You read the rules the wrong way, especially those about stealth.
The problem isn't reading the rules the 'wrong' way. The problem is that the rules for perception are a giant mess of vague and incoherent rules.
As far as 'pinpointing' targets goes, the rules are incoherently written, but strongly suggest that you only need to guess at the target's location if they have successfully hidden, or if you can neither see nor hear them.
You read the rules the wrong way, especially those about stealth.
The problem isn't reading the rules the 'wrong' way. The problem is that the rules for perception are a giant mess of vague and incoherent rules.
As far as 'pinpointing' targets goes, the rules are incoherently written, but strongly suggest that you only need to guess at the target's location if they have successfully hidden, or if you can neither see nor hear them.
This is correct. Its pretty clear you can target an invisible creature with an attack by knowing its location as the only thing the Invisible condition imparts is the DIS to attack.
If you are somehow blinded/deafned at the same time then yes you would not know where they are at...but otherwise you know their location.
This is correct. Its pretty clear you can target an invisible creature with an attack by knowing its location as the only thing the Invisible condition imparts is the DIS to attack.
And the ability to hide without any other form of cover or concealment.
This is correct. Its pretty clear you can target an invisible creature with an attack by knowing its location as the only thing the Invisible condition imparts is the DIS to attack.
And the ability to hide without any other form of cover or concealment.
The main problem I have with RAW is less with invisible creatures than with spells like Darkness or Fog Cloud, which actually have the counterintuitive effect of sometimes making it easier to hit (Hm...our unit of archers can't hit the dragon because they're at long range, reducing a 10% hit chance to 1%. I know, I'll cast Fog Cloud over the unit, granting advantage because the dragon can't see them, and disadvantage because they can't see the dragon. The one advantage negates the multiple sources of disadvantage, so now they can hit!).
The problem here is you can’t discern the location of your target with obscurement like Fog Cloud. So you could miss entirely.
Also, not too many characters hit only on 19 or higher (where your 10% comes from).
Unless the target takes an action to Hide, you are assumed to know their location. Obscurement works just like Invisible.
Not exactly true.
Being hidden means being both unseen and unheard. That is the definition in the PHB. If a creature is already unseen due to invisibility, darkness, fog cloud or total cover of some sort then it can make a hide check to become hidden. This makes it both unseen and unheard and in addition, opponents no longer know which square or location it currently occupies.
However, a DM can easily rule that a creature is out of earshot. It is either too far away or the ambient noise is too loud that any sound the creature makes would be imperceptible. This might also be achieved with the silence spell. In this case, if the creature is both unseen and unheard then it can be automatically hidden (at the DMs discretion) without a hide check being required.
So in the case of archers trying to fire through a fog cloud at targets 150' away the DM could say that you have no idea which locations are occupied by a target. So, if you want to fire at a location, you can still do so. In this case, the attack roll is still a straight roll since you can't see a target and they can't see you so advantage and disadvantage cancel - but the attacker does not know whether the location is actually occupied so the attack automatically misses if not one is there. Realistic? Likely not but it would move along quicker than having everyone roll with disadvantage.
Being invisible does not mean that others are not aware of you and your position. Only if you take the Hide action (i.e. make a Stealth check, which you can always do if you are invisible) and you beat the Passive Perception of the others, these others are not aware of your position.
At the DM discretion, some circumstances might make possible for an invisible creature to need not a Stealth check to make himself unseen and unheard. Such circumstances may be a significant distraction and fair distance. In those cases, always at the DM approval, an invisible creature benefits from being hidden even without a Stealth check.
In my own personal ruling I would make both creatures have disadvantage on attacks and just leave it at that since this seems the most logical way to do it though officials everything cancels out.
At the DM discretion, some circumstances might make possible for an invisible creature to need not a Stealth check to make himself unseen and unheard. Such circumstances may be a significant distraction and fair distance. In those cases, always at the DM approval, an invisible creature benefits from being hidden even without a Stealth check.
I would note that 'being unseen and unheard' is already an unreasonably restrictive requirement. If some monster a hundred yards away with full concealment roars or something, hearing that roar really shouldn't permit accurately localizing it.
