D&D (2024) Group Checks?

[Charlaquin]

Thanks.

Given the change in the invisible condition and using that for non invisible things this is a less than helpful pure mechanics description they give.

14 seemed a lot clearer.

INVISIBILITY
2nd-level illusion
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (an eyelash encased in gum arabic)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
A creature you touch becomes invisible until the spell ends. Anything the target is wearing or carrying is invisible as long as it is on the target's person. The spell ends for a target that attacks or casts a spell.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, you can target one additional creature for each slot level above 2nd.

INVISIBLE
• An invisible creature is impossible to see without the aid of magic or a special sense. For the purpose of hiding, the creature is heavily obscured. The creature's location can be detected by any noise it makes or any tracks it leaves.
• Attack rolls against the creature have disadvantage, and the creature's attack rolls have advantage.

I suspect there was a big push in the core rules revision trim down “unnecessary” text, in order to increase the content-to-pagecount ratio and make more room for the increased amount of art. It was probably assumed that this specification of what being invisible does could be covered in fewer words by including in the condition itself, so spells and other invisibility-granting effects could just point to the condition to explain that functionality. Which is a solid idea on paper, except that they also tried to make the invisible condition pull double-duty by combining it with the extremely similar hidden condition that appeared in some of the earlier playtest UAs. This had the probably unintended effect of implying that either the hide action makes you impossible to find by sight alone, or other sources of invisibility don’t, and the sources that grant invisibility no longer clear up this ambiguity.

A lot of 2024’s weird implications are a result of this shaving down “unnecessary” clarifying text, and causing unintended side-effects. It smacks of editors noticing an apparent inefficiency and taking it upon themselves to “fix” it without first taking the time to understand why it was written “inefficiently” in the first place.

 

[Voadam]

I suspect there was a big push in the core rules revision trim down “unnecessary” text, in order to increase the content-to-pagecount ratio and make more room for the increased amount of art. It was probably assumed that this specification of what being invisible does could be covered in fewer words by including in the condition itself, so spells and other invisibility-granting effects could just point to the condition to explain that functionality. Which is a solid idea on paper, except that they also tried to make the invisible condition pull double-duty by combining it with the extremely similar hidden condition that appeared in some of the earlier playtest UAs. This had the probably unintended effect of implying that either the hide action makes you impossible to find by sight alone, or other sources of invisibility don’t, and the sources that grant invisibility no longer clear up this ambiguity.

A lot of 2024’s weird implications are a result of this shaving down “unnecessary” clarifying text, and causing unintended side-effects. It smacks of editors noticing an apparent inefficiency and taking it upon themselves to “fix” it without first taking the time to understand why it was written “inefficiently” in the first place.

Right.

The spell is the same, it is the condition that has changed from being explicitly transparent to broadly covering nonmagical not seen as well without then specifying anywhere what the specific narrative use of the condition actually is in specific applications.

Quite a change from 14s natural language model.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Sure, but the question is not of what causes it to end, but of what it actually does while you have it. If it doesn’t make you transparent, then whether or not it ends when you’re found is basically irrelevant. If it does make you transparent, then being looked at wouldn’t constitute being found. Neither the hide action, nor the invisibility spell, nor the invisible condition specifies whether or not you are transparent while under its effects, so in the absence of any text stating otherwise, we must assume that all three operate in the same way RE: the subject’s level of opacity.

If you like to read it that way, have fun.

I use the guidelines in the DMG:

Rules are no physics.
Use good faith interpretations.

Saves a lot of time.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I suspect there was a big push in the core rules revision trim down “unnecessary” text, in order to increase the content-to-pagecount ratio and make more room for the increased amount of art. It was probably assumed that this specification of what being invisible does could be covered in fewer words by including in the condition itself, so spells and other invisibility-granting effects could just point to the condition to explain that functionality. Which is a solid idea on paper, except that they also tried to make the invisible condition pull double-duty by combining it with the extremely similar hidden condition that appeared in some of the earlier playtest UAs. This had the probably unintended effect of implying that either the hide action makes you impossible to find by sight alone, or other sources of invisibility don’t, and the sources that grant invisibility no longer clear up this ambiguity.

A lot of 2024’s weird implications are a result of this shaving down “unnecessary” clarifying text, and causing unintended side-effects. It smacks of editors noticing an apparent inefficiency and taking it upon themselves to “fix” it without first taking the time to understand why it was written “inefficiently” in the first place.

I agree. But using the good faith advice will allow you to use those rules easily.

 

[Charlaquin]

Right.

The spell is the same, it is the condition that has changed from being explicitly transparent to broadly covering nonmagical not seen as well without then specifying anywhere what the specific narrative use of the condition actually is in specific applications.

Quite a change from 14s natural language model.

