Solo Character without True Sight or Invisibility Purge... how to handle Potion of Invisibility?

GSmith84

I was working on a Shadowdancer 13 > Fighter and thought, without any ability to dispel illusions or invisibility I'm going to get backstabbed to hell, so I better pump Detect Illusion.

Unfortunately it just doesn't seem to work against any Potion of Invisibility use. I used Keeper to give myself huge boosts to test and I sat there with detect illusions on at 100, 150, 200 and many rounds later, no one ever detected.

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I have SCS installed and BGTweaks. And I'm trying to figure out how on earth you'd make it through solo with this issue.

Blackraven

That sounds like a bug to me. Afaik Detect Illusion is a great skill that should dispel all invisibility (and other illusions), be it in invisibility through spells, scrolls, potions or items such as rings. SCS or BGTweaks aren't supposed to change that.

GSmith84

I just re-installed SCS started a new game and instead of giving myself thieving skills I gave myself XP to manually enter it just in case and tested it.

I ran straight from Waukeen's to the Tanner's basement and it appears to be properly dispelling. I will have to make my way to Maevar's Guild to see if it works there as that is where I encountered the issue. (Doesn't make the Rune Assassin's being able to see through invisibility any less annoying but thats a separate issue.)

JuliusBorisov

@GSmith84‌ and @Blackraven‌ All this time I've searched the reason (because I encounter this problem myself in the latest playthrough) and it seems I've found the answer at last:

by @CamDawg‌

Detect Illusion Thieving skill works ONLY against SPELLS from the illusion school. Ashirukuru are actually hidden in shadows, so DI shouldn't be outing them. The other two are actually exposing 'cheats' of the engine--both of those mages use a ring to simulate pre-buffs, so they're not true mirror images.

http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/309914/#Comment_309914

by @AlexT‌

As for the Ashirikurus, it can be assumed that they are initially hiding in shadows so we're not making any changes there for now.

http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/309955/#Comment_309955

Applying this logic, enemies that have drunk a potion of invisibilty and/or hiding in shadows are NOT detected by this skill.

Blackraven

@bengoshi
Wow, all these years I thought that thieves' Detect Illusions functioned as True Sight, i.e. detecting both potions-based invisibility and Stealth (unless the Cloak of Non-Detection is used), as well as spell-based invisibility. Good to know, though it saddens me that once again Mages get the best deal.
I'm running a Mage/Swashbuckler who already has 50 in Detect Illusions. If I make it into Amn with her, I'll test how she fares in the situations @GSmith84 mentioned. My memory of them is a bit hazy I fear.

CamDawg

Detect Illusion (by original design) worked against anything flagged as an illusion in its file--think stuff like the spells Mirror Image, Invisibility, etc. but not hiding in shadows.

We (talking BG2 Fixpack here, and @AlexT specifically) noticed that many of these same spells, when invoked by items, did not behave. E.g. Mirror Image from Ilbratha could not be dispelled by DI.

This prompted a wider review of spells from items. A handful of items that cast spells were not getting their schools or secondary types set, meaning spell protections or anti-magic stuff wouldn't always work as expected. This also included some of the special, undroppable items used by enemy mages to simulate buffs. BG2FP (and now EE by extension) added proper schools and secondaries to the items to correct this--Ilbratha's Mirror Image can now be dispelled by DI, for example.

Potions don't really 'cast spells', per se, so they were generally omitted from the BG2FP review. The Potion of Invisibility was flagged by the original devs as an Illusion (the only potion in the game that has a school/secondary set, and not changed by EE), so it should be subject to DI. That being said:

GSmith84 said:

Unfortunately it just doesn't seem to work against any Potion of Invisibility use. I used Keeper to give myself huge boosts to test and I sat there with detect illusions on at 100, 150, 200 and many rounds later, no one ever detected.

Detect Illusion does not affect allied creatures, since dispelling your own party protections would suck. I believe it only affects hostiles, but it might also affect neutrals (can't remember, honestly).

GSmith84

It must have been due to a weird situation in my mod install or something because its working now. I can't say for Neutral characters but it does work for hostiles. I don't know what all illusions are considered in this skill though but invisibility I think is the big one. I also don't know what level of detect illusions you need to dispel invisibility as a gnome with Detect at 45 it does get it 50% of the time between Leaving Shadows and I guess the next round where you'd be fully revealed.

As such you can Hide > Detect > Hide again without being engaged in combat fairly regularly and get rid of invisibility, some times mirror image too. I don't know if the Detect Skill being increased increases the speed of the detection or some higher level illusions (like Mislead) require higher detection.

It doesn't really offer a counter to mages because Stoneskin makes backstab a moot point anyway and they would need to be dealt with in another fashion.

bbear

I know 2 ways to dispel illusion (both means are pretty late in the game though):

1. Book of Infinite Spells: True Seeing
2. Upgraded Thief Hood

OlvynChuru

Doesn't the dragonslaying sword let you detect invisibility?