Invisibiliy, Grappling, Disadvantage

I understand that according to the rules there is no disadvantage when shoving or grappling an invisible foe. If your perception is able to overcome their stealth check you know where they are and can employ these actions without penalty.

This is just one of the rules that I find I have trouble picturing. I know my players get frustrated whn their opponents consistently (assuming their intelligent) use this tactic but really if those are the rules of the world and the opponents are living there wouldn't it become pretty common knowledge as an effective foil?

I'm curious does anyone else find that tactics such as these would quickly become the norm against invisible opponents? If not, why not?

MarkK

An invisible creature isn't hidden simply by being invisible. Other creatures know where they are. They have to take additional steps to become hidden. Once hidden, you have to guess where they are which makes grappling more difficult, but not impossible.

I don't like to say whether a character or monster would know a thing or do a thing; rather, I prefer to say they could know a thing or do a thing. So it's reasonable that an NPC or monster could know that grabbing an invisible enemy is a viable tactic. Or they could just stumble upon that in the moment. Grabbing an invisible PC could even be a total unintended (but happy) mistake, depending on how you describe it. Who's to say what the NPC or monster is thinking other than the DM?

So I would not make the argument to my players that some tactic made possible by the rules of the game is necessarily known to all intelligent opponents. And though I would try to stay away from things that frustrate my players, in this case, I would encourage them to act with the knowledge that grappling them while they are invisible is a possibility and that, if they don't want that to happen, they should take steps to avoid it.

Here are my thoughts on,invisibility and combat. Battle is noisy, and an invisible creature is almost impossible to find during battle whether they try and stealth or not. By the rules, they should get advantage (+5) on their passive stealth. I would take it further and say, after a certain distance, you automatically lose track of them regardless. Maybe beyond 30', just for the fact that you can't see what they are doing. Even if you do beat their stealth and can target the square they are in, you still have disadvantage on all attacks, including grapple. If at any point the characters lose track of an invisible target, they should have to use their action to make an active perception check to find them. Otherwise they will just have to choose a square to target.

The only times a creature doesn't have disadvantage against a creature it can't see is when it has a special sense to spot the invisible creature.

Mage of Spellford said:

I understand that according to the rules there is no disadvantage when shoving or grappling an invisible foe. If your perception is able to overcome their stealth check you know where they are and can employ these actions without penalty.

This is just one of the rules that I find I have trouble picturing. I know my players get frustrated whn their opponents consistently (assuming their intelligent) use this tactic but really if those are the rules of the world and the opponents are living there wouldn't it become pretty common knowledge as an effective foil?

I'm curious does anyone else find that tactics such as these would quickly become the norm against invisible opponents? If not, why not?

MarkK

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The DM can always decide to impose advantage or disadvantage if they think it's appropriate. So if you're the DM and you think it would be appropriate to have disadvantage on the check, do so. To me it's kind of a gray area anyway. Even if a shove is an opposed check, it's still a roll of a d20 to resolve a melee attack. Not saying I rule that way, but I would have no problem with a DM that did.

But I also haven't seen this tactic used myself. Maybe no on in my groups have thought of it or maybe it's because invisible opponents are fairly rare.

As far as knowing where your opponent is, expect a wide variety of answers. An invisible creature can take the hide action to avoid detection, but in my games they may also escape notice simply because of environmental factors. Having a fight in the snow and you suddenly see footprints appearing in untrampled snow leading away? You probably know where they are. In the middle of mass combat with hundreds of opponents clashing on a mass battlefield? Maybe not.

This topic came up with my warlock player and the use of the Darkness spell. The player like to use the Darkness spell and Devils Sight feature to fight, which at lower levels made for very easy combats they said were not really challenging. He was looking for more challenging encounters. I started to employ the use of grappling in the darkness, but it does feel odd to say the NPC has a better chance to grapple or grab the warlock in darkness than hit him with a weapon or unarmed strike. After reviewing the environment, the warlock character, and the rules, I concluded not to change anything though. The warlock has a very high acrobatics which keeps the character out of most grapples. However, once the warlock is grappled, it gives the player a greater challenge in the encounter, which he seems to like.

In this particular case, I created a magic item similar to a drift globe. The magic item has a permanent level 2 Darkness spell active. I highly recommend not making a magic item like this. Now the warlock character can pull the darkness pendent, which is attached to chain around his neck, from below his clothes as a action. Given this environment, I've had the NPCs attempt to grab the pendent from around the warlocks neck by using a grapple attempt at disadvantage.

Other grapple attempts of unseen creatures generally do not happen in my games.