Baldur's Gate 3 Stealth: Where You Stand Beats the Roll

A Rogue with Stealth expertise and Pass Without Trace running is spotted the instant they step into a lit doorway an enemy is looking at. A Wizard with 8 Dexterity hiding inside a Fog Cloud cannot be spotted by anything without Devil's Sight or Born into Darkness, as long as nothing walks into melee range. Neither outcome involves a die.

Baldur's Gate 3 only rolls a hiding character's Stealth in one of its three obscurity states, as the watcher sees them. The other two settle the question before Dexterity gets a vote, which makes hiding in this game a positioning skill first and a Stealth score second. Below is how obscurity decides detection, what darkvision does to it, why Fog and Darkness are different tools, what breaks Hiding, and the gear that only switches on in the shadows. The rules come from bg3.wiki's Hide, Stealth, Obscurity, Sight mechanics and Darkvision mechanics pages, plus the spell, feature and item pages listed at the bottom, checked on 2 October 2026. Where I have done arithmetic on top of them, I say so.

Surprise rounds, and stealth attacks fired from outside every vision cone, are covered in our initiative and surprise guide. This one is about staying unseen once you are already in the room.

Three kinds of ground, and only one of them rolls

Hiding starts with the Hide action, which costs an action for most characters. Rogues (Cunning Action, level 2), Gloom Stalker Rangers (level 3) and Way of Shadow Monks (level 3) each get a bonus-action version. A successful Hide applies the Hiding condition, and from then on, whenever you are in the line of sight of a non-allied creature, the game asks one question: how obscured is the spot you are standing on?

Four rules sit on top of that table:

• Shadows only conceal someone who is hiding. bg3.wiki's Obscurity page is explicit that a character who has not used Hide gets no protection from line-of-sight detection, whatever the lighting. The Clear Area, Lightly Obscured and Heavily Obscured conditions themselves only apply after a successful Hide.
• Melee range counts as a Clear Area. Get within melee range of the watcher and you are spotted on sight, however dark it is.
• A natural 1 on the check is a critical failure and gets you spotted on the spot, per the Stealth page.
• The DC is the watcher's passive Perception: 10 plus its Wisdom modifier, plus its proficiency bonus if it is proficient in Perception, plus a flat 5 for advantage or minus 5 for disadvantage, per bg3.wiki's Passive checks page.

Holding Show Sneak Cones (Left Shift by default) draws enemy sight lines; while the selected character is hiding they appear as a red overlay on the ground, which is what is tinting the cobbles in the screenshot at the top of this page.

Dim light is a slow leak

Lightly Obscured is the only state where your Stealth bonus matters to staying hidden, and it matters less than it looks because the check keeps coming back. Two watchers over three turns is six checks, and you have to pass all six. Working the rules through — my arithmetic, not the wiki's:

The 95% row is the ceiling for most characters, because the natural 1 fails whatever your bonus is. Past that point, more Stealth buys nothing against that watcher. Three things lift the ceiling:

• Advantage on the Stealth check. Both dice have to land on 1 to fail, which by my arithmetic is 1 in 400. The Stealth page lists advantage from the Lightfoot Halfling and Deep Gnome races, Elegant Studded Leather and Cat's Grace, among other sources.
• Halfling Luck rerolls a natural 1 once. bg3.wiki's Halfling Luck page puts the failure chance on a roll that only fails on a 1 at 1 in 400.
• Reliable Talent, the Rogue's level 11 feature, treats any die result under 10 as a 10 on a check with a proficient skill, natural 1 included, which its page says removes the chance to critically fail. A proficient Rogue whose Stealth bonus plus 10 meets the watcher's passive Perception passes that check automatically.

Reaching the 95% row is what Pass Without Trace is for: +10 to Stealth for you and allies within 9 m for as long as you concentrate — tied for the largest flat bonus on bg3.wiki's Stealth list. Druids learn it at level 3, Rangers at 5, Trickery Clerics get it as a domain spell, Way of Shadow Monks have it through Shadow Arts, and anyone can cast it once per long rest from the Ring of Shadows, which Oliver gives you for playing both rounds of his hide-and-seek in the House in Deep Shadows. Pass Without Trace is not on the list of actions that keep you hidden (covered below), so cast it before you Hide, not after.

