Cloak of Displacement 5e: Disadvantage on Every Attack, Until Someone Hits You

The Cloak of Displacement 5e is a rare wondrous item, requiring attunement, that gives every creature Disadvantage on attack rolls against you. It stops working the moment you take damage and stays off until the start of your next turn. It's also suppressed when you can't move: in 2014 that means incapacitated, restrained or otherwise unable to move, and in 2024 it means your Speed is 0. Against one big attacker it cuts the hits you take by roughly 40%; against a swarm or a fireball it does little. For a melee character with a free cloak slot, it's a strong use of an attunement slot.

Table of Contents

• •Cloak of Displacement Rules Text
• •How the Cloak of Displacement Works
• •Cloak of Displacement: 2014 vs 2024
• •Is the Cloak of Displacement Worth It?
• •Cloak of Displacement for DMs
• •Frequently Asked Questions

Cloak of Displacement Rules Text

Both SRDs print the same three sentences on the effect. Only the last one, on when the cloak shuts down, was rewritten for 2024.

How the Cloak of Displacement Works

Disadvantage on every attack roll

While you wear it and are attuned, every attack roll against you is made with Disadvantage: melee, ranged and spell attacks alike. Nothing is spent and there's nothing to activate. The illusion runs all day.

What Disadvantage is worth depends on how likely the attack was to hit. The attacker needs the same number on both dice, so the chance of a hit gets squared:

For comparison, a +1 bonus to AC, like the one a Cloak of Protection gives, lowers any of those hit chances by only 5 percentage points.

The damage switch, and what it does to multiattack

If you take damage, the property stops until the start of your next turn. Any damage counts: a hit, a failed save against a fireball, a fall. The first hit against you in a round turns the cloak off for every attack after it until your turn comes around.

Worked example: a monster with two attacks at +6 against your AC 16 (each needs a 10, 55%).

• •Without the cloak: 0.55 + 0.55 = 1.10 hits per round on average.
• •With the cloak: the first attack hits 30% of the time. If it hits, the second rolls normally at 55%; if it misses, the second is also at Disadvantage, 30%. That works out to 0.30 + (0.30 × 0.55) + (0.70 × 0.30) = about 0.68 hits per round.

That's roughly 38% fewer hits. The more attacks a monster makes, the less the cloak helps, because only the attacks before the first hit are affected. A pack of ten goblins gets one good hit in and the rest swing normally.

What switches it off: 2014 vs 2024

The two editions use different triggers for suppression, and they don't cover the same situations:

The 2024 Stunned case is less generous than it looks. Attack rolls against a stunned creature have Advantage, so the cloak's Disadvantage cancels it out and the attacker rolls one d20 as normal. That still beats the 2014 result, where a stunned wearer loses the cloak and attackers roll with Advantage.

When it stacks, and when Advantage cancels it

Disadvantage doesn't stack. If an attacker already has it (because it's blinded, or you're invisible, or you took the Dodge action), the cloak adds nothing. If the attacker has Advantage from anything, such as you being prone within 5 feet of it, the two cancel and it rolls one die. The same goes for the Blur spell: cloak plus Blur is one Disadvantage, not two. Blur doesn't switch off when you're hit (unless the damage breaks your Concentration), so a caster with both has a backstop.

What it doesn't stop

Saving throw effects ignore it entirely: breath weapons, Fireball, a Hold Person. So does anything that doesn't roll to hit. And because any damage turns it off, one of those effects at the top of the round leaves you exposed to every attack that follows.

Blindsight and Truesight

The cloak says "any creature" and, unlike Blur, names no exception. Truesight is still settled by the general rules: the Disadvantage comes from an illusion that shows you in the wrong place, and Truesight sees through visual illusions in both editions (the 2014 SRD says it automatically detects them; the 2024 glossary says they appear transparent). A creature that sees you with Truesight isn't fooled about where you are, so it attacks normally. Blindsight isn't settled: it lets a creature perceive without physical sight, but the cloak doesn't say which senses its illusion deceives. DM ruling: treat Blindsight like Blur does and let it ignore the cloak. Tell the player before attunement.

