I'm confused about how concealment in combat works in D&D Fifth Edition. If there are environmental effects that make it difficult to see a character, but do not grant physical cover, how does that affect the ability of others to target her?
Specific example
A player in a recent session cast Fog Cloud to conceal himself and others while trying to escape a pitched battle. The text of Fog Cloud reads:
You create a 20-foot radius sphere of fog centered on a point within range…. its area is heavily obscured….
What are the effects of such concealment on the mechanics of the following actions:
- Creatures attempting to move within the cloud.
- Creatures within the cloud attempting melee attacks against other creatures within the cloud.
- Creatures outside the cloud attempting ranged attacks against creatures within the cloud.
- Creatures within the cloud attempting ranged attacks against creatures outside the cloud.
Best Answer
There are 6 combat states in 5e when you don't consider cover coming into play (and cover adds modifiers rather than affecting the advantage state, though full cover prevents targeting entirely):
The question is how total concealment (such as from fog cloud) affects these states. To do this we need to address the two components of the states individually. Let's settle the question of advantage/disadvantage first.
This leads us to the blinded condition:
So here's the interesting thing, you both grant advantage, and have disadvantage if you are in a heavily obscured area. So if you attack a creature who is also in a heavily obscured area, you do so as a straight roll (because they are granting advantage and you have advantage). This may be dissatisfying (I know I find it such), and you may want to rule that you only grant advantage to characters who can see you (but that's a house rule).
So we know our advantage state in heavy concealment (attacking at disadvantage, being attacked at advantage, possibly cancelling each other out if both characters are in the fog). However, we don't know our targeting state. Can you be targetted directly or do you need to guess. For this we turn to the "attacking things you can't see" section of the rules:
This is unfortunately unhelpful. When do you have to guess, and when do you know where your target is?
Unfortunately, the guidelines are not particularly good on this. It seems clear to me that hiding is intended to conceal your position (and it's heavily implied elsewhere in the rules, such as the rogue's Blindsense feature, and the final paragraph of the attacking things you can't see block), but it does not directly indicate that your position becomes unknown when you hide. There is this though:
So it seems that hidden certainly obscures your position, and if you move, it should be unknown to your attackers (if you don't move, they'd be perfectly justified to attack the square you were last seen in, thus being able to attack you no problem).
The larger question is can you attack a creature who isn't hiding, but is totally obscured without guessing their location?
This is a question that is unfortunately left completely open by the rules. In general, I'd say that you need to make the stealth check to hide to keep quite and keep your movements under control, but that may be the 4e coming out more than it should in this system. I kind of hope that this gets more clarity in the upcoming DMG than we currently have, but I'm not super hopeful about it. Find something that works for you group and keep it consistent (or establish the rules you're going to operate under when these things come into play). One place we do get a hint is from the invisible condition:
This certainly seems to indicate that you can know an invisible or heavily obscured creature's location, but that it doesn't necessarily require a stealth check (again I'd personally require one to stay quiet)
To answer your final bullets:
So, ultimately, this question comes down to one of whether or not you can target someone accurately if they are heavily obscured. This, ultimately comes down to whether you believe position is always known unless someone is hidden, or whether position can be obscured by another means beyond hidden. Unfortunately, the rules are not clear on this matter and it becomes squarely the domain of DM discretion or table level house rules.
Supporting this stance, we have Jeremy Crawford on the twitters:
So basically, it's hidden, or the whim of the DM.