[3.5] Hide Fix

[Bauglir]

[woodenbandman]

I like this. I think I'll use it. It makes a lot more sense that you can hide from people (like sneak up behind them) but you can't hide while they're actually watching you.

[RobbyPants]

Personally, I'd just have bonuses to Hide and Move Silently overlap instead of averaging them.  I'd apply the appropriate one if you're using a Stealth check to obviuosly hide or be quite (such as sneaking in a dark room or hiding in advance and not making a sound when the person gets there).

For example, if you're a small creature (+4 to Hide), just give a +4 bonus to Stealth checks always, unless the person is using Stealth in a way that doesn't involve hiding.

I don't know.  It sounded more simple in my head, but once I commited it to writing, it might be just as complicated...

[Bauglir]

Well, I made it averages because you can get disproportionately large bonuses with overlap by combining effects that grant bonuses to one or the other (invisibility stacks with effects that grant bonuses to move silently, etc), and since you have to recalculate magic item costs anyway, and since no matter what you do DM adjudication is necessary to work out some things (Incorporeal creatures effectively auto-win Move Silently checks, but obviously shouldn't auto-win stealth checks) so it ends up being case-by-case based on what's being done, which is bad, but better than penalizing people for wanting to be sneaky or perceptive by requiring two skills each, I figured that it's slightly better to do it this way.

Damn run-on sentences that I don't want to bother wording better.

[RobbyPants]

No, that does make sense.

[Orion]

It's way less reliable, and means you have to off-load a bit of responsibility onto the GM, but I'd say you can just write in that if both visual and auditory detection are at issue, then all bonuses count, but if for some reason, either seeing you or hearing you just aren't applicable to the situation, then you don't get a bonus that specifies, one way or the other. Magical effects, you can probably just leave as-is.

[Bauglir]

Yeah, true. Whatever works best for your group is probably best, but the main part is the second bullet.

Oh, and I'm gonna add this to the first post, but for those of you who've already read it, Hide in Plain Sight now allows Hide checks to be made regardless of whether one has Cover or Concealment (actually, based on my definition of being observed, it already does, but now it's explicit), while Camouflage... should do something else. Maybe a reroll on a Stealth check in the appropriate environment?

[Kerrick]

I rolled them together for Project Phoenix; what I did is simply state that xxx grants a bonus to Stealth checks to hide or Stealth checks to move silently. Thus, if you're trying to move quietly (i.e., there's no one around to see you, but they might hear), you'd make a Stealth check, but you only add the bonus from your boots of stealthiness. I hadn't really thought about what would happen if you needed to move quietly AND remain unseen, but averaging the bonuses sounds like a good idea. If you're wearing boots of stealthiness (+10 to MS) and a cloak of elvenkind (+5 to hide), you'd gain an overall +7 bonus to Stealth checks.