D&D 5E - A fix for Hide in Plain Sight

Publish date: 2024-03-29
The Ranger’s Hide in Plain Sight feature sucks. Fortunately, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything offers an alternative feature where you can use a bonus action to become invisible until the start of your next turn, prof times between long rests. This is a perfectly serviceable alternative, but me personally? I hate it. I like my rangers non-magical (or as close to it as I can get away with), so replacing the ability to make a gilly suit with the ability to turn invisible is dissatisfying to me. I also hate the trend of things being usable prof times between long rests instead of once between short rests, and in general I like abilities to be at-will with drawbacks much more than I like abilities to be limited uses that recover on a rest.

Now, all of that is personal taste. I don’t expect most people to share these grievances, and if Nature’s Vale works for you as an alternative to Hide in Plain Sight, that’s awesome! I’m happy for you, and I wouldn’t want that option to be taken away from you. But, for me, I would really like Hide in Plain Sight to get a buff rather than replace it with a prof/long rest magical invisibility. Fortunately, I have what I think is a nice, simple fix, so I’m sharing it here in case anyone else might have use for such a thing.

As-written, Hide in Plain Sight lets you spend 1 minute making camouflage that lets you hide with a +10 bonus by pressing yourself against a flat surface that is at least as wide and tall as you and remaining still. And I quite like all of that! The big issue for me is just that, once you move or take an action, you have to spend another minute camouflaging yourself before you can hide that way again. And that one factor pretty much completely ruins the feature. So, my fix is to just get rid of that part.

You can spend 1 minute camouflaging yourself, as described in the original feature. While camouflaged this way, you have a +10 bonus to Dexterity (Stealth) checks to hide in terrain the camouflage is made to blend in with (the DM decides if a given terrain is appropriate). Additionally, while camouflaged this way, you can make a Dexterity (Stealth) check to hide even when you are not covered or obscured by pressing yourself against a flat surface that is at least as wide and tall as you. You stop being hidden in this way if you move or take an action.

I’m considering making the camouflage only work for a limited time, probably until you finish a short or long rest. That seems like a pretty reasonable limitation to me. Anyway, that’s it. Hope someone finds this tweak useful.

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