Well, I found another forgotten tidbit in the 1E DMG.
Ok, invisibility has always had its limitations. Powder on the floor, dogs and dragons could smell you, enemies could hear you, etc. But there is a section on pg. 60 of the 1E DMG that shows a chart for the possibility of detecting invisible creatures/characters based on HD and INT.
Once you hit the low teen levels and with an INT at the higher end of the scale, invisibilty becomes nearly useless! Consider:
11th level/10+ to 11 HD with a 15-16 INT gives a 30% chance to detect invisible beings.
13th level/12+ to 13 HD with 51-16 INT gives a 50% chance to detect invisible beings. With a 17 INT it rises to 55%.
15th level/15+ HD with a 15-16 INT gives an 85% chance to detect invisible beings, with a 95% chance for INT 17!
So once that wizard hits 15th level, if he has a 17 INT he can detect invisible creatures 95% of the time. That's unreal! Even with a mere 15-16 INT (and I rarely see wizards with lower INT scores), he has an 85% chance to detect any invisible creatures.
By "detect", they mean just that...they somehow see a shimmer or something that lets them know something/someone invisible is there. This is without any need to hear, smell, or sprinkle flour on the floor.
I think the chart gets a little too generous at higher levels. For example, at 13th level, with even an average INT of 11-12, there's a 55% chance to detect invisible beings.
Seems to me that invisibility becomes much less useful at higher levels using that chart.
What do the rest of you think?
Invisibility becomes weak in 1E!
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Invisibility becomes weak in 1E!
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Well, it is only a 2nd level spell. I don't really see a problem with that. Remember, it works both ways, the group can't sneak up on dragons, creatures can't sneak up on them as easily when they are high level. They are still counted as invisible (ie, -4 to try and hit them) so that advantage is still retained. Also, doesn't improved invisibility have a lesser chance of being detected? (it's been a while since I've read the description, but I thought it was harder to detect)
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I'm okay with invisibility the way it works. It has all the other senses working against it, and even vision if you the shimmer is detected.
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