Invisibility Ruling "Carrying"

[Setharious]

There is a small tree covering a road. It is too heavy to be lifted by a single party member. Two of party members work together to carry the log off of the road. One of the party members is invisible. Is the tree invisible or not? It is being carried by the invisible person, just not all the weight is on them.

[strangebloke]

rulebook to the head deals 1d4+STR bludgeoning damage. Pray that your dm is weak.

more seriously, they're not carrying it solo, so no. This would create ridiculous exploits where a player attempts to lift a wagon and because they're bearing part of the weight, the whole wage turns invisible.

[Jerrykhor]

If it can't be carried by a single person, then you are not carrying it. I know 5e didn't define what is 'carrying', but I would argue that it means you can keep possession of it for long periods of time and move around with it without much difficulty. If you can barely walk a few steps after lifting it, and require assistance, that is just 'lifting'.

Thats why olympics call it Weightlifting, and not Weightcarrying.

Edit: Maybe they did define it after all. PHB have rules for Carrying and Lifting. Carrying capacity is STR score x15, and lifting capacity is STR score x30. Anything heavier than your carrying capacity, you cannot carry it, but maybe you could lift it.

[swamp_slug]

The way we rule it at my table is that an item must either be carried by the character when the spell is cast, or it must be completely covered by something that was carried by the character when the spell was cast for it to be invisible. So I would say that the tree trunk remains visible but appears unsupported at one end, which makes it a good trick to make one character appear to be far stronger than they actually are.

[DwarfFighter]

There is a small tree covering a road. It is too heavy to be lifted by a single party member. Two of party members work together to carry the log off of the road. One of the party members is invisible. Is the tree invisible or not? It is being carried by the invisible person, just not all the weight is on them.

50% transparent.

-DF

[Porcupinata]

I don't have a fixed rule for this, but my on-the-fly ruling based on "common sense" and genre tropes would probably be something like...

1) If you are invisible and simply pick something up, the thing remains visible and is seen to be floating in the air as you carry it.
2) If you are invisible and you stuff something under your cloak or other clothing or into a pocket (or it's small enough and you put it entirely in your closed hand or entirely in your mouth) then it also becomes invisible.

Carrying a large log is clearly the first case rather than the second case, so the log would remain visible, with a visible person holding one end of it and the other end hanging (apparently) unsupported in the air.

[dpencil]

The word "carry" very often refers to being worn in D&D terminology. Trying to extrapolate that to anything that you lift is not really rules as intended.

[Carlobrand]

The word "carry" very often refers to being worn in D&D terminology. Trying to extrapolate that to anything that you lift is not really rules as intended.

And sometimes it does not. Per the spell description, "Anything the target is wearing or carrying is invisible as long as it is on the target’s person." You carry your glaive, you don't wear it, but it becomes invisible - unless you attack or cast a spell. You can carry up to 15 times your strength and move, slowly. You can lift more than 15 and up to 30 times your strength, but you can't move with it, and the spell says wear or carry, not lift, so something that takes you over that 15x threshold wouldn't become invisible.

An interesting ramification is a strong man could carry someone on his shoulders and they'd both be invisible, if his subject doesn't weight too much and if he and his subject aren't carrying much else. Here's your chance to rescue the princess.