It's not all that different from carrying around a common mirror in case you run across a basilisk in my opinion.
Another no-brainer move then. If a player doesn't buy a bag of flour and a mirror with their starting gold in one of your games then they're a fool.
IMO, any PC that doesn’t pick up stuff like a steel mirror, a small knife, and some string is a fool unless at least someone else in the party has some. That stuff’s just too useful.
It's not all that different from carrying around a common mirror in case you run across a basilisk in my opinion.
Another no-brainer move then. If a player doesn't buy a bag of flour and a mirror with their starting gold in one of your games then they're a fool.
IMO, any PC that doesn’t pick up stuff like a steel mirror, a small knife, and some string is a fool unless at least someone else in the party has some. That stuff’s just too useful.
2cp for a 1lb bag of flour is a bargain. Slight side note, does anyone pick up a 10ft pole and 50ft of rope as starting equipment any more?
Creative use of mundane equipment to fashion traps is also a way to if you have any creature with innate invisibility on your trail, you also have bags of caltrops and ball bearings to create areas to hinder and funnel invisible critters, it just depends on the nature of the encounter/area you find them in and how you as a DM or player decide to tackle it. There are plenty of resources online about basic trap making for survival/hunting and it shouldn;t be too hard to extrapolate those out to "Home Alone" style/ad hoc traps with mundane equipment.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
* Need a character idea? Search for "Rob76's Unused" in the Story and Lore section.
It's not all that different from carrying around a common mirror in case you run across a basilisk in my opinion.
Another no-brainer move then. If a player doesn't buy a bag of flour and a mirror with their starting gold in one of your games then they're a fool.
IMO, any PC that doesn’t pick up stuff like a steel mirror, a small knife, and some string is a fool unless at least someone else in the party has some. That stuff’s just too useful.
2cp for a 1lb bag of flour is a bargain. Slight side note, does anyone pick up a 10ft pole and 50ft of rope as starting equipment any more?
Creative use of mundane equipment to fashion traps is also a way to if you have any creature with innate invisibility on your trail, you also have bags of caltrops and ball bearings to create areas to hinder and funnel invisible critters, it just depends on the nature of the encounter/area you find them in and how you as a DM or player decide to tackle it. There are plenty of resources online about basic trap making for survival/hunting and it shouldn;t be too hard to extrapolate those out to "Home Alone" style/ad hoc traps with mundane equipment.
50ft of rope comes with most starting equipment. And I learned the value of a 10-foot pole back in 2e, so yeah if I don’t have mage hand I do occasionally grab a pole.
I don’t take the flour, I take the chalk. I grind it up and keep it in druggist folds or small bags that are sized for individual use. I get the rope string and small knife as well as the signal whistle. Later when I have more cash I add things like the steel mirror. My question - how many of you make the common magic items easily available at low levels so PCs can get things like the cloths of mending, beads of food and water, etc as early useful but not powerful magic items?
Mage Hand kinda takes the place of the 10ft pole while also allowing you to do other things. (My favorite use of it was, we were fighting monsters in a cave who were afraid of fire and would snatch and stomp out any torches we held, until someone used Mage Hand to put their torch high out of reach. Then the monsters just had to deal with the disadvantage or whatever they had from being in the firelight.)
I don’t take the flour, I take the chalk. I grind it up and keep it in druggist folds or small bags that are sized for individual use. I get the rope string and small knife as well as the signal whistle. Later when I have more cash I add things like the steel mirror. My question - how many of you make the common magic items easily available at low levels so PCs can get things like the cloths of mending, beads of food and water, etc as early useful but not powerful magic items?
Oh, yeah, o forgot about chalk. Also super useful for a great many things.
I tend to make common magic items available enough. My world has “Brokers,” which are like magic item pawn/consignment shops. The bulk of their inventories tend to be common magic items and consumables of various rarities. Maybe one or two uncommon items. Only the biggest cities have a rare item or two. But they’re great quest givers, and an in-game way for players to make requests too.
