eben2500's page

Agreed 'Guru-Meditation'. You need Cover and Concealment. But I have rogues with 'Hide in Plain Sight'. I've already had a previous thread about the HiPS issue.

Thread: Hide in Plain Sight

Cause they have that, they think they can just disappear and blend in everywhere. It makes GMing difficult. I just mention the word 'Cover and Concealment', and suddenly you have World War III.

The way the rules are written can be misinterpreted and ambiguous.

I believe all of these issues stem back to D&D. In 2nd and 3rd Editions you had more than just 'Stealth'. You had, 'Hide in Shadows, Move Silently, Pick Pocket, etc'. Now a D&D player who in the past used 'Move Silently', now uses 'Stealth'. So they would argue that they are in 'Stealth' because they need to move silently so they don't need Cover and Concealment. And, as it's now Stealth, not Move Silently, they want all the benefits of Stealth like Sneak Attack.

An example being that the group is about to enter an old ruin. There is a potential that enemies are around, but they don't know. My Rogue will roll a Stealth check before entering the ruin.

If there are no potential enemies around, then why does it matter if they succeeded or not in being stealthy?

This is what I believe, but I get the argument that they can be stealthed. If they see someone, they can sneak up to them and attack.

Every place they visit, they are always stealthed. It can make for some difficult GMing.

I've got an issue as to when exactly can one roll a stealth check. I currently have a situation where at the beginning of any adventuring, the rogues in the party say they are Stealthing, and they make a roll.

Now I can understand that they want to move around quietly and don't want to be spotted. But should they roll and have a Stealth value when there is yet to be any opponents which need to roll a perception check?

By doing it this way, it seems to contradict the rules of Breaking Stealth.

Breaking Stealth: When you start your turn using Stealth, you can leave cover or concealment and remain unobserved as long as you succeed at a Stealth check and end your turn in cover or concealment. Your Stealth immediately ends after you make an attack roll, whether or not the attack is successful.

Reading that, it sounds like Stealth rolls should only be applied when in a turn based situation.

Any thoughts anyone?

Thank you DM_Blake!

This is exactly what I thought the rule was. I'm GMing a game and I had this very argument. The point of view from this person was, 'Hide in Plain Sight' means that you are hiding in plain sight. The name says it all.

Basically the situation was a head to head fight. No cover or concealment. At the start of the round, the character would Stealth right in front of his enemy and HiPS. Then the character can apply a heap of Sneak Attack dice. This would occur every round for every combat in the urban environment.

I explained that HiPS means you need to find cover or concealment, eg a curtain, while being observed. Make the Stealth check and your done. If you didn't have HiPS, then you couldn't hide behind the curtain as you are being observed.

They need to make some of these rules more clear, as people interpret them differently. For cases like this, I thought common sense would kick in as you apply it to a real situation.

Here is an example scenario.

A Rogue with Hide in Plain Sight for Urban environment. He is in a room, 20x20. This room is completely empty. Walls are blank, room normally lit, (not to bright).

With him in this room there is one other person. He is facing an enemy. They are directly facing each other in the centre of the room. They are eye to eye.

Now, in this situation, can a Rogue use his Hide in Plain Sight ability, with a successful Stealth check vanish completely from view? No Bluff checks or anything. Just use HiPS to hide.

The rule states that he can Stealth, even while being observed. However, does a Rogue still require Cover and Concealment to complete this action as part of a Stealth check?

I've seen a read a few conflicting arguments in these forums about this which are related it to a Shadowdancer. I'm only interested in the Rogues ability.

NOTE: This is like the Ranger's ability. However the Ranger also has Camouflage. With Camouflage, he doesn't need Cover or Concealment.