They want to stay ambiguous... which may have worked if the rules were entirely written that way. But the rules are half-baked between structured and ambiguous, and now they refuse to provide any structure to the ambiguity. I find it very frustrating at times, personally.
You can absolutely counterspell someone who is invisible.
Counterspell is one of a number of spells that specifically calls out seeing. They could have phrased it in a way that would not be defeated by invisibility, but they did not do so
Greater invis would be the one you could not counterspell. Invisibility drops when you cast a spell which would reveal the caster and therefore be able to counterspelled. If it stated invisibility drops after a spell is cast I'd say it works the same as greater for that round, but casting ends it so it could be countered. Just stand 65 feet away when you cast and it won't matter anyway lol.
You can absolutely counterspell someone who is invisible.
Counterspell is one of a number of spells that specifically calls out seeing. They could have phrased it in a way that would not be defeated by invisibility, but they did not do so
Greater invis would be the one you could not counterspell. Invisibility drops when you cast a spell which would reveal the caster and therefore be able to counterspelled. If it stated invisibility drops after a spell is cast I'd say it works the same as greater for that round, but casting ends it so it could be countered. Just stand 65 feet away when you cast and it won't matter anyway lol.
The question was not about the spell invisibility, with its own conditions for ending the spell, but more generally for the condition invisible. "Someone who is invisible" is someone with the invisible condition, not necessarily someone affected by the spell invisibility.
Greater invis would be the one you could not counterspell. Invisibility drops when you cast a spell which would reveal the caster and therefore be able to counterspelled. If it stated invisibility drops after a spell is cast I'd say it works the same as greater for that round, but casting ends it so it could be countered. Just stand 65 feet away when you cast and it won't matter anyway lol.
Unclear if invisibility ends when you start casting the spell (or attacking), or when you finish. If it ends when you finish, it's too late to counterspell.
You do realize that OP's argument and/or confusion is based entirely arround the _assumption_ that the second bullet has nothing to do with being unseen? This has two parts, lexical and mechanical.
Wording is never perfect because people will take from it what they will or can't unsee something they have. However, let's analyze proper use and function of lexical components in these sentences.
First off, a list in its lexical meaning is an enumeration of different parts that belong to the same subject. So by using a list, it is already clear that all points in the list are applying to the same subject, i.e. the invisible condition. Disagreeing with that would mean that by the same argument you could break up any condition list into parts that do not necessarily refer to the same thing.
However, and this is the second clear indication, to refrain from going into semantics the second bullet even makes it clearer still that it is talking about the same thing. It does so by using the lexical principle of repeating subjects. In this case, the subject in the first bullet is not the "invisible" condition, but more specifically "an invisible creature". The second bullet uses the above principle to not re-iterate the same subject, but use the referencing word "the" to refer to the aforementioned "an invisible creature". It is very specifically referring not to any creature, but to the one mentioned in the first bullet, since there is no other creature being talked about.
This is proper use of lexical principles as is agreed upon in all modern literature. Could it be clearer still? Yes. Would this cause such rulesets to read as if it were a terse microwave manual? At some point yes.
Then to the point of truesight not countering the invisible condition, which in my opinion is even less of an argument here but what you seem to have the most confusion about. This is the mechanical part.
If I run my car into someone and that person has the "flying through the air" condition, there aren't many things I could do at that point to make sure the person doesn't hit the asphalt but influence gravity myself. Let's say I could, and the person stops flying but is now hovering in the air instead, would you say the person is still flying? I don't think so, I just stopped the trajectory going down and have influenced the condition this way. For someone else coming from the opposite direction it might still look like the person is flying, but thay person is not part of the interaction. Conditions therefore are only absolute until someone interacts with them.
This is exactly the same with the truesight ability: it changes the condition of the target for the user of the ability. It has become a relative condition, i.e. the target is no longer invisible or unseen and so it does not have the invisible condition for the person with truesight. If this were not the case, they would not be talking about the same thing, which they specifically are, i.e. being invisible. Another example is grappling. If I grapple a subject and he grapples me, but one of us runs off, we are both no longer grappled nor grappling.
I feel this really is reading what you want to read to your own advantage OP, the text and rules are really quite unambiguous.
This is more of a deconstruction of a rule for the purpose of discussing how it could be better worded. I don’t expect anyone to “well actually...” this at a table.
Tecnik, can a character with Actor have advantage on Deception and Persuasion checks where they are passing themselves off as another but aren't Mimicking speech? Yes, obviously. Cuz that's how bullet points work under a heading, they lay out multiple separate pieces of information that are related insofar as they all relate to the heading, but which are separate game effects.
Don't know why the bullets for conditions would work any differently.
