Invisible is a weird status effect

[Flashkannon]

Per its text, the Invisible status condition seems to grant advantage to the creature's attack rolls and disadvantage to attack rolls against it, whether or not the target can see them. This seems... I don't how how strongly to put this, but it has me scratching my head. Is this errata'd somewhere I couldn't find? It just doesn't seem correct that things with Truesight or See Invisibility cast upon them would still take disadvantage attacking an Invisible creature.

Help me make sense of this?

[Millstone85]

Alas no, they never bothered correcting that obvious mistake.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Per its text, the Invisible status condition seems to grant advantage to the creature's attack rolls and disadvantage to attack rolls against it, whether or not the target can see them. This seems... I don't how how strongly to put this, but it has me scratching my head. Is this errata'd somewhere I couldn't find? It just doesn't seem correct that things with Truesight or See Invisibility cast upon them would still take disadvantage attacking an Invisible creature.

Help me make sense of this?

Specific beats general.

General: if invisible, then (advantage on attacks && disadvantage on being attacked)
Specific (Truesight/see invisibility): Nah, ignore that. They're not invisible to you.

[Lokishade]

The greatest advantage of DnD is that it is literally your imagination.

You don't need to wait for a technician or something to make it work the way you like.

[No brains]

It's also possible to think of invisible not as a prescriptive status effect, but a descriptive one. If a creature is invisible (that is, not visible*), it has the invisible status effect, whether by magic or simple line of sight.

We've also never cleared up if sleeping makes you go unconscious or even prone.

*some extraordinary senses allow effective 'seeing' without ocular use of the visible light spectrum

[Anthalon]

It's also possible to think of invisible not as a prescriptive status effect, but a descriptive one. If a creature is invisible (that is, not visible*), it has the invisible status effect, whether by magic or simple line of sight.

This is a great observation. The clearest example of this can be found in the Gloomstalker ranger: “While in darkness, you are invisible to any creature that relies on darkvision to see you in that darkness.”

Unlike other conditions such as prone, frightened, poisoned, etc, invisible is a Schrödinger’s condition, in that it can be active and inactive simultaneously.

[Demonslayer666]

I think the correct way to handle it is to make it situational, like cover. You do not have the invisibility condition if they can see you.

[Yora]

I think it's always been situational, at least in practice, though not explicitly spelled out.

"If a wizard casts invisibility on himself, but there is nobody around to look at him, does he still have the invisible status?"

Invisibility is not actually an inherent property of a creature or object. It only makes sense to say "Object X is invisible to subject Y."
Which for the invisibility spell really means "the target is invisible to creatures with regular vision."

When an attacker is blind, all targets are invisible to that attacker, even when no magical invisibility effect is on the target.

Invisibility as a status effect is really just a more convenient term than "not visible in certain situations."

[Flashkannon]

Specific beats general.

General: if invisible, then (advantage on attacks && disadvantage on being attacked)
Specific (Truesight/see invisibility): Nah, ignore that. They're not invisible to you.

I'd see that if they were part of the same paragraph, or the second paragraph started with the word "consequently", but they make sure to make the advantage its own bullet point, indicating that it's a separate portion of the effect. Thus, even though See Invisibility allows you to see creatures and objects "as if they were visible", that doesn't really alter the second bullet point. If it was phrased more like "For the duration, creatures in your line of sight do not benefit from being Invisible to you", or something like that.


It's also possible to think of invisible not as a prescriptive status effect, but a descriptive one. If a creature is invisible (that is, not visible*), it has the invisible status effect, whether by magic or simple line of sight.

We've also never cleared up if sleeping makes you go unconscious or even prone.

*some extraordinary senses allow effective 'seeing' without ocular use of the visible light spectrum
If it didn't have its own entry all to itself, I'd see that too, but they very specifically separated it out.

I suppose I'll have to homebrew it to make sense, but I was really hoping there was something I'd missed. Thank you for your contributions, regardless! I think I will just remove the second bullet point of the condition, meaning that one must rely on remaining unseen to obtain advantage from being Invisible.

[Greywander]

There's a few cases like this in 5e. The way certain spells, features, conditions, etc. are worded, strict RAW is "A, also B". There's no causal connection between A and B. If A is somehow invalidated, then B still applies. A common sense interpretation is more "A, therefore B", and thus if A is invalidated then so is B.

A more benign example of something like this is Ray of Frost (and similar spells). Ray of Frost has two effects: it deals cold damage, and it reduces a creature's speed. These are not causally connected. If a creature is immune to cold damage, they still suffer the speed reduction. Likewise, a creature immune to psychic damage would still suffer disadvantage on their next attack roll if they fail a save against Vicious Mockery. And so on. These ones are actually probably intentional, particularly in the case of Chill Touch, which specifically calls out having a special effect against undead, whereas most creatures immune to necrotic damage are undead.

It's a bit silly that an invisible creature still gets the benefits of being unseen even if they are, in fact, able to be perceived. I think some of the other posters here are correct that invisibility shouldn't be treated like a normal condition. Or, the condition simply say that you are treated as being unseen to normal vision, rather than explicitly imposing advantage and disadvantage on attack rolls itself. Being unseen already does that, it's redundant for the invisibility condition to also do that (which is an indication this it was meant to be read as "A, therefore B" rather than "A, also B").

I also find it odd that there are senses that count as "seeing" but don't use vision. Blindsight is almost always ambiguous as to how exactly it functions, with just a few cases explicitly saying the creature uses echolocation. Tremorsense is the other one. Technically, tremorsense should be considered an extension of the sense of touch, possibly with an element of hearing. Hearing is itself a highly specialized sense of touch designed to respond to vibrations in the air.

(Sidenote: Tremorsense on an otherwise blind PC offers a really interesting tradeoff. Flying enemies are your bane, but tremorsense is as good if not better than blindsight against those on the ground. I think it can even "see" through walls and such. Would make for a very interesting caster, allowing you to use spells that require sight in situations that someone with normal vision couldn't, at the cost of having a maximum range equal to your tremorsense range, and not being able to target things in the air. RIP Featherfall, I guess.)

[Composer99]

I'd see that if they were part of the same paragraph, or the second paragraph started with the word "consequently", but they make sure to make the advantage its own bullet point, indicating that it's a separate portion of the effect. Thus, even though See Invisibility allows you to see creatures and objects "as if they were visible", that doesn't really alter the second bullet point. If it was phrased more like "For the duration, creatures in your line of sight do not benefit from being Invisible to you", or something like that.


(a) I concur with PhoenixPhyre; it's a case of a specific rule (see invisibility or truesight) superceding a general one.

(b) What is more, it seems you're overlooking the all-or-nothing nature of conditions. If you're not invisible to a creature (say, one who can see you courtesy of a spell), it follows necessarily and naturally that neither bullet point of the invisible condition applies to you with respect to that creature.

[Contrast]

(b) What is more, it seems you're overlooking the all-or-nothing nature of conditions. If you're not invisible to a creature (say, one who can see you courtesy of a spell), it follows necessarily and naturally that neither bullet point of the invisible condition applies to you with respect to that creature.

This is precisely the problem with the wording of the invisible condition though.

Truesight lets you 'see invisible creatures and objects' but in the condition the advantage/disadv is not technically presented as a benefit of them not being able to see you but as an entirely separate benefit of the condition of being Invisible. As presented being Invisible has two distinct and unrelated benefits - 1) people can't see you 2) adv/disadv with attacking. Truesight addresses the first but not the second.

Lets imagine someone has a special item that means they automatically pass Strength and Dex saving throws even if paralyzed. Would you be arguing that this ability meant they we should disregard the other bullet points of the paralyzed condition on that person? Immunity to one segment of a condition does not automatically denote immunity to all unless specifically clarified as such.


Obviously all sensible people just effectively ignore the second bullet point. The most frustrating thing is that the second bullet point is entirely superfluous - the general rules for unseen attackers would have covered it but presumably they put it there as a reminder just in case people forgot those rules existed.

[JackPhoenix]

(Sidenote: Tremorsense on an otherwise blind PC offers a really interesting tradeoff. Flying enemies are your bane, but tremorsense is as good if not better than blindsight against those on the ground. I think it can even "see" through walls and such. Would make for a very interesting caster, allowing you to use spells that require sight in situations that someone with normal vision couldn't, at the cost of having a maximum range equal to your tremorsense range, and not being able to target things in the air. RIP Featherfall, I guess.)

Tremorsense allows you to pinpoint creature's location. It does not allow you to see it.

[da newt]

RAW Tremorsense allows you to pinpoint creature's location. It does not allow you to see it. Blindsight also does not allow you to see.

When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see.

When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it.

Therefore by RAW all creatures that have no vision and use tremorsense or blindsight always attack w/ DISADV and all attacks against them are at ADV. Further they cannot cast any spells that require a target they can see.

In this case, RAW is obviously ridiculous.

[Keltest]

RAW Tremorsense allows you to pinpoint creature's location. It does not allow you to see it. Blindsight also does not allow you to see.

When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see.

When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it.

Therefore by RAW all creatures that have no vision and use tremorsense or blindsight always attack w/ DISADV and all attacks against them are at ADV. Further they cannot cast any spells that require a target they can see.

In this case, RAW is obviously ridiculous.

Well if we're going super literal RAW like this, then the disadvantage/advantage comes from the blinded condition, not strictly from the lack of visual sight. Blindsight lets you ignore being blinded within its range.

[stoutstien]

RAW Tremorsense allows you to pinpoint creature's location. It does not allow you to see it. Blindsight also does not allow you to see.

When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see.

When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it.

Therefore by RAW all creatures that have no vision and use tremorsense or blindsight always attack w/ DISADV and all attacks against them are at ADV. Further they cannot cast any spells that require a target they can see.

In this case, RAW is obviously ridiculous.

Blind sight has different wording than tremor. Blind sight specific says they don't need to see their surroundings to "see" it where tremor only give them location.

