Invisible Assassin, help

[Knogard]

So my DM threw assassins at the party, one for each of us. They are toying with us before the kill. The one that is messing with me (the cleric) is invisible. I have used true sight and purge invisibility to no avail. He keeps leaving jesters masks on my person and stealing my holy symbol placing it elsewhere. I believe I have actually knocked him over during a fight with another of the assassins and he remained invisible. As well he placed some sort of "contacts" in my eyes that made it so that I couldn't see anyone else just the buildings around me. I washed them out with holy water.

[Venger]

your gm is cheating. there's nothing you can do.

[zlefin]

it does sound like the gm may be cheating to toy with you.
what level are you, and how much wealth you got?
how much prep time do you have, if any? (are you already mid combat?)
how long has he been leaving the jester's masks on you?

[Knogard]

We are lvl 10 not mid combat but there is a large festival going on so no real prep available.

[legomaster00156]

True Sight and See Invisibility can be beaten by only one spell: Mind Blank. Invisibility Purge can be beaten by no spells, but it can be counterspelled, or they might be keeping out of range.
That said, the most likely answer is that the GM is cheating, and you cannot win.

[Drakevarg]

I wouldn't say it's necessarily cheating. The Invisible Stalker for example has no visible form to see, even under invisibility purge.

So, perhaps more old-fashioned tactics. Throw bags of flower everywhere. Make illusionary doubles. If you can't do that, hire people to dress like you and wander around in the crowd, preferably with a sniper poised at a high vantage point to watch them. Hide in a hall of mirrors. In doubt, AoE attacks. Plenty of potential solutions, provided you can get them off before their dagger finds your spine.

[daremetoidareyo]

If you ever make contact with this assassin, try diplomacy. Maybe he just wants money. Or maybe you have a solution to a problem of his that will get him off your back.

Try leaving out milk cookies and a note arranging a time to converse

[Knogard]

So when I first saw him he was portraying himself as a street performer. A jester magicking things away from people and presenting them. In an almost magical way "though I sensed no magic". After I walked past him he had taken my holy symbol I walked back and got it from him he handed it to me and let me walk away then he proceeded to torment me in the ways listed above.

[Venger]

yeah, your gm's cheating as a way to annoy you and waste your time. no in-game tactic you can use to get out of that

[daremetoidareyo]

So when I first saw him he was portraying himself as a street performer. A jester magicking things away from people and presenting them. In an almost magical way "though I sensed no magic". After I walked past him he had taken my holy symbol I walked back and got it from him he handed it to me and let me walk away then he proceeded to torment me in the ways listed above.

Maybe he's using epic sleight of hand rules. Consider using the spell grim revenge from BOVD on him twice and see if that doesn't solve your problem.

[Sagetim]

It sounds to me like he's just using stealth rules and pick pocket....ah, mmmm, what was it in 3.5....Hide, Move Silently, and Sleight of Hand. With Hide In Plain Sight, and a crowd to work with, there's not really anything those spells would do to stop this guy.

I think everyone is jumping to the conclusion that this has to be magic of some kind. Now, I would say he might be on the ethereal plane, except that I'm pretty sure True Seeing lets you spot people there, right? Invisibility Purge wouldn't have any effect on someone who is Ethereal though. So it really seems to me like they are probably just very highly skilled and otherwise mundane. Perhaps you should try Detect Magic, though, because even if they have super epic ninja skills, if they have magic items on their person (and there isn't enough raw mass in the way to halt the detection) those would light them up, possibly like a christmas tree.

In that line of thought, you might want to combat this with a spell like, what was it, Arcane Eye, or Arcane Sight, or something. It's like, a 4th level spell for detecting magic without having to spend time concentrating to make out auras, or something. I'm sure someone else will correct me on the name and effect, but that spell would help you If the target has magic items on their person. Furthermore, you'll want to clear out some space and hang out there. Preference for a place without a ceiling so they can't literally get the drop on you, followed by keeping an eye out on the entire space around you as much as possible. If you can get an open space like, 40ft around you, you might be able to spot them before they get a Death Attack off on you.

Edit: Depending on what the rest of the party can do, Glitterdust, or Fairy Fire might be useful in this situation as well. Worst case scenario, you can have someone cast grease on the ground around you and just...stand there. Even if he succeeds on the balance check, he'll leave foot prints.

