What you keep misunderstanding is that THE ONLY THING that Invisibility and Greater Invisibility do is give you this condition. There is 100% a connection between Hide and Invisibility because WotC decided to make them both do effectively the same thing by them both granting the Invisible condition.
No. I'm not misunderstanding that. They give you the Condition. I have repeatedly agreed with that. What I disagree with is that they redefine the Condition. You want the Invisibility Condition to make people actually invisible because the Invisibility Spell bestows the Condition. It doesn't work that way. If the Invisibility Spell (or Greater Invisibility Spell) bestows something outside of the Invisibility Condition and they do not specify it, that is an issue with those spells. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Condition or the Hide Action.
The Invisible Condition does not, in and of itself, make anything totally see through and no matter how much you want to argue that the Invisibility Spell means it must, that argument fails. How do I know this? Because, again, gelatinous cubes can have the Invisible Condition. It isn't that they actually turned completely see through, it is just that they can be hard to see and can easily be missed.
Does that mean that someone who casts the Invisibility Spell is merely transparent and can be seen once they have moved, or does that mean that the factors that affect a gelatinous cube's Invisible Condition are completely irrelevant to any conversation about the spell?
Further more, the idea the there is a 100% connection between Hide and Invisibility is clearly wrong.
You can maintain a Concentrations Spell after taking the Hide Action without losing the Invisible Condition. You cannot do that with Invisibility.
You can also cast some spells after taking the Hide Action without loosing the Invisible Condition. You cannot do that with Invisibility.
Regardless of Concentration, the Invisible Condition from an Invisibility spell cannot persist for over an hour.
You must be out of an enemy's line of sight and either Heavily Obscured, behind 3/4 Cover, or Total Cover to use the Hide Action. You need gum arabic and an eyelash to use the Invisibility spell.
You must make a Skill Check to successfully take the Hide Action. No roll is required for Invisibility.
All of these are explicit differences between the two. I left off the fact that you lose the Invisibility Condition if you are 'found' after you use the Hide action from that list because, while it is also an explicit difference, it illustrates that there may be implicit differences (since it is unclear if it has defined what 'find' means or simply provided one of the most common methods)
I am not attributing something else from Invisibility to the Hide action, because there is nothing else in Invisibility BUT the Invisible condition.
As shown above, that is clearly incorrect. The spell also provides situations which can cause the Invisible Condition to be lost, and they are not identical to the situations under which the Invisible Condition granted by the Hide Action can be lost. In the common interpretation of the Hide Action, walking out in the open fulfills one of its situations (i.e. being 'found') that the Invisibility spell lacks.
It is a problem with the Invisible condition, because in 5e it absolutely worked the way everyone would expect it to. But then in 5.5e, they made it so that Hide gave you Invisible and thus broke how magical invisibility worked. The rules have to all work together to be cohesive, so saying that Invisibility has nothing to do with this discussion is incredibly disingenuous.
Unless your contention, again, is that there is no way to become transparent in the game.
Nope. You are falling into the common fallacy of duality. Either the situation is A or is it B.
My contention is that Hide and the Invisible Condition are perfectly fine. Characters can also turn transparent. Any argument that people cannot turn transparent is predicated on an error in the Invisibility spell.
Feel free to start a new thread on that fact, because we aren't talking about the Invisibility spell here. We are talking about the Hide Action, which is different.
Unless I'm mistaken, the people (person?) arguing that Hide is perfectly fine and intuitive as is (while also allowing someone to stand out in the open after a successful roll and not be "found") seem to have left the thread some time ago. As far as I can tell, the argument has devolved into "what makes hide—and to what degree is it—unintuitive" with people arguing from different angles, but all ultimately making the same point: that hide needs some work.
A few people are saying that the text works perfectly well without needed interpretation, but leads to unintuitive conclusions that need to be corrected by the DM, while others are saying the text itself isn't tenable without some heavy lifting from the DM to make it work in an intuitive manner.
You are trying to argue that the rules exist outside of the narrative context in which they're used. These are not just abstract keywords. We know what it means to hide, therefore we know what is required to see somebody that is hiding. And we have mechanics to apply in uncertain cases.
(Is that a house ruling? Only in the sense that every ruling made at the table is a house ruling, even the most basic ones. RAW does not incorporate the narrative context, because it cannot.)