[da newt]

RAW Blindsight and Tremorsense do not allow you to "see" they allow you to "perceive." The rules for unseen attacks requires the attacker / target to "see" not sense or perceive. It also does not require the blinded condition for ADV/DISADV from unseen rules (quoted in earlier post). You can perceive exactly where a target is (blindsense, smell, hearing, tremmorsense, etc) but if you can't see them you attack at DISADV and cannot target w/ spells that require a target you can see. Yes, it's dumb, but it's RAW.

PHB:
Blindsight
A creature with Blindsight can perceive its surroundings without relying on sight, within a specific radius. Creatures without eyes, such as oozes, and Creatures with Echolocation or heightened Senses, such as bats and true Dragons, have this sense.

DMG:
BLINDSIGHT
A monster with blindsight can perceive its surroundings without relying on sight, within a specific radius.
Creatures without eyes, such as grimlocks and gray oozes, typically have this special sense, as do creatures with echolocation or heightened senses, such as bats and true dragons.
If a monster is naturally blind, it has a parenthetical note to this effect, indicating that the radius of its blindsight defines the maximum range of its perception.

DMG:
Tremorsense
A monster with tremorsense can detect and pinpoint the origin of vibrations within a specific radius, provided that the monster and the source of the vibrations are in contact with the same ground or substance.
Tremorsense can't be used to detect flying or incorporeal creatures. Many burrowing creatures, such as ankhegs, have this special sense.

[stoutstien]

RAW Blindsight and Tremorsense do not allow you to "see" they allow you to "perceive." The rules for unseen attacks requires the attacker / target to "see" not sense or perceive. It also does not require the blinded condition for ADV/DISADV from unseen rules (quoted in earlier post). You can perceive exactly where a target is (blindsense, smell, hearing, tremmorsense, etc) but if you can't see them you attack at DISADV and cannot target w/ spells that require a target you can see. Yes, it's dumb, but it's RAW.

PHB:
Blindsight
A creature with Blindsight can perceive its surroundings without relying on sight, within a specific radius. Creatures without eyes, such as oozes, and Creatures with Echolocation or heightened Senses, such as bats and true Dragons, have this sense.

DMG:
BLINDSIGHT
A monster with blindsight can perceive its surroundings without relying on sight, within a specific radius.
Creatures without eyes, such as grimlocks and gray oozes, typically have this special sense, as do creatures with echolocation or heightened senses, such as bats and true dragons.
If a monster is naturally blind, it has a parenthetical note to this effect, indicating that the radius of its blindsight defines the maximum range of its perception.

DMG:
Tremorsense
A monster with tremorsense can detect and pinpoint the origin of vibrations within a specific radius, provided that the monster and the source of the vibrations are in contact with the same ground or substance.
Tremorsense can't be used to detect flying or incorporeal creatures. Many burrowing creatures, such as ankhegs, have this special sense.

Specific superseded general. They rules for blind sight bypass the sight rules because they don't need/have eyes but can 'see'. perceive's definition means to see and understand something so only them most tortured reading supports that blind sight is under permanent disadvantage.

Tremorsight only relays vibrations which in and of themselves aren't the target.

[da newt]

I agree that blindsight should qualify as seeing for the purposes of targeting and being targeted, but the actual definition of perceive does not mean to see. You can perceive something with all of your senses, but the rule for unseen attacker / target only allows for seeing. specific>general

perceive:
1.become aware or conscious of (something); come to realize or understand.
"his mouth fell open as he perceived the truth"

1a. become aware of (something) by the use of one of the senses, especially that of sight.
"he perceived the faintest of flushes creeping up her neck"
Similar: see, make out, pick out, discern, detect, catch sight of, spot, observe, glimpse
notice, recognize, identify, hear, smell, sniff (out), scent, nose out, feel, taste, sense

2. interpret or look on (someone or something) in a particular way; regard as.
"if Guy does not perceive himself as disabled, nobody else should"

[stoutstien]

I agree that blindsight should qualify as seeing for the purposes of targeting and being targeted, but the actual definition of perceive does not mean to see. You can perceive something with all of your senses, but the rule for unseen attacker / target only allows for seeing. specific>general

perceive:
1.become aware or conscious of (something); come to realize or understand.
"his mouth fell open as he perceived the truth"

1a. become aware of (something) by the use of one of the senses, especially that of sight.
"he perceived the faintest of flushes creeping up her neck"
Similar: see, make out, pick out, discern, detect, catch sight of, spot, observe, glimpse
notice, recognize, identify, hear, smell, sniff (out), scent, nose out, feel, taste, sense

2. interpret or look on (someone or something) in a particular way; regard as.
"if Guy does not perceive himself as disabled, nobody else should"

Guess it a good thing it does work that way and the designers, RAW, RTMS, and general reading of the language of the book(s) support it.

[Greywander]

Huh, I guess I just interpreted these special senses as being augments or alternatives to vision. I do think blindsight should count, since it specifically calls out not needing to rely on sight, which implies that blindsight is providing sufficient information that normal sight is redundant. Now, there is a question as to the effectiveness of blindsight, e.g. a bat using echolocation isn't going to be able to read or perceive colors, but does this apply to every instance of blindsight?

Tremorsense, though, doesn't seem to have any implication that it can substitute for sight. I suppose my question then is what's the point? You can usually already use other senses, notably hearing, to pinpoint the location of a creature so long as they're not hidden, and no limitations are placed on hearing. Now, this doesn't mean hearing has an infinite range, nor does it mean you can hear through solid barriers, it just means whether you can hear something or not, and how accurately you can use that information to pinpoint someone's location, falls to DM fiat. But we do know that you can hear things from quite far away, and that sound can travel through walls; with a permissive DM, your sense of hearing could render tremorsense entirely redundant.

After looking over some monster stat blocks, I found the Core Spawn Crawler, which has blindsight out to 30 feet and tremorsense out to 60 feet, and it specifies that the crawler is blind beyond their blindsight radius. So perhaps tremorsense is indeed not intended to act as an alternative to sight. That said, you could easily add a trait to a character that allows them to "see" things they can detect via tremorsense. Kind of like how some creatures with a burrow speed have an earthglide or tunneler trait that augments their burrow speed. So by default tremorsense doesn't act as sight, but if augmented by a specific trait then it could act as sight.

Anyway, back on topic, the problem is that, strictly speaking, being able to see a creature doesn't actually remove the invisible condition. So it can be simultaneously true that you can see a creature and that that creature is invisible. Some abilities will specify that an invisible creature is not invisible to you, but that's not the same as simply saying that you can see the invisible creature. In the latter case, you can see them, but they're also still invisible. This is strict RAW; common sense tells us that if we can see a creature, then they're obviously not invisible to us.

[ad_hoc]

I've always thought of Tremorsense being the power the Graboids have in Tremors.

It allows a creature who is burrowing through the ground to pinpoint creatures who are walking on the ground to attack them.

[Greywander]

I've always thought of Tremorsense being the power the Graboids have in Tremors.

It allows a creature who is burrowing through the ground to pinpoint creatures who are walking on the ground to attack them.
So... would they have disadvantage on the attack? Or are we assuming that at the instant of the attack, the creature with tremorsense is able to lay eyes on their target?

I'm still a bit hung up on tremorsense vs. hearing. Hearing as a sense is ill-defined in 5e, but it seems like it already does like 90% of what tremorsense does. If a creature isn't hidden, it is already assumed that you know their location, which is strange because again no range limit is specified. While there's no rule explicitly allowing you to know the location of someone 100 miles away so long as they're not hidden, it's pretty clear that you would know the location of someone 5 feet away, and there's no rules for how distance affects this. Technically, this doesn't even involve hearing, though that's typically the justification for how you're able to ascertain someone's location if you can't see them and they're not hidden.

I'm still inclined to think tremorsense should be treated as seeing your target. As with echolocation, the type of information will be different from normal vision. You can probably get very accurate reads of a creature's weight and size, and probably "hear" the sounds of various materials through the vibrations, e.g. the creaking of leather, the jingle of metal buckles, the flutter of cloth. As with echolocation, you couldn't read or see color, and a lot of other information would be hidden from you.

I see tremorsense as what Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender uses. Almost exactly, in fact. There's even the fight scene between her and Aang where Aang jumps and Toph launches an attack, predicting where he'll land, but Aang, being an airbender, jumps further than a normal person could. This tells me that Toph had very limited ability to sense Aang's position while he was in the air, but would have been able to predict where he'd land based on the vibrations he made when he jumped, had he not been an airbender. Toph's tremorsense is startlingly sharp, and would qualify as "seeing" the target in my book.

[JackPhoenix]

So... would they have disadvantage on the attack? Or are we assuming that at the instant of the attack, the creature with tremorsense is able to lay eyes on their target?

The creature needs to unburrow first (or at least create an opening in reach of the target) anyway, as the ground would provide total cover.


I'm still inclined to think tremorsense should be treated as seeing your target. As with echolocation, the type of information will be different from normal vision. You can probably get very accurate reads of a creature's weight and size, and probably "hear" the sounds of various materials through the vibrations, e.g. the creaking of leather, the jingle of metal buckles, the flutter of cloth. As with echolocation, you couldn't read or see color, and a lot of other information would be hidden from you.

Tremorsense allows you to pick a source of vibration within range, as long as you touch the same surface. It ignores cover, and hiding (as that makes creature unheard and unseen, but doesn't help with other senses) It's not hearing, only information where the vibrations are coming from... and that doesn't need to be a creature: using thumpers to call sandworms is pretty effective.


I see tremorsense as what Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender uses. Almost exactly, in fact. There's even the fight scene between her and Aang where Aang jumps and Toph launches an attack, predicting where he'll land, but Aang, being an airbender, jumps further than a normal person could. This tells me that Toph had very limited ability to sense Aang's position while he was in the air, but would have been able to predict where he'd land based on the vibrations he made when he jumped, had he not been an airbender. Toph's tremorsense is startlingly sharp, and would qualify as "seeing" the target in my book.

Well, that's easily solve. Just check what Toph's stat block says, and... ah. She doesn't have any. Well then, guess speculations on what she can do is kinda useless to determine how unrelated ability works.

[Flashkannon]

(a) I concur with PhoenixPhyre; it's a case of a specific rule (see invisibility or truesight) superceding a general one.

