blindfight or echolocation?

[Icedfate]

okay, now i always took blindfight with every melee , not even to avoid concealment penalty, but more for the immunity to gaze attacks. which i guess was a holdover from what i did in kingmaker because the wild hunt enemies have gaze attacks.

but i was just looking at a build guide and they say "if you have access to echolocation, you don't need blindfight"

is that how that works? does it give immunity to gaze?

i noticed that when i cast echolocation with nenio, a tutorial popup comes up telling me she is now blind.
does echolocation make you blind and then give you blindfight? does it make you immune to gaze? does it let you ignore concealment?

all the description says it it gives "blindsense" in 50' radius, but the game doesn't explain what blindsense is.

[Steffan]

Echolocation is better. Echo ignores all ilusion and blindness effects. Unlike true seeing, it is not countered by mindblank. No miss chances due to mirror image, displacement, invisibility or blindness. It also gives immunity vs gaze attacks (same as Kingmaker)

Problem is you need either a scroll and high use magic device or to play a class that can cast it.

The message is incorrect. Spell works fine. Whether it makes you 'blind' does not matter

[Icedfate]

i wasn't asking about blindness as a negative, given that blindsense implies that you would have none of the negatives of blindness, but then blindness would mean that you are immune to gaze attacks, wouldn't it?

my main question here is if echolocation gives you gaze immunity.

there are ways to get encholocation onto the melees, namely, a class that can cast it on others, such as alchemist or BFT. i dunno if BFT gets access to that spell though.
it's possible that some martials might get it too.
i multied lann into divine hunter and he got it, but meh, he's an archer so it doesn't matter

[Soul]

im not 100% sure but I think it should.... echolocation provides blindsight with a range of 40 feet...

[hilburnashua]

I would say no since there is nothing in the text of echolocation about it (too bad there isn't a description of blindsight in the Encyclopedia) and in tabletop blindsight doesn't give immunity to gaze attacks. But I am not sure there are any gaze attacks in WotR. Even the way the Retrievers's eye attack is written doesn't fit with the normal rules for gaze attacks.

Comes down to which can you afford the best, blindfighting feat or spending points on UMD and trying getting enough scrolls of echolocation to keep it running on most of the dungeons. Could have Nenio make them so at least they could last even longer (especially if you give her the Extend metamagic).

[forkofspite]

Originally posted by hilburnashua:

Even the way the Retrievers's eye attack is written doesn't fit with the normal rules for gaze attacks.

Those are rays, so it would make sense that they do not use gaze attack rules.

Regarding echolocation:
* Yes, arcanists (including BFT) have access.
* Unknown if it provides immunity to gaze attacks - difficult to find in game to test.
* The pop up about being blind is some sort of glitch/bug.

* Although it's supposed to ignore various miss chances (including mirror image), I've started seeing some concealment misses by characters that I thought had echolocation - most recently against the Vampire Pack Master group in Alushinyrra (Upper City). It's possible that the targets were out of echolocation range, but it was certainly surprising and possibly impossible because I think echolocation and composite longbows both have a 50' range (and shortbows have less range than echolocation). I'll try to pay more attention to see if it comes up again and figure out why.

[Icedfate]

the blind fighting feat specifically says it gives immunity to gaze attacks.

nabasus have a gaze. i don't know what else has gaze.
i always took blindfighting in kingmaker because the wild hunt guys have a nasty gaze attack.

but then a couple of guides i read said "you don't need blind fighting if you have echolocation " but didn't go into any more detail than that.

i assume they say that because echolocation allows you to ignore concealment like blindfighting.
no mention was made regarding gaze attacks.
i guess they don't even think about that if nothing in this does gaze?
it seems odd that nothing would have a gaze except for a low level enemy that ceases to be a threat after act 2.



as for concealment, sometimes not being able to be bypassed.
i learned from elsewhere that if an enemy has mind blank , then true sight no longer allows you to ignore concealment.

also, some enemies are incorporeal and the game says "missed due concealment : incorporeal" which nk you need ghost touch to get past that

[Immortal Reaver]

Yes Echolocation gives immunity to gaze. It did in Kingmaker too.
And there are certain concealments it will do nothing about.
I think concealment of Blink spell is unafected.
Also Demon Lord Aspect of Demon MP (and 2 bosses have that aspect too) has 50% that is not countered by anything. Only thing you can do is to have Blindfight.