ever.

Probably Hide shouldn't even be a skill. It should be a special ability of Rogues and available as a feat ("sneaky") that allows you to sneak around and snipe at people. Skills should be acquired in play in a non-leveled fashion and be restricted to things that people are actually willing to be completely bullshit - Profession: Sailor and the like. You shouldn't get skills for going up in level, you should get actual abilities that people are willing to accept are capable of doing things.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1145467059[/unixtime]]
And why is it like this? Mostly it's because having a Spot Skill was a dumb idea. Very few characters can have Spots that are reasonably level appropriate. And if people can use Hide to fire arrows from concealment and have that actually work and be repeatable, then basically Hide is just like Flight - an automatic counter to almost all dumb brute monsters without "wings", and then almost every character is essentially a Dire Bear. As threatening as they are, killing them is basically just a matter of time for a Ranger or Rogue.

Yeah, the hide paradox is tough to deal with.

On one option it's almost useless, on the other it becomes undetectable invisibility.

I don't think many people want either of those.

The problem is a lot of people have different ideas for what stealth is good for.

Recon: People want to send the rogue ahead to scout and get a good idea of what they're up against. For recon to be worthwhile, it has to always or almost always succeed, since you're sending in the rogue solo. The system should also be relatively simple.

Encounter avoidance: Some people would rather just sneak past the bugbear sentries rather than fight them. The problem here is that most D&D parties aren't cut out for stealth, so while the rogue can do it maybe, the cleric can't, so the ability is hard to work into the game. FOr this to work, the rogue must be able to help other party members be stealthy. This may also require certain concessions on their part, like leaving heavy armor behind. But the rogue should definitely be able to make his party more quiet, otherwise encounter avoidance is a lost cause.

Combat escape: Some people want to be able to use stealth to escape battles. Basically you duck around a corner or just vanish in a puff of smoke and the enemy can't find you anymore.

Invisibility: Stealth is pretty much like improved invisibility. You're so stealthy that people just can't see you period, and you can swing your weapons at them too. This one amounts to an uber ability, since it's like invisibility only better, and generally a total encounter winner. However since it's a combat ability it's much easier to fit into a party atmosphere than say Encounter avoidance.


IMO, we need a much more complex hide system than just roll hide/MS vs. Spot/listen. The book has many pages detailing wizard spells or different combat moves, but rogue skills are given almost no time, they're just skill check after thoughts.

Hiding and spotting is one area where D&D's lack of facing really hurts it. I think we could probably refine hide if we just designed some quasi facing rules. If someone is trying to watch all directions at once, there should definitely be a chance to sneak past them regardless of cover or concealment because you're moving when they're not looking. If someone wants to specifically watch a direction, then they should be able to pretty much see anything without cover or concealment, but they're blind to stuff on other sides of them, since their attention is fixed.

Also I think a distinction needs to be made for characters who are on alert (people in combat) versus characters who aren't (the random guard on his dialy patrol) versus people who are actively looking for something (the guard who just succeeded on a listen check).

And we need some new mechanics to handle that stuff and create a rogue minigame. Then we can make stealth actually work.

Personally I'd like stealth to be about using cover and distractions and moving when the guy isn't look, as opposed to some kind of crazy invisibility power whereby the guy can look right at you but not see you while you're in the middle of hacking him to peices with a greatsword. That to me is stretching believability alot and generally doesn't make for great storytelling.

[Crissa]

I would suggest a system in which every character gets stealth and spot. The whole concept that Mr Warrior can't conceive of a door being trapped and therefore can't spot a trap that could kill him (but traps he can spot by definitoin can't kill him) is stupid.

It doesn't matter to me that the average character would be spotted while using stealth if someone tried to see them - the fact is the best use of stealth is when someone isn't trying to see you. So you can totally sneak across the street while guys are talking intead of rolling their spot check every round.

To make a Warcraft analogy (which seems to always start a fight), you either have to allow everyone the chance to make their name-titles vanish and hide in the bushes while at the same time the Rogue gets to Hide in Plain Sight. (Of course, the game doesn't do that, so hiding in plain sight totally wins.)

-Crissa

[Username17]

1145511649[/unixtime]]I would suggest a system in which every character gets stealth and spot. The whole concept that Mr Warrior can't conceive of a door being trapped and therefore can't spot a trap that could kill him (but traps he can spot by definitoin can't kill him) is stupid.