(b) What is more, it seems you're overlooking the all-or-nothing nature of conditions. If you're not invisible to a creature (say, one who can see you courtesy of a spell), it follows necessarily and naturally that neither bullet point of the invisible condition applies to you with respect to that creature.

Well, see, this is where Faerie Fire comes in to complicate the issue. I wasn't aware of it when I was making the earlier poses, but Faerie Fire says "the affected creature or object can’t benefit from being invisible." which means that they knew exactly what they were doing with this, and there exists a wording that bypasses Invisibility RAW, and that See Invisibility and Truesight do not possess it. Really makes this more frustrating, honestly, but there it is.


There's a few cases like this in 5e. The way certain spells, features, conditions, etc. are worded, strict RAW is "A, also B". There's no causal connection between A and B. If A is somehow invalidated, then B still applies. A common sense interpretation is more "A, therefore B", and thus if A is invalidated then so is B.

A more benign example of something like this is Ray of Frost (and similar spells). Ray of Frost has two effects: it deals cold damage, and it reduces a creature's speed. These are not causally connected. If a creature is immune to cold damage, they still suffer the speed reduction. Likewise, a creature immune to psychic damage would still suffer disadvantage on their next attack roll if they fail a save against Vicious Mockery. And so on. These ones are actually probably intentional, particularly in the case of Chill Touch, which specifically calls out having a special effect against undead, whereas most creatures immune to necrotic damage are undead.

It's a bit silly that an invisible creature still gets the benefits of being unseen even if they are, in fact, able to be perceived. I think some of the other posters here are correct that invisibility shouldn't be treated like a normal condition. Or, the condition simply say that you are treated as being unseen to normal vision, rather than explicitly imposing advantage and disadvantage on attack rolls itself. Being unseen already does that, it's redundant for the invisibility condition to also do that (which is an indication this it was meant to be read as "A, therefore B" rather than "A, also B").

I also find it odd that there are senses that count as "seeing" but don't use vision. Blindsight is almost always ambiguous as to how exactly it functions, with just a few cases explicitly saying the creature uses echolocation. Tremorsense is the other one. Technically, tremorsense should be considered an extension of the sense of touch, possibly with an element of hearing. Hearing is itself a highly specialized sense of touch designed to respond to vibrations in the air.

(Sidenote: Tremorsense on an otherwise blind PC offers a really interesting tradeoff. Flying enemies are your bane, but tremorsense is as good if not better than blindsight against those on the ground. I think it can even "see" through walls and such. Would make for a very interesting caster, allowing you to use spells that require sight in situations that someone with normal vision couldn't, at the cost of having a maximum range equal to your tremorsense range, and not being able to target things in the air. RIP Featherfall, I guess.)

The discussion on Tremorsense and Blindsight has been very useful, actually, thank you all for telling me - my players were rather concerned about this change in Invisibility, as one of them had been counting on that particular nonsense in the Invisibility condition to make Greater Invisibility into a high survivability tool.

[Composer99]

This is precisely the problem with the wording of the invisible condition though.

Truesight lets you 'see invisible creatures and objects' but in the condition the advantage/disadv is not technically presented as a benefit of them not being able to see you but as an entirely separate benefit of the condition of being Invisible. As presented being Invisible has two distinct and unrelated benefits - 1) people can't see you 2) adv/disadv with attacking. Truesight addresses the first but not the second.

Lets imagine someone has a special item that means they automatically pass Strength and Dex saving throws even if paralyzed. Would you be arguing that this ability meant they we should disregard the other bullet points of the paralyzed condition on that person? Immunity to one segment of a condition does not automatically denote immunity to all unless specifically clarified as such.


Obviously all sensible people just effectively ignore the second bullet point. The most frustrating thing is that the second bullet point is entirely superfluous - the general rules for unseen attackers would have covered it but presumably they put it there as a reminder just in case people forgot those rules existed.

No.

This is preposterous.

The invisible condition is not a game of semantic parsing of bullet points. It's a single holistic condition. Either you are invisible to a creature or you are not.

If a creature can see you, it inevitably follows that you are not invisible to that creature. Therefore you gain no benefit from the invisibility condition against that creature, meaning neither bullet point of the condition applies to you with respect to that creature.

What is so difficult to understand about this?


Well, see, this is where Faerie Fire comes in to complicate the issue. I wasn't aware of it when I was making the earlier poses, but Faerie Fire says "the affected creature or object can’t benefit from being invisible." which means that they knew exactly what they were doing with this, and there exists a wording that bypasses Invisibility RAW, and that See Invisibility and Truesight do not possess it. Really makes this more frustrating, honestly, but there it is.


No.

There is no complication, and no confusion.

The invisible condition is not a game of semantic parsing of bullet points. It's a single holistic condition. Either you are invisible to a creature or you are not.

If a creature can see you, it inevitably follows that you are not invisible to that creature. Therefore you gain no benefit from the invisibility condition against that creature, meaning neither bullet point of the condition applies to you with respect to that creature.

What is so difficult to understand about this?

[Greywander]

No.

This is preposterous.

The invisible condition is not a game of semantic parsing of bullet points. It's a single holistic condition. Either you are invisible to a creature or you are not.

If a creature can see you, it inevitably follows that you are not invisible to that creature. Therefore you gain no benefit from the invisibility condition against that creature, meaning neither bullet point of the condition applies to you with respect to that creature.

What is so difficult to understand about this?
It is preposterous. But we're not the ones being preposterous by pointing out the flaw in how the rules are written. It is the devs who wrote those rules who were preposterous. Pointing out these "semantic parsing of bullet points" helps to identify flaws in the way the rules are written, and subsequently patch those with a houserule. No one is actually arguing that invisibility should work this way.

Being unseen is not the only effect of the invisible condition. It should have been the only effect of the invisible condition, though; the second bullet point is entirely redundant if the target can't be seen. The only time it would come up is if, for some reason, the target can be seen but still has the invisible condition. I don't know how the devs didn't catch this.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The rules are not written for close parsing. Doing it that way is bad interpretation, not RAW. Context and meaning matter. This is not 3e, and that style of BS reading is one thing we left in the past where it belongs.

[RSP]

Similar issue with Hiding. Per RAW, it’s not situational: once any character notices a Hiding creature, it no longer uses its Stealth role and would need to Hide again:

“Until you are discovered or you stop hiding, that check’s total is contested by the Wisdom (Perception) check of any creature that actively searches for signs of your presence.”

So, RAW, if a PC hides, but is then seen by other PCs (or other PCs notice them with Passive Perception), their Dex (Stealth) check is no longer usable, because they’ve been “discovered.”

Obviously this is a ridiculous way to play, but it is the RAW.

[Flashkannon]

It is preposterous. But we're not the ones being preposterous by pointing out the flaw in how the rules are written. It is the devs who wrote those rules who were preposterous. Pointing out these "semantic parsing of bullet points" helps to identify flaws in the way the rules are written, and subsequently patch those with a houserule. No one is actually arguing that invisibility should work this way.

Being unseen is not the only effect of the invisible condition. It should have been the only effect of the invisible condition, though; the second bullet point is entirely redundant if the target can't be seen. The only time it would come up is if, for some reason, the target can be seen but still has the invisible condition. I don't know how the devs didn't catch this.
See, they get it. It's a little more egregious considering how often a creature that is Invisible would be seen, including the likes of Truesight, Blindsight, etc discussed earlier here, which show up on a large amount of higher-power minsters. It's not a super big deal to houserule, a rather simple change, really, but it's concerning that it was missed.

The rules are not written for close parsing. Doing it that way is bad interpretation, not RAW. Context and meaning matter. This is not 3e, and that style of BS reading is one thing we left in the past where it belongs.
I'm not quite sure what you mean. Any attempt to discern the meaning of the rules is parsing them. When, in your opinion, does "parsing" turn into "close parsing"? They presented the rules text for Invisibility in its own heading, and included bullet points to separate it out into separate sub-chunks under that heading. It would be a little disingenuous to purposefully ignore the very obviously intentional formatting. Like, I don't like that it's like this, but it is written on the page that way. To argue otherwise would mean to argue that the rules were rather carelessly constructed, which is, I guess, something you could argue, but that'd be a dire situation I'd rather not contemplate too much.

[Segev]

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Any attempt to discern the meaning of the rules is parsing them. When, in your opinion, does "parsing" turn into "close parsing"?

Generally speaking? When you go from, "Ah, yes, that makes sense," when you read it, to, "wait, now that I read it more closely, it stops making sense."

If it never made sense and that's why you're reading it more closely, then it's not too "close parsing."


It is very clear that the Invisibility condition is describing the effects of not being visible. If you are visible, you do not get those benefits just because you have a tag that says "you are invisible." Those saying, "If a creature can see you, you're not invisible to that creature," are correct.

[stoutstien]

I never understood why it's in the condition section. It's redundant with the sight rules and seen/unseen target in the combat chapter.

[Segev]

I never understood why it's in the condition section. It's redundant with the sight rules and seen/unseen target in the combat chapter.

Because some things reference things being invisible, so they made a condition for reference. All it really is doing is re-stating the seen/unseen target rules.

[AdAstra]

While I think that the rule could be better worded, along the lines of "You cannot be seen by other creatures, and thus gain the following benefits:" the meaning is pretty obvious.

As fun as it is to rag on Drown-Healing and other such stuff, those sorts of things are rarely an actual problem. Things like whether Blindsight counts as seeing for the purposes of X actually is somewhat of an issue, since there's a fair bit of room for interpretation there. But overall it's still pretty clear. Even creatures without Blindsight can perceive other creatures without being able to see them. That's (part of) why when Invisible your location is still known unless you Hide. Blindsight clearly goes a step beyond the normal capabilities of a creature, or everyone would have it. In combination with the fact that it's Blindsight should be a good indication that it's functionally a substitute for being able to see.

[stoutstien]

Because some things reference things being invisible, so they made a condition for reference. All it really is doing is re-stating the seen/unseen target rules.

I could see that if invisible needed that kinda of support but 5e's vision rules are rudimentary and invisible's rules should needed shifted over so it falls with true and blind sight.
Not like the condition section is even where it makes sense.

