Countering Invisibility, HiPS, and Concealment: Glitterdust?

[keikobad]

While players mostly have to cope with these in CvC, monsters occasionally use them as well.

However, it is very difficult on straight fighter types, as I've witnessed in fights vs Sereg. Blind fighting won't help you against a HiPS archer.

Even with Spot items, Fighters will have a hard time getting their scores high enough to deal with the Hide scores a HiPS monster will have if they are going to be able to hide against casters.

Listen is a better route, but I haven't seen any items to boost it yet, and even so the MS scores on many spawns or PCs may be too high. Dunno.

Thought it'd be interesting to have a "Pouch of Glitterdust" item that, when used, would hit everyone in a small area and, for a few rounds,
-apply a large penalty (-50 or whatever the max is) to their Hide scores
-remove invisibilty and concealment OR apply an AC penalty to creatures with those effects

Removing invisibility/concealment would be ideal, but might be a bit overpowered, especially if the items can be obtained in quantity. Invisibility and concealment are often supposed to persist longer than the effects you'd have on a buyable item than this, but there's no easy way of restoring invisibility or concealment to a target after the glitterdust expires. Alternatively, the item script could check to see if a creature has those effects, and if so apply a -4 AC penalty or some such for the duration of the glitterdust.

It'd be neat to have it as a grenade-like weapon, but a small area of effect centered around the user would also work and perhaps be less overpowering.

Of course, NPCs could use these too, if added to the AI. Could be something a Sereg Cuar would want.

Any interest in such a thing?

[Vroshgrak]

if your going to nerf HiPS, improved invisibility etc, you might as well nerf every clerics favorite spell, greater sanctuary. Just to be fair. But I think its alright to leave things as they stand now.

[Draegloth]

Neat idea however I think you should stick with your invisibility concealment only as if you throw some glitter into some shadows they will not sparkle, not unless you shine some light on them. However if you throw some glitter on an invisible target standing in broad daylight they will sparkle quite a bit Id think. If this was implemented as an area effect spell like cloud of bewilderment or cloudkill it might actually give casters a pretty good reason to memorize gust of wind.

I think its a good idea as long as it gets some ironing, but hell whatever you come up with somebody will be unhappy and honestly Id rather have the team fixing bugs or adding cool new areas to explore. Plus they got enough on there hands fixing broken spells or nerfing them so they work better with pnp dnd.

[eNTrOpY]

Everyone and their mother would be carrying this item if it were to be added, and all you'll really have accomplished is now instead of letting only mages and clerics with TS being to see every rogue around you'll let every character spot any rogue.

[KinX]

great! so when can we expect to see Glitterdust in-game?

[keikobad]

Everyone and their mother would be carrying this item if it were to be added, and all you'll really have accomplished is now instead of letting only mages and clerics with TS being to see every rogue around you'll let every character spot any rogue.

I'd think the trick is to make expensive/hard to craft and make it last only a few rounds-- 3 or 4. Haste and Heal potions are sooper dooper too, but you don't see too many people chugging them-- these days.

Also, if the effect is centered around the user, instead of being a grenade weapon, it'll be quite challenging to use. If you can't see the rogue, you have to make a pretty damn good guess where they're going, run up, and spend a whole round USING the item before it takes effect-- the rogue could just exit stealth and run around a corner.

However, if said rogue was a shadowdancer who came towards you and attacked you, and you used the glitterdust, you'd have a few rounds to strike back. Ditto if it's not a shadowdancer but a person with concealment and high AC.

[keikobad]

Neat idea however I think you should stick with your invisibility concealment only as if you throw some glitter into some shadows they will not sparkle, not unless you shine some light on them.

Add some glowmoss to some ore dust and presto, you have dust that glitters on its own.

[eNTrOpY]

Even with Spot items, Fighters will have a hard time getting their scores high enough to deal with the Hide scores a HiPS monster will have if they are going to be able to hide against casters.

Well then fighters are disadvantaged against monsters with HiPS, or with good stealth skills in general. If a fighter wants to be effective against stealthier characters they'll have to burn the skill points
Mages and clerics are disadvantaged against anything with sufficient Monk levels. Doesn't mean we should give them an item to give massive penalties to SRs of creatures in an area?

Thought it'd be interesting to have a "Pouch of Glitterdust" item that, when used, would hit everyone in a small area and, for a few rounds,
-apply a large penalty (-50 or whatever the max is) to their Hide scores
-remove invisibilty and concealment OR apply an AC penalty to creatures with those effects

This is equivalent to making an item that makes comabat characters within a radius get a -50 penalty to hit. Since stealth characters won't have as good as attack base as fighters we should give stealth chars something that does this too to even that playing field too. (sarcastic - don't, for the love of god, listen to this)

Listen is a better route, but I haven't seen any items to boost it yet, and even so the MS scores on many spawns or PCs may be too high. Dunno.

