The party has been out in the wild tracking a leprechaun for a month. They’ve managed to find it a couple times, but it routinely turns invisible once attacked and makes its escape. They’ve guessed that it probably doesn’t have a lot of hit points, but turning invisible with plenty of room to run has made it impossible to get in enough attacks to bring it down.
After a few lucky survival checks, they’ve picked up its trail again, and Aidan, the Eldritch Knight, spots it first. “Chill Touch!” he shouts, firing off the cantrip, landing the hit but dealing a disappointing 2 necrotic damage. The rest of the party groans as the leprechaun takes its action to turn invisible yet again.
“Nice job scaring him off,” says Thugwump the Barbarian.
Aidan points a little ways off.
“Ohhh! Thugwump thugwumps!” The barbarian runs off, and targets the exact spot where the leprechaun is hiding.
What just happened?
Here’s the text of Chill Touch:
You create a ghostly, skeletal hand in the space of a creature within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the creature to assail it with the chill of the grave. On a hit, the target takes 1d8 necrotic damage, and it can’t regain hit points until the start of your next turn. Until then, the hand clings to the target.
If you hit an undead target, it also has disadvantage on attack rolls against you until the end of your next turn.
Thugwump has followed the skeletal hand clinging to the leprechaun.
Does that work?
It sure seems that it ought to. The Invisibility spell, Ring of Invisibility, Cloak of Invisibility, and Potion of Invisibility all refer to making yourself invisible along with whatever you’re “wearing or carrying.” The ghostly skeletal hand is clinging to the target.
The rules for attacking unseen targets impose disadvantage on attack rolls, and that would still apply. Thematically, that also makes sense. Thugwump can’t see the leprechaun’s footing, it’s stance, the position of its limbs, all things one would want to observe to land an attack against a dexterous target. But, attacking unseen targets also automatically misses if the player picks the wrong space to attack. Chill Touch negates that problem.
Spells that don’t require attack rolls, like Thunderwave, Cloud of Blades, Bonfire, Burning Hands, and the like will be fully effective. Spells that require seeing the enemy, like Magic Missiles, won’t work at all though.
It’s only going to last until the start of Aidan’s next turn, but that’s enough time for the entire party to make an attack, including Aidan on his next turn when he can try to do some more substantial damage. It’s also going to be extremely helpful if anyone lower down the initiative order has Faerie Fire.