Rules Refresh: Hiding, Surprise, and More

Author: Icebrick1

Being hidden and obtaining surprise at the start of combat is one of the most powerful tactical advantages available in Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. A number of the builds and analyses on our website highly value abilities and spells which aid in obtaining it, such as the pass without trace spell. However, the actual rules for Stealth and surprise in the game is an area of the game that can often seem opaque and difficult to interpret. This article serves to collect and distill the relevant information on Stealth and surprise in the game, as well as provide some mild recommendations on the more ambiguous aspects of the rules.  

In order to fully explain the rules, careful examination of the exact wording is required to decode the meaning. Let us begin with the section on hiding from the Player’s Handbook:

When you attempt to Hide, you make a Dexterity (Stealth) check and you keep that roll until you are discovered or stop hiding. To decide whether a creature will notice you, your roll is compared to their passive Perception.¹ Generally, you can hide if the creature you want to hide from can’t see you, and you can’t hide if they can see you, but this is subject to the DM’s discretion. Hiding ends if you make excessive noise, make an attack, or come out of hiding and approach a creature.

What the rules don’t clearly explain is what being hidden actually does. First off, it is relevant for surprise, which is explained later. Secondly, it makes you actually undetected, meaning that a creature will need to either take the Search action (described below) to locate you, or guess what square to attack. This can be inferred from lines such as this:

This implies that your location is unknown when you are hidden.

This is distinct from not being hidden, as generally all creatures in combat are assumed to be aware of other creatures, even if they’re invisible or otherwise unseen. (See Battleship Invisibility below.)

It is unclear if you need to be unseen at all times to remain hidden, or only when you attempt to Hide. The rules only say that “if you come out of hiding and approach a creature, it usually sees you,” which means that by Rules As Written (RAW) once you are hidden, you remain unseen and unheard until you approach a creature. This leads to strange and nonsensical outcomes, like a hidden character standing in plain sight and remaining hidden as long as they don’t walk closer to an enemy. 

If it is instead ruled that a character can only remain hidden if they stay out of sight, this also leads to some undesirable outcomes. It becomes impossible for a Rogue to hide behind cover and peek out to gain advantage on an attack, something that would be possible RAW.

One way to solve this is to say that you do need to be out of sight when you start hiding, but it is up to DM discretion if you can remain hidden after that, since “the DM decides when circumstances are appropriate for hiding.” This could allow you to peek around cover to make an attack while remaining hidden, while still preventing you from leaving cover completely. This will unfortunately vary from game to game, but this might be preferable to strict adherence to either of the extremes presented above.

Lead Designer Jeremy Crawford seems to take this middle approach: he has said that “running out into the open” would not allow you to remain hidden. But he has also stated that a Rogue could leave cover and remain hidden. However, it should be noted that designer tweets aren’t official rulings. The final playtest version of D&D 5th Edition made it clear that at least half your body needs to be covered to remain hidden, this would be a reasonable ruling to make use of.

¹ It is unclear what exactly occurs if the roll is exactly equal to a creature’s passive Perception Score. Hiding is not an actual contest in the mechanical sense, despite the usage of the word “contested” in the rules. This is because one side is not making an ability check, but using their passive Perception score, and the side hiding does not have to roll an ability check every time someone tries to perceive them. Even if it was a contest, it’s not apparent how the tie should be resolved. According to the rules:

However, whether prior to the contest the creature was hidden or not is unclear. The designers seem to be of the opinion that the creature trying to hide needs to roll higher (Dragon Talk, 16:40), but this is something to decide at your table.

An obscured area has some kind of hindrance to sight, and can be used to determine if a creature is able to hide or not. Here is the actual text of the rules:

Sadly, we are again left with a lot of ambiguity. Particularly this sentence: “A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area.” Does this mean that a creature in the area is effectively blinded whenever it tries to see anything, or that any creature is effectively blinded when attempting to see something in the area? Both interpretations don’t quite make sense all the time. This also extends to a lightly obscured area: does it only give disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight to creatures in the area, or does it also apply to a creature outside the area trying to see in? However, for the purposes of interpreting this rule we will focus on heavily obscured areas.

