Being invisible can make you easier to hit in some circumstances!


Rules Questions


Invisibility grants you total concealment, which means that enemies can target the square you are in, then get a 50% miss chance. But this can actually improve the situation for them if you have a high AC and they have a low attack!

Consider the following:
Person A is attacking Person B. Person A has an attack bonus of +3; Person B has an AC of 18. There is a 30% chance of person A hitting them, because they have to roll a 15 or above.

Now let's say Person B becomes invisible. Now Person A has to hit the square they are in (AC 5, thus A has a 95% chance of hitting) and then gets a 50% miss chance. Since .95 x .5 is .475, there's a 47.5% of making the hit, a full 17.5% greater!

This could get even worse, too - suppose Person B had an AC of 23. Now A can only hit B with a natural 20, thus a mere 5% chance of hitting. If B turns invisible, it actually increases his chances of being hit by 42.5% - as though his AC had dropped from 23 to 15.

This seems counter-intuitive to me. Am I doing something wrong?

Additional: Even in a worse case scenario, where an attacker has an attack of +0, they have an 80% chance to hit an AC 5 square, thus a 40% chance to hit an invisible creature. This is the same probability as if the creature was visible and had an AC of 12.

In fact, anything with an AC 13 or more higher than the attacker's bonus would be worse off by becoming invisible.

Dark Archive

Making a weapon or touch spell attack you still have to hit the enemies AC not the static AC 5 for attacking the floor you could use for vials of Alchemists Fire, etc.

You make an attack at the square you believe your target is in, pick wrong and its a wasted attack, pick right, roll to hit their full AC, you got a hit? Great! Oh wait... *now* you roll a 50% miss chance, better luck next time.


That's what I thought, but the wording on total concealment doesn't seem to hold to that:

PRD wrote:

Total Concealment: If you have line of effect to a target but not line of sight, he is considered to have total concealment from you. You can't attack an opponent that has total concealment, though you can attack into a square that you think he occupies. A successful attack into a square occupied by an enemy with total concealment has a 50% miss chance (instead of the normal 20% miss chance for an opponent with concealment).

You can't execute an attack of opportunity against an opponent with total concealment, even if you know what square or squares the opponent occupies.

(Emphasis mine)


Right the miss chance applies before you roll vs AC as I understand it essentially you know the square they're in(since they're within 5ft and stabbed you on their round) so you swing at them start off with 50% chance of just swinging at air, if you get past that 50% then you roll vs their armor class to see if you actually hurt them.


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HAS vs IS

Little words with big meanings.

A successful attack ... has a 50% miss chance...

vs.

A successful attack ... is a 50% miss chance...

HAS = shows what happens if there is a successful attack

IS = defines the successful attack

In this case the word is HAS so it shows what happens if there is a successful attack. The successful attack happens if you pick the right square and make an attack, with all penalties, that is equal to or higher than the AC.

Hope this helps.

Dark Archive

Derek Vande Brake wrote:
That's what I thought, but the wording on total concealment doesn't seem to hold to that:

You're misunderstanding what it says, when you can't see a target you have to choose a square to attack into, note it does not say "A successful attack against a square" which would be vs AC 5, but 'into'. You pick a square, make an attack against the full AC of anyone in it if you picked correctly (whether or not this is your hoped for target), if successful you face the miss chance.


Ah, okay. That makes sense.


I hope I'm not being too inconsiderate for only posting this pointless message, but I really need to get it off my mind:

*facepalm*

That is all.


It is, just a little bit. We try to keep this a friendly place. I'm fairly rules-savvy now (... not counting scrolls, which I have to re-learn every time it comes up) but when I first started I had a lot of 'incorrect' revelations too.

Just yesterday I realized you might be able to use Combat Expertise to gain a Dodge bonus to AC while firing a volley of ranged attacks with no penalties to the shots, as long as your Full Attack includes one melee attack (probably the one at your lowest bonus). When I wake up tomorrow, maybe I'll realize I missed a stupid detail that makes it not work, but I would prefer not to feel dumb if I get corrected about it first.


1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.
Suthain wrote:

it does not say "A successful attack against a square" which would be vs AC 5, but 'into'.

You pick a square, make an attack against the full AC of anyone in it..
I agree this is how it's supposed to work... But note the actual text:
Quote:
You can't attack an opponent that has total concealment, though you can attack into a square that you think he occupies.

It straight up says you can't attack the opponent who has total concealment.

You aren't attacking them, you aren't targetting their AC.
That's more fundamentally problematic than distinctions of 'attacking a square' vs. 'attacking into a square'.
Not that that distinction doesn't have ANY validity, but if we aren't attacking the opponent (it says we can't),
then what the hell ARE we attacking in the square, but the square itself?

Again, I fully agree that your reading is how it's MEANT to work, but the wording itself is a wreck,
so I can more than see why the OP could have understood it to work as he did...

And then there's how the rules are silent if there happens to be more than one creature in the square...
Ridiculously easy to happen w/ Tiny creatures, riders of Mounts, Conscious + Unconscious characters sharing square, etc...