[Gruftzwerg]

I would like to ask how you confirmed that the assassin is "invisible"?

For me it sounds just like they are hiding in the crowd (of the festival) which beats see invisible + true sight.
Add a high Sleight of Hand score and he could do what you described.

[Knogard]

I know he is invisible because I literally knocked him over saw a dust cloud but no body. And we have me a human cleric (law/war domains), a fire moon elf titanblood fighter going deep woods sniper prestige, a teifling paladin of bahamut, and an aasimar necromancer. And we are in the open right now. In our mansion that we are having built.

[flappeercraft]

Doesn't seem like cheating to me. Seems to me like the spells Superior Invisibility and Mind blank were used together, powerful combo

[Knogard]

Purge invisibility. Would have fixed it.

[GiantFlyingHog]

Doesn't seem like cheating to me. Seems to me like the spells Superior Invisibility and Mind blank were used together, powerful combo


Purge invisibility. Would have fixed it.

If it is Superior Invisibility, Invisibility Purge would have no effect. However, SI is a ninth level spell, so your DM seems to be being rather unfair. Also, if that is the case, only blindsight, not blindsense, or possibly detect magic would allow you to detect him, although if he's moving around the latter will only allow you to sense the presence of magic, not where he actually is.

[Thurbane]

I can think of a couple of scenarios where the DM may not be cheating:

* Assassin is blowing a small fortune on Dust of Disappearance. "Normal vision can’t see dusted creatures or objects, nor can they be detected by magical means, including see invisibility or invisibility purge."

* Assassin has HiPS and a very high Hide mod (Dark Creature Skulk, for instance).

[Gruftzwerg]

I can think of a couple of scenarios where the DM may not be cheating:

* Assassin is blowing a small fortune on Dust of Disappearance. "Normal vision can’t see dusted creatures or objects, nor can they be detected by magical means, including see invisibility or invisibility purge."

* Assassin has HiPS and a very high Hide mod (Dark Creature Skulk, for instance).

But True Sight was already been used, which beats Dust of Disappearance/Gr. Invisibility/Superior Invisibility.

And and from the info we got (falling into dust) this doesn't make any sense to me any more. Cause he had to be visible at that moment, hide stopped to work at the moment the two bumped into each other. If True Sight was on at that moment, he should have definitively seen him. (or was TS at that moment not up?)

[Thurbane]

True Seeing does not work on Dust of Disappearance.


Dust of Disappearance
This dust looks just like dust of appearance and is typically stored in the same manner. A creature or object touched by it becomes invisible (as greater invisibility). Normal vision can’t see dusted creatures or objects, nor can they be detected by magical means, including see invisibility or invisibility purge. Dust of appearance, however, does reveal people and objects made invisible by dust of disappearance. Other factors, such as sound and smell, also allow possible detection.

The greater invisibility bestowed by the dust lasts for 2d6 rounds.The invisible creature doesn’t know when the duration will end.

Moderate illusion; CL 7th; Craft Wondrous Item, greater invisibility; Price 3,500 gp.

True Seeing is most definitely a magical means of detecting invisible creatures. Specific trumps general.

I have used this exploit as a PC against a pair of Erinyes.

[Eldariel]

A couple of options:
- Get Mindsight (Psychic Reformation or summon something Telepathic and get them to take the feat), Touchsight (as a a psionic consumable), or such. Very hard to avoid those. I guess you don't have access to Polymorph and Assume Supernatural Ability? Does your deity offer Transformation Domain [Races of Eberron]? You could use the spell "Substitute Domain" [Complete Champion] to acquire it and then Psychic Reformation (consumable of some sort) to switch to Mindsight and Assume Supernatural Ability. Then turn into a Spellweaver [MMII] and get a 1000 mile Telepathy complete with knowledge of the location and strength of every intelligence in the area. Though for your purposes more minor abilities would work.
- Arcane Sight - if you can make them steal something magical, you can keep tabs on them. Enchant your Holy Symbol or such. Admittedly hard for divine casters to access the spell at this juncture but you can always get a Scroll and Guidance of the Avatar (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20010504a) the activation check.
- Use Divine Insight [Spell Compendium] and Guidance of the Avatar (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20010504a) plus your massive Wis to boost your Spot-check enough to Spot active invisible target (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/spot.htm).
- Use Divination to find a spell that could affect them (you have Commune so play 20 questions with your DM) and try and disable them in one go.
- Faerie Fire, flour or generic mundane solutions to stealth; track their footsteps, get some guard dogs with scent or such.


