invisibility, again

[hollyfant]

A trickery cleric / rogue should have mojo enough between her spells, heavy armor, and feinted SAs. Hardly immediate need to dash to rescue from the burden of the invis issue.

That strikes me as rather irrelevant. A trickery cleric/cleric will very much depend on Invisibility and Silence to go skulking about. Clerical domains have often been mentioned as needing a revision, but no-one ever finished the task. So let's stick to the topic at hand - the bugged implementation of the invisibility status.

Replacing invisibility with HiPS + a bonus to Hide seems to be the way to go, but the real kicker is the plethora of counter-invisibility measures. See Invisibility and See the Unseen would have to be modified too - and I'm not sure how. Plus there are the PnP classics such as Glitterdust or a bag of flour.

Plus with Invisibility countering Spot only, the related issues with Listen become a problem in their own right: speech, bardic music and inspirations and spellcasting all do not make any sound that can be detected with Listen.

[Kemeras]

I have read through this thread and it seems that Regalis proposed solution is the only one that the engine could really accept without a major coding effort (from my understanding is restrictive due to a small talent pool).

I understand that. I'm proposing a solution along different lines. Something that can actually be implemented.
You can't make the detection part work right, period. Caveat, it may be possible to manipulate the perception handler with NWNx4.
Instead of trying to make the spells conform to d20 SRD, which is impossible, we conform the spells to the mechanics of the game. For detection purposes, the spell now works as if the caster is silenced: no move silently check. So one solution to get a consistent result is to have the spell provide the silenced effect to the caster.
That explains why the invisible caster cannot be detected with listen: they're silenced.
Being silenced is a double-edged sword, as opposed to the free gift given to casters now.
You can implement spot detection because it's against a fixed DC. 45 is probably most appropriate, but it could be set at whatever. You can implement the effects of the search toggle, and you give the spotter a momentary blip of see invis, and it doesn't mess up hide's functionality either.
What there is no way to implement is the move silently/listen aspects. Obsidian themselves said invisible creatures are now treated as silenced, and the simplest solution by far is to make them fully silenced.

I don;t have the skill set to do it but this seems like a valid compromise between "What we would like" and "what we can reasonably" code.

Any cons that people can see to a solution like this? I would say it beats not being able to use the spell at all and I can't really see any negative sides but I am not that drilled into balance issues. Wiser heads than mine can comment on that

Kemeras

[Regas]

So the solution to fixing the invisibility bug that is making invisibility over-powerful is to make invisibility even more powerful by declaring the bug a feature?

[Zelknolf]

Silence effect would require that spells cast from invisibility be silenced. It would effectively remove the ability to use strategies like invisible healing or summoning, but would indeed make invisibility the ultimate in stealth technology.

Unless we take the silence effect to include deafness. In which case it becomes much less good for acts of espionage and suddenly becomes an effective counter to Wail of the Banshee.

... personally, I'd rather just make invisibility work like invisibility, and scrap the "Oh, but we can't make the tech people do that." and "That's too complex" arguments -- the fact is that those of us who are driven to tech projects enjoy the challenge. No one will ever write code for mindless entertainment.

[NESchampion]

... personally, I'd rather just make invisibility work like invisibility, and scrap the "Oh, but we can't make the tech people do that." and "That's too complex" arguments -- the fact is that those of us who are driven to tech projects enjoy the challenge. No one will ever write code for mindless entertainment.

I'm all in favor of this.

[Kemeras]

... personally, I'd rather just make invisibility work like invisibility, and scrap the "Oh, but we can't make the tech people do that." and "That's too complex" arguments -- the fact is that those of us who are driven to tech projects enjoy the challenge. No one will ever write code for mindless entertainment.

I'm all in favor of this.

Isn't that the problem through? i.e. you *can't* make the engine work correctly for invisible due to how the developers sporked the feature.

That is my understanding of the issue, nothing can be scripted to get around the silence effect without breaking more features, etc ,etc.

I would have assumed that if it could be accomplished easily it would have been done already.

Regas original point does still stand, fix the infinite use special abilities and leave it as is?? Probably the solution that requires the least amount of effort.

[Zelknolf]

That is my understanding of the issue, nothing can be scripted to get around the silence effect without breaking more features, etc ,etc.

Yes. The fact that you say this tells me that it is going to be interesting and worth doing.

I would also remind that most of the things we do here started with people saying that it couldn't be done, including the very notion of a multi-server project run through the Aurora engine with a central vault and database.

