No Re-Load Challenge end? Spell Trap impact?
Noloir
Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 380
Doing a No-Reload challenge with a DSorc. A relatively great character with tons of survivability. After finishing the harper challenge in the docks district I went to the Thumb's Inn to defeat the hidden pirates. With the recently acquired Staff of The Magi I decided to experiment with Spell Trap instead of cheesing against the pirate mage with invisibility. The mage cast hold and the spell hit while spell trap was active. Isn't Spell Trap designed to absorb enemy spells while increasing personal spells? So would this be a glitch?
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Hold Person has to be cast on a visible critter to work, like all single-target spells, but its projectile has a slight area effect, which is why you can hold multiple targets if they're close to each other.
So, improved invisibility will block the spell from being cast at you directly (unless the caster is a lich or shares the lich's ability to see through invisibility without a spell), but Spell Trap/Deflection/Turning spells will not. (Minor) Globe of Invulnerability and Spell Immunity: Enchantment will also block it.
You're not the first person that this happened to, incidentally. I recall there was another run that ended not long ago for precisely this reason.
A reliable lore about BG2 magic can be obtained only with experimentation, a lot of reading here and in the net and maybe using modding tools. The manual and the ingame description are only starting points.
I don't understand cheesing with invisibility. Improved invisibility is lev4, is supposed to do something more then the lev2 spell or the lev3 that can make invisible the whole party. Blocking the spell from being cast at you directly is a part of that something. Using Improoved Invisibility as a spell protection, even if it don't protect you from the spell but from being targeted whit the spell, is a completely legit tactic, is the main reason why people use this lev4 spell instead of a lev2 spell. I don't see any cheese, unless you call cheese a clever use of a spell for what it is intended to do.
Using divine Magic Resistance to lower enemy MR is cheese, there you bend a spell to do something different from what it is supposed to do.
Imo the spell description is crystal clear,
"Caster chooses 1 creature as a victim all creatures within 5 feet are also affected"
or, in other words, "the spell must taget someone" and "the spell effect affects an AoE" wich is a common situation in BG2 magic, Dispell Magic do the same, Insect Plague does something similar but not identical.
In BG2 magic differences like "what the spell can target" and "what the spell will affect" are not cavilling, are important things if someone wants to use it in the proper way.
What is not so crystal clear is the Spell Trap description that only tell a misleading "The spell trap can absorb any level of spell, from one to nine". And this being misleading is only because is not "absorb any level of spell targeting the recipient" or "absorb any level of spell affecting the recipient". Again cavilling, but relevant.
As the Spell Trap description is not crystal clear I can agree with Arunsun about making an exception, even if such exceptions usually are only allowed in case of bugs and other stuff due to engine and not to player error.
About the SoTM thing I continue to think that is not cheese, but a clever use of the (really OP) item as intended by developers. I really appreciate Tactics Twisted Rune because there Layenne uses her staff as every clever mage uses it, casts and disappear. And SoTM or being a Swadowdancer is not needed to waste enemy mage's spell disappearing while he is casting.
At low levels my thieves routinely do it, first they lure mage's helpers one by one and backstab them multiple times to death, then going visible near the border of mage's area of sight wait him to begin casting. As long as the casting animation begins one step, hide in shadows, spell wasted. Repeat.
When the mage stands, protected only by his stoneskin, his helpers gone, his spellbok empty, is an easy game, some ranged attacks to consume the skins and as long as the mage's toon change color hide and backstab. A low level thief can kill a much stronger mage with much stronger helpers, using only mundane equipement, suffering almost no damage.
No cheese at all, just sound and clever tactics to use the true potential of a class. Or of an OP item as SoTM.
Dispel magic can be cast on the ground, it does not require an actual target on which you center the AoE. Insect plague can be resisted (with magic resistance) and if it is it will not spread. Unless I am mistaken, hold person will hold the target in the AoE even if the main target resist the spell. The effect is an AoE centered on a target, which is quite different from a single target spell that then spread or an AoE centered on whatever point you want. This rather unique status of targeted but not single target spell makes it not so clear IMO. The only other spell I can think of with a similar behaviour is the SSM sun soulray.
About Insect Plague I don't think that MR is relevant concerning what I told, as it target 1 person an then (if that person doesn't resist or is immune) spread to a certain area affecting up to a certain number of enemies. It target 1 and affect an area. I told similar but not identical because it affects up to a certain number of persons in the area and not everything the area.
Both Hold Person and Insect Plague have to target a person, if all the enemies are invisible you can not cast those spells, but both affect an area, they can hit you also if you are not directly targeted, just because you are near a targeted person.
So they are different from PW Blind that target a person and affects (only) the same person or fireball that target an area ( you can cast it to hit invisible foe) and affects an area, they share the targeting feature of PW B. and the affecting feature of FB.
"what the spell can target" and "what the spell will affect".
Using SR is a matter of personal taste, not a necessity.