echnical question for you guys. A bit of a debate in one of the games I play in, hoping you guys can chime in
Attacking an invisible creature
- Player and enemy are engaged in melee - Enemy turns invisible and fly's above the PC, never leaving PC's area so not taking an AOO - Player attacks at disadvantage to try and hit the enemy - PC meets the enemies AC with the disadvantage role - However some people think the enemy should never have been able to be hit due to enemy flying above, and the PC never picked a specific direction
As I understand it you don't have to say a specific direction when attacking an invisible enemy right?
As Understand the rule you don't quite know where they are but you take a wild guess (aka at disadvantage), and if you still some how manage to hit good for you you "guessed" correctly.
I guess this also falls under areal and underwater battles?
You absolutely can attack an invisible enemy in that situation. Unless the Invisible enemy takes the Hide action, the PC is still aware of their general location. Especially if the invisible creature is still within 5 feet. Without taking the Hide action, the PC can still hear the general location that the enemy moved to and can take a wild stab toward them (represented by disadvantage).
if you're Invisible and move away you don't incur any AOO (need to see the creature moving away to get an AOO)
I found this rule if it helps:
Unseen Attackers and Targets
Combatants often try to escape their foes' notice by hiding, casting the invisibility spell, or lurking in darkness.
When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see.If the target isn't in the location you targeted, you automatically miss, but the DM typically just says that the attack missed, not whether you guessed the target's location correctly.
When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it.
If you are hidden — both unseen and unheard — when you make an attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses.
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"A rightful place awaits you in the Realms Above, in the Land of the Great Light. Come in peace, and live beneath the sun again, where trees and flowers grow."
— The message of Eilistraee to all decent drow.
"Run thy sword across my chains, Silver Lady, that I may join your dance.”
First, being invisible means you don't trigger attacks of opportunity, so the creature could have freely flown away.
Flying above does not make the enemy unattackable. Range is range and includes above and below.
Then we enter the grey area of invisible enemies and knowing their location. First, invisible is not hiding. Being hidden means you are neither seen nor heard, and your location is not known. Turning invisible only satisfies one of those. While invisible you are able to take the Hide action which will silence your movements and cause enemies to lose track of your location if your stealth check succeeds. Many DMs will also allow an invisible creature to be functionally hidden automatically if they are far enough away from any enemies (more that 60ft for example).
In your example, the invisible creature is still in melee range, so it could be assumed the character has tracked its movements and rough location from noise and fluttering of air enough to try an attack (at disadvantage).
If a creature was invisible or hidden and its location was not known exactly then you would first have to guess a square to target (personally, I make the player roll a dice based on the size of the possible area the creature could be hiding in to choose successfully). Then even if the correct square is found the attack is still at disadvantage to represent the difficulty of success.
You absolutely can attack an invisible enemy in that situation. Unless the Invisible enemy takes the Hide action, the PC is still aware of their general location. Especially if the invisible creature is still within 5 feet. Without taking the Hide action, the PC can still hear the general location that the enemy moved to and can take a wild stab toward them (represented by disadvantage).
Thanks for this.
I guess this also has the same effect in aerial or underwater combat as well?
I think everyone already has good answers as to the difference between invisible and hiding.
Vision and senses are not very well covered rules.
I think that, 99 times out of 100, people tend to equate "Perception" to "Vision", but Perception can be accomplished through all the senses, not just sight. I think the best example of something like that in-game are creatures that have advantage on perception using scent, such as cats or dogs... sight and sound are most commonly used to track perception, but all senses are viable for that purpose.
You absolutely can attack an invisible enemy in that situation. Unless the Invisible enemy takes the Hide action, the PC is still aware of their general location. Especially if the invisible creature is still within 5 feet. Without taking the Hide action, the PC can still hear the general location that the enemy moved to and can take a wild stab toward them (represented by disadvantage).
This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see.