[Segev]

I could see that if invisible needed that kinda of support but 5e's vision rules are rudimentary and invisible's rules should needed shifted over so it falls with true and blind sight.
Not like the condition section is even where it makes sense.

:shrug: I am explaining it from the perspective of trying to guess what they were thinking. I am unsure if I'd have put it there if I were on the writing team without knowing that the question of whether it should be there ever arose. But I would've written the vision and particularly the heavy obscurment rules differently, too.

[stoutstien]

:shrug: I am explaining it from the perspective of trying to guess what they were thinking. I am unsure if I'd have put it there if I were on the writing team without knowing that the question of whether it should be there ever arose. But I would've written the vision and particularly the heavy obscurment rules differently, too.

Aye. I guess I'm not one to have an emotional stance on a lot of things but the layout 5e material/rules just irks me to no end. They really are elegant in play but presented in such a way its like they wanted to keep it a secret.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Generally speaking? When you go from, "Ah, yes, that makes sense," when you read it, to, "wait, now that I read it more closely, it stops making sense."

If it never made sense and that's why you're reading it more closely, then it's not too "close parsing."


It is very clear that the Invisibility condition is describing the effects of not being visible. If you are visible, you do not get those benefits just because you have a tag that says "you are invisible." Those saying, "If a creature can see you, you're not invisible to that creature," are correct.

Yeah. Another telltale is when your interpretation would change if the formatting changed. If that'd all been one paragraph instead of bullet points, this reading makes no sense.

When there are two plausible readings and one produces absurd results, choose the other. Even if it means ignoring formatting details.

[Greywander]

The rules are not written for close parsing. Doing it that way is bad interpretation, not RAW. Context and meaning matter. This is not 3e, and that style of BS reading is one thing we left in the past where it belongs.
You're... not entirely wrong. This is probably how the rules should be approached, at the table. The problem with this mindset is that it makes the rules subjective. At the table, the rules are subjective, as whatever the DM says is how it is, but this isn't conducive to discussions away from the table about what the rules of the game are. For example:

To argue otherwise would mean to argue that the rules were rather carelessly constructed, which is, I guess, something you could argue, but that'd be a dire situation I'd rather not contemplate too much.
If we accept that the rules don't mean what they literally say, that they need to be run through some subjective interpretation, then we've basically agreed that there are no rules and anything goes. If someone comes to me with a rules question, then the only answer I can give them is, "IDK, ask your DM," which isn't helpful to them. There's always the chance that the DM could rule things differently from RAW, but even if they do there's no way I could even guess how their ruling would be different. So if someone asks me a rules question and I actually want to give them a helpful answer, the only thing I can do is give them the literal RAW. There are a few isolated cases that often get houseruled, and usually in the same way, so if I'm aware of that then I'll mention that, too, since that will typically be more in line with how the DM will actually rule.

Again, part of the benefit of these discussions is identifying poorly written rules and formulating a houserule that will "patch" that bad rule. This helps with rules discussions since those patches will tend toward being common knowledge, so more people are already aware of the issue and how to fix it.


It is very clear that the Invisibility condition is describing the effects of not being visible. If you are visible, you do not get those benefits just because you have a tag that says "you are invisible." Those saying, "If a creature can see you, you're not invisible to that creature," are correct.
If what the rule means is different from what the rule says, then it's a poorly written rule. We're fortunate that we have common sense and can instantly see that the literal rule makes no sense, and thus patch it with a houserule, but that's not an excuse for the rule to be poorly written in the first place.


the meaning is pretty obvious.
The rules should say what they mean. Is that too much to ask? This particular rule isn't even that complex, so it's not like the issue is arising from strange interactions within a massive subsystem.

Now, is this a super big deal? Not really, it's an easy fix, and most of us have been using the "fixed" rule before we even realized the rule was broken. It's just strange how many people are defending the devs for writing a badly written rule. Is it really so hard to say "yeah, they messed up, just patch it with a houserule"?

[Xetheral]

Now, is this a super big deal? Not really, it's an easy fix, and most of us have been using the "fixed" rule before we even realized the rule was broken. It's just strange how many people are defending the devs for writing a badly written rule. Is it really so hard to say "yeah, they messed up, just patch it with a houserule"?

Is it hard to say they messed up and patch it with a houserule? No. But this rule is amenable to multiple readings, as evidenced by the fact that so many people did and/or do read it as non-broken. So why declare the broken version to be "correct" and implement an explicit houserule rather than just going with the non-broken reading in the first place? What purpose would that serve?

[Greywander]

It's not amenable to multiple readings. It's amenable to multiple subjective interpretations, but there is only one correct literal reading. While you are invisible, you have advantage on your attacks, and others have disadvantage on their attacks against you, even if they can see you. This is what the rules literally say. The advantage/disadvantage is decoupled from simply being unseen and made an explicit part of being invisible, and invisibility is a condition that affects your character, regardless of whether you can be seen or not. If someone can see you, then it only interacts with the aspect of invisibility that says you can't be seen. That's it.

I don't care that the intention is "obvious". I care about what is True. And what's True is that this is how the rule is written. I'm not going to pretend the rule says something it doesn't. I'm not going to willingly believe something I know is a lie just because it's easier. The rule says what it says. It's a bad rule. I'd rather fix the rule than pretend it doesn't need fixing.

If you can't understand this, then it's probably down to a difference of personalities. I'm a perfectionist, so I can't stand something being "wrong". Saying a rule says something it doesn't is "incorrect", and that is intolerable to me. Maybe it isn't for you. Just think of it as me being hard Lawful in real life. It's basically the same motivation behind obsessively straightening crooked picture frames; it is antithetical to me to simply pretend that a crooked frame is actually straight, and I feel compelled to straighten the frame.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Literal is not correct by definition. In fact, for most writing, literal is the objectively wrong reading.

[Segev]

It's not amenable to multiple readings. It's amenable to multiple subjective interpretations, but there is only one correct literal reading. While you are invisible, you have advantage on your attacks, and others have disadvantage on their attacks against you, even if they can see you.I fail to see anything in the Condition that says, explicitly, "even if they see you." I would argue, in fact, that you are not invisible if they can see you.

[Contrast]

I fail to see anything in the Condition that says, explicitly, "even if they see you." I would argue, in fact, that you are not invisible if they can see you.

The frightened condition has 2 bullet points, one giving disadv on attack rolls and ability checks and one preventing you willingly moving closer to the source of your fear.

If someone had an ability that read 'While frightened you do not have disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls while the source of its fear is within line of sight' would you argue that meant they could move closer to the source of their fear?

Immunity to part of the effects of a condition should not imply immunity to the rest. Or should it? A lot of people in this thread seem to be arguing we should just intuit when that is the case (and when it isn't).

In invisibility we know there is an obvious causal link between not being able to be seen and the adv/disadv so we know to just ignore what the rules are telling us but that isn't clear for other conditions that follow a similar pattern. Is it intended that is how frightened should work? If we assume Invisibilty was intentionally written that way, I have no idea. If Invisibility was accidentally written that way, its very obvious.


Edit - And you are invisible even if someone can see you. Imagine being observed by one person with Truesight and one person without at the same time. The fact that the person with Truesight can see me doesn't mean the person without can.

Edit 2 - Follow up thought. A number of people I've played with over the years have made the observation that its weird being invisible doesn't make hiding easier (aside from allowing you to do it where you otherwise couldn't). I always make the point that a DM is free to grant adv if they think it is situationally helpful but that if they'd made it an intrinsic part of the condition it would be kinda weird mechanically that it gave you adv even when they could see you.

[Xetheral]

It's not amenable to multiple readings. It's amenable to multiple subjective interpretations, but there is only one correct literal reading.

Even if that were true (which I dispute based on the evidence multiple readings in this thread), we have no objective method to determine which reading is the correct one. Outside of progamming languages and Lojban, there is no method for unambiguously resolving disputes regarding textual interpretation. And the rules weren't written in programming languages or Lojban. Even trying to stick to the "literal" words on the page (and I agree with PhoenixPhyre that doing so is rarely going to lead to correct interpretations), interpretation still isn't unambiguous. Consider:


"While you are invisible, you have advantage on your attacks, and others have disadvantage on their attacks against you, even if they can see you. This is what the rules literally say."

Despite ostensibly sticking to the literal text, you're making an inference here. Specifically, as Segev notes, the rules don't include the words "even if they can see you". You're inferring that clause from the structure of the rule, but the truth of such an inference isn't unambiguous. Indeed, as an inference, it can't be unambiguous--there's always going to be room to argue whether or not an inference is a good one.


If you can't understand this, then it's probably down to a difference of personalities.

I can indeed understand it, and I think our personalities in this regard may not be all that different. Rather, I think the dispute is probably more epistemological. I don't share your confidence that any one reading of the rule can meaningfully be said to be True* when I don't have a method to unambiguously determine which reading that is. To use your picture-hanging analogy, I see it as akin trying to straighten a picture in an old house where neither the floor nor the ceiling are level with the ground or parallel with each other, and the furniture is uneven--there simply isn't an unambiguous reference against which to level our photos, however much we might wish there were.

(*With a pedantic caveat for trivial readings that just reiterate the original text.)

[Segev]

If an ability says "you are not frightened by X," then you are not Frightened by that creature.

If you can ("effectively") see the creature, it is not invisible to you.

[Greywander]

Despite ostensibly sticking to the literal text, you're making an inference here. Specifically, as Segev notes, the rules don't include the words "even if they can see you". You're inferring that clause from the structure of the rule, but the truth of such an inference isn't unambiguous. Indeed, as an inference, it can't be unambiguous--there's always going to be room to argue whether or not an inference is a good one.
Being able to see a creature doesn't stop them from being invisible. Certain effects that allow you to see an invisible creature specifically call out that you treat the creature as if they weren't invisible, in which case the invisible condition is ignored for interactions between the two of you. But not every ability that allows you to see invisible creatures has this clause. Thus you end up with a situation where you can see a creature who is invisible, but they still count as being invisible for you.