I do something similar, I have a world spanning trade group that specializes in magic items and high value items. Common magic items etc are fairly readily available. Uncommon occasionally and rarer to legendary can be special ordered. Their shops and caravans are heavily guarded and they have several tier 4 “quick response” teams for major problems - most dragons have stopped even trying to rob them. They buy magic items as well as having mages that focus on creating items.
Alternate way of coming at the problem: You're in a campaign where the primary antagonists are duergar or some other group with reliable access to invisibility. What do you do to adapt as far as character choices and to defend a small settlement (may be a mine, village, whatever, as long as it is something Tier 1 or 2 PCs could at least unofficially be in charge of defending).
Rattle traps, raked dirt “moats” lots of scrolls of see invisible, flash bangs chalk and dust traps, spiked growth, sickening radiance, stinking cloud, Thunderwave, transmute rock, web, wall of fire all L5 or less and usable by tier 1&2 PCs.
Well, while Faerie Fire is a great spell for debuffing enemies who are invisible or that have a high AC, it's AoE effect prevents you from safely using it around allies. Notably, it also has Zero effect on invisible objects, since it only affects creatures.
Reread the spell. It starts with:
"Each object in a 20-foot cube within range is outlined in blue, green, or violet light (your choice)."
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
So ... just curious ... how do folks run the situation in which a PC or NPC, with a large bag of flour, breaks it open and throws it into the air in the location of an invisible creature?
Depends how cinematic I'm feeling. Realistically speaking it pretty much just fails (invisibility affects your gear, presumably it would also affect flour stuck to you. There's going to be some visible disturbances in the air if moving rapidly but they won't do much beyond revealing location, which 5e treats as mostly automatic anyway).
Then you would see a creature shaped hole moving through the particulates, and be able to track its footprints if it “walks.” I would still grant advantage on checks to detect and locate the invisible creature.
The source of invisibility is important to consider here. If it was, say, an invisibility spell, then the effect that causes your belongings to turn invisible has already taken effect. It doesn't say it can suddenly start turning new objects invisible simply by picking them up. That isn't part of the spell description. It turns whatever you had with you at the time of casting invisible, only. And it can only maintain that invisibility until it leaves your person.
So if you were to get dusted with something, that's going to be super visible. Unless you recast the spell again, which would then now also make the dust invisible since it was on you at the time of the spell effect applying.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Well, while Faerie Fire is a great spell for debuffing enemies who are invisible or that have a high AC, it's AoE effect prevents you from safely using it around allies. Notably, it also has Zero effect on invisible objects, since it only affects creatures.
Reread the spell. It starts with:
"Each object in a 20-foot cube within range is outlined in blue, green, or violet light (your choice)."
Okay, thanks, I didn't catch that. It's a spell that I've used but not in the context of invisible objects. It seems clear to me that Faerie Fire is generally the superior spell to See Invisibility as long as the caster can hit more foes/objects than allies unless you're dealing with a scenario in which invisible creatures or objects are likely to be numerous and widely dispersed.
Alternate way of coming at the problem: You're in a campaign where the primary antagonists are duergar or some other group with reliable access to invisibility. What do you do to adapt as far as character choices and to defend a small settlement (may be a mine, village, whatever, as long as it is something Tier 1 or 2 PCs could at least unofficially be in charge of defending).
Duergar can also Enlarge themselves. Try to fight indoors with a ceiling no more than 7' tall to slow them down if they try to go biggun' on the party. Rather than entire moats, use deep pits (10 foot or more deep) and fill them with sharpened spikes. Use the pits to funnel them into narrow "safe zones" where they make easy target for archers. Again, you want to limit the ability of duergar to use size to their advantage. Arm the NPC settlement dwellers with stuff like caltrops, flour (see above discussion of flour), and hand crossbows.
