Why can enemies target invisible characters?
Alonso
Member Posts: 806
This looks like a bug. In the Firkraag dungeon my mage casts Improved Invisibility on Minsc and Minsc attacks a guardian. The guardian casts a fireball on Minsc and fries him. When I try to cast a spell on an invisible character I get a message saying I can't do that. So why can enemies do it?
I read a request to have this as a part of the game, but it doesn't look like it was successful (and rightly so in my opinion).
I read a request to have this as a part of the game, but it doesn't look like it was successful (and rightly so in my opinion).
Post edited by Alonso on
0
Comments
I think the Guardian may be one of those foes.
*giggles and runs into the night*
but yeah Icestorm , Fireball , Skulltrap , all those AOE's can just be thrown at the rough location and still hurt the invisible party member.
Edit: And they can't see through invisibility.
Improved invisibility becomes slightly visible when you attack or interact with the environment in some way - although monsters will suffer a penalty for hitting and players will still benefit from partial invisibility.
Invisibility does not stop damage from AoE spells which of course includes fireball.
If you for example were casting mass healing/haste or some party-buff and one of your NPC was invisible he would still heal/haste/buff him as well - you cannot cast individual spells on that NPC when they are invisible (this also happens if your NPC is hiding in shadow - no personal spells can be cast on someone that is current hiding - you have to leave shadows in order to cast on that character.)
Of course you can get your mage to fire AoE spells in a general direction of invisible creatures and it will hit them but usually creatures that go invisible are thieves with potions or mages and your team is already engaged in close combat with them so using a damaging AoE like fireball in the same area as your team is not advised unless you have a certain high level mage spell that is party friendly for damage of course you can still use spells like hold, horror, chaos and emotions spells on monsters that are mixed with your group when fighting.
With non detection and improved invis, you can easily break and stall even some liches unmodded
That said, those Guardians do not cast spells, they force spells. Forced spells ignore most spell-casting rules. A creature using forced spells to simulate proper spell-casting is cheating. Unfortunately there isn't any proper way for creatures to cast location-targeted AoE spells. It still doesn't excuse them for casting creature-targeted spells this way though.
So, in a nutshell, the AI cheats to keep the game balanced. Hmmm... Cheesy.
This is also why enemies will cast spells on themselves when you are invisible, hoping to hit you if you are nearby or trying to sneak up on them. They can't target the ground, so they target themselves with castings like like 'remove magic', confusion, hopelessness, chaos... etc. AOE stuff.
So while enemies can target you when you are invisible, they cannot hit you with anything that you can't hit them with when they go invisible (the guardian's flame strike, for example, is useless when you're invisible).
There may be claims that such spells have been used on invisible characters, but I personally have never seen this happen. Not once. I can only speak for myself, though. This is my best understanding of the behaviour you're asking about, and maybe it doesn't apply to enemies that naturally see through invisibility.
Every time that I thought I had seen one of my characters being targeted while invisible, it was because they were no longer invisible. During a battle it is easy to miss the pitifully quiet 'woosh' sound of the invisibility wearing off, or the subtle change in transparency of the character.
1. Aerie casts Improved Invisibility on Minsc. She's level 9, so the spell lasts 12 rounds, which gives you plenty of time for testing.
2. Minsc opens the door located westwards (coordinates 2531, 967).
3. Minsc attacks the guardian in the room with his arrows. The guardian turns hostile.
4. The guardian attacks Minsc with fireballs, a flame arrows and a flame strike, all of them targeted at Minsc.
Minsc has remained invisible the whole time and still the guardian has cast two spells which require direct targeting at him.
...and I suppose even if you weren't, you could do the same thing with Spell Immunity: Divination, so yeah, Liches need something to not become a laughingstock.
I have no idea how ND really works to this day.
On topic I agree it's kinda cheating when the AI targets ground AoE spells on 1 of your characters but it can be cheesed easily with boots of speed/haste and switching equipment for immunities/resistances while the spell is still flying. I haven't played unmodded in a while but I think SCS replaces these genies' fireballs with Sunfire with makes more sense.
To cast it, the condition is only seeing the enemy, it does not check for if the enemy is untargettable (improved invisible but made an attack) or not. When you are improved invisible and have made an attack, enemies 'see' you and can attack you normally (abeit you enjoy ac and save bonuses) but normal spells can not be cast on you. (Unless the caster can normally see invisible, like a dragon or demon/deva) This script ignores that condition via ForceSpell.
Enemy ai can not target an area. Thus, old mods like tactics and such made liches to summon a rat or a creature with no animation and shower it with wiltings/comets to hit the pc with area effect if the pc is under pro from undead effect. Scs mod makes casters cast chaos/emotion spells on themselves when they can not target enemies, hoping to catch an enemy with the area effect.
Enemies that can see invisible, like dragons/demons/devils/devas/planetars, are not affected by improved invisibiltiy and can cast at you. You still enjoy ac and save bonuses from improved invisibility, though. And you can backstab them when attacking from invisibility (unless they are immune to backstab, like some dragons) but positioning can be tricky as they can always see you.