Making touch spells land more

rlterry

I am planning on making a "Blaster" Sorc. I like the idea of making a one that uses touch type spells (just because). But if I remember right, when I first played this years ago, I very often missed with my touchy touchy spells. I know it has to do with your THAC0 or whatever... but is there a way to raise this for "melee" spells so they don't miss so much?

ajwz

I know how you feel. My sorcerer likes to touch people too.

chickenhed

In BG1 that will be difficult. To be honest I'm not even sure if 18 str helps or not. Once you get BG2 and some arcane buff spells, it becomes far easier.

The only thing I can think of to make your touch spells land more often is to disable the enemy first. Sleep comes to mind.

rlterry

I guess no "Mr. Creepers" then

CaptRory

If you were playing a regular mage you could dual from fighter or even thief and get a better THAC0. Thief would let you easily jump out of hiding and touch someone for the boosted chance of success. Can you backstab with a touch attack as well? XD

OurQuestIsVain

In vanilla BG you used to get a bonus to hit (or rather, no penalty) for having a proficiency point in blunt weapons. I once made a fighter/mage dual class that specialized in running up and touching people (dirty thoughts) He had specialization for blunt weapons so he was able to almost always hit due to the bonuses.

However, I remember reading somewhere on these forums that since they don't use the category blunt weapons any more they decided to put the hit bonus into clubs...which mages can't put pips in...so your only option would be a dual or multiclass character.

Diablerist

CaptRory said:

Can you backstab with a touch attack as well? XD

Lol. Indeed you can backstab with Chill Touch Guess I'm gonna dual-class Xzar.

Madhax

rlterry said:

I guess no "Mr. Creepers" then

Putting enemies to sleep and then touching them isn't "Mr. Creepers" enough for you?

But yeah, I hate how touch spells work. Perhaps you should shadowkeep yourself a half-orc sorcerer? Their 19 strength would give you a nice boost to your melee attacks.

marfig

Touch spells were always pretty annoying, back in Pen & Paper too.

Now, I don't remember this right. But I'm pretty sure AD&D 2nd edition rules already stated that any touch spell doesn't get discharged if you fail your To Hit roll. They only get discharged on hit, on command, or if you cast another spell. So you can basically keep trying to hit your target with your touch spell every round.

It would be good BGEE fixed this in conformance to the 2nd edition ruleset. As far as I remember neither BG or BG II applied this rule correctly.

Sorn

I feel as that would make Hurt rather broken.
Also, am I the only one that wondered why Vampiric Touch was an attack spell, rather than a touch spell?

Nazad

Attacking from stealth will grant the usual +4 bonus to hit. Ghoul touch used from stealth is one of my thief/mage disabling tactics. I'm pretty sure that Strength will grant the appropriate bonus to hit. Note that Chill touch lasts for 1 round/level and can be used on several strikes, but in my attempts with that spell, I more often kept missing and got killed.

TJ_Hooker

Currently mostly touch spells are bugged and use the club proficiency, which means that a lot of people using them are doing so with a penalty from lack of proficiency, meaning -5 to hit for a mage/sorceror. Touch spells themselves give a +4 to hit, but you're still getting a net -1 penalty. I believe that this bug is getting fixed so that the proficiency-less.

CaptRory

It'd be nice if they just added a proficiency for it. Something you could put points in. "You dual classed a fighter with Grandmastery Bad Touch into a Mage? Why?"

Oxford_Guy

Touch spells definitely seem to be an area that requires some consistency and clarification, at the moment it's not at all clear or logical how the proficiencies or to hit modifiers work for these