You can't counter Enlarge with low ceilings; the effect specifically says if the target can't grow to fully double their size, they just grow as much as possible and then stop. All other effects still apply regardless.
You can't counter Enlarge with low ceilings; the effect specifically says if the target can't grow to fully double their size, they just grow as much as possible and then stop. All other effects still apply regardless.
The point of low ceiling is not to stop the Enlarge from taking place, it's to literally reduce their movement speed. It's the same reason why kobolds make tunnels that are good for Small sized creatures but not for Medium sized ones. Again, it's about limiting their inherent advantages as much as possible.
Perhaps the best argument against the bag of flour trick is to admit that D&D is a game as much as it is a simulation of reality, and the game side requires certain elements to require resources to overcome. If you can duplicate a level 2 spell with a bag of flour, that spell becomes useless. And then your players are going to use the same bag to circumvent perception checks, gain total obscurement on demand, provide nearly free fireball-sized explosions, etc. Yes, it's fun and creative but it also just breaks the workings of the game.
So if D&D is just your fun imagination time, go nuts with the flour. But if you want a game that requires thoughtful action, resource management, and challenging scenarios, you need to respect the limitations of the system that provides that experience.
As for Invisibility Purge, I think it's a missed opportunity as a power for a non-spellcaster - maybe some kind of monk or barbarian. This game needs WAY more utility powers that aren't spells so that non-spellcasters have a chance to do something outside of combat that their friends couldn't just do faster and easier with a spell.
I mean, once again invisibility is a nice but not massive buff in 5e; all it really does in combat is give advantage to one outgoing attack and disadvantage to incoming attacks in a brief window unless a character actively wants to try and hide during combat. Unless you're a Rogue, that'll blow your Action for the turn, assuming you roll well enough to make it stick. And there's exactly two sources I can find that will make the invisibility last through an attack: Greater Invisibility- which is exclusively single-target- and Cloak of Invisibility- a Legendary magic item and thus pretty much entirely subject to DM approval to end up in the party's hands, so barring a 4th tier Arcane Trickster there's no straightforward way I can see to get the spell up on a Rogue without leaving the caster open as a target to force them to drop concentration. And by 4th tier there's so many other broken options in play that this doesn't really stand out, plus most bosses have sufficient extrasensory powers to negate it. Even on Faerie Fire, the invisibility negating effect is more a secondary benefit to the spell, given that its primary use is setting one or more enemies up to face all incoming attacks at advantage. Honestly, I'd say 5e really doesn't need an additional Invisibility hate effect; it's a very short lived buff in practice for combat purposes, and there's a plethora of magical and mundane options to counter it for general stealth situations.
I disagree with the notion that invisibility be treated as little more than a Stealth boost or one-time attack advantage. As I've noted, Invisibility applied to a creature with an innate Fly speed is potentially much more difficult to deal with as there are far more directions from which they can attack. Improved Invisibility on an Aarakocra, Owlin, Crystal Dragonborn with the Sharpshooter feat are all really strong options for PCs. On the other side, you have a host of monsters/NPCs with multiple castings of invisibility and innate fly speed as well: Djinni, Efreeti, Oni, Blue Abishai, Nycaloth, Invisible Stalker, etc. How to throw flour on a creature flying 60 feet above you?
At the very least, See Invisibility should be modified so that it can be cast on other creatures.
Umm, what’s “improved invisibility”? I don’t recognize the term. Multiple casts of Invisibility aren’t nothing, but it’s not great action economy. And regardless, it’s still a fairly limited defense in combat; your position is still known and one good AoE spell or ranged attack that beats disadvantage (hardly impossible) can end the effect right there if they blow the concentration check. Wouldn’t hurt to make SI touch, though.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
IMO, any PC that doesn’t pick up stuff like a steel mirror, a small knife, and some string is a fool unless at least someone else in the party has some. That stuff’s just too useful.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
2cp for a 1lb bag of flour is a bargain. Slight side note, does anyone pick up a 10ft pole and 50ft of rope as starting equipment any more?
