Invisibility

Alternative Name: Unseen Veil

2nd-Level Illusion
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (an eyelash encased in gum arabic)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
Available To: Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

Effect: A creature you touch becomes invisible until the spell ends. Anything the target is wearing or carrying becomes invisible as long as it is on the target’s person.

The spell ends early if the target attacks or casts a spell.

Overview

Invisibility is one of the defining spells because it does something very few forms of magic can do so completely: it removes a creature from sight and turns that absence into advantage. There is no wavering outline, no deceptive duplicate, no false target to choose between. There is simply a person the eye cannot find.

That absence is not passive. It immediately changes how every creature in the scene understands danger. A visible enemy can be judged, tracked, threatened, and answered. An invisible one cannot. Even when others know you are near, they must guess at your movement, listen for your passing, watch the world for signs of disturbance, and fear the possibility that you are already where they can least afford you to be.

This is what makes Invisibility so powerful. It does not add a lie to reality. It removes certainty from it.

Why Invisibility Matters

Invisibility stands at the height of the illusion cluster because it resolves, in the most absolute everyday form, the central problem of defensive and deceptive illusion magic.

Mirror Image asks: which body is real?
Blur asks: where exactly is the body?
Invisibility answers: the body cannot be seen at all.

That shift changes not just combat, but the logic of a whole encounter. Attacks become guesses. Guard patterns become vulnerable. Locked spaces become less secure. Social scenes gain unseen witnesses. Pursuits become unstable. Traps may be reached without warning. Knowledge may be gathered without permission. The spell does not merely protect the caster. It changes who possesses initiative.

That is why Invisibility matters so much in play. It is useful in battle, but its true greatness lies in how many kinds of scenes it can transform: stealth, scouting, intrusion, espionage, escape, sabotage, rescue, theft, and tense moments where being unseen matters more than being strong.

Best Uses

Stealth and Infiltration

This is the classic use for good reason. Invisibility lets a character pass where sight alone would stop them. Guards, sentries, patrols, and watchers lose their most immediate advantage the moment the target can no longer be seen. In a fortress, temple, vault, manor, or prison, that can be enough to make the impossible merely dangerous.

Scouting and Intelligence Gathering

Few spells are better for learning what others mean to keep hidden. Invisibility allows the careful observer to hear plans, count defenders, inspect routes, identify hazards, and discover truths that force would never reach cleanly.

Escape Under Pressure

When pursuit is close and line of sight is the enemy’s greatest tool, Invisibility can break the certainty that keeps a chase coherent. A vanished target is not automatically safe, but every second spent guessing is a second won.

Ambush and First Strike

The invisible combatant decides when presence becomes action. That freedom of timing is often worth more than raw damage. The difference between being expected and being absent until the decisive instant is often the difference between a struggle and an execution.

Tension and Area Denial

Even without striking, an invisible creature changes behavior around them. Enemies bunch together, spread too wide, waste actions, guard the wrong route, protect objects already compromised, or stare into empty space while the real danger moves elsewhere. The spell creates pressure simply by existing.

Practical Tactics

Move as Though You Can Still Be Found

Invisibility removes sight, not sound, weight, smell, or consequence. Boots still scrape. Doors still open. Dust still shifts. Water still parts. A careful invisible creature acts like someone hiding from every other sense in the room, not someone who has become untouchable.

Break the Spell on Purpose

Because the spell ends when the target attacks or casts a spell, the moment of revelation matters enormously. The best use of Invisibility is often not remaining unseen for as long as possible, but choosing the single moment when becoming seen will do the most damage.

Let the Environment Help You

Invisibility becomes even more dangerous in darkness, noise, crowded interiors, windy battlements, dripping caverns, busy courts, incense-heavy shrines, and any place where other sensory clues are confused, delayed, or drowned out.

Use It Before Combat More Than During Combat

Invisibility is often strongest before blades are drawn. It excels at approach, setup, reconnaissance, and positioning. Once the spell breaks, that initial edge is gone. Treat it less as a long duel tool and more as a spell that decides where the duel begins.

Coordinate Carefully

When used on an ally, Invisibility rewards planning. The invisible target should know exactly what the goal is: scouting, theft, eavesdropping, positioning, escape, rescue, or a single sudden attack. Clear intention makes the spell far more valuable than improvisation alone.

Limits of the Spell

Invisibility is powerful, but it is not absolute. It does not make the target silent, intangible, scentless, or immune to being guessed. It removes them from sight, and that is not the same as removing them from the world.