And again, if you go by strict RAW there is more goofiness:
'A (any) succesful attack into a square occupied by an opponent with total concealment has a 50% miss chance'
so if my Familiar goes Invisible and flies into my square to sit on my shoulder,
you can see ME just fine, but the attack would seem to still suffer 50% miss chance,
because you are attacking 'into a square occupied by an opponent with total concealment'.

Needless to say,
the entire passage could have been written more concisely and directly and all these problems could have been avoided,
so that the OP would never have had reason to step down this rabbit hole.


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The rules really, really don't like creatures occupying the same square.

If two invisible creatures occupy the same square and you attack that square, which one do you hit? Can they affect that chance? What if one of them is Helpless and the other isn't? If you miss one could the attack still hit the other?

If a character is invisible or stealthed and doesn't want to be detected when another creature approaches them, what happens? Can they 'allow' the creature through? What if the creature stops in their square? What if another creature attacks that square -- is there a random chance who is actually struck? Does one of them grant a Cover bonus to the other? Are there penalties for attacking a creature whose square you are occupying?

It reminds me of the Infravision headaches. Anyway, the rules have given creatures magic force-fields that prevent creatures from staying in their square, and shunt them out at the end of their turn if they somehow end up inside. It's perhaps inelegant, but usually doesn't come up, and I have personally felt the headaches of adjudicating those rules when a player of mine and I mutually agreed to temporarily ignore the 'can't enter / stay in an enemy's square' rule during a stealth situation.

Liberty's Edge

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Quandary wrote:
Suthain wrote:

it does not say "A successful attack against a square" which would be vs AC 5, but 'into'.

You pick a square, make an attack against the full AC of anyone in it..
I agree this is how it's supposed to work... But note the actual text:
Quote:
You can't attack an opponent that has total concealment, though you can attack into a square that you think he occupies.

It straight up says you can't attack the opponent who has total concealment.

You aren't attacking them, you aren't targetting their AC.

The way I read that is that you can't deliberately target the opponent because you can't see them, however you can swing your sword into the square they are in and hope to hit them.

Their AC would still apply - their Armour doesn't suddenly become useless, they can still try to dodge the incoming blows, but in addition half of those blows may be coming nowhere near the target as the foe is swinging blindly (50% miss chance).

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

Nonetheless, your original statement is true. Sometimes being invisibile can make you easier to hit. If you have 4 mirror images up, then you are only 20% likely to get hit with a successful attack, but making yourself invisible will jack that up to 50%.

Dark Archive

Zahir ibn Mahmoud ibn Jothan wrote:
Nonetheless, your original statement is true. Sometimes being invisibile can make you easier to hit. If you have 4 mirror images up, then you are only 20% likely to get hit with a successful attack, but making yourself invisible will jack that up to 50%.

If they target the correct square, a huge if, if not then your miss chance went to 100% so being invisible made you less likely to get hit. Though you do bring up an interesting point, if you have mirror image up and then go invisible... do the images also? Or do they remain visible, in which case they'd give away the square you were occupying? The spell text implies the images go invisible with you and certainly states they provide no miss chance when you're invisible but for many people implied is far from good enough and they need specifics.


Huh. I had never even considered the problems of multiple invisible creatures in a square - ironic, since the critter that made me start thinking of this was a quasit, which are tiny.

Now I want to hit my players with a swarm of invisible quasits...

Sovereign Court

Suthainn wrote:
If they target the correct square, a huge if, if not then your miss chance went to 100% so being invisible made you less likely to get hit. Though you do bring up an interesting point, if you have mirror image up and then go invisible... do the images also? Or do they remain visible, in which case they'd give away the square you were occupying? The spell text implies the images go invisible with you and certainly states they provide no miss chance when you're invisible but for many people implied is far from good enough and they need specifics.

Interesting point, Mirror Image states:

"If you are invisible or the attacker is blind, the spell has no effect (although the normal miss chances still apply)"

I assume that's worded to say that once you go un-invisible or your attacker gets un-blind the spell has normal effect.

Dark Archive

Derek Vande Brake wrote:

Huh. I had never even considered the problems of multiple invisible creatures in a square - ironic, since the critter that made me start thinking of this was a quasit, which are tiny.

Now I want to hit my players with a swarm of invisible quasits...

Have them move into the squares of the PCs and ready actions to move with them. For some reason players never want to take a blind swing into each others' squares.


Dust Raven wrote:
Derek Vande Brake wrote:

Huh. I had never even considered the problems of multiple invisible creatures in a square - ironic, since the critter that made me start thinking of this was a quasit, which are tiny.

Now I want to hit my players with a swarm of invisible quasits...

Have them move into the squares of the PCs and ready actions to move with them. For some reason players never want to take a blind swing into each others' squares.

Even better if they don't attack, but do so while a paladin is around. "Aha! I'm detecting evil from that person!" *Smites the commoner* "Why did I just lose my powers?"

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