D&D 5E Greater Invisibility and Flanking?

[Oofta]

That sounds like a character using metagame knowledge to determine their course of action. How do they know that leaving themselves open against the invisible attacker doesn't make them any more vulnerable than actively defending against them?

How does the PC know anything? All they know is that they can't see where the attack from the invisible character comes from. If you can't see where that attack is coming from you may as well do your best you can to avoid attacks you can see.

 

[DudeFaceGuy]

With Greater Invisibility you'd gain advantage regardless of flanking and the rules for flanking don't say anything about you or your ally being visible or taking actions to gain the benefit of flanking, your ally just needs to be CAPABLE of attacking or w/e, everything else everyone else is saying is just their interpretation, I mean, it makes sense that the target would have to be aware of the 2nd threat to give you advantage (because it's attention is split) but RAW doesn't specify that condition...

In the end it's up to the DM's discretion.

 

[DudeFaceGuy]

Had a situation come up last night with a PC using greater invisibility attacking a monster. Another PC came over to attack the same monster and wanted to flank. My first thought was that the second PC could not see the first PC, so no flanking bonus. A player argued that the monster is distracted by the first player attacking him, so it should not matter. I can kind of see both reasons, more so since invisibility is not as powerful as older editions and monsters know which square you are in unless you have silence as well. Just wanted to get thoughts.

With Greater Invisibility you'd gain advantage regardless of flanking and the rules for flanking don't say anything about you or your ally being visible or taking actions to gain the benefit of flanking, your ally just needs to be CAPABLE of attacking or w/e, everything else everyone else is saying is just their interpretation, I mean, it makes sense that the target would have to be aware of the 2nd threat to give you advantage (because it's attention is split) but RAW doesn't specify that condition...



In the end it's up to the DM's discretion.

 

[billd91]

There is little or nothing the PC can do to protect themselves from an invisible attacker. They have no way of knowing where the attack is coming from before it lands, therefore the invisible attack gets advantage. In the meantime, if they ignore the other guy on their opposite side that enemy will get advantage because once again they don't see the attack coming.

Two attackers and not knowing where the next attack is coming from is worse than paying attention to the one you can see. The invisible attacker already gets advantage and by the rules advantage does not stack. It's not that the person being attacked is just giving up and standing still, they're just paying attention to the attacker they can do something about. In that case the invisible attacker still gets advantage but the other opponent doesn't gain any advantage from flanking.

I stick by my ruling and my logic.

This just opens up the can of worms of a flanked creature choosing to ignore one of his attackers to deny advantage to the other… for any reason. Flanked by a goblin and a much more dangerous threat? Ignore the goblin, deny advantage to the more dangerous threat. Mobbed by goblins on all sides? Ignore half of them because it’s better for 4 to have advantage than 8.

 

[Horwath]

this is why it was a bad idea to put every form of bonus into advantage, and sometimes simple +X works better or better yet in 5E spirit, stacking advantage.

invisibility is clearly better condition for attacker than flanking and
being flanked by invisible opponent is clearly worse than being flanked by two visible opponents or only one invisible.

maybe flank: 1×advantage
invisibility 2×advantage.
attacking prone target; 1×advantage
attacking paralyzed/unconscious; 3×advantage

stacking to max of 4×advantage

elven accuracy adds +1 dice if you have at least 1×advantage(max of 5)