My Simple (One-Sentence!) Revised Hiding Rules for 5.5e

Over the course of 2025, I’ve seen multiple bloggers and Youtubers attempt to fix D&D 5.5’s new hiding rules. While these are all folks I respect, most of their revisions ended up as 2,000+ word treatises full of technical jargon that made me want to reach for the Ibuprofen more than my gemstones.

So, as an antidote, here’s my one sentence revised hiding rules for D&D 2024:

“If you want to hide from one or more creatures contest a Stealth check against their Perception.”

Problem solved!

Running Hiding with a Core Mechanic + Rulings

Ok, I am being slightly facetious; but, nonetheless, I believe you can satisfactorily resolve 80% of your gameplay situations simply by recalling the crux of the 2014 rules. And, if you need to adjudicate a scenario where hiding should be easier than a straight up skills contest (the players or monsters have plenty of time to stage an ambush), or harder (someone wants to run 30 feet out of cover and still count as hidden), you can simply make a ruling that reflects the fictional situation… the simplest solution being the application of advantage or disadvantage on a roll.

Hiding – unlike swinging a sword in anger, or casting a spell – is something we have all done in real life. We know how it works: it doesn’t need codifying to within an inch of its life, and we certainly don’t need to be picking up the 2024 Player’s Handbook to consult three separate pages (two under “Hide Action” and one under “hiding”), and then be referred to a fourth page on the Invisible condition… only to be left more confused than when we started.

Stealthily avoiding combat is key to completing any heist (Art by WOTC),

Ultimately a player is hiding to gain a benefit, which is either a) avoiding a combat entirely or b) gaining advantage on their next attack roll, by being unseen (or “Invisible”). As DMs, we simply need to decide whether hiding is actually possible in the current situation, and, if so, how likely it is, so that we can determine credible odds and roll some dice to see if the player(s) in question gets the benefit or not.

Most of the time a contested Stealth vs. Perception check will be the easiest and best way to simulate those odds. But yes, there will be times when using this basic mechanic alone doesn’t create fair odds for the fictional situation in the game world. A classic example of when a Stealth vs. Perception contest doesn’t work is when a large number of players want to sneak past a guard. The swingy nature of the d20 makes it highly unlikely that a party of four PCs will ALL succeed on their Stealth check, so we need to make a ruling that provides us with *roughly* the right types of odds for the situation. I would probably say something like: “if the first of you succeeds, the rest can follow in their footsteps and get advantage on the check”. And I would use the guard’s passive Perception only to keep the DC low. (The official rules for group checks are arguably even more generous… although I have never liked them much).

In other words, our job as DMs is to take the basic mechanic, apply our (rudimentary) knowledge of probability, and then adjust to create vaguely credible odds. 17 bandits are lying in ambush? We know the bandits can’t all beat the players’ highest passive Perception if we actually roll for them, but we feel these merry men should have at least some chance of success. So we give these bandits proficiency in Stealth (+3) and we let them use their passive Stealth score (harking back to the Taking 10 rule of old). Then, what the hell, we give Robin H. and friends advantage (+5), as they know the terrain and have stuck some twigs in their hair. Now the bandits’ total passive Stealth 18. We’ll make the players roll an active DC 18 Perception check to spot the ambush. If a party of four PCs have an average of +4 Perception that’s about a 75% chance of at least one of them spotting the ambush. Sounds about right to me.

But how will you know when the players spot the ambush, when there are no specific rules for this? Easy, we’ll let the dice we already rolled decide, using the highest of the players’ Perception checks to inform the narrative. If the highest roll is 18 exactly, then the players spot the ambush seconds before it is launched. They are not surprised, but they are at close range with no time to prepare. If one of them manages to hit DC 25, then this player sees a glint of sunlight reflecting off a nocked arrow before they even enter the ravine.

Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t needs ultra-specific, condition-bloated hiding rules for DMs to be able to referee these types of scenarios. And, in fact, such rules can’t possibly cover every scenario anyway, making it a fool’s errand to try to design them this way.

What we need is a basic mechanic (a skills contest works just fine), and then a few ways to adjust the odds (passive scores, advantage / disadvantage, different ways to run group checks etc.), and we can feel confident and relaxed about running stealth in our games.

Distracted opponents = advantage on your Stealth check (Art by WOTC).

But What About Hiding in Combat?

A lot of the anguish over D&D’s hiding rules comes from the fact that rogues can do it (repeatedly) during a combat, by taking the Hide action as a bonus action as part of their Cunning Action ability.