I don't mean to drag up a dead topic, this isn't even what I was searching for; but words should be perfect and exact... they used the phrase "cannot benefit from the effects of invisibility" with faerie fire-
So why don't they add a similar line to the truesight ability? If it's obvious, state the obvious- sure it's only semantics? But in a game of books and words semantics mean everything.
truesight still lets you cast spells that require you to see the target, so it's not completely useless if the RAW keeps the advantage/disadvantage in play...
I don't mean to drag up a dead topic, this isn't even what I was searching for; but words should be perfect and exact... they used the phrase "cannot benefit from the effects of invisibility" with faerie fire-
So why don't they add a similar line to the truesight ability?
Because they can still benefit from invisibility -- against characters/creatures other than the one that has truesight.
I don't mean to drag up a dead topic, this isn't even what I was searching for; but words should be perfect and exact... they used the phrase "cannot benefit from the effects of invisibility" with faerie fire-
So why don't they add a similar line to the truesight ability?
Because they can still benefit from invisibility -- against characters/creatures other than the one that has truesight.
It's easy enough to just rewrite something...
Truesight
A monster with truesight can, out to a specific range, see in normal and magical darkness, see invisible creatures and objects (negating all conditions of invisibility on a seen target), automatically detect visual illusions and succeed on saving throws against them, and perceive the original form of a shapechanger or a creature that is transformed by magic. Furthermore, the monster can see into the Ethereal Plane within the same range.
-OR-
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 (unless seen through the aid of magic or a special sense)
I get not wanting to clutter things with "common sense" text that "should be" inferred; but it needs to be there anyway because common sense is not a universal constant- and things can be inferred many different ways unless explicitly stated.
When the game was limited to paperbound books and supplements it would have always taken until the next edition or a new book to correct language usages; but in the world of digital media these things could be sorted, altered and corrected in real time. Not using the ability to adapt, shift and improve [in real time] is purely lazy with these tools at their disposal.
I don't mean to drag up a dead topic, this isn't even what I was searching for; but words should be perfect and exact... they used the phrase "cannot benefit from the effects of invisibility" with faerie fire-
So why don't they add a similar line to the truesight ability?
Because they can still benefit from invisibility -- against characters/creatures other than the one that has truesight.
It's easy enough to just rewrite something...
Truesight
A monster with truesight can, out to a specific range, see in normal and magical darkness, see invisible creatures and objects (negating all conditions of invisibility on a seen target), automatically detect visual illusions and succeed on saving throws against them, and perceive the original form of a shapechanger or a creature that is transformed by magic. Furthermore, the monster can see into the Ethereal Plane within the same range.
-OR-
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 (unless seen through the aid of magic or a special sense)
I get not wanting to clutter things with "common sense" text that "should be" inferred; but it needs to be there anyway because common sense is not a universal constant- and things can be inferred many different ways unless explicitly stated.
When the game was limited to paperbound books and supplements it would have always taken until the next edition or a new book to correct language usages; but in the world of digital media these things could be sorted, altered and corrected in real time. Not using the ability to adapt, shift and improve [in real time] is purely lazy with these tools at their disposal.
For WotC, the game is still in books...resources like D&D Beyond are not directly part of WotC. Also, if they corrected in real time, that means you would have infinite versions and most people would not have the “official” version, and their $50 books would be out of date probably before they bought them. This is the biggest reason that the rules say the DM has the final say for their table, rather than tripling the size of each book to cater to those who for some reason or another can’t use context and common sense to interpret rules
There's that common sense silliness again. Common sense only exists with common experiences, the entire concept is ridiculous as all people interpret things differently. "All" people would need to share in all experiences that occur in "one's" life for a commonality to exist as a blanket ability. If you're a borg, cool... if you're not part of a collective it is simply absurd as a concept.
Blinded creatures are subject to the rules for Unseen Attackers and Targets, unless they have an ability that lets them see while blind, such as Blindsight.
Creatures fighting invisible foes are subject to the rules for Unseen Attackers and Targets, unless they have an ability that lets them see invisible creatures.
There's that common sense silliness again. Common sense only exists with common experiences, the entire concept is ridiculous as all people interpret things differently. "All" people would need to share in all experiences that occur in "one's" life for a commonality to exist as a blanket ability. If you're a borg, cool... if you're not part of a collective it is simply absurd as a concept.
Just to point out here, your rewrite of truesight is just redundant. The rules explicitly state that a condition ends when it is countered. (Beyond that, the counter of each condition is not explicitly given). Being seen is the counter to invisibility, so your additional statement in that text is entirely unnecessary. The rules completely support the fact that once you can see someone, they gain no benefit from the invisible condition. The weird part about this entire 4 page thread is that people keep forgetting that fact about how conditions end, yet it seems to solve (almost) the entire discussion.