Invisibility has two effects. One of these effects is that you become unseen. Being able to see an invisible creature only negates this specific part of the invisible condition. The other aspect, the advantage and disadvantage on attacks, still applies, because nothing has negated it.

The idea that being able to see an invisible creature would negate invisibility entirely is a logical leap that isn't part of the rules. Now, I understand this logical leap; it's obviously how it was meant to work. But I still contend that this is not what was written.

Consider an example where we have Condition X. Condition X has two effects on a creature: A and B. Ability Y allows you to ignore effect A on creatures with Condition X. So what about effect B? It still applies. Why would you ever think that effect B would no longer apply just because effect A was negated? And yet, that's exactly what you're doing here. Merely because the condition is called "invisible" you've made an assumption that being able to see the creature somehow negates invisibility in its entirety, but this isn't how rules work. This is, of course, how it should be run at the table, but that is in spite of, not in accordance to, the actual rules. The rules are wrong.


I can indeed understand it, and I think our personalities in this regard may not be all that different. Rather, I think the dispute is probably more epistemological. I don't share your confidence that any one reading of the rule can meaningfully be said to be True* when I don't have a method to unambiguously determine which reading that is. To use your picture-hanging analogy, I see it as akin trying to straighten a picture in an old house where neither the floor nor the ceiling are level with the ground or parallel with each other, and the furniture is uneven--there simply isn't an unambiguous reference against which to level our photos, however much we might wish there were.

(*With a pedantic caveat for trivial readings that just reiterate the original text.)
Sounds like this might be a difference in world view, then. Relativism vs. Absolutism. While I do think some things could be said to be relative, I am an Absolutist for most things: Whatever is True, whatever is Right, whatever is Good, is always True, Right, and Good, irrespective of the context. For the Relativist, what is Good in one situation might not be Good in a different situation, or to a different person.

A classic example of this might be the trolley problem (although I think the trolley problem might have more to do with a different aspect of moral philosophy, e.g. utilitarianism). You can do nothing, and five people will die. Or you can take action and kill two people by your own hand, but in so doing spare the five. To the Absolutist, killing innocents is wrong, regardless of the reasons, so the Right thing to do is nothing. To the Relativist, killing a few innocent people might be justified if it will save more innocent people. It's not a perfect example, but it does show how you could arrive at a different conclusion. Killing innocents is generally considered bad, but there might be circumstances where it would be considered acceptable. Don't take this as a moral judgement of Relativism; the trolley problem is designed to be a moral paradox with no "right" answer. Both types of people would save everyone if they could, but the trolley problem doesn't offer that as an option.


If an ability says "you are not frightened by X," then you are not Frightened by that creature.

If you can ("effectively") see the creature, it is not invisible to you.
"Not frightened by X" would be more comparable to "X is not invisible to you". Being able to simply see an invisible creature is more akin to being able to move closer to a creature you are frightened of. Being unseen is merely one of two effects of the invisible condition. See my above example with "Condition X".

[Thunderous Mojo]

Being able to see a creature doesn't stop them from being invisible. Certain effects that allow you to see an invisible creature specifically call out that you treat the creature as if they weren't invisible, in which case the invisible condition is ignored for interactions between the two of you. But not every ability that allows you to see invisible creatures has this clause. Thus you end up with a situation where you can see a creature who is invisible, but they still count as being invisible for you.

Invisibility has two effects. One of these effects is that you become unseen. Being able to see an invisible creature only negates this specific part of the invisible condition. The other aspect, the advantage and disadvantage on attacks, still applies, because nothing has negated it..

I find this position to be emblematic of not looking at the rules holistically.
Invisible is a *conditional* situation....if Invisible Creature X is visible to Creature Y then none of the bullet points of the Invisible Condition apply;
for Creature Y...Creature X is visible...(which is the default state).

As Player, I honestly would not play in a game that uses the Crawford D&D Celebration ruling....I've better things to do with my time, and any explanation defending the Ruling revealed at D&D Celebration seems bound to be tortured, twisted, and Convoluted...and ultimately, not likely to be convincing.

Now, the Crawford ruling on Invisibility does seem appropriate for Natively Invisible creatures such as the Invisible Stalker...which has no visible form, and for whom Invisibility is a constant state, and not a conditional state.

[Greywander]

I find this position to be emblematic of not looking at the rules holistically.
Invisible is a *conditional* situation....if Invisible Creature X is visible to Creature Y then none of the bullet points of the Invisible Condition apply;
for Creature Y...Creature X is visible...(which is the default state).
Or or or, let's assume for just a second that this is actually the intended reading. To be clear, I don't believe that it is, but let's pretend for a moment. A creature that you can see with the invisible condition is actually meant to have advantage on their attacks, while imposing disadvantage on your attacks. Now, why might this be? What would be the justification for this?


Now, the Crawford ruling on Invisibility does seem appropriate for Natively Invisible creatures such as the Invisible Stalker...which has no visible form, and for whom Invisibility is a constant state, and not a conditional state.
Ah, so maybe a creature that is invisible... is actually invisible. Being able to see them allows you to see where they are and who they are, but perhaps they're still, I don't know, partially transparent? Somehow, despite being aware of them, they're still visually elusive enough to you that you have trouble landing your attacks, and likewise you have trouble seeing their attacks coming and thus defending yourself properly.

So, there's a possibility that simply being able to see an invisible creature doesn't fully clear their invisible status. You can see them, but they're still sort of "half invisible" to you, enough to make it difficult to see them properly to attack them or to defend yourself against their attacks.

Okay, so... how do we know this isn't the intended reading? What would make you think that this isn't what the rule was supposed to say? Why would you think it works differently than what I've laid out? Like I said, a strict, literal reading of certain abilities only gives you the ability to see the invisible creature, but doesn't fully negate invisibility. It's actually not that implausible that they might still be partially transparent or something, not enough that you can't identify them, but enough that it confuses their movements and makes them hard to engage in a fight.

To be honest, the only reason why I don't think it's supposed to be this way is because of my own subjective intuition on the matter. But maybe I'm actually wrong, and this is the intended reading of the rules. After all, this is what the rule literally says, why would I just assume that it was wrong? It's not like it would be the first time I've made that mistake.

[Segev]

Invisibility has two effects, one of which is a consequence of the other. If you ignore the causal effect, you ignore the consequences of that causal effect.

If you can ("effectively") see a creature, it is not invisible (to you). It doesn't say, "Ignore only the first clause of Invisibility," it says "you can [effectively] see" the creatures. Being able to see them means you ignore any "invisibility" they may have.

[Greywander]

Invisibility has two effects, one of which is a consequence of the other.
[Citation Needed]

No other condition works this way. Each bullet point under a condition is treated as being independent of every other bullet point. One effect is not a consequence of the other. As long as the condition is in effect, each of the listed effects are applied. If one or more of those effects are negated, the remaining effects are still applied.

Here's another example: The Charmed condition has two effects: you can't attack the charmer, and the charmer has advantage on social checks against you. If you have an ability that allows you to attack the charmer, does that necessarily mean the charmer doesn't have advantage on social checks against you anymore?

I just reread the blinded condition, and they repeated the same mistake as they did with invisibility. It should have been enough to simply say you can't see, maybe with a note reminding you about the vision rules, but no, they decided to list disadvantage on attacks and advantage to attacks against you as an entirely separate effect of the blinded condition, independent of your inability to see. So guess what happens if you're a fighter with the Blind Fighting style and you get hit with a blindness effect? That's right, the Blind Fighting style doesn't negate blindness, it merely allows you to see while blinded. Technically, blindsight as a sense doesn't even resist the blinded condition (that's something specific to the Blind Fighting style), so you can block blindsight by blinding a creature who isn't immune to it.

How could WotC make the same mistake twice? And for extremely similar things (both conditions, both related to visibility)? I almost wonder if they didn't write the blinded and invisible conditions first, then wrote the rules for vision after. So those second bullet points under both the blinded and invisible conditions actually were the only things that would enforced those effects, because the rules for being unseen hadn't been written yet. There's probably no way to know for sure, even the devs might not remember at this point.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Ah, so maybe a creature that is invisible... is actually invisible. Being able to see them allows you to see where they are and who they are, but perhaps they're still, I don't know, partially transparent? Somehow, despite being aware of them, they're still visually elusive enough to you that you have trouble landing your attacks, and likewise you have trouble seeing their attacks coming and thus defending yourself properly..

This the Predator Explanation.

A Greataxe or Maul do not rely upon precision. An Axe blow aimed at one's head, is still likely to kill someone if the target's cloaking device and movement instead caused the blow to strike an arm.

The predator Explanation adds a level of granularity, that ultimately, might be detrimental to the inter-subjective compact of a D&D game.

See Invisibility should be, (and historically has been), a hard counter to Invisibility, for the caster of the See Invisibility. Faerie Fire should not be more effective then the spell See Invisibility at seeing Invisible creatures.

Those are my feeling on the matter.

Truesight, in game, essentially allows one to see Unconstructed Reality...otherwise known as the 'true nature of the universe'.

It is a judgement call wether a Predator Style cloaking device defeats someone with an absolute, clear view of the universe that is provided by Truesight.

For myself, the Crawford ruling, in general, demonstrates poor judgement.
(As I mentioned before, it might strike me as fine depending upon the specific scenario, though)

[Keltest]

For may part, any reading of a rule that results in it making less sense is the wrong reading. Earnest communication relies on a good faith effort by both sides to understand and be clear. That includes going "well this interpretation doesnt make much sense." and discarding it in favor of one that does, even if its a slightly odd way of phrasing it.

[Greywander]

This the Predator Explanation.

A Greataxe or Maul do not rely upon precision. An Axe blow aimed at one's head, is still likely to kill someone if the target's cloaking device and movement instead caused the blow to strike an arm.
Assuming your attack connects at all. Even with disadvantage, a hit is still a hit, and does the same damage.


See Invisibility should be, (and historically has been), a hard counter to Invisibility, for the caster of the See Invisibility. Faerie Fire should not be more effective then the spell See Invisibility at seeing Invisible creatures.
You're right, it should be.
And politicians and clergymen should be more concerned with the well being of the people they lead, and not with lining their own pockets or clinging to power.
And people should be hardworking and law abiding members of society, and not begging for handouts or turning to crime.
And I should be able to do the things I keep saying I want to do and never getting around to starting.