At the DM discretion, some circumstances might make possible for an invisible creature to need not a Stealth check to make himself unseen and unheard. Such circumstances may be a significant distraction and fair distance. In those cases, always at the DM approval, an invisible creature benefits from being hidden even without a Stealth check.
I would note that 'being unseen and unheard' is already an unreasonably restrictive requirement. If some monster a hundred yards away with full concealment roars or something, hearing that roar really shouldn't permit accurately localizing it.
I was just quoting Crawford from the podcast he did on it.
I would note that 'being unseen and unheard' is already an unreasonably restrictive requirement. If some monster a hundred yards away with full concealment roars or something, hearing that roar really shouldn't permit accurately localizing it.
In Champions, they differentiate between "targeting" senses (for humans, only vision) and non-targeting senses. Hearing, in Champions, is a non-targeting sense. So you could potentially attack something that you heard, but you'd be at the Champions equivalent of Disadvantage (1/2 OCV).
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In Champions, they differentiate between "targeting" senses (for humans, only vision) and non-targeting senses. Hearing, in Champions, is a non-targeting sense. So you could potentially attack something that you heard, but you'd be at the Champions equivalent of Disadvantage (1/2 OCV).
A number of game systems have something similar to that, because it's a useful concept, but 5e doesn't.
So it's harder for a character to avoid blows from an invisible creature, right ? This is the basis of being invisible giving advantage on the attack, the victim does not see the blow coming.
Sure, if the attack is actually aimed at the victim. But I'd argue being blinded is a far bigger problem for the attacker than not being able to see the attacker is for the target. If someone tries to stab 2 feet to your right it really doesn't matter if you knew they were stabbing or not. And as soon as armor comes into the picture and the attacker loses the luxury of causing an injury from any kind of contact, the situation is even more skewed against them. How do you aim for someone's head without accidentally striking their body armor, shield or weapon when you only have a vague notion of where they are? Even if you narrowed their position to a 5 foot square area, that's still a lot of uncertainty.
The RAW ruling especially egregious for ranged attacks. As you add more distance it's increasingly harder to notice signs of an invisible target's movement, the target becomes smaller (from the attacker's perspective) and small errors in aim become increasingly magnified. You're also limited to trying to intersect your target with a very thin line; melee weapons can at least by swung in a broad arc.
It's just too charitable to the attacker for my tastes. When I add the fact that it catches pretty much every player off guard and that it often negates other bad situations, this rule's brought me nothing but pain. At best I have to interrupt combat to explain why it's a straight roll and at worst I'm getting completely nonsensical results when the disadvantage from long range or being restrained or poisoned ends up negated.
If you give both parties disadvantage then all that happens is that the combat takes twice as long. Giving them both normal rolls has exactly the same outcome but we spend half the time at the table rolling dice.
Pacing is a legitimate concern but I disagree with these being equivalent situations. The double disadvantage will almost certainly affect how players feel about the situation and it also tips the scales of the battle in favor of save-based abilities. I very much doubt everyone would behave exactly the same in both scenarios.
I do appreciate that both sides missing constantly can cause difficulties for the DM, but that kind of lull in the action can arise from all sorts of situations. Wall spells, Globe of Invulnerability, monsters with the ability to poison/restrain/paralyze/slow/banish/incapacitate multiple targets, monsters going ethereal or making a run for it, or even just having too many NPC allies or enemy minions in the encounter can also cause pacing problems. If the action's grinding to a halt it's the DM's job to either move the scene forward in larger time chunks or hand-wave some of the minutiae to keep the game moving.
With it being about whether you can see an attacker or the target, I wonder if the logical solution (which ties in with the larp anecdote above) is:
Attacking someone you can't see: Disadvantage
Attacking someone who can't see you: Advantage (so these cancel when you are both fighting in the dark)
Being attacked by someone you can't see: you cannot add dexterity modifier to your AC (or perhaps half it, for listening for the attacks).
So heavy armour in the dark is better than relying on your ability to dodge. Two enemies who are invisible swing as normal, but cannot attempt to dodge - so an invisible tank in heavy armour is more likely to survive than an invisible rogue in a leather jerkin.
