Arelith

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This Article IS ABOUT about Darkness and a Spammable Sun Spell Mechanic used in THE UNDERDARK;
This article is NOT ABOUT the light mechanic justifiably used to push drow off the surface in the day.
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The duration is 2 to 4 rounds depending on whether the reflex saving throw was successful. Why are we getting blindness when we *succeed* at a saving throw?

Why are we getting a spammable blind against us ... while in the Underdark ... even when we succeed at a saving throw? The problem with using darkness as a cover in anything related to PvP is this:

Darkness, even if you have Ultravision .. and are actively attacking the sneak attacker ... subjects you to sneak attacks -- and it shouldn't.

I do not feel like this change tested in a live combat environment, even if it "feels thematically appropriate", and removing one spamable blind mechanic usable by the Underdarkers.. and then just adding another without the same protections applied.. is kind of weird.

This is a 70% miss chance. While in the Underdark. And Loremasters can cast scrolls at a high enough level to break SR. On a colossal sized spell.

Fights do not happen in the 20-foot radius of a darkness spell, and the effects don't come off the moment you enter darkness. This is not a fair, or balanced mechanic the way it is currently being tuned and pushed out the door while ignoring Neverwinter Nights bugs and limitations that have a serious impact on fights.

I also want to point out that Orcs have almost identical light limitations as drow, and the Orog lore on Arelith even mentions this. This is, effectively creating the exact same scenario as the Word of Faith issue ... that ***ONLY*** hurts the Underdark.

You literally removed this kind of exploit, and added another of the exact same kind ... in the same patch: Only worse and longer lasting.

It seems pretty rough and, frankly, annoying to deal with in a worse way than WoF spam (which, yes, just removed)

Maybe bare minimum make it only hit you on a failed save? Maybe it only works on the surface, so every single caster in the underdark isn't suddenly Solaire

I think this was a perfectly reasonable change.

Personally, I'd like them to remove the blindness mechanics, and just leave whatever miss-chance they want. I still say the exact same Loremaster thing is going to happen since it's a 70% miss chance ... one person having that much power over a colossal radius's action economy and whether they are forced to eat sneak attacks in a large melee is.. nuts.

Dreams wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 1:31 pm I think this was a perfectly reasonable change.

Why is 70% miss-chance, and an unavoidable 2 - 4 round blindness effect that is spammable by scroll on a colossal radius reasonable ... when "the counter" gets you sneak attacked (and strength drained) by a character that already has epic dodge, even while you have ultravision up and are actively attacking the rogue?

All while in the middle of the Andunorian trade hub. People are talking about getting deleted by weapons masters, and you're talking about 70% miss chance on a successful save and between 12 and 24 seconds of blindness.

If I pre-drop Darkness to protect against this.. and sit in it... with Ultravision already popped.. and I attack a rogue who is stealthing (who I spotted) into that darkness toward me regardless of if he can see or not: He gets full sneak attacks on every attack. Where is the lore in that?

<moved by author>

So, the problem isn't about the whole sunlight thing at all, but about rogues getting sneak attack in darkness?

<moved by author>

The lore is that drow don't see very well in the light because they live in holes. Drow live in holes with other monsters that also see in the dark, so their natural *throws darkness* is going to work vs surfacers and less vs monsters from dark holes.

Dreams wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 1:54 pm The lore is that drow don't see very well in the light because they live in holes. Drow live in holes with other monsters that also see in the dark, so their natural *throws darkness* is going to work vs surfacers and less vs monsters from dark holes.

Yes. It's that my own supposed counter to this literally kills me, even when I do everything properly WHILE in the Underdark.

The mechanic chosen is borked. Hard-coded borked ... which is one thing, if I'm on the surface -- I'm supposed to run away and go back to the darkness: Cool. Sure, I'll ignore the bug... THEMATIC RUNNING OCCURES

But if this is the mechanic for fighting in the Underdark ... that's the issue. This is a spammable scroll spell I am complaining about, and the fact that it happens in the Underdark, and I don't actually think you're reading what has been typed here. Only the title.

Look at the actual Darkness (and the Sneak Attack) interaction I am talking about.

- Drow With Ultravision: Successfully Uses Darkness, and is immune to Sunburst.
- [This is The Problem] Drow Gets Sneak Attacked While Fully Able To See The Rogue He Is Attacking In The Darkness. Every attack the rogue makes against the drow is a sneak attack because darkness is a broken and buggy mechanic that is not ready for this use.

This is also ignoring the continuous reboot-requiring issues caused by overlapping darkness that effectively blinds you forever, anyways long after you've left the darkness the moment you get tapped by an AoE dispel.

Use darkness > Move out of the darkness. I don't see how this is such a huge issue. PvP never takes place with everyone standing still. The specific scenario that you have a problem with isn't going to happen unless you're already making other massive mistakes in your strategy.

If you're worried about bugs due to darkness, report it in the bug threads?

As one of the few times I'm levelling serious criticism.

It is really not a good idea to remove a spammable saveless blind mechanic (word of faith) and then immediately add one that is far worse in the same patch.

Dreams wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 2:02 pm Use darkness > Move out of the darkness. I don't see how this is such a huge issue. PvP never takes place with everyone standing still. The specific scenario that you have a problem with isn't going to happen unless you're already making other massive mistakes in your strategy.

If you're worried about bugs due to darkness, report it in the bug threads?

It takes a set amount of rounds of sitting in darkness to remove the effect. It does not happen immediately.

Wenchslayer wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 2:08 pm

Dreams wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 2:02 pm Use darkness > Move out of the darkness. I don't see how this is such a huge issue. PvP never takes place with everyone standing still. The specific scenario that you have a problem with isn't going to happen unless you're already making other massive mistakes in your strategy.

