Total concealment = invisible?

[Terronus]

In our game last night the party ranger ended up getting stuck in a fog cloud with a sea drake with fifteen feet between them.

While firing at the drake, he stated that although he had a 50% miss chance, the drake would be flat footed against him, since he was technically invisible, so the drake would be flat footed.

Just a simple question as to whether this is the case or not... thanks ahead of time for the advice!

[Archaeik]

No, concealment and invisibility are different things and each have specific modifiers associated with them

Concealment

Invisible

You can have the miss chance w/o gaining the invis modifiers

[Archaeik]

Going over the fog cloud situation...

It looks like they are indeed invisible to each other (unless adjacent)

so the drake would be denied its Dex to AC vs the ranger
and the ranger would be denied his Dex to AC vs the drake

as an fyi, Sneak Attack still wouldn't work, as

Quote:

The rogue must be able to see the target well enough to pick out a vital spot and must be able to reach such a spot. A rogue cannot sneak attack while striking a creature with concealment.

[Cheapy]

He never brought up sneak attack...

With total concealment, you can make a stealth check. The rules are fuzzy here, but it's safe to assume that if they make the stealth check, they are effectively invisible.

[Archaeik]

I don't even think you need the stealth check. Such a check would hide your location, but if attacking the same round it would need to be a sniping check.

And I was being thorough

[StreamOfTheSky]

Yes. Total concealment says, "If you have line of effect to a target but not line of sight, he is considered to have total concealment from you." Invisibile condition says, "Invisible creatures are visually undetectable." Invisibility says, "While they can't be seen, invisible creatures can be heard, smelled, or felt. Invisibility makes a creature undetectable by vision, including darkvision."

They are one and the same. To further clarify, fog cloud even says, "A creature within 5 feet has concealment (attacks have a 20% miss chance). Creatures farther away have total concealment (50% miss chance, and the attacker can't use sight to locate the target)."

They could have made it even more painfully obvious by outright stating total concealment = undetectable by sight = what invisibility means. But that they didn't opt for redundancy doesn't change the fact that the two are one and the same.