So I just watched a video that blew my mind about Invisibility. Per the actual rules and Jeremy Crawford confirming, if you're invisible via the Invisibility spell or Greater Invisibility, and a creature has Blindsight, Truesight, or Wizard lets say casts See Invisibility, they can see you, but you still have advantage to attack and they have disadvantage to attack you. MIND BLOWN! I thought Blindsight, Truesight and See Invisibility prevented this but Jeremy Crawford stated it does not, and that is the reason for spells like Faerie Fire which specifically state the creature can't benefit from being invisible vs just saying the creature can't go invisible. The key word was "benefit" meaning the advantage and disadvantage is also removed.
So after realizing that and blowing my mind, I thought about Shadow of Moil and essentially creating the Blinded condition since it heavily obscures the area and that creates Blinded. And like the Invisible condition, there are two separate points, so would this mean Truesight, Blindsight and Tremorsense don't negate the advantage on attacks and disadvantage for attacks against the Shadow of Moil caster? I'm not sure if its supposed to work the same as Invisible condition.
Here are the points for each
Invisible
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.
Attack rolls against the creature have disadvantage, and the creature’s Attack rolls have advantage.
Blinded
A blinded creature can’t see and automatically fails any ability check that requires sight.
Attack rolls against the creature have advantage, and the creature’s Attack rolls have disadvantage.
The benefit of seeing through invisibility is really dumb in 5th edition, and Crawford doesn't even bother to explain it. But basically seeing an invisible creature means you know where they are, so when you attempt an attack you at least know that it can succeed.
For example, a melee character with a 5 foot reach can attempt to attack an invisible creature that they believe is nearby, but they don't know if they are actually in range, so when they roll the attack (with disadvantage) it doesn't matter if they roll two natural 20's, because they might never have been in range to hit in the first place so they still miss. But if they can see it due to a special sense, then they can at least move into range and attack knowing that they have a chance of hitting, even if it's a worse chance than normal.
Meanwhile, a dragon with blindsight or truesight doesn't need to guess where the invisible creature is in order to catch it in its breath weapon attack, it knows where that creature is so can just fully place the area of effect onto them however it wishes.
There are also benefits for any feature or ability that requires you to see the target; this includes a lot of spells that you couldn't otherwise cast on an invisible creature at all, it also applies to a Barbarian's Danger Sense to save against it, or opportunity attacks when it tries to move away from you (being invisible is essentially free Disengage if you can't see through it somehow). So there are benefits even with this ruling.
Personally I'm not a fan of this ruling though, mostly just because it's a pain in the ass to run properly in both theatre of mind (where it's hard to do it fairly) and on a grid system (where you'd have to track invisible creatures in secret to prevent metagaming). But also because Crawford himself regularly goes on and on about how D&D rules are "idiomatic" and should be applied using common sense, yet he defends a nonsensical case where you see something yet it is still invisible to you. I don't like his attempt to hand-wave that using Predator as an example; because in Predator when someone catches a glimpse of the alien it's because it still has a slight shimmer when it moves, or it can be perceived in other ways (foliage, mud, water etc.), they're not using any special senses in these cases, that's just how invisibility works against regular sight.
You could maybe justify it as special senses being like thermal imaging, where you can see something but not terribly well, but truesight is never described like that, and in fact it specifically allows a creature to "automatically detect visual illusions", which invisibility arguably is an example of (though it has no DC to detect it, so RAW this doesn't act as a workaround), but that does make it pretty clear truesight is more than just a fuzzy blobby mess of colours.
For these reasons, in all the groups I've played the second bullet of the invisible condition is almost always ignored, so being invisible is just a very easy way to become an unseen attacker/target, because otherwise it's just so much harder to run properly. In this case the benefit of faerie fire is that you still counteract the invisible condition for everyone, not just yourself. Making yourself unseen is already a powerful ability, and faerie fire is still a really good spell (as it grants advantage which is a huge boost to party damage). Plus going by RAW utterly diminishes see invisibility, true seeing etc. for no reason.
At least in my experience, this is how you'll find that most tables actually run it.
I think in this case, Jeremy's answer is a band-aid that doesn't even get right all of the rules on conditions. With that being said, invisible should never have been a condition anyway, since it depends on the observer's senses as much as anything about the invisible creature.
The benefit of seeing through invisibility in is really dumb in 5th edition, and Crawford doesn't even bother to explain it. But basically seeing an invisible creature means you know where they are, so when you attempt an attack you at least know that it can succeed.
For example, a melee character with a 5 foot reach can attempt to attack an invisible creature that they believe is nearby, but they don't know if they are actually in range, so when they roll the attack (with disadvantage) it doesn't matter if they roll two natural 20's, because they might never have been in range to hit in the first place so they still miss. But if they can see it due to a special sense, then they can at least move into range and attack knowing that they have a chance of hitting, even if it's a worse chance than normal.
Meanwhile, a dragon with blindsight or truesight doesn't need to guess where the invisible creature is in order to catch it in its breath weapon attack, it knows where that creature is so can just fully place the area of effect onto them however it wishes.