But yeah, this sounds like a simple Hide in Plain Sight + Sleight of Hand with high skill rolls. It might be Su (generally requires shadows or such) or Ex (requires certain terrain types, doesn't always enable hiding without cover/concealment). Trying to remove the conditions for their Hide might work as might trying to simply overcome their numbers.

Once you detect them, you need to be sure you can take them down quickly before they can hide through some other means so a SoD/SoPermanent Disable (Blindness is a good one) might work. Slay Living, trapping them in Wall of Stone (probably excellent Reflex so prefer targeting other saves though) or such might be a good option. Dominating would work but I don't know if you have access to it. If they're living, Slay Living is probably the way to go (but beware the fact that they may not in fact be alive). If you do kill 'em, you can always interrogate them with Speak with Dead, so don't worry about killing them in that regard. But again, caught alive they can't be bought back to life and annoy you elsewhere so...

[Gruftzwerg]

True Seeing does not work on Dust of Disappearance.



True Seeing is most definitely a magical means of detecting invisible creatures. Specific trumps general.

I have used this exploit as a PC against a pair of Erinyes.

I would still argue, that they are both specific about canceling the other out.

Dust of D.: blocks all magic detection
True Sight: Ignore all illusion effects

And in this chase I would fall back to spellLvl to measure which one beats the other = True Sight wins imho.

______________


But I guess I may have found a better solution.

How about an Area Dispel?

That should be able to dispel the invisibility effect imho.

[Crake]

To everyone saying the GM is cheating: Assassins get hide in plain sight. If you don't have a high enough spot check, nothing is going to help.

To OP: Try glitterdust, the -40 on hide checks should help in spotting them.

Edit: Also, hide in plain sight is an Su ability, try using antimagic field. If they're caught in the area without cover or concealment, they'll be automatically visible to you, without a chance to hide.

[rel]

Others have covered most of the detection tricks so I'll just add a few alternate suggestions:

There is a cantrip, summon holy symbol. Does what it says.

you could trap your holy symbol so that looting it is a terminal mistake, the only limit here are your resources and creativity.
- poison immune yourself and coat the symbol in something potent.
- conceal a bunch of fine holy (or unholy) darts (or shuriken) inside it
- enchant the symbol as a custom magic item
- make a really big lead holy symbol shrink it and cover it in a strong glue
- etc

Subtly gain a source of poison and critical hit immunity. 4 out of 5 assassins will have no way to deal with that and if no one knows you have the trick no one thinks to counter it.

Certain passive spells, most notably the symbol line work on everything even that which you cannot see. consider setting up a few (because forcing all your enemies to eat only 1 save vs suck is too generous) to reveal at an opportune moment

[Eldariel]

To everyone saying the GM is cheating: Assassins get hide in plain sight. If you don't have a high enough spot check, nothing is going to help.

To OP: Try glitterdust, the -40 on hide checks should help in spotting them.

Edit: Also, hide in plain sight is an Su ability, try using antimagic field. If they're caught in the area without cover or concealment, they'll be automatically visible to you, without a chance to hide.

Who's saying they're Assassins as per the class though? They may be assassins as in the profession but their class make-up can be basically anything; there are multiple kinds of HiPS and they could easily have an Ex version as well. Thus, while AMF Scroll is a possibility, I'm not sure it's reliable enough, particularly with the low range.

Anyways, good magical stuff to add to your stolen objects is stuff like the Symbol spells. Make them roll some Fort and Will as they behold your normally concealed Holy Symbol full of all the Symbol-spells you can cast. You can also use Detect Object to trace them after the fact.

[Gruftzwerg]

To everyone saying the GM is cheating: Assassins get hide in plain sight. If you don't have a high enough spot check, nothing is going to help.


the moment where "he knocked him over" hide stops working and he should have been visible until it's his turn in initiative again. Iirc HIPS ain't an immediate action and must be done in your turn = small window where the enemy should have been visible imho.

