Hiding and heavy obscurity - Rules & Game Mechanics - Dungeons & Dragons Discussion - D&D Beyond Forums (2024)

As we all know, lightly obscured gives disadvantage on perception for seeing things and heavily obscured gives essentially the blinded condition.

But it says that when you have the blinded condition, “A blinded creature can't see and automatically fails any ability check that requires sight”So what ones that mean for perception when trying to find hidden targets? Does it just give you disadvantage on perception or do you fail automaticity. Does keen senses that uses smell or sound ignore it and still have advantage?

What about being blinded and deaf, does that make it so if you don’t hit that hiding target, you don’t know where they are unless they have a smell based ability?

Heavy obscurity is not blinded, your use of the word essentially is false. It does something similar, but Greater Invisibility is similar to Invisibility as well.

Being Blinded and deaf means you do not know where an opponent is UNLESS you can feel them, like perhaps they hit you. Then you get an attack with disadvantage against soemeone you cannot see but know where they are. Similarly instructions from allies can help "TO YOUR LEFT!"

If your target is lightly obscured and hidden you have disadvantage on Perception checks to see them. If you have keen hearing or smell or both you might be able to use those senses with advantage (instead of sight with disadvantage) to approximately locate the target depending on the conditions as determined by the DM. However that still doesn’t mean you can “see” the target. So unless you pass that Perception check with disadvantage to actually see them then any spells that target “a creature you can see” still won’t work and any attack would still be made at disadvantage following the rules for attacking an unseen target.

If your target is heavily obscured whether they are hiding or not then you flat out automatically fail any Perception check to see them at all.If you have keen hearing or smell or both you might be able to use those senses with advantage instead of sight to approximately locate the target depending on the conditions as determined by the DM. However that still doesn’t mean you can “see” the target so any spells that target “a creature you can see” still won’t work and any attack would still be made at disadvantage following the rules for attacking an unseen target.

The only exceptions to those rules are if you have blindsight or blindsenses or echolocation or tremorsense since those allow you to technically see” something/someone even if you can’t actually see it/them. So for example if you’re a fighter with the blindfighting fighting style and they are close enough then it doesn’t matter if they are obscured or not.

If you have blindsenses (but not blindsight) or echolocation or keen hearing then being deafened would mean you can’t even detect the creature either because your hearing that would let you detect them isn’t working.

Quote from Mog_Dracov >>

Heavy obscurity is not blinded, your use of the word essentially is false. It does something similar, but Greater Invisibility is similar to Invisibility as well.

The rules for heavy obscurement literally say “A heavily obscured area--such as darkness, opaque fog, or dense foliage--blocks vision entirely. A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area.” So if you are trying to see something/someone that is heavily obscured you aren’t technically blinded but you are effectively blinded in regards to seeing the heavily obscured thing/person. I think the OP got the right of it more or less in this context.

Quote from AWierdPotato >>

If your target is lightly obscured and hidden you have disadvantage on Perception checks to see them. If you have keen hearing or smell or both you might be able to use those senses with advantage (instead of sight with disadvantage) to approximately locate the target depending on the conditions as determined by the DM. However that still doesn’t mean you can “see” the target. So unless you pass that Perception check with disadvantage to actually see them then any spells that target “a creature you can see” still won’t work and any attack would still be made at disadvantage following the rules for attacking an unseen target.

If your target is heavily obscured whether they are hiding or not then you flat out automatically fail any Perception check to see them at all.If you have keen hearing or smell or both you might be able to use those senses with advantage instead of sight to approximately locate the target depending on the conditions as determined by the DM. However that still doesn’t mean you can “see” the target so any spells that target “a creature you can see” still won’t work and any attack would still be made at disadvantage following the rules for attacking an unseen target.

The only exceptions to those rules are if you have blindsight or blindsenses or echolocation or tremorsense since those allow you to technically see” something/someone even if you can’t actually see it/them. So for example if you’re a fighter with the blindfighting fighting style and they are close enough then it doesn’t matter if they are obscured or not.

If you have blindsenses (but not blindsight) or echolocation or keen hearing then being deafened would mean you can’t even detect the creature either because your hearing that would let you detect them isn’t working.

Thanks for the help