Well been a while since I updated Lian - they progressed a bit further in small segments over the past couple weeks - but their progress is too vague to journal it properly so I'll just summarize -we did some shopping at Ulgoths Beard then finished Dorns quest and entered BG City - took on Merchants League and Seven Suns and just finished the sewers but have not reported back to Scar yet.
Dorn has shared a bit more about his meek and unassuming personality along with some amusing tales involving a small insignificant village - Lian wonders if he is trying to impress him...perhaps putting Dorn in the lead slot has gone to his head...
Just accepted Razzys quest for the nymph which will probably be our next destination after rest at Elfsong.
In case you forgot the party consists of
Dorn (6) Kagain (6) Viconia (just went to 7 in the sewers) Edwin (6) Baeloth (7) Lian Longshot F5/T6
There's not much that has challenged the group to any degree in BG City so far and most of the time Dorn, Kagain, and Viccy stomp in with weapons swinging while Lian and the two magelings add arrows, stones, and darts to the mix with the occasional spell cast. The three tanks got held in the sewers with the carrion crawlers and ogre and the other three bailed them out - was probably the most spells used in battle since we hit town. Maybe I'll recruit Tiax to take Baeloths place for a while (assuming Baeloth won't leave for good) Rep is 10 now.
Well BG City has a dwindling population of mages thanks to Lian & Co's recent excursions - Both Ragefast and Razzy have gone on to a better place as well as thier new freind Baeloth. Ragefast never got a spell off but Lian took pity on the nymph and set her free. This of course did not set well with thier employer Razzy who taunted them to follow him up to his tower lair if they dared.
As it turned out they had to find the way on their own as poor Razzy never made it off the ground floor but Baeloth fell to a couple of the ghasts as the party made their way to Razzys penthouse and the group decided they were tired of his overbearing manner anyway.
They stumbled on to the Helm & Cloak Inn after Razzys lair and managed to take down the riff raff that showed up in spite of their wounds from Razzys minions and Baeloths absence. On a breif visit to the bridge area they spoke to a gnomish fellow named Quayle and Lian was so entertained by his banty rooster style he hired him immediately. A mage and cleric he will no doubt prove useful in battle as well as keeping the party entertained - a very suitable replacement for Baeloth no doubt.
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The group continues to be near indestructable - a bad sign for a no reload group as it usually leads to over confidence and an untimely end but we shall hope for the best. Not sure what we will do next.
Alright, I'll give this a go. Since I always play no-reload however, I'm adding some restrictions for myself, as well as a difficulty-increasing mod.
My self-imposed restrictions and rules:
I'll be playing on core rules at all times, so randomized HP rolls and chance to learn spells.
Protagonist may not have a better stat role than the minimum of 75, the stats of which may not be altered, but I can reroll until I get a distribution I'm satisfied with.
I'll be roleplaying my alignment to the best of my ability. Given that I mostly play Good characters, that means no robbing every house blind, threatening Borda to get to kill him for XP and items etc.
No easter-eggs. That means no early Ring of Evermemory, or Ankheg Plate, Ring of Fire Resistance etc... if my character couldn't reasonably expect there to be a powerful magical item somewhere (like under a tree in the middle of a forest), he won't pick it up.
Some minor metagaming will be OK (mainly to know where quest NPC's are holed up), because otherwise you pretty much miss out on half the quests. All in the spirit of my character's alignment though, as stated above.
// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods // The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod // ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version] ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1000 // Initialise mod (all other components require this): v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1910 // Protection from Normal Missiles also blocks Arrows of Fire/Cold/Acid and similar projectiles without pluses: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2020 // Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2030 // Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2111 // Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic -> Inquisitors dispel at their level (not twice their level): v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2120 // Slightly weaken insect plague spells, and let fire shields block them: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2150 // Make spell sequencers, spell triggers, and contingencies learnable by all mages: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3000 // Replace BG1-style elemental arrows with BG2 versions: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3010 // Replace +1 arrows with nonmagical "fine" ones: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3021 // Replace many +1 magical weapons with Fine ones -> Fine weapons are immune to the iron crisis: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3030 // Re-introduce potions of extra-healing: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3040 // Reduce the number of Arrows of Dispelling in stores -> Remove Arrows of Dispelling from stores: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // Faster Bears: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4010 // Grant large, flying, non-solid or similar creatures protection from Web and Entangle: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5010 // Move Boo into Minsc's pack: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6030 // Smarter Mages -> Mages cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6040 // Smarter Priests -> Priests cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6104 // Potions for NPCs -> All of the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity party: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v23(BETA)
I'm a novice to SCS having only played it a few times and never gotten past chapter 2, and fully expect to have a number of early casualties. Still, why not make this a real challenge...
For my first attempt, I'm resurrecting one of my favorite characters: Odrelomp Gogglebur, the Neutral Good halfling Priest of Lathander!
Stats actually didn't turn out awful, although they're certainly not good. Decent Wisdom for the vital early bonus spells, and +2 HP per level from Constitution (which matters quite a bit with SCS and random HP on level up). Unfortunately he won't be wearing plate any time soon.. or medium shields, for that matter. At a stretch (and after the Strength tome) he could wear magical chainmail/splintmail, but until then, looks like he's stuck with studded leather and the magic variants thereof. That plus no Dexterity bonus to armor class means I'll have to be very careful with him around archers.
Starting proficiencies went into Sling and Sword and Shield style. Reasons being he won't be able to hit anything that isn't held or sleeping in meele this early regardless, and the extra -1 to ranged AC might save him at some point in the future. Maybe not sound reasoning, but L4 should come rather rapidly if he survives, at which point I'll pick up War Hammer proficiency.
And so, on to the actual attempt! Danger didn't take long to find Odrelomp. In fact, there were three separate attempts on his life within the very walls of Candlekeep (one by a nefarious cabal of rats, of all things). One of those attempts actually turned into our first semi-close call.
Carbos was easily dispatched by a Command and a sling bullet to the vital parts. Shank, being an Elf and therefore almost immune to the sleep effect, was a different matter. After getting off a Magical Stone that only did 2 damage, Odrelomp tried to keep his distance from Shank while pelting him with bullets. This was the result:
Yep, as soon as Shank was out of Odrelomp's line of sight, the sneaky bastard actually hid in shadows and pulled off a backstab! Scary stuff when you only have 10 HP. Shank landed another blow for 1 HP before Odrelomp could best him, so it was a profusely bleeding halfling that limped out of that priests' quarters.
Having (narrowly) survived the attempts on his life, Odrelomp follows the regular routine: Sleeps to regain spells, goes off with Gorion only to witness him die, and teams up with Imoen. Aside from a Diseased Gibberling, the pair arrive at the Friendly Arm Inn without incident.
Of course, you know what's coming. Yep, that bane of 1st-level characters, Tarnesh. Being a decidedly good-natured fellow, it would never occur to Odrelomp to use Xzar and Montaron as meatsacks/spellsponges (although they probably deserve it), so our resources for this fight are rather thin. Thankfully, even though SCS Tarnesh is far more dangerous than the vanilla version, he has one weakness: He's not 6th level or above, and so does not get to make a saving throw against Command. Which ultimately proves to be his downfall:
Following this, cleaning up the hobgoblins around the Inn and returning Joia's ring with the help of Khalid and Jaheira is virtual child's play. One well-deserved rest later, the heroic quartet make their way south to Beregost, stopping on the way to relieve an ogre of his belts (Command once again proving absolutely invaluable, both against the ogre and his wolf friend).
The party are currently recovering from their escapades at Feldepost's Inn, Jaheira having turned L2 Fighter/L2 Druid by Odrelomp skillfully delegating the task of talking Marl down to Imoen. More to come, for sure.
