Greater Invisibility: What You Don’t See Can Hurt You

Usable By: Bard, Sorcerer, Wizard

Spell Level: 4

School: Illusion

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: Touch

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

Components: V, S

You or 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.

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

A window creaks open; the nobleman turns from his dinner alone over his glamorous dining table. Just a breeze, perhaps. He stands, meandering over to it to close it. Best not to let in a draft, after all! Midway there, he’s stopped, as he bumps into something, but there is nobody there; “What… What is this?” he mutters out. A raspy voice responds “You get what you deserve, noble filth” as a dagger is dug into his belly. The servants found him hours later, not a trace beyond the still ajar window of the infiltrator.

Invisibility is iconic. It's powerful. It changes the axis on which the game is played, opening up entire new routes to success that otherwise were completely off limits to the players. Greater Invisibility takes all of those elements, boils down the window to use them to just a minute, but drops the remaining conditions that keep Invisibility in check. Now, functionally every creature treats you like they’re blinded even as you fire off spells and make weapon attacks. Every attack roll you make has advantage, every enemy attack has disadvantage, assuming they know the space you occupy, which isn’t always the case.

Greater Invisibility isn’t that much better than Invisibility. If you can only take one, I think you can get all you really want out of Invisibility out of the lower level version. If you want to take a fighter and juice them up, Haste is a pretty amazing option to have access to that competes with your concentration slot. Still, there is a good amount of power here; it can be something you’re happy to cast on yourself routinely once a fight breaks out.

Your mileage may vary with how “hittable” you are with this. Lenient DMs may not even ask you to move to stay obfuscated from enemy attacks. Other particularly strict DMs might denote specific conditions that reveal your general location even after moving should you not literally take the hide action. This has a huge impact on the effectiveness as a combat spell, but even at its floor it can still be a meaningful buff that coincidentally gives you all the tools Invisibility does at a higher cost and lower duration. If you like Invisibility and want a combat version, Greater Invisibility will service you well.

5e Spells

Greater Invisibility: What You Don’t See Can Hurt You