In the former interpretation, a creature in heavy obscurement is basically blinded, but anyone outside the obscurement can see inside just fine. This doesn’t really make sense in any normal scenario, unless it’s some kind of magic cloud that makes you close your eyes inside it.

Let’s go with the latter interpretation then: it prevents everyone from seeing things in the area. This makes sense if you’re heavily obscured in the darkness outside the light cast by a campfire. Someone by the campfire couldn’t see you, but you can see them. This doesn’t make sense when you’re in the center of a smoke cloud. You can somehow perfectly see things outside of the cloud, while an outsider is unable to see you.

The problem is that it makes perfect sense to be able to see out of darkness, but not a cloud of smoke. However, by the rules both are simply heavily obscured areas, so RAW there’s no rulings which makes them behave differently from each other.

A third way to look at these rules is to say the second sentence is superfluous: all you need is “A heavily obscured area […] blocks vision entirely.” This means that nothing in the area can be seen, and any creature in the area can’t see either. Now the smoke cloud example makes sense, a creature inside can’t be seen, nor can they see outside of it, but it makes natural darkness nonsensical, as you should be able to see someone near a lit campfire in the darkness of the night.

Sadly, there isn’t really a way to overcome this. A cloud of smoke and natural darkness should function differently, but again, they are both just an area of heavy obscurement. A DM might rule that they work as we expect them to, but then we run into problems with magic where we cannot look at reality to see what makes “sense.” Can you see outside the area of the darkness spell? You can see outside of normal darkness, but maybe darkness absorbs all light and is like an opaque black blob that functions similar to fog cloud. The only solution to this is to have a conversation between players and DM on how these effects will function.

Lightly obscured areas are normally not relevant to hiding; while the rules are indecisive and up to DM discretion, they implicitly convey that a creature should normally not be able to hide in a lightly obscured area, as evidenced by the existence of features that explicitly do allow this, such as Wood Elf’s Mask of the Wild. Remember that having disadvantage on a check reduces a creature’s passive Perception by 5, but for a lightly obscured area this will generally only apply to spotting purely visual phenomena like secret doors and not hiding creatures because those are usually heard, not seen. Otherwise a creature would be harder to detect in a lightly obscured area than a heavily obscured area!

Aside from allowing you to hide, being heavily obscured or otherwise unseen has additional benefits.

This is pretty simple: If a creature can’t be seen by the target of an attack, the attack has advantage. If a creature can’t see the target of its attack, the attack has disadvantage. Note that if both targets are in complete darkness, the area of a sleet storm or are in some other scenario where neither the attacker nor target can see each other, the advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out (Player’s Handbook, pg. 173).

A common way to become unseen is to become invisible. As is traditional, here’s the text of the invisible condition:

So, an invisible creature can’t be seen and is always heavily obscured for the purpose of hiding. Additionally, they have advantage on attack rolls and enemies have disadvantage on attack rolls against them. An invisible creature can always attempt to Hide, since it’s always heavily obscured, but until it does successfully Hide, its location is known, due to some sign other than sight such as by leaving tracks or making noise.

Astute readers will notice that neither bullet point of the invisible condition is connected to the creature being unseen, which we covered above. This means that even if you can somehow see an invisible creature, they can still try to Hide from you because they are always heavily obscured for the purposes of hiding, and they still have advantage on attacks and enemies have disadvantage on attacks against them by RAW. The latter of which has been confirmed by Jeremy Crawford (20:05). Some spells like faerie fire do remove all the benefits from invisibility, but something like see invisibility won’t prevent invisible enemies from using most of the condition’s benefits.

In this case, it would be fine to rule that seeing an invisible creature makes them effectively not invisible for you; it’s more intuitive and makes abilities that let you perceive invisible creatures more impactful.

In order to hide in combat, a creature must take the Hide action. This means that even if a creature goes invisible or enters an area of heavy obscurement, its location will be known until it takes the Hide action. The Search action allows a creature to make a Wisdom (Perception) check to spot hidden creatures (or find something else, potentially using an Intelligence (Investigation) check instead). The searching creature will need to roll against the total of the Dexterity (Stealth) check the hiding creature made when it first hid, as described in the rules for hiding. Note that passive Perception acts as a kind of “floor” for this check. (See our Ability Check Guide.)

