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...
The much much more common scenario that would also apply to the same rules (as stated before) is darkness or a fog cloud.
Both situations involve multiple creatures that are heavily obscured.
YOu know that the rules are actually pretty close to that because what I would do (and what I actually did on a number of occasions when in a LARP in complete darkness) is just wait and make perception checks until you know where to attack. Because these active checks take your action, you would at best attack every other round, using the intermediate rounds to retaliate or hide or make a perception check.
Except that's not how the rules work. You don't need to make active perception checks every round, you only need to make a check if someone hides and beats your passive perception.
You don't even need to be higher level. Fog Cloud is a 1st level spell available to multiple classes and covers a huge area. Everyone being stuck in a heavily obscured area has the same effect as everyone being invisible.
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.
I have been thinking about something similar (ish) to this (for use once we are back to in-person combat), whereby a character has an AC that doesn't include their DEX mod (and a few other things that feel like dodging the blow rather than absorbing it), and if the attack would hit them if they are just standing there (attack above AC), then they can choose to attempt a "dodge check", which is basically roll a d20 and add all the things that they removed from their AC, if the dodge check beats the attack roll, they successfully dodge. A critical hit is impossible to do a dodge check on, of course.
If you are invisible, your target has disadvantage on their dodge check (making it so that only your armor is relevant), whilst if your target is invisible, you have disadvantage on your attack roll. Being blinded (or effectively blinded, such as darkness) makes it one stage further, since you can't see signs of their presence, so you auto-fail the dodge save.
Though this sort of thing does make it more complicated, and is probably only of marginal relevance to this conversation.
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So far this session, I have killed three pets, four teammates, and only hit the enemy once, and my fire bolt didn't work against a creature immune to fire. Trust me, you NEVER want to borrow my character or my dice.
But that's exactly what I'm speaking about. If you are in a dark room and you don't know where the adversary is, he probably beat your perception with his stealth. So then you are going to start looking for him and use you active perception to try and find him by being lucky (or maybe he makes a mistake by moving and you hear him).
If he attacks someone (including you), you know where he is until he takes an action to hide. What you describe works in 4th edition (where hiding was part of movement), but not in 5th.
And this ties into another thread. I'm sorry, but if there is an area of darkness, you will certainly not see anything in there, and you might not even know that there is a monster in there., even if it did not "hide". It might just be sitting quietly, or even sleeping, and I'm not sure about you, but I would not let an average character hear something simply breathing from 10 meters away.
Detecting a monster that isn't currently active is a vague point in the rules, but we were talking about combat. And particularly the proposal was doubling turn length, which implies rolling every other round.
It's a way to do it, but I think that it should also depends on other abilities, obviously the guy with higher perception and/or stealth should have an advantage there and attack more often, which is why I think it works out with the rules out of the box.
That's not the way it works with rules out of the box. No-one has to be spending any actions making perception rolls unless one of the combatants is spending actions to hide, which is usually only a sensible choice for creatures or characters that can hide as a bonus action.
Overall 99.9% of the time the Auto-Find rule will be in effect and 0.1% of the time you will have a case where something is invisible, chooses not to act in any way, AND chooses NOT to hide (Still have to think of a convoluted reason any of this would happen....)
Ultimately it doesn't matter as it quite literally may never happen to anyone in a campaign as the circumstances are so precise to not even be worth mentioning.
Overall 99.9% of the time the Auto-Find rule will be in effect
There is no such thing. Really.Otherwise, prove it.
and 0.1% of the time you will have a case where something is invisible, chooses not to act in any way, AND chooses NOT to hide (Still have to think of a convoluted reason any of this would happen....)
You don't need to hide on purpose to be unseen and unheard, for once, and second this is to show to you that you should not expected to get a roll "just because of the rules", because these rules simply do not exist.
Ultimately it doesn't matter as it quite literally may never happen to anyone in a campaign as the circumstances are so precise to not even be worth mentioning.
just open your mind to other kind of games that boardgame-style fights.
Listen its just not going to happen to an extent most people will even consider it. If your group has a lot of creepy invisible creatures that just like sitting in corners and not breathing that is fine but I do not see it happening for most people.
Its just obliviously they don't want everyone having to spend every other turn rolling perception checks to just find the thing hiding in the corner doing nothing as thats not exactly my idea of "compelling gameplay".
Just let them see the footprints or hear the boards shift a bit and move on with it.
I'd handle the issue of "do you know where the invisible person is" based on the players descriptions of their actions. "I look around the room" means they are using their eyes, so can't see invisible things.