All conditions do is describe the game-mechanical effects of a state. In the case of Invisible, that state is "not being seen". How you can be seen is outside of the condition's scope.
Are the rules around this stuff well put together? No. But they function as long as you take the context into account.
(In particular, invisibility magic not specifying that you cannot be seen by normal sight is an omission, but we are still aware of the context, so it's not actually a problem.)
So you finally agree with me. These rules only work if you use the context of 5e to houserule the interpretation. That reading these rules as-is do not make narrative or mechanical sense.
This is, perhaps, at an extremely meta level, but no, I don't agree with you. I'm probably closer to diametrically opposed to you.
You need to have the narrative context to apply any rule in play. This isn't house-ruling as in "changing the rules". It's just knowing what it means to "hide", to be "found", etc., because these are things that can only be understood in the narrative context.
Yes like the see invisibility spell, blind sight etc.
Like ordinary vision. Unless an effect specifies otherwise, creatures can be seen, and invisibility doesn't specify otherwise.
See, now you're ruling that this must be so because the rules doesn't say it can't, but the inverse is also true. So it comes down to whether you read it a functional or not (and you've already decided where you stand)
Yes like the see invisibility spell, blind sight etc.
Like ordinary vision. Unless an effect specifies otherwise, creatures can be seen, and invisibility doesn't specify otherwise.
Nah. Then the see invisibility spell would do nothing at all. In fact the see invisibility spell clarifies that invisibility actually makes the invisible, because the effect is to see people with the invisible condition as if they were visible. The invisibility condition therefore makes you not visible. People seem to want hiding to work a certain way so they want to read invisibility to mean that, when it clearly does not.
Nah. Then the see invisibility spell would do nothing at all.
Exactly. RAW, the invisibility spell doesn't do anything. It's clearly not RAI, but the entire point of this discussion is that RAW is a dysfunctional mess and that we don't actually know what RAI is for stealth.
Nah. Then the see invisibility spell would do nothing at all.
Exactly. RAW, the invisibility spell doesn't do anything. It's clearly not RAI, but the entire point of this discussion is that RAW is a dysfunctional mess and that we don't actually know what RAI is for stealth.
RAW the Invisibility spell grants you the Invisible condition which does not end if you are found or if you cease to be hidden. This is clearly different from the Invisible condition granted by the Hide action. It is up to DM interpretation what a creature "looks like" in-world while it is invisible due to either of these factors. The Invisible spell could be interpreted as magically preventing other creatures from looking at them - such as concept of the perception filter from Dr. Who - or it could be interpreted as magically making the creature transparent, or it could be interpreted as magically creating a cloud around the creature that obscures the vision of other creatures.
Mechanically it does not matter which of those interpretations is used, because the Invisible spell does not make a creature unnoticed / undetected by other creatures, it only makes it so the creature cannot be targeted by effects that require a the target to be seen and affects attack accuracy - unless the attacker has Blindsight/Truesight. The only way to be unnoticed / undetected is to approach enemies while being "stealthy".
In contrast a creature that is Invisible from the Hide Action has not been affected by magic so that they lose the benefits of the Invisible condition as soon as any enemy finds them or they cease to be hidden. Again it doesn't matter what being hidden "looks like" in the game world, you can imagine it as becoming transparent like in BG3 or as just pressing oneself against the wall or ducking behind objects, or as just squatting down like in Skyrim.
2024 Rules removed most of the flavour text, in favour of just mechanical effects. So you can flavour these abilities however you like! But the mechanics don't change.
They do do something! They allow creatures with those abilities to attack Invisible creatures without Disadvantage, to receive attacks from them without the attacker having advantage, and to target those invisible creatures with abilities that require the target to be seen.
They do do something! They allow creatures with those abilities to attack Invisible creatures without Disadvantage, to receive attacks from them without the attacker having advantage, and to target those invisible creatures with abilities that require the target to be seen.
Right what they do is let you see Invisible creatures, which counter some of the condition's benefits.
. . .RAW the Invisibility spell grants you the Invisible condition which does not end if you are found or if you cease to be hidden. This is clearly different from the Invisible condition granted by the Hide action. . .
This is the thing a lot of people seem to be missing. It is not any different from the Invisible Condition granted by they Hide action. The Hide action bestows every single thing that the Invisible Condition grants, identical to the Invisibility spell.
