Flaming Sphere & Invisibility effects

Your reasoning on this particular instance isn't all that much of a stretch, even if I don't personally agree with it, but some of the folks on the other thread never let up even when presented with other scenarios with other edge spells. Every single time, they insisted that one must follow the absolute literal reading of the spell, which has problems of it's own, such as how to explain how the spell is supposed to recognize between friend and foe that finely. That is the part that annoyed me, and the reason I tend to dislike the path that using your logic sets up. It's not bad in and of itself, but it tends to lead either to further headaches as each side is forced to cut the edge thinner and thinner or everyone ignoring large chunks of the rulebook because no one can agree on how to interpret them, and it's easier simply not to deal with it. Whereas grouping Flaming Sphere with the other summons does nothing to add to the overall power of either spell (or if it does, let's face it, Flaming Sphere tends to need it), stays within the intent of the spell, and provides a more compromise friendly solution, even if it isn't the absolutely technically accurate one by RAW. Neither solution is better in the immediate instance, but one does better of keeping long term peace on terms that both player and DM can agree on.

possible resolution

We may need our own LPF house rule on these situations on a case by case review.

This one my require an addm to this spell stating [as an example only] where casting this spell will most certainly dispel invisibility, but not greater invisibility, directing it by a caster who went invisible after casting it [will not / will] dispel invisibility.

thoughts?

Wow, I had no idea this was such a contentious topic. I appreciate all the discussion so far. I admit I was expecting a much simpler 'This is the rule' sort of response rather than a debate that has no clear answer. Personally, I'm ok with leaving the ultimate answer up to the DM and player using the effects to work out. I think having to rule/notate spell effects such as SDW has suggested would get too unwieldy fairly quickly.

GlassEye said:

I think having to rule/notate spell effects such as SDW has suggested would get too unwieldy fairly quickly.

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unfortunately true.

I must admit that I probably wouldn't be as concerned if I didn't have a wizard that is likely going to have to depend on invisibility a fair bit to survive. With no AC and limited HP, it's one of the wizard's primary defenses against both magic and mundane attacks. Trying to tell a player that he can either defend himself but be largely useless to the rest of the party unless he wants to spend all his time buffing or actually help the party in combat by dealing with foes while leaving himself open for a counter attack is not going to go over well. Asking a fighter to make that decision would never even considered, but defining an attack that widely is going to do precisely that for a wizard or anyone else who relies on invisibility to be effective. Yes, there are other defenses, but invisibility is one of the few that breaks up both line of sight and effect for direct target spells while also protecting against regular attacks, so any ruling that limits the usefulness of invisibility limits the number of safe, but still useful, actions considerably. In the end, it's not the ruling of the immediate case that bothers me, it's the logic that is used, which can be problematic at higher levels, when the wizard really does need that for defense just to maintain basic usefulness.

There is a lot that can be done to lessen the viability of invisibility: See Invisibility, Invisibility Purge (both low level spells that aren't unreasonably expensive as wands), for example. For the non-magical a simple bag of flour will help find the invisible creature. A high Perception skill helps pinpoint the location (made easier if the caster casts spells with verbal components). At higher levels a spellcaster should graduate to Greater Invisibility and not worry about breaking invisibility when casting spells. Invisibility is good but I wouldn't base my entire defense on it.

GlassEye said:

There is a lot that can be done to lessen the viability of invisibility: See Invisibility, Invisibility Purge (both low level spells that aren't unreasonably expensive as wands), for example. For the non-magical a simple bag of flour will help find the invisible creature. A high Perception skill helps pinpoint the location (made easier if the caster casts spells with verbal components). At higher levels a spellcaster should graduate to Greater Invisibility and not worry about breaking invisibility when casting spells. Invisibility is good but I wouldn't base my entire defense on it.

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I never said it would be the only defense, but as one of the few that can seriously hinder any direct attack, magic or mundane, it is certainly an important one. Greater Invisibility is great in immediate combat, but not for much else; it's duration and the same casting time means that often regular invisibility is still a better overall choice for those not wanting to directly attack their foes. The fact that there are enough other ways to counter invisibility without having to make a ruling that a spell effect can break invisibility even in rounds after it's been cast, especially when combined with an extremely broad definition of what constitutes an attack, makes the particular logic here just seems a bit too much for me personally. It's no one aspect, but rather, the whole effect, both short term and long term, that is just a little bit too much of a power play on the DM's side; there are better tools to limit invisibility that have much less collateral issues.