It's important to recognize that hiding is hard. Once you've managed to become unseen, whether through invisibility or obscurement or cover or whatever, then you need to take a full action to hide and roll well enough on the associated stealth check.
Hidden is a very powerful condition, and it is proportionally expensive for most creatures to achieve in combat. I think a lot of DMs who treat invisible as functionally hidden are not fully aware of how frustrating and imbalancing that house rule can be.
Invisibililty is often over-estimated. Functionally, it means that a character can attempt to Hide in open space without requiring cover. It does not, however, explicitly grant advantage on Stealth Checks, although many DMs rule that it does in the moment.
"A rightful place awaits you in the Realms Above, in the Land of the Great Light. Come in peace, and live beneath the sun again, where trees and flowers grow."
— The message of Eilistraee to all decent drow.
"Run thy sword across my chains, Silver Lady, that I may join your dance.”
An invisible creature is impossible to see without the aid of magic or a special sense.
This means you don't know where it is and have to make a guess telling your DM which 5 foot by 5 foot square you think your target is in... good luck.
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"A rightful place awaits you in the Realms Above, in the Land of the Great Light. Come in peace, and live beneath the sun again, where trees and flowers grow."
— The message of Eilistraee to all decent drow.
"Run thy sword across my chains, Silver Lady, that I may join your dance.”
Functionally, it also means you are Invisible and cannot be seen.
If you cannot be detected (not wearing medium or heavy armor to make noise and not leaving any footprints) then it's best guess as to where you are.
I think Invisibility would be a good opportunity to utilize Passive Stealth. Passive Perception is almost always the only Passive Stat that gets used, but with the boost of Invisibility, I think it makes perfect sense for a creature to be able to use 10+Stealth to determine whether or not they're hidden, assuming they're in some condition that won't leave obvious signs of their location in spite of their stealth stat (like being in sand/snow where footprints would make their position obvious without deliberately compensating for them somehow).
I think everyone already has good answers as to the difference between invisible and hiding.
Vision and senses are not very well covered rules.
I think that, 99 times out of 100, people tend to equate "Perception" to "Vision", but Perception can be accomplished through all the senses, not just sight. I think the best example of something like that in-game are creatures that have advantage on perception using scent, such as cats or dogs... sight and sound are most commonly used to track perception, but all senses are viable for that purpose.
Thus "vision and senses are not very well covered rules."
The rules for vision are incomplete at best amd the rules for every sense other than sight are practically nonexistent.
And here is a fun fact as an example: If a grappledinvisible creature hides (which it can do because it is heavily obscured by invisibility), the grappler - according to the rules - no longer knows where the creature they are grappling is.
Try and think of how many different terrain types there are and how many weather conditions nullify or even out invisibility.
Mud. Snow. Shallow water. Tall grass. Light foliage. Sand. Leaves. And don't forget if they walk in this stuff or through water or blood or anything really and then walk somewhere else you can track them by the footprints they leave. (Those who are clever will find ways around this, like not walking in those areas to begin with.)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"A rightful place awaits you in the Realms Above, in the Land of the Great Light. Come in peace, and live beneath the sun again, where trees and flowers grow."
— The message of Eilistraee to all decent drow.
"Run thy sword across my chains, Silver Lady, that I may join your dance.”
Remember if you are grappling someone you are touching them, this is using a sense to overcome invisibility to some degree, you still attack with disadvantage due to not seeing your target... but you know exactly where they are due to the grapple.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"A rightful place awaits you in the Realms Above, in the Land of the Great Light. Come in peace, and live beneath the sun again, where trees and flowers grow."
— The message of Eilistraee to all decent drow.