Being invisible does not mean that others are not aware of you and your position. Only if you take the Hide action (i.e. make a Stealth check, which you can always do if you are invisible) and you beat the Passive Perception of the others, these others are not aware of your position.
Again, this goes way beyond that the rules say, you are reversing the intent by stating this. The invisible status is much clearer and RAW: "An invisible creature is impossible to see without the aid of magic or a special sense. For the purpose of hiding, the creature is heavily obscured. The creature's location can be detected by any noise it makes or any tracks it leaves."
So it can be detected by the noise it makes, or by the track it leaves, but no, by default, adversaries are not aware of the position of the invisible creature. These are the rules.
After that, I agree that by default, the creature is not hidden, and that unless it takes precautions which are materialised by actually hiding, when it does something, there is a chance that it might be detected. But if it's not doing anything, and if it's beyond (and again, only the DM adjudicates that, there are no guides about this in the rules) reasonable detection range, there is no chance that it will be detected.
To give you an example, you are in a very long corridor, 1000 feet long, plain stone, no dust, lit at regular intervals. There is an invisible creature not moving, just breathing somewhere along that corridor.
At what distance would you detect it ?
It's not making any noise (apart maybe possibly from its breathing), and it's certainly not leaving any tracks...
Now, what JC says, and with which I agree (but you will see that it's completely different from your proposal) is that, in combat, when people rush around, act quickly, move things around, etc. it would be almost impossible not to notice the presence of an invisible enemy, because by doing the above actions, he would probably make some noise, disturb the environment, leave some tracks, etc. And that unless that enemy takes special precautions and is good at it (the stealth check), its adversaries probably have a reasonable idea of its location, especially since an invisible enemy is dangerous, and canny combattants would be extremely careful about tracking it wherever possible.
It's not incompatible with the above, and it just goes to prove, once more, that there are no hard and fast rules in that domain. Only the DM knows the position of all characters, visible and invisible and, depending on the circumstances, will grant checks (or use passives) to tell the players what their character know and see, using the rules as guidelines.
At the DM discretion, some circumstances might make possible for an invisible creature to need not a Stealth check to make himself unseen and unheard. Such circumstances may be a significant distraction and fair distance. In those cases, always at the DM approval, an invisible creature benefits from being hidden even without a Stealth check.
This is where we use passive stealth, that shows how unobtrusive someone can be when doing casual things. Very useful around a campfire for example, someone spying on it might see the 5 standard people, but not notice the rogue who, by force of habit, clings to shadows and does not make much noise moving around.
This is just exactly what JC says in the podcast. You are right though he says that's the case in combat.
All the things that make D&D a roleplaying game, in addition to the more board-gamy side of tactical fighting.
No, imprecision in rules has nothing to do with being a roleplaying game. There are legitimate reasons for leaving things out of the rules (mostly practical issues of page counts and rule complexity), but they don't have a lot to do with whether something is a roleplaying game. In any case, your argument boils down to "The rules are great as long as you ignore them".
If you are truly in the dark, I can guarantee that your biggest feat is going to be that you could be hit by anything coming from any direction, right into a vital location, with no chance to avoid it because you will not see it coming. Whereas you will of course not be aiming for anything specific, just trying to be lucky in attacking.
That's my point. You're trying to be lucky. Even if you know where they are (e,.g. they're leaving obvious footsteps or making a lot of noise) there's generally going to be more "wrong" ways to attack an armed and armored opponent than "right" ways. You don't know where their limbs are at, you don't know if they're bending their knees more than usual, you don't know which lines of attack they're blocking with their weapon and/or shield or if they're currently attacking. It's like a trying to fight a Displacer Beast but with even more uncertainty. The same would apply to non-humanoid monsters that are only vulnerable in certain spots (e.g. a roper's hard as rock all over except in their eyes and mouths.) The fact that targeting the wrong square/cuboid is an automatic miss doesn't really address that issue.
I'm definitely going to have to figure out a way to house rule this in case it ever happens. Because it is just absurd that two invisible characters can attack each other as if neither one was invisible and it was just a normal situation. ...