Personally I'm not a fan of this ruling though, mostly just because it's a pain in the ass to run properly in both theatre of mind (where it's hard to do it fairly) and on a grid system (where you'd have to track invisible creatures in secret to prevent metagaming). But also because Crawford himself regularly goes on and on about how D&D rules are "idiomatic" and should be applied using common sense, yet he defends a nonsensical case where you see something yet it is still invisible to you. I don't like his attempt to hand-wave that using Predator as an example; because in Predator when someone catches a glimpse of the alien it's because it still has a slight shimmer when it moves, or it can be perceived in other ways (foliage, mud, water etc.), they're not using any special senses in these cases, that's just how invisibility works against regular sight.
You could maybe justify it as special senses being like thermal imaging, where you can see something but not terribly well, but truesight is never described like that, and in fact it specifically allows a creature to "automatically detect visual illusions", which invisibility arguably is an example of (though it has no DC to detect it, so RAW this doesn't act as a workaround), but that does make it pretty clear truesight is more than just a fuzzy blobby mess of colours.
For these reasons, in all the groups I've played the second bullet of the invisible condition is almost always ignored, so being invisible is just a very easy way to become an unseen attacker/target, because otherwise it's just so much harder to run properly. In this case the benefit of faerie fire is that you still counteract the invisible condition for everyone, not just yourself. Making yourself unseen is already a powerful ability, and faerie fire is still a really good spell (as it grants advantage which is a huge boost to party damage). Plus going by RAW utterly diminishes see invisibility, true seeing etc. for no good reason.
At least in my experience, this is how you'll find that most tables actually run it.
I agree, I mean it surprised me when I heard him say it but if my DM or any DM said they don't agree and if the creature can "see" via Blindsight, Truesight etc, you then you lose advantage and disadvantage i'd definitely not argue at all. More just curious if others had thought of it the way Crawford described and then if it would apply to other things like Shadow of Moil causing Blinded condition.
I agree, I mean it surprised me when I heard him say it but if my DM or any DM said they don't agree and if the creature can "see" via Blindsight, Truesight etc, you then you lose advantage and disadvantage i'd definitely not argue at all. More just curious if others had thought of it the way Crawford described and then if it would apply to other things like Shadow of Moil causing Blinded condition.
Shadow of Moil is actually a really interesting case, because what's happening with that is that you're heavily obscured not by being in darkness, but rather by "flame-like shadows" which makes it seem as though Devil's Sight, truesight etc. can't counteract this, because what you're being obscured by is a form of obstruction, rather than being simply harder to see, so it's more like fog cloud than darkness.
In balance terms shadow of Moil is the grown-up version of blur; it has the same basic effect (disadvantage to hit you) but while also dimming the area and delivering damage to anything that does hit you. For a 4th-level spell it's pretty good, though it still requires concentration, and your action to cast it, so it's not without trade-offs. It seems more fair that it would counteract certain senses because it's two full levels higher than blur (which can be seen through because it explicitly says so).
I think in terms of how it works it's clear in what it's supposed to do; it makes you heavily obscured no matter what, though because of the way it works it's going to be up to your DM how effectively you can use that to Hide (as a big blob of darkness with "flame-like shadows" in the middle is going to stand out in the middle of a courtyard on a sunny day. 😉
Also, it's worth noting that what it does is not apply the blinded condition as such, as a creature only counts as blinded when trying to perceive, attack, or defend vs. the heavily obscured creature. In a way this means they aren't blinded the rest of the time so long as they can see other targets etc. normally. So it's different to being "properly" blinded by the blindness/deafness spell or similar.
There is no general rule that says we should look at bullet points for a condition independently rather than holistically. I think it is a mistake (and I may be in the minority for saying this) to look at the two bullet points irrespective of each other. If you cast see invisibility on yourself, then an invisible creature is not invisible to you. To say that they still have advantage on attacks against you due to the invisible condition and that any counter to this only applies to the first bullet point ignores the entire context of the interaction between the condition and the spell. The source of the advantage is that you cannot see them--but now you can. The thing that makes invisibility unique among conditions is that it is a relative condition. Unlike prone for instance, where you either are or you are not prone, your invisibility in contingent on whether you are visible or not to a particular creature looking at you. The rules for conditions say that the condition is ended when it is negated. Being able to see an invisible creature should not negate the invisible condition for everyone. It's best to think of it as negating the condition relative to the viewer during the time the viewer can view the invisible creature. Jeremy got this one wrong, and I'm glad it was in a conversation rather than an official channel.
First, Devin, I want to say that I agree with you.
But I think Jeremy's idea in that video is that the second bullet point conveys the advantage in and of itself and has nothing to do with unseen attacker rules, which happen to also apply. It seems quite tortured to me, I completely agree that visible is the counter to invisible, and per the rules that should end the condition (apparently for everyone, as written).
If, say, your friend stood you up after you were knocked down, would you remain under the prone? Jeremy's answer seems to indicate yes.
And further, I really don't understand what counters invisibility if visibility doesn't. Do you have to not only be able to see the creature but also have some way of countering the second bullet by gaining advantage too? And if you do then counter that second bullet does that mean invisible is defeated and you go straight to advantage since the condition is now countered? Or does invisibility need to be countered for everyone? Or is Jeremy saying that to counter invisibility, you really have to remove the effect causing it in the first place?
