Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
The thing is, I don't know what "hiding" really means without context.

Like, I understand moving slowly and quietly to avoid attracting attention. I understand moving behind cover or otherwise out of line of sight. But, that only hides you from a specific vantage point. Likewise, most "hiding" involves finding some place where you blend in and then don't move or draw attention to yourself.

This is very different from sneaking around a battlefield.

Like, imagine a dungeon. The rogue "hides" before the fighter opens the door, and the party charges into the next room. If there are monsters in the next room, they can't see the rogue, because she was in a different room. But why is she any more "hidden" when she walks through the same door that everyone else did to engage the monsters?

I don't know, I kind of feel like players expect stealth to work like in a video game where your character crouches down and turns semi-transparent and then remains in "stealth" until they do something to break stealth, but that doesn't really match to my understanding of hiding in the real world.
As you are designing your own system anyway, you can change it.

If you copy D&D with hide actions, hidden status effects and sneak attacks for rogues, you get behavior like D&D. But that is your fault alone. Look how Shadowrun (as something widely known) handles stealth : As runners are basically criminals trying to stay unnoticed as long as possible, stealth is a major part of the gameplay. And somehow SR does not have a single one of your specific problems.