There's a new palette being phased in on the servers that is supposed to contain spot and listen bonus items. How bout we wait and check these out before we start suggesting tactical nuke solutions that will cause unhappiness among a large spectrum of characters (rangers, rogues, shadowdancers, assasins, some monks)

[Melakin Skywieder]

Add some glowmoss to some ore dust and presto, you have dust that glitters on its own.

Thought you wanted hard that would be easy. Besides and some glowmoss to ore dust and presto, you got dusty glowmoss

There's a new palette being phased in on the servers that is supposed to contain spot and listen bonus items. How bout we wait and check these out before we start suggesting tactical nuke solutions that will cause unhappiness among a large spectrum of characters

I agree (though I love the tactical nuke reference).

[Halvar Yanocen]

Glitterdust is a very dangerus substance.

There is a rumor going around about a truely evil variant of it
(developed to help fighters against casters) which have the
following properties:

magic resistance +50 for the user, last 24h
all hostiles within a 60 feet radius get all their magical effets
dispelled, inlcuding weapon and armor bufs
all hostiles within a 60 feet radius get 100% spell failure for 10 rounds.

[keikobad]

Add some glowmoss to some ore dust and presto, you have dust that glitters on its own.

Thought you wanted hard that would be easy. Besides and some glowmoss to ore dust and presto, you got dusty glowmoss

Hehe--note I didn't specify which kind of ore. Could be adamantium. (Ok, that'd be too hard.)

There's a new palette being phased in on the servers that is supposed to contain spot and listen bonus items. How bout we wait and check these out before we start suggesting tactical nuke solutions that will cause unhappiness among a large spectrum of characters

Relax, I doubt anyone on the Team would bother coding this. I am, however, interested in scripting spells and trinkets like this that add to the tactical challenge of fighting, regardless of whether they get used here or not, hence I post about it. *Points to the Forum Title*

I like the general rulebase in Avlis, and I'm curious to see how people think such an item would impact it.

Glitterdust is a very dangerus substance.

There is a rumor going around about a truely evil variant of it
(developed to help fighters against casters)

Actually, negating/penalizing concealment is very useful against casters-- concealment refers to the miss chance on your attacks when fighting a caster with improved invisibility, ghostly visage, etc...

Now, you'd expect the glitterdust to completely cancel such effects-- making it a portable version of the 3rd level cleric spell, Invisibility Purge.

Problem is, even if the item is hard to obtain, folks will be able to stock up on a few. And, whereas a shadowdancer can simply disengage while the Hide penalty wears off and try again as often as she wants, a caster is limited by the spell slots. NPC casters rarely have more than one of these anyway, so any invisibility purge hurts. NPC shadowdancers-- I don't know if there are any that use the feat without being possessed, nor what the AI would instruct them to do. It might be too powerful against them too.

However, fighters can still hurt concealed casters, so long as they can hit often enough. The combination of really high AC AND 50% concealment which lasts a good long while is painful for fighters. Therefore, applying a AC penalty to targets WITH concealment (instead of dispelling it) is quite useful.

It sounds bad for the HiPS crowd, but think about how this item would actually be used. A shadowdancer can attack from a range and then HiPS again, before the glitterdust user can run to them and use it. Remember, it takes a full round to activate an item.

The main impact on a shadowdancer would be when they close in to melee and the target uses the dust-- it'll give the SD a full round of attacks without retaliation, but then they might want to disengage and run off for 3-5 rounds until the dust wears off, if they feel unsafe meleeing without having the HiPS escape immediately available.

The more I think about it, the cheaper I think this item could be. If designed appropriately.

Maybe it'd be ok as a grenade weapon-- certainly a shadowndancer wanting to use it against, say, a cleric with the Trickery domain, wouldn't want a personal area of effect or she'd screw up her Hide score as well. I'm leery about the way those weapons work though-- isn't one able to immediately target someone with them, and if you make the roll the weapon will hit them even if they run away? Or does it fall on the spot where the target originally was?

[Deider]

As a person who loves the Glitterdust spell, I think it would be neat.

As a team member, don't get your hopes up. Not even thinking about the balance thing, there are at last count 1,089,485 other things on our list. Integrating the CEP, fleshing out crafting, flossing Verg's butt, you know what I'm saying here.

As the guy who made the Listen, Spot, and Search items in the reorganized palette, I can tell you that there aren't many of them but they get pretty much as good as we allow normally in Avlis. Come to the next SATF-sanctioned Trade Fair and you may just see some up for auction.

[eNTrOpY]

The moment you said glowmoss, the forum title stopped registering for me since that's pretty much Avlis specific for me and I openned up