As soon as they realise there's something invisible, I expect them to start responding in kind - "I will listen for a footstep" or something like that.
I'm thinking that an invisible creature should be sneaking if it wants to go unnoticed. Look at the fight scene in Spiderwick Chronicles where the girl's swinging at invisible goblins. She knows they are there, because they have attacked her, so she's keeping track of them by sound and seeing leaves move etc. But if one decided to sneak away, she would still be swinging around her and wouldn't know it'd snuck away. If it just ran away without attempting stealth, it would be given away.
I would expect an invisible creature to be able to walk through a fight without being noticed (EG the ring of power, lord of the rings/hobbit), but only if people are preoccupied. walking through a room with someone sat quietly will alert them that you're there, even if you're invisible - you'll have to sneak.
The much much more common scenario that would also apply to the same rules (as stated before) is darkness or a fog cloud.
Both situations involve multiple creatures that are heavily obscured.
Except that's not how the rules work. You don't need to make active perception checks every round, you only need to make a check if someone hides and beats your passive perception.
You don't even need to be higher level. Fog Cloud is a 1st level spell available to multiple classes and covers a huge area. Everyone being stuck in a heavily obscured area has the same effect as everyone being invisible.
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I have been thinking about something similar (ish) to this (for use once we are back to in-person combat), whereby a character has an AC that doesn't include their DEX mod (and a few other things that feel like dodging the blow rather than absorbing it), and if the attack would hit them if they are just standing there (attack above AC), then they can choose to attempt a "dodge check", which is basically roll a d20 and add all the things that they removed from their AC, if the dodge check beats the attack roll, they successfully dodge. A critical hit is impossible to do a dodge check on, of course.
If you are invisible, your target has disadvantage on their dodge check (making it so that only your armor is relevant), whilst if your target is invisible, you have disadvantage on your attack roll. Being blinded (or effectively blinded, such as darkness) makes it one stage further, since you can't see signs of their presence, so you auto-fail the dodge save.
Though this sort of thing does make it more complicated, and is probably only of marginal relevance to this conversation.
If he attacks someone (including you), you know where he is until he takes an action to hide. What you describe works in 4th edition (where hiding was part of movement), but not in 5th.
Detecting a monster that isn't currently active is a vague point in the rules, but we were talking about combat. And particularly the proposal was doubling turn length, which implies rolling every other round.
That's not the way it works with rules out of the box. No-one has to be spending any actions making perception rolls unless one of the combatants is spending actions to hide, which is usually only a sensible choice for creatures or characters that can hide as a bonus action.
Overall 99.9% of the time the Auto-Find rule will be in effect and 0.1% of the time you will have a case where something is invisible, chooses not to act in any way, AND chooses NOT to hide (Still have to think of a convoluted reason any of this would happen....)
Ultimately it doesn't matter as it quite literally may never happen to anyone in a campaign as the circumstances are so precise to not even be worth mentioning.
Listen its just not going to happen to an extent most people will even consider it. If your group has a lot of creepy invisible creatures that just like sitting in corners and not breathing that is fine but I do not see it happening for most people.
Its just obliviously they don't want everyone having to spend every other turn rolling perception checks to just find the thing hiding in the corner doing nothing as thats not exactly my idea of "compelling gameplay".
Just let them see the footprints or hear the boards shift a bit and move on with it.
It's not on me if you can't find a compelling reason to have the party spot the invisible creature in the room mid combat who isn't trying to hide.
The title is an invisible creature attacking an invisible creature but sure we are not talking about combat....
I'd handle the issue of "do you know where the invisible person is" based on the players descriptions of their actions. "I look around the room" means they are using their eyes, so can't see invisible things.
As soon as they realise there's something invisible, I expect them to start responding in kind - "I will listen for a footstep" or something like that.
I'm thinking that an invisible creature should be sneaking if it wants to go unnoticed. Look at the fight scene in Spiderwick Chronicles where the girl's swinging at invisible goblins. She knows they are there, because they have attacked her, so she's keeping track of them by sound and seeing leaves move etc. But if one decided to sneak away, she would still be swinging around her and wouldn't know it'd snuck away. If it just ran away without attempting stealth, it would be given away.
I would expect an invisible creature to be able to walk through a fight without being noticed (EG the ring of power, lord of the rings/hobbit), but only if people are preoccupied. walking through a room with someone sat quietly will alert them that you're there, even if you're invisible - you'll have to sneak.
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