D&D 5E Greater Invis and Stealth checks, how do you rule it?

Ovinomancer said:

Fundamentally, it doesn't matter. However, @Oofta is claiming the podcast on stealth vindicates his approach over others -- that it provided explicit justification for his approach. If his approach is as you suggest -- every situation every time is evaluated de novo -- then he's not in alignment with what the podcast is. I've no problem whatsoever if someone draws a tighter line than I do on what counts as special circumstances, but I sensed a goalpost shift somewhere in the last few pages in regards to what the podcast is and I'm trying to see if that's true.

To use your analogy, the podcast says that x is 10. It also says that sometimes, you add y and get a different answer. If @Oofta and @Helldritch are in agreement, I don't really care what y is or how often it's added to x. But, I suspect that their position is that it's always x+y and never just x. And, that's fine, but it's not what the podcast says.

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So, you've both listened to the podcast. You've come away from the podcast with what are identical-in-practice approaches of how to handle invisibility. You describe the podcast differently, each in keeping with the fact that you describe your identical-in-practice approaches differently. I'm still not seeing a problem here.

If you both have identical-in-practice approaches to invisibility, then it follows that the podcast equally supports the practical results at both of your tables.

Oofta said:

Stop with the insults.

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Okay, then tell me why it is you don't answer the question I ask.

Ovinomancer said:

If no rule states this, then please point to the rule that says I know where a visible creature within a clear line of sight is. I guarantee you I can make that ambiguous enough to argue it doesn't say you see anything. There are any number of special circumstances that the GM could use to rule otherwise, therefor it's not a given that you can ever locate a creature, visible or not, in any given situation.

I mean, this is what this line of argument comes down to. There's a clear assumption that you know where other things are unless there's a reason not to, and invisibility takes pains to say it's not a reason in and of itself, but it could make other reasons more compelling.

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The rules do not specify a lot of things. It is assumed that people reading them have a modicum of common sense and understand how things in the real world work.

And the ranger feature quoted earlier clearly proves that there are situations where you are not aware of locations of non-hidden things and that invisibility is at least one cause for such a situation.

Xetheral said:

So, you've both listened to the podcast. You've come away from the podcast with what are identical-in-practice approaches of how to handle invisibility. You describe the podcast differently, each in keeping with the fact that you describe your identical-in-practice approaches differently. I'm still not seeing a problem here.

If you both have identical-in-practice approaches to invisibility, then it follows that the podcast equally supports the practical results at both of your tables.

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They aren't identical in practice at all. This is a handwave that ignores rather important differences. Fundamentally, absent a baseline assumption, players cannot guess what a GM will decide in a given situation. With a baseline, they can make an educated guess. Further, if the GM is clear as to what might constitute a special case, players can also anticipate that. If it's all ad hoc, then players may be able to guess what the GM will decide if they have both a good grasp of how their GM reasons things AND happen to share the same mental picture of the fiction at that moment and can usefully apply that grasp. If invisibility is entirely situation based, then players have to ask 20 questions to understand well enough how it might work in this situation (getting the same mental picture and grasp of reasoning) every time. I mean, @Crimson Longinus does pretty much what I do, only reversed on the baseline -- invisible creatures are automatically hidden unless special circumstances apply. I disagree with him because I feel that makes invisibility too good, but I at least agree with him conceptually.

Crimson Longinus said:

The rules do not specify a lot of things. It is assumed that people reading them have a modicum of common sense and understand how things in the real world work.

And the ranger feature quoted earlier clearly proves that there are situations where you are not aware of locations of non-hidden things and that invisibility is at least one cause for such a situation.

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So, the argument is that they buried the lede about invisibility meaning automatically hidden in a high level class feature? It couldn't possibly be a catch all to be clear that you notice hidden creatures even if they're invisible?

Ovinomancer said:

They aren't identical in practice at all. This is a handwave that ignores rather important differences. Fundamentally, absent a baseline assumption, players cannot guess what a GM will decide in a given situation. With a baseline, they can make an educated guess. Further, if the GM is clear as to what might constitute a special case, players can also anticipate that. If it's all ad hoc, then players may be able to guess what the GM will decide if they have both a good grasp of how their GM reasons things AND happen to share the same mental picture of the fiction at that moment and can usefully apply that grasp. If invisibility is entirely situation based, then players have to ask 20 questions to understand well enough how it might work in this situation (getting the same mental picture and grasp of reasoning) every time. I mean, @Crimson Longinus does pretty much what I do, only reversed on the baseline -- invisible creatures are automatically hidden unless special circumstances apply. I disagree with him because I feel that makes invisibility too good, but I at least agree with him conceptually.

