Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Every creature within range to hear the fighter knows he's around... somewhere. Running in plate armor is ~70-75 db at 1m. Steelmanning, we'll assume the louder value. 75db at 1m is 69db at 2m, 63db at 4m, 57db at 8m, 51db at 16m, 45db at 32m, and 39db at 64m (which is inaudible under normal background noise conditions). If literally nothing else is going on, that means creatures within ~60m can hear him (~195'). (How loud he yells could alter these distances, as shouts vary from 70 to 90db, typically).
However, assuming this is part of a larger combat, chances are he's only audible at ~16m, as a 50db background noise for an active combat engagement is probably a lowball estimate. That's about 50'. It is quite possible he is only audible to some combatants.
But just because they know he's around, doesn't mean they know where he is. Assuming human-like creatures, if the sound is directly in front of them, they can get the source relative to their position down to a couple of degrees. So the person he's charging at probably has a good idea where he is, especially since they'll also experience the doppler effect as the sound moves directly towards them, and the close proximity of the clanks from the armor will give him a good idea of positioning.
But as the sound moves to the side, human hearing gets much less precise, up to 10 degrees of arc in determining the sound source, so other creatures are likely to have a much less precise idea of where he is. Indeed, the visual cues of their ally fighting with this invisible foe are probably an easier way to identify where he is to within a couple 5' squares. And these creatures are going to be farther away, and thus the sound will be less loud at their location. If another party member is making significant noise near them, they may not hear him at all, and thus not be paying attention to what is going on with their friend.
But what if the wizard cast Invisibility on himself? Chances are, the enemies don't even hear him cast, especially not if the fighter is charging forward in plate armor anyway. A normal conversation voice is in the 50-60db range at 1m. And the wizards footsteps and robe rustling as he moves are going to be totally inaudible with the other sounds of the battle, probably even at 5'. (the sound of moving in a robe is ~10-20db, so in heartbeat to whisper territory. It would have to be incredibly quiet to hear that at even 5'). He doesn't need to make a stealth check for no combatants to be able to hear him.
So no, i don't think everyone in the area knows exactly where the fighter is, or even what happened. They probably didn't hear the wizard casting the spell. There's a good chance they were too far away to be able to tell what specific motions his hands were making. (~25' to comfortably understand sign language, for example, and that's with the person trying to communicate to you). And the wizard is probably standing behind the fighter, which would obscure what he was doing. So there might be some perceived motion behind the guy wearing armor, and then he just disappears. Then there's a bunch of clanking and a yell coming from something they can't see, and suddenly their buddy is bleeding and swinging his sword in the air in front of him. Do they have any idea what happened? Most creatures don't know the mechanics of specific spells. And that's assuming they could watch that entire sequence unfold instead of dealing with some other situation that demands their attention. They might not even have noticed the fighter disappear if they were significantly distracted otherwise.
So yes, I would consider everyone in the combat having the exact 5' square location of the fighter to be magical awareness, even with the noise he's making (although anyone searching for the fighter and within ~50' shouldn't have too hard of a time figuring it out).
(This is where I point out the Thunderclap from the eponymous cantrip is only audible out to 100'. Even if we assume that distance is based on combat-level background noise, that's still only ~80db (which is silly low for thunder), significantly less if we assume its based on normal background noise. If a Thunderclap is only audible out to 100', that suggests intended hearing ranges for sounds reasonably producible by a person who isn't intentionally trying to be quiet should still have an audibility range between 5' to 50' in combat, depending on what they're doing and wearing. (And Knock is somehow even louder than a Thunderclap).)
Without getting into the darkness wars above, I’ve seen a couple instances where these spells can be useful. I’ve been in a game where a well placed fog cloud allowed us to retreat, and there another allowed us to sneak by an area more easily (it helped that it was a place naturally prone to fog, so it didn’t seem out of place.)
The other times these can be useful, as noted above, can be based on party composition. A warlock with devil’s sight, a dwarf with their tremorsense. A fighter or someone with the blind fighting fighting style. Those kinds of things. In the right parties and situations, it can be used very effectively. So it’s a question of knowing your allies’ capabilities.
That is exactly the same (in concept) as using Disadvantage as an abstraction for not knowing exactly where to attack and swinging / shooting widely in approximately the right location. D&D isn't interested in being a perfect simulation of reality. Its extremely abstracted, e.g. in 5.5e they are using the same condition to describe hiding behind a barrel and being literally invisible.
You are more than welcome to Homebrew exact decibles produced in every situation and then invent how well different fictional monsters can hear and guesstimate the background noise in various combat situations. Because it's very naive to assume human hearing should be used as the benchmark for creatures as diverse as Alien-tentacle-panthers, living rocks, and undead snakes, or that "the heat of battle" is always equally noisy when "battle" can be a panther silently stalking then pouncing on the wizard, or a stampede of elephant-sized humanoids in armour.
The designers have made it abundantly clear they do not care to detail out all these different situations, rather just provide simplified abstracted rules that DMs are free to flesh out as they wish (or not). If my dog can hear the mailman wearing ordinary clothes walking up the 10 m driveway up to the house while the dog is inside out house, it is not at all unreasonable for a displacer beast to hear an invisible wizard a similar distance away.
To be fair, 10 degrees is precise enough that you’d know direction to within the 5’ square out to 20’ or so. You may not know the precise location of everyone on the battlefield, but sound alone can probably give you a pretty good idea of where combatants are in your general vicinity if they‘re moving around without making an active effort to be stealthy. Correctly identifying who’s where in a fog cloud is what probably gets you into trouble and there really should be more confusion when combatants can’t visually distinguish friends and foes.
