Solo Character without True Sight or Invisibility Purge... how to handle Potion of Invisibility?
GSmith84
Member Posts: 25
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.
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.
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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.)
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.
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.
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: 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).
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.
1. Book of Infinite Spells: True Seeing
2. Upgraded Thief Hood