Armour that taxes the roll

Per the Stealth page, every heavy armour and every variant of Scale Mail and Half Plate gives disadvantage on Stealth checks — except six named pieces: Armour of Agility, Helldusk Armour, Protective Plate, Unwanted Masterwork Scalemail, Yuan-Ti Scale Mail and the Sharpened Snare Cuirass. Disadvantage means both dice have to clear the number, so by my arithmetic the 95% row above drops to about 90% per check and the 80% row to 64%. Our best armour guide covers the Exotic Material pieces on that list.

The small Stealth bonuses are cheap to collect: the Smuggler's Ring gives +2 Stealth and +2 Sleight of Hand for -1 Charisma, from a skeleton hidden in a bush on the Risen Road, and the Gloomstrand Shield adds +1.

Darkvision moves you one step into the light

Creatures with darkvision do not see the dark the way you hope they do. Within their darkvision range, per bg3.wiki's Darkvision and Stealth pages:

• Lightly Obscured counts as a Clear Area. You are spotted on sight.
• Heavily Obscured counts as Lightly Obscured. You are back to rolling.
• Inside a Fog Cloud or Darkness, you still count as Heavily Obscured.

The standard ranges are 12 m for Darkvision and 24 m for Superior Darkvision, though the Darkvision mechanics page notes that creatures can carry custom ranges. The Stealth page adds that many creatures have a hidden 2 m darkvision on top, so an enemy with no listed darkvision can still downgrade your cover once you are that close. Sarevok's Horned Helmet and the Assassin of Bhaal Cowl give their wearer functional darkvision out to 5 m.

That is the case against relying on dim light in Act One. bg3.wiki lists the Darkvision passive on the Goblin Warrior, so inside its darkvision range a dim corner of a goblin camp is a Clear Area as far as detection goes.

Devil's Sight and the Born into Darkness passive go a step further: to a creature with either, Fog and Darkness count as only Lightly Obscured. The Born into Darkness page lists it on Sharrans in and around the House of Grief and the Cloister of Sombre Embrace, and the Devil's Sight page lists it on Raphael, Helsik, Sceleritas Fel and a run of imps, among others. Your own cloud is a Stealth check against them, not a guarantee.

For which playable races carry which kind of darkvision, our races guide covers it. The Darkvision mechanics page's short version: Dragonborn, Githyanki, Halflings and Humans have none, and full Drow (not Drow half-elves), Duergar and Deep Gnomes have the 24 m kind.

The dark changes the attack roll too

Obscurity is not only a detection system. bg3.wiki's Sight mechanics page names two attack-roll effects:

• Too dark. Attack rolls against a Heavily Obscured target have disadvantage when the attacker lacks darkvision or the target is beyond its range.
• Attacking from shadows. Attack rolls have advantage when the attacker is Heavily Obscured from the target's point of view — in the Darkvision mechanics page's terms, the attacker's darkvision covers the target and the target's does not cover the attacker. That page marks this rule as still needing verification, so treat its edge cases as unconfirmed.

Hiding adds a third source: the Hiding condition gives advantage on all attack rolls. The catch is on the Hide page — attacking ends Hiding. Anything gated on the Hiding condition is one attack per Hide, which is the real value of the bonus-action version: a Rogue, Gloom Stalker or Shadow Monk who can find a spot to re-hide can Hide and attack in the same turn.

Fog and Darkness are not the same cloud

Both clouds Heavily Obscure and Blind everything inside them, and per the Hide page, hiding inside either one is an automatic success against anything without Devil's Sight or Born into Darkness. After that they part ways, and the difference is projectiles.

The Sight mechanics page splits targeted spells such as Sacred Flame, Sleep and Misty Step, which need line of sight, from projectile actions such as weapon shots, Fire Bolt, Fireball and Magic Missile, which only need a clear path. Fog stops the first kind and lets the second through. Darkness stops both. That produces three practical readings:

• Fog hides you; it does not shield you. Projectiles still fly through it, and the Sight mechanics page says enemies typically fire into Fog or walk inside. Everyone inside is Blinded, which per the Blinded condition page means disadvantage on attack rolls and attack and spell range cut to 3 m.
• Darkness is a wall. Nothing shoots in or out unless it can see through magical darkness. The same page says enemies are discouraged from entering, prefer throwing items from outside, and otherwise simply end their turn.
• Lost enemies come looking. When a creature loses a hidden or invisible party member, the Sight mechanics page says it sweeps its vision cone over your last known position, then tries Sense Hidden Presence within 3 m of it; the Detecting Presence condition that applies searches for Invisible creatures within 3 m, who must pass a Dexterity save or be Revealed. The page adds that enemies which cannot reach that spot and act in the same turn tend to do nothing at all, which it describes as a reliable way to make them skip turns.

