Rules Refresh: Hiding, Surprise, and More (2024 Edition)

Author: Icebrick1

The 2024 Revised Player’s Handbook has recently released, and with it come new rules for hiding, surprise, and some of the related mechanics. This article will break down these new rules and point out differences from the previous rules. The new rules have their upsides and downsides: most notably surprise has been tuned down significantly, which is a good change since it was previously incredibly powerful. However, they do use some confusing terminology and contain their own oddities. We refer to the 2014 rules for hiding, surprise and more at times in this article. If you want to brush up on those rules, you can find them here: Rules Refresh article.

Hiding

The Rules Glossary contains the description of the Hide action:

“With the Hide action, you try to conceal yourself. To do so, you must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity (Stealth) check while you’re Heavily Obscured or behind Three-Quarters Cover or Total Cover, and you must be out of any enemy’s line of sight; if you can see a creature, you can discern whether it can see you. On a successful check, you have the Invisible condition. Make note of your check’s total, which is the DC for a creature to find you with a Wisdom (Perception) check. The condition ends on you immediately after any of the following occurs: you make a sound louder than a whisper, an enemy finds you, you make an attack roll, or you cast a spell with a Verbal component.”

Player’s Handbook (2024), p. 368

Compared to the old rules, this has a few notable differences:

You need to pass a minimum DC 15 check no matter the Passive Perception of your enemies. The description doesn’t mention it, but you do still need to roll higher than the Passive Perception of enemies as well, for implied reasons we’ll get into later.

You are either hidden or you aren’t. You can’t be hidden from some enemies but visible to others. This has some weird edge cases where a mage scrying on you from 1,000 miles away prevents you from hiding from the goblins right in front of you, but hopefully your DM will use some discretion.

You turn literally Invisible. RAW, this is the same Invisibility as from the Invisibility spell, but presumably this is supposed to represent just being unnoticed rather than literally somehow turning invisible. However, this does still carry all the effects of being Invisible, which has a number of implications.

While you do need to be out of sight for the initial Hide action, you can walk around in the open afterwards due to being invisible, a huge difference from the 2014 rules. This can lead to some pretty silly situations, like enemies being unable to see you in an empty room so long as you took the initial Hide action out of sight. The best choice is probably to roll with it and make up an explanation (maybe you’re camouflaged as a statue, or the enemies are really distracted). At the very least, the DM can make this harder by giving enemies Advantage on their Wisdom (Perception) checks, adding +5 to their Passive Perception. If a player rolled a 28 on the Dexterity (Stealth) check, maybe they do deserve some near-supernatural hiding abilities.

Most spells and features like See Invisibility do the same thing whether the Invisibility is from a spell or hiding, meaning see Invisibility would work against a creature non-magically hiding out in the open.

While allies might know your location, they are still affected by the Invisibility RAW, which can interfere with certain features and spells.

Aside from these differences, much is still the same. The effects of hiding are very similar to 2014: enemies don’t know where you are and you have Advantage to hit them. You are revealed in pretty much the same way: by attacking, making noise, or getting found – though since you can no longer be seen, finding you is harder than before.

Overall, this is a fairly substantial buff to the Hide action. If you’re regularly leaving hiding to make an attack or similar, it’s a smaller difference since you’ll need to keep getting out sight to Hide again, but if you just want to stay hidden and concentrate on a spell for example, the enemies will be forced to take the Search action to even have a chance at finding you. There is the downside of always needing to meet the minimum DC 15 no matter the enemy’s Perception, but most builds making use of Hide should already have pretty good Stealth, so this isn’t too onerous.

Invisible

Invisible, as a condition, has received some updates in the 2024 rules. Here’s the description from the rules glossary:

“While you have the Invisible condition, you experience the following effects.
Surprise. If you’re Invisible when you roll Initiative, you have Advantage on the roll.
Concealed. You aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen unless the effect’s creator can somehow see you. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying is also concealed.
Attacks Affected. Attack rolls against you have Disadvantage, and your attack rolls have Advantage. If a creature can somehow see you, you don’t gain this benefit against that creature.”

Player’s Handbook (2024), pg. 370

Most notably, being Invisible now gives Advantage on Initiative. This happens no matter what – even if all your enemies can see Invisible creatures for example, you still have Advantage. Hiding is an easy way to get Invisibility, but it would be reasonable to rule that the enemy gets a chance to spot you with Passive Perception before Initiative is rolled.