That certainly doesn't follow with the other advice that says that says conditions apply when they're obvious, for example that you are unconscious when you are asleep.
First, Devin, I want to say that I agree with you.
But I think Jeremy's idea in that video is that the second bullet point conveys the advantage in and of itself and has nothing to do with unseen attacker rules, which happen to also apply. It seems quite tortured to me, I completely agree that visible is the counter to invisible, and per the rules that should end the condition (apparently for everyone, as written).
If, say, your friend stood you up after you were knocked down, would you remain under the prone? Jeremy's answer seems to indicate yes.
And further, I really don't understand what counters invisibility if visibility doesn't. Do you have to not only be able to see the creature but also have some way of countering the second bullet by gaining advantage too? And if you do then counter that second bullet does that mean invisible is defeated and you go straight to advantage since the condition is now countered? Or does invisibility need to be countered for everyone? Or is Jeremy saying that to counter invisibility, you really have to remove the effect causing it in the first place?
That certainly doesn't follow with the other advice that says that says conditions apply when they're obvious, for example that you are unconscious when you are asleep.
I do agree it is clunky and doesn't make much sense.
But for your prone example, I think Crawford's point was this is invisibility specifically caused by a spell and its the spell that is giving the two conditions, where as prone is just a physical condition of being knocked down, its not being created and sustained via magic.
And he used the example of Faerie Fire to negate all impacts of invisibility because the spells states any benefit from invisibility is gone, so both conditions of invisible would be negated in that instance.
Again not saying I agree with his logic, but just those are the ways he explained it to justify his reasoning. Definitely something I would discuss with DM before ever assuming Crawford's explanation as true in a campaign. That being said it could be used against you as well if your Fighter took Blindsight fighting for this exact reason or caster took See Invisibility to negate. So in that sense not broken if both players and enemies can use it to their advantage and disadvantage, just a weird interpretation.
Yeah, try saying "No, I don't care! I still get advantage, It doesn't matter that the dragon can see me. I'm invisible!" to your DM. I can't imagine that going well for anyone if your DM hasn't drank the kool-aid on this particular ruling.
It may not be broken, but it is bad. It means that there is no way to negate invisibility spells except dispel magic or the one or two spells worded like faerie fire -- and dispel doesn't work if it is a monster trait or action that isn't a spell. It actually works out to be a lot more powerful for players than anything. Greater invisibility is significantly more powerful if monster senses don't counter it anymore, only one or two spells that most monster (hazard a guess: nearly none) have.
And again I still don't understand how this dumb ruling coincides with the actual rules on countering conditions. If I throw flour on an invisible creature, they're visible -- to all -- does that dispel greater invisibility on them? Certainly the condition has been countered as effectively as being stood up counters prone -- the condition ends. Or, Jeremy's ruling overrides what's actually in the PHB about conditions?
So I just watched a video that blew my mind about Invisibility. Per the actual rules and Jeremy Crawford confirming, if you're invisible via the Invisibility spell or Greater Invisibility, and a creature has Blindsight, Truesight, or Wizard lets say casts See Invisibility, they can see you, but you still have advantage to attack and they have disadvantage to attack you. MIND BLOWN! I thought Blindsight, Truesight and See Invisibility prevented this but Jeremy Crawford stated it does not, and that is the reason for spells like Faerie Fire which specifically state the creature can't benefit from being invisible vs just saying the creature can't go invisible. The key word was "benefit" meaning the advantage and disadvantage is also removed.
Bear in mind Jeremy Crawford isn't an official rules authority - that is, he can't just say something and thereby set or change any sort of rule. Content from him is generally good for getting RAI (since, as a major rules dev, he has insight into the RAI we can't have), but that's the extent of it.
Several of the rules interactions here are not as well-defined as anyone trying to play the game might like, and several others are deeply stupid, like the rules for darkness (which literally no-one plays with, RAW, as they're so stupid even official WOTC campaign books ignore them). Here's what we know:
Darkness will make you "effectively blinded" and Blindsight has no actual text letting Blindsight override the Blinded condition in general (whether it's caused by darkness or something else, like the blindness/deafness spell). If you want Blindsight to do anything whatsoever, as a result, your DM has to abandon reading the RAW so strictly that literally nothing outside of the rules text can ever happen, because "perceive its surroundings without relying on sight" as specified in Blindsight isn't a game term and isn't any more defined anywhere else. Supposing your DM is going to have Blindsight actually function, which generally means having Blindsight let you ignore being Blinded, they may as well have it also ignore invisible. There is absolutely no strong argument that Blindsight can let you ignore being Blinded but can't let you ignore your target's invisibility (both bullets).
Truesight is harder to reason about - unlike Blindsight, where we have some beasts, like dolphins, that have it in their statblock so we can apply our real-world knowledge to guessing how something should work, nothing in the real world has Truesight. Since Truesight doesn't need to be house-ruled to function, and strict RAW agrees with you, under some DMs, Truesight won't bypass advantage/disadvantage vis a vis Invisibility.
See Invisibility lets you "see invisible creatures [...] as if they were visible" (Truesight lets you see them, but not as if they were visible). It's going to be up to your DM to figure out the difference, if any; a DM is well within their rights to rule that Truesight lets you see invisible creatures hazily, so disadvantage/advantage still applies, while the See Invisibility spell is more powerful and lets you bypass.