GlassEye said:

Wow, I had no idea this was such a contentious topic.

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Neither did I, or I'd probably not have asked over in the original game thread. I just thought it was a slightly odd case.

I have a couple of thoughts that I think might help (and possibly, keep in mind that I'm about to argue against my own character's power curve for whatever that's worth ). Let's see if I can articulate them well enough:

First, I think it's probably a good idea to discuss the conditions of 'mundane attack' versus 'spell attack' separately, since I do think the invisibility spell tries to break out what constitutes an "attacking spell" on its own. To that end, let me tackle this real quick:

Mowgli said:

If my character cuts a rope in order to drop an anvil on a foe's head, that's the same thing as swinging a sword to hit that foe, or throwing a rock. He's using a tool to directly harm someone, and he has to make an attack roll using his own abilities/BAB/whatever.

<snip>

In the case of a trap it's a little more blurry, but to my way of thinking the distinction is still clear. Although my PC triggers the trap, once it's triggered it's no longer under his control, and any attacks made use the traps stats, not my PCs.

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I do think it gets really muddy if you say 'cut the rope on your anvil' is an attack, but 'push the button on your spiked wall trap' isn't. Since, really, an anvil hanging by a rope seems like a trap to me. A really simple, obvious trap, but a trap nonetheless. I'm a little hard pressed to see something other than semantics separating the act of cutting a rope to send your enemies into the ground and cutting a rope to send a large piece of ground into your enemies. I think cutting that rope falls under the same logic that the trap does. To my mind, for mundane attacks only, the rule seems to be: is the invisible character providing the direct force behind the attack? Yes = invisibility goes buh-bye. Throwing rocks, knives, arrows, or swinging fists, swords, or really hard peanut brittle are all attacks. Using gravity, springs, cogs, etc which you incite by your action to in turn provide damage through another means don't. i.e., if there's a step between you and the damaging factor, you're still invisible. In the mundane world, that's enough to filter off the 'hostile energy' that makes invisibility cranky.

If we say that, I can only think of one real hair-split condition: what's the difference between cutting the rope and holding the rock in your hands when you let it drop? And even then, I think the fact that the damaging object was in direct contact with your hands prior to its assault makes for some reasonably consistent logic (for a value of logic where 'magic that gets mad when you attack' is a given).

Now, ignore all the mundane arguments when it comes to spells. Spells have / break special rules, so I think looking at them separately is probably a much safer option. And I think we can use their special rules / categorizations to draw what might be a reasonable line at least as far as this spell is concerned. Sure, a spongy fire ball that rolls around for several rounds bears a decent resemblance to, say, a summoned fire elemental. Both move against your foes and set them ablaze if you want them to.

However, Flaming Sphere isn't a Conjuration (summoning) spell. That very narrow school / subschool combo appears to have its own special 'pass' when it comes to whatever magical aggression instability is inherent in Invisibility and Vanish. It's probably safest just to say 'Conjuration (summoning) excluded' when you start the discussion, I think, for that reason.

Flaming sphere, on the other hand, is an Evocation [energy type]. We should pick something in its school to compare it to, instead, I think. I realized Call Lightning makes a good example: You cast it once, but then you can use it to move electricity about over several rounds and hurt people / damage objects. It doesn't roll about like a Flaming Sphere, but I think it's a reasonable approximation, and it's Evocation [energy type], as well. I don't think anyone would argue calling a lightning bolt in subsequent rounds is a clear attack. I think the only difference, then, is that the flaming sphere is moving horizontal instead of vertical. And without the special hall pass of a specialized school / subschool, that means it breaks your invisibility if the damage you're doing is to a creature.

Gah. I hope that made a modicum of sense.

jkason said:

Sure, a spongy fire ball that rolls around for several rounds bears a decent resemblance to, say, a summoned fire elemental. Both move against your foes and set them ablaze if you want them to.

However, Flaming Sphere isn't a Conjuration (summoning) spell. That very narrow school / subschool combo appears to have its own special 'pass' when it comes to whatever magical aggression instability is inherent in Invisibility and Vanish. It's probably safest just to say 'Conjuration (summoning) excluded' when you start the discussion, I think, for that reason.

