Range of illusion dispelling
Alonso
Member Posts: 806
I'm observing a quite weird behaviour in illusion dispelling spells with SCS. I'm in the graveyard crypts about to enter a room that I know is full of invisible vampires. I cast True Sight from outside that room. True Sight has a very large area of effect, 120 feet, so the whole room is well within its range. Then I send Minsc in, protected by Protection from Undead. As you can see in the picture, True Sight has only revealed one of the vampires. The other vampires remain invisible because they cannot attack Minsc:
Then I send in Haer' Dalis, who is not protected against the undead. The rest of the vampires attack Haer, becoming visible immediately:
I have tested this with Oracle and the result is the same. Why are not all the vampires revealed?
I attach a save that you can use to test it yourself.
Then I send in Haer' Dalis, who is not protected against the undead. The rest of the vampires attack Haer, becoming visible immediately:
I have tested this with Oracle and the result is the same. Why are not all the vampires revealed?
I attach a save that you can use to test it yourself.
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Comments
Other area-effect spells have the same issue. A Slow spell won't be able to curve around corners; the area of effect expands from its center.
It actually makes in-game sense, so I'm not even sure it's contrary to developer intent. True Seeing would let you see through illusions, but it doesn't let you see through walls; that's what Farsight and Clairvoyance do. It makes sense that it wouldn't stretch around corners.
I mean, in your screenshot, there are 20 feet of solid wall in between the mage and those hidden vampires you want to reveal. True Seeing doesn't let you explore around corners like Farsight or Clairvoyance, nor is there any indication in the spell description that it would do so, so it would be weird if it revealed invisible critters around corners when it couldn't reveal the terrain around corners. The only reason you can see the big table in that screenshot is because Minsc ventured out of the hall.
The spell is more of a "see through illusions" thing, not a "see through illusions and also walls" thing.
Edit: Typo.
Edit: Had this window open for a while and some posts got added before I replied. This looks weird now.
In general it seems safe to assume that spells do not pierce walls unless otherwise specified. That'd be a big feature to just not mention. It would let you cast you spell "invisibly" more effectively than many illusion spells. Why cast Shadow Door when you can just cast from behind an actual door?
A spell can either be carried by projectiles directly (like true sight) or originate from the point a projectile reaches (the spell target). In this case you've clearly cast the spell to originate in the corridor where it can spread to Minsc. If you had cast the spell this side of the wall then, even though it would have been close to Minsc, it would not have affected him (as web, like other area effects, can't pass through walls). Similarly, if you tried to cast the spell at Minsc's location directly you would find your character moving into the corridor to do the cast - as the game engine knows the projectile can't go through the wall.
The spell description does not mention a billion things. That's because it is a summary description that is trying to capture the essence of what the spell does. So I do not understand the mentality of "spell description does not mention = bug". If you can't see through walls, a spell description does not have to state "upon casting this spell you still cannot see through walls" to be accurate.
a blinded mage can use true sight to destroy a pi or reveal an invisible enemy as long as there is no physical obstacle in the line of sight between them and don't see it happening cause he is blind.
i think that the actual implementation of true sight is good, as it gives more tactical value to the game. i often use it with my thieves or invisible toons to avoid enemy's true sight. scouting (or using metagame knowledge, how Valarien should have known that that particular room is filled with vampires?) and using the terrain features make possible both to use effectively true sight, even if your party should have pulled out something more then "bombing from the fog of war a true sight", and to defend from enemy true sight.
everything that compel to use the terrain features and good tactics instead of meta knowledge in my book is a very good thing...
SI protect from every spell of a particular school, and is stated in the spell description, should every other spell have in its description that the right SI makes the spell not effective against the protected character?
and to have a surge is a chance that a wild mage has casting every spell.
the roof of the keep and the library are in 2 different areas.
the only truly missing things are " It does not mention that illusions cast in between the "ticks" of True Sight will persist until the next tick of True Sight"
and "there must be an unobstructed line of sight between the caster and the illusion".
this is an example of what i call to use the terrain features to your advantage.
In my defense I will say that, believe it or not, this is effectively my first playthrough (the last time I did a full playthrough was 15 years ago, so I have forgotten almost everything), plus I'm playing SCS in hard difficulty, so my tactical approach is "everything is fair in love and war".