Odrelomp continues his mad adventuring romp throughout the Sword Coast. Wanting to shore up his skills a bit (not to mention increase his odds of surviving more than one arrow), Odrelomp's gang did the easier tasks around Beregost. Silke still lives, on account of being somewhat scary stuff for a party of four L1's.
However, taking on the halfling-murdering ogrillons south of Beregost netted the desired result: Level 2 for Odrelomp and Imoen, with Odrelomp rolling 6 for HP before Con bonus, putting him at a respectable 18 HP total and therefore empowering him with the ability to survive two arrows without complaint, which is a 100% improvement to the previous arrow-surviving-situation!
With that necessary level up out of the way, the gang pressed south for Nashkel, and (naturally) picked up Minsc. Following a quick rest, it was off at double pace towards the Gnoll Stronghold. While en route, a pleasant surprise: A winter wolf volunteered a nice chunk of XP, putting Khalid at level 2. Sadly, he only rolled a 3 for HP before Con bonus, but oh well... at least he's going places.
Upon arriving at the Gnoll Stronghold (and resting.. always with the resting), the fighting was actually pretty stiff. Given that Khalid was still wearing splint mail at the time, he was getting beat on a lot, and healing spells ran dry during the fight with the chieftain.
With potions in short supply, Odrelomp figures he might as well save on the party's precious few resources and send a raging Minsc to the front. This... was a mistake. Oh, Minsc cut a bloody swath across the battlefield alright. Unfortunately Odrelomp forgot to aim the dangerous end at the gnolls before instructing Minsc to rage, which of course means this happens:
Quite a bit of undignified screaming and running later, Minsc was eventually persuaded to stop killing the party and start killing the enemy. Bit of a miracle only Jaheira went under... and even more of a miracle she wasn't chunked.
Fortunately, the party managed to not only save Dynaheir after this (with Jaheira still dead, of course) but also returned to Nashkel and raised the unfortunate druidess without incident.
As a fitting finale to this session, Odrelomp decides to head towards the Nashkel Mines. Not to go through them mind you, but rather to trigger Dorn's ambush so we can get a suit of plate mail for Khalid off the female elf (here's that tiny bit of metagaming I was talking about earlier).
Of course, Dorn is quite sloppy and always leaves two archers alive. Which is somewhat of a problem when you have one very squishy, very low level (1) mage with you.
At first I was fully expecting Minsc to go berserk and bisect poor Odrelomp, but thankfully he kept his cool. Back to Nashkel again for another resurrection, fortunately with no added complications along the way.
However, all clouds have a silver lining, and in this case, it comes in the form of mighty Odrelomp now being a level 3 Priest of Lathander. 4 HP rolled before Con bonus.. acceptable, and he now sports a respectable 24 HP.
The party is now recovering at the Nashkel Inn. Two party deaths in such a short span of time can put anyone on edge...
Odrelomp continues to live uninterrupted, which is more than you can say for a few party members.
Having recovered his halfling gusto (aided by a number of alcoholic drinks) at the Nashkel Inn, Odrelomp & Co. set out to further assist the beleaguered citizens of Beregost, starting with cleansing the hills of a clan of Half-Ogres. Unfortunately, the entire party had to turn around within minutes of arriving at the scene: While battling an obscene amount of gnolls advancing from the north, the party was encircled by a vanguard of cunning Flinds from the south, and the same thing happened that always seems to happen when there are enemy combatans of any kind, shape or color around: Dynaheir bit the dust.
OK, technically the Flinds just spawned behind the party, but I like the explanation above better. I noticed them when Dynaheir took a critical hit for 5 damage, told her to move (not much point popping a potion when she has 6 max HP against Flinds that are in meele range) and Odrelomp to Command a Flind.. and there goes a second critical hit, and she's gone.
Back to Nashkel for a quick Raise Dead, and then straight back to fighting gnolls and Half-Ogres. With better results this time, although Dynaheir was reduced to 1 HP and poisoned by a hobgoblin while running away from that mace-wielding bandit and 3 gnolls... the party doesn't have enough disablers (only brave Odrelomp) to completely hold down a battlefield yet.
Following this, it seemed a natural course to go after Bassilus. Unfortunately, before reaching Bassi the party decides to take on some lowly hobgoblins (one of whom has a Shortsword +2), resulting in Dynaheir once again displaying her propensity for catching arrows with vital organs, and subsequently dying:
You'll note that Khalid is dead in that photo as well. Yep, turns out he is just enough of a wuss to get beaten to death in melee by a single archer hobgoblin who got tired of being chased and turned around to fight. No joke. And before that he came very close to dying when fighting a bandit. Come on Khalid, you're just embarassing the party...
So, two Raise Deads later, we finally get to engage Bassilus. Bit of a bug here as his servants did not turn hostile (which I reckon they're supposed to), which made the fight a lot easier. Bassi failed his save against Silence with a Doom stacked on him beforehand, and so was no longer a credible threat:
Following turning Bassilus' bounty in, the party took down Silke, who never got an offensive spell off. Not for lack of trying, though: With SCS she starts with Stoneskin active, has an Invisibility/Mirror Image minor sequencer prepared, another Mirror Image memorized AND healing potions (which she'll quaff while invisible), so it was basically a LOT of shooting/magic missile'ing before she went down.
Not feeling quite done for the moment, the party decided to tackle that weird little area with the cow being attacked by xvarts. Which was a bit scary when it comes to the ogres, as they had an Ogre Berserker mixed in with them. Again, SCS makes it more frightening, since they now get the Berserk ability, have a ton of hitpoints, and will gladly one-shot your fighter regardless of HP and armor class. Thankfully, our one and only Blindness scroll did its work, and the party (though scattered from frantically trying to flee the morningstar-wielding monstrosity) was eventually able to pelt it down. Although its Berserk wore off before we could finish it and the damage killed it, thereby denying the party XP. Hmph.
Another area cleaned, and another level! Odrelomp just managed to scrounge enough experience to hit level 4, rolling a five for hitpoints before con modifier, which puts him at 31 HP total (and now with war hammer proficiency). Not bad, not bad.. soon he might even have a chance of surviving an errant lightning bolt.
Its work for the time being done, the party has retreated to Nashkel. Khalid will be getting instructions on how not to be such a massive wimp as to be undone by a single rabid hobgoblin in meele, and Dynaheir will be pining for reaching level 3 and being able to just stay invisible rather than acting as a pincushion.
@Aldain, very exciting run. At first, I was wondering why you were having such a hard time keeping aggro off of poor Dynaheir, but then I noticed you were playing an SCS run. It must program the AI to have enemies start shooting and swinging at mages as priority targets - which makes sense, because that's what the player does, too. It's amazing how much harder the game gets when the AI uses the same tactics you do. +
@Aldain, very exciting run. At first, I was wondering why you were having such a hard time keeping aggro off of poor Dynaheir, but then I noticed you were playing an SCS run. It must program the AI to have enemies start shooting and swinging at mages as priority targets - which makes sense, because that's what the player does, too. It's amazing how much harder the game gets when the AI uses the same tactics you do. +
Indeed it does. Ranged attackers are crazy for mages and will target them above all else. You can trick them by sending your melee attackers in first, but every few seconds they seem to reaquire targets (Dynaheir's second death came about when that Hobgoblin Elite stopped running from Minsc for 1/2 second to take a potshot at her). Hence my comment about Dynaheir pining for L3.. at least invisible she'll be a little safer until we hit a battle where her meager spell arsenal is required. And invisibility is just such an awesome utility spell all around regardless.. can't wait.
