Hide in Plain Sight with no restrictions

[gooddragon1]

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[BowStreetRunner]

In order to hide you need
a source of cover or concealment and
an opportunity to hide while not being observed

The various Camouflage and Hide in Plain Sight abilities all seem to be worded inconsistently, but they all work around two basic concepts:
expanding the list of what constitutes cover and concealment when attempting to hide and/or
allowing you to make a hide attempt even while being observed.

Note that none of them truly allow you to walk in front of the guard without some form of cover, although they may allow you to begin hiding behind some form of cover while the guard is watching you. For the ranger ability, natural terrain is still a form of cover, if only for the purposes of making a hide check. The rule is bent but not broken. Likewise, the illusionist ability just expands to pretty much any form of terrain counting as a form of cover.

[Fizban]

The Blur spell grants you concealment, which some people say means you can walk right out in front of people because you're hiding the in the concealment from Blur. This is pretty absurd. But then there's the Umbral Disciple from Magic of Incarnum, that seems to have that as a class feature: they get a controllable amount of concealment, and at 20% or higher they can hide in plain sight.

There are two main references for Hide in Plain Sight, and as far as I'm concerned, they don't agree. Ranger HiPS specifically says natural terrain, and the meaning of the "while observed" line can be inferred from their previous Camouflage ability: they already got the ability to use natural terrain instead of concealment or cover, and now they can do so even while observed. Ranger is the most commonly referenced, even by classes that have no such Camouflage ability and no affinity for natural terrain.

The Shadowdancer/Assassin entry starts with the "while observed" line. It then continues, as if to define what "while observed" means, saying you can hide when in the open as long as you're within 10' of a shadow. Most people take this as providing both abilities, letting you hide by any means even while actively observed, as well as being able to use any shadow within 10' as means of hiding.

Now here's the kicker: almost none of those classes had Hide in Plain Sight in 3rd edition. That's 3.0 edition, where I first read the ability, in the second book I ever bought, the 3.0 DMG. When Hide in Plain Sight was first printed, it was only the Shadowdancer version. Now think about how that ability reads, as if it reading it for the first time. The majority of the text is talking about using a shadow to hide even though you shouldn't be able to, that's clearly the big rule you're breaking, and class features back then didn't go on for pages doing multiple things under a single entry. One class feature, one restriction lifted, and that would be hiding without proper cover. It wasn't until 3.5 edition with the Ranger's version of HiPS that they made a clear distinction between the idea of Camouflage style abilities for hiding without concealment or cover, and the actual Hide in Plain Sight ability of hiding while under observation.

And as usual, half the designers didn't realize there might be a difference. Was Shadowdancer always supposed to let you both hide in meager shadows and also hide while staring someone in the face? Cause that's a huuuuge ability to get at 1st level in a PrC, and not the kind of thing you'd find in 3.0 at all. Even 3.5 classes make you wait a long time, the Shadowdancer only seems to keep it at 1st because it's grandfathered in. Is the Ranger actually just being strung out and nerfed into oblivion compared to the darling Assassin and Shadowdancer? Well whatever the original or final intent, we have two drastically different entries being referenced by all sorts of other classes, shadow classes looking at Rangers and I'm pretty sure there's at least one natural class referencing Shadowdancer. It's all stupid enough I'd rather just carry a bandoleer full of Liquid Smoke and and Liquid Night and ninja my way through life.