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Why do so many DMs use the wrong rules for invisibility?
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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 7019010" data-attributes="member: 2067"><p>Speaking by RAW:</p><p></p><p>It is hypothetically possible to be undetected if you have not taken the hide action.</p><p></p><p>However, invisibility by itself isn't sufficient to be undetected - explicitly, "any noise it makes or tracks it leaves," and by inference, a lot of other circumstances, will still reveal your location. "Any noise" can logically include the rattle of your backpack as you move, or the sound of the fabric of your robes, or the sound of you breathing, the sound of your footsteps on the ground, or, well <em>any</em> noise. This is reinforced under Hiding, where it states "an invisible creature can't be seen, so it can always <strong>try to</strong> hide. Signs of its passage might still be noticed, however, and <strong>it still has to stay quiet</strong>." </p><p></p><p>So if you are a silenced odorless flying nudist and you turn invisible? Maybe then you are also undetected. Or maybe the DM rules that you moving through the air makes a gentle <em>woosh</em> noise, so you're still detected because you're not flying through a vacuum. In practice, it's hard to imagine a circumstance where the only thing you're missing to be effectively unnoticed is that you're <em>visible</em>, but the DM is given a lot of leeway to determine that.</p><p></p><p>There's plenty of room to think that doesn't make a lot of sense (the "noisy battlefield" argument is one I find pretty persuasive), and everyone's free to do whatever they want in their own games, but the RAW seems pretty clear to me, as does the intent that you need to do something above and beyond "become invisible" to be completely undetected.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think the default RAW expectation is that "If all you do is turn invisible, you aren't also hidden." </p><p></p><p>Anyone who turns invisible and also then becomes hidden is doing something <em>else</em> to also be hidden - invisibility itself doesn't also confer the hidden status. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think that's in line with how it's intended to be run, but I also think that "sufficient noise to be heard" isn't the (very low) bar that the RAW sets. Per the RAW, your location can be detected by <strong>any noise you make</strong>. Which basically means that unless a creature takes special precautions to not make ANY noise (<em>silence</em> spell, the Hide action, being naked and saying "I'm not moving and I'm holding my breath and I don't even scratch that itch on my nose," to which my response would be, "Okay, make a Dexterity (Stealth) check to see if you can avoid that itch..."), invisibility ain't gonna cut it. "Sufficient noise to be heard" per RAW = "any noise." </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>One thing that I've found useful in my own adjudication is this consideration: how far away can you hear the normal sounds of human conversation?</p><p></p><p>Turns out this is a hard question to answer because acoustics is <em>dang science</em>, but <a href="http://www.answers.com/Q/How_far_away_can_a_person_hear_someone_talking" target="_blank">some rando on the internet suggests 20 meters as a rule of thumb</a>, and that translates to 65 feet. If I set a default assumption of "Creatures generally make noise equal to the sounds of normal human conversation, maybe a bit louder what with the armor and the heavy backpack and all", 60 feet seems like a good rule of thumb. Unless stated otherwise, they're basically always making this amount of noise. </p><p></p><p>So you wouldn't necessarily notice something invisible and 200 feet away.</p><p></p><p>But you'd hear it making <em>woosh</em> noises if you were 60 feet from it, IMC.</p><p></p><p>That same rando suggests 10 meters for whispers, so maybe someone invisible "trying to be quiet" could be 30 feet away? </p><p></p><p>You want anything else, I'm going to ask you to make a Stealth check or otherwise describe to me how you're preventing yourself from making small adjustments of your body or whatnot.</p><p></p><p>What doesn't make sense to me is the assumption that someone carrying a backpack loaded with supplies and a coin pouch heavy with coin and armor and daggers and opulent robes can just go invisible and suddenly drop off the face of the earth. Or that a flying creature doesn't make <em>any</em> noise as it flies.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 7019010, member: 2067"] Speaking by RAW: It is hypothetically possible to be undetected if you have not taken the hide action. However, invisibility by itself isn't sufficient to be undetected - explicitly, "any noise it makes or tracks it leaves," and by inference, a lot of other circumstances, will still reveal your location. "Any noise" can logically include the rattle of your backpack as you move, or the sound of the fabric of your robes, or the sound of you breathing, the sound of your footsteps on the ground, or, well [I]any[/I] noise. This is reinforced under Hiding, where it states "an invisible creature can't be seen, so it can always [B]try to[/B] hide. Signs of its passage might still be noticed, however, and [B]it still has to stay quiet[/B]." So if you are a silenced odorless flying nudist and you turn invisible? Maybe then you are also undetected. Or maybe the DM rules that you moving through the air makes a gentle [I]woosh[/I] noise, so you're still detected because you're not flying through a vacuum. In practice, it's hard to imagine a circumstance where the only thing you're missing to be effectively unnoticed is that you're [I]visible[/I], but the DM is given a lot of leeway to determine that. There's plenty of room to think that doesn't make a lot of sense (the "noisy battlefield" argument is one I find pretty persuasive), and everyone's free to do whatever they want in their own games, but the RAW seems pretty clear to me, as does the intent that you need to do something above and beyond "become invisible" to be completely undetected. I think the default RAW expectation is that "If all you do is turn invisible, you aren't also hidden." Anyone who turns invisible and also then becomes hidden is doing something [I]else[/I] to also be hidden - invisibility itself doesn't also confer the hidden status. I think that's in line with how it's intended to be run, but I also think that "sufficient noise to be heard" isn't the (very low) bar that the RAW sets. Per the RAW, your location can be detected by [B]any noise you make[/B]. Which basically means that unless a creature takes special precautions to not make ANY noise ([I]silence[/I] spell, the Hide action, being naked and saying "I'm not moving and I'm holding my breath and I don't even scratch that itch on my nose," to which my response would be, "Okay, make a Dexterity (Stealth) check to see if you can avoid that itch..."), invisibility ain't gonna cut it. "Sufficient noise to be heard" per RAW = "any noise." One thing that I've found useful in my own adjudication is this consideration: how far away can you hear the normal sounds of human conversation? Turns out this is a hard question to answer because acoustics is [I]dang science[/I], but [URL="http://www.answers.com/Q/How_far_away_can_a_person_hear_someone_talking"]some rando on the internet suggests 20 meters as a rule of thumb[/URL], and that translates to 65 feet. If I set a default assumption of "Creatures generally make noise equal to the sounds of normal human conversation, maybe a bit louder what with the armor and the heavy backpack and all", 60 feet seems like a good rule of thumb. Unless stated otherwise, they're basically always making this amount of noise. So you wouldn't necessarily notice something invisible and 200 feet away. But you'd hear it making [I]woosh[/I] noises if you were 60 feet from it, IMC. That same rando suggests 10 meters for whispers, so maybe someone invisible "trying to be quiet" could be 30 feet away? You want anything else, I'm going to ask you to make a Stealth check or otherwise describe to me how you're preventing yourself from making small adjustments of your body or whatnot. What doesn't make sense to me is the assumption that someone carrying a backpack loaded with supplies and a coin pouch heavy with coin and armor and daggers and opulent robes can just go invisible and suddenly drop off the face of the earth. Or that a flying creature doesn't make [I]any[/I] noise as it flies. [/QUOTE]
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Why do so many DMs use the wrong rules for invisibility?
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