Creative use of mundane equipment to fashion traps is also a way to if you have any creature with innate invisibility on your trail, you also have bags of caltrops and ball bearings to create areas to hinder and funnel invisible critters, it just depends on the nature of the encounter/area you find them in and how you as a DM or player decide to tackle it. There are plenty of resources online about basic trap making for survival/hunting and it shouldn;t be too hard to extrapolate those out to "Home Alone" style/ad hoc traps with mundane equipment.
50ft of rope comes with most starting equipment. And I learned the value of a 10-foot pole back in 2e, so yeah if I don’t have mage hand I do occasionally grab a pole.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I don’t take the flour, I take the chalk. I grind it up and keep it in druggist folds or small bags that are sized for individual use. I get the rope string and small knife as well as the signal whistle. Later when I have more cash I add things like the steel mirror. My question - how many of you make the common magic items easily available at low levels so PCs can get things like the cloths of mending, beads of food and water, etc as early useful but not powerful magic items?
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Mage Hand kinda takes the place of the 10ft pole while also allowing you to do other things. (My favorite use of it was, we were fighting monsters in a cave who were afraid of fire and would snatch and stomp out any torches we held, until someone used Mage Hand to put their torch high out of reach. Then the monsters just had to deal with the disadvantage or whatever they had from being in the firelight.)
Oh, yeah, o forgot about chalk. Also super useful for a great many things.
I tend to make common magic items available enough. My world has “Brokers,” which are like magic item pawn/consignment shops. The bulk of their inventories tend to be common magic items and consumables of various rarities. Maybe one or two uncommon items. Only the biggest cities have a rare item or two. But they’re great quest givers, and an in-game way for players to make requests too.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I do something similar, I have a world spanning trade group that specializes in magic items and high value items. Common magic items etc are fairly readily available. Uncommon occasionally and rarer to legendary can be special ordered. Their shops and caravans are heavily guarded and they have several tier 4 “quick response” teams for major problems - most dragons have stopped even trying to rob them. They buy magic items as well as having mages that focus on creating items.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Alternate way of coming at the problem: You're in a campaign where the primary antagonists are duergar or some other group with reliable access to invisibility. What do you do to adapt as far as character choices and to defend a small settlement (may be a mine, village, whatever, as long as it is something Tier 1 or 2 PCs could at least unofficially be in charge of defending).
Hunting dogs, bear traps, large AoE spells, the Blind-Fighting Fighting Style. Next question?
Rattle traps, raked dirt “moats” lots of scrolls of see invisible, flash bangs chalk and dust traps, spiked growth, sickening radiance, stinking cloud, Thunderwave, transmute rock, web, wall of fire all L5 or less and usable by tier 1&2 PCs.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Reread the spell. It starts with:
"Each object in a 20-foot cube within range is outlined in blue, green, or violet light (your choice)."
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
The source of invisibility is important to consider here. If it was, say, an invisibility spell, then the effect that causes your belongings to turn invisible has already taken effect. It doesn't say it can suddenly start turning new objects invisible simply by picking them up. That isn't part of the spell description. It turns whatever you had with you at the time of casting invisible, only. And it can only maintain that invisibility until it leaves your person.
So if you were to get dusted with something, that's going to be super visible. Unless you recast the spell again, which would then now also make the dust invisible since it was on you at the time of the spell effect applying.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Okay, thanks, I didn't catch that. It's a spell that I've used but not in the context of invisible objects. It seems clear to me that Faerie Fire is generally the superior spell to See Invisibility as long as the caster can hit more foes/objects than allies unless you're dealing with a scenario in which invisible creatures or objects are likely to be numerous and widely dispersed.
