Greenfield
Adventurer
I had a player who we occasionally called Jeckyl, since every action his character declared was followed with "and hide". He had a very questionable Hide check in the +35 range at level 11. Don't ask me how.
Stealth like that is in many ways worse than Invisibility, since Invisibility can be detected by a number of magical means.
Many of the suggestions made in this discussion presume that the opponents know of the player character's style in advance. That is, the monsters enjoy some form of the mystical and legendary "Telepathy With DM". A truly fearsome power, to be sure.
To help manage things, use a handful of coins. Each one represents a place where the character might be. Only you and the player know whether he/she is the penny, the nickel, the dime, the quarter etc. Rather than the player moving his/her mini, they tell you via a note where they're moving. You move the coins. All of them. That way the others don't know which one is their ally.
If the player points to where the character is going so others can see, the Invisibility fails immediately. They blew their cover.
Now consider the bad-guy tactics. Many a group I know of has a simple policy: Start a battle with an area Dispel or Greater Dispel. It's not targeting the specific PC, it's a general shot at de-buffing the party. and Invisibility is definitely a buff.
Targeting the PC, or having the entire world specially prepped for that tactic is kind of cheap and cheesy. It's you saying that the character isn't allowed to use a class ability that they worked for and earned.
On the other hand, running a world where people know that Invisibility can happen? That's being a good DM. So the invisible Rogue might be able to pilfer from local stores, but when facing an enemy in the field they should be prepared for people who can See Invisible and/or throw Glitterdust.
Related issues: It was pointed out that Greater Creation can turn a single gold piece into several cubic feet of gold coins. Gold, by the way, weighs a shade over a half ton per cubic foot, or in game terms about 60,000 gp per caster level. (50 per pound times 1206 pounds per cubic foot).
To prevent people from taking advantage of this major abuse, we made a house rule: Faerie Gold (as we came to call it) wasn't unheard of. That is, the PCs aren't the first people in the world to think of it. The house rule was that it was effectively dispelled by contact with cold iron. So many shop keepers, and anyone who dealt with high end items, had a small plate of cold iron bolted or embedded in their counter. All coins were drawn across it as they were counted, so Faerie Gold would be revealed and the counterfeiters caught.
This wasn't the DM picking on a particular character, it was just the NPCs of the world adjusting to the fact that they live in a world where there's magic, and this kind of thing is possible.
Stealth like that is in many ways worse than Invisibility, since Invisibility can be detected by a number of magical means.
Many of the suggestions made in this discussion presume that the opponents know of the player character's style in advance. That is, the monsters enjoy some form of the mystical and legendary "Telepathy With DM". A truly fearsome power, to be sure.
To help manage things, use a handful of coins. Each one represents a place where the character might be. Only you and the player know whether he/she is the penny, the nickel, the dime, the quarter etc. Rather than the player moving his/her mini, they tell you via a note where they're moving. You move the coins. All of them. That way the others don't know which one is their ally.
If the player points to where the character is going so others can see, the Invisibility fails immediately. They blew their cover.
Now consider the bad-guy tactics. Many a group I know of has a simple policy: Start a battle with an area Dispel or Greater Dispel. It's not targeting the specific PC, it's a general shot at de-buffing the party. and Invisibility is definitely a buff.
Targeting the PC, or having the entire world specially prepped for that tactic is kind of cheap and cheesy. It's you saying that the character isn't allowed to use a class ability that they worked for and earned.
On the other hand, running a world where people know that Invisibility can happen? That's being a good DM. So the invisible Rogue might be able to pilfer from local stores, but when facing an enemy in the field they should be prepared for people who can See Invisible and/or throw Glitterdust.
Related issues: It was pointed out that Greater Creation can turn a single gold piece into several cubic feet of gold coins. Gold, by the way, weighs a shade over a half ton per cubic foot, or in game terms about 60,000 gp per caster level. (50 per pound times 1206 pounds per cubic foot).
To prevent people from taking advantage of this major abuse, we made a house rule: Faerie Gold (as we came to call it) wasn't unheard of. That is, the PCs aren't the first people in the world to think of it. The house rule was that it was effectively dispelled by contact with cold iron. So many shop keepers, and anyone who dealt with high end items, had a small plate of cold iron bolted or embedded in their counter. All coins were drawn across it as they were counted, so Faerie Gold would be revealed and the counterfeiters caught.
This wasn't the DM picking on a particular character, it was just the NPCs of the world adjusting to the fact that they live in a world where there's magic, and this kind of thing is possible.