"Run thy sword across my chains, Silver Lady, that I may join your dance.”
echnical question for you guys. A bit of a debate in one of the games I play in, hoping you guys can chime in
Attacking an invisible creature
- Player and enemy are engaged in melee - Enemy turns invisible and fly's above the PC, never leaving PC's area so not taking an AOO - Player attacks at disadvantage to try and hit the enemy
Just explicitly pointing out the PC has to either guess at random where the invisible enemy is (doable, just unlikely) or manage to hear the enemy (completely GM dependent and highly dependent on how the enemy flies - under a sane GM, hummingbirds are a lot louder than owls) to work out what square to attack. Also, the enemy could have left the player's reach without provoking an AoO, due to being invisible: AoOs explicitly require sight.
- PC meets the enemies AC with the disadvantage role - However some people think the enemy should never have been able to be hit due to enemy flying above, and the PC never picked a specific direction
This is illegal. All attacks must have a target, and you can't declare an enemy you can't detect as a target - you can guess a space and attack that space and see what happens, but that would require a direction and a distance (unless the weapon didn't have reach). Or you can just pick your target space, rather than using polar geometry.
As I understand it you don't have to say a specific direction when attacking an invisible enemy right?
You don't normally use directions to pick spaces, but you do need to designate what space you're attacking.
Remember if you are grappling someone you are touching them, this is using a sense to overcome invisibility to some degree, you still attack with disadvantage due to not seeing your target... but you know exactly where they are due to the grapple.
That helps against invisibility, but the creature in my scenario is also hidden. If hiding doesn't hide your position, then it does nothing at all (especially for invisible creatures).
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echnical question for you guys. A bit of a debate in one of the games I play in, hoping you guys can chime in
Attacking an invisible creature
- Player and enemy are engaged in melee
- Enemy turns invisible and fly's above the PC, never leaving PC's area so not taking an AOO
- Player attacks at disadvantage to try and hit the enemy
- PC meets the enemies AC with the disadvantage role
- However some people think the enemy should never have been able to be hit due to enemy flying above, and the PC never picked a specific direction
As I understand it you don't have to say a specific direction when attacking an invisible enemy right?
As Understand the rule you don't quite know where they are but you take a wild guess (aka at disadvantage), and if you still some how manage to hit good for you you "guessed" correctly.
I guess this also falls under areal and underwater battles?
You absolutely can attack an invisible enemy in that situation. Unless the Invisible enemy takes the Hide action, the PC is still aware of their general location. Especially if the invisible creature is still within 5 feet. Without taking the Hide action, the PC can still hear the general location that the enemy moved to and can take a wild stab toward them (represented by disadvantage).
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
if you're Invisible and move away you don't incur any AOO (need to see the creature moving away to get an AOO)
I found this rule if it helps:
Unseen Attackers and Targets
Combatants often try to escape their foes' notice by hiding, casting the invisibility spell, or lurking in darkness.
When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see. If the target isn't in the location you targeted, you automatically miss, but the DM typically just says that the attack missed, not whether you guessed the target's location correctly.
When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it.
If you are hidden — both unseen and unheard — when you make an attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses.
First, being invisible means you don't trigger attacks of opportunity, so the creature could have freely flown away.
Flying above does not make the enemy unattackable. Range is range and includes above and below.
Then we enter the grey area of invisible enemies and knowing their location. First, invisible is not hiding. Being hidden means you are neither seen nor heard, and your location is not known. Turning invisible only satisfies one of those. While invisible you are able to take the Hide action which will silence your movements and cause enemies to lose track of your location if your stealth check succeeds. Many DMs will also allow an invisible creature to be functionally hidden automatically if they are far enough away from any enemies (more that 60ft for example).
In your example, the invisible creature is still in melee range, so it could be assumed the character has tracked its movements and rough location from noise and fluttering of air enough to try an attack (at disadvantage).
If a creature was invisible or hidden and its location was not known exactly then you would first have to guess a square to target (personally, I make the player roll a dice based on the size of the possible area the creature could be hiding in to choose successfully). Then even if the correct square is found the attack is still at disadvantage to represent the difficulty of success.
Thanks for this.