Duergar can also Enlarge themselves. Try to fight indoors with a ceiling no more than 7' tall to slow them down if they try to go biggun' on the party. Rather than entire moats, use deep pits (10 foot or more deep) and fill them with sharpened spikes. Use the pits to funnel them into narrow "safe zones" where they make easy target for archers. Again, you want to limit the ability of duergar to use size to their advantage. Arm the NPC settlement dwellers with stuff like caltrops, flour (see above discussion of flour), and hand crossbows.
You can't counter Enlarge with low ceilings; the effect specifically says if the target can't grow to fully double their size, they just grow as much as possible and then stop. All other effects still apply regardless.
The point of low ceiling is not to stop the Enlarge from taking place, it's to literally reduce their movement speed. It's the same reason why kobolds make tunnels that are good for Small sized creatures but not for Medium sized ones. Again, it's about limiting their inherent advantages as much as possible.
Perhaps the best argument against the bag of flour trick is to admit that D&D is a game as much as it is a simulation of reality, and the game side requires certain elements to require resources to overcome. If you can duplicate a level 2 spell with a bag of flour, that spell becomes useless. And then your players are going to use the same bag to circumvent perception checks, gain total obscurement on demand, provide nearly free fireball-sized explosions, etc. Yes, it's fun and creative but it also just breaks the workings of the game.
So if D&D is just your fun imagination time, go nuts with the flour. But if you want a game that requires thoughtful action, resource management, and challenging scenarios, you need to respect the limitations of the system that provides that experience.
As for Invisibility Purge, I think it's a missed opportunity as a power for a non-spellcaster - maybe some kind of monk or barbarian. This game needs WAY more utility powers that aren't spells so that non-spellcasters have a chance to do something outside of combat that their friends couldn't just do faster and easier with a spell.
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
I mean, once again invisibility is a nice but not massive buff in 5e; all it really does in combat is give advantage to one outgoing attack and disadvantage to incoming attacks in a brief window unless a character actively wants to try and hide during combat. Unless you're a Rogue, that'll blow your Action for the turn, assuming you roll well enough to make it stick. And there's exactly two sources I can find that will make the invisibility last through an attack: Greater Invisibility- which is exclusively single-target- and Cloak of Invisibility- a Legendary magic item and thus pretty much entirely subject to DM approval to end up in the party's hands, so barring a 4th tier Arcane Trickster there's no straightforward way I can see to get the spell up on a Rogue without leaving the caster open as a target to force them to drop concentration. And by 4th tier there's so many other broken options in play that this doesn't really stand out, plus most bosses have sufficient extrasensory powers to negate it. Even on Faerie Fire, the invisibility negating effect is more a secondary benefit to the spell, given that its primary use is setting one or more enemies up to face all incoming attacks at advantage. Honestly, I'd say 5e really doesn't need an additional Invisibility hate effect; it's a very short lived buff in practice for combat purposes, and there's a plethora of magical and mundane options to counter it for general stealth situations.
I disagree with the notion that invisibility be treated as little more than a Stealth boost or one-time attack advantage. As I've noted, Invisibility applied to a creature with an innate Fly speed is potentially much more difficult to deal with as there are far more directions from which they can attack. Improved Invisibility on an Aarakocra, Owlin, Crystal Dragonborn with the Sharpshooter feat are all really strong options for PCs. On the other side, you have a host of monsters/NPCs with multiple castings of invisibility and innate fly speed as well: Djinni, Efreeti, Oni, Blue Abishai, Nycaloth, Invisible Stalker, etc. How to throw flour on a creature flying 60 feet above you?
At the very least, See Invisibility should be modified so that it can be cast on other creatures.
Umm, what’s “improved invisibility”? I don’t recognize the term. Multiple casts of Invisibility aren’t nothing, but it’s not great action economy. And regardless, it’s still a fairly limited defense in combat; your position is still known and one good AoE spell or ranged attack that beats disadvantage (hardly impossible) can end the effect right there if they blow the concentration check. Wouldn’t hurt to make SI touch, though.