So after realizing that and blowing my mind, I thought about Shadow of Moil and essentially creating the Blinded condition since it heavily obscures the area and that creates Blinded.
Shadow of Moil does not obscure an area, it obscures a creature (the caster). However, something trying to see someone under the spell is effectively Blinded (but not actually Blinded, which is why you can't cure darkness with a spell that cures blinded).
And like the Invisible condition, there are two separate points, so would this mean Truesight, Blindsight and Tremorsense don't negate the advantage on attacks and disadvantage for attacks against the Shadow of Moil caster?
Tremorsense does not and never has let the user see anything. It lets you locate things, and that's it. Tremorsense does absolutely nothing against Shadow of Moil, why would it? Anyone trying to locate someone under Shadow of Moil generally succeeds.
Truesight has never worked on Shadow of Moil, because Shadow of Moil heavily obscures you via direct spell text (and "flame-like shadows"), not by interacting with the vision rules. Seeing through magical darkness won't let you see through Shadow of Moil because Shadow of Moil doesn't obscure you via magical darkness.
Blindsight, as discussed above, does nothing whatsoever unless your DM fixes it, and the exact nature of their fix will have different consequences for Shadow of Moil. Because Shadow of Moil uses "flame-like shadows", which are not a game term, we have no idea how noisy the flames are, or what they smell like, or anything else we'd need to know to guess how it should interact with Blindsight. Ask your DM.
I'm not sure if its supposed to work the same as Invisible condition.
If I throw flour on an invisible creature, they're visible -- to all -- does that dispel greater invisibility on them? Certainly the condition has been countered as effectively as being stood up counters prone -- the condition ends. Or, Jeremy's ruling overrides what's actually in the PHB about conditions?
I would pronounce the flour invisible once the creature wears/carries it.
Anything the target is wearing or carrying is invisible as long as it is on the target's person.
I would grant that it lights up the creature momentarily enough to identify where and what it is, but not long enough for unmodified follow-up targeting. Potentially handy for tracking footprints, though.
The thing that bugs me about the faerie fire case in particular is that it suggests it specifically states a creature cannot benefit from being invisible in order to specifically negate the advantage/disadvantage aspects of that condition, when the plainly obvious reason for the chosen language is to specify that it negates the effects of invisibility without actually ending the invisibility condition. If an invisible creature is made visible through faerie fire, but the caster loses concentration and the spell ends, the creature regains the benefits of their invisibility. The distinction is that faerie fire effectively suspends the effects of invisibility without actually dispelling the invisible condition.
Another way to look at it is if there were a spell that, say, causes nearby projectiles to home in on an affected target. Such a spell might state that an affected person does not have the benefits of being prone against ranged attacks, since any projectiles will home in on their position. It would be ridiculous for the spell to say that it dispels the prone condition, even on a temporary basis, because that would imply that the spell forces the person to stand, which it does not.
So I just watched a video that blew my mind about Invisibility. Per the actual rules and Jeremy Crawford confirming, if you're invisible via the Invisibility spell or Greater Invisibility, and a creature has Blindsight, Truesight, or Wizard lets say casts See Invisibility, they can see you, but you still have advantage to attack and they have disadvantage to attack you. MIND BLOWN! I thought Blindsight, Truesight and See Invisibility prevented this but Jeremy Crawford stated it does not, and that is the reason for spells like Faerie Fire which specifically state the creature can't benefit from being invisible vs just saying the creature can't go invisible. The key word was "benefit" meaning the advantage and disadvantage is also removed.
Bear in mind Jeremy Crawford isn't an official rules authority - that is, he can't just say something and thereby set or change any sort of rule. Content from him is generally good for getting RAI (since, as a major rules dev, he has insight into the RAI we can't have), but that's the extent of it.
Several of the rules interactions here are not as well-defined as anyone trying to play the game might like, and several others are deeply stupid, like the rules for darkness (which literally no-one plays with, RAW, as they're so stupid even official WOTC campaign books ignore them). Here's what we know:
Darkness will make you "effectively blinded" and Blindsight has no actual text letting Blindsight override the Blinded condition in general (whether it's caused by darkness or something else, like the blindness/deafness spell). If you want Blindsight to do anything whatsoever, as a result, your DM has to abandon reading the RAW so strictly that literally nothing outside of the rules text can ever happen, because "perceive its surroundings without relying on sight" as specified in Blindsight isn't a game term and isn't any more defined anywhere else. Supposing your DM is going to have Blindsight actually function, which generally means having Blindsight let you ignore being Blinded, they may as well have it also ignore invisible. There is absolutely no strong argument that Blindsight can let you ignore being Blinded but can't let you ignore your target's invisibility (both bullets).
Truesight is harder to reason about - unlike Blindsight, where we have some beasts, like dolphins, that have it in their statblock so we can apply our real-world knowledge to guessing how something should work, nothing in the real world has Truesight. Since Truesight doesn't need to be house-ruled to function, and strict RAW agrees with you, under some DMs, Truesight won't bypass advantage/disadvantage vis a vis Invisibility.
