Yesterday we had a bit of a conflict about how going and attacking someone inside a Fog Cloud.
Does a creature need to use the hide action to avoid enemies knowing his location inside the fog cloud? In this case, if a creature doesn't hide can know where they are for the purposes of a melee or an AOE spell attack?
Best Answer
The creature can't be seen, but they may be heard or smelled
The creature doesn't have to hide, but hiding will help to take advantage of the fog cloud's obscurement. If creature wants its location to be "unknown" hiding becomes necessary.
They can, but AoE can be tricky, and how the target is detected will vary.
Melee attacks
The problem for the melee attacker is getting into melee range inside the 20' radius circle so that the attacker is within melee range even though it can't see the target. A creature would expect to have disadvantage on such an attack roll, or even to miss by not being close enough to make a melee attack.
Unseen Targets (Chapter 9, Unseen Attackers and Targets)
AoE attacks: Depends on the AoE's radius and effects
AoE attacks are a bit trickier to adjudicate, since AoE varies.
If the AoE is big enough, the size of the fog cloud may not suffice to prevent the radius of the AoE's effect from hitting the target inside the fog cloud. As an example, if my dwarf Tempest Cleric is inside of a fog cloud with a 20' radius, and the enemy Archmage casts a fire ball at the edge of the cloud (which is a point that he can see) I am by intersection of those two circles in the AoE of his fireball. {roll save for half damage} If, on the other hand, I had cast that spell and stepped back 10', I'd not be in his fireball's blast radius. But if he had a spell with a 40' radius, I'd still be in the AoE if he aimed it the same way as the fireball example. (As a quick example, frozen sphere has a 60' radius, so my Tempest Cleric would be subject to its effects if the Archmage cast that spell).
From Hide (Combat, Chapter 9)
Fog cloud provides obscurement
Let's walk through the spell and how "obscurement" works.
From Vision and Light section in the rules:
Creatures that rely on sight won't see whomever is in the fog cloud. But other senses are involved in Wisdom(Perception) checks, so a "Hide" action may help make detection by other senses more difficult. (Hearing, smell, etc.)
Blinded (Appendix A)
If the creature trying to find the character in the fog cloud has to rely on sight, then they cannot see them. If other senses are being used, then an attempt may be made to detect the hidden creature.
How else might the creature in the fog cloud be detected?
Smell and hearing, or abilities like tremorsense or blindsight.
Perception. (From "Using Ability Scores")
There are a number of monsters that have advantage to perception checks that rely on smell. For example, Cloud Giants and Werebears have:
Special sensors will modify the above
There are monsters like Umber Hulks who have other senses that let them find you without sight.
Tremorsense
In a case like this, hiding in a fog cloud by staying very still could give disadvantage to a creature using this sense to find another creature, or lead to "Unseen target" depending on how your DM rules "vibrations" ... is a heartbeat enough vibration to sense? That ruling may vary from one DM to another.
Blindsight
This would render the "hide in a cloud" effort moot.