How to mirror walk

[Kevin_Smith]

Hi folks. I quite often use mirror walking on my character, and I noticed that it fails approximately 5 out of 6 times. I noticed, as well, that wizards in the party never seem to fail their teleport. I'd like to learn how does mirror walking work and why is this happening ...

[DaloLorn]

Don't bother.

In addition to all the usual teleport checks (on which you take a hefty penalty, by the way, unless you have at least as much Search as you do Concentration), Mirror/Shadow Walk requires you to make a second roll to avoid automatically botching the spell, with a flat 33% chance of autofailing after you pass the teleport check. Between the greatly increased failure rate, and the higher-level spell slots required for arcanists to cast them, the spells are widely regarded as useless, with only three functions that I'm aware of:

• A teleportation option for priests, if they're foolish enough not to take a domain which has Teleport as a domain spell. (Or if they play favored souls instead of clerics.)
• A free teleport for Shadow Adepts. (Shadow Walk doesn't consume any gold if you're a Shadow Adept.)
• A teleportation option for those poor foolish wizards who choose Conjuration as their prohibited school.

[Kevin_Smith]

Hmm, a very interesting insight. The spell looked more appealing from the description of it, I had no idea about these hidden nuances. I will keep using it for rp and hoping for re work

[JustAnotherGuy]

Hmm, a very interesting insight. The spell looked more appealing from the description of it, I had no idea about these hidden nuances. I will keep using it for rp and hoping for re work

RP-wise, it's the most dangerous of all the teleportation methods. What happens, is that as soon as you step into the mirror dimension to travel, you have a doppleganger of yourself trying to kill you and take your place in the prime material. From a purely IC perspective, this is why some (perhaps many?) do not use it.

OOCly, this is why it's the hardest to pull off.

[Louvaine]

You are not doing anything wrong. Mirror Walk and Shadow Walk are the worst. Shadow Adepts get Shadow Walk for free (no gold cost, no spell slot cost) and yet many of them choose to use Teleport instead.

[ValerieJean]

Don't bother.

In addition to all the usual teleport checks (on which you take a hefty penalty, by the way, unless you have at least as much Search as you do Concentration), Mirror/Shadow Walk requires you to make a second roll to avoid automatically botching the spell, with a flat 33% chance of autofailing after you pass the teleport check. Between the greatly increased failure rate, and the higher-level spell slots required for arcanists to cast them, the spells are widely regarded as useless, with only three functions that I'm aware of:

• A teleportation option for priests, if they're foolish enough not to take a domain which has Teleport as a domain spell. (Or if they play favored souls instead of clerics.)
• A free teleport for Shadow Adepts. (Shadow Walk doesn't consume any gold if you're a Shadow Adept.)
• A teleportation option for those poor foolish wizards who choose Conjuration as their prohibited school.

Most of these comments are rather unneeded. The player is not foolish by any measure for what they are doing or choosing to do or take. Mirror Walk is not useless, it offers clerics a means of teleport without Travel Domain [even though rply severely dangerous route to go but alas]. Yes they could take UMD and use scrolls but that is beside the point here. The player asked for help and understanding on Mirror Walk not whether their choices to you are foolish or not. JustAnotherGuy went about this quite better.

Shadow Walk with its also higher rate of failure is the same gist, you are attempting to walk through the Shadow Plane, yes the percentile may be rather high but both the Mirror and Shadow Plane are very dangerous places to just waltz through without issue. But if you are a Shadow Adept there is the nice bonus of - it does not cost anything. Yeah gold may be easy to obtain for some but if you TP every chance you get that does add up if you have nothing to offset it.

Again it is not "foolish" for people to choose something that they want to choose.

This is highly inappropriate Dalolorn and I am quite disappointed, whether you care or not does not matter, but you represent the Dev Team as Lead Programmer. Do better in your responses to players who are asking for help and understanding.

Hmm, a very interesting insight. The spell looked more appealing from the description of it, I had no idea about these hidden nuances. I will keep using it for rp and hoping for re work

Unfortunately the spells do not give the exact numbers behind "Dangerous", but as JustAnotherGuy said and again myself, it is the RP of the spell and what you are doing that makes the failure more prominent. Having the Search skill offers better navigation through these planes. Concentration as the wiki states can be used instead but at a minus four to the roll. 33% chance to fail is high, I have not tested it personally myself but I wonder if having more Search would lessen the failures at all or if the 33% chance is just a flat unchangeable number.

I may ask this looked into if it has not been already and I appreciate if any have knowledge of that to chime in here.


I hope this all helps a bit better Kevin_Smith and that you are not completely deterred from the use if it falls inline with your character's RP.

[DaloLorn]

Concentration as the wiki states can be used instead but at a minus four to the roll.

It's somewhat worse than that. If your Search skill (plus your Shadow Adept level!) is 5 or more ranks under than your Concentration skill, you receive a flat -4 to the teleport check. Simply using Concentration-4 would only result in a -1, maybe a -2 penalty to the teleport check, certainly not a -4.

