Ghostly Presence - new spell, filling in stealth gap

[Kelleris]

I was going through my (epic level, designed to be stealthy) bard/assassin's abilities, and I noticed a gaping hole in the defenses available to me. I can magically shield myself from normal sight, from darkvision, from hearing, from alignment detection, from scrying, from magical aura detection, and from tracking, but not from blindsight and its relations. To make matters worse, there aren't any effective mundane countermeasures either. Imagine my annoyance at finding out that a 3rd-level spell or power can foil something I've piled my resources into being able to do. I don't even get to roll! :weep: Hence:

Ghostly Presence
Illusion (Glamer)
Level: Assassin 3, Bard 3, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Personal or touch
Target: You or a creature or object weighing no more than 100 lb./level
Duration: 1 min./level (D)
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless) or Will negates (harmless, object)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless) or Yes (harmless, object)

Casting this spell garbles the low-level sense data that allow a creature to use blindsight, blindsense, or tremorsense to discern your location. You read as nothing in particular to those abilities, effectively becoming invisible, but only insofar as blindsight, blindsense, and tremorsense are concerned.

The creature or object touched becomes difficult to perceive via the blindsight, blindsense, and tremorsense abilities. In detecting someone protected by ghostly presence, these abilities are no better than normal sight; if a creature relies on one of these abilities as its sole means of perceiving the world, it may spot the cloaked creature as though it instead had normal vision out to the listed blindsight range. If the recipient is a creature carrying gear, that vanishes, too, as far as blindsight, blindsense, and tremorsense are concerned. If you cast the spell on someone else, neither you nor your allies can detect the subject via blindsight, blindsense, or tremorsense.

Items dropped or put down by an invisible creature become visible to blindsight, blindsense, or tremorsense; items picked up disappear if tucked into the clothing or pouches worn by the creature. Any part of an item that the subject carries but that extends more than 10 feet from it becomes visible to blindsight, blindsense, and tremorsense.

Of course, the subject is not magically made invisible, and any sense ability other than those listed works normally against them. The spell ends if the subject attacks any creature. For purposes of this spell, an attack includes any action that would end the spell invisibility.

Ghostly presence can be made permanent (on objects only) with a permanency spell.

Arcane Material Component: A bit of stretched hide encased in a piece of amber.

Ghostly presence is patterned after the invisibility - see invisibility relationship. Blindsight is a 3rd-level spell, and so this counter to it is as well. So what do you think?

I'm not actually sure it should be 3rd level, though. Maybe 2nd would be better. Blindsight is better than, but much rarer than, normal vision. It would kinda make sense, then for the counter to it to be lower-level than the counter to vision, since it's a very niche-y effect (much more so than gaining blindsight). It might not be worth taking at 3rd level.

 

[Ferrix]

Just a note, the new complete arcane has a new spell called Superior Invisibility which doesn't even make someone invisible to blindsight and it's a 9th level wizard spell.

Other comments however:

See to me a spell that didn't cover sound, smell, etc. wouldn't have a chance of covering detection by blindsense/sight. It's just nonsensical to me.

Particularly because blindsense/sight relies a great deal on many of those sensations: tactile sensitivity (vibrations in the air and through the ground), touchsight for example emits a psychokinetic field which literally touches everything within line of effect to the person using it. So you'd have to negate tactile senses too (which to me means incorporeality or etherealness). Sonar types, again meaning you'd probably have to be incorporeal or ethereal to avoid that one effectively. Smell often plays a large part too, as well as whisker type senses which are more of a 6th sense type (studies of cats and other whiskered animals shows that the whiskers are actually part of a different sensory type than the standard five).

Don't really know about this still.

 

[Kelleris]

You might as well ask why you can still see normally under the effects of invisibility, since the light rays are passing through you.

The answer is that they aren't; it's an illusion. It's not changing your substance somehow any more than invisibility makes you actually transparent. It's just magically blocking that one sense.

And I find it highly likely that this spell you cite does a whole lot more than this one does. Another 9th-level wiz/sor spell from an issue of Dragon is called stalking spell. Assuming these are about the same level, that spell makes you undetectable by any form of senses, allows you to take hostile actions while under its effect, and lasts for a whopping hour/level. Mitigating that effect all the way down to this is, I would argue, an eminently reasonable 3rd level spell effect.

