Elhanan wrote...
Mystery X wrote...
Blind Fight has not been helping me deal with magical Darkness. I cannot target anyone in Darkness unless I am in melee range.
I thought I would be able to get a Listen check to detect enemies in Darkness. Am I wrong on that? Even enemies with Move Silently should be out of Stealth mode in combat (though I suppose if they are standing around doing nothing in Darkness, they can be using Stealth). I have maximum Listen, and as an Elf, should be getting full benefit from it without being in Detect Mode.
Perhaps something in here may help explain the factors involved:
http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Listen
http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Spot
I had read the Wiki entries, but that did not quite clear it up.
"Listen alerts a character to hidden creatures that may be nearby."
I assume that opponents unseen because they are inside Darkness are considered hidden, so I get my Listen check to detect them.
"Listen
detects hidden creatures by opposing their move silently check. A
successful check renders the hidden creature visible, and makes it a
valid target for the listener."
With maximum Listen, I would expect to be winning some of those checks, even against opponents my level who had a maximum Move Silently skill. In one battle, there were about 4-6 opponents hidden in the Darkness (I don't know exactly, I couldn't see them). At least some of them were engaged in melee with my henchmen. I shouldn't have been taking a penalty for being in combat because I was taking no combat actions. I don't know exactly how to judge distance, but that should not have been too much, it was in a short dungeon corridor.
I don't know how to assess this penalty: "+5 DC for every 40cm of object (including creatures) between listener and target in outdoor areas." My henchman may have been between me and the enemies (something my henchmen do not accomplish frequently enough), so maybe that's giving me a penalty.
I don't know all the factors, particularly what the Move Silently skill might have been for the opponents, without cracking open the module. (It was against Duergar, I know they all have some sort of stealth skills, I usually encounter them when they are in stealth mode trying to sneak up on me.)
I was just expecting that with maximum Listen, I would be successful with at least one check against multiple opponents over several rounds. So that made me wonder whether I was just failing all the checks, or if magical Darkness were treated differently than invisibility and blindness and I was not getting the checks in the first place.