Hitting with Ebon Eyes

[funmasta]

Ebon Eyes remove the miss chance of a hit in Darkness.
Now my question: if u can scent (or blindsense or listen) somebody and pinpoint him - do u have a miss chance or does he hit u normally cause of ebon eyes? - or does he have to see u to benefit from ebon eyes?

 

[TYPO5478]

I'm not familiar with the spell (no books with me right now), but my guess is that you have to have eyes to benefit from ebon eyes.

On the other hand, if you have Blindsight or Scent, you don't need eyes to pinpoint the location of your target.

I guess I don't understand the question.

 

[Mistwell]

Ebon Eyes
The subject of this spell gains the ability to see normally in natural and magical darkness, although it does not otherwise improve the subject's ability to see in natural dark or shadowy conditions. The subject ignores the miss chance due to lack of illumination other than total darkness.

 

[Alpha Polaris]

Ebon Eyes
The subject of this spell gains the ability to see normally in natural and magical darkness, although it does not otherwise improve the subject's ability to see in natural dark or shadowy conditions. The subject ignores the miss chance due to lack of illumination other than total darkness.

Emphasis mine. You ignore the miss chance caused by lack of illumination, not all possible miss chance. So if you have scent and ebon eyes, and you face an opponent in a zone of darkness -- magical or otherwise -- you can ignore the miss chance, but this has nothing to do with scent: you can just see the opponent thanks to ebon eyes. On the other hand, if your opponent is invisible, scent allows you to locate her, but ebon eyes does not help you hit her, because the miss chance is due to invisibility, not lack of illumination.

 

[Hypersmurf]

The subject of this spell gains the ability to see normally in natural darkness, although it does not otherwise improve the subject's ability to see in natural dark conditions. The subject ignores the miss chance due to lack of illumination other than total darkness.

This description is very confusing to me.

You can see normally in natural darkness... but that's the only improvement to your ability to see in natural darkness that you get! (Er... what other improvement to my ability to see in natural darkness do I need?)

And if it's totally dark, you don't get to ignore the miss chance. (You can see in the dark... but if it's really dark, even though you can see, there's still a 50% miss chance.)

-Hyp.

 

[TYPO5478]

Nobody said it was a good spell, Hyp.

 

[Deset Gled]

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[Hypersmurf]

Nobody said it was a good spell, Hyp.

I'm just confused as to what it's actually supposed to do.

I get the feeling that there's at least one error in there. But I don't know if it's only supposed to allow you to see in magical darkness, not natural; or if it's supposed to remove the miss chance in total darkness as well; or something else.

-Hyp.

 

[AuraSeer]

You can see normally in natural darkness... but that's the only improvement to your ability to see in natural darkness that you get! (Er... what other improvement to my ability to see in natural darkness do I need?

That bit makes sense to me. It's clarifying that you can see as well in darkness as you can in the light, but no better. That is, the spell doesn't let you automatically succeed on Spot checks, or even give a bonus to them; all it does is remove the darkness penalties.

I do agree that the "other than total darkness" part is messed up, because it contradicts the rest of the spell. Either that clause should go, or the spell should be reworded to clarify that it doesn't work at all in "total darkness."