ok I have a feller in my group who says a paint gernade would reveal a person using invisabilaty.
I say once it contacts the person it also become invisibal.

The spell Invisibility and Improved Invisibility don't actually make anyone invisible. They just tinker with your mind, making you not see them. Doesn't matter if they get splattered with paint, have a bag of flour dump on their head, are standing in the rain, or anything else. The spell makes you not see them.

What about methods of invisibility that dont involve magic? My friend had a character that has a cloak that makes him invisible and no its not magical.

That's a completely different topic. Ruthenium becomes ineffective if you splatter it with paint. It's up to the GM to determine how ineffective it becomes, though. Without looking anything up, I'd probably lower its effectiveness by -1 for every success made on the Throwing Weapons test used to splatter the area... assuming the cloaked individual was within the area of the "blast."

Splash paint on either side of that stuff and two opposite regions will be visible. Where the paint is blocking the shifting colors and where the sheet is showing only the paint because that's all the sensors see.

It's not invisibility, it's very effective camo.

The spells are a more confusing matter entirely that has been debated wildly, but the answer will still be "no" until the rules change.

Any form of camo like Ruthenium would be ineffective if splattered with paint, since it relies on changing color to keep you hidden, and the paint would negate that.

A mind altering spell would act like an SEP field. Technically people could still see you, but they wouldn't notice you, even if you were covered in paint. Depending on how effective the spell was they might not even notice the 'effects' of you, like paint foot prints on the ground. However, it wouldn't fool anything without a mind, like a security camera or an IR trip wire.

A Physical spell to manipulate the light or bend it around you would let everything see straight through you, people and machines. However, they could notice you by the space you take up, i.e. the lack of paint on a wall because it hit you instead. It would also have the side effect of making the invisible person completely blind to what they were invisible to.

Any physical ilusion works to an extent that makes people shout "it should be a manipulation," but since any physical spell can be described as a manipulation, these borderline spells are categoried by the mana type spell with a similar result. Otherwise, the elemental balance would be even more messed up than it is now, and there would be no functional reason for having categories of spells.

The effect may be that of a photonic manipulation, but there are already too many manipulation spells compared o the other groupings, so it is an illusion, a very real seeming illusion.

"Invisibility affects the minds of viewers." 'Nuff said.

SR3, p.195:

Here we go again.

Yes, it's Physical because it's affecting Physical objects. In this case, technological sensors (and notice the wording; "as well," meaning "in addition to affecting targets minds"). It in no way actually makes you invisible, it just makes people and things think/record you as being invisible. That's why some people can see through it while others can't. If you were actually invisible, that wouldn't happen; at best, they'd just know someone or something was present and would still suffer the +8 blind fire penalty.

But you know, treat it however you like. I honestly don't care what you do in your games.

I say kill said individual execution style to make an example to the group why not to argue with the god-like gm. And then, if need be, I can fill the now open slot on your group roster... I want to play in a game rather than be the gm constantly.

I haven't really paid attention to the previous (humongous, heated) threads on invisibility picayunne, but I've just thought of a curious situation: If you shine a laser designator through an improved-invisible person, where does the guided missile go?

I see three possible answers:

-It homes in on the spot originally aimed for, on the other side of the character. This should mean that laser weapons and all other sorts of light actually go through the character, making him truly invisible in the light-bending way.

-It homes in on the character. Lame, IMO. It means that you should be able to illuminate invisible characters with bright lights, which is dumb.

-It nullifies the designator signal since it hits the character and the character is invisible, therefore the signal cannot be seen by the missile. This was my first impulse, but then I realized its implications. This would mean that light which hits the character "disappears", causing the character to leave visible shadows.


I hope this hasn't been brought up before.

I'd say 1 or 3, either is equally valid. Why? Because the invis spell is an SEP field. It's not that you don't see what's invisible, it's that you do see whatever you're expecting to see there. So the person firing the laser designator would see a nice big spot on the other side of the person. You, as the GM, would determine whether or not the missile is 'expecting' to see the laser designator. If it IS expecting to see the laser designator somewhere, the only place it could put it is in the 'shadow' of the invisible person (making the missile less accurate, but since it would be hitting behind the person, the shooter will see what he's expecting to see; dead hit). If it ISN'T, it won't see the laser and will fly unguided until it has such a point of view that it can see around the person or hits something else. Obviously, the problem with this is you have to figure out what a missile expects...

