5e invisibility and Detect Magic

[Maxperson]

And if the PCs fail stealth checks, you're more than welcome to narrate such outcomes.

Dex is used for more than stealth. And actually, by RAW I can narrate such outcomes for a low dex PC eating and drinking.

 

[Maxperson]

Still talking about invisible golems? Check.

So far so good.

Still saying the stealth system is broken in relation to invisible golems? Check.

Lost it after one!! Stealth isn't broken. It just doesn't cover all situations.

Ovinomancer on topic? Yup.

Way to ignore things in an effort to try and make it seem like you are in our conversation. So I will repeat.

"Dude. You're having a conversation that nobody else is in. Why don't you join our conversation where we aren't making a decision and then inexplicably rolling."

Nobody is arguing that. You're off in your own world talking to nobody about things that aren't happening. Come join us in OUR conversation.

 

[Oofta]

The only assumption there is that it is possible, not guaranteed. On a failed stealth check, that might be what happened to cause the failure. Or something else could happen. The point wasn't that this is what happens, but that if you assume all of those things are impossible and roll anyway, the problem is on your end.

From now on just assume my ruling is:

In order to detect a creature it has to be perceived somehow. The DM decides when an opposed dexterity (stealth) and wisdom (perception) checks are called for based on there being a chance of being detected. If there is no chance of detection, there is no check.​

BTW this goes for an inanimate golem that cannot be seen and is not making noise nor interacting with the environment in a detectable way as well as any number of other scenarios. I don't know where you personally are because I can't hear, smell, touch or see you. An invisible raven familiar flying over a busy market would never make enough noise to be heard over the noise of the crowds unless it caws. A gargoyle is just a statue until it attacks. A lone goblin on a mountain a half mile away may see you but be imperceptible to the party.

So on and so forth. Have a good one.

 

[pemerton]

There's nothing like a good Hiding/Perception thread!

The iron golem I’m imagining isn’t a single piece of cast metal or anchored firmly to the ground the way a statue might be. It’s made of smaller plates or pieces of metal joined together in such a way as to allow movement, with its center of gravity in its torso, about where a person’s would be. Pressure from sudden gusts of air on the body of the creature would have to be resisted by counterbalancing movements to keep it from toppling over.

That's what the iron golem in the 4e rulebooks looks like. The one in the AD&D MM is a bit more like a statue cast in iron.

iI think there's a difference in how we interpret False Appearance. To me, it doesn't grant any sort of auto-success on attempts to hide. Like invisibility, it merely grants an opportunity to hide when other circumstances appropriate for hiding are absent.

The False Appearance trait doesn’t actually turn the gargoyles into statues. It just makes them look like statues. If they’re invisible, it doesn’t matter what they look like because they can’t be seen.

My take on this is that if an invisible gargoyle fails a DEX(Stealth) check then the PCs might notice eg wind blowing through an invisible statute, or water dripping onto it, or whatever narration makes sense in the context.

(I can't get help from either AD&D - the MM says nothing about gargoyles looking like statues - nor 4e - in 4e a gargoyle's stone form gives it DR and regen, but doesn't affect its ability to Hide or Bluff.)

Anyway, as you suggested upthread, an invisible statue seems likely to cause some alarm. Personally if a creature has the ability to look like a statue, I think it undermines that stealth capacity by then turning it invisible!

it makes sense to me that a golem would have the same chance of being noticed as any other creature with a 9 DEX and no Stealth proficiency.

If the idea that a hidden invisible creature might be noticed through sound makes no sense to you, then don’t make a ruling that it might be noticed that way. That’s fine with me. Personally, I rule out that hidden creatures have a chance of being noticed if they’re more than around 35 feet away. In this thread, I’ve only said that it does make sense to me that an invisible golem might be noticed by sound while hiding, and that because of that I would make a DEX check for the golem against the passive Perception scores of anyone who comes close enough and is alert to danger. By saying that, I’m not telling you how to run your game. I’ve suggested setting a higher DC than what you could roll for the golem, but I think a better suggestion that’s more in line with how you seem to rule this situation is to not call for a check and to auto-surprise the PCs with the golem’s first attack. Do I have that right?

With respect to the higher DC - it would be easy enough to rule that the golem has Advantage on its attempt to hide, giving it a +5 on a passive check and hence an overall result of 14. But you seem to be contemplating "super-advantage" that (to some extent) goes contrary to bounded accuracy in the strictest sense - are there other context, outside of hiding/perception, where that would make sense?

 

[Xetheral]

For those who say that the Dexterity of the invisible golem matters, I have a different hypothetical:

The party is in an apparently-abandoned prison, consisting of a long multi-level hallway of closed, metal-latticework cell doors on both sides. Two of the cells are actually occupied by unwillingly-invisible humans, and those cells and the immediate environs of those cells are covered by Silence effects. Both prisoners want to be noticed and do everything in their (very limited) power to attract attention. Is the low-dex prisoner more likely to be noticed than the high-dex prisoner?