 

[Ferret]

What do you mean 'these abilities are no better than normal sight', they aren't any better anyway, except for lettting you see in the dark/no eyes etc. Can you clarify... Are they blind to you when you use this spell, because they couldn't see you with normal sight? Or do they just gain no benefits over vision?

Sorry if it sounds like I'm trying to open the door the wrong way here, but I'm a bit confused.

 

[Kelleris]

Sorry. I should probably be more clear. This spell is designed to make you one of the exceptions to the "usually does not have to make Listen or Spot checks" clause of blindsight/blindsense/tremorsense. They just can't pinpoint you automatically, but they still get to attempt the approapriate check.

Flavor-wise, the spell mutes the things that all the named abilities pick up on. It's not enough to do anything on its own (you look a little blurry, your voice sounds a littl ehollow, etc.), but if you're already hiding well enough to fool sight and sound and whatnot in some other way, ghostly presence makes up the difference.

They just gain no benefits over normal vision while the spell lasts.

 

[Ferrix]

And I find it highly likely that this spell you cite does a whole lot more than this one does. Another 9th-level wiz/sor spell from an issue of Dragon is called stalking spell. Assuming these are about the same level, that spell makes you undetectable by any form of senses, allows you to take hostile actions while under its effect, and lasts for a whopping hour/level. Mitigating that effect all the way down to this is, I would argue, an eminently reasonable 3rd level spell effect.

Taken from this page: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20041105a&page=3

9th-Level Sorcerer/Wizard Spells
ABJUR
Absorption: You absorb targeted spell energy to power spells of your own.
Reaving Dispel: On a targeted dispel, steal spell power and effects for yourself.
CONJ
Sphere of Ultimate Destruction: Featureless black sphere moves 30 ft./round, disintegrates on ranged touch attack.
Summon Elemental Monolith[M]: Calls powerful elemental creature to fight for you.
ENCH
Programmed Amnesia[M]: Destroy, alter, or replace memories in target creature.
ILLUS
Superior Invisibility: Subject is invisible to sight, hearing, and scent for 1 min./level, and can attack.
TRANS
Transmute Rock to Lava: Transforms one 10-ft. cube with subsequent fire damage and effects.

Does not appear that it does much more than that.

 

[Ferrix]

Also pass without trace does not make you unsmellable. Only that you do not leave a scent when you travel making it impossible to track you by scent. Just like you don't leave footprints or broken twigs in your path. Doesn't mean that you don't take steps or brush aside twigs, etc.

 

[Ferrix]

You might as well ask why you can still see normally under the effects of invisibility, since the light rays are passing through you.

The answer is that they aren't; it's an illusion. It's not changing your substance somehow any more than invisibility makes you actually transparent. It's just magically blocking that one sense.

Actually it isn't blocking a sense, it's just creating an illusory ward around you so that it looks like you aren't there. It's not actually effecting a creatures senses directly, if it did, it'd be a targetted effect closer to the cloud mind power.

 

[Kelleris]

You're outdoing yourself Ferrix.

Actually, I'd say that the intent of that spell would be to stop blindsight, since it's almost always an especially precise form of one of the senses mentioned.

Still strikes me as kinda weak for a 9th-level spell, but it's a bad idea to judge from the little indexing blurb.

 

[Ferrix]

You're outdoing yourself Ferrix.

Actually, I'd say that the intent of that spell would be to stop blindsight, since it's almost always an especially precise form of one of the senses mentioned.

Still strikes me as kinda weak for a 9th-level spell, but it's a bad idea to judge from the little indexing blurb.

Heheh... I just think that with the ability to get your hide check up to around +120 or so using improvisation gives you more than enough ability to get around blindsense/sight even with the penalties listed by Isida. Particularly if you get creative using your environment or by asking for help from your fellow adventurers which just goes to show that sometimes you can't do everything on your own. I atleast, and I imagine Pilmer can make use of Etherealness.

Sometimes blindsight, like in the case of the psionic touchsight power is actually not related very specifically to the 5 basic senses. Other creatures have a collaboration of the 5 senses to get blindsight. Basically, I think going with a spell which is targeted would be the only way I could see negating something so specific to a creature.