Invisibility/Area Spells Issue

[Ralkain]

Hi,

While playing a lowbie mage I noticed that the new Area Effect modifications are causing Invisibility to drop and preventing re-casting of it. It happens when you put down Grease (or any area spell I would think).

If you pre-cast grease (i.e., no enemies around) it doesn't drop (as normal). However, the second any enemy enters the area and as long as any enemies are in the area your invisibility spell drops and any subsequent castings immediately drop.

Its easy to see how this could happen under the new area scheme, but this shouldn't be and isn' in 3E or base nwn.

Is there any way to tie dropping invis only to the round the spell is cast? Barring that, is it possible to always drop invis when casting area spells (enemys around or not) and never having enemies in the area causing it to drop?

Dave.

[FunkySwerve]

It'll do the same thing with GS and imp invis. This isn't exactly directly intended by me, but I'm glad it does it, as it halts any number of chessy powerleveling scearios involving huge puddles of acid fog etc. COULD it be changed? Yes, but I would have to make the puddle be created by the area, which would cut off xp to the caster, and make it damage partymembers, and greatly complicate the scripts since areas don't have casterlevels. Will it be changed, given these considerations? Nope. And this IS a part of the standard NWN engine, btw, all I did was fix the heartbeat scripts on the persistant AoEs that were supposed to be firing so that they DO fire, by making them into psuedoheartbeats (self-repeating commands seperated by a fixed delay).
Funky

[hiryuu]

Even if it's not in 3E rules, I would consider Grease, and especially damage fogs, hostile actions for the purposes of Invisibility or Sanctuary. As Funky says, it has always worked that way, but per-round spells were so broken that you didn't get the benefits or the resulting penalties.

[FunkySwerve]

LOL after finally getting a chance to make a new character, I saw grease at work in the tower and was sorely tempted to renerf it (not gonna tho, at least not till I playtest a fair bit more - we wanted a useful lvl 1, even if a bit overpowered).

I also forgot to mention that these spells will prevent resting, a far worse inconvenience imo, but equally unavoidable (meaning probably fixable but a ton of work to do so without creating exploits).

Funky

[Ralkain]

funkyswerve said:

I also forgot to mention that these spells will prevent resting, a far worse inconvenience imo, but equally unavoidable (meaning probably fixable but a ton of work to do so without creating exploits).

And that's the point I was getting to. The way area spells used to work had issues, the new method addresses many of those, but has other issues.

Unless those other issues can be resolved. I think it was better before (with the damage increases added back in since they only take it on entering).

The old method may not have been great on the mechanics of the spell, but were great on the mechanics of magic and other spells. The new method is better on the mechanics of that spell, but mess up the mechanics of other spells and magic rules in general.

Which makes the new method feel more out of place. Its one thing to play a game and have Spell X not work as expected or as it should, its quite another to have Spell X cause spell Y not to work as it should .

However, we could get used to either method and appreciate the DM efforts in pursuing whatever solution they end up deciding upon.

Dave.

[archmage]

As a die-hard caster, I decided to throw my $0.02 in on this one. Yes they are slightly buggy now, but these spells actually work. It opens up whole new avenues of strategy and possibilities. For this fact alone, leave them as they are now. I mean what is the point of acid fog if it only damages enemies once. Al it then does is make people's graphics stutter. PLus if its a one-time hit, the damage is horrible, as it was designed to incur that hit every round, and balanced with that in mind. If resting is really a problem for you, a simple dispel magic, mords, or gust of wind would do the trick. You could even use a dispelling rod. As for the issue of it breaking Greater Sanctuary and Invisibility, it has to break those. How fun would it be in a duel to just stand therer and lay down every cloud spell in the book, and lean back in GS. Not very. Thankfully it breaks them. If it didnt, mages would be nigh unstoppable.

[Ralkain]

archmage said:

As a die-hard caster, I decided to throw my $0.02 in on this one.

Cool, I play a lot of variety and almost asked for die hard casters point of view.

Plus if its a one-time hit, the damage is horrible, as it was designed to incur that hit every round, and balanced with that in mind.

No argument here, it should do damage every round. It doesn't the old way, but the new way has other quirks/side effects. You just have to weigh which is better, both have good and bad points.

As for the issue of it breaking Greater Sanctuary and Invisibility, it has to break those. How fun would it be in a duel to just stand therer and lay down every cloud spell in the book, and lean back in GS. Not very. Thankfully it breaks them. If it didnt, mages would be nigh unstoppable.

Breaking them and breaking subsequent castings are two different things. It also extends web's duration greatly which makes the hobgoblin area (and probably the area off anduin) more challenging (which I kind of like).

Of course so would turning off the setting preventing area spells/effects from affecting self/allies. This setting, and enemies not walking around the area when they can, certainly plays into the sit in a cloud issue as well.

I'm not coming down on either side, both have merits and flaws. I like the feel of the former, but some of the logic of the newer. We'll get used to however they end up.

Keep up the good work guys, never been on a server with DMs so active on adding features/updates to the server. Love it.

Dave.