___

I start to assume that there are several layer of deceptions working at the same time (HIPS + dust of D. and you need to beat em at the same time to profit.
I used this for my clawlock build. The enemy mostly will have problem with at least one of the layers and even if he could beat all of them, it cost them actions to beat em (most of the times several rounds). It's a dirty trick that most targets can't handle, one way (layers) or the other (survive the needed actions to detect).

I would suggest to start with Area Dispel and than try to spot him somehow (maybe with magic now^^)

[Eldariel]

the moment where "he knocked him over" hide stops working and he should have been visible until it's his turn in initiative again. Iirc HIPS ain't an immediate action and must be done in your turn = small window where the enemy should have been visible imho.

___

I start to assume that there are several layer of deceptions working at the same time (HIPS + dust of D. and you need to beat em at the same time to profit.
I used this for my clawlock build. The enemy mostly will have problem with at least one of the layers and even if he could beat all of them, it cost them actions to beat em (most of the times several rounds). It's a dirty trick that most targets can't handle, one way (layers) or the other (survive the needed actions to detect).

I would suggest to start with Area Dispel and than try to spot him somehow (maybe with magic now^^)

You need to either:

Bypass it: Mindsight, Touchsight, etc. will probably work though due to Darkstalker I doubt Scent, Blindsight or company would suffice; it may be worth attempting with a Planar Ally/Summon though - Arcane Sight might work at least if they steal something magical but they may not have anything magical on their person.
Overcome everything at once: A sufficiently high Spot-check will suffice to bruteforce through it - Cleric's spells excel at this.
Try to negate multiple layers simultaneously: Prevent Hide with the environment and also dispel the spell; though if it's e.g. Invisible Stalker sort of permanent Ex invisibility from shapeshifting or as a taken over body or whatever, this won't work but True Seeing + prevented Hiding would.


You could use Commune to figure out their means of hiding to narrow it down and make this easy; just retreat to an extradimensional space to study the matter. Or Plane Shift/Teleport the **** away, figure stuff out and Plane Shift back in. This is probably the best course of action - buy time and figure out what's going on and talk with your God or whatever. Trying to guess is a surefire way to get killed: as soon as they know you have means to locate and defeat them they might get serious so you only get one shot at it and you need to make sure you pull the right string. Figure out what works/what their defenses are, prepare for it and kill them. It's sufficient to either find out what tools would work to detect them or what their tools of staying out of sight are; either way, once you know, defeating them is easy. Just don't make the mistake of assuming they only have one option; once you've figured out their means of nondetection, use additional divinations to ensure it's their only one or to try and find other ones.

EDIT: One thing. How do you know they are trying to kill you? Sounds more like fooling around and they sound more like street charlatans (or real world Magicians) than anything; I'm not sure they even can hurt you meaningfully.

Sounds like you had a combat that ended in them escaping - but to what end was the fight in the first place? Who started it? Can you ascertain their goals? Likely you're way too formidable in combat for them to be a threat - them just attacking you seems illogical if tht's the case.

Beware the social acceptability and fallout of killing them in a city if they are indeed just skilled humanoids. Something like breaking their minds would most likely be preferable if you have access to Domination-like things. Detect one, dominate them, teleport away and proceed to pick their brain for information.

[Crake]

the moment where "he knocked him over" hide stops working and he should have been visible until it's his turn in initiative again. Iirc HIPS ain't an immediate action and must be done in your turn = small window where the enemy should have been visible imho.

As far as I'm aware, there's nothing to say that you cannot hide if someone hits you. You retain your hide check until you need to move once more. In 3.5 even while attacking you can hide, albeit at a -20 penalty (not the case in pathfinder, impossible to hide while attacking), though you can attack, reveal yourself for a moment, and the immediately move afterwards to return to hiding. If there is something somewhere that says hitting someone automatically reveals them if they were hiding, can you please reveal that source?

[Gruftzwerg]

As far as I'm aware, there's nothing to say that you cannot hide if someone hits you. You retain your hide check until you need to move once more. In 3.5 even while attacking you can hide, albeit at a -20 penalty (not the case in pathfinder, impossible to hide while attacking), though you can attack, reveal yourself for a moment, and the immediately move afterwards to return to hiding. If there is something somewhere that says hitting someone automatically reveals them if they were hiding, can you please reveal that source?

