Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 8356392" data-attributes="member: 6801845">When it comes to invisibility and being detected, there's nothing that says everyone automatically knows where you are unless you take an action to hide.For invisibility (and darkness), the rules are actually quite sparse. Basic rules page 105 for invisibility says:• 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.Note that the location "can be" detected. Not "is always" detected. In addition "noise it makes or any tracks it leaves." What happens if it's not making noise or leaving tracks? A flying creature in a zone of silence in the dark is going to be undetectable in most cases.If you say that an invisible person is always detected unless they have taken the hide action, Invisibility suddenly becomes virtually useless to many, if not most, casters.  Why ever bother casting Invisibility if you could get the same benefit from the Blur spell?  Invisibility should be useful to characters other than Arcane Tricksters or for the wizard casting casting the spell on a sneaky character.So let's say there's an invisible golem on a hard floor.  It's not moving.  I don't think you would know where it is without some other effect giving it away. It doesn't breath, it isn't moving, it is literally making no sound.  Assuming there are no cobwebs hanging off of it or similar the only way to detect the golem is to stumble into it since the only way to perceive it would be to see it, which you cannot do.If the golem activates because you enter the area and it starts moving, you can hear it and now you may know something is out there. You may even have a pretty good idea of it's location depending on the situation, but it's not automatic. The way I run it, you may not know exactly where it is until it attacks. At that point you can target it with disadvantage.I agree that this does leave a lot up to the DM and different DMs are going to rule it differently. That may bother rules lawyers (not saying you are one or that it's even a bad thing) but it's just part of the structure of 5E. So yes, you have to ask your DM how they handle stealth and invisibility. I think the DM making rulings based on common sense when the rules aren't explicit is a strength of 5E, not a weakness. Feel free to disagree.The rules tell you how to hide so that creatures do not know where you are.  That does not mean that creatures know where you are if you are not hidden any more than stating that all mammals are bats because bats are mammals.If you are invisible and have not successfully taken the hide action, other creatures may or may not know where you are.  Your PC in full plate just turned invisible while walking in mud in a light rain?  Everybody probably knows where the PC is because they can hear him, see their tracks and the rain is outlining their shape.  In a zone of silence (or in a situation where there is enough noise to hide the sound the PC makes) on hard ground leaving no tracks?  There is no reason to assume they are detected.  Throw in the light rain to outline the creature (something not explicitly mentioned in the rules) and the invisible creature walking in a zone of silence on concrete may still be easy to detect because you can see the creature's outline.There's a reason I prefer D&D to computer games.  The rules do not need to be encapsulate every single possibility, the DM can make judgement calls.</blockquote>

Verification