Cloak of Displacement: 2014 vs 2024

What this means at the table:

• •2024 keeps the cloak up through more conditions. Being stunned or incapacitated no longer drops it. Being grappled or restrained still does in both editions.
• •2024 ties suppression to one number. Any effect that sets your Speed to 0 suppresses the cloak, whatever the condition is called, which makes the edge cases easy to rule on.
• •Nothing else changed. The math above works the same in both editions.

Is the Cloak of Displacement Worth It?

For the character who gets attacked most, yes. It turns a 55% hit into a 30% hit until something connects, which is worth far more than +1 or +2 AC at that range. It takes an attunement slot and your one cloak slot. The SRD says a character can't normally wear more than one cloak, so it competes with every other cloak:

Who should use it:

• •Fighters, paladins and other front-liners. Disadvantage removes the most hits when an attack would land about half the time (needing 9 to 13 on the die), which is where enemy attacks against a well-armored front-liner tend to sit.
• •Duelists against single big monsters. One giant with two attacks is the best case.

When it's a trap: in fights against many small attackers, against casters who use saving throws, and against grappling monsters. A wizard who sits in the back line gains more from the Cloak of Protection's +1 to saves, because the threats that reach a back-liner are usually spells.

Cloak of Displacement for DMs

Where it turns up. As a rare item it belongs in a level 5 to 10 hoard. It suits the lair of anything that fights by misdirection: an illusionist, a band of thieves, a creature that hunts by ambush.

What it changes. The player wearing it gets hit much less by the big single attackers you use as bosses: an ogre, a giant, a lone knight. Fights built around one heavy hitter become easier. Encounters with many attackers, area spells and grapples are barely affected, and you don't need to target the cloak on purpose; mix encounter types and it will come up.

Pricing. The 2024 SRD values a rare item at 4,000 GP and says rare items are usually found only in cities. The 2014 SRD has no prices. For a shop, the magic item rarity calculator helps set the asking price.

Rulings to settle early. Decide how the cloak works against Blindsight before a creature with it shows up. Remind the player that falling damage or a trap triggered at the start of the round turns the cloak off too.

Hooks.

• •An assassin in the party's way wears a Cloak of Displacement. The fight is hard until someone thinks to blast the whole hallway first.
• •A tailor in the capital sells cloaks that "make you hard to hit." One of the twenty on the rack is real, and the tailor doesn't know which.

Which cloak the fighter swapped out last month is the kind of thing that slips between sessions. Loreify records the game and keeps the loot in the recap.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the Cloak of Displacement require attunement?

Yes. It's a rare wondrous item that requires attunement in both the 2014 and 2024 rules, and it uses your cloak slot.

Does the Cloak of Displacement work after you take damage?

No. When you take damage, it stops until the start of your next turn. Every attack after the first hit in a round is rolled normally.

Does the Cloak of Displacement stack with Blur or the Dodge action?

No. Disadvantage doesn't stack: with the cloak plus Blur or Dodge, attackers still roll only two dice. Blur and Dodge do keep working after you take damage, so they cover the rounds the cloak drops.

Does the Cloak of Displacement work while stunned?

In the 2014 rules, no: a stunned creature is incapacitated, which suppresses the cloak. In the 2024 rules it only shuts off when your Speed is 0, so it still works while you're stunned, but it cancels against the Advantage that attacks get against a stunned creature.

How much is a Cloak of Displacement worth?

4,000 GP under the 2024 SRD, the value of any rare magic item. The 2014 SRD doesn't give prices for magic items.

Item text: System Reference Document 5.1 (2014) and 5.2.1 (2024), Wizards of the Coast, CC-BY-4.0. Analysis, rulings and ideas are Loreify's own.