33% chance to fail is high, I have not tested it personally myself but I wonder if having more Search would lessen the failures at all or if the 33% chance is just a flat unchangeable number.

I may ask this looked into if it has not been already and I appreciate if any have knowledge of that to chime in here.

I double-checked the script (for the umpteenth time, it bears mentioning) before specifying it was 33% in my prior post. There is no way whatsoever to reduce this, and it bears repeating that this is 33% on top of whatever chance you have of failing the basic teleport check. (Which is at least 5%, because only Greater Teleport is immune to autofailing by rolling a nat 1 on the teleport check's d20. It may be higher if you don't have a great caster level and high Spellcraft+Search skills.)

In the best-case scenario, 95% of Mirror Walks will pass the teleportation check and go on to the subsequent d100. 62.7% will subsequently roll 66 or lower (there may be an off-by-one error somewhere in my math, but it's a pretty minor change) and be allowed to complete the teleport. (Though this is still no guarantee they won't be injured along the way, only that they'll get there if they survive!) This means that, on average, nearly 4 out of every 10 Mirror Walks attempted by the absolute best Mirror Walkers on the server will fail. If your CL, Search, and Spellcraft are too low to get a decent modifier on your teleport check, this already problematic result will degrade further, and if your Concentration greatly exceeds your Search, you may be incapable of Mirror Walking if your life depended on it.

[ValerieJean]

Concentration as the wiki states can be used instead but at a minus four to the roll.

It's somewhat worse than that. If your Search skill (plus your Shadow Adept level!) is 5 or more ranks under than your Concentration skill, you receive a flat -4 to the teleport check. Simply using Concentration-4 would only result in a -1, maybe a -2 penalty to the teleport check, certainly not a -4.

33% chance to fail is high, I have not tested it personally myself but I wonder if having more Search would lessen the failures at all or if the 33% chance is just a flat unchangeable number.

I may ask this looked into if it has not been already and I appreciate if any have knowledge of that to chime in here.

I double-checked the script (for the umpteenth time, it bears mentioning) before specifying it was 33% in my prior post. There is no way whatsoever to reduce this, and it bears repeating that this is 33% on top of whatever chance you have of failing the basic teleport check. (Which is at least 5%, because only Greater Teleport is immune to autofailing by rolling a nat 1 on the teleport check's d20. It may be higher if you don't have a great caster level and high Spellcraft+Search skills.)

In the best-case scenario, 95% of Mirror Walks will pass the teleportation check and go on to the subsequent d100. 62.7% will subsequently roll 66 or lower (there may be an off-by-one error somewhere in my math, but it's a pretty minor change) and be allowed to complete the teleport. (Though this is still no guarantee they won't be injured along the way, only that they'll get there if they survive!) This means that, on average, nearly 4 out of every 10 Mirror Walks attempted by the absolute best Mirror Walkers on the server will fail. If your CL, Search, and Spellcraft are too low to get a decent modifier on your teleport check, this already problematic result will degrade further, and if your Concentration greatly exceeds your Search, you may be incapable of Mirror Walking if your life depended on it.

Perhaps an update to the Wiki at least for Mirror Walk is needed then. As it only states you get -4 to Concentration Roll/check if your Search skill is lower, as well if Spellcraft is also involved.


Perhaps then if able, allow the Spellcraft + Search/Concentration Roll/Check to adjust this percentile? [Though I ask why can it not be adjusted, I do not recall these spells in Vanilla NWN2 myself which would lead it to being added by BGTSCC and thus should be adjustable?] The higher the Search the better ability to Navigate or even toss in Lore of the Planes to help with that as well. Instead of just a flat end all be all. I understand the spells are dangerous to those who do not navigate which makes sense but to those who may and have the skills for it perhaps that can provide a bit ease upon the spells use/not use.

[DaloLorn]

Generally, it's my impression that teleportation is not viewed too favorably by veteran staff members, so proposing a change that makes the system in any way less painful than it is always needs to be done with the awareness that it'll provoke discussion of at least three distinct comprehensive teleportation overhauls (which has usually been confined to the public Discord), each of which would broadly be viewed as a downgrade by most of the people using the spells. Eventually, it feels inevitable that one of those overhauls will get enough traction to make it to implementation, so I've developed a reluctance to even discuss smaller improvements like what you're suggesting.

Don't get me wrong, I hate what the Mirror/Shadow Walk spells are right now, and one idea I was particularly fond of was instancing a Mirror/Shadow Plane adventure for the party being teleported, making success more likely at the cost of making it more time-consuming and more dangerous. But these are niche spells, and if improving them means bundling those improvements together with a heavy-handed nerf to the rest of the teleportation family, then I'm of the opinion that we're better off leaving well enough alone.

[Louvaine]

I think that talking about what teleportation should be is a great idea.

Is this the right place for such talk?