Wishful thinking can't overturn reality. But in this case, a houserule will suffice.

But seriously, I do wonder if they wrote these conditions before writing the vision rules, and that's where this all came from. It would make so much sense.

Edit:

For may part, any reading of a rule that results in it making less sense is the wrong reading.
Why is it easier for you to believe that someone is reading the rules wrong than to believe that the rule was written wrong? It's not hard to write rules that don't make sense. On the contrary, writing rules that make sense is difficult.

[Keltest]

Why is it easier for you to believe that someone is reading the rules wrong than to believe that the rule was written wrong? It's not hard to write rules that don't make sense. On the contrary, writing rules that make sense is difficult.

Because we have multiple readings, and one of them makes sense and works fine, and the other one doesnt. A rule that doesnt make sense wouldnt have any readings that make sense.

ETA: If you can say "yeah, this is obviously not how its meant to work" then that should be the end of it, IMO.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Because we have multiple readings, and one of them makes sense and works fine, and the other one doesnt. A rule that doesnt make sense wouldnt have any readings that make sense.

ETA: If you can say "yeah, this is obviously not how its meant to work" then that should be the end of it, IMO.

Yeah. And this is a totally normal part of interpreting natural language. Even in a legal context. In fact, the judiciary in most countries has some formulation of canon of construction (a rule for interpreting laws[1]) that says "assume that the legislatures aren't crazy; assume that they intended the writing to mean something." It counsels that if there are multiple readings that fit the other canons and some of them don't make sense, those cannot be the correct ones. Unless none of the readings that fit the other canons make sense either. And when they run into something that doesn't make sense, they do the minimum necessary to produce a sensible reading. In this case, move the first sentence of the first bullet outside the bullet points.

You can't jump to bad writing as long as there's a plausible interpretation that makes sense. Well, you can, but that's a sign of bad reading. Loophole hunting and nit-picking are things that, contrary to popular opinion, don't actually win you court cases.

Any argument that rests on formatting is a weak argument. And that's all this is--it relies entirely on the fact that it's formatted as bullet points instead of paragraphs.

There's also another canon--the law does not hide elephants in mouseholes. Same goes here (by explicit statement of the devs). A major thing like this would be explicitly called out. Not hidden in a formatting choice in an appendix.

[1] yes, even the laws have those. And they're not, generally, based on the literal interpretation of the words, either. Interpreting a text, especially a rules text, requires work. And requires paying attention to context, writing style, intent of the authors, etc. Another reason why the fetishization of "RAW" is utterly misguided and actually detrimental to the game. Literal readings are wrong readings in most cases. Yes, even for computer code.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Assuming your attack connects at all. Even with disadvantage, a hit is still a hit, and does the same damage..

This is the capricious aspect of the ruling:
a hit is still a hit...but the visibility that See Invisible imparts, (is for unknown reasons), different than 'normal' visibility?

I do suspect the Unseen Attackers and Invisibility will receive some attention and clarification in the Anniversary Edition. If not, then WotC will have missed an opportunity to improve the ruleset.

[Greywander]

And when they run into something that doesn't make sense, they do the minimum necessary to produce a sensible reading. In this case, move the first sentence of the first bullet outside the bullet points.
So... they make a house rule.

As has been pointed out, literally no other condition works like this, except maybe blinded (but that's for the same reasons as the invisible condition). What makes the most sense to me is not to give these two conditions special treatment, but rather to assume that a mistake was made in writing these rules, and that a houserule should be used to bring them in line with how the other conditions work. We don't even need to move a sentence outside of any bullet points, we simply need to eliminate the second bullet point under each of these two conditions; they're entirely redundant with the rules for being unseen.

I feel like we're actually agreeing, but we're expressing our viewpoints differently. I think a mistake was made in how the rule was written, and the rule should be corrected with a houserule. You think my interpretation of what the rule says is incorrect because it produces a nonsensical result, and thus you choose to interpret the rules in a subjective way that makes more sense. We arrive at the same end point, but we're arguing the semantics of how we got there.

Basically, we agree that the literal rule is incorrect. Where we differ is that I think the rule was written incorrectly, while you think that we're reading the rule incorrectly. I want to rewrite the rule using a houserule so that the literal rule matches what we both feel to be correct, but I guess you feel like this is superfluous and we should just roll with what we already know to be the correct rule without needing to formally state it.

I think that's right? Let me know if I've misrepresented your position.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm saying that it makes sense as written, because the literal reading is usually nonsense. For everything written. Basically, I'm saying to stop reading anything literally. That's not a valid interpretation method for natural language, no matter how legalistic the writing style. And 5e isn't legalistic at all, so the literal interpretation is almost never the right one, and literal interpretation is actually disfavored.

I'm reading it how (I believe) it was written to be interpreted and ignoring the literal meaning because that's usually garbage. So I'm not changing anything, just taking the most natural interpretation and paying attention to context. And that's normal. Writing is not usually meant to be taken literally.

[Telok]

Why is it easier for you to believe that someone is reading the rules wrong than to believe that the rule was written wrong? It's not hard to write rules that don't make sense. On the contrary, writing rules that make sense is difficult.

"100 Things every designer needs to know about people" p.137, "people assume it's you, not the situation",
referencing Zagefka, Hanna, et al. 2010, 'donating to disaster victims: responses to natural and humanly caused events', European Journal of Social Psychology, doi:10.1002/ejsp.781

There's research. Apparently the default human behavior is to blame the people involved who are doing sometjing you think is incorrect. And you probably won't be able to stop yourself even if you realize you're doing it.

Search link

https://www.google.com/search?q=100+Things+every+designer+needs+to+know+a bout+people&client=ms-android-samsung-rvo1&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#scso=_-cQAYt7OO9PJ0PEP1o-WuAE8:1.0666667222976685

[f5anor]

Per its text, the Invisible status condition seems to grant advantage to the creature's attack rolls and disadvantage to attack rolls against it, whether or not the target can see them. This seems... I don't how how strongly to put this, but it has me scratching my head. Is this errata'd somewhere I couldn't find? It just doesn't seem correct that things with Truesight or See Invisibility cast upon them would still take disadvantage attacking an Invisible creature.

Help me make sense of this?

I am not sure I understand the issue here, the following is the RAW:


Invisibility
2nd-level illusion
A creature you touch becomes invisible until the spell ends. Anything the target is wearing or carrying is invisible as long as it is on the target's person. The spell ends for a target that attacks or casts a spell.

Its clear, that the spell does not define a saving thrown, or some kind of contest. It just defines the "condition" of "Invisible" that takes place automatically upon casting the spell. There is no way to contest this, based on this description.


Invisible

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.




See Invisibility
2nd-level divination
For the duration, you see invisible creatures and objects as if they were visible, and you can see into the Ethereal Plane. Ethereal creatures and objects appear ghostly and translucent.

The See Invisibility spell does not define any kind of contest, it just removes the effects of the "Invisible" status for you, the beneficiary of this spell, when looking at creatures that have the "Invisible" status.

In my view, the RAW is quite clear that as far as the "Invisible" condition is concerned, the beneficiary of "See Invisibility" is not impacted by the effects imposed by "Invisible" when looking at a creature with that condition.

[Segev]

Here's another example: The Charmed condition has two effects: you can't attack the charmer, and the charmer has advantage on social checks against you. If you have an ability that allows you to attack the charmer, does that necessarily mean the charmer doesn't have advantage on social checks against you anymore?

Please cite for my any precedent for any ability you've tried to analogize to Invisibility where there is a creature with explicit immunity to only part of that Condition. At best, I suspect you might find some creatures immune to being Incapacitated but not to Paralysis, or similar nested ones, but in each case, they're immune to the specific bullet point by immunity to what that bullet point does, independent of the Condition.

Nobody is "immune to the Invisible Condition," but saying "you can see the creature" is a way of saying "that creature isn't Invisible to you." If they'd left the second bullet point out of Invisibility, we'd be having this argument with people claiming that not being able to see them does nothing, and WotC would be (rightly) scolded for having forced people to look up what "cannot see" does elsewhere. Any wording that references what not being able to see them does would be really clunky to try to work around the unintuitive reading that is trying to separate the second bullet point from the first.

The rules are clear, and it takes a deliberately pedantic parsing to create the counterintuitive situation. If a rule can be parsed in more than one way, and one way makes sense while the other creates dysfunctions, it's the people choosing to read it to create dysfunctions that are reading it wrong.

[Greywander]

I'm saying that it makes sense as written, because the literal reading is usually nonsense. For everything written. Basically, I'm saying to stop reading anything literally. That's not a valid interpretation method for natural language, no matter how legalistic the writing style. And 5e isn't legalistic at all, so the literal interpretation is almost never the right one, and literal interpretation is actually disfavored.

I'm reading it how (I believe) it was written to be interpreted and ignoring the literal meaning because that's usually garbage. So I'm not changing anything, just taking the most natural interpretation and paying attention to context. And that's normal. Writing is not usually meant to be taken literally.
Then what makes your interpretation more valid than anyone else's? Not just for this rule, but for any rule? Why can't I decide that 9th level rangers get 9th level spells, because that's "what makes sense", and the literal rules that forbid this are "nonsense"? Why would I be wrong for deciding to rule that way? What you've basically said is that, not just this rule, but every rule, is 100% subjective because the literal rules can't be trusted. Then what's the point in even writing rules down?

I could also point to hundreds of examples where the literal rules are simple and straightforward and do exactly what they say. "A creature who fails a saving throw takes X damage." "You can Y as a bonus action." Etc. For the overwhelming majority of the rules, the literal reading is perfectly fine, with no dispute over what the meaning is. The literal reading is not usually nonsense, it's usually straightforward and correct. Rather, the literal reading is rarely nonsense, but not never nonsense. Sometimes a nonsensical rule has to be dealt with, but that's the exception, not the rule (pun not intended, but I'll take credit for it anyway).