Battleship Invisibility

Many DM’s and players forget how hiding works when it comes to invisible enemies or obscurement like fog cloud. They allow a creature to hide without using the Hide action, and oftentimes without even making a check. We refer to this as Battleship Invisibility, because you are left randomly targeting squares hoping to score a hit, as in the popular game Battleship. In some scenarios, like an invisible creature in the area of a silence spell, it might be possible for a creature to become unseen and unheard without hiding, which would still conceal their location. We recommend not being overly strict with how difficult it is to hear a creature, though. Even if it might occasionally seem nonsensical for creatures to track each other so well using just sound or other indirect signs, while potentially distracted by combat, this is ultimately healthy for the game as Battleship Invisibility makes being nigh-untargetable way too easy with the likes of something like fog cloud. The designers of the game also indicate that the general assumption in combat is that a creature’s position is known unless it is hidden, even if it is invisible (Dragon Talk, 29:30).

To understand surprise, initiative must be explained first. Let’s take a look at the rules in the Player’s Handbook.

So, “when combat starts,” initiative is rolled to determine what order the characters and enemies go in during combat. This seems simple enough, but the timing is somewhat ambiguous. Can someone make a quick attack before combat “begins” to get an additional attack before initiative is rolled? What about when you’re about to shoot a crossbow at unaware enemies?

The designers have clarified that initiative should be rolled as soon as any hostile action is taken but before it is completed. (For example, in this Dragon Talk segment.) So if the Barbarian wants to attack the bad guy before they finish talking, they have to roll initiative first. If the bad guy wins, that represents their superior reaction speed allowing them to respond to the Barbarian’s hostile intent before the Barbarian’s attack. In the situation where you’re attacking unaware enemies, we will need to bring in the surprise rules to give you the whole picture, but before you make that crossbow shot, initiative will still need to be rolled. Depending on the scenario however, it is still possible to prepare for combat in other ways like casting spells such as bless and spirit guardians, as long as it wouldn’t provoke an immediate response from any enemies.

This is also healthy for the game, as it makes sure participants aren’t actively being rewarded for interrupting the flow of the game. Players blurting out “I attack” hoping to score a free hit before combat begins does not make for a good time.

One final note before we move on; initiative is an ability check. This means most spells or features that interact with ability checks, like guidance or the Bard’s Jack of All Trades, can be used with initiative. However, it is one with no DC and which you can’t “pass” or “fail”, and thus things like silvery barbs or the Pact of Talisman cannot alter the ability check.

Now that the basics have been established, let’s add in surprise.

Text Breakdown

Let’s carefully break this down sentence by sentence because this is a very contentious piece of text. “The DM determines who might be surprised,” is often misinterpreted as meaning it is down to DM opinion on who is surprised or not, but that is not actually the case. It just means that it is the DM’s job to determine who is surprised and not, as explained in the subsequent sentences. This is presumably because only they will have access to the monsters’ Stealth and Perception bonuses.

Now, for the way the DM determines which creatures are surprised. “If neither side tries to be stealthy, they automatically notice each other.” Thus far, this is pretty self explanatory. If no one is trying to Hide, no one will be surprised. “Otherwise, the DM compares the Dexterity (Stealth) checks of anyone hiding with the passive Wisdom (Perception) score of each creature on the opposing side.” So if at least one side is trying to be stealthy, the DM compares² the Dexterity (Stealth) of hiding creatures against the Wisdom (Perception) of the enemies, but for what purpose? The final sentence explains: “Any character or monster that doesn’t notice a threat is surprised at the start of the encounter.” This tells us what is actually required to be surprised: a creature is surprised if they don’t notice any threats at the start of the encounter.

Really, these rules are only confusing because they contain irrelevant text and bury the lede by only mentioning the actual conditions for surprise in the last sentence. An easier way of explaining the rules might be “A creature is surprised if it does not notice any threats at the start of combat. To determine if a creature detects any hidden creatures before combat begins, the DM compares the creature’s passive Wisdom (Perception) score to any hiding creatures’ Dexterity (Stealth) checks.”