See Invisibility lets you "see invisible creatures [...] as if they were visible" (Truesight lets you see them, but not as if they were visible). It's going to be up to your DM to figure out the difference, if any; a DM is well within their rights to rule that Truesight lets you see invisible creatures hazily, so disadvantage/advantage still applies, while the See Invisibility spell is more powerful and lets you bypass.
So after realizing that and blowing my mind, I thought about Shadow of Moil and essentially creating the Blinded condition since it heavily obscures the area and that creates Blinded.
Shadow of Moil does not obscure an area, it obscures a creature (the caster). However, something trying to see someone under the spell is effectively Blinded (but not actually Blinded, which is why you can't cure darkness with a spell that cures blinded).
And like the Invisible condition, there are two separate points, so would this mean Truesight, Blindsight and Tremorsense don't negate the advantage on attacks and disadvantage for attacks against the Shadow of Moil caster?
Tremorsense does not and never has let the user see anything. It lets you locate things, and that's it. Tremorsense does absolutely nothing against Shadow of Moil, why would it? Anyone trying to locate someone under Shadow of Moil generally succeeds.
Truesight has never worked on Shadow of Moil, because Shadow of Moil heavily obscures you via direct spell text (and "flame-like shadows"), not by interacting with the vision rules. Seeing through magical darkness won't let you see through Shadow of Moil because Shadow of Moil doesn't obscure you via magical darkness.
Blindsight, as discussed above, does nothing whatsoever unless your DM fixes it, and the exact nature of their fix will have different consequences for Shadow of Moil. Because Shadow of Moil uses "flame-like shadows", which are not a game term, we have no idea how noisy the flames are, or what they smell like, or anything else we'd need to know to guess how it should interact with Blindsight. Ask your DM.
I'm not sure if its supposed to work the same as Invisible condition.
It does not, in any way.
I do agree that thematically it makes no sense and whether its RAW or not it would make more sense that Blinded, See Invisibility etc do in fact counter Invisibility. I just found it interesting to hear something i'd never thought was true before.
If you don't want to go to the link it says (tweeted by Crawford 2017)
"Truesight sees through darkness, including the darkness created by shadow of Moil. In contrast, truesight doesn't penetrate physical concealment, such as what would be created by a dense sandstorm or a blanket. #DnD
It was in response to this tweet
@JeremyECrawford Hi Jeremy, quick question about shadow of moil. It heavily obscures its caster with shadows. I take the shadows as flavour and understand that truesight is defeated by spells that use the heavily obscure effect, is this correct?
But then in 2019 Crawford tweeted
"Shadow of Moil heavily obscures you, full stop. The spell also dims the light around you. The fact that you're heavily obscured is a result of the flame-like shadows surrounding you, not the result of being in darkness. This means you're heavily obscured even to darkvision. #DnD
in response to this tweet
@JeremyECrawford Shadow of Moil spell makes the warlock heavily obscured, but the "flame-like shadows" that heavily obscure only the warlock are physical concealments (like flames/smoke) or are mundane shadows (so darkvision lets see the warlock in shades of gray)?
Very confusing. I agreed with you, I thought they weren't actual "darkness" but flames like like darkness that cause the area to be heavily obscured. I think its another ask your DM to confirm before assuming.
As written, the advantage and disadvantage provided by invisible is a different bullet point from the concealment. There are two ways of reading this
It's just restating the rules on Unseen Attackers and Targets, in which case the advantage/disadvantage is negated by anything that negates being unseen.
It's a completely separate effect.
I'm sure RAI is #1, but you can make a RAW argument for #2.
As written, the advantage and disadvantage provided by invisible is a different bullet point from the concealment. There are two ways of reading this
It's just restating the rules on Unseen Attackers and Targets, in which case the advantage/disadvantage is negated by anything that negates being unseen.
It's a completely separate effect.
I'm sure RAI is #1, but you can make a RAW argument for #2.
Even if it is a completely separate effect, its in the same condition. That's really the problem with Jeremy's interpretation, because anything that cancels a condition cancels all of it. #1 and #2 should be functionally identical in the game, per the rules they put into the game.
To go from, "I think the rule is meant to work like this," to, "There is no way anyone could possibly argue for another interpretation," is a leap I'm not going to make.
Very confusing. I agreed with you, I thought they weren't actual "darkness" but flames like like darkness that cause the area to be heavily obscured. I think its another ask your DM to confirm before assuming.
They're actually "flame-like shadows" rather than darkness as such. While someone could try to argue "shadows are just darkness", the fact that the spell does not create an area of darkness, but instead imposes heavily obscured directly makes it clear that these are no ordinary shadows, especially since they're not being cast by any light.
Ruling that they are just darkness would massively undermine this 4th-level spell, as everyone and their mum has darkvision in 5th edition these days (seriously, people without darkvision are the oddity now), and would be able to just ignore it. Functionally it's the upgraded form of blur for warlocks, so it really shouldn't weakened (especially since it already requires an action plus concentration).
Plus in D&D shadows can be more than just shadows, as they can be shadow matter; that weird malleable substance from the shadowfell that shadow dragons are made from, forms the basis of all illusions and can even be used for creation etc.
