D&D (2024) D&D 2024 Rules Oddities (Kibbles’ Collected Complaints)

[Chaosmancer]

Nope. It just lets you see invisibility.
And hidden is now invisibility.

But perhaps the spell lets you see something like life force, or thermal vision, which makes anyone glow to you.

Huh, I thought the Diviner's 3rd eye got rid of the "see into the ethereal plane" because the spell already does that and it was redundant.

 

[mellored]

If I'm hidden behind a door or wall with total cover and you can still see me with See Invisible, the spell is in effect giving you X-ray vision.

It doesn't. It just lets you see things with the Invisible condition.

Another question, not yet hit I don't think, is how this'll interact with camouflage effects and items e.g. Cloak of Elvenkind, Robe of Blending, Blur, etc. that don't in fact make you invisible but still make you hard to see.

Completely negates the hide action (which is Invisible) so getting a bonus to Stealth doesn't help.

Does nothing to Blur or anything else. Only Invisible.

Huh, I thought the Diviner's 3rd eye got rid of the "see into the ethereal plane" because the spell already does that and it was redundant.

They may have just removed the "ethereal plane".

I think there was only 1 spells that lets you get there anyways.

 

[Lanefan]

Is that a problem with See Invisible revealing hidden creatures though?

By that explanation is seems to me that See Invisible would reveal magically invisible creatures with total cover just as well, so if that is the case it isn’t a broken ruling that hidden creatures are likewise seen as well as invisible.

Is there a convincing case See Invisible sees through total cover?

Not in common-sense terms.

But the following hard-line rules logic says differently:

IF a creature behind total cover is considered hidden
AND IF hidden creatures are considered invisible
AND IF See Invisible reveals hidden creatures
THEN See Invisible reveals creatures hidden behind a wall or door.

The problem with this lies in the second line: 'hidden' and 'invisible' should be separate and different conditions neither reliant on the other for its definition; and treated differently by the rules. Something like:

Invisible: you cannot be seen from any direction or at any range.
Hidden: you are actively using cover, camouflage, and-or stealth to conceal your presence but can be seen if and when these elements no longer hide you.

See Invisible should only pull the first of these and not touch the second.

 

[Maxperson]

I mean, that indicates an insane lack of playtesting and designers who don't know what they're doing, frankly.

Maximizing success/power is not a hard thing to predict. I hate to praise 3E, but this 100% seems like the sort of thing the designers for that would have considered as possible/likely. Being naive as a designer is never a good thing nor to be defended, imho.

All of this particular stuff screams "We did no playtesting of these changes at all", honestly. I'm sure in reality they did do some, but it seems like maybe they leaned way, way too hard to the very limited results they allowed for from the surveys. There's a lot of stuff here that reminds me of some of the worst mistakes of early 4E. But 4E was designed around rapid patching and updates. 5E so far has been explicitly designed around absolutely no errata at all if at all possible, and has done like a handful of balance changes at all. Even to fix/clarify this they'll basically need more "real" errata than 5E has even had so far.

They did the exact same thing when 5e came out. There was a lot of playtesting and surveys, and then in-between the last survey and the release of 5e they came up with a lot of stuff we never got to see and put it into the rules.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Is there a convincing case See Invisible sees through total cover?

I don't think it does. In the current rules, if someone is not hidden but it behind total cover, can you see them? I know you can't target them but not sure whether this means they can or cannot be seen.

All that the new See Invisibility does is let you see creatures that were previously invisible or hidden. Which honestly I don't see why that's a problem, the spell really sucks right now and probably should've always let you see hidden creatures.

Personally I view this change as an intentional Fix, not a mistake

 

[mellored]

AND IF See Invisible reveals hidden creatures

Not quite.
It just lets you see though the invisible condition.

You would need something else to see though walls.

 

[Azzy]

They may have just removed the "ethereal plane".

No, it's still in.

 

[mamba]

But what makes that undesirable?

from whose perspective? The answer seems to be obvious for either, so it seems to just be a matter of which side you find yourself on

 

[mamba]

It does not let you see though total cover, no matter if they are hidden or not.

is that specifically pointed out in the spell description?

 

[mamba]

Is there a convincing case See Invisible sees through total cover?

not to me