I still think this mod gives the AI a pretty serious advantage though, rather than put us on equal footing. They can always blow their entire spellbook and all their resources (enemies above the lowly ranks of bandits/hobgoblins tend to get a lot of potions now, most notably oil of speed and healing potions) on a single fight, whereas I have to try and conserve a bit. It is good fun though, and especially mages become a LOT more lethal.
Odrelomp's adventures continue apace. Warning: This is a very long post. I've tried to partition it and avoid walls of text, so hopefully it's still quite readable.
When last we saw our intrepid heroes, they were gathering their wits in Nashkel. Opting for some diversions before battling demons and the like in the depths of Nashkel's mines, Odrelomp heads out to the west, followers in tow.
Of course, these were familiar stomping grounds for the party, having passed through weeks ago while on a quest to save Dynaheir. This time, they were being serious about it though.. not a monster nor scrap of treasure would be left in their wake.
Not much to write about Xvart Village, really. The party as it was, even back then, could have probably handled 50-60 of them at once without much trouble. At least the spawns are fixed though, as the screenshot illustrates.
The party didn't press their luck with Borda. Not only because I'd rather not fight a high-level mage with near 100% spell resistance just for a magical shortsword and a few easily attainable spell scrolls, but also because it'd be really freaking evil to try and rob someone... Odrelomp simply declined Borda's offer politely and went on his way.
The area north of the Gnoll Stronghold provided a few minor battles. Neville and his chumps are actually a moderate challenge now, primarily because they get better positioning (his 5 hobgoblins surround the party), and because Neville himself always has a few potions available. Still, judicious application of a Potion of Defense, stealth for Imoen and Sanctuary for Odrelomp secured the victory.
Finally, there were the ogre berserkers and hobgoblins blockading the bridge. Apart from one berserker killing himself by having Berserk expire though, it was quite easy, primarily because Minsc is a surprisingly effective archer (and Jaheira helped with Entangle x2):
Clearing out the Xvart's at Gnoll Stronghold and stealing their stuff (mostly low-level spell scrolls, a few healing potions and the Charisma tome) was without incident. However, while traveling to the area east of Gnoll Stronghold, there was a pretty unwelcome ambush.
I'll admit I was a bit worried there. Fortunately, even though the Ogre Magi managed to sleep half the party, brave Minsc (who is probably the most powerful in the party by a factor of three) got in a nice juicy hit for 19 damage while raging, and that put the fell beast down.
Sendai also proved challenging. I actually had an internal debate about whether or not Odrelomp should engage her (as you can get by without having her go hostile), but arrived at the conclusion that it was motivated, even for a Good PC. She's rude (not a big deal), threatening (this is a big deal) and you don't even have to threaten her back to have her attack you, just say that you don't want to leave the area and she'll charge. Her archer buddies caused a bit of a headache, and Dynaheir once again came close to taking a dirtnap, but the party pulled through:
And with that, the party had completed the lower Nashkel circuit. Odrelomp still wasn't confident about going in the mines however; not only because of the kobolds, but due to another reason which will become apparent at the end of this post.
Thus wanting another level for all concerned, the party headed off to do some Ankheg hunting. No screenshots here, as we never came even close to dying.. Khalid had to chug a few healing potions occasionally, but Ankhegs are as vulnerable as any low-HD critter to Command. Having cleared the Ankheg's out, the party of course also invested in having some nice Ankheg plate made (and passed by Ulgoth's Beard as well to grab the lovely cloak there). They also cleared out some zombies real quick-like near Baldur's Gate, and helped the lesser of two evils gain control of some golden bowl.
Somewhere around there, Odrelomp (and indeed, the entire party) gained a level, and he now has access to 3rd level spells (though he could cast only one per day, given that he doesn't have fantastic wisdom).
This experience under his belt, Odrelomp finally had the confidence to move in on the mines. Though he might as well take care of Zordral first while he's in the area:
You'll notice that the friendly witch is dead. Apparently, when you select the calm, good options with Zordral, as opposed to taunting him, he'll always kill her. Meh. At least a few extra potions and a robe were gained. Zordral proved a little challenging, but nothing the party couldn't stomach (indeed, as can be gleaned from the screenshot, half of them slept through the entire fight).
Alright! Finally time to clean out some kobolds! With a brief stop to handle Greywolf first of course, whom (due to failing his saving throw against Hold Person) wasn't a threat, oil of speed nonwithstanding.
With the entire party around L4-5, the kobolds couldn't do much, even though they came in prodigious numbers. A lucky commando burned off half of Imoen's hitpoints with a nasty critical hit, but that was about it.
Alright, so, about Mulahey.. this fight seems a little bugged in SCS currently. I decided to try it anyway without uninstalling the component. What happens is, once Mulahey spots you and gives his Evil Rant, he calls for help. Which keeps spawning. Indefinitely. With the party cornered by a few dozen Kobold Commandos, Guards and Skeletons, Dynaheir panicked and used her Wand of Fire to discharge a massive fireball on the poor critters. Note that the "poor critters" includes Khalid, who was standing a little close to the epicentre and got a bad tan. Bad as in killing him.
However, the good news is that this seemed to fix the bug. All the kobolds and skeletons were killed, and no more spawned. Hence, the party could (aided by lots of Invisibility and Sanctuary) move in close to Mulahey and finish him off with ease:
The return to Nashkel actually went off without a hitch. Khalid was raised, and Nimbul easily put down. I was worried he'd rip the party apart given how low they were on offensive/buffing magic, but SCS has him use his spells almost exclusively for defense, and try to fight in melee instead. A single melee enemy, no matter how buffed, isn't very dangerous any more. Although he did discharge a Chromatic Orb x 2 trigger at Imoen, she lived to tell about it.
Alright, so we're high(ish) level, might as well get on with the plot. The party moves to Beregost, rests up, then goes to confront Tranzig. Who talks to us the second he spots us on the stairwell, then throws up a myriad of protections and Horrors the entire party (clever that Odrelomp forgot to cast Remove Fear). Fortunately, Imoen makes her save, and in another twist of good fortune, scores a couple quick critical hits on Tranzig, who panics, preventing him from magic missile'ing Imoen down.
That could've gone a lot worse. Anyway, the party is safe and sound.
Remember how I said there was another reason behind the party clearing out Ankhegs before proceeding with the mines? That reason is about to rear its ugly head. As the party leaves Feldepost's Inn... this happens:
Yep, those are the Amazons. They and the party you find outside Gullykin no longer just stand around waiting to be killed in SCS; they'll instead search out and ambush your party at random times once you get into chapter 3. The reason you can't see the two female thieves is that they've just stealthed and are moving into position to get some backstabs off...
Alright, don't panic. Odrelomp's nerves of steel will see him through. He quickly casts Sanctuary, instructing Dynaheir to go invisible, and both spells go off without a hitch. Minsc starts plinking away at the plated cleric with Khalid lending a melee hand, while Jaheira and Imoen try to disrupt the cleric in chain.
This battle was a bit of a mess. Both clerics got several spells off (Unholy Blight and Hold person mostly). Both thieves managed to land backstabs. However, they lacked potent fighter-types. With a lot of healing potions and a Holy Smite from Odrelomp, the party eventually managed to turn the tides. I'm actually thankful the thieves were dumb enough to try and backstab: They have some very nasty magical ammunition (Arrows of Fire and Darts of Wounding), and I'd really have hated for them to go to town on my squishies with them.
Anyway, at long last (felt long but was probably only around 4-5 rounds) the party finishes their would-be assassins off.
And with that, Odrelomp felt he had pushed his luck enough for one day, and retired to the Jovial Juggler to overcome his by now quite deep-seated paranoia.
Odrelomp yet lives, and is now a mighty 5th level Priest of Lathander.