I guess this also has the same effect in aerial or underwater combat as well?
Thanks for correcting me on this, forever learning =]
I think everyone already has good answers as to the difference between invisible and hiding.
Vision and senses are not very well covered rules.
I think that, 99 times out of 100, people tend to equate "Perception" to "Vision", but Perception can be accomplished through all the senses, not just sight. I think the best example of something like that in-game are creatures that have advantage on perception using scent, such as cats or dogs... sight and sound are most commonly used to track perception, but all senses are viable for that purpose.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
It's important to recognize that hiding is hard. Once you've managed to become unseen, whether through invisibility or obscurement or cover or whatever, then you need to take a full action to hide and roll well enough on the associated stealth check.
Hidden is a very powerful condition, and it is proportionally expensive for most creatures to achieve in combat. I think a lot of DMs who treat invisible as functionally hidden are not fully aware of how frustrating and imbalancing that house rule can be.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Invisibililty is often over-estimated. Functionally, it means that a character can attempt to Hide in open space without requiring cover. It does not, however, explicitly grant advantage on Stealth Checks, although many DMs rule that it does in the moment.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Functionally, it also means you are Invisible and cannot be seen.
If you cannot be detected (not wearing medium or heavy armor to make noise and not leaving any footprints) then it's best guess as to where you are.
An invisible creature is impossible to see without the aid of magic or a special sense.
This means you don't know where it is and have to make a guess telling your DM which 5 foot by 5 foot square you think your target is in... good luck.
I think Invisibility would be a good opportunity to utilize Passive Stealth. Passive Perception is almost always the only Passive Stat that gets used, but with the boost of Invisibility, I think it makes perfect sense for a creature to be able to use 10+Stealth to determine whether or not they're hidden, assuming they're in some condition that won't leave obvious signs of their location in spite of their stealth stat (like being in sand/snow where footprints would make their position obvious without deliberately compensating for them somehow).
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Thus "vision and senses are not very well covered rules."
The rules for vision are incomplete at best amd the rules for every sense other than sight are practically nonexistent.
And here is a fun fact as an example: If a grappled invisible creature hides (which it can do because it is heavily obscured by invisibility), the grappler - according to the rules - no longer knows where the creature they are grappling is.
Yeah, it can get wonky... real wonky.
Try and think of how many different terrain types there are and how many weather conditions nullify or even out invisibility.
Mud. Snow. Shallow water. Tall grass. Light foliage. Sand. Leaves. And don't forget if they walk in this stuff or through water or blood or anything really and then walk somewhere else you can track them by the footprints they leave. (Those who are clever will find ways around this, like not walking in those areas to begin with.)
Sure they do--they just cannot see them.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Remember if you are grappling someone you are touching them, this is using a sense to overcome invisibility to some degree, you still attack with disadvantage due to not seeing your target... but you know exactly where they are due to the grapple.
Just explicitly pointing out the PC has to either guess at random where the invisible enemy is (doable, just unlikely) or manage to hear the enemy (completely GM dependent and highly dependent on how the enemy flies - under a sane GM, hummingbirds are a lot louder than owls) to work out what square to attack. Also, the enemy could have left the player's reach without provoking an AoO, due to being invisible: AoOs explicitly require sight.
This is illegal. All attacks must have a target, and you can't declare an enemy you can't detect as a target - you can guess a space and attack that space and see what happens, but that would require a direction and a distance (unless the weapon didn't have reach). Or you can just pick your target space, rather than using polar geometry.
You don't normally use directions to pick spaces, but you do need to designate what space you're attacking.
Followup: here's an excellent summary of the various, confusing, sometimes mutually contradictory rules governing finding an invisible creature:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/rules-game-mechanics/102520-if-at-disadvantage-always-fight-blind#c13
That helps against invisibility, but the creature in my scenario is also hidden. If hiding doesn't hide your position, then it does nothing at all (especially for invisible creatures).