It is simply that the Invisibility spell explicitly grants some things that exist outside of the Condition (duration, requirements, etc.) that differ from the things outside of the Condition (duration, requirements, etc.) that Hide explicitly grants.
Those are primarily limitations that are granted. However, these explicit differences shows that the two are not identical and that there may be implicit differences as well (e.g., the spell may actually make a character see-through while the action does not).
The difference in most of these limitations is relatively minor, but the fact that Hide has the limitation that the Condition ends when an enemy finds you may be hugely significant (because it leads to possible implicit differences). In full fairness, this is where we get into a spot of bad writing because it is unclear if the only way for an enemy to find you is a Wisdom (Perception) Check or if actions may result in you being found regardless of the check (which is why I will fight anyone tooth and nail who wants to maintain there is only one thing the RAW can possibly mean).
Nah. Then the see invisibility spell would do nothing at all.
Exactly. RAW, the invisibility spell doesn't do anything. It's clearly not RAI, but the entire point of this discussion is that RAW is a dysfunctional mess and that we don't actually know what RAI is for stealth.
Or your reading of RAW is wrong. Why people keep jumping through these hoops where it says you are concealed but you are not really concealed is beyond me. The RAW says you are concealed. It gives some rules effects what being concealed means, but it also still means you are concealed. As in not accessible to be viewed. You can't be seen. That is what being concealed means. How that impacts the game. You aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen unless the effect’s creator can somehow see you. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying is also concealed.
Nah. Then the see invisibility spell would do nothing at all.
Exactly. RAW, the invisibility spell doesn't do anything. It's clearly not RAI, but the entire point of this discussion is that RAW is a dysfunctional mess and that we don't actually know what RAI is for stealth.
Or your reading of RAW is wrong. Why people keep jumping through these hoops where it says you are concealed but you are not really concealed is beyond me. The RAW says you are concealed. It gives some rules effects what being concealed means, but it also still means you are concealed. As in not accessible to be viewed. You can't be seen. That is what being concealed means. How that impacts the game. You aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen unless the effect’s creator can somehow see you. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying is also concealed.
That's the issue. No, RAW does not also mean that. RAW means what it says and nothing more. It is exactly like how when the rules say you are Poisoned they do not mean that you have necessarily been affected by some toxic chemical or protein. Instead, they mean "You have Disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks" until something occurs that ends the Condition.
Now, there is an argument to be made that people cannot spot you without making a Wisdom (Perception) check (if you used the Hide Action), so people insisting that it is RAW that you can't walk out of cover and dance around are also incorrect, but your position is not RAW at all.
In full fairness, this is where we get into a spot of bad writing because it is unclear if the only way for an enemy to find you is a Wisdom (Perception) Check or if actions may result in you being found regardless of the check (which is why I will fight anyone tooth and nail who wants to maintain there is only one thing the RAW can possibly mean).
That is not unclear at all. The Errata clearly states you have to remain "hidden" to maintain the Invisible condition from the Hide action, and that the condition ends if an enemy "finds" you. It does not state "finds you with a perception check", it says "finds". That is 100% deliberate as we have seen they have even Errata'd the condition and did not add "with a perception check" to the "finds you" cause. So twice over the designers have indicated that "find" is a not meant to be restricted to a perception check, it is a broad all emcompassing word to be interpreted by the DM.
The invisible condition can appear different in-game depending on how it was gained, just as in-game it being bitten by a rattlesnake and getting drunk would have very different appearances in-game despite both giving the Poisoned condition. You (and HBers and designers) are free to flavour the Invisible condition however you like in whatever circumstances you like. So if someone wants to make a spell or ability that allows someone to "disappear" into a crowd just by blending in - they can do that with the new Invisible condition. If someone wants to make a spell or ability that allows someone disguise their movements by being surrounded by a swarm of insects, they can do that with the new invisible condition. If someone wants to make a spell or ability that turn someone completely transparent they can do that with the new invisible condition. All they need to do is add flavour text describing how that invisible condition presents itself.
Any time you define a term, you are negating the natural meaning of that term, unless you explicitly incorporate the natural meaning.
No. I'm not misunderstanding that. They give you the Condition. I have repeatedly agreed with that. What I disagree with is that they redefine the Condition. You want the Invisibility Condition to make people actually invisible because the Invisibility Spell bestows the Condition. It doesn't work that way. If the Invisibility Spell (or Greater Invisibility Spell) bestows something outside of the Invisibility Condition and they do not specify it, that is an issue with those spells. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Condition or the Hide Action.
