Stealth rules in Dnd 5e were never published!

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[meow]

the Stealth rules rolled a nat 20 to hide in unpublished content

[I..cast..fireball]

I typed it out for everyone. You are welcome.

Conditions for Stealth
In order to avoid detection, you need some way to remain out of sight, either something to hide behind or an area of poor visibility to locate yourself in.
Stay out of sight. You can’t just stand in the middle of an empty, lit room and hope to avoid notice. Something must conceal you, perhaps a large object, a piece of terrain, or an immobile creature of a sufficient size, such as a slumbering dragon. Regardless of what stands between you and a viewer, it must cover at least half your body for you to hide behind it.
An environmental phenomenon that obscures you from view can also provide a means to hide.
A Heavily obscured area typically contains darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage. A creature in a heavily obscured area is out of sight, just as if it were hiding behind an obstruction, and thus can try to hide. A lightly obscured area typically contains dim light, patchy fog, or moderate foliage. Monsters and characters have special abilities that enable them to try to hide even in areas that are only lightly obscured.
Stay quiet. It’s assumed that you try to avoid making noise while hiding, and your Dexterity (Stealth) check also represents your ability to keep quiet. If you make a noise, such as yelling a warning to an ally or knocking over a vase, you give away your position and are thus no longer hidden.

[renatocorvaro]

I have been saying for years that the stealth rules in 5E are the most unhelpful stealth rules I have seen in any game ever, and I've played White Wolf games.

[fortunatus]

Seems to me that it was deliberately removed. In the game now, you must have total cover or be heavily obscured to Hide. Anything else such as 3/4 cover or 1/2 cover is up to the individual DM and the circumstances that the player is dealing with. EDIT: The stealth rule could certainly have been written better, for sure.

[Unsensitive]

Speaking of hiding in open fields... Minor illusion cantrips.

Solid snake your way into hiding, or just make a big illusory rock to block line of sight.

[kris_k]

I literally never understood stealth properly, it was always, "Can I hide by doing X" and if it made sense I could hide.

[chadliampolley]

Not only are your videos extremely entertaining - but they are also informative and are immensely helpful to a new DM trying to be more solid in adjudication/understanding of the game/mechanics. Thanks, Kobold.

[defensivekobra]

the only mildly reasonable suggestion here is that they either
a) forgot to include the rule, and then once they realized their mistake they did not want to add it in as an rule in a future book like xanatar's or tasha's, perhaps as to not upset people already using some homebrew rule for it or to avoid looking dumb or whatever
b) deliberately wanted it to be up to DM adjucation with the only caveat being that you are supposed to understand "heavily obscured = can hide" and "lightly obscured = can hide if a feature says so" from context clues or whatever

as for the whole "just remove whole page art" well if you pay close attention, you might notice that least some of the art matches up with other art from the same book or with art between the PHB and DMG, and in Xanatar's each of the chapter artpieces also fit together

[kylekid]

Oh PLEASE god people NEED it. No one KNOWS the rules here. Makes rouge’s SEEM op

[mayhemivory]

someone on reddit recently made another important discovery. depending on how you read it, being heavily obscured is only necessary to take the Hide action. in order to remain hidden, you only need to be lightly obscured.

its really not clearly written, more like an interpretation of natural language…

but it would explain how you can make attacks from being hidden, especially if we add that part you found about something covering half your body (which i would consider only lightly obscured).

[Kanta]

"Bonus action wasn't even a thing. That's how ancient this is."
Me, still spending Wednesday nights calculating whether my players hit based on their THAC0: : |

[carloscostacox]

The rule requiring half-cover is part of the Hide action, it was just omitted and "streamlined" as part of the sentence "you need cover or concealment to hide" The minimum amount of cover in the rules is 1/2 cover, therefore it is implicit you need to have at least enough cover to hide half your body, which should be very advantageous to small creatures but is often overlooked. And yes, you are right, I agree, it is much better written and less ambiguous.

[bunchflttrsndnumbrs]

I feel like recreating stealth rules is the first real challenge for any new DM.

[eduardopereiradossantosmel]

This is very useful, but I think most of the confusion in stealth comes from what to do after you're hidden than getting hidden. I've seen a lot of discussion about at which point the hidden rogue who moved from his cover to do a melee sneak attack is not hidden anymore. Which is a valid concern.
The rules assume creatures are meatballs with 360 vision, but it also assumes no one is looking at the rogue after he did his stealth check, until after he strikes. It is a mess.

[agsilverradio]

I guess you could say the stealth rules were... *hidden?* 😎

[DoomsdayRsistance]

I always thought it was weird that you can cast a spell from stealth and still surprise the enemy in 5E, just reading the rules for spell casting, it's about the least stealthy thing a character can do, more so with vocal components. Given you need to stay quiet for stealth in these rules, it does question if you're really taking an action from stealth, unless you have silent spell meta magic or something similar.

[Calavid]

Cool find! I didn't know about this. Having made a video on stealth myself, I can say there is massive rules precedent for the relationship between lightly and heavily obscured for stealth. Seeing it illustrated so clearly there is a relief, at least it confirms that relationship is RAI and not just speculation.

As to the half your body part, I feel like that could have been worded slightly differently. The way it's written there makes it seem like you can hide so long as just half your body is obscured, but I feel like the intention is your typically able to duck behind something that's at least half your size. Also, as written, it's seems like a human could hide behind a halfling lol.

[bluephoenixchicken]

Hey Kobold, just letting you know you forgot to add the l to stealth in the title of the vid. Keep up the good work

[tommytigert]

I love it! We will spread this knowledge far and wide in the name of our kind and generous, Great King-Kobold, Gator, and all the various Crocodilians!

Seriously though I play a rouge like 90% of the time, this is great.

[maka]

XptoLevel3 did a GREAT video about this. He discovered you have to use the Skulker feat description to deduce the rules of hiding and it just comes to something near to what's written in the demo. Awesome.