This caused issues in the original 2014 version of 5e as well, with many DMs unsure exactly how to run this ability satisfactorily. Getting advantage on an attack roll (nearly) every round is a big buff for any class, but is especially potent for rogues as it brings their Sneak Attack online, even when their target isn’t engaged with one of the rogue’s allies.

Arguably the worst aspect of the rules ambiguity is that rogue players expect to be able to bonus action Hide as a matter of course, simply by virtue of having the Cunning Action ability. This breaks our immersion in situations when hiding in combat feels completely unrealistic…. while it has always felt odd to me that any PC can disappear behind a column to gain total cover, but somehow only the rogue becomes twice as good at shooting when they reappear at the start of their next turn.

In the end, for my Waterdeep: Dirty Jobs campaign, I made a house “rule” with the goal of recognising / enabling this signature rogue ability, but making the players work a little harder to get it (…and also making it feel a bit more realistic in play).

Here it is…

My Hiding In Combat Rules Tweak

“To benefit from being an unseen attacker, in a combat where you have already been seen, you need to be able to first a) break line of sight with a potential target and then b) change positions on the battlefield. If the DM agrees you can satisfy these conditions you can take the Hide action. When you come out of hiding to target a creature, you contest your Stealth check vs. the Perception of your target. If you succeed you count as an unseen attacker and gain advantage on your attack roll.”

What it means is that the rogue needs enough movement to disappear behind total cover, and then reappear somewhere else, perhaps behind another pillar nearby… or, if they dived under a table, it could be the other side of said table etc. For me this makes some sense at least, because if you disappear behind a pillar, and then stay there, you may be unseen but everyone knows where you are (at least if we extend the 5e supposition that folks on the battlefield have great 360 vision!).

Naturally, all kinds of scenarios will come up that require a ruling, but this rule has created a clear expectation for my rogue players about what they need to do to bonus action Hide – and they’ve never grumbled about it. After two years of running hiding in combat this way, I can say that this rule has worked really well on my table.

The real danger is on the roof… (Art by WOTC).

Just Take Steady Aim Instead!

One thing I haven’t seen noted in any discussions about hiding in 5.5 is that rogues don’t need to do it anyway.

The Steady Aim ability comes online at 3rd level (just one level after Cunning Action), and it allows you to gain advantage on your next attack roll using a bonus action. It does requires you to sacrifice your move for the turn, but for a ranged rogue already ensconced behind half or three-quarters cover, this might not be a big deal.

The best thing about Steady Aim is that the rules are clear and easy, and don’t require any player-DM mediation, plus the advantage is guaranteed (no having to pass a Stealth check).

So if you’re having trouble reaching an accord with your players about how hiding should work, just encourage them to reach for this ability instead.

Your Thoughts?

This post is the culmination of a trilogy of posts where I’ve been expounding upon the benefits of the maxim: rulings not rules. You can check out the first and second post here.

Meanwhile, I’d love to hear how hiding in combat, or setting ambushes, works on your table, whether you’re playing 5e or 5.5e, or something in between. Do share in the comments…. needless to say I read all comments (and reply to most of them!).

My Interview On Win With Dice Podcast

I had the pleasure of being interviewed over at the Win With Dice podcast recently. The idea was to chat about my forthcoming book, The Creative GMs Guide to Extraordinary Locations, but we ended up talking about a bunch of stuff, related to making rulings, random encounters, the influence of travel blogging on my work and much more… why not stick it on in the background while you do the washing up!?

I’ve just seen they’ve released part II as well… where we discuss my design process, and importing the book’s locations into your own worlds, settings and systems. It was a long interview in total and I may get a bit incoherent towards the end… I was flagging! 🤣

RPG Product Spotlight

Origin Studios got in touch with me recently asking me to check out their D&D one shots. What they’ve done a bit differently to those of us who’ve published our adventures on the DMs Guild or DriveThru is that they’ve made their adventures into interactive web pages. In the end this isn’t too different to a bookmarked PDF, but it’s a bit more intuitive and avoids all the annoying constant resizing and jumping between pages that happens when you try to read a PDF adventure. I also liked the art and the handouts.

Full reviews are beyond my time allowances, but the adventures themselves look fun at a glance. The Midnight Masquerade requires that players use the three pre-gens provided and compare backstories to find out what’s going on, making it more a readymade scenario to play out than a freewheeling D&D experience. Which actually has its advantages for a one shot experience.

The Lantern Keeper reminds me a bit of the adventures in Candlekeep Mysteries. The players need to go around town asking questions to solve a mini-mystery (a missing magic lantern) and deal with the situation.

Anyway, you can find out more about each adventure and Origin Studios in general on their website.

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