Drow and Blindness

[LinuxPup]

Currently if you want to see in your own darkness naturally, become an Assassin.

[Lorkar1]

As long as we are on the subject of darkness, shouldn't Drow darkness be a free action? It is supposed to be an innate ability not cast as a spell, so it shouldn't take more than a thought to implement. As far as seeing in it, even in PnP Drow couldn't see in their own darkness. So that at least should remain the same.

[Sparky]

The Drow Darkness, per DnD standards, is considered a spell-like ability that takes a standard action to activate.

[P. Fricebottle]

Gary gets blinded by his own Fire Storm each time he casts it, its not all that bad.

[LinuxPup]

Gary is Duergar? I never knew that...

Too bad I didn't knew that.

[mgrjebbo]

This is definitely a pain but having played a few drow I do agree that they should be blinded by bright light spells. Maybe a solution for those that disagree would be this:

At 25th level the drow having spent so much time in the light and having been exposed to many light focusing magic’s has reach a level of experience that he/she can focus their body and mind to ignore the blinding effect of bright light.

At 25th level the drows goes to the purist guild in Ave where he receives the following token.

Self targeting only, non-transferable
Use 3 times a day.
Cancels blindness effect caused by bright light.

Note: This token will have no effect against Aasmir aura.

[disastro]

this is definitly a pain but having played a few drow i do agree that they should be blinded by bright light spells. Maybe a solution for those that disagree would be this:.

i'm not against blindness per se. blindness would be fine if the game engine wasn't broken with respect to uncanny dodge and blind fight. i think you can make an arbitrarily high light penalty to ac/ab/etc (adjust to whatever is appropriate to the benefits/drawbacks of ecl3) without running into engine bugs or internally inconsistent application of core rules.

same effect, just not broken.

[disastro]

Gary gets blinded by his own Fire Storm each time he casts it, its not all that bad.

gary is a full plate user right? for full platers the blindness is not much more than an annoyance, and if you have listen you can still target nearby enemies. i think it works fine there. however for a dexer its murder.. they lose just about all their ac regardless of the right build.

ironically that makes the naturally speedy drow warrior better as a low dex plater.

[Sparky]

Just an FYI, its Uncanny Dodge that's broken, Blind Fight works exactly as advertised.

Found two old post of mine for reference, half way down.

http://www.nsrealm.com/public/ns/viewto ... a&start=30

I can confirm that being Blind is basically a death sentence to Dex builds if you have no way to remove the debuff. Against the Dexxer I tested WoF against, they had Blind Fight, Uncanny Dodge, and well over 70 AC, I was striking with rolls of 47, indicating they probably lost both Dex and Dogde bonus.

Being blind confirs the negatives to Hit and skills, but those were negligable compared to the high AC loss.

One of the above feats, Blind Fight, or Uncanny Dodge, is not performing as it should in this situation.

Just throwing out my findings to those curious...

In my testing, Blind Fight functioned as it should have for the Blinded character. I gained no bonus to hit when striking him while he was blinded.

I can conclude that Uncanny Dodge is the offender. I'll check the Bioware site later on today to see if I can confirm Uncanny Dodge is not working as it should.

Hope that helps.

[Amoenotep]

holy crap..did you use the SEARCH button? just think of some of the time we could save if we used something as handy as that....

[disastro]

thanks for the link sparky. it confirms what dexers already know. if using this fact is intentional on the part of the devs to balance the race then there's nothing more to say on the subject.

fyi both uncanny AND blind fight should counteract the loss of dex ac from invisible attackers according to standard d&d rules at least (blind fight does more than counteract the +2 to hit an invisible attacker gets):

--- from http://www.d20srd.org
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#blindFight

Blind-Fight [General]
Benefit
...
An invisible attacker gets no advantages related to hitting you in melee. That is, you don’t lose your Dexterity bonus to Armor Class, and the attacker doesn’t get the usual +2 bonus for being invisible. The invisible attacker’s bonuses do still apply for ranged attacks, however.

You take only half the usual penalty to speed for being unable to see. Darkness and poor visibility in general reduces your speed to three-quarters normal, instead of one-half.

Normal
Regular attack roll modifiers for invisible attackers trying to hit you apply, and you lose your Dexterity bonus to AC. The speed reduction for darkness and poor visibility also applies.
Special

The Blind-Fight feat is of no use against a character who is the subject of a blink spell.

A fighter may select Blind-Fight as one of his fighter bonus feats.

---

uncanny dodge:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/rogue ... cannyDodge

Uncanny Dodge (Ex)

Starting at 4th level, a rogue can react to danger before her senses would normally allow her to do so. She retains her Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) even if she is caught flat-footed or struck by an invisible attacker. However, she still loses her Dexterity bonus to AC if immobilized.

[Celorn]

OOoooo.....

I wonder if uncanny dodge will be fixed in the '69 patch?!? That would be nice for a lot of people, and bad for another lot of people .

[Nyeleni]

Don't think so, I didn't see it on the changelog for the next update... Then again I wasn't looking out for it either...

[disastro]

theres an active thread on this topic on the bioware boards:

http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic ... m=42&sp=45

an official ruling from wizards was solicited and its confirmed that uncanny is not working per the rules as written. a request was made in the 1.69 thread but who knows if anything will come of it.

[PeregrineV]

Does the game engine distinguish between blindness and darkness-induced blindness?