Imho hide doesn't turn you invisible. It just hides your presence. And once you interact with somebody without a successful Sleight of Hand check (what is the chase when you bump into someone), your presence is revealed imho.

I mean, can you sneak infront of somebody's face and stick your finger in his nose without him seeing you? That only works with invisibility. With hide this would involve an epic lvl penalty for your hide check at least to do this kind of stuff (bumping into someone unnoticed with sole hide) imho.
And that's the reason why I assume several layers of deception (hide + invis of some kind).

[Westhart]

Imho hide doesn't turn you invisible. It just hides your presence. And once you interact with somebody without a successful Sleight of Hand check (what is the chase when you bump into someone), your presence is revealed imho.

I mean, can you sneak infront of somebody's face and stick your finger in his nose without him seeing you? That only works with invisibility. With hide this would involve an epic lvl penalty for your hide check at least to do this kind of stuff (bumping into someone unnoticed with sole hide) imho.
And that's the reason why I assume several layers of deception (hide + invis of some kind).

The epic penalty you mention would be -20, and there are classes/feats (I believe?) that reduce the penalty

[GiantFlyingHog]

Given how we have been discussing Hide, has the OP made any mention of being allowed to make spot checks? No matter how good this assassin is, he shoud still be alllowed to make a check. Since the OP specifically mentioned invisibility, I doubt he has been allowed to make a spot check.

[Westhart]

Given how we have been discussing Hide, has the OP made any mention of being allowed to make spot checks? No matter how good this assassin is, he shoud still be alllowed to make a check. Since the OP specifically mentioned invisibility, I doubt he has been allowed to make a spot check.

Good point, didn't consider that...

[gijoemike]

Hello, first post on the forum here.

I do not believe your GM is messing with you by cheating as much as some others believe. You have mentioned several times that "Assassin B" has left a jester's masks on your person to mess with you. I think that is super important detail. What if when "Assassin B" nabbed your holy symbol the very first encounter he handed you a cursed holy symbol. You willing accepted it (you don't get saves for willing accepted spells, normally reserved for potions, healing, buffs).

Literally everything you have described could be attributed to a cursed item. No spell can see the invisible rogue because there isn't one. Said cursed item returning to you even behind closed barred doors. A jester's mask is a common symbol of trickster deities and it clearly doesn't like other holy symbols. Holy water washed away your blindness. And you haven't given it a second thought because it is a festival and those masks are everywhere. Surely, it isn't the same mask each time?!?!

The guy you knocked over in combat wasn't even the same guy. No one saw him so you don't know. Your GM sounds like he has dropped about a billion hints that you are cursed by a divine cursed item.

I would go so far as to say "Assassin B" isn't an assassin or rogue at all. He is a cleric of a trickster god. He *might* still be around. His job is mostly done.

[Thurbane]

Not to blow my own horn, but this guy is an example of how hard to detect an NPC can be: Soratōkā (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22297554&postcount=169)

[ATHATH]

What if the assassin is using both mundane AND magical means to remain hidden? When one method (HiPS or Invisibility) fails, the other one should still work, allowing the assassin to renew the disabled/discovered ability.

[Goaty14]

Can't you just Scry on this guy? Locate Item your holy symbol? Tremorsense?

You can't ban divination, so just get the necromancer to do a thing.

[Doc_Pippin1]

I think what most people are forgetting is you don't have to detect this guy to win, either burn the haystack to find the needle or trick the needle into finding itself...

Several precious AOE spells are pretty much unstoppable like acid fog and haboob if you can lure him into a trap you can just explod-Inate the **** out of the area till he dies

or

you can use scrolls of contingency or glyph seals to booby trap your stuff, booby trap the booby traps booby trap everything

If you absolutely must try to outsmart this assassin I would recommend non magical means since your GM is nerf batting your spells, take a look at torch bug paste and flour pouchs also try following this turd with secondary tracking line a floor with a powder and look for foot prints or use a munch of sting and bells to detect his movement, or even a bunch of marbles and see which ones move with the added bonus of forcing him to balance or fall

A more hilarious option is to make sealed biohazard type suits and cover yourselves and everything in your manor with aboleth mucus...

[daremetoidareyo]

I'm telling you, try parlay. This is an opportunity for the DM to drop mad plot points. You don't have to fight this guy to win. You have to double his pay or kill his family. You can't explore these options without trying a communication Channel first.