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So your claim is that your approach necessarily produces more consistent results than @Oofta's approach? I see no reason to assume that it going to be true. Both of your approaches boil down to the DM having to make a judgement call about how hard it would be detect the square an invisible creature is in. Why do you think using that judgement call to determine whether to deviate from a default is going to be more consistent than using that judgement call directly?

Ovinomancer said:

So, the argument is that they buried the lede about invisibility meaning automatically hidden in a high level class feature? It couldn't possibly be a catch all to be clear that you notice hidden creatures even if they're invisible?

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It unambiguously proves that non-hidden is not synonymous with location known. Make of that what you will.

iserith said:

Here's another way of looking at it: Being invisible imparts a number of benefits. Attackers have disadvantage. The invisible creature's attacks are at advantage. Spells that require seeing the target cannot target the invisible creature. The invisible creature is also heavily obscured meaning that it can attempt to hide at any time whereas other creatures need to get behind significant cover or a heavily obscured area which may in turn hinder their own line of sight. Pretty good, right?

Want to make it so that on top of all that the attacker has to guess where you are? Spend an action and succeed at a Dexterity (Stealth) check. That's the price of admission, if you're not content just having all the other benefits I laid out above. Occasionally, the DM might give that away as a freebie, but I wouldn't count on it.

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As far as game balance goes, you are not wrong. My problem is not from a game balance standpoint but from the standpoint of having the rules make intuitive sense.

I strongly believe D&D works best when the rules build on the intuitive expectations of DM and players. Note that this does not mean "realism." Hit points are grossly unrealistic. But they make intuitive sense: You get hit, you take damage, too much damage and you die. You may have some head-scratchy, Fridge Logic moments when you sit down and think about hit points, but at the table in the moment, they mostly work the way people expect them to.

With invisibility, the intuitive expectation is that if I turn invisible, people don't know where I am unless they are very alert or I do something that reveals my location. Previous editions had rules that followed this intuition, but also made invisibility available very cheap at very low level, which made it notoriously overpowered. 5E's solution was to keep invisibility cheap and low-level, but violate the intuition in order to bring it into balance. I would much rather see invisibility remain powerful and balance it by pushing it back to higher levels and greater cost.

Why did I based my assumption at 30 feet?
Feral Sense of the Ranger allows for attacking an invisible creature with no penalty if it is within 30 feet provided yaddi yadda and so on.
Allowing others to be aware if within 30' provided yaddi yadda and so on, is just an extrapolation of what is logical to assume.

Blind sense is even more powerful. It even works on hidden but it is limited to 10 feet. If a 14th level rogue can only do this on invisible creatures within 10'... I doubt that the average Joe can do it at 30'. But at least it works on hidden invisible foes which is something.

So the 30 feet was not out of nowhere.
Whenever it is possible, I try to follow the rules as RAW as possible. IF RAW isn't possible, I try the RAI. And finally, I am there to adjudicate when even the RAI fails. There are times when the rules are simply inadequate and the DM must use his judgement to the best of his ability. Juggling with a rule to make it work at all times is pure fantasy in my POV. But trying to follow it most of the time, in a reliable fashion is the way to go.

And in the case of pure adjudication from my part, and a player disagree. I usually put the matter on vote. We take note of the result (I always have a portable computer with an Excel base for the different rules and adjudications) and if a similar situation happens, I can always refer to it in a pinch.

Xetheral said:

So your claim is that your approach necessarily produces more consistent results than @Oofta's approach? I see no reason to assume that it going to be true. Both of your approaches boil down to the DM having to make a judgement call about how hard it would be detect the square an invisible creature is in. Why do you think using that judgement call to determine whether to deviate from a default is going to be more consistent than using that judgement call directly?

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I make judgement calls all the time on what's possible, including whether or not you know exactly where an enemy is. In my last session, there were a few times when I told people they knew the general but not exact location because of effects that granted total obscurement.

Nobody questioned because they trust me as a DM to be fair. If the situation were reversed I would treat monster's knowledge based on the same types of judgement. I think it can add quite a bit to a game to have that tentacle reach out of the fog to pull a henchman screaming to their doom. IMHO you lose something if you know exactly where the monster is at all times no matter what the situation is unless there are exploding powder kegs because that's the one example Crawford gave.

As the podcast says, it's up to the DM to decide if you know exact location. There is no exact formula because we aren't playing a board game or computer simulation.