Should Blindness stop targeted spells?

bigrob

I'm playing a solo gnome thief illusionist, with SCS installed. I attacked Tranzig, and blinded him. Despite being blinded, he was still able to target me with dire charm as I arrowed him from a distance. Is that right, or is it a bug? I thought I'd be safe from all except area affect spells.

Grond0

Blindness does prevent using targeted spells at a distance, so I presume he wasn't blinded. I would guess that what happened is that you noted from the battle text that he didn't show a save against your spell and assumed that meant he was blinded, but that's not always the case. One problem is that the game uses two different mechanics against spells - one that applies the spell and one that applies the accompanying effects. While those two should in theory always be consistent, on rare occasions they're not - so it is possible for a saving throw to be failed and a visual effect to show on a character, but for that character to not actually be affected. It works the other way around as well, where occasionally the text will show a saving throw as successful, but a character will still be affected by a spell.

jmerry

Specifically, pausing at the exact right moment can decouple the effects of a spell so that different saves are used for different effects. This is a bug in the game engine, and it's been around for a while. And in the Blindness spell, the "Blinded" text and the actual blindness are different effects. The option to auto-pause when you cast a spell is particularly likely to cause this, though it shouldn't in the case of Blindness because of the projectile's travel time.

Another possibility is that Tranzig started casting the spell while he could see you; being blinded doesn't interrupt casting even if you can no longer see the target.

bigrob

Thanks for your help. I did have auto pause on casting a spell on, but I've moved on now so can't replay that moment again. I'm playing sort of no-reload, but I decided to let myself off that one. Also I let myself off being held by hold person despite having minor spell deflection up. Googling that one told me hold person counts as area effect even though it has to be targeted at my protected solo character, which I thought was counter intuitive.