@Aldain, that was a very exciting and enjoyable read, with great screenshots. How do you get those clickable thumbnails at the end? I tried linking thumbnails from Photobucket, and they just sat there as thumbnails in the post with no way to click-to-enlarge.
@Aldain, that was a very exciting and enjoyable read, with great screenshots. How do you get those clickable thumbnails at the end? I tried linking thumbnails from Photobucket, and they just sat there as thumbnails in the post with no way to click-to-enlarge.
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it. It seems the forum creates the thumbnails automatically when you attach jpegs to your post.
Alright, the party were about to embark on the main quest, at long last. However, given that the plan has always been to dualclass Imoen, a decision was reached to at the very least pillage Ulcaster before she turned into a mage and the party were robbed of their resident thief for quite some time.
Not before cleaning out another few simple areas though. Starting with the Samuel/Hafiz one, where Odrelomp got to see his alignment come back to bite him in parts best left unmentioned. Accidentally passing the patrolling Flaming Fist with Samuel in the backpack, the party were unable to convince said officer of the law that Samuel was not who he appeared to be. This of course meant one angry Flaming Fist, and one massive reputation loss for the party when they defended themselves.
Simple stupidity at work there.. the party could've just headed north and had not a care in the world. Still, what's done is done. Samuel was handed over to Gellana at the Friendly Arm Inn, and the party headed back down towards Amnish territory.
This is where the true drama of this little update unfolds. As the party was rummaging around the area containing a few tombs and one jelly-experimenting wizard, something unexpected occured.
Just a quick rundown: Halacan is the enemy party's arcane caster, in the bottom left of the picture. Morvin is the dwarven fighter, top middle. Drakar is their cleric, top left, and Molkar is their dualwielding human fighter, top right.
OK, we'll get through this. We knew they'd come for us sooner or later. Minsc quaffs an Oil of Speed and starts firing at Halacan, while Odrelomp, Imoen and Jaheira aim for Drakar. Khalid is just trying to draw as much ire as possible to keep Molkar and Morvin off the easier targets.
Unfortunately, Halacan's first choice of spell to cast is Sleep. Which goes off successfully, and... well, you can see for yourselves.
Lovely. Absolutely lovely! Minsc fails his save, Khalid fails his save, Dynaheir fails her save. ALL of our heavy hitters are incapacitated for the duration of the fight and then some, all because Odrelomp was too stupid to pack a Dispel Magic. To make things EVEN better, we now have two skeletons incoming from the east as well.
OK. It's not over yet. Odrelomp and Imoen are L5 and so immune to sleep, and thus still ambulatory. Amazingly, Jaheira made her save against Sleep, so we're at half strength (at least with regard to numbers).
Send Jaheira to the north to hold off Drakar and Morvin, and have her chug whatever potions will help. Before the battle is over, she'll have downed about 3000 GP worth of potions (Cloud Giant Strength, Potion of Power, Stone Form, Magic Protection, and lots of healing potions). She's temporarily managing to hold her own; Drakar's spells bounce off her, and she's actually putting out a lot of hurt with that club of hers now that she's at 23 Strength.
Imoen isn't of much use; all our magic arrows were on Minsc and he's happily asleep. She gets to distract Molkar, basically running in circles, while Odrelomp hits Halacan with everything he's got.
Very slowly, the tide of battle starts to turn in our favor. Jaheira eventually chunks (!) Drakar, and goes to work on Morvin. Halacan amazingly fails his save against Hold Person, and is ground down by Odrelomp's mighty hammer. Morvin is really hurting Jaheira, but she's keeping up (barely) with healing potions and occasional retreats.
Odrelomp turns on Molkar, who is still fruitlessly chasing Imoen. Amazingly, Molkar ALSO fails his save against Hold Person. Odrelomp and Imoen combine (ranged) forces, and eventually pelt him down.
With none but Morvin of the enemy team left standing, the battle is decided. A few rounds later, the dwarf falls, and our heroes stand triumphant! Huzzah!
We are very lucky Odrelomp is such a tough cookie. 16 constitution, good HP rolls, good saves thanks to the shorty bonus, and surprisingly decent armorclass considering his dexterity (magic chainmail isn't horrible, actually) enabled him to basically hold off Halacan, two wild dogs and two skeletons on his own. Jaheira, completely pumped up on potions, held the northern front, and Imoen played fighter-bait to the east. Close but no cigar, evil bountyhunters!
After a fight like this, there's really nothing this side of the Cloakwood Forest that can even compare. Our heroes easily dispatch Narcillicus, but that's probably largely due to him failing his save against Silence:
The rest of the area is a cakewalk. Ghouls and ghasts do not react favorably to a sanctuaried halfling Turning them.
Then it's off to Ulcaster, again not a big deal. Supposedly Icharyd and the vampiric wolf at the end of the dungeon should now have some powers, but Odrelomp never noticed any.. they just had absurd amounts of hitpoints, and Icharyd hits every single time he swings. Oh, and he now has a dozen kobold buddies. Nothing a charge from our Wand of Sleep can't handle.
Towards the end of the dungeon, Imoen hits L6 thief, bumping her scores to 90 Open Locks/95 Find Traps, and it's time to dualclass. She's now a very weak little mage, and will so remain for quite a while.
OK, we have two arcane casters (one's very weak, but she can at least use some of our fancy wands, like Wand of Fire and Wand of Summoning). Odrelomp decides it is at long last time.. these bandits must be ousted from their stronghold!
Larswood beckons first. By now, bandits are just laughable, and the party plow through them with ease.
However, on the same map, we've got one deranged and one murderous druid. While a bit of a joke normally, Osmadi is quite nasty with this SCS setup. He tosses up a ton of protections (as do all casters), but also includes a summon. And targets the weakest party member he can see with an, as far as I could tell, uninterruptable Call Lightning. And we know who the weakest party member is...
When will Odrelomp learn to just let the mages, nowadays including Imoen, stay invisible during the opening moves of tougher fights? Never, never will he learn this. Trivia: The fourth (neutral) bear in that screenshot is Corsone. Apparently he didn't like his chances fighting Osmadi's cave bears with spells, and instead elected to shapeshift to fight fire with fire. I found it kind of funny.
We were actually very lucky there. Dynaheir only has 25 HP total; another 1-2 points of damage and she'd have been fried permanently. One laborious backtrack to the Friendly Arm Inn later, she's back on her feet, and the party proceeds to Peldvale. Somewhere around here, Dynaheir did manage to hit L5, so she's now both sleep-immune and packing a little artillery of her own that's not wand-dependent. Nice.
Things in Peldvale proceed with no particular difficulty. Several Black Talon Elites are actually defeated without them firing even one of their lovely little arrows.. all these Arrows of Ice will no doubt come in handy when we take on the camp proper. Raiken and his merry gang of worthless thugs are dispatched:
Having also rescued but not recruited Viconia, we leave the party in Peldvale, pondering in great detail how to properly dismantle the prodigious bandit presence in the camp to the north.
Odrelomp is still a level 5 Priest of Lathander, but creeps ever closer to that glorious level 6...
Another great post, Alduin. Very exciting reading. Poor, poor Dynaheir. At least she didn't get chunked - but it'll be be pretty amazing if she makes it to the end without chunking. She got chunked in one of my games once on the top floor of the Iron Throne, by a Fireball, and that was just a vanilla game.
Re Bassilus undead troops not going hostile - I think this is a feature of BGEE - in Vanilla if you choose the correct dialoge choices his minions all die and you face him alone (or perhaps with just the non-skeleton minions) - in BGEE they just don't go hostile unless you directly attack them - so you can kill Bassilus without thier interference and leave the minons alone or take them out as well.