The Invisible Condition does not, in and of itself, make anything totally see through and no matter how much you want to argue that the Invisibility Spell means it must, that argument fails. How do I know this? Because, again, gelatinous cubes can have the Invisible Condition. It isn't that they actually turned completely see through, it is just that they can be hard to see and can easily be missed.
Does that mean that someone who casts the Invisibility Spell is merely transparent and can be seen once they have moved, or does that mean that the factors that affect a gelatinous cube's Invisible Condition are completely irrelevant to any conversation about the spell?
Further more, the idea the there is a 100% connection between Hide and Invisibility is clearly wrong.
All of these are explicit differences between the two. I left off the fact that you lose the Invisibility Condition if you are 'found' after you use the Hide action from that list because, while it is also an explicit difference, it illustrates that there may be implicit differences (since it is unclear if it has defined what 'find' means or simply provided one of the most common methods)
As shown above, that is clearly incorrect. The spell also provides situations which can cause the Invisible Condition to be lost, and they are not identical to the situations under which the Invisible Condition granted by the Hide Action can be lost. In the common interpretation of the Hide Action, walking out in the open fulfills one of its situations (i.e. being 'found') that the Invisibility spell lacks.
Nope. You are falling into the common fallacy of duality. Either the situation is A or is it B.
My contention is that Hide and the Invisible Condition are perfectly fine. Characters can also turn transparent. Any argument that people cannot turn transparent is predicated on an error in the Invisibility spell.
Feel free to start a new thread on that fact, because we aren't talking about the Invisibility spell here. We are talking about the Hide Action, which is different.
Unless I'm mistaken, the people (person?) arguing that Hide is perfectly fine and intuitive as is (while also allowing someone to stand out in the open after a successful roll and not be "found") seem to have left the thread some time ago. As far as I can tell, the argument has devolved into "what makes hide—and to what degree is it—unintuitive" with people arguing from different angles, but all ultimately making the same point: that hide needs some work.
A few people are saying that the text works perfectly well without needed interpretation, but leads to unintuitive conclusions that need to be corrected by the DM, while others are saying the text itself isn't tenable without some heavy lifting from the DM to make it work in an intuitive manner.
If you aren't affect by any effect that requires you to be see how you are being seeing?
You aren't affected by any effect that requires you to be seen unless you can be seen. Which is kind of... tautological and meaningless?
No, isn't, in another words, if somenthing doesn't negate the concealment you can't be seeing
This is, perhaps, at an extremely meta level, but no, I don't agree with you. I'm probably closer to diametrically opposed to you.
You need to have the narrative context to apply any rule in play. This isn't house-ruling as in "changing the rules". It's just knowing what it means to "hide", to be "found", etc., because these are things that can only be understood in the narrative context.
Yes like the see invisibility spell, blind sight etc.
Like ordinary vision. Unless an effect specifies otherwise, creatures can be seen, and invisibility doesn't specify otherwise.
See, now you're ruling that this must be so because the rules doesn't say it can't, but the inverse is also true. So it comes down to whether you read it a functional or not (and you've already decided where you stand)
Nah. Then the see invisibility spell would do nothing at all. In fact the see invisibility spell clarifies that invisibility actually makes the invisible, because the effect is to see people with the invisible condition as if they were visible. The invisibility condition therefore makes you not visible. People seem to want hiding to work a certain way so they want to read invisibility to mean that, when it clearly does not.
Exactly. RAW, the invisibility spell doesn't do anything. It's clearly not RAI, but the entire point of this discussion is that RAW is a dysfunctional mess and that we don't actually know what RAI is for stealth.
To me an interpretation where many rules such as Blindsight, Truesight, See Invisibility, Invisibility, Greater Invisibility don't do anything is most likely erroneous.
RAW the Invisibility spell grants you the Invisible condition which does not end if you are found or if you cease to be hidden. This is clearly different from the Invisible condition granted by the Hide action. It is up to DM interpretation what a creature "looks like" in-world while it is invisible due to either of these factors. The Invisible spell could be interpreted as magically preventing other creatures from looking at them - such as concept of the perception filter from Dr. Who - or it could be interpreted as magically making the creature transparent, or it could be interpreted as magically creating a cloud around the creature that obscures the vision of other creatures.