If anyone has come up with a good way to house rule this, please let me know. Because RAW makes utterly zero sense to me.
If you give both parties disadvantage then all that happens is that the combat takes twice as long. Giving them both normal rolls has exactly the same outcome but we spend half the time at the table rolling dice.
My suggestion is to go with the rules here.
I do "go with the rules", but also say that turns take twice as long (12 seconds rather than 6). The reasoning for this is that you are being more careful about moving and attacking to try to make sure that a. you don't walk into your opponent's sword, and b. you know roughly where your opponent is before attacking. (basically simulating two-way disadvantage without slowing down the game)
On the other hand, if there are any visible creatures, then I would grant disadvantage to anyone attacking an invisible creature, regardless of whether the attacker is visible or not.
Also, the chances of a situation in which everyone is invisible are very low...
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The problem isn't reading the rules the 'wrong' way. The problem is that the rules for perception are a giant mess of vague and incoherent rules.
As far as 'pinpointing' targets goes, the rules are incoherently written, but strongly suggest that you only need to guess at the target's location if they have successfully hidden, or if you can neither see nor hear them.
This is correct. Its pretty clear you can target an invisible creature with an attack by knowing its location as the only thing the Invisible condition imparts is the DIS to attack.
If you are somehow blinded/deafned at the same time then yes you would not know where they are at...but otherwise you know their location.
And the ability to hide without any other form of cover or concealment.
Good point...yes that too!
Not exactly true.
Being hidden means being both unseen and unheard. That is the definition in the PHB. If a creature is already unseen due to invisibility, darkness, fog cloud or total cover of some sort then it can make a hide check to become hidden. This makes it both unseen and unheard and in addition, opponents no longer know which square or location it currently occupies.
However, a DM can easily rule that a creature is out of earshot. It is either too far away or the ambient noise is too loud that any sound the creature makes would be imperceptible. This might also be achieved with the silence spell. In this case, if the creature is both unseen and unheard then it can be automatically hidden (at the DMs discretion) without a hide check being required.
So in the case of archers trying to fire through a fog cloud at targets 150' away the DM could say that you have no idea which locations are occupied by a target. So, if you want to fire at a location, you can still do so. In this case, the attack roll is still a straight roll since you can't see a target and they can't see you so advantage and disadvantage cancel - but the attacker does not know whether the location is actually occupied so the attack automatically misses if not one is there. Realistic? Likely not but it would move along quicker than having everyone roll with disadvantage.
Being invisible does not mean that others are not aware of you and your position. Only if you take the Hide action (i.e. make a Stealth check, which you can always do if you are invisible) and you beat the Passive Perception of the others, these others are not aware of your position.
At the DM discretion, some circumstances might make possible for an invisible creature to need not a Stealth check to make himself unseen and unheard. Such circumstances may be a significant distraction and fair distance. In those cases, always at the DM approval, an invisible creature benefits from being hidden even without a Stealth check.
In my own personal ruling I would make both creatures have disadvantage on attacks and just leave it at that since this seems the most logical way to do it though officials everything cancels out.
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I would note that 'being unseen and unheard' is already an unreasonably restrictive requirement. If some monster a hundred yards away with full concealment roars or something, hearing that roar really shouldn't permit accurately localizing it.
I was just quoting Crawford from the podcast he did on it.
I mostly just wing it.
In Champions, they differentiate between "targeting" senses (for humans, only vision) and non-targeting senses. Hearing, in Champions, is a non-targeting sense. So you could potentially attack something that you heard, but you'd be at the Champions equivalent of Disadvantage (1/2 OCV).
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A number of game systems have something similar to that, because it's a useful concept, but 5e doesn't.
Sure, if the attack is actually aimed at the victim. But I'd argue being blinded is a far bigger problem for the attacker than not being able to see the attacker is for the target. If someone tries to stab 2 feet to your right it really doesn't matter if you knew they were stabbing or not. And as soon as armor comes into the picture and the attacker loses the luxury of causing an injury from any kind of contact, the situation is even more skewed against them. How do you aim for someone's head without accidentally striking their body armor, shield or weapon when you only have a vague notion of where they are? Even if you narrowed their position to a 5 foot square area, that's still a lot of uncertainty.
