Attacking into a Solid/Fog

[Brock Samson]

My friends and I were discussing this last Saturday. The spell Solid Fog states that you can't see in at all more than 5 ft, so if someone's inside they've got full concealment if you rely on sight. It says that normal ranged attacks simply fail, but "magic rays and the like" can go through. However, most of those still require a ranged touch attack right?

What methods can you use to still detect your foe? I gave the example of a 7th level wizard killing a 20th level monk with his magic missles/orbs of lesser x by trapping him in a solid fog or two and just blasting away with impunity, regardless of the small amount done or not.

Blindsight of course should work. Blindsense, how would that work? How about Scent? Tremorsense?

And how the heck does a relatively low-level wizard go about getting Tremorsense?

[Brock Samson]

Or getting some of these other forms of sense too, not just tremorsense.

[ericgrau]

You have a 50% miss chance assuming you know what square he is in. Blindsense or tremorsense or a good listen check (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#invisibility) tell you his square. You need blindsight to negate the 50% miss chance.

Normally your best bet as a caster is an area spell like fireball.

Scent tells you your foe exists somewhere within 30', or a rough direction with a move action. It's pretty useless at range for this. You need to be in melee to find a square with scent, and even then you'd still have the 50% miss chance (or 20% in the case of solid fog for being so close, see fog cloud).

[dextercorvia]

Normal ranged attacks fail because the fog slows them down, too. Spells aren't slowed down that way.

Tremorsense is a 3rd level Wizard spell in the SpC. It would help you with rays, but you have to be able to see your target to use Magic Missile and the like.

[Brock Samson]

Would Blindsight allow you to use Magic Missle?

[Darrin]

And how the heck does a relatively low-level wizard go about getting Tremorsense?

Tremorsense (Spell Compendium, Rgr 2, Sor/Wiz 3). Kind of a waste for a 3rd level spell, though.

A potion of embrace the wild (Spell Compendium, Dru 2, Rgr 1) helps you locate the square. Only 100 GP if made by a Ranger.

Buy a few pouches of Torch Bug Paste (25 GP, Complete Scoundrel). Throw these as a splash weapon (ranged touch attack), and anything within 5' is painted with a non-magical faerie fire effect which negates concealment (but not magical darkness). However, this doesn't negate the fog blocking your LOS, so unless the creature was on the edge of the fog, you still couldn't use vision to target.

Stormfire Ring (4000 GP, MIC) also offers faerie fire 5/day, but even better, it does 1d6 electricity damage each round (no attack roll, no save), up to 25d6 damage per day.

Blindfold of True Darkness (9000 GP, MIC) offers blindsight 30' at a pretty cheap price.

There's also the Mindsight feat from Lords of Madness. It's similar to blindsense, so you can pinpoint creatures, but they still get a miss chance. You need some form of telepathy, and the usual method to pick that up is a 1-level dip into Mindbender, or Hidden Talent/Psicrystal Affinity via EPH.

You can also take Devil's Favor and Devil's Sight feats (Fiendish Codex II), which gives you darkvision, and for a limited number of times per day you can gain blindsight 30' for 5 rounds.

Or you can use Sculpt Spell (four 10' cubes version) or something like gust of wind/wind wall to carve a path through the fog.

[ericgrau]

Would Blindsight allow you to use Magic Missle?
Yeah so blindfold of true darkness is the simplest way to target in fogs. Blindsense would not let you target it and rays would have a 50% miss chance, so you need blindsight.

[deuxhero]

A potion of embrace the wild (Spell Compendium, Dru 2, Rgr 1) helps you locate the square. Only 100 GP if made by a Ranger.


Ranger caster level is a minimum of 2.

Now Archivists, Chameleons and Artifcers can make it at minimum cost by pulling from the Ranger list.

[Anxe]

Because every Ranger takes Brew Potion all the time.

Also, your DM may interpret that Scent does not work. Since people have a hard time moving through it I feel that the particles necessary for smell wouldn't be moving at all. This is just an interpretation though and by RAW scent would still work.

Tremorsense sounds like the way to go on this. Magic Missile would still hit all the time (I think).

[deuxhero]

A caster doesn't need the spell personally. A ranger friend to a guy with brew potion works as well.

[ericgrau]

Like blindsense, tremorsense still only gives the square and still has a 50% miss chance. You wouldn't be able to target a magic missile with it. You could do rays with a 50% miss chance or simply drop an area spell.

The default for potion pricing is that a more major caster made it.

[Andion Isurand]

Moment of Insight, is a 2nd level PsyWar (and Lurk) power that lets you negate most of concealment within 30 ft, from Complete Psionic 93.