Re Bassilus undead troops not going hostile - I think this is a feature of BGEE - in Vanilla if you choose the correct dialoge choices his minions all die and you face him alone (or perhaps with just the non-skeleton minions) - in BGEE they just don't go hostile unless you directly attack them - so you can kill Bassilus without thier interference and leave the minons alone or take them out as well.
(Or thats the way they work for me anyway)
Great run so far Aldain!
Normally they all die. With the SCS component Improved Bassilus, about half of them are supposed to stay alive until Bassilus dies. Which they do, but they don't turn hostile, as I'm supposing they should.
OK, Odrelomp plows onward. The bandit camp is next....
The rules are simple: Once you attack any bandit in the camp, they'll all come after you. You CAN sneak past the ones in the camp and just kill the guards in Tazok's tent, then sneak back out.. but why not clean house while you're at it?
The party set up shop in the northwestern corner of the map. The enemy can only come at them from two directions, and if things look really bad, there's the possibility of an emergency retreat.
This turns out to be unnecessary. Huge numbers or not, most of the bandits have terrible saves, and a few Webs in conjunction with Wands of Fire basically spell their doom. Some of the Black Talon Elites manage to get occasional shots off, but nothing even comes close to threatening Odrelomp.
A few rests later (we're running on Knock and bashing after all, what with Imoen dualed) Cloakwood Forest is coming up.
The first area is nothing special. For once Seniyad CAN actually get interrupted while casting his spells, and the party brings him down in short order. Once he's gone, his minions last all of two rounds on their own.
The spider-infested part of the forest proves a lot more deadly. Immediately upon entering, the party is beset by three Phase Spiders, one of whom manages to repeatedly poison Odrelomp:
The spiders are eventually beaten back, but that was a closer call than I like. Improved Spiders are no joke.
Having cleared all spiders from the area, the party engages Centeol. She never gets to cast any of her new spells, but her Giant Spiders manage to Web Khalid, with somewhat predictable results.
Should have splurged and let him down a Potion of Freedom.. ah well. A quick trip to the FAI and back, and we're moving into druid territory.
All of the druids here have been beefed up though. The one who accosts you at the bridge is allowed to walk away (a +2 quarterstaff would be nice, but Odrelomp typically doesn't lie, so we end up with a Potion of Invulnerability instead). The other two cause some havoc with Call Lightning, but are disposed of in rapid order nonetheless.
Finally, it is time to tackle Amarande, the Shadow Archdruid. Now, in vanilla BG:EE, he's a complete joke. That is no longer the case. Immediately upon turning red, he calls in two lesser druids (shapeshifters, who turn into werewolves and start attacking the party). There's no room to move around, and they're causing serious damage to our squishies.
Then, his defensive spells kick in. Armor of Faith, Bless, Barkskin, freakin' Iron Skins and yes... Improved Invisibility, the latter causing all our targetted spells against him to fail. Apparently, Amarande is now an Avenger. But wait, it gets better.
His first spell, which he casts with ease since no one in the party can hit him with his by now very low AC, is Chain Lightning. Great, we're fighting a druid that is at least level 11...
This spell is followed by Insect Plague, which panics the entire group and completely shuts down any chance at spellcasting. Then, adding insult to injury, Amarande throws out a Chaos. Which everyone fails their save against (no wonder, since it's made at -4).
In between completely shutting down the party with his spells, Amarande also shapeshifts into a Fire Salamander and proceeds to torch pretty much everyone. This is our mighty party roughly 4 rounds into the battle:
What can we do? The entire party is confused, frightened and has 100% spell failure. Minsc is killing Khalid, who is in turn killing Minsc. Amarande is laughing in our face while he and his two cronies take their time destroying us in meele. We can't even quaff a potion or beat an unglorified retreat. Will the cunning halfling finagle his way out of this most dire situation?
No. No, he will not. A few confused rounds later, Amarande lands a crushing blow against Odrelomp's woefully inadequate chainmail, and it is over.
It is a small comfort that the confused party somehow accidentally killed the cronies. This was a humiliating end to what at first glance looked like a grand adventure, and Odrelomp's spirit cannot rest quietly until he is avenged!
In retrospect, something as simple as having Invisibility Purge or Detect Invisibility prepared might have saved us. Amarande led with Chain Lightning, which would've given us another round to hit him with more spells after dispelling his Invisibility before he managed to throw Insect Plague at us. Still, it would have been very touch and go regardless.. in that cramped space, there was no possibility to maneuver, and Odrelomp was a prime target throughout the fight.
So, there we have it. One halfling bites the dust, and probably a lot later than he should have, by all rights (given our 4-5 close calls). I guess I'll start thinking up a new character...
In unmodded Vanilla BG they all died (with the proper dialoge options) - in unmodded BGEE they don't die but they don't go hostile either when Bassilus does (with the right dialoge option).
I'm guessing they changed this so you have to kill them to get thier weapon drops which is pretty substantial early in the game.
As for the SCS component I've never used it but I suspect it was not changed to reflect the BGEE changes that keeps them from going hostile (with the right dialoge choices).
@aldain, condolences on the end of a great run. I wish you would keep playing and move over to the minimal reload thread. I think your other readers and I could still learn a lot from reading your posts and watching you finish your run.
@aldain Exciting run! You really were amazing when fighting those SCS bounty hunter ambushes! Condolences for your loss, but Arch-druid is really very powerful with SCS. There is some randomisation in his spell picks, he did not get Insect Plague in my game, but got Chain lightning, Call woodland beings (those dryads could wreck your party if you don't kill them fast) and Improved Invisibility is the worst since you can not target him with spells. My Shadowdancer had some pitiful detect illusions skill and was lucky to dispel his invisiblity. Also I ran downstairs the moment he started chanting 'cupio, virtus, licet' (oncoming chaos spell!)
But a chain lightning killed my pc numerous times too. Maybe the best strategy would be sending a tank with potion of magic shielding to soak up all nasty spells.
Amarande grants pathetic amount of xp when killed anyway, and no decent loot. Not really worth it.
@aldain, condolences on the end of a great run. I wish you would keep playing and move over to the minimal reload thread. I think your other readers and I could still learn a lot from reading your posts and watching you finish your run.
Naw, it wouldn't be the same. Odrelomp is dead and gone, best he rest in peace.. but I'll give this another go, I'll have some time this weekend and will certainly have decided on another character by then.
@aldain Exciting run! You really were amazing when fighting those SCS bounty hunter ambushes! Condolences for your loss, but Arch-druid is really very powerful with SCS. There is some randomisation in his spell picks, he did not get Insect Plague in my game, but got Chain lightning, Call woodland beings (those dryads could wreck your party if you don't kill them fast) and Improved Invisibility is the worst since you can not target him with spells. My Shadowdancer had some pitiful detect illusions skill and was lucky to dispel his invisiblity. Also I ran downstairs the moment he started chanting 'cupio, virtus, licet' (oncoming chaos spell!)
But a chain lightning killed my pc numerous times too. Maybe the best strategy would be sending a tank with potion of magic shielding to soak up all nasty spells.
Amarande grants pathetic amount of xp when killed anyway, and no decent loot. Not really worth it.
Absolutely, those two bounty hunter fights were awesome. I especially liked fighting Molkar and his friends with just a cleric, fighter/druid and thief available.. most fun I've had playing BG for years.
Yeah, going after Amarande was mostly about being a completionist, with his +2 Club being a consolation prize. The latter of which seems ridiculous in retrospect since Jaheira (the intended recipient) is just no bloody good in meele without lots of buffs/potions, +2 Club or no.. at a stretch she can clobber the odd hobgoblin. I'm not even sure sending a lone character with magic shielding in would work... SCS AI is pretty smart and would probably just have him shapeshift and beat on the poor tank until the potion expired.