My take is that the disadvantage to hit an unseen creature is because you can't see where its body and shield and armour are so you can't place your blow to try and overcome defences. Instead of watching how the foe is moving their limbs and where they are shifting their weight, you are striking blindly.
Shadows of moil achieves the same thing by obscurement - making it that attackers can't read body language to predict strikes.
If you have some sense allowing you to sense the foes' movement and weight shifting and where they are holding their weapons and shields then you should not have the disadvantage to attack. As far as I can read, see invisibility and truesight both do this.
I think tremorsense doesn't. It doesn't let you sense where the foe is holding their shield so you can attack past it, or how their attack is actually a feint, or anything like that.
Not sure if it's been said before, and apologies if it has but, Faerie Fire also states that it coats the creature in an outline of light, which is, somehow, powerful enough to negate the effects of being invisible. Yet, Truesight, and See Invisible, which states that the creature is detected 'as if they were visible' somehow didn't make the creature visible 'enough' for the invisibility to be countered?
[Ik, necro, but It's fascinating to me that, in all the arguments I've seen, no one seems to make a connection to that specific wording of the spell as opposed to the others.
Each of these game elements handle invisible creature differently though;
The ability of truesight and See Invisibility let you see invisible creatures, which counters only part of the condition while under Faerie Fire one can't benefit from being invisible at all meaning it is entirely counter.
Countering the invisible condition only in part is still significant for it means you can now see such creature and target it with effects targeting a creature you can see, actually know where it is and prevent it from trying to hide from you by being unseen this way.
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So I just watched a video that blew my mind about Invisibility. Per the actual rules and Jeremy Crawford confirming, if you're invisible via the Invisibility spell or Greater Invisibility, and a creature has Blindsight, Truesight, or Wizard lets say casts See Invisibility, they can see you, but you still have advantage to attack and they have disadvantage to attack you. MIND BLOWN! I thought Blindsight, Truesight and See Invisibility prevented this but Jeremy Crawford stated it does not, and that is the reason for spells like Faerie Fire which specifically state the creature can't benefit from being invisible vs just saying the creature can't go invisible. The key word was "benefit" meaning the advantage and disadvantage is also removed.
So after realizing that and blowing my mind, I thought about Shadow of Moil and essentially creating the Blinded condition since it heavily obscures the area and that creates Blinded. And like the Invisible condition, there are two separate points, so would this mean Truesight, Blindsight and Tremorsense don't negate the advantage on attacks and disadvantage for attacks against the Shadow of Moil caster? I'm not sure if its supposed to work the same as Invisible condition.
Here are the points for each
Invisible
Blinded
Here is the youtube for Jeremy Crawford discussing, its a minute 20:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n42dboiQeOY&ab_channel=Dungeons&Dragons
The benefit of seeing through invisibility is really dumb in 5th edition, and Crawford doesn't even bother to explain it. But basically seeing an invisible creature means you know where they are, so when you attempt an attack you at least know that it can succeed.
For example, a melee character with a 5 foot reach can attempt to attack an invisible creature that they believe is nearby, but they don't know if they are actually in range, so when they roll the attack (with disadvantage) it doesn't matter if they roll two natural 20's, because they might never have been in range to hit in the first place so they still miss. But if they can see it due to a special sense, then they can at least move into range and attack knowing that they have a chance of hitting, even if it's a worse chance than normal.
Meanwhile, a dragon with blindsight or truesight doesn't need to guess where the invisible creature is in order to catch it in its breath weapon attack, it knows where that creature is so can just fully place the area of effect onto them however it wishes.
There are also benefits for any feature or ability that requires you to see the target; this includes a lot of spells that you couldn't otherwise cast on an invisible creature at all, it also applies to a Barbarian's Danger Sense to save against it, or opportunity attacks when it tries to move away from you (being invisible is essentially free Disengage if you can't see through it somehow). So there are benefits even with this ruling.
Personally I'm not a fan of this ruling though, mostly just because it's a pain in the ass to run properly in both theatre of mind (where it's hard to do it fairly) and on a grid system (where you'd have to track invisible creatures in secret to prevent metagaming). But also because Crawford himself regularly goes on and on about how D&D rules are "idiomatic" and should be applied using common sense, yet he defends a nonsensical case where you see something yet it is still invisible to you. I don't like his attempt to hand-wave that using Predator as an example; because in Predator when someone catches a glimpse of the alien it's because it still has a slight shimmer when it moves, or it can be perceived in other ways (foliage, mud, water etc.), they're not using any special senses in these cases, that's just how invisibility works against regular sight.
You could maybe justify it as special senses being like thermal imaging, where you can see something but not terribly well, but truesight is never described like that, and in fact it specifically allows a creature to "automatically detect visual illusions", which invisibility arguably is an example of (though it has no DC to detect it, so RAW this doesn't act as a workaround), but that does make it pretty clear truesight is more than just a fuzzy blobby mess of colours.
For these reasons, in all the groups I've played the second bullet of the invisible condition is almost always ignored, so being invisible is just a very easy way to become an unseen attacker/target, because otherwise it's just so much harder to run properly. In this case the benefit of faerie fire is that you still counteract the invisible condition for everyone, not just yourself. Making yourself unseen is already a powerful ability, and faerie fire is still a really good spell (as it grants advantage which is a huge boost to party damage). Plus going by RAW utterly diminishes see invisibility, true seeing etc. for no reason.