That leaves the question of shadows somewhat unanswered. Do they leave shadows?

Here's a weird situation:

I'd say it's 4: The laser hits the target just fine, and the missle strikes the target unless the missle has to pass through where the character is. Laser weapons would damage the character as well, but you'd still have to hit him and be incredibly lucky (meaning, the GM would have to just be a dick about hitting him at random or the character would have to be directly in front of another appropriate target). The +8 penalty would/should still apply, however.

You wouldn't see the guy's shadow because you don't WANT to see the guy's shadow. That's the spell. Lasers weapons would work because they have nothing to do with 'seeing' what you're ripping up, but you might not actually see the fact that you hit anything but the wall behind him. The guy behind the invisible man won't feel anything, although perhaps he'd see the searing beam of light on his chest (that is, until the invisible man is knocked down or whatever).

That's why illusion spells have been defined as "anything that sounds like it could be an illusion," because everything can be a manipulation spell of some sort.

Use a tear gas greande with dye marker. The tear gas may cause the invisible guy to be incapacitated AND you can identitfy where he is by the eddies in the dye stream.

But if your mind is being fooled into thinking there's nothing there, then it's also safe to assume it's being told to ignore any telltale <edit> visual </edit> evidence, e.g., eddies in the dye stream, footprints in snow, frosted breath on a cold day, etc. If you successfully resist the illusion, then you'd see the (formerly) invisible target just as well as anything they're standing in/walking through.

Bad analogy spooky because that's not true. The spell tells you you cannot see him, theres a real difference. He still makes noise, touches things, leaves an odor, and interacts with the world around him.

True. I guess I should have qualified it with 'telltale visual evidence', since it's a visual-only illusion.

No, you simply cannot see the invisible object, not its effects. If so, then any tell tale visual evidence would be covered up which is simply not true.

An invisible car running through traffic would cause a gap in the traffic flow! And you aim your LAW at that gap. Therefore, you can aim at the frosted breath/heat signature/other signs and hit your target.

Splashing paint would cause the splashed paint on the person to disappear but the rest of the paint would still be visible and you spray at the empty area.

OK then, minor telltale visual evidence. You've got to draw the line somewhere.

As for aiming for the gap in the paint spray, frosted breath, etc, I'd say that would be determined by your spell resistance roll. If you pass it, then you're clever enough to use the sensory data available to you to make up for not seeing the target. If not, then you're really just firing blindly in the same general direction as the gap in the paint.

Honestly, this would be so much easier if it really did make you invisible .

There was a major thread back in the old forums about invisible doors and casting combat spells through them... you might want to check that out.

I rule that the spell only turns invisible anything present on the caster when the spell is cast. If something leaves the caster then it becomes visible and if the caster picks something new up, its stays visible unless he spends a complex action to "Control the spell" actively. Much like moving a barrier, it takes active concentration. I find it works quite well.

Sounds reasonable enough. How do you handle wounding? That is, do you require a complex action to make a bullet (shuriken, knife, etc) embedded in the target's thigh 'disappear'? If the invisible person doesn't have a spare complex action, does his opponent suffer a reduced targetting penalty for any attachs they may get in before the wound disappears?

There's a small problem with Invisibility being a mental spell only, like an SEP. Imagine this simple senairio: You're exploring a building you've never been in before when you come around a corner and there's an invisible guy standing in the middle of the hallway. Now, naturally with him being invisible you wouldn't notice him there, but there's a small problem, you can't see through him! You won't be able to see the other end of the hallway behind him because even though you won't notice him he'll still be blocking your sight, so what do you see? You might argue that the spell effect will prevent you from noticing that you can't see behind him, since that would negate the spell by giving away his position, but since you've never been in the building before you have no idea what what's behind him looks like, so you couldn't just ignore not seeing it.

Here's another thing to consider, would an invisible person block LOS for spell-casting? Technically you couldn't have LOS if there was a person standing in your way, but if he was invisible you would think that you did.

Magic is a wonderful thing. You don't have to know how it does what it does, only that it does what it does. Magicians and theorists like to theorize about what it does, but the simple fact is that magic is magic. It defies logic in many ways, and the Invisibility spell is one such example.

Word.