In the next run, I'll just leave him to his own devices until I'm absolutely confident I can take him down.
OK, guess I'm back in the action. This was a short first session though, so I embellished a little at times.. hopefully it's not too much text. Same restrictions and mod as last time (reposting for convenience):
My self-imposed restrictions and rules:
I'll be playing on core rules at all times, so randomized HP rolls and chance to learn spells.
Protagonist may not have a better stat total than the minimum of 75, and the roll may not be altered. I may, however, reroll until I get a distribution I am satisfied with.
I'll be roleplaying my alignment to the best of my ability. No meta-gaming to get better rewards, more XP etc.
No easter-eggs. That means no early Ring of Evermemory, or Ankheg Plate, Ring of Fire Resistance etc... if my character couldn't reasonably expect there to be a powerful magical item somewhere (like under a tree in the middle of a forest), he won't pick it up.
Some minor meta-gaming will be OK (mainly to know where quest NPC's and party members to be are holed up, or how to recruit the latter). All in the spirit of my character's alignment though, as stated above.
// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods // The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod // ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version] ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1000 // Initialise mod (all other components require this): v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1910 // Protection from Normal Missiles also blocks Arrows of Fire/Cold/Acid and similar projectiles without pluses: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2020 // Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2030 // Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2111 // Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic -> Inquisitors dispel at their level (not twice their level): v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2120 // Slightly weaken insect plague spells, and let fire shields block them: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2150 // Make spell sequencers, spell triggers, and contingencies learnable by all mages: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3000 // Replace BG1-style elemental arrows with BG2 versions: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3010 // Replace +1 arrows with nonmagical "fine" ones: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3021 // Replace many +1 magical weapons with Fine ones -> Fine weapons are immune to the iron crisis: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3030 // Re-introduce potions of extra-healing: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3040 // Reduce the number of Arrows of Dispelling in stores -> Remove Arrows of Dispelling from stores: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // Faster Bears: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4010 // Grant large, flying, non-solid or similar creatures protection from Web and Entangle: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5010 // Move Boo into Minsc's pack: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6030 // Smarter Mages -> Mages cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6040 // Smarter Priests -> Priests cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6104 // Potions for NPCs -> All of the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity party: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v23(BETA) ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v23(BETA)
Enter Archibald, the Chaotic Good Human Sorcerer (I forgot to grab a screenshot when starting, so this is a little ways into our adventure):
Not.. exactly a poster child for powerful sorcerers, now is he. I found this roll absolutely hilarious; mechanically speaking, he's got next to zero advantage from his stats, aside from a pitiful boost to lore. At least there's no subtle pressure to squander all the Tomes on him; they'll be distributed among the party to help our chances of actually making it through the game.
Roleplay-wise, however, that intelligence means he's pretty much a genius. An almost instinctual understanding of the finer points of tactics and utilization of obscure spells will certainly come in handy, provided our mighty hero isn't slain by a rabid gibberling right out the gate. Let's see what happens.
For our two starting spells, Archibald elects to go for Shield and Spook. Shield gives us MM immunity (important), and improves our absolutely abyssal AC against all attacks, but especially missile ones (very important). Spook is just great for temporarily disabling anything from casters to ogres, and the built-in save penalty as you level means it never goes obsolete.
Anyway, on to the game proper. Somewhat surprisingly, Archibald survives the pitfalls of Candlekeep. Shank fails his save against Spook, and takes a sling bullet to the forehead. Carbos actually makes his save, but we have a spot of good luck wherein he only manages to slice Archibald for 1 damage before being put down.
Once outside Candlekeep and having joined with Imoen. Archibald reviews his options. Our first priority must be to gather allies, and we know where there are such to be found: the Friendly Arm Inn. Off we go. En route we actually run into a Xvart, who surrenders his short sword to Imoen for safe keeping.
Now standing at the Inn's gates, Archibald utilizes a scrying cantrip with which he is so familiar as to being able to cast it at will (yeah yeah, metagaming...), and realizes there lies an insidious and relatively powerful Mage in wait for us. Let's review possible tactics and the likely outcome of each:
Option 1: Charge in with Shield up, all guns blazing. Tarnesh will respond by instantly casting Shield and Mirror Image (which he always does), making it almost impossible for us to hit him. He will then Sleep us, which we are highly unlikely to resist, and either club us to death with his quarterstaff, or if we're still awake, Horror us and start unloading Acid Arrows/Magic Missiles. Our Wand of Magic Missiles will be ineffective, since his Shield renders him immune to them. Even if we manage to Spook him, we still lack a way to really hurt him before he hurts us (ie killing us). Probability of success: Somewhere around 1%, if we get a ranged critical hit in that hits him instead of a mirror image.
Option 2: Send Imoen in stealthed. Have her backstab Tarnesh, and hope she rolls high enough on the damage die to instantly kill him. We don't know his exact HP, but given that he casts L2 spells, we know he is at least L3 and so has a minimum of 6-12 HP. Meaning Imoen pretty much has to roll a 6 for damage on her short sword, and of course land the backstab to begin with, for us to be somewhat safe. Probability of success: Say 10%. A 16% chance of Imoen rolling max damage for the hit, reduce it by say one-third to account for the risk of her missing (we don't know Tarnesh's unbuffed armor class).
Option 3: Run off, find more help, and return in force. Probability of success: 100% if we grab a cleric, since Tarnesh is a sucker for Command. Still, this is the sissy option, and Archibald is anything but a sissy.
Having discarded option 3, Archibald reasons that 10% is a lot better odds than 1%, so option 2 it is.
Imoen sneaks up, oil of speed active (to give her a chance to land a second hit if the backstab fails to kill Tarnesh, even though her odds to hit after his defenses go up are next to non-existent), and engages. She lands her backstab, but probability bites us in the rear.
OK.. OK, we can fix this. Imoen might get a lucky critical hit. Archibald moves up and adds his paltry sling bullets to the mix. Tarnesh sleeps Imoen, Archibald counters with a Spook, which Tarnesh saves against. At this point our brave hero basically panics and beats a disorganized retreat. The round after, Tarnesh tosses out a Magic Missile, and Imoen drops:
Crap on a stick. Tarnesh is now hunting us. We're immune to his Magic Missiles, but he still has Horror, an Acid Arrow, and that damnable quarterstaff (we only have 4 HP after all, so even a staff-wielding mage is a danger). Trying to avoid him only works so long, and eventually he finds us cowering in a corner.
However, this is where our luck changes. Tarnesh fails his save against Spook, and while he's running around, his Mirror Image wears off on its own. Once he recovers, Archibald miraculously scores a hit with his sling at just the right time, interrupting Tarnesh's Horror. By now the three guards in the courtyard have noticed the commotion and are swinging wildly at the would-be assassin. Unfortunately, he gets off his Acid Arrow.. which hits Archibald for 3 damage. Down a healing potion, and we're back to 4 HP. The Acid Arrow ticks again.. and again only hits for 3 damage! Another healing potion and a LOT of running around later, the guards finally manage to take Tarnesh down.
I guess it IS better to be lucky than good. The guards didn't even move on top of where the now deceased Tarnesh was standing, so we get to swipe his gold and spell scrolls. Imoen is raised, and Khalid/Jaheira recruited.
From here, it's quite smooth sailing. Archibald decides to shake things up a bit however; Khalid will be our resident archer, while Jaheira takes point. Once you get him to L6 and thereby 3 pips in Longbow, Khalid is actually a pretty mean sniper. Even meaner now that the dexterity tome is up for grabs, which will eventually push him to 17 natural dexterity. As for Jaheira, she has the advantage of getting to cast Armor of Faith a large number of times per day. Once she hits L5 druid, that's 10% damage resistance to almost everything, which will doubtless come in handy against some of the heavy hitters.
