About the "absolute" hidden condition and unlocated hidden enemies:
I think the biggest flaw in the play test rules as presented is the binary form of the hidden condition. It works with invisibility. You're ether visually undetectable or you're not. But "hidden" is relative. You can be hidden FROM someone. You might be hidden form all your enemies but since everybody is entitled to roll his own perception, that's often an unlikely event.
So as long as we don't include a kind of "group" or "party perception", I can only see a "hidden from [creature]" as a relative state working.
In practice it would look like this:
Hero H fights against the monsters A, B and C. H finds cover against A and B (but not C), so he tries to hide. He beats both their perception checks, so he gets "Hidden from A" and "Hidden from B". Next round A beats H's stealth check result which negates H's "hidden from A" condition. H is now only hidden from B.
That could work. But we would have to rethink the way, the invisibility condition relies on the hidden condition. Invisibility is an absolute - being hidden is not, hence a necessity for decoupling.
The second biggest problem is what I like to call the "battleship locating dilemma" in miniature-based gaming. What actually are the consequences of an inability to locate an enemy in miniature gaming?
Quote:
If a character tries to attack an invisible creature whose location he has not pinpointed, have the player choose the space where the character will direct the attack. If the invisible creature is there, conduct the attack normally. If the enemy's not there, roll the miss chance as if it were there and tell him that the character has missed, regardless of the result. That way the player doesn't know whether the attack missed because the enemy's not there or because you successfully rolled the miss chance.
This "guessing game" seems to rely on the idea, that the gm doesn't use a miniature to mark the location of a monster/npc the players can't pinpoint. Otherwise there wouldn't be any guessing about its location and the fake miss chance roll wouldn't make any sense.
But what if SOME players can pinpoint an invisible/hidden creature and some don't? Should the gm prepare blindfolds for players with low perception? It's actually the same mistake I described earlier: An absolute approach to a problem that can't work without situational ruling.
