Hi! I’ve tracked down the cause of the Kicked: RPC Error in PlayerAttack issue in Vanish v2.0.5 when hitting sleeping players.

Problem

When a sleeper is hit, Vanish throws a NullReferenceException inside
OnEntityTakeDamage(BaseCombatEntity entity, HitInfo info), which then bubbles up as an RPC error and kicks the attacker.

Root cause

• entity.ToPlayer() (or equivalent) can return null in edge cases (sleepers / non-player entities in the damage pipeline).

• The current code calls IsInvisible(victim)before checking if victim is null.

• Additionally, aggressively modifying HitInfo (HitEntity = null, replacing damageTypes) can break downstream assumptions and trigger RPC kicks.

Problematic order in current code:

BasePlayer attacker = info.InitiatorPlayer;
BasePlayer victim = entity.ToPlayer();
if (!IsInvisible(victim) && !IsInvisible(attacker)) return null;
if (attacker == null) return null;​

Required fix (exact patch)

Reorder null checks and handle victim safely, and avoid nulling HitEntity:

private object OnEntityTakeDamage(BaseCombatEntity entity, HitInfo info)
{
    if (entity == null || info == null) return null;

    var attacker = info.InitiatorPlayer;
    if (attacker == null) return null;

    var victim = entity as BasePlayer; // can be null in edge cases
    if (!IsInvisible(attacker) && (victim == null || !IsInvisible(victim)))
        return null;

    if (IsInvisible(attacker) && HasPerm(attacker.UserIDString, PermDamage))
        return null;

    info.damageTypes?.ScaleAll(0f);
    info.HitMaterial = 0;
    info.DoHitEffects = false;

    return true;
}

This completely stops the NRE and prevents RPC Error in PlayerAttack when hitting sleepers.

Thanks!