Monster's that see through invisibility without casting

Noloir

Anyone know off-hand all the creatures in the game that can effective see through invisibility and non-detection without true sight? Making an effort to complete a no re-load run but with all of these random technicalities I'm just about ready to call it quits.

Gotural

Liches, Dragons, Demons, Wondering Horrors, Melyssan, Demogorgon, Planetars, Devas, Rune Assassins, The Ravager and a few others I'm forgetting.

Lord_Tansheron

Beholders, I'm pretty sure.

JuliusBorisov

Lord_Tansheron said:

Beholders, I'm pretty sure.

Nope, they don't see through invisibility, even with the SCS. Meanwhile, the SCS has a component for Illithids to see through invisibility (matches the Tactics mod).

Gotural said:

Liches, Dragons, Demons, Wondering Horrors, Melyssan, Demogorgon, Planetars, Devas, Rune Assassins, The Ravager and a few others I'm forgetting.

Also, Kuo-toa, Gromnir, Balthazar, all of Sendai's clones.

Gotural

The fish-men can see through invisibility?! I had no idea.

Lord_Tansheron

bengoshi said:

Nope, they don't see through invisibility, even with the SCS.

You'd think with that many eyes, they'd know something was up.

Gotural

They are immune to backstabs with their 360 degree vision though.

semiticgoddess

@bengoshi: Only Sendai herself can see through invisibility, at least with SCS installed. Her clones cannot. I remember being overwhelmed during that fight and being able to escape multiple times just by drinking Potions of Invisibility.

@Noloir: You can avoid the notice of liches using a Protection from Undead scroll, but SCS liches will try to dispel it with Remove Magic. Protection from Evil will also ward off summoned demons that can see through invisibility, but in SCS, that only works against your own demons, not the enemy's.

gorgonzola

@Gotural, Kuo-toa can see through invisibility, but they can be backstabbed if you manage to send your invisible thief at their back. AFAIK they are the only ones that can be backstabbed and can see through invisibility.

JuliusBorisov

semiticgod said:

@bengoshi: Only Sendai herself can see through invisibility, at least with SCS installed. Her clones cannot. I remember being overwhelmed during that fight and being able to escape multiple times just by drinking Potions of Invisibility.

The funniest thing is that while answering the question I had your post in my mind, where you wrote about the Sendai's clones - https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/648868/#Comment_648868

Because indeed, my own experience tells me that the clones don't see through invisibility - https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/671760/#Comment_671760

gorgonzola

They are not monsters but also spells casted trough certain scrips can target characters protected with invisibility even if the monster is supposed to not see trough it and, at least in notEE, spells casted trough CC.
Whith tactics many spells are scripted this way ( and almost everyone and his brother see trough invisibility), since is a long time that tactics mod is always installed in my game I don't remember if in vanilla or with other mods there are enemies with that kind of script.

jinxed75

gorgonzola said:

@Gotural, Kuo-toa can see through invisibility, but they can be backstabbed if you manage to send your invisible thief at their back. AFAIK they are the only ones that can be backstabbed and can see through invisibility.

No, they are not. You can also backstab Demons(except Demogorgon), Ascension-Illasera, SCS-Illithids, Liches, just to name a few.
Immunity to backstab is quite rare actually.

Noloir

Cambion can as well as I learned the hard way as well as Air Elementals though tge latter doesn't attack through the spell. They do obnoxiously follow the character though. Got routed as a lone Dsorc in the planar prison. Cast chain lightning off screen again the Cambion's Demon lured to the bottom of the prison but somehow the attack went to the top of the map hitting the Cambion.

Went invisible with Improved Invisibility but everything excluding the thralls ignored the invisibility. My character ultimately got routed by the Cambion and suprised stunned by thr Demon only to get mauled viciously off camera when sucked into one of the planar portls. Wasn't pretty.

Arunsun

And with EE, even the player can (with the potions you can get in the Resurrection gorge, only 2 of them though), which has proven quite useful against Tactics Layenne.

ifupauline

Lord_Tansheron said:

Beholders, I'm pretty sure.

beholders don't but I remember that my cleric was attacked using Sanctuary, I was very surprised, I don't remember if a mod was installed or not though. Actualy I just found an old post stating the same thing as me. Is it a bug?

http://www.ironworksforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12785

gorgonzola

@ifupauline , the old post on Ironworks talk of a game with Tactics mod, with that mod some of beholders, the high level ones, see trough invisibility, it has a specific component to change beholders. We can not use a modded game to know what is in a differently modded one.

Blackraven

Of the Beholder kin, only Hive Mothers can see through invisibility at least in SCS and afaik vanilla.

semiticgoddess

I've also noticed that SCS Gauths erroneously will attack invisible characters due to their scripts, even though they don't have the see invisibility opcode.

Blackraven

semiticgod said:

I've also noticed that SCS Gauths erroneously will attack invisible characters due to their scripts, even though they don't have the see invisibility opcode.