5e’s language has never truly been natural, it was full of technical jargon, they just tried to make the jargon sound natural in 2014, which lead to a lot of misunderstandings. Though, those misunderstandings often went unnoticed unless someone pointed the folks doing the misunderstanding to Sage Advice. In 2024 they seem to have opted to do away with much of the pretext of naturalness. Though not all of it, probably because the commitment to backwards compatibility prevented them from changing faux-natural terminology. They’ve added some extra capitalization to indicate where a faux-natural term is actually rules jargon, but people often don’t pay close enough attention to capitalization to notice.

 

[Charlaquin]

If you like to read it that way, have fun.

I use the guidelines in the DMG:

Rules are no physics.
Use good faith interpretations.

Saves a lot of time.

I agree. But using the good faith advice will allow you to use those rules easily.

Sure, you can use the rules if you just assume they’re supposed to work in a way that makes sense and run them accordingly. But that’s not a defense of the way they’re written. The actual RAW very plainly implies that either the Hide action makes you impossible to find by sight alone, or the Invisibility spell does not. This doesn’t prevent a competent DM from recognizing that this probably wasn’t intended, and running stealth according to their intuition instead of according to RAW. But it’s a definite fault in RAW that such a ruling is necessary. It would have been easy to write the rule in a way that actually functioned the way they obviously intended it to.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Quite a change from 14s natural language model.

Natural Language as a design goal is dead in 2024.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Send the rogue (and maybe druid, and maybe bard, and maybe wizard... etc) ahead to scout or accept that the odds of being stealthy are low.

Heck, I've seen an entire party switch to studded leather to enable a stealth mission. It's not that it can't happen. It's that some players will stubbornly refuse to play into any amount of realism that gives them any disadvantage at all.

Scouting is one thing, but evenin light armor (assuming you don’t track encumbrance because carrying an extra set of armor adds up) you still need to beat a DC 15 with a +0 mod, probably more than once, or get into a fight at 6 less AC (which will likely nearly double the odds of getting hit) - and that assumes you have 5 min to change to sneaky armor and ten minutes to change back after.

If party stealth is gonna be a thing in you campaign, you should probably ban heavy armor or make mithril pretty easy yo get.

 

[Retros_x]

Or alternatively it autofails as they cannot see you because you are invisible.

Now we are going in circles, I'd argue the invisible condition only applies here because you are hidden and out of sight. The moment you drop from the ceiling in front of the guard you are spotted, no perception roll needed, no advantage on your attack anymore.

But if we interpret the invisible condition this way, then the invisibility spell, which gives the invisible condition and does nothing else, is pretty useless.

No. The spell effect does NOT stop when you get in line of sight of someone or someone hears you. That makes the spell definitely more potent thant the hide action which you give you the same effect but with more pre- and postconditions.

We have condition "invisibility" that gives you specific advantages. To get this condition you can either

a) use the hide action, with a set of requirements for getting and losing the invisibility condition.
b) cast the invisibility spell, with a different set of requirements for getting and losing the invisibility condition.

The set of requirements of the spell are a subset of the requirements of hide action, making the spell a more potent way to reap the advantages of the condition "invisible" , which is fair because this way cost you resources (a spellslot).

One of the requirements for the hide action is that you lose the condition if an enemy spots you. The spell does NOT have this condition, only the hide action. To being spotted by an enemy they need to perceive you with their senses. If you are eg. still in darkness, or around the corner they need to roll a perception check, because their is a chance of failure to perceive your presence. If they enlighten the area or walk around the corner you were hiding, they do not need to roll a perception check, because there is no chance of failure to perceive the presence of someone who is standing in bright light in the middle of the room or who stands in front of you when you turn around the corner. *

This is 99% how the rules are intented, but the phrasing is idiotic as this discussion proves. Definitely a downstep from 2014 (which already had misleading phrasings about the whole stealth and hide topic), I hope there will be some errata.

Spoiler: * A bit off topic into details how DM can handle stealth

Of course a lot is DMs fiat, mainly because these changes of the environment or enemys action (making light, walking around the corner) could be misused by antagonistic DMs to bypass the perception roll. The DM should use common sense. A patrol for example moves around and if a hero hides around a corner in the way of a patrol than yes that was a stupid location to hide because the patrol will walk around that corner.

But here a lot of fun can emerge. Instead of just saying "well thanks to your stealth roll the guard doesnt hear you waiting around the corner, but they just continue their patrol stumbling into you and yelling an alarmed shout" and completely disvaluing their roll, you give players an additional point of decision: "thanks to your good stealth roll they don't hear you approaching and peaking around the corner. But they are still coming straight in your direction and you realize that this is the exact route of their patrol and they might run direct into you anyway - what do you do?" valuing their roll while still giving consequence to their bad/unlucky hiding spot.

 

[Retros_x]

If party stealth is gonna be a thing in you campaign, you should probably ban heavy armor or make mithril pretty easy yo get.

Absolutely wild to me to ban a whole category of armor just so the party don't have to adjust their plans. Leave your plate at home or let the stealthy character do the scouting, if you want to have a more "realistic" approach. If you just want to have the marvel gang doing a little cinematic sneak, just do a group check and the sneaky characters can carry the heavy armored ones (although it denies the cost of getting a huge AC bonus).