Invisibility and prowling

It's a known fact that invisibility in Arcanum is more bugged then not - guards know you're trying to lockpick stuff around them, getting pissed and all, but even after they go down to hatred, they don't attack becouse they can't see you. You freak people out when you try to talk to them while being invisible, but when it comes down to it, guards, the Schuylers and other scripted conversations can take plece when the PC is invisible - with the other side remaining unable to attack until you throw the first punch. Then there's combat, sure, it's reasonable to make the PC visable during the attacks, but it should be possible to get away with throwing rocks at street lamps at night while being invisible - yet the guards have some invisibility detectors that make them go after you.

But there's a nice spurprise here that I've recently noticed - while invisible, prowling works a bit differently - kinda as if dettection was reduced to hearing. Now that's pretty logical in itself, but not in the context of such a bugged feature. Concretely, my char - half-ogre with no points in prowling - was not detected by an NPC while standing in front of him, about 4 tiles away - the NPC was 'perilous'. However, after circling the poor bugger and sneaking from behind, the NPC turned around, becoming aware of my presence. I've tried that with some prowling skill and oiled thieves leather and... It actually worked. That is, NPCs were equally aware of me preseance no matter if I stood in front or behind them. Unfortunately, that's about it, it took the same amount of prowling skill to be undetected behind the NPC while prowling normally as it did while sneaking under invisibility - behind or in front.

This makes me wonder, how stealthy is invisibility ? Or reather, how much of that ingame behaviour was intended and should be somehow explained and how much is just bugged and should be tolerated or exploited ? I'm wondering about that becouse I'm currently playing a invisible-ghost kind of character - trying to remain as undetected as possible, leaving no witnesses to tell they saw me (gotta get that expert training somewhere) and getting leads to the main quest by stealing clues and interrogating the dead. But now, halfway through the game I'm wondering how undetected the char really was, with this half-assed invisibility.


edit: Yeah, that was supposed to be 'sneaking under invisibility'...

 

Well, invisibility would sure be useful for a prowling master. Since it compleately ignores the line-of-sight modifiers, one would be able to remain undetected at all times. However with anything less then 5 pts in prowl, you'd eventualy walk up to someone with a high perception and have your cover blown... To an extent anyways.

Another advantage is the to-hit bonus you get when the enemy is compleately unaware of your preseance - it might work better with bows and throwing weapons, since it takes a lot of prowling skill to have the 'safe' status when right next to someone... If that's possible at all.

After a little combat testing, invisibility proved rather useless becouse it didn't make opponents lose track of the character even though they were 'perilous' when looking straight at him.

In other words, it appears that invisibility is pretty handicaped to keep the game in balance and make prowling useful. I'm not sure if that's a good thing though... Techies need high perception to fire guns and get eye gear and goggled helmet later, so prowling is only natural for them. It's basically the same expense of CP for mages to get invisibility so it should be more useful... Or at least there should've been a silence spell that together with invisibility, would make a charchter compleately undetectable.