History Main / InvisibilityWithDrawbacks

* ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic'' ''VII'' and ''VIII" have Master Ari Magic spell Invisibility that, well, turns your party invisible. However, the spell will fail if you cast it when enemies are nearby (so if you're in a middle of a dungeon when it ends, you're out of luck) and yelling, colliding with monsters, attacking and even casting defensive spells will break it. Its duration also isn't very good until the caster reaches Grandmastery in Air Magic. It is still a very useful spell for sneaking somewhere though.

[[quoteright:605:[[ComicBook/{{G-Man}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/invisible_breath.png]]]]

* ''[[VideoGame/HenryStickminSeries Stealing the Diamond]]'' has this trope apply at one point. During the Unseen Burglar route, Henry can choose an invisibility pill. Depending on the version being played, either Henry will become blind and fall off the roof (vision works by light striking the retinas, but [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome if the retinas are transparent the light just passes through them]]), or the game will lose track of him (you obviously can't track something that is invisible).

** Klingon and Romulan warships have extremely effective cloaking devices, but cloaking takes up so much power that they can't fire any of their weapons or raise their DeflectorShields while cloaked. Another drawback of Romulan (but not Klingon) cloaking devices was the inability to use the [[{{Teleportation}} transporters]] while cloaked. The one time they ''can '' fire while cloaked, in ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'', it gives the ''Enterprise'' and the ''Excelsior'' a hard time and the infamous ''Scimitar'' in ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'', which could cloak, fire ''and'' raise shields, which was able to outfight the ''Enterprise''-E '''and''' a pair of state-of-the-art Romulan Warbirds at the same time.

** Klingon and Romulan warships have extremely effective cloaking devices, but cloaking takes up so much power that they can't fire any of their weapons or raise their DeflectorShields while cloaked. Another drawback of Romulan (but not Klingon) cloaking devices was the inability to use the [[{{Teleportation}} transporters]] while cloaked. The one time they do, in ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'', it gives the ''Enterprise'' and the ''Excelsior'' a hard time and the infamous ''Scimitar'' in ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'', which could cloak, fire ''and'' raise shields, which was able to outfight the ''Enterprise''-E '''and''' a pair of state-of-the-art Romulan Warbirds at the same time.

It's very common for the power of invisibility to have some inherent drawbacks that limit it to only being situationally useful. This is an incredibly universal trope across both fantasy and science fiction genres. It's most common in video games and tabletop games but frequently appears in other media. Invisibility needs to be balanced or it will become a GameBreaker. Also, writers don't want an invisible assassin to start going around and murdering main characters. If a monster or villain is invisible, this can often take the form of a plot point that the hero can exploit as a weakness.

** The episode that introduces the Romulans and their cloaks ("Balance of Terror") also shows that the cloak interferes with the Romulan ship's sensors. This gives Kirk the idea to have the ''Enterprise'' match the bird-of-prey's movements; to the Romulans, the ''Enterprise'' looks like a sensor echo.

* Discussed and subverted in ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode "200". When the writer of a show based on the SG-1 team finds out that one of his actors has pulled out of production, the members of SG-1 suggest that he could continue to use the character by making him invisible, leading to a montage of scenes from an otherwise off-screen incident in which Colonel O'Neill was rendered invisible. The writer is wary of using this particular technique as it gives the character a little too much power. Carter points out that he can always invent drawbacks. She then subverts the example with O'Neill's own invisibility. She implies it did not have any drawbacks, but they came up with some to convince him to return to normal because, well, [[PowerPerversionPotential it's Jack O'Neill]].