A small hole in the old rules has also been patched: you no longer gain the benefits of Advantage on attacks and attacks no longer have Disadvantage against you even if an enemy can somehow see you.

Surprise

Surprise is the other main change to the rules on Stealth in 2024.

“If a combatant is surprised by combat starting, that combatant has Disadvantage on their Initiative roll. For example, if an ambusher starts combat while hidden from a foe that is unaware combat is starting, that foe is surprised.”

Player’s Handbook (2024), pg. 23

This is more vague than the original rules, which specifically related it to hiding. The example does suggest that even people on alert would be surprised by hidden foes – even if you’re expecting trouble, you don’t know when exactly it’ll happen. Depending on the DM, it might even be possible to surprise someone that can clearly see you if they weren’t expecting you to attack.

These rulings are significantly lower stakes than they are in the 2014 rules however, as the effects of surprise are much more mild, merely being Disadvantage on Initiative. Winning Initiative is equivalent to getting an extra turn, which is very good, but having Disadvantage on Initiative is only a slight setback compared to effectively skipping a whole turn with 2014’s rules.

In the old rules, there were niche scenarios where someone might start Initiative without being aware of any enemies, for example if they had the Alert feat and won Initiative while all their enemies were hiding. This can now occur under normal circumstances if the surprised party just happens to overcome Disadvantage and win Initiative – just as before we recommend allowing them to get a vague sense something is coming and take an action such as Ready, Dodge, or Search.

Note that the Disadvantage on Initiative from being surprised is separate from the “Surprise” effect of Invisibility. For example, a guard might be openly attacked by your party while you’re Invisible. Even though the guard isn’t surprised and rolls Initiative normally, you would still roll with Advantage due to the benefits of Invisibility.

Overall, this is a huge improvement for the health of the game, as surprise used to be overwhelmingly powerful, but now it’s merely “nice to have.” This has had some knock-on effects though – Pass without Trace used to be possibly the best spell in the game, but it’s no longer overwhelmingly powerful, even though the spell itself hasn’t changed. Consequently, classes like Ranger and Druid that had access to Pass without Trace are weaker.

Passive Perception

The 2024 rules are oddly coy about Passive Perception, only referencing it a few places. For example, unlike the 2014 rules, the 2024 rules never explicitly say you compare Passive Perception against Dexterity (Stealth) to hide. Ultimately however, it does seem to be that the intent is that Passive Perception is still a thing and works pretty much the same as 2014.

“Passive Perception is a score that reflects a creature’s general awareness of its surroundings. The DM uses this score when determining whether a creature notices something without consciously making a Wisdom (Perception) check.”

Player’s Handbook (2024), pg. 372

So say the rogue takes the Hide action and rolls a 16, but an enemy has a Passive Perception of 18. The rogue does pass the minimum DC of 15, but their Invisibility ends if an enemy finds them. The rogue is “something”, and using Passive Perception doesn’t require making a Wisdom (Perception) check, so the enemy should notice them immediately without needing to take the Search action. In effect, this means that Passive Perception does still function as the “floor” you need to beat when trying to hide.

This is, however, an interpretation, as Passive Perception does not have defined mechanics. It is not even explicitly mentioned that your Passive Perception Score corresponds to a DC/Skill Check result. The revised Dungeon Master’s Guide may have more details, but it is not yet released at the time of writing.

Odds and Ends

Everything else remains mostly the same as described in the Rules Refresh article. This includes: it being ambiguous what happens on a tie between Dexterity (Stealth) and Passive Perception, the timing of Initiative (roll before any attacks), and Obscurement being the same between a thick cloud of fog and natural Darkness even though they should function differently. (Though it now says a Heavily Obscured area is “opaque” rather than “blocks sight entirely,” which means about the same thing, but “opaque” does suggest more strongly stuff like the Darkness spell should be an opaque sphere.)

Conclusion

The new rules aren’t perfect by any means, including many of the same flaws as the original, but they are overall an improvement once you get past the confusing use of a few terms like Invisibility. Stealthy strategies received a huge blow in the nerfing of surprise, but the Hide action has been much improved, making it much easier to stay hidden and even completely bypass encounters. As somehow almost always happens though, casters are probably the stronger users of the new Hide action – as martials will need to constantly expose themselves to make attacks, while casters can silently turn the tides of battle by concentrating on a key spell.