[Kemeras]

That is my understanding of the issue, nothing can be scripted to get around the silence effect without breaking more features, etc ,etc.

Yes. The fact that you say this tells me that it is going to be interesting and worth doing.

I would also remind that most of the things we do here started with people saying that it couldn't be done, including the very notion of a multi-server project run through the Aurora engine with a central vault and database.

Cool, if you are actively working on a solution then thanks man, obviously having invisibility working as it should be is *the* ideal solution. I was under the impression that wasn't really possible without major effort and from the thread it didn't look like anyone wanted to take on the coding of a full blown solution.

I joined ALFA in 2004 and hosted Earthspurs for a bit, fully aware of the technology hurdles that ALFA has overcome and I have always been impressed. The breath of the vision is what attracted me here.

Cheers!

[Sandermann]

Oh Hai!

yeah I'm back(ish), as the person who first opened this kettle of worms and subsequently did some pretty heavy investigation into it, I'd probably better chuck my two pence into the discussion.

The original problem came to light after the 1.23 patch, and yes it was brought to light by high level warlocks. However I never called it an exploit, the invis effect that is applied worked fine before 1.23, so the players had no idea their previously perfectly valid and PnP accurate ability was no longer such. Prior to 1.23 behaviour such as following close to other PCs and spying/stalking them was fine as the victim had a fair chance to detect the stalker.

The core game engine effect EFFECT_INVISIBILITY was altered to prevent a PC (and only a PC) from being detected by means of a listen check - why this was done I can only guess at, presumably because in single player people got pissed that they could be attacked by NPCs while invised.

The results of some pretty extensive testing were this:
An NPC can never detect an invis PC by means of listen checks
a PC can never detect another invis PC by means of listen checks
a PC can detect an invis NPC by means of listen check
an NPC can detetc another invis NPC by means of listen checks.

My proposed solution was thus:
Add to the spell script for invisibilty (which used by all invis spells, potions and incantations) a pseudo heartbeat.

The logic of this script would be:
Is there another PC within 30 feet > Is that PC able to detect hidden PCs (Detect mode or able to passivley detect) > Roll a secret listen check for that PC vs the invis PCs Move Silently, the invis PC does not get a skill bonus to this roll unless they are in stealth mode > If the roll is successful, apply a see invisibility effect to the listening PC for one round.

The one big downfall of this is that the listening PC would be able to see ALL invis'd creatures within range for that round.

Remember in a PnP environment there hundreds of mundane options for locating an invis'd creature once you suspect its there. Throwing sand/water/ale towards its suspected location, swinging a big stick about, etc. Having the invis'd PC "appear" and become targetable encompasses these options within the limits of the game engine.

Good to be back

[Zelknolf]

Two downsides:

The revealed PC also loses the 50% miss chance for that round.

[Sandermann]

That can easily be added for the duration of the round, miss chance isnt hard to apply

[Zelknolf]

Can be, but it does mean that we need to test how/if miss chance interacts with invisibility -- especially in case of there being someone who actually has see invisibility in the room-- their attacks likely being foiled by that blasted rogue and his listen checks.

[t-ice]

a PC can detect an invis NPC by means of listen check

Thanks for the detailed info, Sand. I was wondering why PCs can still detect my invis NPCs, but that cleared it up

The revealed PC also loses the 50% miss chance for that round.

I might add I think the invisible attacker should get a bonus to-hit, that is likely also negated by the see invis.

For what it's worth, I would call these on-engine effects acceptable losses in Sand's method. The perfect and complex should not be the enemy of the good and simple. What are the chances of actual CvC battle forced in such a "peeper" scenario, without a DM present, anyway. And more importantly, how relevant are the invis problems as compared to all the other problems the nwn2 engine, without a DM, imposes in such a scenario. Whether that scenario turns to a standing fight or a flee and pursue.

Is that PC able to detect hidden PCs (Detect mode or able to passivley detect)

I would say detect mode is an artifact of the nwn2 engine that shouldn't be taken to account. Stealth mode represents actively trying to hide, which makes sense. But there's not point in ruling that PCs keep their eyes and ears closed if the player didn't click on detect mode. There's really no downside to detect mode under normal circumstance, it's really only a pointless point-and-click chore on players to keep detect mode up always when not running. If detect mode could be made to be always on when not running, then it would be fine.

[dergon darkhelm]

As the player of a PC who planned to use this spell I would welcome either a fix or reasonable accomodation in replacement.

[hollyfant]

All we can do is hope someone in out Tech department has a fix, but OEI really fscked us up good...