There is a lot of talk whether or not using the Invisibility to prevent mobs from attacking extractors in one of the new challenge quests is a cheat. Not going to use the other word, just because.

I don’t feel like it is myself. I was talking with old Tobril and Fopo about it last night while working on more IQ quests.

And Fo was very much yep thats a cheat; until I said one thing. In PnP DnD you can invis objects. That was all it took for him to turn around.

And then the topic shifted to how would we or our Dms handle such an issue. Or how could the DM use there tools to get around the players casting invis on the mining machines.

A key to understanding what options a mob would have at its disposable is to understand what the mob knows. So lets get a short list of what it might know.

!, where the extractor is, or normally sits. I mean these things sit on their island right?
2, for some reason they really don’t like the extractors running. To the point where when one is active your tribe/what ever sends out party after party to see why it is running and to shut the damn things off.
3, I would bet that being it is something they dislike so much they would have tried to remove them, but couldn’t so they must be heavy.

Okay that is a good list. Following that logic I try to put myself in to that mind set. I have just been told that the one of the extractors is running and to go handle it. I get to where the extractor is and it is gone. But it still is doing the thing that pisses me off. Maybe I can hear or smell it.

I forget all the different kinds of mobs that spawn, I only ran it like 2-3 times. But we have to allow that according to PnP some of the mobs don’t rely on sight as strongly as we do. Gnolls for example use their noses a lot. Earth Ellies or Mud men (I remember them attacking me once) might have tremor sense.

So an invised extractor might make them start to hunt around for it just as quickly as not.

In come quests the mob casters pass out buffs like Displacement and Deathward. Why couldn’t they pass out see invis or True seeing? The way those mob casters dispel in every quest now, like it is going out of style, tell me they wouldn’t dispel the hell out of that extractor.

So is invising a cheat? I don’t think so. Until mobs have the smarts to respond better to some of the player tactics I might put it in the cheesy pile.

❤