I happened to run into some drow wizard who absolutely did not want to coexist in peace. In the following skirmish I blinded him with glitterdust, but it didn't seem to disturb his ability to target spells at my PCs. So I'd like to know, what should the effect of blindness be on a caster? I don't think he should be able to target his spells like normal. Or maybe is it a drow speciality to be immune to blindness? TIA
ANy caster you blind still has the ability to target spells wherever they damn well please. It's as if the all recieved training from the miracle worker. Damned unfair if you ask me.
It's how the game engine treats non-party member casters. They just can't target sensibly otherwise. Don't think there's much we can do without a lot of hacking of the actual game engine itself.
IIRC the rules don't say that casters need to be able to see, except in very specific circumstances (IE magic missile - you can target anyone you can see, the missiles never miss) in combat however blindness is a bigger factor, blindness results in attacks made by the blind character to miss 50% of the time (as with concealment) unless the character has the blind fighing feat.
I found that Blindness (and by extention, Glitterdust), isn't nearly as useful in ToEE as it is in PnP DnD 3.x
Our PnP games allowed a blind caster to target AoE spells with some randomness put in by the DM (blind fight feat got rid of the randomness). However, the DM never allowed a blind caster to target anything that needed to be targetted at a specific individual (like Magic Missile, or Hold Monster) - although he did permit a blind caster with the Blind Fighting feat to attempt to target this way by making a ranged touch attack with a 50% concealment penalty and a -4 to hit. Seemed the most fair to us at the time. However, I doubt that anything like that could be programmed into the game without the help of Troika and that's highly unlikely to happen.
I think in the PHB it says you have to be able to see or touch the targets for targetting spells like charm person. Of course you could use cone or AOE spells at certain points in space but not direct them at a specific target (that you cannot see). But I can't find anything about concealment. I guess 50%+ means invisible, so you cannot target it. But what about lower percentages? Touch attacks (+ranged) work like (ranged) attacks, so that's clear. But does a charm person against 20% concealment mean that you can target normally, or that you have a 20% chance of failing to affect the target? Of course, this is just out of personal interest since it seems we cannot fix these things in TOEE. A shame. Give us the frigging source code already, Atari.
50% concealment is just that, not invisible, but 50% chance to outright miss regardless of the attack roll. 100% concealment is invisibility. And as I said above, this was in PnP that the DM we ran under handled this. Basically it came down to not even bothering to try a directed attack while blinded. One way around it that might be possible would be a Wizard Eye spell since it magically transmits visual images to the caster. Again though, doubtful that any of this can be programmed into ToEE.
Actually, concealment is when you cannot see your attacker at all (due to blindness, invisibility, darkness, fog, etc) and incurs a 50% miss chance on all attacks. Partial Concealment is when you can't see your opponent clearly and incurs a 20% miss chance.
Arcane Eye requires concentration to work. Couldn't cast another spell while using it to target, although you could use it one round, get a lay of the land, and then the next round cast a spell using your mental image of the battlefield. Of course, a quick-minded wizard will remember that he can use his familiar to deliver touch attacks. :evil_laug
An Arcane Eye, once cast, will float inert when it's not concentrated on. You have to concentrate (a standard action) to get it to do anything or get information from it. Unlike most "concentration" spells, you can cease concentration and pick it up again, so you can use it one round, not use it the next, and then use it again (and repeat for the duration of the spell). A quickened Arcane Eye spell wouldn't remove the concentration requirement to use it; it would just remove the casting time to create it. You could Cast Arcane Eye and then use it to target quickened spells on rounds you concentrate with the eye, or that you could use the eye one round, get a view of everything, then attempt to target spells on enemies that you hope haven't moved since you got your last look, or that you could use it one round, then the next round cast an AOE spell with accuracy in the hopes that your intended targets haven't moved much.
