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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sunshadow21" data-source="post: 6028029" data-attributes="member: 6667193">That seems to the hangup. Some people see the flaming sphere in that light. Others, like myself, see it fitting much better fitting with fitting in with the summon spells. Once it's there, it's there for the duration as a solid object, unlike your example of Call Lightning, where the lightning bolt only exists from the time you call it to the time it hits the target. Second, I really fail to see how any movement occurs to be a factor; Whether you move it yourself, or the animal moves under his own power after you tell it where to go, the end result and the intent is the exact same. Same difficulties with the other examples they specifically call out. If you want to go by intent, than summon spells or cutting the rope on a bridge shouldn't count any different than a flaming sphere should, or as another example, spiritual weapon. In all cases, the force that is providing the damage is coming from something clear and distinct from the caster; the caster did an action to put bring that force into play, either by cutting the rope, or by casting a spell, or even moving an otherwise inanimate object around, but the caster is not the source of the damage in any of those examples; the object or animal is. I think that your understanding of what counts for mundane purposes still matters greatly for spells. Personally I find that trying to treat magic and mundane as automatically different in all cases is a trap that causes most of the headaches people have with magic. Unless an individual spell/subschool specifically calls out something different, as far I'm concerned, it still follows the same rules as any mundane source. Using the direct vs indirect comparison seems very much to be the intent of the invisibility spell, even if some of the wording is a bit ambiguous on that point, at least by my reading; I could care less about what constitutes an attack and what doesn't because the intent in almost all cases is the same - defeat the enemy. Regular invisibility is for indirect actions, and moving a large spongy ball of flame around is still indirect; greater invisibility is for direct actions. For those simply wanting to get into a advantageous position, and not needing the invisibility for anything else, Vanish  lasts long enough to serve that purpose, and uses a lower spell slot to boot.  I approach spells as looking for the simplest solution first, and in this case, that solution is what is the caster directly doing? If the caster is acting directly on an opponent, regular invisibility will not hold. I still don't see how the spell can tell between Bull's Strength and Magic Missile, but whatever, I guess that's one point where I have to suspend logic to make the game more enjoyable for everyone at the table. If the caster is directly acting on a non-opponent, regular invisibility holds. An inanimate ball of flame is not an opponent, so it does not break invisibility. I really don't understand why people insist on making it more complicated by trying determine what constitutes an "attack" and what doesn't. Doing so adds nothing to the game, except argument, and I don't see why you would deliberately add that. If you try to use willfully and actively harming the enemy as the  barometer, or start getting into secondary or chain reaction effects, than pretty much any spell, or mundane action, is going to drop regular  invisibility, rendering it largely useless for anything but scouting, buffing, and healing, all of which are worthy enough in the right circumstances, but none of which are going to be worth an entire spell to boost them, even if taken as a group.This does mean that at times, the spell is a bit more powerful than many folks like, but really, with all the counters that were pointed out up thread, the spell is still not all that particularly powerful for it's level, especially since many adventures take place in dungeons where it doesn't take long to figure out, to at least some degree, where the invisible creature is because there simply isn't that many places they could be. Sometimes I think that a large chunk of people would be happier just getting rid of regular Invisibility and keeping Vanish and Greater Invisibility, and they probably wouldn't mind it if those were removed either; most people won't actually say it out loud, but they don't like having to deal with the effect, in any form, or under any circumstances, and only tolerate because it's part of the D&D tradition.</blockquote>

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