The See Invisibility spell does not define any kind of contest, it just removes the effects of the "Invisible" status for you,
The point of contention is that See Invisibility, and a few other similar effects, only removes the first bullet point of the invisible condition. The invisible condition does two things: it makes it so people can't see you, and it gives you advantage on your attacks and imposes disadvantage on attackers. Being able to see an invisible person only clears that first bullet point, it doesn't remove the condition entirely, so the second bullet point is still in effect.

I still suspect that the reason it's like this is because they may have written the invisible and blinded conditions before they wrote the rules for being unseen. Since the rules for being unseen didn't exist yet, they had to bake the advantage/disadvantage directly into those conditions, and once they'd written up the rules for being unseen, those second bullet points became redundant. And it wouldn't have been a problem if they had written abilities meant to cancel out invisibility/blindness properly, but they didn't.

Let me reframe the condition to illustrate my point. A lot of the discussion is resulting from the fact that the condition itself is called "invisible", and thus we naturally assume that being able to see the creature should cancel out the condition entirely. If we rename the condition to something else, the issue should become clear:


Condition X

A creature with Condition X 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.


So now let's say you have an ability that allows you to see a creature with Condition X. Great, that only affects the first bullet point, and doesn't clear the condition entirely. The creature is still under Condition X, and still benefits from the second bullet point. If you have a different ability that says that, for you, the creature is not under Condition X, then you get to ignore the condition entirely. But not every ability that allows you to see invisible things has that verbiage.

I don't know why some people are so insistent that there's nothing wrong with the way the rule is written. Wouldn't it be better if it were slightly edited to be something like...?


Invisible

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.
Note: Attack rolls against an unseen creature have disadvantage, and the creature's attack rolls have advantage against creatures who can't see them.


All I did was turn the second bullet point from an effect of the invisible condition to a reminder of the rules for being unseen. Even if you do misconstrue it as a trait of the condition, it still doesn't work if you can be seen, which is sufficient to make See Invisibility work like it's supposed to. How is this not better than what we currently have?

[Keltest]

Then what makes your interpretation more valid than anyone else's? Not just for this rule, but for any rule? Why can't I decide that 9th level rangers get 9th level spells, because that's "what makes sense", and the literal rules that forbid this are "nonsense"? Why would I be wrong for deciding to rule that way? What you've basically said is that, not just this rule, but every rule, is 100% subjective because the literal rules can't be trusted. Then what's the point in even writing rules down?

You've conflated an extremely literal reading of the text, which is not how people communicate, with the literal existence of the text.

[Greywander]

You've conflated an extremely literal reading of the text, which is not how people communicate, with the literal existence of the text.
That doesn't answer any of my questions. If I insist that the rules say 9th level rangers get 9th level spells, what is your recourse to refute that? If you toss out the literal rules, then what even is left?

[Keltest]

That doesn't answer any of my questions. If I insist that the rules say 9th level rangers get 9th level spells, what is your recourse to refute that? If you toss out the literal rules, then what even is left?

It does answer your questions, because you arent tossing out the "literal rule", you're tossing out the literal parsing of the text. The rule is still there, you just read it like a normal person instead of a rather poorly designed code compiler.

There is a rule that dictates how ranger spell progression functions. Just read the words like a normal person and apply them.

[Unoriginal]

That doesn't answer any of my questions. If I insist that the rules say 9th level rangers get 9th level spells, what is your recourse to refute that? If you toss out the literal rules, then what even is left?

The Dungeon Master.

[Greywander]

Is there something wrong with wanting to rewrite a rule so that the literal parsing matches what the rule was supposed to do?

Maybe it just doesn't bother you that the rule is "wrong" so long as you can infer what was intended. But it bothers me.

Edit:

The Dungeon Master.
Yeah, you got me there.

But still, even if a DM would slap it down, things like Punpun are still technically legal within the rules. My point is that the same is true for the invisible condition.

Like, I would never advise a player to exploit this weird, unintended aspect of the invisible condition. I know a DM would slap it down. I just want to correct it so that it's no longer technically legal.

[Keltest]

Is there something wrong with wanting to rewrite a rule so that the literal parsing matches what the rule was supposed to do?

Maybe it just doesn't bother you that the rule is "wrong" so long as you can infer what was intended. But it bothers me.

Yes, because people dont talk like that. Trying to write the rules like that led to a lot MORE dysfunction in 3.5, because now instead of just trusting people to use their brains to know what was meant, they parsed the actually poorly written rules incorrectly and led to things like Pun-Pun, which was obviously not what was meant.

[Segev]

I just want to correct it so that it's no longer technically legal.

What do you propose do accomplish this?

[Greywander]

What do you propose do accomplish this?
Remove the second bullet point. It's redundant with the rules for being unseen anyway, so it wouldn't change anything with regards to people who can't see invisible creatures. Then, all the invisible condition is doing is making you unseen. That's it. The advantage/disadvantage falls naturally out of being unseen. If you can see an invisible creature, then they're no longer unseen, and don't benefit.

It's such a simple fix, I don't know why people are arguing against it.

[Keltest]

Remove the second bullet point. It's redundant with the rules for being unseen anyway, so it wouldn't change anything with regards to people who can't see invisible creatures. Then, all the invisible condition is doing is making you unseen. That's it. The advantage/disadvantage falls naturally out of being unseen. If you can see an invisible creature, then they're no longer unseen, and don't benefit.

It's such a simple fix, I don't know why people are arguing against it.

Redundancy can be good sometimes. In this case, the benefits of the spell are immediately, ahem, spelled out.

[Greywander]

Then present it as a reminder of the rules for being unseen, not as a separate effect for the invisible condition. Heck, since the blinded condition has the same issue, they could just put one of those little notice boxes on that page to remind players about the rules for being unseen.

The other route would be to go and rewrite every ability that is meant to counter invisibility to actually ignore the condition as a whole, rather than simply allowing you to see the invisible creature. But that seems more complicated.

[Keltest]

Or they could just leave it as is, since everybody seems to understand it as intended, and therefore no problem needs to be fixed?

[Segev]

Remove the second bullet point. It's redundant with the rules for being unseen anyway, so it wouldn't change anything with regards to people who can't see invisible creatures. Then, all the invisible condition is doing is making you unseen. That's it. The advantage/disadvantage falls naturally out of being unseen. If you can see an invisible creature, then they're no longer unseen, and don't benefit.

It's such a simple fix, I don't know why people are arguing against it.

We are a bunch of forumites, none of whom have any influence over the way the PHB is printed in future runs, nor over how the errata is officially written. What is the net difference between, "House rule: remove the second bullet point," as you read it and wish, and, "If you're seen by something, you're not invisible to it," as a ruling?

It's not that people are "opposed" to it, it's that you're proposing a non-change, as far as most of us are concerned. Sure, we agree, under how you read it, removing the second bullet point achieves desired ends. We just don't see the need, ourselves, to codify it as a house ruled erratum, and instead see it as just how it runs anyway.

[Willie the Duck]

Help me make sense of this?
Others have gone over the specific question in far greater detail than I feel necessary. Let me talk about the general situation (this all with a preemptive ‘IMO’/’As I see it’).

In 3e and 4e, there was a drive (in some cases internally, otherwise simply in the culture of the games’ most strident fans) to make the game rules textually rigorous to the level of Magic: the Gathering, computer programming, or other criteria. After much gnashing of teeth, harsh words, and hurt feelings amongst the forumites over at Wizards.com, it was realized that this didn’t make anyone happy. People who just wanted a set of rules to play a game found that attempts to remove ambiguity made the ruleset more cumbersome and less useful towards their ends, while those people who believed an unambiguous ruleset was an end to and of itself are the kind of people who really can’t be satisfied (especially if the designers ever deviated from the way they would have done it). Since unlike a computer game ambiguity can’t cause a crash and unlike MtG, there aren’t many for-cash tournaments where a ‘bad call’ could cost someone thousands of dollars, it became a real question of whose needs were most important to serve, and it seems that the decision WotC made was the casual gamer.

Thus 5e was built as a reaction to that, with a focus on natural language and DM adjudication. Where things worked as you think they do and if there were two ways to interpret something, you went with the one that made sense (and that there were still two ways to interpret things is not seen as a problem). Mind you, it is possible that there was an over-reaction, and everyone has their own favorite example of a rule (often times related to vision or stealth) that was written poorly. However, in the end, the game seems to have threaded the rigor needle to most people’s satisfaction most of the time.

Should more care have been taken to eliminate ambiguity? I’m not sure (I certainly question that as a specific goal). It becomes a question of whether it could have been achieved without sacrificing readability and appeal to the general audience. I’ve seen games with rulesets with very little ambiguity, but they either 1) aren’t broad-market appeal games, or 2) have less in-baked audience expectations than D&D. It’s also my impression that people give pre-WotC D&D and non-D&D TTRPGs a little more leeway in some of these regards (example: Hero System has entire powers where they just put a stop sign symbol basically stating that the GM will have to step in and decide how something works and/or if an option is on the table or not).


It is preposterous. But we're not the ones being preposterous by pointing out the flaw in how the rules are written. It is the devs who wrote those rules who were preposterous.
IMO, the devs have been very much preposterous like a fox (or maybe ‘Crazy like a fox with regards to their preposterousness?’). They’ve figured out that the internet pedant crowd was never going to be satisfied with their product regardless of how much effort they put in, and decided to focus on a much more pleasable audience.


We are a bunch of forumites, none of whom have any influence over the way the PHB is printed in future runs, nor over how the errata is officially written. What is the net difference between, "House rule: remove the second bullet point," as you read it and wish, and, "If you're seen by something, you're not invisible to it," as a ruling?
It's not that people are "opposed" to it, it's that you're proposing a non-change, as far as most of us are concerned. Sure, we agree, under how you read it, removing the second bullet point achieves desired ends. We just don't see the need, ourselves, to codify it as a house ruled erratum, and instead see it as just how it runs anyway.
Agreed.

[f5anor]

The point of contention is that See Invisibility, and a few other similar effects, only removes the first bullet point of the invisible condition.

In my humble opinion, this is a very far-fetched interpretation of the RAW, which requires the reader to ignore the fact that the condition which caused the original effect ("Invisible"), is actually not affecting the target anymore.

