Beating invisibility

[Hand of Evil]

Keep it Simple and Easy - scent and hearing, guard dogs or other animals, that is why you train them: function.

 

[hong]

Keep it Simple and Easy - scent and hearing, guard dogs or other animals, that is why you train them: function.

Eh. If a sorc can cast greater invis, he can also cast fireball. Bye bye guard dogs, unless you're talking fiendish guard dogs with 6 fighter or rogue levels. Which I will now have to stat up for my campaign, damn your eyes.

 

[edventure]

see invisibility, blindsight, blindsense, tremorsense, invisibility purge, glitterdust, faerie fire, or true seeing.

Ozmar the Observant

Dust of appearance, Dispel Magic , ...

We have a fighter (who had his threat range down to 12-20 in 3.0) get so sick of mages going invisible he commissioned an item of true seeing. Basically it's a headband that he pulls over his eyes to activate. Kind of like using the force to see.

I don't see any reason to remove spells just because they may prove inconvenient to deal with.

The aforementioned character was obviously an instant kill crit machine so we faced a lot of undead and a few constructs. To this day we are forbidden to mention to the player that there is a feat in NBoF that allows you to crit undead.

 

[The LMS]

Eh. If a sorc can cast greater invis, he can also cast fireball. Bye bye guard dogs, unless you're talking fiendish guard dogs with 6 fighter or rogue levels. Which I will now have to stat up for my campaign, damn your eyes.

Any char of that high a lvl should be able to bypass gaurd dogs using a brute force technique, and the gaurds that go with them. However if your talking about the Demon lords castle with the demon lords "gaurd dogs", the dogs will probly be something about as powerful as the thing you described, and better able to deal with invis as well.

If he's invisable, chances are he's trying to be stealthy. If he cast's fireball, chances are he just failed. If he failed then chances are the BBEG knows he's coming. If the BBEG knows he's coming the BBEG will prepare. If the BBEG is preparing invisability is one of the things he's likely to prepare for. If the BBEG is preparing for the potential of invisability the BBEG will use one of the large myriad of ways to minimize the benefit of an invisable opponent.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Eh. If a sorc can cast greater invis, he can also cast fireball. Bye bye guard dogs, unless you're talking fiendish guard dogs with 6 fighter or rogue levels. Which I will now have to stat up for my campaign, damn your eyes.

But if you cast fireball, doesn't that make being invisible moot.

Crickets and frogs will make noise but will stop when they sense something, this is another simple alarm.

 

[hong]

But if you cast fireball, doesn't that make being invisible moot.

Crickets and frogs will make noise but will stop when they sense something, this is another simple alarm.

Note that greater invis in 3.5E is a combat spell. It has a duration of 1 rd/level, which makes it useless for any kind of extended sneaking around. If you're trying to do that, you use normal invis.

 

[hong]

So, while I completely respect and support your freedom to play your game the way you like it, I am just pointing out that your contention that invisibility is somehow the "only spell" that requires someone to go outside the rules framework to counter, is incorrect. You do not have to go outside the rules to counter invisibility.

But you _do_ have to go outside the rules, _if you don't have magic_.

There are a number of reasons I dislike greater invis.

- The classic ways to deal with it all assume the availability of magic. However, D&D by its very design limits this magic to only a subset of classes and certain monsters. If you're anyone else, you have to work at it: either get levels in a spellcaster class, or get a magic item, or have a friend handy. D&D is a lot like rock-paper-scissors, where you have to have counter X for tactic Y, or you're screwed. Greater invis isn't the only thing responsible for this, of course, but it's one of the biggies for sure. I don't like this sort of feel. It limits the sort of encounters you can come up with, and is just another factor to have to take into account. While I'm a confirmed gearhead when it comes to building monsters and NPCs, there's still a limit to how much I want to have to store in my headspace.

- This ties into the issue of player skill as well. D&D is a complicated game when all the bells and whistles are turned on, and it's easy, if you're inexperienced or not into character optimisation, to get in over your head. In this situation, a party that doesn't know how to handle greater invis could easily be TPKed by a single flying, invisible sorc. I'd rather not risk getting into that situation if I can help it.

- From a world-building perspective, it stretches credibility to say that every group of giants, orcs or other monsters, or at least every significant villain, should be able to deal with invis. Now you can certainly say that in a world where the spell exists, people would have figured out ways to handle it, but that's just begging the question. Ultimately greater invis is just another D&Dism with no major reason to exist, beyond how it's always been in the rulebooks.

- From a more personal perspective, I'm a visually oriented gamer. I think of things in terms of how they look, and from that point of view, greater invis is just anticlimactic. Getting fireballed out of nowhere or sliced to bits by nothing in particular just doesn't look good, mang.


Note that I don't have anything against normal invis, only the greater variant. Sneak around all you like. Combat, however, is something else.

I also don't have anything against lots of magic, per se. My current campaign is high magic for sure, with people flying around, wind walking, dim dooring, etc. Fireballs and cones of cold are all over the place. That doesn't mean I use everything in the books, though.

 

[Pielorinho]

Hong, certainly play how you like, but may I suggest a houserule that might bring the spell more in line with your desires?

Make greater invisibility the Predator spell, with the following caveats:
1) The spell grants the "Hide in Plain Sight" ability, with a +20 bonus on the hide check.
2) If you have some reason to look at the specific location the invisible creature is in (e.g., a fireball comes from that direction, you hear chanting coming from over there, or a friend points and shouts, "There he is!"), you gain a +5 or +10 bonus on the spot check.
3) Any item picked up by the invisible creature, or any material that adheres to the invisible creature, takes 1 round to fade from existence, enabling people to do tricky things to discover Mr. Invisible.

Would the spell be useable with these modifications?
Daniel

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

3) Any item picked up by the invisible creature, or any material that adheres to the invisible creature, takes 1 round to fade from existence, enabling people to do tricky things to discover Mr. Invisible.

Actually, the description for Invisibility already makes it clear that any item picked up by the invisible creature or any material that adheres to the invisible creature remains visible. Period.

If you weren't holding it or didn't have it on you when you cast the spell, everyone can see it until you put it someplace where it wouldn't be seen even if you were visible (inside a pouch, under your clothing, etc.). If someone dusts you lightly with flour, you are an invisible person covered in visible flour, and need to take a few actions to brush most of it off if you want to get back to your former total-concealment glory. And if they threw mud or paint on you, you might just be completely out of luck there.

Anyway, the kind of problems Hong describes are the sort of thing that only really strikes when you've got Greater Invisibility (or worse, Improved Invis in 3.0) combined with flight or some really forgiving terrain that makes it difficult to narrow down where the bad guy might be. Personally, I've never been too worried about the way that really effectively countering greater invisibility requires particular spells and a fair amount of planning. I mean, I can see how it might create an occasional near-catastrophe, but it's not something that would make me bar it from the game. There really are a lot of magical counters to use against it, and I don't particularly care if some kinds of opponents don't have access to any of them; those opponents will just get slaughtered, I expect. Part of the fun.

--
and if it leads to an occasional party catastrophe, that's part of the fun, too
ryan

 

[Mystery Man]

By banning Greater Invis do you not then open the door for banning all "Greater" spells? Arcane Sight, Scrying, Teleport etc. Ok now those are gone what about all the lesser spells? If greater is not allowed shouldn't those go as well? This is where I would start to second guess myself. And this is why I don't like banning spells, or really anything. If I ban it, that means I can't use it.

I don't have a problem with lots of magic either but, I'll ban books like nobodies business. For example IMC only FR, Completes, and the Core are allowed. There's more involved but in a nutshell my philosophy is limit the resources, not whats available in them.