Now to the quote. Sure, maybe common sense has no place in a rule's lawyer's game. It works for most of us humans though because 'common sense' doesn't actually rely on common experience -- only common language and a bit of logic. But if you are going to go down the "rules need lawyer-ing to work" route, you'd better consider all the relevant rules.
Beyond all of that TexasDevin is right. If you can't figure out how it should probably be played (in this particular case) then maybe 5e isn't the ruleset for you.
There's that common sense silliness again. Common sense only exists with common experiences, the entire concept is ridiculous as all people interpret things differently. "All" people would need to share in all experiences that occur in "one's" life for a commonality to exist as a blanket ability. If you're a borg, cool... if you're not part of a collective it is simply absurd as a concept.
Truesight does not counter invisibility (the character remains invisible to creatures other than the one with truesight). Blindsight does not counter blindness (the creature remains blind to anything outside of its blindsight radius).
There's that common sense silliness again. Common sense only exists with common experiences, the entire concept is ridiculous as all people interpret things differently. "All" people would need to share in all experiences that occur in "one's" life for a commonality to exist as a blanket ability. If you're a borg, cool... if you're not part of a collective it is simply absurd as a concept.
Truesight does not counter invisibility (the character remains invisible to creatures other than the one with truesight). Blindsight does not counter blindness (the creature remains blind to anything outside of its blindsight radius).
As I said, if we can't agree that being seen is the counter to being invisible, then we probably can't agree that standing is the counter to being prone, and 5th edition is simply not written for the style of rules lawyering that you want to do here.
As I said, if we can't agree that being seen is the counter to being invisible, then we probably can't agree that standing is the counter to being prone, and 5th edition is simply not written for the style of rules lawyering that you want to do here.
A counter, in the way you're talking about, is something that removes a condition. If a creature with truesight looks at you while you're invisible, you don't suddenly pop into view.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
They want to stay ambiguous... which may have worked if the rules were entirely written that way. But the rules are half-baked between structured and ambiguous, and now they refuse to provide any structure to the ambiguity. I find it very frustrating at times, personally.
Greater invis would be the one you could not counterspell. Invisibility drops when you cast a spell which would reveal the caster and therefore be able to counterspelled. If it stated invisibility drops after a spell is cast I'd say it works the same as greater for that round, but casting ends it so it could be countered. Just stand 65 feet away when you cast and it won't matter anyway lol.
The question was not about the spell invisibility, with its own conditions for ending the spell, but more generally for the condition invisible. "Someone who is invisible" is someone with the invisible condition, not necessarily someone affected by the spell invisibility.
Oops! Sorry, nevermind lol.
Unclear if invisibility ends when you start casting the spell (or attacking), or when you finish. If it ends when you finish, it's too late to counterspell.
You do realize that OP's argument and/or confusion is based entirely arround the _assumption_ that the second bullet has nothing to do with being unseen? This has two parts, lexical and mechanical.
Wording is never perfect because people will take from it what they will or can't unsee something they have. However, let's analyze proper use and function of lexical components in these sentences.
First off, a list in its lexical meaning is an enumeration of different parts that belong to the same subject. So by using a list, it is already clear that all points in the list are applying to the same subject, i.e. the invisible condition. Disagreeing with that would mean that by the same argument you could break up any condition list into parts that do not necessarily refer to the same thing.
However, and this is the second clear indication, to refrain from going into semantics the second bullet even makes it clearer still that it is talking about the same thing. It does so by using the lexical principle of repeating subjects. In this case, the subject in the first bullet is not the "invisible" condition, but more specifically "an invisible creature". The second bullet uses the above principle to not re-iterate the same subject, but use the referencing word "the" to refer to the aforementioned "an invisible creature". It is very specifically referring not to any creature, but to the one mentioned in the first bullet, since there is no other creature being talked about.
This is proper use of lexical principles as is agreed upon in all modern literature. Could it be clearer still? Yes. Would this cause such rulesets to read as if it were a terse microwave manual? At some point yes.
Then to the point of truesight not countering the invisible condition, which in my opinion is even less of an argument here but what you seem to have the most confusion about. This is the mechanical part.
If I run my car into someone and that person has the "flying through the air" condition, there aren't many things I could do at that point to make sure the person doesn't hit the asphalt but influence gravity myself. Let's say I could, and the person stops flying but is now hovering in the air instead, would you say the person is still flying? I don't think so, I just stopped the trajectory going down and have influenced the condition this way. For someone else coming from the opposite direction it might still look like the person is flying, but thay person is not part of the interaction. Conditions therefore are only absolute until someone interacts with them.