At least in my experience, this is how you'll find that most tables actually run it.
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I think in this case, Jeremy's answer is a band-aid that doesn't even get right all of the rules on conditions. With that being said, invisible should never have been a condition anyway, since it depends on the observer's senses as much as anything about the invisible creature.
I agree, I mean it surprised me when I heard him say it but if my DM or any DM said they don't agree and if the creature can "see" via Blindsight, Truesight etc, you then you lose advantage and disadvantage i'd definitely not argue at all. More just curious if others had thought of it the way Crawford described and then if it would apply to other things like Shadow of Moil causing Blinded condition.
Shadow of Moil is actually a really interesting case, because what's happening with that is that you're heavily obscured not by being in darkness, but rather by "flame-like shadows" which makes it seem as though Devil's Sight, truesight etc. can't counteract this, because what you're being obscured by is a form of obstruction, rather than being simply harder to see, so it's more like fog cloud than darkness.
In balance terms shadow of Moil is the grown-up version of blur; it has the same basic effect (disadvantage to hit you) but while also dimming the area and delivering damage to anything that does hit you. For a 4th-level spell it's pretty good, though it still requires concentration, and your action to cast it, so it's not without trade-offs. It seems more fair that it would counteract certain senses because it's two full levels higher than blur (which can be seen through because it explicitly says so).
I think in terms of how it works it's clear in what it's supposed to do; it makes you heavily obscured no matter what, though because of the way it works it's going to be up to your DM how effectively you can use that to Hide (as a big blob of darkness with "flame-like shadows" in the middle is going to stand out in the middle of a courtyard on a sunny day. 😉
Also, it's worth noting that what it does is not apply the blinded condition as such, as a creature only counts as blinded when trying to perceive, attack, or defend vs. the heavily obscured creature. In a way this means they aren't blinded the rest of the time so long as they can see other targets etc. normally. So it's different to being "properly" blinded by the blindness/deafness spell or similar.
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There is no general rule that says we should look at bullet points for a condition independently rather than holistically. I think it is a mistake (and I may be in the minority for saying this) to look at the two bullet points irrespective of each other. If you cast see invisibility on yourself, then an invisible creature is not invisible to you. To say that they still have advantage on attacks against you due to the invisible condition and that any counter to this only applies to the first bullet point ignores the entire context of the interaction between the condition and the spell. The source of the advantage is that you cannot see them--but now you can. The thing that makes invisibility unique among conditions is that it is a relative condition. Unlike prone for instance, where you either are or you are not prone, your invisibility in contingent on whether you are visible or not to a particular creature looking at you. The rules for conditions say that the condition is ended when it is negated. Being able to see an invisible creature should not negate the invisible condition for everyone. It's best to think of it as negating the condition relative to the viewer during the time the viewer can view the invisible creature. Jeremy got this one wrong, and I'm glad it was in a conversation rather than an official channel.
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First, Devin, I want to say that I agree with you.
But I think Jeremy's idea in that video is that the second bullet point conveys the advantage in and of itself and has nothing to do with unseen attacker rules, which happen to also apply. It seems quite tortured to me, I completely agree that visible is the counter to invisible, and per the rules that should end the condition (apparently for everyone, as written).
If, say, your friend stood you up after you were knocked down, would you remain under the prone? Jeremy's answer seems to indicate yes.
And further, I really don't understand what counters invisibility if visibility doesn't. Do you have to not only be able to see the creature but also have some way of countering the second bullet by gaining advantage too? And if you do then counter that second bullet does that mean invisible is defeated and you go straight to advantage since the condition is now countered? Or does invisibility need to be countered for everyone? Or is Jeremy saying that to counter invisibility, you really have to remove the effect causing it in the first place?
That certainly doesn't follow with the other advice that says that says conditions apply when they're obvious, for example that you are unconscious when you are asleep.
I do agree it is clunky and doesn't make much sense.
But for your prone example, I think Crawford's point was this is invisibility specifically caused by a spell and its the spell that is giving the two conditions, where as prone is just a physical condition of being knocked down, its not being created and sustained via magic.
And he used the example of Faerie Fire to negate all impacts of invisibility because the spells states any benefit from invisibility is gone, so both conditions of invisible would be negated in that instance.
Again not saying I agree with his logic, but just those are the ways he explained it to justify his reasoning. Definitely something I would discuss with DM before ever assuming Crawford's explanation as true in a campaign. That being said it could be used against you as well if your Fighter took Blindsight fighting for this exact reason or caster took See Invisibility to negate. So in that sense not broken if both players and enemies can use it to their advantage and disadvantage, just a weird interpretation.
Yeah, try saying "No, I don't care! I still get advantage, It doesn't matter that the dragon can see me. I'm invisible!" to your DM. I can't imagine that going well for anyone if your DM hasn't drank the kool-aid on this particular ruling.
It may not be broken, but it is bad. It means that there is no way to negate invisibility spells except dispel magic or the one or two spells worded like faerie fire -- and dispel doesn't work if it is a monster trait or action that isn't a spell. It actually works out to be a lot more powerful for players than anything. Greater invisibility is significantly more powerful if monster senses don't counter it anymore, only one or two spells that most monster (hazard a guess: nearly none) have.
