D&D 5E Why do so many DMs use the wrong rules for invisibility?

[Lanefan]

Not true.

Spellcasters can't charm or command you, their blur and mirror image spells are negated, and they can't cast misty step to escape. Fighters can't use Protection style. Rogues can't use Uncanny Dodge. Evokers can't use Sculpt Spell.

No-one can use the Dodge Action.

Ranged Attacks at close range do not suffer disadvantage.

This last one makes no sense - I'm at disadvantage to hit you with an axe in darkness but I can shoot you business as usual? Yikes!

Also, something important and often overlooked: if you are in darkness and you move away from a foe then they cannot make an attack of opportunity against you.

Unless you have no allies in the darkness with you there's a huge assumption being made with these rules: that in the darkness you can tell friend from foe, particularly if there's a battle raging in said darkness.

Lan-"here in the dark"-efan

 

[Tony Vargas]

I can't see any designer intentionally setting out to make a bad rule

So, they can become Hidden from you with a successful Stealth check. If they fail, you might still know they're there, even if you can't see them. Maybe you can hear them chuckling over how bad the rule they're creating is going to be, or maybe you can detect them from ripple effects visible on the internet...

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Ugh, the phrasing of that feat is why this thread exists. "Other creatures don’t gain advantage on attack rolls against you as a result of being hidden from you." Creatures don't get advantage from being hidden from you; they get advantage from being unseen by you. If they are hidden then they are unseen, but they can be unseen without being hidden.

That's not the wording any more.

Alert (p. 165). The third benefit now
reads as follows: “Other creatures don’t
gain advantage on attack rolls against you
as a result of being unseen by you” (6th
printing)

Every sane DM was already ruling it this way, because hiding should never make your attacks worse, but it's nice that WotC saw fit to eventually make that clarification explicit.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Treating Invisibility/Darkness/Blindness as "suddenly no one knows where you are" is like one of my three top pet peeves about how I see D&D being run - on both the side of the players, and the side of the DM.

I can accept that people run it however the hell they want, but honestly running it that way just makes it a lousy play experience in a fight. Having no particular clue where an enemy is unless you spend time/effort to figure it out leads to such a cascade of caveats and exceptions and DM judgement calls that I just wanna throw up my hands and admit defeat.

This is exacerbated by the fact that the stealth/surprise rules themselves are kind of incoherent in 5e, and so it's not always clear what you need to do to achieve it or what you can do while keeping it (the RAW interpretation suggests that the relatively simple-sounding "I sneak up behind them" is essentially only possible with a DM ruling that explicitly permits it, and is otherwise impossible). So the moment a DM rules that being invisible also makes you perfectly undetectable by any means, you're also wrestling with one of the most obnoxiously vague and judgement-dependent parts of 5e's RAW.

So in play, it usually just feels like someone telling you that they can do basically anything they want and you can't stop them unless you spend your entire round trying to find out where they are first.

It's The Worst.

 

[Hussar]

I'm totally on board with [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION] on this one.

I guess my answer would be, which ruling makes the game more fun? And, yup, that's going to differ by table. Like I'm a B, the idea of forcing one side (usually the players) to flail around blindly while they play Marco Polo with imaginary elves is about as much fun as watching grass grow. It's extremely frustrating. And, IMO, makes invisibility extremely powerful. If the group (bad guys or good guys) loses an entire round of actions while leaving the other group completely free to do whatever it wants, that's a HUGE benefit.

But, again, AFAIC, I go with, "What would be the most fun here?" rule - flailing around blindly or simply imposing a penalty to attack and treat invisibility as a strong, but not overwhelming, buff?

So, yeah, I tend to lean on the 4e style interpretation of invisibility. You can't be directly targeted and attacks have disadvantage on you. If you spend the action to Stealth, THEN you are Hidden and require the other side to take actions to find you. This, to me, seems the most balanced way of handling it.

-----

Just adding a thought. We had an invisible enemy in our last session. Now, the enemy was a powerful wizard. He dropped a Time Stop, chugged a couple of potions and had some other buffs up, including: Fly, Globe of Invulnerability, and Fire Shield. Now, the encounter was at night.

Now, we play on Fantasy Grounds, so, we always have a battlemap. The DM proceeded to make the enemy invisible on the map. My argument was that since the baddie is glowing, and in the center of a faintly visible sphere, wouldn't we know pretty much where he was? To speed the game along, I got shot down and told that no, we couldn't detect the baddy by the light he was shedding. To me, this seemed rather strange.

And this is where the whole, "If you go invisible, you're automatically undetectable" idea kinda comes in. In my way of adjudicating, since the wizard wasn't taking the hide action, the whole argument would be moot. But, when you start from the position that "If you go invisible, you're automatically undetectable" all sorts of weirdness and corner cases start cropping up.

I prefer doing it the way we do it, just for simplicities sake if nothing else.

 

[Oofta]

Treating Invisibility/Darkness/Blindness as "suddenly no one knows where you are" is like one of my three top pet peeves about how I see D&D being run - on both the side of the players, and the side of the DM.

There are some logic flaws I keep seeing on this thread (and similar ones).

One is that if you succeed on a hide you are not detected therefore you are detected if you have not successfully taken a hide action. That's like saying that all mammals are bats because bats are mammals. If you are invisible you may or may not be detected depending on the situation.

Another is the slippery slope argument. That since depending on the circumstances an invisible creature may not be detected even though they have not taken the hide action they are never detected if they are invisible. I don't see anyone stating that on this thread.

All I can say is that being invisible does not automatically mean no on knows where you are in any games I've played. Nor does it mean that you are automatically detected if you have not taken the hide action.

If a creature is making sufficient noise to be heard, stepping in mud or otherwise leaving tracks, is in a light drizzle/smoke/mist, is close enough that you can feel a disturbance in the air ... or any number of other reasons ... then your PC knows where the creature is.

It's The Worst.

It's funny. To me the worst would be rules that explicitly state that I always know where someone is even if I cannot see, here or otherwise detect them.

In a previous edition, I don't know how many times everyone at the table agreed that it was idiotic that we knew exactly where everyone was unless they were officially "hidden". [Sarcasm]Because why wouldn't you know that there's an invisible creature 200 feet away. Flying 10 feet above the ground. When the PCs are in the middle of a battle having to shout over the noise of combat. Totally made sense.[/Sarcasm]

 

[Celtavian]

That is what I call a profound and complete design failure.

Unless creating incomprehensible rules were the intent.

Since I don't believe the WotC designers to be that inept, I choose to believe they intentionally created a system that could not be used clearly and consistently.

Why? Because this neatly deflects criticism, and makes potentially everybody happy.

The weirdness of the invisibility and darkness rules is definitely a clear design flaw where the advantage/disadvantage mechanic is shown to have a major weakness.

 

[Lidgar]

So recently the party battled an invisible stalker. Ah, good times...

The way we ran it was:

1. Before the party attacked, they had to successfully perceive it (perception versus the IS's stealth role).
2. After it attacked, they knew where it was (if they didn't already).
3. When the IS used an action to withdraw stealthily (to target a new PC), they again had to perceive it until it attacked.

This worked fine for our table. The pain of course was all their attacks were at disadvantage while its attacks were at advantage. For want of a faerie fire spell (or ye ole glitterdust!)

 

[Hussar]

The weirdness of the invisibility and darkness rules is definitely a clear design flaw where the advantage/disadvantage mechanic is shown to have a major weakness.

What's the major weakness of advantage/disadvantage?

 

[Prism]

We require a stealth check to ensure the opponent doesn't know where you are - not as a hide action but just a move silently check