This is exactly the same with the truesight ability: it changes the condition of the target for the user of the ability. It has become a relative condition, i.e. the target is no longer invisible or unseen and so it does not have the invisible condition for the person with truesight. If this were not the case, they would not be talking about the same thing, which they specifically are, i.e. being invisible. Another example is grappling. If I grapple a subject and he grapples me, but one of us runs off, we are both no longer grappled nor grappling.
I feel this really is reading what you want to read to your own advantage OP, the text and rules are really quite unambiguous.
This is more of a deconstruction of a rule for the purpose of discussing how it could be better worded. I don’t expect anyone to “well actually...” this at a table.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Tecnik, can a character with Actor have advantage on Deception and Persuasion checks where they are passing themselves off as another but aren't Mimicking speech? Yes, obviously. Cuz that's how bullet points work under a heading, they lay out multiple separate pieces of information that are related insofar as they all relate to the heading, but which are separate game effects.
Don't know why the bullets for conditions would work any differently.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Yeah, invisibility would be improved if the second bullet point became:
At that point it's just restating the Unseen Attackers rules, but adding one sentence to avoid page flipping is reasonable.
I don't mean to drag up a dead topic, this isn't even what I was searching for; but words should be perfect and exact... they used the phrase "cannot benefit from the effects of invisibility" with faerie fire-
So why don't they add a similar line to the truesight ability? If it's obvious, state the obvious- sure it's only semantics? But in a game of books and words semantics mean everything.
truesight still lets you cast spells that require you to see the target, so it's not completely useless if the RAW keeps the advantage/disadvantage in play...
Because they can still benefit from invisibility -- against characters/creatures other than the one that has truesight.
I hate that this thread got bumped :(
"Not all those who wander are lost"
It's easy enough to just rewrite something...
Truesight
A monster with truesight can, out to a specific range, see in normal and magical darkness, see invisible creatures and objects (negating all conditions of invisibility on a seen target), automatically detect visual illusions and succeed on saving throws against them, and perceive the original form of a shapechanger or a creature that is transformed by magic. Furthermore, the monster can see into the Ethereal Plane within the same range.
-OR-
Invisible
I get not wanting to clutter things with "common sense" text that "should be" inferred; but it needs to be there anyway because common sense is not a universal constant- and things can be inferred many different ways unless explicitly stated.
When the game was limited to paperbound books and supplements it would have always taken until the next edition or a new book to correct language usages; but in the world of digital media these things could be sorted, altered and corrected in real time. Not using the ability to adapt, shift and improve [in real time] is purely lazy with these tools at their disposal.
For WotC, the game is still in books...resources like D&D Beyond are not directly part of WotC. Also, if they corrected in real time, that means you would have infinite versions and most people would not have the “official” version, and their $50 books would be out of date probably before they bought them. This is the biggest reason that the rules say the DM has the final say for their table, rather than tripling the size of each book to cater to those who for some reason or another can’t use context and common sense to interpret rules
There's that common sense silliness again. Common sense only exists with common experiences, the entire concept is ridiculous as all people interpret things differently. "All" people would need to share in all experiences that occur in "one's" life for a commonality to exist as a blanket ability. If you're a borg, cool... if you're not part of a collective it is simply absurd as a concept.
They could also have made the rules more compact and still more coherent. Just replace two bullet points with bullet points for other rules:
Replace the second bullet point on Blinded with
Replace the second bullet point on Invisible with
Just to point out here, your rewrite of truesight is just redundant. The rules explicitly state that a condition ends when it is countered. (Beyond that, the counter of each condition is not explicitly given). Being seen is the counter to invisibility, so your additional statement in that text is entirely unnecessary. The rules completely support the fact that once you can see someone, they gain no benefit from the invisible condition. The weird part about this entire 4 page thread is that people keep forgetting that fact about how conditions end, yet it seems to solve (almost) the entire discussion.
Now to the quote. Sure, maybe common sense has no place in a rule's lawyer's game. It works for most of us humans though because 'common sense' doesn't actually rely on common experience -- only common language and a bit of logic. But if you are going to go down the "rules need lawyer-ing to work" route, you'd better consider all the relevant rules.
Beyond all of that TexasDevin is right. If you can't figure out how it should probably be played (in this particular case) then maybe 5e isn't the ruleset for you.
Truesight does not counter invisibility (the character remains invisible to creatures other than the one with truesight). Blindsight does not counter blindness (the creature remains blind to anything outside of its blindsight radius).
As I said, if we can't agree that being seen is the counter to being invisible, then we probably can't agree that standing is the counter to being prone, and 5th edition is simply not written for the style of rules lawyering that you want to do here.
A counter, in the way you're talking about, is something that removes a condition. If a creature with truesight looks at you while you're invisible, you don't suddenly pop into view.