Beating Superior Invis/Hide checks without using money

[DeAnno]

Are there any spells that are of use against Superior Invisibility that don't have costly material components? (Obviously True Sight is the canonical counter, but that has a component cost of 250 gp) I figure Arcane Sight might work, but it would be nice if there was something with better range than 120 feet. I am mainly concerned about a sniper duel at the extreme of Range: Medium or Long, where using area spells to blanket a position can become impractical, and the enemy is using Invisible metamagicked spells to conceal even his approximate position.

Similarly, is there any good way to ferret out a conventionally hiding enemy when the range is such that there is too much space to cover with Glitterdust and your spot check is losing on its own? Does Arcane Sight autobeat a Hide check if you can get within 120 feet? (Assuming they have any magical auras at all on them, of course)

Alternately, are there any blaster spells with areas so ridiculously large that you can blanket such huge stretches of terrain (one hundred foot radius plus, probably)?

I'm aware that scrying might be of use, but many forms are slow and/or expensive, and all of them lose to Mind Blank.

[MirddinEmris]

Well, if you can get a really big telepathy range, than Mindsight is good. Or you can go Undead with Lifesense and never come out in a daylight).

[Malroth]

Locate city bomb?

[Curmudgeon]

Does Arcane Sight autobeat a Hide check if you can get within 120 feet? (Assuming they have any magical auras at all on them, of course)
Arcane Sight will tell you a square has a magical aura, but not what sort. And you're not allowed to make a Spellcraft (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/spellcraft.htm) check for further information unless you can see the creature or item generating the aura.
When casting detect magic, determine the school of magic involved in the aura of a single item or creature you can see. So it could simply be magical graffiti: Arcane Mark and Magic Mouth are both low-level and permanent, so a world rich with spellcasters will also be rich with their prankish leavings. Unless you're adventuring in a world built to conform to Chekhov's gun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun), expect lots of things to generate auras. Unless you get close enough to succeed at a Spot check to see a Fine (mouth-sized) mark, you won't know if it's magical graffiti. And if you still fail with an adequate Spot check to see something that size in plain sight, you still won't know the real answer. It could be someone hiding, or it could just be the residue from an overwhelming aura that passed by days ago (which lingering aura would occur whenever someone's toting around a cursed minor artifact to provide some spiteful defense against Mordenkainen's Disjunction).

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

As mentioned, Mindsight works pretty well.

It's not spells, but Psions have Touchsight and Psionic True Seeing (no material component).

Shapechange can easily get you true seeing, but it does have a costly focus. Then again if you can cast Shapechange you'll probably want to use it anyway.

It's worth noting that Superior Invis defeats Glitterdust.

As a curiosity, if you're both able to cast 8th level spells or higher, how is it that you know you're going to be in a long-range spell duel? IME mages at that level tend to proxy fight.

[TuggyNE]

So it could simply be magical graffiti: Arcane Mark and Magic Mouth are both low-level and permanent, so a world rich with spellcasters will also be rich with their prankish leavings. Unless you're adventuring in a world built to conform to Chekhov's gun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun), expect lots of things to generate auras. Unless you get close enough to succeed at a Spot check to see a Fine (mouth-sized) mark, you won't know if it's magical graffiti. And if you still fail with an adequate Spot check to see something that size in plain sight, you still won't know the real answer. It could be someone hiding, or it could just be the residue from an overwhelming aura that passed by days ago (which lingering aura would occur whenever someone's toting around a cursed minor artifact to provide some spiteful defense against Mordenkainen's Disjunction).

Fortunately, lingering auras have their own unique strength, and arcane sight automatically informs you of the aura's exact strength immediately with no action required or check needed. You can also use this to ignore magical graffiti, for the most part: only a location with one or more Strong auras can be the one with the enemy caster.

[DeAnno]

As a curiosity, if you're both able to cast 8th level spells or higher, how is it that you know you're going to be in a long-range spell duel? IME mages at that level tend to proxy fight.

It's a bit of a theoretical exercise, though in my experience if people are just wandering around in the wild with Mind Blank on they can be sort of tricky to find without actually engaging with them.

Plus proxy fighting takes all the fun out of it.

Ideas I've thought of so far are Limited Wish for True Seeing, which will cost no money but eat 300 XP, and Greater Scrying Eyes, which provide a True Seeing effect but are kind of lousy as you can't really fight somebody with them.