Mechanically it does not matter which of those interpretations is used, because the Invisible spell does not make a creature unnoticed / undetected by other creatures, it only makes it so the creature cannot be targeted by effects that require a the target to be seen and affects attack accuracy - unless the attacker has Blindsight/Truesight. The only way to be unnoticed / undetected is to approach enemies while being "stealthy".
In contrast a creature that is Invisible from the Hide Action has not been affected by magic so that they lose the benefits of the Invisible condition as soon as any enemy finds them or they cease to be hidden. Again it doesn't matter what being hidden "looks like" in the game world, you can imagine it as becoming transparent like in BG3 or as just pressing oneself against the wall or ducking behind objects, or as just squatting down like in Skyrim.
2024 Rules removed most of the flavour text, in favour of just mechanical effects. So you can flavour these abilities however you like! But the mechanics don't change.
They do do something! They allow creatures with those abilities to attack Invisible creatures without Disadvantage, to receive attacks from them without the attacker having advantage, and to target those invisible creatures with abilities that require the target to be seen.
Right what they do is let you see Invisible creatures, which counter some of the condition's benefits.
Meaning without such ability you don't see them.
This is the thing a lot of people seem to be missing. It is not any different from the Invisible Condition granted by they Hide action. The Hide action bestows every single thing that the Invisible Condition grants, identical to the Invisibility spell.
It is simply that the Invisibility spell explicitly grants some things that exist outside of the Condition (duration, requirements, etc.) that differ from the things outside of the Condition (duration, requirements, etc.) that Hide explicitly grants.
Those are primarily limitations that are granted. However, these explicit differences shows that the two are not identical and that there may be implicit differences as well (e.g., the spell may actually make a character see-through while the action does not).
The difference in most of these limitations is relatively minor, but the fact that Hide has the limitation that the Condition ends when an enemy finds you may be hugely significant (because it leads to possible implicit differences). In full fairness, this is where we get into a spot of bad writing because it is unclear if the only way for an enemy to find you is a Wisdom (Perception) Check or if actions may result in you being found regardless of the check (which is why I will fight anyone tooth and nail who wants to maintain there is only one thing the RAW can possibly mean).
Or your reading of RAW is wrong. Why people keep jumping through these hoops where it says you are concealed but you are not really concealed is beyond me. The RAW says you are concealed. It gives some rules effects what being concealed means, but it also still means you are concealed. As in not accessible to be viewed. You can't be seen. That is what being concealed means. How that impacts the game. You aren’t affected by any effect that requires its target to be seen unless the effect’s creator can somehow see you. Any equipment you are wearing or carrying is also concealed.
That's the issue. No, RAW does not also mean that. RAW means what it says and nothing more. It is exactly like how when the rules say you are Poisoned they do not mean that you have necessarily been affected by some toxic chemical or protein. Instead, they mean "You have Disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks" until something occurs that ends the Condition.
Now, there is an argument to be made that people cannot spot you without making a Wisdom (Perception) check (if you used the Hide Action), so people insisting that it is RAW that you can't walk out of cover and dance around are also incorrect, but your position is not RAW at all.
That is not unclear at all. The Errata clearly states you have to remain "hidden" to maintain the Invisible condition from the Hide action, and that the condition ends if an enemy "finds" you. It does not state "finds you with a perception check", it says "finds". That is 100% deliberate as we have seen they have even Errata'd the condition and did not add "with a perception check" to the "finds you" cause. So twice over the designers have indicated that "find" is a not meant to be restricted to a perception check, it is a broad all emcompassing word to be interpreted by the DM.
The invisible condition can appear different in-game depending on how it was gained, just as in-game it being bitten by a rattlesnake and getting drunk would have very different appearances in-game despite both giving the Poisoned condition. You (and HBers and designers) are free to flavour the Invisible condition however you like in whatever circumstances you like. So if someone wants to make a spell or ability that allows someone to "disappear" into a crowd just by blending in - they can do that with the new Invisible condition. If someone wants to make a spell or ability that allows someone disguise their movements by being surrounded by a swarm of insects, they can do that with the new invisible condition. If someone wants to make a spell or ability that turn someone completely transparent they can do that with the new invisible condition. All they need to do is add flavour text describing how that invisible condition presents itself.