Yeah, the audible range for thunderclap has always bothered me. It should really just be called clap.
But you don't know distance, just vaguely approximate angle, because humans don't have bifocal hearing.
The bigger point, of course, is that louder sounds drown out softer ones. If a fighter is clanking around in plate armor, you probably can't hear the wizard move, speak, or anything else, because the wizard is likely both farther away and quieter than the fighter.
For completeness, fog also muffles and disperses sounds, which would make pinpointing location in a fog cloud very difficult.
You of course skipped over that noticing an invisible creature was present was non-trivial in 2nd edition. Going unnoticed as an invisible creature did not require any sort of stealth check. (which, well, the closest thing would have been a rogue skill to move silently in 2nd edition, but an invisible creature didn't need that to have a good chance of going unnoticed.)
Better hearing should mean better perception checks. Or advantage on perception checks that involve hearing.
And if there are much louder sounds closer to you, it doesn't matter how good the creature's hearing is.
Invisibility should be a form of stealth. It should not be infallible, but it should also not be irrelevant.
I'm still waiting for anyone to quote any actual rule in 2024 that says you know where all combatants are that aren't hiding.
Gasp! Writers Cannot Do Math! You know, that's the kind of thing you could probably write a whole webpage to discuss...
Once again, the point being missed is that much like most other elements of combat, D&D 5e's approach on tracking positions and such only bears a passing resemblance to reality- but notably a distinct resemblance to how such things are handled in many action stories.
No it shouldn't. It's a terrible idea, and you're wrong to assume that treating invisibility as only blocking vision makes it irrelevant.
You're literally forcing every enemy to attack you at Disadvantage. That's very strong. Treating it as Stealth would be downright busted. Especially for spells like Greater Invisibility.
You won't get the rule you're demanding to see because the designers of this game didn't write down the most obvious things for practical reasons.
And let's be honest, even if we gave it to you, you'd keep moving the goal post... But the example given for the Perception skill does mention "using a combination of senses".
Sight isn't the only sense that matters.
--Blur makes every enemy attack you at disadvantage, and it doesn't end if you attack someone or cast a spell. Invisibility is just worse blur in your interpretation. (The longer concentration time of Invisibility doesn't matter under your interpretation, because it has zero application outside combat, since it doesn't contribute at all to your stealth. If you can sneak around successfully anyway, you can do it just as well without the Invisibility spell as you can with it, because your stealth check is literally the only thing that matters. If you can't sneak around successfully without invisibility, you can't sneak around successfully with it! When Hide gives you the same Invisible condition, what do you need the spell for? In combat, of course, the invisibility spell ends the moment you do something combat relevant.) You've basically written Invisibility (the spell) out of the game.
--Of course, your interpretation also means the Hide action doesn't actually make you unnoticed, because Hide literally only gives you the Invisible condition, same as the Invisibility spell, just with different ending conditions. The RAW is perfectly clear on this.
--Sight is the sense that humans are best at. Losing access to sight makes humans pretty incompetent at things like navigating space or tracking the movement of other creatures and objects. I'd run something like a dog differently. I mean, even a stealth check should be mostly useless against a dog -- can't hide the fact that your character hasn't bathed in a week. (Hiding your scent should be doable, but that's a Nature or Survival check, and requires specific materials and more time than an Action).
--By all means, go somewhere with lots of noise, like a park next to a busy road, blindfold yourself, and describe to a buddy the precise location (within a 5' square) of everyone within 100' around you by sound and smell. See how well you do. It should be easy, since you aren't even distracted by someone yelling in your face and trying to hit you with a sword, right?
--Surely we can agree that taste isn't terribly useful for figuring out where unseen enemies are. And touch is either a search action or you've blundered into someone during your movement. (Or I suppose you're declaring attacks at squares and you chose well and connected with something).
--Speaking of which, i've seen people literally walk into other people even when their sight wasn't impaired...
--If the rules actually said it straight up, that would be RAW. If they don't, that's just your houserule.
Yeah, you're just repeating the same stuff that's been debunked a 1000 times on these forums.
Go through earlier posts first, then we'll talk...
I'm so confused. Why should better senses only give benefits when actively using perception with Actions, but invisibility should make you automatically Hidden without using Actions? Invisibility is not irrelevant to stealth/hiding. Invisibility allows a creature to take the Hide Action and be Hidden anywhere and everywhere rather than only while there is an object blocking line of sight to them. An invisible creature can Hide 5 ft from another creature's nose, and can Sneak across an open well-lit square without being noticed if their Stealth check is high enough. Whereas this is impossible for a clearly visible creature regardless of their Stealth check.
It absolutely is useful if you are a Naga or other Snake-like monster.
Only in our modern age of extreme distraction and safety. Have you seen someone even doing something as banal as walking in the woods walk into someone or a tree? I certainly haven't because even just unevenness in the ground of the woods is sufficient to force someone to pay attention to what they are doing and what is going on around them sufficiently to avoid that. Generally characters & creatures in D&D are alert to possible danger so would require effort to sneak past. Hence this is the default, and the designers leave it up to DMs to rule otherwise in the rare cases where a creature is extremely distracted or deeply asleep. For another example just consider the difference between walking past an experienced domestic horse without them noticing vs walking past a wild horse without it noticing.
Blur is a combat spell, Invisibility is an out-of-combat utility spell. Fog Cloud as I mentioned previously is mostly a out-of-combat utility spell with a few niche applications in combat. Darkness is a bit more combat-compatible, as evidenced by several classes getting ways to see through it, but also is good as a out-of-combat utility spell.