A Land Far Away

This is a question involving the Track feat and Light Penalties as an Underdark race.

I have no way to prove this, nor any way to test this (without DM help), but I believe the light penalty may be removing my ability to take advantage of the track feat. For instance, when in a cave/underground, I am able to see hostiles on the mini map when they show as arrows pointing to where they are located, before they are even blips actually on the mini map. When in an outside area, however, I am unable to see hostile until I am WITHIN their LOS and aggro range.

Now I realize that I am taking a -1 penalty on my survival skill roll, but the range difference is just insane for me to believe this is the culprit. Furthermore, I have the anecdotal comparison to my wild elf ranger who at level 1 was easily able to track these same hostiles well before they became a threat, which is something I cannot say about my current drow (with track feat and same modded survival as the wild elf had - 1).

I believe the light blindness penalty (which is also bugged as I till take it at night) is removing the track feat.

I guess these are only small things in the grand scheme of things as I am the only sucker playing this type of character, but I wanted to bring it up.

Heero wrote: I believe the light blindness penalty (which is also bugged as I till take it at night) is removing the track feat.

Not a bug. Drow are hurt and repelled by even a lit candle. The light of the moon and stars gives you a penalty too


J

mr duncan wrote:

Heero wrote: I believe the light blindness penalty (which is also bugged as I till take it at night) is removing the track feat.

Not a bug. Drow are hurt and repelled by even a lit candle. The light of the moon and stars gives you a penalty too


J

Light Blindness (EX): Abrupt exposure to bright light (such as sunlight or a daylight spell) blinds a drow for 1 round. In addition, drow suffer a -1 circumstance penalty on all attack rolls, saves, and checks while operating in bright light.


All the Underdark races aren't phase by candles. If that were the case, any spell that produced even a modicum of light (such as the fireball's explosion) would send them into a headache-filled tizzy. Obsidian has also already acknowledged that the Light penalties applying EVERYWHERE outdoors instead of just during the day is a bug. We went over it back when ALFA2 first started, in fact.

Not sure why it would be killing the range on your survival, though. -1 to survival shouldn't shut you down completely. I'd get with Holly, as he seems to love testing these things.

I don't think it's an underdark race thing. Same thing happens to me. My track skill barely works outside of my LOS outdoors, but in caves I can track most of the map.

I put this down to indoor/underground areas usually being significantly smaller than outdoor areas and with very limited LOS, so it only looks like your track range is much higher in internal areas than it is in external areas.

Never really tested it out with real measurements though.

if its just between indoor/outdoor areas then thats most likely it. I have several 32x32 interior areas in the works that we can test in on.

I wonder if Daylight Adaptation feat would fix that? Even briefly granted OOC'ly by a DM during guided testing.

Grey Orcs are legal as extraordinary PCs, no? Part of their mojo is tracking and even "scent", (and WIS builds would be commonplace) but with Light Blindness to go along with it. Hmm.

Ugh.
http://www.alandfaraway.org/forums/view ... &hilit=ecl

Now I'm wondering if Light Blindness remains a "crazy mixed bag that doesn't do what it says it does", as the NWN2 Wikia also seems to emphasize when talking about Drow. That is, that it's really "Outdoors Blindness (day or night)" with messed up non-penalty to AB, and always a save/skills penalty... this "tracking" problem could also be tied to the bad vanilla implementation.

I do not know if, two years after AL's investigation into this, if some kind of OOC workaround came about, or what.

May be more important to have some awareness of as underdark-y stuff progresses under say, Sand's part of the project. That is, that even daring night time surface activities, actually zap all kinds of skills and saves, and "maybe" even the track business.

Yes light penalties are very fixable.

We'd need to:
Add a new feat.
Check for the OE feat on login. If it exists, remove it and add our own.
Use our OnAreaEnter hooks to check if a PC is outdoors during the day time. If so, apply penalties. If not, remove penalties.
Also check every PC heartbeat (or so) that the sun hasn't gone down/come up and apply/remove penalties based on that.

Someone send me the changes to acr_area_i and feats.2da, as well as a new file (acr_lightblind_i? it can be 3rd-party code) which handles all the details and I'll try to get it in. It would probably be better to maintain a pseudo-heartbeat for checking timing, once every few minutes or something.