The party clears out hobgoblins, the belted ogre, and Beregostian spiders in short order. Next on the agenda is filling up the party roster. The idea here, again in keeping with somewhat unusual combinations, is grabbing Branwen and Xan, and eventually dual-classing Imoen. In the end, assuming we survive the very harsh early levels, we'll have three full arcane casters, one full cleric and half a druid. Not bad.. only Khalid will be stuck without magic.
But that's a long way into the future. For now, we make our way down to Nashkel, easily cleansing the hobgoblins blocking our progress (Khalid doing 95% of said cleansing with his bow). We grab a scroll from the local temple, and free Branwen. A quick rest later, Neira falls to our might:
Our immediate goals are now, in order: #1. Get everyone at least one more level (Jaheira and Imoen have already leveled, but more is always better). #2. Gather enough gold to afford the Wand of Sleep from High Hedge. Why? See goal #3. #3. Pick up Xan to finish our party lineup. This is what goal #1 and #2 are all about. We need more HP to improve our chances of surviving stray kobold arrows, and we need access to Sleep to have even a shot at pushing through the improved Nashkel Mine with this poor, squishy party.
We won't actually kill Mulahey when we pick up Xan. As we learned from Odrelomp's example, those bounty hunters (which only hunt you down once you've started chapter 3 and are level 3 or higher) are truly nasty, even for a sturdy halfling. Imagine what they'll do to a frail Sorcerer...
No, we'll pick up Xan, then have him cast Invisibility on himself from a scroll (Branwen talking to him under Sanctuary), and simply walk past Mulahey. Get powerful by adventuring around the Sword Coast, then return with a vengeance to lay Mulahey low.
But that is in the future. For now, Archibald and friends will enjoy a few drinks and warm, safe beds at the Nashkel Inn. Archibald remains a level 1 Sorcerer.
Archibald and gang moves north of Nashkel, to hunt some half-ogres and bandits. The first encounter goes well enough, with Teyngan failing his save against first Spook, then Command, thus becoming an easy target.
The half-ogres are another story. Jaheira takes hit upon hit upon hit; we're basically exhausting all our potions. And as if that isn't enough, a bloody cave bear decides to crash the party, homing in on Archibald like a heatseeker:
Having burned all but two of our healing potions, we finally clear out the half-ogres and turn upon the cave bear, who is still wildly chasing Archibald around. It's a victory, but Archibald comes perilously close to those claws on several occasions.
Following this, we interrupt our standard route of going north to tackle Bassilus (since at the moment, he would probably kill us quite handily). We opt instead to turn in some more easy quests around Beregost, and grab the spider extermination rewards.
Not before we take out Silke and Karlat though. Sure, Silke's an L7+ Mage with a sequencer and Stoneskin up, but how bad can it possibly be?
It can actually be very bad. She gets off a Haste before our Magic Missile (cast from a scroll) interrupts her, naturally also making her save against Command. After turning invisible and healing, she throws out an Emotion at us (while saving against another Command), incapacitating the entire party except Branwen. Two rounds later, Branwen's futile effort at a defense meets its preordained end, and the entirety of our sleeping party is unceremoniously clubbed to death.
How embarassing... though I guess this was destined to be a short run. Given that it'd be nice if I could actually COMPLETE a run, I'll probably loosen the stat restriction for the next one. Anyway, Archibald and his unconventional gang are now history.
OK, last try at this. Same restrictions and mod, with one exception: No stat limitation. I waited until I was confident this poor character wouldn't die a horrible untimely death like Archibald, hence this is a rather long post.
Enter a serious contender to complete a run, Evander the True Neutral Totemic Druid:
Roll is legit, took about half an hour to scrounge up (96 total). He has almost no weakness, barring only being able to survive 1 Illithid hit once we move into BG2. He'll get all the tomes as well, and once he's swiped the strength/constitution ones, I may even be able to let him lose in melee occasionally with Barkskin and a Flame Blade. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
As a Totemic Druid, we have no regular shapeshifts. This doesn't really matter, since they're not all that great. What we do have is the ability to summon a spirit animal once per day for every 5 character levels. These spirit animals level with us: At levels 3, 5, 7 and 10, their hit dice goes up to equal our level (they start at 1HD at level 1), and each variant (snake, bear, lion, wolf) has a different ability. At L10 they're essentially as powerful, or more so, than a full-fledged Skeleton Warrior. Very nice, and at the end of BG:EE we'll be able to summon 3 of them per day.
On to the story. Candlekeep comes and goes, as it is wont to do. Carbos is clubbed to death with a Shillelagh, and Shank proves no match for a spirit lion. We embark upon our quest, picking up Imoen along the way.
This time around, let's not rely on luck to see us through battles that we are simply not equipped to fight. Tarnesh is worth a paltry 120 XP but can easily kill us unless we get really lucky with rolls. The solution is simple: Don't fight Tarnesh yet. Given that a shakeup of party composition would also be nice, we opt to just skip past the FAI for now.
Instead, we head north and pick up Ajantis to be our meatshield, and make our way south to Beregost. On the way, we clear out a few hobgoblins (we're seriously strapped for cash, even a few coin drops and rings will be useful at this stage), and have a go at the by now familiar belted ogre. Here we joyously discover the spirit bear's special ability: Save vs death or be panicked. That will probably come in handy at some point (and indeed, is quite nice even in this fight as it means the ogre runs right back into the two Entangle spells he just saved against).
Our intended party is our current three, as well as Minsc, Dynaheir and Branwen. Since they're all fairly easy to aquire, we skip doing the Beregost quests until we're at full capacity. We do clean out the two very minor areas south of Beregost though, starting by dealing with the halfling-murdering SCUM on the road:
I thought I'd really miss Command, but frankly, Entangle serves as a perfectly viable substitute when we're up against mean melee opponents. And unlike Command, Entangle can be used to lock down an entire group of melee hostiles for a long time. If something gets through, Ajantis (under his self-supplied Protection from Evil) handles it.
While in this area, we also clear out a few more hobgoblins, grab their boots and a few healing potions from their cave hidey-hole, and press southward. Even more hobgoblins, even more wanton violence, and we pick up a bloodstone amulet intended for Mr. Colquetle.
Alright, so we're in Nashkel, at long last. We swung by the Carnival and picked up Branwen before, and now Minsc is recruited and outfitted (he'll be using a Composite Longbow, hulking brute that he is).
With a party of five, we feel confident in taking on Neira. And indeed, as is always the case, she lacks the levels to resist Command.
I've had a go at her once around party level 1-2 with no Command, Hold Person etc. She'll typically destroy the entire party then, as one of the first spells she cast is Unholy Blight. Very fast casting time so difficult to interrupt through damage, and at the aforementioned levels, it'll kill anyone of good alignment caught in the area of effect, except very beefy fighters. Nasty.
Anyway, dead she is. We rest up, and then it's off to rescue Dynaheir. Barring a few gibberlings, we sneak through the two preceding areas to the Gnoll Stronghold unnoticed. Once there, it's another quick rest, followed by fighting. Since we're so very low level however, spawns are quite manageable.
We make our way to the Chieftain's group. A double Entangle allows us to control the battlefield, and we emerge victorious without much difficulty.
Dynaheir is rescued, and finally we are at full strength! We take the time to clear out a few Xvarts and steal their stuff (as we always do), then it's back to Nashkel.
