“PHB1 p286, ‘Teleportation: Line of Sight: You have to be able to see your
destination. No Line of Effect: You can teleport to a place you can see even if you don’t have line of effect to it.’

“So it doesn’t actually matter what state of visibility the enemies have because it doesn’t matter if the Wiz has LoS to them. The enemies being invisible is a moot point; its completely irrelevant to the resolution of the power’s effect.”

In other words, you were right and your DM was wrong. You didn’t have to have LoS to the target, only to the destination. It’s an easy one for a DM to confuse in-game, especially since it would have absolutely _destroyed_ the fun/challenge of the monster.

A little bit of background will probably help.

I play a Battlemind in our campaign. We were going up against a solo lurker, and I had decided to try out my new daily power Psionic Anchor. The power’s text reads:

Hit: As a free action at the end of the target’s turn, you can teleport the target to a square adjacent to you (save ends).
Miss: Half damage. As a free action at the end of the target’s next turn, you can teleport the target to a square adjacent to you.

Now, I interpreted that as my character creates a kind of psionic link with the target, which allows me to continually teleport them next to me at the end of their turn, whether they want me to or not. The enemy that we were fighting would consistently burrow, pop up and hit everyone, then burrow, pop up and hit everyone, burrow, etc. I planned to make it so that it would just end up next to me, so that the rest of my party could try and get some damage in.

I used the power and missed. However, I figured that I could at least teleport the target next to me at the end of it’s turn, as the power says. At the end of the it’s turn, it burrowed, as usual. I said that I teleport it next to me, and our DM said that I couldn’t, as I couldn’t see the target. I felt that this kind of defeated the purpose of this power and just didn’t seem like a good way of handling the situation.

I know that people probably will think that since I’m a player I probably just want things to go my way. However, I plan to DM a different campaign in a few months and I do honestly want to know what kind of ruling should be made here.

Was my Battlemind in the right? Or should I not be able to teleport a burrowed enemy?

I checked the books and confirmed for myself that visibility of the target doesn’t necessarily matter, but line of sight (though not effect) to the destination does. Of course a DM is free to waive this, especially if the lack of LOS was just due to (correctable) placement.

Sorry if this has been pointed out already, but I suppose another vote doesn’t hurt.

The answer comes down to how comfortable and mature your players are with meta-gaming. Are they the kind of players who can say, “Well, I know this but my character doesn’t, so he’s going to act this way instead…” Or are they the kind that say, “Oh I failed my nature check but I read this monster before; its a so-and-so that resists…”

Yes, the monsters location is now knowledge of the player, but is it knowledge of the characters? That’s the non-rules point you need to stress to them. Yes, you may have a power that grants you a +2 to initiative, but your character doesn’t know WTF initiative is!

I see two solutions to this:

1. The easy way: You play RAW, it works as described, and as the DM you then fluff it in some way, like the suggestions here (targets shimmer, Wiz gets a magic sense, etc). That’s what we do all the time – we provide a “story” for why these mechanical things happen.

How do you explain in narrative terms how Combat Advantage works? How do you explain Marking? Those are mechanics we as storytellers must find a way to translate into a narrative. Yes, sometimes we just have to say, “OK, I’m not sure how to explain this, but the monster has an Aura 2 that causes you to take a -2 to hit. I dunno, I guess he stinks. Whatever, let’s move on.”

2. The hard way: You come up with some system that allows the power to work RAW but maintains the lack of monster location knowledge. You could tell the Wiz, “OK, you unleash the blast and hit the monster in front of your ally. You can also tell that 2 other creatures – ones you apparently can’t see – were in the blast. Makes 2 more attack rolls. OK, both hit, good. Now tell me -ideally- where you would like the 2 hidden monsters to be teleported to? OK, your keen arcane sense tells you one of them has been teleported to the first square you requested. But the 2nd one seems to be too far away. Would you like to try for a different square?”

Something like the above dialogue maintains that storytelling veil, but it just takes a lot longer and more patience form everyone involved.

To answer Mildeway’s rules question, IMHO, yes I believe the monster would still have invisibility + hidden under RAW:

1. The invisible monster make their stealth checks and beat the PCs passive perception. The monsters are hidden.
2. A monster attacks the lead ally, so they now know enemies are present.
3. The Wiz sets off his blast, hits multiple creatures, and teleports them around. The Wiz now has some knowledge of the creatures numbers and locations – the quality and quantity of that knowledge is dependent on how the DM rules it.
4. At this point the monster have taken no actions to break hidden, and the PCs have taken no actions to detect monsters.

But I would also argue that in the hands of any good party it wouldn’t last long:

5. The Wiz just has to yell, “Hey ally 1 and 2, I -think- I just teleported an invisible creature between you two!”
6. The allies then either; a. attack where they think the monster is, b. try to step into the square running into it, or c. make an active perception check. Any of those will break hidden; the monsters would still invisible but their location would be confirmed.

On a successful stealth check “you are hidden, which means you are silent and invisible to the enemy (see “Concealment” and “Targeting What You Can’t See” PHB1 281)” (PHB2 222)

“Targeting What You Can’t See” says “If an invisible creature is hidden from you, you can neither hear nor see it, and you have to guess what space it occupies. If an invisible creature is not hidden from you, you can hear it or sense some other sign of its presence and therefore know what space it occupies, although you still can’t see it.” (PHB2 223)

“Make a Perception Check” says “On your turn, you can make a Perception check as a minor action to determine the location of an invisible creature that is hidden from you.” (PHB2 223)

“Enemy Activity” says “if an enemy tries to enter your space, you don’t remain hidden from that enemy.” (PHB2 222)
The effects of invisibility are (PHB1 281):
1) “You can’t be seen by normal vision.”
2) “You have combat advantage against enemies that can’t see you.”
3) “You don’t provoke OA from enemies that can’t see you.”

Personally, I’ve given up on answering the question by RAW (but wouldn’t mind seeing it settled one way or another). To me it makes sense that the targets are no longer hidden to the wizard either because the blast is like he tried entering their space, or because the blast provides him some kind of non-normal vision to detect their presence. But that’s MY call, and only my call. I’d respect any GM that disagrees. I wouldn’t even put it past myself to rule otherwise if I had designed a setting specific reason that didn’t work. I might even go for a middle ground (that’s obviously house-ruled) and allow a free action perception or arcana check to allow the wizard to locate them. And as long as I’m offering opinions, if they’re still hidden, I’d let the wizard describe where he wants them in vague terms like “far away” or “off to the left”. And if I was really toying with them, I’d let them give me vague explanations every time they cast the spell (on second thought, that would just get annoying for me _and_ them).

Well, if the enemies are invisible and not hidden, Cruven (and everyone else) knows what square they are in and where they end up. Somehow – a shimmer in the air, scraping a foot on the ground, or whatever – the enemies broadcast their location to the PCs. So that’s straightforward.

If the enemies are invisible and hidden, I’d say the power does indeed grant a “free” locate hidden target ability. That’s okay by me – it dovetails well with the fluff of an arcane wayfarer as master of space manipulation. Perhaps Cruven can detect the gravity wells of hidden creatures. I don’t think it’s a big deal, because all the enemy needs to do is, on its turn, move 1 square and it’s hidden again (the PCs don’t know which square it’s in anymore).