Quote Originally Posted by Doctor Despair View Post
Darkvision is a buff to the viewer that allows you to use spot checks to gain information; it does not directly reveal information. Locate City, like Scry, does directly reveal information. The magical collection of this information is an effect. The targets are affected in that information about them has been collected. Mind Blank, in describing the nature of its protection, offers some insight into the difference between scrying for a specific target (e.g., an object, a community, a creature, etc) or just scrying an area; direct collection of information is an effect that is protected against by the spell, and scry is clarified as a targeted spell, although it does not have a target line.
There are protections against Darkvision, too, though. Either you're wrong about Darkvision -- which isn't even limited to being a spell -- or you're wrong about "perceived" being the same as "affected".

Spoiler: It's the latter. You're trying to make a distinction where there is no such distinction.

The only effect of most information-gathering spells is in the head of the caster.

None of the other creatures in the area of most information-gathering spells are affected by having their information perceived by the caster. Only the caster (or other spell beneficiary) is affected by the information-gathering.

You want to take 2 damage and a negative level for being the only "target" which was "affected"? That might be supported. But it's not reasonable to pretend that the one person actually affected by the information-gatering is immune, while everyone who isn't affected somehow is.


Quote Originally Posted by Doctor Despair View Post
The rules for invisibility make clear that there is a distinction between being targeted by a spell, and being subject to or present within a spell, and that they may not all be true at once. It does not clarify that a spell with an area of effect cannot have that foe as a target, however, or in other words, that more than one cannot be true at once.

Some spells will have an area it affects, but no targets; for example, Flash Frost, added to a spell with no targets, makes the ground icy in the area of its affected spell. This is a spell that would have an area and include enemies in the effect, but would not have targets.

Some spells will have an area it affects, and targets, but will not include every foe within that effect; for example, a spell with a limited number of targets selected from anywhere in an area. This spell would have an area, targets, and effects, but would not include foes in the effect.

Locate City, directly gathering information about communities in the area, would both have an area (10 miles/level) that includes foes (if you were hostile to a creature within the range, of course), would include foes within the spell's effect (again, providing you were hostile to a creature in the community, or perhaps the community at large), and target the communities in range (having targets).

Scrying has no listed target, and never uses the word target in the spell, but has a subject it is meant to affect -- the creature you are scrying. It is clarified in Mind Blank as a targeted effect.

Locate City also has a subject it is meant to affect -- communities, or at least the nearest community within the area the spell is magically checking. The spell has an area it affects, an area, valid targets within the area, it has the cold descriptor... It has everything it needs to be a valid target for the feat.

Edit:

Another workable spell, if someone prefers to avoid Locate City, which seems to be contentious to some, would be Detect Thoughts (2) or Detect Incarnum/Evil/etc(1). Throw an Invisibility on a character, which won't break so long as the invisible character doesn't view any of the affected creatures as foes, and have them run through a dense city, maintaining concentration as a free action, leaving a trail of ice and dead 1HD creatures in their wake.
The only affect of the information-gathering spell Locate City is information being gathered in the caster's head. The caster is the only creature affected by the spell. All other creatures in the spell's area are not targets. (The caster probably isn't a target either, but that's moot.)

If the arguments above remove Locate City from consideration -- and they should -- the same arguments probably work on all of those other spells, too.

You might remember me bringing them up as evidence that spells can have areas which aren't affected.