The RAW ruling especially egregious for ranged attacks. As you add more distance it's increasingly harder to notice signs of an invisible target's movement, the target becomes smaller (from the attacker's perspective) and small errors in aim become increasingly magnified. You're also limited to trying to intersect your target with a very thin line; melee weapons can at least by swung in a broad arc.
It's just too charitable to the attacker for my tastes. When I add the fact that it catches pretty much every player off guard and that it often negates other bad situations, this rule's brought me nothing but pain. At best I have to interrupt combat to explain why it's a straight roll and at worst I'm getting completely nonsensical results when the disadvantage from long range or being restrained or poisoned ends up negated.
Pacing is a legitimate concern but I disagree with these being equivalent situations. The double disadvantage will almost certainly affect how players feel about the situation and it also tips the scales of the battle in favor of save-based abilities. I very much doubt everyone would behave exactly the same in both scenarios.
I do appreciate that both sides missing constantly can cause difficulties for the DM, but that kind of lull in the action can arise from all sorts of situations. Wall spells, Globe of Invulnerability, monsters with the ability to poison/restrain/paralyze/slow/banish/incapacitate multiple targets, monsters going ethereal or making a run for it, or even just having too many NPC allies or enemy minions in the encounter can also cause pacing problems. If the action's grinding to a halt it's the DM's job to either move the scene forward in larger time chunks or hand-wave some of the minutiae to keep the game moving.
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With it being about whether you can see an attacker or the target, I wonder if the logical solution (which ties in with the larp anecdote above) is:
Attacking someone you can't see: Disadvantage
Attacking someone who can't see you: Advantage (so these cancel when you are both fighting in the dark)
Being attacked by someone you can't see: you cannot add dexterity modifier to your AC (or perhaps half it, for listening for the attacks).
So heavy armour in the dark is better than relying on your ability to dodge. Two enemies who are invisible swing as normal, but cannot attempt to dodge - so an invisible tank in heavy armour is more likely to survive than an invisible rogue in a leather jerkin.
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This is just exactly what JC says in the podcast. You are right though he says that's the case in combat.
I'm just quoting the rules guy.
Disagree if you want...
5e is supposed to have quicker combat hence why I think you auto locate invisible stuff in combat if they don't hide.
Otherwise it's a game of battleship but with a moving target which is not very quick.
No, imprecision in rules has nothing to do with being a roleplaying game. There are legitimate reasons for leaving things out of the rules (mostly practical issues of page counts and rule complexity), but they don't have a lot to do with whether something is a roleplaying game. In any case, your argument boils down to "The rules are great as long as you ignore them".
That's my point. You're trying to be lucky. Even if you know where they are (e,.g. they're leaving obvious footsteps or making a lot of noise) there's generally going to be more "wrong" ways to attack an armed and armored opponent than "right" ways. You don't know where their limbs are at, you don't know if they're bending their knees more than usual, you don't know which lines of attack they're blocking with their weapon and/or shield or if they're currently attacking. It's like a trying to fight a Displacer Beast but with even more uncertainty. The same would apply to non-humanoid monsters that are only vulnerable in certain spots (e.g. a roper's hard as rock all over except in their eyes and mouths.) The fact that targeting the wrong square/cuboid is an automatic miss doesn't really address that issue.
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Part of this is just that Invisibility is only a second level spell, they don't want to make it too obnoxious to deal with in combat.
Exactly...it would be pretty stupid IMO if you had to guess where an invisible thing was within 30 ft of you always....much less right next to you.
Overall I am glad in combat its default state is "auto-notice" unless you have a compelling reason NOT to.
I do "go with the rules", but also say that turns take twice as long (12 seconds rather than 6). The reasoning for this is that you are being more careful about moving and attacking to try to make sure that a. you don't walk into your opponent's sword, and b. you know roughly where your opponent is before attacking. (basically simulating two-way disadvantage without slowing down the game)
On the other hand, if there are any visible creatures, then I would grant disadvantage to anyone attacking an invisible creature, regardless of whether the attacker is visible or not.
Also, the chances of a situation in which everyone is invisible are very low...