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

No, you aren't. To be hidden you must be unseen and unheard and unnoticed.

For example, an invisible creature walking on a surface covered in dust or leaves is not hidden. You know where they are because you can see their foot marks. Even if the ground is clean you know where they are by sound (e.g. rustling clothing, rattling gear, footsteps, breathing) or by the breeze of their passing.

To become hidden, the unseen creature must take steps to muffle its sound and obscure its tracks. In combat, this generally requires the Hide Action.

Ruling that unseen = hidden causing misunderstanding, as seen by the number of posts on forums like this one. It also makes a level 2 spell way too powerful and creatures like invisible stalkers and poltergeists (and Assassin Rogues) much stronger.

I like how you automatically see footprints when they're from an invisible creature. Clearly the best way to track someone is to cast invisibility on them, as they then have huge glowing footprints. No roll needed then!

THIS is why the interpretation is rules lawyer BS. You have to jump through so many hoops to justify the poorly worded rule that somehow makes an invisible creature's automatically known unless they take the hide action. If an invisible stalker attacks, then runs around a corner, why would you possibly know what square they're in? The answer always circles back to some kind of Spider-Man hyper awareness that only doesn't seem to exist in situations not involving locating an invisible creature. Why do I automatically notice some dust being disturbed by an invisible creature, yet still need to use Investigation to notice some displaced dust from a sliding door?

When you're bending over backwards to justify something "cuz the rules say so", maybe it's time to re-evaluate whether the rule is well written.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So far so good.



Lost it after one!! Stealth isn't broken. It just doesn't cover all situations.



Way to ignore things in an effort to try and make it seem like you are in our conversation. So I will repeat.

"Dude. You're having a conversation that nobody else is in. Why don't you join our conversation where we aren't making a decision and then inexplicably rolling."

Nobody is arguing that. You're off in your own world talking to nobody about things that aren't happening. Come join us in OUR conversation.

Max, we can scroll up to see that tge post I responded to ended with you saying, "the hide rules don't work well fir a oerfectly hidden creature." To which I responded that if you decide the creature is perfectly hidden, don't roll and the rules work fine. It seems I'm doing a perfectly fine job of following the conversation you're having, if maybe not the one you want to have but have rolled poorly for.

 

[Ovinomancer]

From now on just assume my ruling is:

In order to detect a creature it has to be perceived somehow. The DM decides when an opposed dexterity (stealth) and wisdom (perception) checks are called for based on there being a chance of being detected. If there is no chance of detection, there is no check.​

BTW this goes for an inanimate golem that cannot be seen and is not making noise nor interacting with the environment in a detectable way as well as any number of other scenarios. I don't know where you personally are because I can't hear, smell, touch or see you. An invisible raven familiar flying over a busy market would never make enough noise to be heard over the noise of the crowds unless it caws. A gargoyle is just a statue until it attacks. A lone goblin on a mountain a half mile away may see you but be imperceptible to the party.

So on and so forth. Have a good one.

Great! You've caught up to what I've been saying all alomg! This is the core loop od 5e: for a given action (in this case, a golem remaining hidden) decide yes, no, or maybe. If maybe, roll.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I like how you automatically see footprints when they're from an invisible creature. Clearly the best way to track someone is to cast invisibility on them, as they then have huge glowing footprints. No roll needed then!

THIS is why the interpretation is rules lawyer BS. You have to jump through so many hoops to justify the poorly worded rule that somehow makes an invisible creature's automatically known unless they take the hide action.

It's only BS if you've decided on fiction that contradicts it. It works just fine of you don't make those assumptions. In other words, the rules say that invisible creatures are detected if not hidden. You can narrate that or, if you decide to narrate something else, you can change the rule. The problem here is narrating against the rule and then complaining it's the rule's fault.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong, at all, with narrating hiw you want. My point is only that tge conflict us coming from your choice of narration -- there are other choices that don't have this problem. There's a very valid reason to narrate counter to the rule -- if you find that more fun, do it! -- but that doesn't shift the problem to the rule.

It's important in any game to understand what the rules do in the game and the assumptions that go along with that, if only so that you know what you need to adjust to meet your preferences. In this case, the rule works just fine under the assumption that invisibility is imperfect enough to allow location absent hiding. If you don't like this, change it! And have fun! But, it's not the rule's problem that you have a different set of assumptions. It's not your problem, either, for that matter. It's only a problem when blame is attached.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yes. Like the assumption that all iron golems creak like rusty door hinges with even the tiniest of movements and that there is nothing else in the environment that could make a similar noise. Or that they move when not commanded to do so.

In order to detect a creature it has to be perceived somehow. It's up to the DM to decide if there is any way of perceiving the creature. That's it. End of story.

Nope. Only the one that fails it's DEX(stealth) check creaked. Or maybe it groaned. Or whirred. Or scraped. Or whistled. The particulars don't matter, the point us that it wasn't oerfectly quiet and still because, you know, it failed it's hide contest.