And again I still don't understand how this dumb ruling coincides with the actual rules on countering conditions. If I throw flour on an invisible creature, they're visible -- to all -- does that dispel greater invisibility on them? Certainly the condition has been countered as effectively as being stood up counters prone -- the condition ends. Or, Jeremy's ruling overrides what's actually in the PHB about conditions?
Bear in mind Jeremy Crawford isn't an official rules authority - that is, he can't just say something and thereby set or change any sort of rule. Content from him is generally good for getting RAI (since, as a major rules dev, he has insight into the RAI we can't have), but that's the extent of it.
Several of the rules interactions here are not as well-defined as anyone trying to play the game might like, and several others are deeply stupid, like the rules for darkness (which literally no-one plays with, RAW, as they're so stupid even official WOTC campaign books ignore them). Here's what we know:
Shadow of Moil does not obscure an area, it obscures a creature (the caster). However, something trying to see someone under the spell is effectively Blinded (but not actually Blinded, which is why you can't cure darkness with a spell that cures blinded).
It does not, in any way.
I would pronounce the flour invisible once the creature wears/carries it.
Anything the target is wearing or carrying is invisible as long as it is on the target's person.
I would grant that it lights up the creature momentarily enough to identify where and what it is, but not long enough for unmodified follow-up targeting. Potentially handy for tracking footprints, though.
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The thing that bugs me about the faerie fire case in particular is that it suggests it specifically states a creature cannot benefit from being invisible in order to specifically negate the advantage/disadvantage aspects of that condition, when the plainly obvious reason for the chosen language is to specify that it negates the effects of invisibility without actually ending the invisibility condition. If an invisible creature is made visible through faerie fire, but the caster loses concentration and the spell ends, the creature regains the benefits of their invisibility. The distinction is that faerie fire effectively suspends the effects of invisibility without actually dispelling the invisible condition.
Another way to look at it is if there were a spell that, say, causes nearby projectiles to home in on an affected target. Such a spell might state that an affected person does not have the benefits of being prone against ranged attacks, since any projectiles will home in on their position. It would be ridiculous for the spell to say that it dispels the prone condition, even on a temporary basis, because that would imply that the spell forces the person to stand, which it does not.
I do agree that thematically it makes no sense and whether its RAW or not it would make more sense that Blinded, See Invisibility etc do in fact counter Invisibility. I just found it interesting to hear something i'd never thought was true before.
As far as Shadow of Moil, another Crawford moment when he tweeted https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/943256098869469184?lang=en
If you don't want to go to the link it says (tweeted by Crawford 2017)
"Truesight sees through darkness, including the darkness created by shadow of Moil. In contrast, truesight doesn't penetrate physical concealment, such as what would be created by a dense sandstorm or a blanket. #DnD
It was in response to this tweet
@JeremyECrawford Hi Jeremy, quick question about shadow of moil. It heavily obscures its caster with shadows. I take the shadows as flavour and understand that truesight is defeated by spells that use the heavily obscure effect, is this correct?
But then in 2019 Crawford tweeted
As written, the advantage and disadvantage provided by invisible is a different bullet point from the concealment. There are two ways of reading this
I'm sure RAI is #1, but you can make a RAW argument for #2.
Even if it is a completely separate effect, its in the same condition. That's really the problem with Jeremy's interpretation, because anything that cancels a condition cancels all of it. #1 and #2 should be functionally identical in the game, per the rules they put into the game.
To go from, "I think the rule is meant to work like this," to, "There is no way anyone could possibly argue for another interpretation," is a leap I'm not going to make.
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My take is that the disadvantage to hit an unseen creature is because you can't see where its body and shield and armour are so you can't place your blow to try and overcome defences. Instead of watching how the foe is moving their limbs and where they are shifting their weight, you are striking blindly.
Shadows of moil achieves the same thing by obscurement - making it that attackers can't read body language to predict strikes.
If you have some sense allowing you to sense the foes' movement and weight shifting and where they are holding their weapons and shields then you should not have the disadvantage to attack. As far as I can read, see invisibility and truesight both do this.
I think tremorsense doesn't. It doesn't let you sense where the foe is holding their shield so you can attack past it, or how their attack is actually a feint, or anything like that.
Not sure if it's been said before, and apologies if it has but, Faerie Fire also states that it coats the creature in an outline of light, which is, somehow, powerful enough to negate the effects of being invisible. Yet, Truesight, and See Invisible, which states that the creature is detected 'as if they were visible' somehow didn't make the creature visible 'enough' for the invisibility to be countered?
[Ik, necro, but It's fascinating to me that, in all the arguments I've seen, no one seems to make a connection to that specific wording of the spell as opposed to the others.
Each of these game elements handle invisible creature differently though;
The ability of truesight and See Invisibility let you see invisible creatures, which counters only part of the condition while under Faerie Fire one can't benefit from being invisible at all meaning it is entirely counter.
Countering the invisible condition only in part is still significant for it means you can now see such creature and target it with effects targeting a creature you can see, actually know where it is and prevent it from trying to hide from you by being unseen this way.