If you're worried about bugs due to darkness, report it in the bug threads?

It takes a set amount of rounds of sitting in darkness to remove the effect. It does not happen immediately.

If you move out of the darkness, you get hit by the blind and 70% miss chance that doesn't disappear when you go back into the darkness. All it does is make you immune to hits from it while you're in it, and even that isn't guaranteed. The mechanic of it is buggy and it's not an Arelith issue ... it's a beamdog level issue that has existed since the inception of Neverwinter Nights.

The Dreadnaught crew has probably fiddled with this Light Blindness thing and Darkness (since it happens every single boarding action) more often than any other player has -- since the dreadnaught drops a darkness globe on crossing that doesn't cover the whole ship..

This thing is gonna be an issue on several mechanical levels and is not ready for mass use as people pass in and out of them. It's a buggy mechanic that frequently requires players to restart their clients, and causes you to get sneak attacked by mobs you can see and are attacking with YOU having Ultravision while in the darkness to protect yourself.

This thing would be OP even if it was 50% miss without blindness because it lasts longer than WoF ever did. This has no effective counterplay to being spammed via scroll.. you can't just 'dip into the darkness' to wash it off - even while IN the Underdark or your own home settlement in Andunor.

I for one like this new world where balance doesn't matter if it's regarding a monster race. #SurfaceSupremacy

Kind of yelling that the arguments for "blanket drow nerf with no actual, realistic counterplay, that effects them everywhere and acts like nothing else in the game" is coming with a clear misunderstanding of what is even being discussed, just a player reaction "haha drow bad."

If darkness spells cast from drow gave non-drow a 70% miss chance by itself, that could only be dispelled by a light spell, the amount of screaming would be legendary.

Drowboy wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 2:54 pm If darkness spells cast from drow gave non-drow a 70% miss chance by itself, that could only be dispelled by a light spell, the amount of screaming would be legendary.

You do see how a single spell that needs 65 Lore to be cast from a scroll and affects only one race (Who get the counter as a racial spell) is ever so slightly different from a spell that every member of a race gets for free and with a counter that no race gets for free, right?

Nitro wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 3:01 pm

Drowboy wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 2:54 pm If darkness spells cast from drow gave non-drow a 70% miss chance by itself, that could only be dispelled by a light spell, the amount of screaming would be legendary.

You do see how a single spell that needs 65 Lore to be cast from a scroll and affects only one race (Who get the counter as a racial spell) is ever so slightly different from a spell that every member of a race gets for free and with a counter that no race gets for free, right?

The dark cloud is currently very inconsistent and does not remove the debuff immediately. This has been a notoriously frustrating debuff to deal with even before it could be weaponized by players.

It's buggy in addition to also being incredibly overtuned.

Then it really sounds like the bug should be reported and documented so it can be fixed. Doing a quick "darkness" search in the bug forum reveals nothing related to this issue, apparently very prevalent and well known, from 2020 onwards.

Wenchslayer wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 3:10 pm

Nitro wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 3:01 pm

Drowboy wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 2:54 pm If darkness spells cast from drow gave non-drow a 70% miss chance by itself, that could only be dispelled by a light spell, the amount of screaming would be legendary.

You do see how a single spell that needs 65 Lore to be cast from a scroll and affects only one race (Who get the counter as a racial spell) is ever so slightly different from a spell that every member of a race gets for free and with a counter that no race gets for free, right?

The dark cloud is currently very inconsistent and does not remove the debuff immediately. This has been a notoriously frustrating debuff to deal with even before it could be weaponized by players.

It's buggy in addition to also being incredibly overtuned.

It's also just silly to pretend 65 lore or enough umd for a book is a hard target to hit to shut a race down imo. Especially for something that can be spammed unlike WoF now.

I assume nobody defending this is doing so in good faith. Maybe empathize with the drow players for a moment and imagine if the character you were playing could be blinded (plus other debuffs) by a relatively common spell, with no save.

It even blinds you when you resist the spell with magic resistance, so it doesn't matter if the person is a loremaster with a higher caster level or not: Anybody who gears lore can AoE this via scroll on a large (Underdark) battle-field with a colossal radius effecting say... ALL of Saltspar.

Just tested it.

Dipping in and out of darkness doesn't fix it either -- though why you would need to step into magical darkness while IN THE UNDERDARK is kind of funny since the spell is an instant and the light is gone is beyond me..

This is literally Word of Faith spam that ONLY works on Underdarkers, but cannot be spell-resisted or saved against. This even functions on us if we are 'blind' and cannot SEE the light spell.

The update was a little tough to interpret and I haven't been able to test this extensively.

So it's blindness for 4 rounds on save fail, and on a successful reflex save it's 'half' to 2 rounds of blindness minimum?

Has this been tested with evasion, remove blindness, spell resistence, etc yet? From what I can tell spell resistence still applies to sunburst, so at least any level 30 drow is presumably immune to the scrolls like they are to WoF scrolls.

Edit: oh it still works on SR. Seems like a bug.

Charon's Claw and I even tested in the Upperdark Portal Room.

SR.
Blind.
Successful Save.
Failed Save.

Scroll or Spell doesn't matter. 70% miss chance. This is mechanically worse than the new Turn Undead against vampires and affects more PC's in a wider radius and is attached to scrolls you can prepare in advance.

It also kills vampires.

dominantdrowess wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 3:29 pm It also kills vampires.

Summons or PC's?

Aren wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 3:33 pm Summons or PC's?

Both.