Hmm, actually we do need a special object to apply the effects so we can distinguish them from others. I had a system to do this way back but for some reason it got deprecated. Must find out why.

Anyways, this is pretty easy.

Just piping in -

Anything that brings game engine light management closer to D&D is great.

As a sidebar --- how hard would it be to make a torch that is a droppable but still gives off light? Or to make an item that could dropped with a light spell cast on it that would continue to shed light?

That would be very cool Imho.

I forgot about this topic as Ive been away for a little while.

It may be an inside/outside thing, but it is my observation (perceived or otherwise) that my dirt elf (a level 1 wild elf ranger) was never in any danger from the typical goblin spawns on BG as the dots showed up well in advance. I dont feel that way with the drow.

Anyway, I plan to take the Light Adaption feat upon making level 3 in 5-7 months so no worries.

SwordSaintMusashi wrote: All the Underdark races aren't phase by candles. If that were the case, any spell that produced even a modicum of light (such as the fireball's explosion) would send them into a headache-filled tizzy.

Actually this very thing was addressed in the novels about drow. A single candle a character lit was a pain for him, and he described it as toughening himself up to the light. A simple light spell is supposed to mess up drow, they know this and plan to counter it

I think it was early on when we first meet Phaeraun

There's a bit of incongruity between 3.5ed light rules and what is written in FR novels.

In the books, drow seem to have more AD&D style "infravision". They can seem enemies in total darkness, but wizards need at least a tiny bit of light ( a small purple candle) to ready/study by. But they aren't blinded by it.


In 3.5, "Darkvision" is the ability to see in total darkness. It applies to all "mundane" sight (not invis./hidden stuff etc) and creatures with this ability can see in total darkness. It is not disrupted by the presence of a light source.


I agree that drow light sensitivity is meant to apply to a "bright" source, not a canadle. I mean it's not as if the Menzoberranzan light-based clock tower ( damn -- what is it named ... Norbindel??) makes people blinded.

To be fair, not every novel was written with the 3.0/ 3.5 ruleset. In 2nd edition, drow did have infravision (and so did elves and dwarves), and were able to see by heat instead of light. They were also extremely vulnerable to light: being in a light spell gave them -2 dex, -2 to hit, and gave their targets +2 to saves v. their spells; targeting someone else in a light spell was -1 hit/ +1 saves, and that stacked (i.e. -3 to be in a light spell swinging at someone in a light spell). In that set of canon, normal torches and candles are called out as painful, but not enough to manifest as penalties.

I'm not sure about War of the Spider Queen, specifically (being published two years after the 3.0 ruleset and one year after the FRCS was updated to it; pulp novels don't usually take very long to write.), but I'd entertain the notion that at least the first portion of it was written before the concept of low-light vision/ darvision (and not infravision/ extreme light sensitivity) made it to FR. But every setting that made the 2e -> 3.0 transition had a lot of retconning to do. Best to note said retconning and move on.

dergon darkhelm wrote: I agree that drow light sensitivity is meant to apply to a "bright" source, not a canadle. I mean it's not as if the Menzoberranzan light-based clock tower ( damn -- what is it named ... Norbindel??) makes people blinded.

I certainly do not think that drow should get the penalty for being around a candle, but the light penalties from being out in moonlight still makese sense

Narbondel is the name of the column that 'lights' up Menzoberranzan, but it is lit by heat not light


J

However, in 3.0/3.5 ruling, Moonlight is not classified as "bright light". Its the reason some races get low-light vision, which operates under moonlight/starlight. By the book, Light Sensitivity does not punish you while the sun is not up (in terms of day/night cycles). Its an admitted bug with the NWN2 engine that has been recognized, and if we can, correct it. If not...well, I'm not a tech person or someone who could correct it, so I don't know if its even possible.

Edit: Interestingly enough, I did a little digging on the bug too, and found this:

*This is improperly applied whenever a light blind character is outdoors, even during night time.
*The attack and saving throw penalty are only applied on the character sheet. They are not applied to the rolls in game.

Can the second part of that be confirmed?

Edit 2: Tested on WHL Beta server. No penalty applied to attack rolls in the day, outside. But -1 applies to saving throws. Cannot properly test skills, as the dice roller reads off character sheet data I assume.