Beholders too. One of the Beholders on the bridge in the Old Tunnels killed invisible Jan with a Death Ray in my run with Gerland the Skald.

lunar

Same thing about beholders. I usually kill groups of beholders with a caster under mislead (clone is in a safe place) and blast them away. Cheesy? Beholders are cheesy, and mislead still has its dangers as it has a short duration. Beholders are pretty smart, they are not sitting ducks with scs, they disperse and walk around when blasted by an invisible foe. I noticed sometimes one beholder or gauth launches a single ray to my misled character, but very rarely and never continued the attack after that. Definitely an unintended behaviour, a little quirk in the scripting? I take it as the beholder shooting randomly at the direction of where that cone of cold or fireball came and occasionaly finding its mark by pure luck.

Noloir

lunar said:

Same thing about beholders. I usually kill groups of beholders with a caster under mislead (clone is in a safe place) and blast them away. Cheesy? Beholders are cheesy, and mislead still has its dangers as it has a short duration. Beholders are pretty smart, they are not sitting ducks with scs, they disperse and walk around when blasted by an invisible foe. I noticed sometimes one beholder or gauth launches a single ray to my misled character, but very rarely and never continued the attack after that. Definitely an unintended behaviour, a little quirk in the scripting? I take it as the beholder shooting randomly at the direction of where that cone of cold or fireball came and occasionaly finding its mark by pure luck.

Legitimate tactic in my eyes. Mislead exists for a reason. If it didn't have some type of effective function it wouldn't be in the game.

jinxed75

It exists for a reason. However, parking the clone in a far corner of the map is an exploit. Whether this is legitimate or not, is up to the individual player.

Musigny

Gotural said:

Liches, Dragons, Demons, Wondering Horrors, Melyssan, Demogorgon, Planetars, Devas, Rune Assassins, The Ravager and a few others I'm forgetting.

+ Mother Hive and Unseeing Eye as already mentionned + the elder orbs in hell
+ the five but Illasera if IIRC
+ several of Nyalee's friends
+ the guys and creatures at the Helm seal (WK level 5 final encounters - 3 challenges)

+ probably some new EE creatures but I haven't played them enough to easily identify the candidates

If you tell me the exact conditions you have in mind, this can be checked with a quick and dirty script.

Musigny

Noloir said:

lunar said:

Same thing about beholders. I usually kill groups of beholders with a caster under mislead (clone is in a safe place) and blast them away. Cheesy? Beholders are cheesy, and mislead still has its dangers as it has a short duration. Beholders are pretty smart, they are not sitting ducks with scs, they disperse and walk around when blasted by an invisible foe. I noticed sometimes one beholder or gauth launches a single ray to my misled character, but very rarely and never continued the attack after that. Definitely an unintended behaviour, a little quirk in the scripting? I take it as the beholder shooting randomly at the direction of where that cone of cold or fireball came and occasionaly finding its mark by pure luck.

Legitimate tactic in my eyes. Mislead exists for a reason. If it didn't have some type of effective function it wouldn't be in the game.

The day someone codes a script with such an attack type against you, I bet that, all of a sudden, you'll find it less legitimate

Gotural

The Rogue Rebalancing Chosen of Cyric encounter actually does this, you fight a F/M/T with a Spell Trigger containing Mislead and the clone run away into some traps so you can't even go and destroy it in melee without being killed if I remember correctly. During that time the F/M/T and the Assassin will happily chop you with 100+ damage backstabs.

It's even stronger for enemies because they can backstab you from every angles.

jinxed75

You can spoil his day easily by casting an Oracle directly at start, though. But let's not spoiler the CoC encounter here

Gotural

I think parking a clone is a totally legitimate tactic, the spell was kinda designed for this reason and you can even do this playing PnP v.3.5.

I had a lot of fun as a DM when a friend of mine casted a Finger of Death at a powerful Fiend intented to be the boss of the scenario but because they were noisy blasting everything in the Fiend's fortress, I decided that it would be able to cast a few buffs before the fight as it knew the heroes were coming for it.

One of these spells was Mislead, and the Finger of Death was actually directed at the clone without my players knowing and it killed it instantly (I rolled a critical failure on the fortitude saving throw).

My players were so happy when they 'killed' the boss in a round only for the Fiend to reappear a round later, unharmed and ripping the poor Sorcerer in melee.

jinxed75

There are always a 1000 ways as a DM to screw up your players, because they do not play in the manner you want them to, if that is where your joy comes from.
Related to the game the question is, whether you want to employ tactics the game can't properly respond to, or not.
I found ripping whole groups apart with Mislead cheese also cool, for the first 2 or 3 times. Then it became boring quickly.
But this is of course for everyone to decide by themselves.

gorgonzola

I think that using the mislead is legittimate, and even the mislead clone singing bard song, as almost all was nerfed in it but not that button.
But legit doesn't mean good to use. Game's AI weakness can be exploited in so many legit ways, as well as its being repetitive, you can memorize what each single enemy will do, know the exact moment when he will do it, and build your tactic on this.
Technically some legit uses of AI weakness are very different from cheating or cheesing by exploiting engine mechanics.
Functionally I don't see much difference in hiding away a mislead clone or fake talking and killing a still blue circled enemy. The results are identical, easy victory without any risk or challenge. Keeping the clone in sight of the enemy, maybe casting on him an invisibility or trying to protect him is different.

I like when some modded enemy use a cheap tactic against me, like in the Rogue Rebalancing Chosen of Cyric encounter, and still is so easy to counter it. A thief detecting illusions, oracle, TS, DM or just ranged attacks from all the party as the clone try to run away. Game's AI can't never win against a human, but at least let it give a try....