That means enemies may still:

• hear movement
• notice footprints, disturbed dust, or shifting objects
• use blindsight, tremorsense, or other non-visual detection
• prepare attacks against likely spaces
• fill an area with flame, water, smoke, sand, or other revealing matter

The spell also ends when the target attacks or casts a spell. That boundary is crucial. Invisibility is not a sustained combat supremacy tool at this level. It is a spell of approach, denial, timing, and positional control.

Its other balancing factor is concentration. The unseen remain vulnerable to disruption, panic, injury, and the ordinary hazards of being alive in a hostile place.

DM Notes

Invisibility works best when treated as absence, not distortion. Do not describe a shimmering figure unless some other effect is revealing one. The central power of the spell is that the eye does not receive an answer.

Describe the world instead:

• footprints appearing in dust
• water breaking around unseen legs
• a torch turning toward empty air
• a door moving with no visible hand
• hanging chains nudged aside
• guards going silent because something is plainly present, but not visible

This keeps the spell dramatic without weakening its identity.

At the same time, intelligent opposition should adapt. They may close ranks, listen carefully, throw powder or liquid, ward narrow exits, ready attacks, or guard what matters most. That is not punishing the spell. It is letting the spell create a sharper scene.

The best invisibility play does not erase tension. It relocates tension into empty space.

Good Combinations

Silence: One of the cleanest pairings. If sight is denied and sound is suppressed, detection becomes much harder.

Pass without Trace: Excellent for infiltration, group stealth, and reducing the ordinary clues that invisibility alone does not remove.

Misty Step: Useful for repositioning once the spell breaks or for reaching a spot that stealth alone cannot safely cross.

Darkness: In some environments, stacking visual uncertainty with magical darkness makes all other tracking harder and more stressful.

Disguise Self: Useful before or after invisibility in infiltration play, especially when being seen briefly under the right identity matters.

Greater Invisibility: The natural higher-tier evolution of the spell, shifting invisibility from setup and approach into active combat dominance.

Adventure and Story Uses

Invisibility is one of the most versatile narrative spells in the game because it opens situations that brute force, persuasion, and ordinary stealth often cannot.

A thief crosses a guarded treasury without ever giving the guards a target.
A spy listens to a closed council and learns what will reshape a kingdom.
A hunted mage vanishes mid-flight, leaving pursuers to argue with empty air.
A rescuer enters a prison that no army could storm in time.
An assassin waits in perfect stillness for the exact moment history becomes murder.
A pilgrim slips unseen into a forbidden shrine to witness what no outsider was meant to see.

That is why Invisibility endures as a cornerstone spell. It turns absence into agency. It makes uncertainty itself an instrument of power.

Invisibility

This material is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms ofthe Open Game License v1.0a.

Illusion (Glamer)
Level Bard 2, Sorcerer/Wizard 2, Trickery 2
Components V, S, M/DF
Casting Time 1 standard action
Range Personal or touch
Target You or a creature or object weighing no more than 100 lb./level
Duration 1 min./level (D)
Saving Throw Will negates (harmless) or Will negates (harmless, object)

Spell Resistance Yes (harmless) or Yes (harmless, object)

The creature or object touched becomes invisible, vanishing from sight, even from Darkvision. If the recipient is a creature carrying gear, that vanishes, too. If you cast the spell on someone else, neither you nor your allies can see the subject, unless you can normally see invisible things or you employ magic to do so.

Items dropped or put down by an invisible creature become visible; items picked up disappear if tucked into the clothing or pouches worn by the creature. Light, however, never becomes invisible, although a source of light can become so (thus, the effect is that of a light with no visible source). Any part of an item that the subject carries but that extends more than 10 feet from it becomes visible.

Of course, the subject is not magically silenced, and certain other conditions can render the recipient detectable (such as stepping in a puddle). The spell ends if the subject attacks any creature. For purposes of this spell, an attack includes any spell targeting a foe or whose area or effect includes a foe. (Exactly who is a foe depends on the invisible character’s perceptions.) Actions directed at unattended objects do not break the spell. Causing harm indirectly is not an attack. Thus, an invisible being can open doors, talk, eat, Climb stairs, summon monsters and have them attack, cut the ropes holding a rope bridge while enemies are on the bridge, remotely trigger traps, open a portcullis to release attack dogs, and so forth. If the subject attacks directly, however, it immediately becomes visible along with all its gear. Spells such as bless that specifically affect allies but not foes are not attacks for this purpose, even when they include foes in their area.

Invisibility can be made permanent (on objects only) with a permanency spell.

Arcane Material Component An eyelash encased in a bit of gum arabic.