The Darkness spell is learned at level 3 by Sorcerers, Warlocks and Wizards, at level 5 once per long rest by Drow, Drow half-elves and Asmodeus tieflings, by Eldritch Knights at 7 and Arcane Tricksters at 8, and Way of Shadow Monks get Shadow Arts: Darkness for 2 ki. If you would rather not spend concentration on Fog, the Hammergrim Mist Amulet casts Fog Cloud once per long rest without concentration; it sits in a locked chest in a ruined house east of the tollhouse in the Shadow-Cursed Lands.

Darkness plus Devil's Sight

Devil's Sight is a Warlock Eldritch Invocation available from level 2: you see normally in darkness, magical included, out to 24 m, and you are immune to being Blinded by Darkness — though not by Blindness, Fog Cloud or Hunger of Hadar, per its page. Stand in your own Darkness with it and the Darkness page says your ranged attacks out of the cloud get advantage, tagged "Attacking from shadows", while anything without the same sight cannot shoot back in.

Three caveats from the same pages:

• A target with darkvision spoils it. If the target has darkvision and you are inside its range, you get no advantage. The Darkvision page files that as a bug, since darkvision cannot actually see into magical darkness.
• Enemies with Devil's Sight are not locked out. They treat your cloud as Lightly Obscured, so they get a Stealth check against you.
• Shadow Magic Sorcerers get the same trick without the invocation, but only one way. Casting Eyes of the Dark: Darkness for 2 sorcery points gives the caster sight in the cloud for its duration. Per the Eyes of the Dark condition page, a Darkness cast with a spell slot, or by anyone else in the party, still Blinds them. Our Patch 8 subclasses guide has the rest of that subclass.

What keeps you hidden, and what does not

Hiding ends on the first action that lacks the Stealth spell flag. bg3.wiki's Stealth (spell flag) page says it plainly: a hidden character performing any action without the flag ends stealth and is detected by enemies in range. The common entries on the flagged list:

• Hide in every version, Dash (including Cunning Action: Dash and Step of the Wind: Dash), Jump and Enhanced Jump
• Dip — you can coat your weapon without breaking cover
• Minor Illusion and Meow, the distractions the Hide page names for turning enemy vision cones away from you
• Darkness, Shadow Arts: Darkness and the spear-granted Shar's Darkness
• Patient Defence, Cloak of Shadows, One with Shadows and Hide in Plain Sight

Ordinary attacks are not on it, and neither are Disengage, Pass Without Trace or most spells. One exception for casters: bg3.wiki's Subtle Spell page notes that a Sorcerer casting with Subtle Spell while sneaking keeps their concealment and rolls a Stealth check instead, as if under Greater Invisibility.

Hiding is not Invisible

The two get used interchangeably and they are different conditions with different exits.

The Wet line matters for your own party. bg3.wiki's Wet page says becoming Wet breaks normal Invisibility immediately, which is why our status effects guide warns against Create Water near your own scout; the Greater Invisibility condition lists no such exit.

Greater Invisibility's climbing DC

Greater Invisibility does not end when you act; it asks for a Stealth check, and the DC rises with every success. Per the Greater Invisibility and Stealth pages, the DC is 15 plus the number of previous successful checks outside Honour Mode, and 15 plus that number squared in Honour. Working the formula:

Actions with the Invisible spell flag — Jump, Dash and the Arrow of Darkness among them — skip the check and do not raise the DC. By my arithmetic, a character with +10 Stealth passes the first check 80% of the time and, in an Honour Mode run, the fourth (DC 24) 35% of the time. (The Stealth page's prose describes the second step as DC 17, which disagrees with the formula printed on both pages; the table follows the formula.)

