Good afternoon my fellows!
I have a few questions about the spell Shadowfade (from the Heroes of the Darklands supplement).
The spell is "Illusion (Shadow)"
It says that, in areas of darkness, the target of Shadowfade is invisible to creatures using darkvision to see it. In dim light, you instead have concealment against them.
My question is, how does this interact with other spells? A few in particular.
1&2) SEE INVISIBILITY & INVISIBILITY PURGE
This seems pretty straight forward, but I am convinced it does not work.
You are not ever actually invisible. You are invisible specifically to darkvision.
It doesn't render you invisible... it screws with darkvision, per the direct description.
If either of those worked against Shadowfade, why would it even exist vs. reg Invisibility?
It would be categorically inferior in just about every single way.
Both are 1min/Lv, both are broken by hostile actions.
One makes you outright invisible. "...becomes invisible."
The other makes you invisible only to a specific subset "...is invisible to..."
3) TRUE SEEING
This I feel is entirely straight forward. You see everything as it is.
This totally busts Shadowfade just as easily as actual Invisiblity.
My takeaway: Invisibility requires See Invis, Invis Purge and/or True Seeing to pierce. Shadowfade cannot be beaten by See Invis or Invis Purge, but even the cantrip Light or a simple torch can screw it up, let alone some stronger light producing spell or effect.
How do you all feel about this?
This spell, so many years later, CAN'T be outright useless in comparison.
I think see invisibility and invisibility purge would both work. Shadowfade makes you invisible (if conditionally).
Why does it exist? It's a 1st level spell with min/level duration which works on basically everything native to the area it comes from. No further reason needed.
I agree with AVR, things that defeat invisibility will defeat Shadowfade.
I also agree with his analysis that it's a 1st level spell with a long duration that would work well against a lot of groups with darkvision.
Many of those wont have light sources readily available, if at all, because they're not used to needing them. And there is a strong chance they're not high enough level to have access to things that defeat invisibility (consider most characters in the game world are no more than level 5).
Thirded.