Blind Fight

[The Butcher]

My suggestion is to make Blind Fight immunize the character who picks it against Blindness, or fix the following bug with Blindness.

There is a bug with Blindness, where even a character who selected the Blind Fight feat can not actually attack a hostile target, when blinded; not until a creature attacks him first. This makes spells like Word of Faith, that blinds everyone without a save, a very powerful escape mechanism and grinding tool.



Blinded (as per PnP, for reference.)

The character cannot see. He takes a -2 penalty to Armor Class, loses his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any), moves at half speed, and takes a -4 penalty on Search checks and on most Strength- and Dexterity-based skill checks. All checks and activities that rely on vision (such as reading and Spot checks) automatically fail. All opponents are considered to have total concealment (50% miss chance) to the blinded character. Characters who remain blinded for a long time grow accustomed to these drawbacks and can overcome some of them.

[Dragor]

The blindness bug is not fixable due to the invisability hardcoded effect

I cant see any glaring issues with tweaking blind fight into a blindness immunity...except possibly offensive spellcasting

[roguethree]

Actually, because only melee types are going to take Blindfight, this would go a long way toward helping find balance. That is, no more "lol WoF I win."

[Dragor]

Actually, because only melee types are going to take Blindfight...

you think this why?

even from a casters perspective, training to target enemies off of senses other than sight makes sense...but it opens a can of worms

[The Butcher]

but it opens a can of worms

Fair enough. However, I would rather see the Fighter types get buffed at the risk of making a single Favored Soul/Cleric spell becoming obsolete, instead of refusing the buff to Fighter types so Favored Souls/Clerics retain another I.WIN button.

[Dragor]

Fair enough. However, I would rather see the Fighter types get buffed at the risk of making a single Favored Soul/Cleric spell becoming obsolete, instead of refusing the buff to Fighter types so Favored Souls/Clerics retain another I.WIN button.

I was saying it opens a can of worms in respect to casters taking the feat with your suggested modifications not as a whole...I like the idea currently as I havent found anything that causes an overbalance in it yet

[Lothoir]

I think he's referring to casters taking the feat so they can target with spells. With a 50% miss chance and a -2 ATK I don't see it as being too much of a problem, especially when you consider how much of an investment a feat is to a non-fighter.

[BedlamX]

Agreed. Blind fight should let you do just that: Fight while blinded. Not just fight concealed baddies.

[Dragor]

With a 50% miss chance and a -2 ATK...

with the hardcoded mess that obsidion or whoever created when they "fixed" ivis is that while you are blinded all other objects are pretty much treated as ethereal from your chars perspective


getting around this by making blind fight in effect immunity to blindness will take away the blanket perspective etherealness but also any of the penalties will be gone

to keep that someone would have to create a custom variant of blindness making the entire suggested modification of blind fight unecissary


it would be more thoroughly solved by a custom scripted blindness effect however

[Lothoir]

Thinking it over even more, this would be less and less useful to a caster as compared to a fighter. A fighter gets an unlimited number of attacks so long as they are alive, making 50% concealment less of an issue. Additionally their attack ratings are so high -2 means nothing to them.

A wizard's best spells, on the other hand, are ranged touch attacks. -2 attack is a hit, but not too bad. The 50% concealment however is crippling. Unlike a fighter a wizard only has 3 or 4 disintegrates at the most.

This would ultimately benefit fighters much more than it would wizards. Clerics walk around immune to blindness so the feat would add nothing to them.

Dragor: There are only 2 or 3 spells I can think of off the top of my head that blind creatures. They would need to be changed to check for the feat, and if it detects it the character would not have the blindness effect applied to them but rather a linked -2 ATK penalty, -2 AC, 50% miss chance. The remove blindness spell could then be altered to remove the miss chance. With all three effects being linked the penalties would also disappear.

[GodBeastX]

Blind-Fight [General]
Benefit
In melee, every time you miss because of concealment, you can reroll your miss chance percentile roll one time to see if you actually hit.

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.

This does not make you immune to blindness. It just makes you slight more likely to hit things you can't see well cuz of concealment.

In 1.2x patch blindness got bugged where you can't attack hostile enemies while blind. I told this to obsidian, but they never put out another patch so, my thinking is just remove anyone's ability to inflict blindness and be done with it.

[The Butcher]

it would be more thoroughly solved by a custom scripted blindness effect however

This really seems like the best method to bring Sundren closer to PnP, but it is also the most demanding of DEV attention. Nevertheless, any help/fix towards giving a preemptive defense towards Blindness and its bugged affect is a welcome one.

[Lothoir]

The Blindness spell is a 2nd level spell with a fort save and Power Word Blind only works when the target is low on hit points, besides taking up a valuable high level slot. Neither of these are particularly bothersome for a pure melee build.

Replace the blindness effect in Word of Faith to a deafness effect. 20% spell failure that means absolutely nothing to a fighter unless someone's trying to give him orders. It also makes sense that a holy word would sear the ears rather than eyes.

[Dragor]

Dragor: There are only 2 or 3 spells I can think of off the top of my head that blind creatures. They would need to be changed to check for the feat, and if it detects it the character would not have the blindness effect applied to them but rather a linked -2 ATK penalty, -2 AC, 50% miss chance. The remove blindness spell could then be altered to remove the miss chance. With all three effects being linked the penalties would also disappear.

a good workaround but implausable from the standpoint of the person who has to script it, especially if it is only for dealing with three spells


I'm actually leaning in favor of GBX's suggestion of removing the blindness effect although it still causes work dealing with the spells that cause blindness (for FS's and whatnot who cannot exactly shrug off losing a spell)

As I can say that when Blinding Spittle was removed it didnt really effect a Druid/FS's effectiveness all that much so probably the laziest...*ahem* easiest solution

[Lothoir]

When Blinding Spittle was removed Spirit Shamans were allowed relevels to choose new spells. I would imagine Favored Souls would be allowed the same courtesy. If Blindness is removed there would be no problem from that standpoint.