Beware The River Of Shadows

[Goldwin Blacknight]

Beware the River of Shadows! (Goldwin managed to roll a "1" on his fortitude save and died the other day again.) Beware the River of Shadows! Don't try for your grave there while invisible because the malar AND the Vamps will see you and chase you! Beware the River of Shadows! Don't try to SNEAK back to your grave (hide and move silent 50) because the malar AND the vamps will see you and chase you and kill you! BEWARE THE RIVER OF SHADOWS!

[Blackguy]

ehhh .. ? Right?

[twidget658]

No hide skill can beat the True Seeing of the Malar. Those are some bad kitties.

[Goldwin Blacknight]

What threw me was the fact that the Vamps also saw through invisibility and sneak. That place is just so strange-snake stuns malar-malar atttacks snake-vamp attacks malar-seen all of this happen there.

[Nyralotep]

Good place to not go alone.  Nob always makes sure to have a good stout fighter before he goes there.

[Chrys Ellis]

Hmmmm....place seems safe enough to me.  Oh, that's right Goldwin, you're not immune to posion and charm.  Guess that would put a damper on things.  Hehehe.

[Jilseponie Wyndon]

I can vouch for Goldwins statement . . . been there . .done that . . . OUCH!

~ Jil

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Y'know, True Seeing shouldn't cut through a simple Hide check.

[Leanthar]

*chuckles* Not going to buy it Stephen. True Seeing is going to see everything and that will not change. If that changes it is the day that I rip out GSanc, Invisibility and all of that. And then we would keep the skills the same but the spells would be removed. Regardless of what I just stated...nothing is being changed and it will continue to see through hide checks.
  This is yet another one of those topics that come up every 3-4 months.

[Etinfall]

and it just told alot of people where Malars live. Prolly sholdn't post cnr locations in the forums.

[ZeroVega]

I have to agree with Leanthar. It popped up a while ago and I believe it was stated that True Sight should definatly see through Shadow Dancing (manipulating the shadows to hide yourself) and normal shadows. Hiding behind a solid object or simply knowing how to move away from a creature's line of sight should protect you, the problem is that you can't separate the two and for reasons of balance and the sheer number of people who can hide... oh and the fact that Shadow Dancers, who are usually normal "sneakers" first, can't separate Shadow Dancing from normal sneaking would give an unfair advantage to some. NWN is just not that flexible and if it was there would no doubt be complaints shot from every angle on it. We've lived with it this long, why change now?

[Gulnyr]

Stephen_Zuckerman - 6/21/2006  7:25 PM

Y'know, True Seeing shouldn't cut through a simple Hide check.

Y'know, since Hide checks don't require actually hiding, it only makes sense that True Seeing can spot hidden people.  

If NWN had fancy line-of-sight checking and forced a hiding character to actually hide behind a tree, then True Seeing would be broken.  Since a character can "magically" hide in the middle of an empty, well-lit room, True Seeing is not broken.  Hide is.

[Zelda1]

Ash found out the hard way with the hide thing... ehhh... the malar went "BITE" and Ash croked.. typical Ash..

[darkstorme]

Well, if animations were better, "hide" would show the character sneaking around the walls, perhaps having thrown a cloth over himself, keeping to the shadows - when you're rolling on hide and move silently in PnP, it's assumed that this is what you're doing.  NWN just doesn't have sufficiently precise movement control to allow for hiding-style movement.  I would still say that True Seeing, while able to see through magical or divine concealment, ought not to see a normal-hide individual.  However, I understand for balance it has to act like super x-ray vision.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

With all the points listed, you're right; in NWN Layo, TS should cut through Hide. However, in PnP, it doesn't, and shouldn't, and I'm in the middle of getting my hide handed to me in a PnP campaign I'm in because I forgot that little part.

If the coding were complex enough to include decent line-of-sight rules, then I'd complain, but you're right, all of you. First off, there is no way to distinguish an SD's HiPS from normal H/MS, considering the way we have it coded currently. Second, there are quite a few who have nice, nice, NICE Hide skills. One of my characters is one of those... And let's face it, most of the people who can cast True Seeing, don't have decent Spot checks. In my own personal opinion (I'll TOTALLY include this in the PnP games I run, but understand that the current workings are better for Layo) TS should give a +20 to Spot checks, because you basically see EVERYTHING that you have line of sight to.

I can see how this would come up every six months or so... It's a valid question, though it has an equally valid answer.

Thanks for your time.

[Goldwin Blacknight]

I totally agree that "True Seeing" should be "TRUE SEEING" and powerful. Maybe I wasn't clear before. In the past I've been able to use the tactic of going into the malar area invisible to draw the malars away to a corner and fight them seperate as the snake and vamps don't see me invisible (maybe this isnt the place to mention this-BUT). Unfortunately, this wasn't the case when I went back for a grave intending to draw the malar away and fight seperately again. Everything there must have smelled the blood on my armor since now, when invisible, they ALL saw me and gave chase..malar, vamp, and snake. The vamps and snake have "True Seeing" also? Why would it be possible to draw the malar away while invisible in one instance and not in the other? Hate to draw this out, but just trying to learn from it. (Yeah-NEVER go there again!-heh)