For the record, the approach I used eventually was to send in summons to bait the vampires into attacking and giving up their invisibility.
And kudos to @DavidW, as always, for this neat piece of AI (I imagine the AI at play here is SCS rather than vanilla).
At any rate, even though I think that now I understand how areas of effect work, I would like to read a complete description, because this is surprisingly complicated. Ideally, a description that somebody new to the game can understand. AFAIK, this has never been explained anywhere.
Unless I've misunderstood your position, we don't agree. In my view there are no AoE spells that go round corners from the point at which the spell emanates. It is of course possible to cast a spell like web from your position so that it triggers at a different location and then affects something around a corner from your location, but that's very different from the argument you seemed to be making about true sight that it should affect things not in a direct line of sight from your character.
I didn't make that argument, I didn't say anything about what should or should not happen. I just pointed out that the behaviour of the spell differs from its description, and therefore one of them must be wrong. I didn't say anything about which one is wrong because I don't know. The comments here suggest that the behaviour of the spells is fine, which means that the description is wrong. That makes sense to me, so I guess it must be the right view.
in my defense i will say that, believe it or not, also i am not the best player around and pointing out in the forums the errors and not completely flawless tactics of the other players is my way to vent my frustration
my trusted mouse familiar is the one that fight for me the hardest battles when after many reloads i want to hit the monitor with my war hammer
your tactical approach is sound, considering the situation, the first and most important thing is to beat the game
and your strategy failed only cause you lacked of a particular knowledge about how the spells aoe work, knowledge that now you have.
Really not so remarkable
As has been said above it would not be reasonable to say in the summary description for every spell that it doesn't go through walls, so I don't think the specific description is wrong. You could make a case that there should be more description in the manual somewhere about the general behavior of spells (and include there that they don't go through walls), though that sort of level of detail would not typically be found in game manuals.
at the beginning, without a previous experience with the pnp game, no internet and no manual i was completely ignoring basic concepts like thac0 or ac. it was clear to me that for some strange reason a lower thac0 and ac was better, but how they work and interact for me was a mistery.
still after a couple of runs i was able to beat the game quite easily, to use my mages with a certain efficiency, i was even able to kill kangaxx without the green scrolls or the use of si abjuration, as i never discovered haw those tools make the battle trivially easy.
knowledge 15%
useful knowledge 15%
efficiency 40%
then with the manual, but still not internet what changed? i did read the manual, that had some additional information i could not find in game, and had the descriptions of all the spells, that can be found also in game, but are much more easy to read an learn on a book.
knowledge 35%
useful knowledge 18%
efficiency 41%
then internet and the forums and you tube (you can find there some rare examples of outstanding play level in a sea of mediocrity)
knowledge 80%
useful knowledge 65%
efficiency 90%
i am only guessing the percentages, but i hope that what i want to communicate is clear.
there is very little that i could learn from the manual that i had not discover without it. few runs, starting on easy and finding even the goblins of the starting dungeon hard, then increasing the difficulty up to insane gave me almost the same level of efficiency that i had after reading the manual.
internet, so the contribution and experience of other players changed everything.
i agree that a manual does not need a very deep and detailed analysis of the technical aspects of the game.
but i personally found it almost completely not useful, all appearance, flavor, and 0 substance.
i learned a lot much on some internet resources like this:
https://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/SpellsReference/Main.htm
only few internet pages, but founding and reading them gave me a completely new level of understanding about how the spell system works, while the manual basically gave me no useful information i had not already discovered playing.
to write on a manual something like:
"AoE spells: the spell is effective in an area with the radius stated in the spell description, the center point of the aoe is the caster if the spell is on self, like sunfire, or the point where the spell is cast at if is a ranged one, like fireball. a ranged spell can not pass trough walls and closed doors as well as physical obstructions protect the recipient even if he is in the aoe"
is not complicated, takes only a little space in a manual. written by a native english speaker more skilled then me in this kind of things it probably can be even shorter and easier to understand.
i agree that is not a good strategy to base our knowledge on the manuals, but i really think that they could add a lot more useful information taking about the same space if their true focus would have been substance and not appearance.