Note that if a group is trying to surprise an enemy, everyone in the group must roll higher Stealth than that enemy’s passive Perception. If a creature is able to see any threats, the creature isn’t surprised, but it is possible to surprise only a portion of a group if you exceed the passive Perception of some members but not the passive Perception of others. 

Surprise is also only relevant when initiative is initially rolled. For example, If some third group of enemies sneaks up on two groups fighting, neither side can be surprised since they have already detected enemies and it is no longer the start of combat.

Assuming the DM allows the party to stay hidden within reason while still being able to see (see the Hiding section for details), it should almost always be possible to surprise enemies as long as the party isn’t caught off guard themselves. So long as the party moves at a slow travel pace and beats the enemies’ passive Perception, they should be able to surprise the enemies, this is explained on page 182 of the Player’s Handbook: “While traveling at a slow pace, the characters can move stealthily. As long as they’re not in the open, they can try to surprise or sneak by other creatures they encounter.” Dungeons are not out in the open, and it’s clear this isn’t just intended for overland travel. This section of the rules begins with the following text:

The exploration rules in the Map Travel Pace table from the Dungeon Master’s Guide (p. 242) also includes a row for traveling in a dungeon.

The example of surprise given seems to show that this is the intent as well:

If it’s possible to leap out of trees and surprise enemies, then it is similarly possible to leap out from behind a door and surprise enemies.

A strange scenario might arise if a creature immune to surprise (like a player character with the Alert feat) happens to go first and is not surprised despite not seeing any enemies. The character can still take actions, such as the Ready action; this can be explained by the character getting some kind of “gut feeling” that combat is about to begin.

Sticking closely to RAW might lead to some practical issues during play: you end up having to keep track of multiple Stealth rolls and passive Perception scores against one another, which can lead to a large number of hidden creatures on either side, regardless of whether surprise is achieved or not. This can lead to frustrating experiences, especially for players, when enemies spring up unexpectedly during combat and make it feel like the players had no agency. To combat this, you might instead elect to normally not have any creature start combat hidden, which greatly simplifies the start of combat, allows for more interactivity on both sides of things, and also addresses the aforementioned awkward scenario with Alert.

² It is ambiguous what occurs on a tie, see Hiding for a more complete explanation.

Implications

Surprise is extremely powerful. It essentially gives the party an extra round in a game where combat often lasts 2 to 4 rounds. Combine this with good bonuses to initiative, and you have basically acted out an entire combat before the enemy has been allowed to do anything.

As a comparison to a widely known feature, Action Surge is often regarded as a strong ability; surprise is essentially an improved Action Surge (because it also includes bonus actions and movement) for the whole party.

Besides the additional time it takes to move at a slow pace in order to be able to move stealthily, there is usually no cost to attempting to surprise enemies, meaning competent parties will attempt to do so as often as possible.

Pass without trace is possibly the strongest spell in the game of its level due to its interaction with surprise. It grants a +10 bonus to Dexterity (Stealth) checks for the whole party. Many enemies have a passive Perception between 10 and 15, allowing characters with even very poor bonuses to Stealth to surprise their enemies. If the whole party invests into Stealth, which we recommend, there won’t even be the possibility of failure in a majority of encounters. With a one hour duration, it’s even possible to maintain concentration between encounters and surprise enemies multiple times from a single casting. It’s often worth having some character act as a dedicated pass without trace caster.

Above is a box plot comparing monster passive Perception to their CR. (Sourced by Esker from the Monster Manual, Volo’s Guide to Monsters, and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes. Dragons have been separated since they have unusually high passive Perceptions and a disproportionate number of variations.) As can be seen, passive Perception remains quite low until high levels; it takes until CR 11 for the median passive Perception to reach 16. Meanwhile, the minimum roll of just a level 5 character with Stealth proficiency, a +2 Dexterity Modifier and pass without trace is 16.

With how complicated and unclear the rules surrounding hiding and surprise can be, it can be difficult to run the game completely Rules as Written. Hopefully, you now understand how Hiding and its related mechanics work, and are now more capable of deciding how to best run it at your table and use it with your characters. If you’re the DM of the game you should make it clear how exactly you’re going to run hiding and obscured areas like darkness.