I have some other thoughts about sweeping large stretches of land with Boreal Wind (FB) to try to scare people out/destroy their cover, though the Fort negates makes it sort of impractical unless you're in asymmetric combat against a lot of weaker hiding foes.

Lastly, I realized that even if the caster has Superior Invisibility, See Invis will let you see their Invisible spells, which reduces the magnitude of hax possible for a sniper to some degree.

[CombatOwl]

Are there any spells that are of use against Superior Invisibility that don't have costly material components?

Telekinesis and a bag of flour. There's two ways to use flour--the first is to simply try to target the square that the invisible person is in (superior invisibility prevents glitterdust from doing this, but does not prevent mundane means), covering them in something that wasn't invisible when they cast the spell (and therefore renders them effectively visible). The other way to use the flour is to ferret out the silence that surrounds someone with superior invisibility--use a sonic effect that creates a compression wave (there's a few of them, take your pick) and observe the flour. When the wave hits the silence, it should (if the DM is willing) be disrupted, revealing the square where the target is hiding. A "poor man's" way of doing this involves using the aforementioned sonic effect to attack the floor where you think the person is hiding. Since the silence of superior invisibility is an area effect (albeit a small one), the floor where the person is standing will not be affected by the sonic effect.

OTOH, if superior invisibility is being used by anyone but the players, it's probably because the DM is wanting to be a ****, and nothing you can do will reveal it cheaply.


I figure Arcane Sight might work, but it would be nice if there was something with better range than 120 feet. I am mainly concerned about a sniper duel at the extreme of Range: Medium or Long, where using area spells to blanket a position can become impractical, and the enemy is using Invisible metamagicked spells to conceal even his approximate position.

Forget it, that's the DM being a ****. Nothing you do (except dying) will stop the suffering.


Alternately, are there any blaster spells with areas so ridiculously large that you can blanket such huge stretches of terrain (one hundred foot radius plus, probably)?

Locate city...

[Maginomicon]

Somehow get a lot of water into the room.



Powdered Water
5sp, 1 oz. not including the jug; Alchemy DC 10
This fine white powder sparkles faintly. An ounce, when mixed with a drop of water, becomes a gallon of drinkable water. The powder is usually put in a vessel that can contain the full gallon of water before the drop of activating liquid is added. The vessel is then shaken to agitate the mixture. It takes a full round for the gallon of water to form. The powder must be kept in a water-tight container to remain effective, but it is an easy way to transport large amounts of water over great distances.

A gallon jug half-full of Powdered Water translates to 64 gallons. Trigger it with either a vial of ordinary water or the Create Water cantrip, shake the jug a little, and then throw the now-foaming jug like a grenade to where you think the invisible creature might be, shattering the jug.

This will flood the room enough to see where the water splits around the invisible creature's feet.

[Arc_knight25]

Somehow get a lot of water into the room.



A gallon jug half-full of Powdered Water translates to 64 gallons. Trigger it with either a vial of ordinary water or the Create Water cantrip, shake the jug a little, and then throw the now-foaming jug like a grenade to where you think the invisible creature might be, shattering the jug.

This will flood the room enough to see where the water splits around the invisible creature's feet.

All I can think of is Splash Ninja's from Amnesia. Scary stuff.

[Chronos]

Y'know, people always say that the Magic Aura spell is useless, and this situation is the reason why I don't understand that. If you've got a really good hide check and you're wearing magic items, you don't want them to give you away. So you put anything you don't need right now in your Haversack, UMD a wand of Magic Aura on your Haversack and anything else you do need, and then put the wand in the Haversack too. Presto, now Arcane Sight won't reveal you, either.

[Piggy Knowles]

Y'know, people always say that the Magic Aura spell is useless, and this situation is the reason why I don't understand that. If you've got a really good hide check and you're wearing magic items, you don't want them to give you away. So you put anything you don't need right now in your Haversack, UMD a wand of Magic Aura on your Haversack and anything else you do need, and then put the wand in the Haversack too. Presto, now Arcane Sight won't reveal you, either.

I agree, and Magic Aura at will is one of my favorite class features of the Spymaster. That said, you could also keep your haversack and other magic items behind a lead-lined cloak.

[Doc_Maynot]

Deathwatch? May be a Cleric spell, but in the cone you'll know how many beings there are, and you'll know if they are dead, undead, almost dead, pretty much dead, or alive. And that includes the status on the hidden person. So it's a way to "ping" for one such hidden of invisible person if they are in the area.