Flaming sphere, on the other hand, is an Evocation [energy type]. We should pick something in its school to compare it to, instead, I think. I realized Call Lightning makes a good example: You cast it once, but then you can use it to move electricity about over several rounds and hurt people / damage objects. It doesn't roll about like a Flaming Sphere, but I think it's a reasonable approximation, and it's Evocation [energy type], as well. I don't think anyone would argue calling a lightning bolt in subsequent rounds is a clear attack. I think the only difference, then, is that the flaming sphere is moving horizontal instead of vertical. And without the special hall pass of a specialized school / subschool, that means it breaks your invisibility if the damage you're doing is to a creature.

Gah. I hope that made a modicum of sense.

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That seems to the hangup. Some people see the flaming sphere in that light. Others, like myself, see it fitting much better fitting with fitting in with the summon spells. Once it's there, it's there for the duration as a solid object, unlike your example of Call Lightning, where the lightning bolt only exists from the time you call it to the time it hits the target. Second, I really fail to see how any movement occurs to be a factor; Whether you move it yourself, or the animal moves under his own power after you tell it where to go, the end result and the intent is the exact same. Same difficulties with the other examples they specifically call out. If you want to go by intent, than summon spells or cutting the rope on a bridge shouldn't count any different than a flaming sphere should, or as another example, spiritual weapon. In all cases, the force that is providing the damage is coming from something clear and distinct from the caster; the caster did an action to put bring that force into play, either by cutting the rope, or by casting a spell, or even moving an otherwise inanimate object around, but the caster is not the source of the damage in any of those examples; the object or animal is.

I think that your understanding of what counts for mundane purposes still matters greatly for spells. Personally I find that trying to treat magic and mundane as automatically different in all cases is a trap that causes most of the headaches people have with magic. Unless an individual spell/subschool specifically calls out something different, as far I'm concerned, it still follows the same rules as any mundane source.

Using the direct vs indirect comparison seems very much to be the intent of the invisibility spell, even if some of the wording is a bit ambiguous on that point, at least by my reading; I could care less about what constitutes an attack and what doesn't because the intent in almost all cases is the same - defeat the enemy. Regular invisibility is for indirect actions, and moving a large spongy ball of flame around is still indirect; greater invisibility is for direct actions. For those simply wanting to get into a advantageous position, and not needing the invisibility for anything else, Vanish lasts long enough to serve that purpose, and uses a lower spell slot to boot.

I approach spells as looking for the simplest solution first, and in this case, that solution is what is the caster directly doing? If the caster is acting directly on an opponent, regular invisibility will not hold. I still don't see how the spell can tell between Bull's Strength and Magic Missile, but whatever, I guess that's one point where I have to suspend logic to make the game more enjoyable for everyone at the table. If the caster is directly acting on a non-opponent, regular invisibility holds. An inanimate ball of flame is not an opponent, so it does not break invisibility. I really don't understand why people insist on making it more complicated by trying determine what constitutes an "attack" and what doesn't. Doing so adds nothing to the game, except argument, and I don't see why you would deliberately add that. If you try to use willfully and actively harming the enemy as the barometer, or start getting into secondary or chain reaction effects, than pretty much any spell, or mundane action, is going to drop regular invisibility, rendering it largely useless for anything but scouting, buffing, and healing, all of which are worthy enough in the right circumstances, but none of which are going to be worth an entire spell to boost them, even if taken as a group.

This does mean that at times, the spell is a bit more powerful than many folks like, but really, with all the counters that were pointed out up thread, the spell is still not all that particularly powerful for it's level, especially since many adventures take place in dungeons where it doesn't take long to figure out, to at least some degree, where the invisible creature is because there simply isn't that many places they could be. Sometimes I think that a large chunk of people would be happier just getting rid of regular Invisibility and keeping Vanish and Greater Invisibility, and they probably wouldn't mind it if those were removed either; most people won't actually say it out loud, but they don't like having to deal with the effect, in any form, or under any circumstances, and only tolerate because it's part of the D&D tradition.

sunshadow21 said:

An inanimate ball of flame is not an opponent, so it does not break invisibility.

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A sword is not an opponent, so it does not break invisibility to swing it at an opponent. The user is not acting on the opponent, he's acting on the sword.

(This is not meant to be a snarky comment, but to illustrate my view - a caster wielding a ball of fire, directing it where to go, is the same as a fighter wielding a sword, directing it where to go.)

But it seems that what we have here is not a failure to communicate, but rather an irreconcilable difference in the way we view the matter.

It seems we need to either have the judges come to an arbitrary decision or leave it to the GM to adjudicate the matter in their individual games. My preference would be for the latter, but I'm good either way.