Absolutely agree. Thematically, skilled veterans shoul be able to identify pit traps and callow young thieves should fall into them. That sounds an awful lot like a Level check to me. Possibly some classes (like the Scout) should have additional bonuses to their awareness, but in general characters should just be able to notice things if they take the time to check them out and are highly experienced.

It doesn't matter to me that the average character would be spotted while using stealth if someone tried to see them - the fact is the best use of stealth is when someone isn't trying to see you. So you can totally sneak across the street while guys are talking intead of rolling their spot check every round.

This I definitely agree with. Stealth shouldn't normally be usable to run around someone so fast that you can punch them six times in the back of the head without them ever figuring out what's going on (that should be possible of course, especially against people of lower level, just not a major part of the game). But Stealth should allow you to:

[*] Pick off a sentry without alerting the rest of the castle.
[*] Sneak past a guardroom filled with off duty guards playing smash-the-beetle.
[*] Observe an enemy camp undetected.
[*] Lurk in the bushes while the King's patrol marches past.

These tasks shouldn't even be difficult. Seriously a commoner should be able to do any of it (except possibly pick off a sentry as it would generally take him more than a round to drop a guard).

To make a Warcraft analogy (which seems to always start a fight), you either have to allow everyone the chance to make their name-titles vanish and hide in the bushes while at the same time the Rogue gets to Hide in Plain Sight. (Of course, the game doesn't do that, so hiding in plain sight totally wins.)

-Crissa

I have no idea what that analogy is supposed to mean.

People should have a number of available statuses of sneakiness and alertness.

Sneaking:

[*] Creeping around. You're focused on moving silently. You're somewhat preoccupied and it's hard to do anything else. You move really slow, and it's hard for people who aren't looking for you to find you. People who do find you will know you are "up to something".

[*] Sneaking. You move at a fairly normal speed and make relatively little noice. You can perform acrobatic ninja manuvers while sneaking, making you harder to find, and more obviously out of place if you are found. You can attack normally, but your defense suffers.

[*] Strolling. You walk around in a normal way. You are likely to be able to pass yourself off as "belonging" wherever you happen to be.

[*] Charging. You move faster than normal, and have full combat ass kicking. Stealth is an afterthought at best.

Spotting:

[*] Unaware. You are asleep, or cleaning the bottom of a barrel, or whatever. You are only dimly aware that events occur around you. Loud noises may rouse you. Then again, they may not.

[*] Distracted. character is having a conversation or something. Good luck hearing stuff

[*] Suspicious. Character is actively looking for trouble, but doesn't know what kind of trouble he's looking for. Weapons may be at the ready, and a character can jump right into combat if requirred. The character is hard to sneak past.

[*] Alerted. Character knows that there are goblins attacking, or that a thief is running off with the jewels. The character is very difficult to sneak past.

So if the Sherriff's men are marching through Sherwood, they are Suspicious. That means that you have to be really good to sneak up and grab the last guy in the marching order and pull him into the bushes. Once the other guards notice that one of their men got rolled, they'll be Alerted to that trick and Robbin will have to pull something else (unless he rolls really crazy well, he is much higher level than these guys).

-Username17

[Crissa]

I crossposted this to World of Warcraft Community Suggestions forum.

-Crissa

[User3]

What's to stop heroes from declaring themselves being perpetually alert/suspicious?

While I'm sure there's varying degrees of advantages to declaring yourself sneaky to non-sneaky, I can't think of any reason why someone would want to be less alert.

Maybe you could impose penalties for alertness depending on your task and what you've been doing. Like an untrained militia guard who is having a conversation with his captain at two in the morning is distracted, while a trained veteran won't suffer any penalties for standing at the same spot for 16 hours.

[RandomCasualty]

1145666683[/unixtime]]What's to stop heroes from declaring themselves being perpetually alert/suspicious?

Well, I'd assume the state would be more of a DM call based on what the guy is doing. And he'd likely impose penalties on you if you wanted to be alert while doing something like picking a lock or something, or he may just declare it outright impossible.

Further you probably shouldn't be able to stay on alert status for longer than a certain amount of time. People will eventually get bored if nothing happens and they aren't in an obviously dangerous locale.