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Improved Invisibility + Backstab don't work in EE?

I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find the answer (the search in this forum is quite the handfull).

Is Improved Invisibility nerfed when it comes to backstab?

I played the original Icewind Dale not so long ago, and I still have the saves here for testing. I had a Fighter/Mage/Thief that casted Improved Invisibility on herself, and then went on a killing spree backstabing everyone. I had to move her around, as when enemies turned to attack her she would no longer be able to backstab, but I could quickly go to another distracted enemy and backstab him before he reacted. All of this on a single Improved Invisibility cast.

Now, reading here and there, I don't see anyone talking about this, but about Mislead. As I started a Heart of Fury run with a Thief > Fighter (counting on being able to be casted Improved Invisibility by my Mage), I'm a bit worried that this doesn't work and I have a really, really expensive thief (planning on going lvl 21 assassing, and then fighter), as Mislead only works on the caster.

I went and downloaded EE Keeper to try it out, and I'm not being able to backstab more than once with Improved Invisbility. The thing is, this is both with EE Keeper (which, even if it just change some character stats, is still a mod), and on very poor testing conditions (on Easthaven, on those goblins), so I would like a kind of "official" confirmation.

Does Improved Invisibility work with backstab so you can make more than 1 backstab?

PD: It is a real pain to find the differences with the original game. I have to go around looking for forum posts, and some faqs, and mostly looking on BG2 stats to try to figure out how does something work on the EE. Would it be so difficult to have some kind of "Diff Sheet" for each game? Or at least 1 diff sheet for BG2, and the other expanding upon that?
semiticgoddess

Comments

  • VaelVael Member Posts: 3
    No, no, I did not have the 3E Sneak Attack. I had the backstab ability, x5 damage.

    I can actually do it right now on my old Icewind Dale game. I still have the game installed and I keep the saves, and I tried it before posting. I positively did x5 damage (as stated by the ingame log) every single time. Whenever the enemy turned around, I stopped backstabbing; as soon as I arrived to another enemy that wasn't attacking me (while the other enemy was still following me to attack me), I backstab it. I did this repeteadly during the game, although only on really though, mage-heavy combats.

    I can also point you to an old post from another forum explaining this tactic on old Icewind Dale.
    semiticgoddess
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    JuliusBorisovsemiticgoddess
  • VaelVael Member Posts: 3
    Well, that explain it then.

    Really, these games should have some kind of "Diff sheet" or something to avoid these things. I have a lvl 15 thief on a Heart of Fury run thinking that this works, and who knows when will I face a problem like this in future runs, as most FAQs and guides are for vainilla IWD, or also keep these kind of misconceptions.
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  • kjeronkjeron Member Posts: 2,367

    Come to think of it, did original IWD have this ability to switch between Backstab and Sneak Attack on the fly? Or was Sneak Attack standard? If the latter, that would explain things.

    Sneak Attack was added in the Expansion, so it wasn't standard.
    semiticgoddess
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    Vael said:

    No, no, I did not have the 3E Sneak Attack. I had the backstab ability, x5 damage.

    I can actually do it right now on my old Icewind Dale game. I still have the game installed and I keep the saves, and I tried it before posting. I positively did x5 damage (as stated by the ingame log) every single time. Whenever the enemy turned around, I stopped backstabbing; as soon as I arrived to another enemy that wasn't attacking me (while the other enemy was still following me to attack me), I backstab it. I did this repeteadly during the game, although only on really though, mage-heavy combats.

    I can also point you to an old post from another forum explaining this tactic on old Icewind Dale.

    That still sounds like your doing sneak attacks to me. Improved Invis never allowed backstabs after breaking intial invisibility with Improved Invis.
  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859
    ThacoBell said:

    That still sounds like your doing sneak attacks to me. Improved Invis never allowed backstabs after breaking intial invisibility with Improved Invis.

    As I understand it, (which as a non-modder is a big qualifier and should be understood as "not very far at all"), IWD and BG were built on largely the same engine so spell behavior was pretty consistent between them, but there were still some differences.

    Monsters affected by Sleep woke up when you hit them in vanilla IWD and not in vanilla BG1/BG2, for instance. Web had a different radius in IWD, (in addition to a different animation and a different save penalty). It's entirely possible that Improved Invisible backstabs is another such example, in which case merging the two games onto the same engine could easily result in unanticipated behavior changes as one game suddenly adopted the other's behavior.

    I don't remember Improved Invisibility backstabs being a thing, but it's been a while since I've played vanilla IWD and the difference between Sneak Attacks and Backstabs is marked clearly enough in the display that if OP is saying that's the behavior he or she is observing, I believe that's what's happening.

    Unfortunately, it'd be pretty hard to document a full list of those kinds of spell behavior changes, since I'm not sure anyone has ever dug into the difference in a rigorous way before.
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    ThacoBell
  • JarlealeJarleale Member Posts: 114
    Actually in unpatched early BG1, I was able to continually backstab with a mage/thief using improved invisibility. If I remember correctly this was patched as it was not intended behavior. I can imagine the same could be the case in IWD as they use the same basic ruleset and engine.
    SomeSort
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