Features that turn you invisible in the dark

A handful of class features turn you invisible or move you between shadows, most of them only from Lightly or Heavily Obscured ground, and they are a large part of what the Way of Shadow Monk and the Gloom Stalker are built around.

The pages carry three wrinkles:

• Cloak of Shadows drops if you cross from Lightly to Heavily Obscured ground, or back, because of a coding bug its page documents. Stay in one kind of shadow.
• One with Shadows survives some movement. Its page says movement actions with the Invisible flag, such as Fly (Illithid Power) or Brutal Leap, do not break it — but the basic Jump and Fly (class action) are specifically coded to remove it.
• The Trickery Cleric's version does not need the dark. Its page says it borrows Cloak of Shadows' description but does not actually check for obscurity, so it works in bright light.

Gear that switches on in the dark

The Obscurity page draws the line that matters here. An item that triggers while you are obscured works as long as you are standing in a Lightly or Heavily Obscured space — you do not need to Hide. An item that triggers while you are Hiding needs the condition, and gives it up on your first ordinary attack. A third group cares whether the target is obscured, which makes them payoffs for your own Darkness and Fog rather than stealth gear.

Nine of those thirteen come from Act Two. The item and passive-feature pages add the fine print:

• Several are buggier than their tooltips. Viconia's Priestess Robe and both Dark Justiciar Half-Plates promise advantage on Stealth "while obscured", but the Stealth page says all three apply it everywhere, Clear Area included. Shar's Spear's save advantage only works on Dexterity saves, and its bonus d6 lands on any weapon attack against an obscured creature, not just the spear's. Dread Iron Ambush likewise adds its d6 to every weapon attack its wielder makes while hidden.
• Some leave their buff behind. Shadeclinger's Clinging Shadows, the Shade-Slayer Cloak's Skilled Skullduggery and the Dread Iron Dagger's Lethal Concealment all stay on the character after the item is unequipped. Shadeclinger's page notes you can pass its condition to the whole active party by having each member equip and remove it in turn.
• Least Expected switches on late. Equip it while already obscured and Darkveil Precision does not apply until you step into a Clear Area and back, or Hide.
• The Shadow Blade only wants the target in the dark. Patch 8 Hotfix 1 limited the passive to melee weapon attacks, and the ring's page says that since Patch 8 the spell needs no concentration and the blade lasts until long rest, so the ring can make one blade per short rest.
• The Cloak of Cunning Brume, sold by Mattis at the Last Light Inn, drops a 2 m fog cloud for one turn whenever you Disengage — a portable Heavily Obscured patch to Hide in.

Covert Cowl and Shade-Slayer Cloak also sit in our critical hits guide's threshold table, and they stack with the other reductions there.

Quick reference

• Hide first, or the shadows will not conceal you. Obscurity only protects a character with the Hiding condition from being spotted. Hide is an action, or a bonus action for Rogues, Gloom Stalkers and Way of Shadow Monks.
• Clear Area or melee range: spotted on sight. Lightly Obscured: Stealth against passive Perception, every turn, per watcher. Heavily Obscured: no check. A natural 1 on the check gets you spotted.
• In dim light the natural 1 caps most characters at 95% per check, which by my arithmetic is about 60% over ten checks. Advantage on Stealth, Halfling Luck and Reliable Talent are the ways past it; Pass Without Trace's +10 is the usual way to reach it.
• Darkvision steps your cover down one level inside its range: Lightly Obscured becomes Clear, Heavily becomes Lightly. Fog and Darkness still count as Heavily Obscured against it.
• Attacks against a Heavily Obscured target are at disadvantage without darkvision; Hiding gives advantage on attack rolls, and attacking ends Hiding.
• Fog blocks sight but not projectiles. Darkness blocks both, and can be cast without breaking Hiding.
• Devil's Sight in your own Darkness gives advantage on ranged attacks out, unless the target has darkvision and you are inside its range.
• Hiding ends on any action without the Stealth flag. Dash, Jump, Dip, Minor Illusion and Darkness keep you hidden; attacks, Disengage and Pass Without Trace do not.
• Greater Invisibility's Stealth DC is 15 plus your previous successes, or plus their square in Honour Mode.
• "While obscured" gear works without hiding; "while Hiding" gear needs the condition; Shadow Blade, the Knife of the Undermountain King and the Shadow-Cloaked Ring want the target in the dark.