With all due respect to a clear and precise reading of the RAW, this way of interpreting the RAW does not lend itself to a good playing experience, as it is based on a suspension of basic cause and effect logic. How can something affect you, that is no longer applicable to you? Where does the effect come from?

[Greywander]

In my humble opinion, this is a very far-fetched interpretation of the RAW, which requires the reader to ignore the fact that the condition which caused the original effect ("Invisible"), is actually not affecting the target anymore.
It is affecting the target. There are some effects meant to combat invisibility that specifically say that "the creature is not invisible to you". See Invisibility is not one of those. All it does is allow you to see the invisible creature. The creature is still invisible, though, and is still being affected by invisibility.

Is this dumb? Yes. Yes is it.


With all due respect to a clear and precise reading of the RAW, this way of interpreting the RAW does not lend itself to a good playing experience, as it is based on a suspension of basic cause and effect logic. How can something affect you, that is no longer applicable to you? Where does the effect come from?
I'd rather recognize a mistake and fix it than pretend that there is no mistake. It seems like we just aren't going to agree on this.

[Segev]

I'd rather recognize a mistake and fix it than pretend that there is no mistake. It seems like we just aren't going to agree on this.

I'm just not sure how you hope to "fix" it. Even if literally everybody in this thread agreed with you, it would still be a house rule you have to implement at your table to fix what you perceive to be broken. Each of us would have to implement the same house rule if we agreed it was necessary to achieve the results desired.

The only difference is that those of us who disagree with you on the need already run it the way you feel you need a house rule to run it. So, then, what's the difference? What does convincing us the rule needs "fixing" to do what we already have the rule do in our games accomplish for you? We cannot edit the PHB and make it "fixed" for anybody but ourselves.

[Demonslayer666]

It is affecting the target. There are some effects meant to combat invisibility that specifically say that "the creature is not invisible to you". See Invisibility is not one of those. All it does is allow you to see the invisible creature. The creature is still invisible, though, and is still being affected by invisibility.
...

Yes, but not for that observer that can see invisible, only other observers that can't.

The target is not invisible to anyone that can see them, removing that condition for that observer.


This is why Invisibility should not be a condition, because it is observer dependent. Cover isn't a condition (and should not be one).

[Flashkannon]

Nobody is "immune to the Invisible Condition," but saying "you can see the creature" is a way of saying "that creature isn't Invisible to you."
Ah, see, but this is where I'd bring up Faerie Fire.

Compare:
"the affected creature or object can't benefit from being invisible." -Faerie Fire
"For the duration, you see invisible creatures and objects as if they were visible" -See Invisibility

One of those very explicitly says it prevents a creature from using any of the benefits of Invisibility. The other, even if you could read it as potentially 'countering' Invisible, is much less explicit.



Or they could just leave it as is, since everybody seems to understand it as intended, and therefore no problem needs to be fixed?

We are a bunch of forumites, none of whom have any influence over the way the PHB is printed in future runs, nor over how the errata is officially written. What is the net difference between, "House rule: remove the second bullet point," as you read it and wish, and, "If you're seen by something, you're not invisible to it," as a ruling?

It's not that people are "opposed" to it, it's that you're proposing a non-change, as far as most of us are concerned. Sure, we agree, under how you read it, removing the second bullet point achieves desired ends. We just don't see the need, ourselves, to codify it as a house ruled erratum, and instead see it as just how it runs anyway.

In my humble opinion, this is a very far-fetched interpretation of the RAW, which requires the reader to ignore the fact that the condition which caused the original effect ("Invisible"), is actually not affecting the target anymore.

With all due respect to a clear and precise reading of the RAW, this way of interpreting the RAW does not lend itself to a good playing experience, as it is based on a suspension of basic cause and effect logic. How can something affect you, that is no longer applicable to you? Where does the effect come from?

Allow me to say: when I introduced the simple house rule of removing the second bullet point of Invisible so that you would need to remain unseen to retain the advantage/disadvantage, I was met with bitter resistance by someone in the party with Greater Invisibility, who saw that house rule as a 'nerf' of the spell's capabilities. I had to spend a couple hours arguing this, so please, I understand it's academic or perhaps 'obvious' to you that it's meant to be read in a certain way, but the realities on the ground are not always the same. In point of fact, if I was in your camp with regards to the reading of the rules, I would simply have ruled that rule as you did, and not needed to make this thread seeking something I had potentially missed.


Others have gone over the specific question in far greater detail than I feel necessary. Let me talk about the general situation (this all with a preemptive ‘IMO’/’As I see it’).

In 3e and 4e, there was a drive (in some cases internally, otherwise simply in the culture of the games’ most strident fans) to make the game rules textually rigorous to the level of Magic: the Gathering, computer programming, or other criteria. After much gnashing of teeth, harsh words, and hurt feelings amongst the forumites over at Wizards.com, it was realized that this didn’t make anyone happy. People who just wanted a set of rules to play a game found that attempts to remove ambiguity made the ruleset more cumbersome and less useful towards their ends, while those people who believed an unambiguous ruleset was an end to and of itself are the kind of people who really can’t be satisfied (especially if the designers ever deviated from the way they would have done it). Since unlike a computer game ambiguity can’t cause a crash and unlike MtG, there aren’t many for-cash tournaments where a ‘bad call’ could cost someone thousands of dollars, it became a real question of whose needs were most important to serve, and it seems that the decision WotC made was the casual gamer.

Thus 5e was built as a reaction to that, with a focus on natural language and DM adjudication. Where things worked as you think they do and if there were two ways to interpret something, you went with the one that made sense (and that there were still two ways to interpret things is not seen as a problem). Mind you, it is possible that there was an over-reaction, and everyone has their own favorite example of a rule (often times related to vision or stealth) that was written poorly. However, in the end, the game seems to have threaded the rigor needle to most people’s satisfaction most of the time.

Should more care have been taken to eliminate ambiguity? I’m not sure (I certainly question that as a specific goal). It becomes a question of whether it could have been achieved without sacrificing readability and appeal to the general audience. I’ve seen games with rulesets with very little ambiguity, but they either 1) aren’t broad-market appeal games, or 2) have less in-baked audience expectations than D&D. It’s also my impression that people give pre-WotC D&D and non-D&D TTRPGs a little more leeway in some of these regards (example: Hero System has entire powers where they just put a stop sign symbol basically stating that the GM will have to step in and decide how something works and/or if an option is on the table or not).


IMO, the devs have been very much preposterous like a fox (or maybe ‘Crazy like a fox with regards to their preposterousness?’). They’ve figured out that the internet pedant crowd was never going to be satisfied with their product regardless of how much effort they put in, and decided to focus on a much more pleasable audience.

Thank you for stopping by, I like the analysis! I feel like perhaps another editing pass or two could have been made to 5e (I can't but raise the topic - stealth and illusion rules in 5e are a little underdeveloped, to the detriment of any Rogue with a skeptical DM, but then again, most DMs who would prevent a Rogue from hiding or keep breaking illusions too often were gonna do that regardless)

Thanks again to Greywander, who is of like mind to myself.

[JackPhoenix]

Ah, see, but this is where I'd bring up Faerie Fire.

Compare:
"the affected creature or object can't benefit from being invisible." -Faerie Fire
"For the duration, you see invisible creatures and objects as if they were visible" -See Invisibility

One of those very explicitly says it prevents a creature from using any of the benefits of Invisibility. The other, even if you could read it as potentially 'countering' Invisible, is much less explicit.

The invisible creature can still benefit from invisibility against anyone who can't See Invisibility. The target affected by Faerie Fire is visible to everyone.

[Flashkannon]

The invisible creature can still benefit from invisibility against anyone who can't See Invisibility. The target affected by Faerie Fire is visible to everyone.
Yes, but if they meant it like you're implying, See Invisibility would have said something along the lines of "For the duration, Invisible creatures cannot benefit from the Invisible condition against you." That could probably be worded a little less awkwardly, but you get what I mean. The phrasing between those two spells is vastly different.

[Dr. Murgunstrum]

Yeah, the plain language approach of this edition has been pretty bad for issues of vision.

There are a variety of builds based around Darkness, Invisibility and Attacking Creatures in Darkness that result in:

Darkness is kind of stupid, because fighting blindly pretty much amounts to regular fighting, except certain spells (and not all spells) cannot target creatures who cannot be seen, and the only real conditions that governs sight seems to be Blindess and Invisible, neither of which provide a framework for a status quo.

This results in nonsense like claiming you cannot RAW see things, therefore sight triggers don’t exist and other such pedantry.

It would have been nice if they had just set up clear vision rules with clear conditions rather than the murky obscurement rules (and the murky cover rules which don’t actually interact with obscurement rules)

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yes, but if they meant it like you're implying, See Invisibility would have said something along the lines of "For the duration, Invisible creatures cannot benefit from the Invisible condition against you." That could probably be worded a little less awkwardly, but you get what I mean. The phrasing between those two spells is vastly different.

Each spell stands alone and differences in wording aren't dispositive of anything in this edition. You can't (in this edition) reason from one specific ability to another. Differences in wording just usually mean that different people wrote them (or the same people at different times). Divining meaning from wording differences is a great way to end up in a mess in any natural-language text. Because anything read during that process is coming entirely from the reader.

[Segev]

On "fighting in darkness" and fighting blind in general, I find that a house rule that you only get advantage to hit a target that can't see you if you can see them solves the verisimilitude problems. That causes two people swinging blindly in dense fog to both have disadvantage.

[Keltest]

On "fighting in darkness" and fighting blind in general, I find that a house rule that you only get advantage to hit a target that can't see you if you can see them solves the verisimilitude problems. That causes two people swinging blindly in dense fog to both have disadvantage.
That sounds good from a simulationist standpoint, but bad from a "making the combat take twice as long as it needs to" standpoint.

[Segev]

That sounds good from a simulationist standpoint, but bad from a "making the combat take twice as long as it needs to" standpoint.

I have rarely found it to appreciably extend a fight, because I have rarely found that two creatures will continue fighting blind under those conditions. They will resolve the conditions or back off and fight some other time or place.