Alright, so our party is gathered. Now would probably be a good time to level a bit and gain some gold. We opt for taking the scenic route back up to Beregost. Teyngan and his friends as always prove more deadly than their experience value would seem to indicate, but with a lot of micromanaging and running, we prevail without any deaths.
Seriously: Don't let Teyngan close to melee range. He hits for 13+ damage and has a very good THAC0. Just have him chase one of your mages, don't try to stand up to him unless you're way overleveled.
Anyway, the half-ogres of the area are helpless before Entangle, and fall to focused fire:
Here Evander also gains a level, and is now level 2. Huzzah! Unfortunately, he rolls a 2 for HP before constitution modifier. Boo! This puts him at a total of 12 HP.
Now we're in Bassilus' area. Normally we'd rest and then tackle the entire area, but Branwen is literally a few hundred XP shy of level 3, which would mean Hold Person x3... undoubtedly useful when taking on Bassilus. So we go on a scavenger hunt for experience, and eventually she gains her precious level.
As we're trying to rest to clear the remainder of the area (hobgoblins and Bassilus still being at large), we are assaulted again and again by skeletons. Who prove that weak though they are, a second level Totemic Druid is actually weaker:
A single hit to the head forces Evander to run for his life. There's a lesson to be learned here: Evander is simply not ready for front-line duty yet, and likely won't be for some time. That was actually really lucky. Had one of the other skeletons decided to pelt Evander from range at that time, this run would likely have ended then and there. We'll need to be more careful from now on.
Anyway, eventually we manage to rest uninterrupted. While en route to destroy some over-equipped hobgoblins, we run into quite a nasty random group: Three bandits and a ghast.
Since we can't really close to melee with the ghast, our usual modus operandi of sending Ajantis to clobber the bandits in melee isn't viable. An alternative strategy is devised: Ajantis will draw off the ghast, while a stealthed Minsc chops up the bandits with a little ranged support from the rest of the party. This works out fine, until the ghast manages to get a swipe in at Ajantis, and he fails his save.
Branwen is sent in to draw the ghast off so it won't kill Ajantis, and.. is also hit, failing her save. Drat. We pull out all the stops, Dynaheir tossing a single Magic Missile in, and Imoen unloading her Wand of Magic Missiles. Amazingly, we put the fell beast down moments before it would have finished Ajantis off.
That bit of nastiness behind us, we heal up and engage the hobgoblins to the south. Who are just as annoying as always. Two archers whose arrows poison on hit, and a high-strength melee fighter. Trying to conserve offensive spells for Bassilus means we do this the hard way, and Branwen is poisoned. We wear our opponents down however, and come out still standing.
Alright, so time for the big star of this area, Bassilus. We toss up a quick Bless, and engage. Bassilus' first move is tossing an Unholy Blight, which we fail to interrupt. Thankfully, he aims it at Ajantis, who is the only one in the party with the HP to survive it (having leveled to 3 a while back and now sporting 28 HP).
After this, I'm not sure what happened. We simply can't land a hit on Bassilus to save our life, but at the same time we can't seem to fail our saves against his spells either. Even doomed, he makes every single save against Hold Person and Command too. 5-6 rounds later, Bassilus actually starts to run low on spells (we're completely out by now), and with our very occasional critical hits, we've got him down to badly wounded.
At this point, the bugger casts Sanctuary, followed by Cure Critical Wounds. Arg. We've had enough! Minsc quaffs our one and only oil of speed, and follows Bassilus around while we await his Sanctuary dropping. Once it does, we re-engage, and eventually manage to bring him down.. though a lot of healing potions were required.
Having finally bested the mad cleric, we complete our Beregost circuit. Melicamp actually survives his transformation, and provides us with 2000 XP, which is always a good thing. Every quest in or around Beregost is finished... except Silke. Confident or no, there's no way we're tackling her without some means of dispelling Invisibility. Not to mention a few Magic Missiles to punch through her Mirror Image.
Turning in quests actually accrues a fair bit of experience, and around here somewhere, Evander turns level 3, rolling an 8 (ie max) for HP before constitution modifier. Yay! And we get a new spell level too. Except most second level druid spells are highly situational... still, it's better than nothing. Third level also means our spirit animal grows in power, so it's all good.
We hop on over to the FAI, and at long last, Tarnesh gets what's coming to him.
Command is really the only guaranteed way of dealing with him. Sleep works too, but you may get unlucky with him making his saves... better to be certain.
Having turned in every quest at the FAI, the party relaxes for a bit, and here we leave them for the time being. Evander is now a third level Totemic Druid.
Evander lives, though we had another close call, as you'll soon see.
Exiting the FAI, the party heads southwards. More power is needed before proceeding, and the areas around Nashkel will provide us with that power.
First up, triggering Dorn's ambush. In a stunning turn of events, Dynaheir actually survives the initial volley, saving us a few hundred gold in Raise Dead costs.
And Ajantis finally gets to put on plate. Not bad.
Next up, cleansing the areas west of Nashkel. Once again the poor xvarts and their resident cavebears cannot stand against us. The mighty ogre berserkers just north of the stronghold are another story, however. Fortunately, a double heaping helping of Grease and Entangle spells their (slow but steady) ranged doom:
Not evident in the screenshot is Dynaheir's glee at surviving the hobgoblin ambush Neville put into play earlier. Shield and a spare Protection from Evil, along with an immediate casting of Larloch's Minor Drain, let her live just long enough for the party to put down her antagonists.
Anyway, forth we venture. Amazingly, just east of the stronghold Dynaheir finds a use for Power Word: Sleep, in that it can be utilized to keep pesky but dangerous gnolls from bothering Minsc:
I never thought I'd find a practical use for that spell, but what do you know.. of course it's still incredibly situational and probably not worth it once Dynaheir acquires Agannazar's Scorcher, but we can enjoy the cool graphics of it in the interim.
Gnolls put down, we proceed to deal with Sendai. As always with nasty SCS archers against a fairly low-level group, we take a good deal of lumps, but eventually come out on top. And hey, once again PW:S actually gets to do something (prevent an injured but hasted archer from running away to keep plinking at us):
Naturally, we take out Vax and Zal on the way. That bit of nastiness done with, we return to Nashkel, laden with valuable loot and everyone up by a level. Good.
Alright, so we're a full party of L3-L4 adventurers. I think we can handle one little mage that doesn't even have L4 spells available, namely Zordral. Unfortunately, we're about to find out what happens when we break what I now consider to be the cardinal rule of SCS runs: Don't assume any mage to be a pushover. Really, just don't.
We're outside the tent. Apply the standard buffs: Remove Fear, Chant, Bless, and CHARGE! Zordral, of course, takes one look at us, sniffs disdainfully, and incapacitates the whole damn party except Ajantis with a single sleep spell:
That was not even funny. Always assume every mage has Sleep available, and just do not go after them until at least your big bruisers are level 5 or higher! Arr!
OK, Ajantis is still up. This is going to come down to whether or not Zordral has any additional disabling spells prepared. Thank heaven for small mercies I guess, because he's a Conjurer. He tosses out two Summon Monster I while Ajantis tries to bring down his Mirror Images. A few dogs and a tasloi aren't going to kill Ajantis though, who keeps wailing on Zordral.
Zordral continues with Glitterdust, Melf's Acid Arrow, Charm Person and a solitary Magic Missile. Ajantis makes both saves, and just keeps pounding on the mad mage while downing a few healing potions. When Zordral pulls his quarterstaff and engages in melee, I realize it's over. We've won!
That was just way too close for comfort. If Ajantis had failed his initial Sleep save, we'd all be dead. Had he failed his save against Charm Person, we'd all be dead. This has further shored up my resolve to just leave Silke be until everyone is level 5 or higher.
Anyway, after quite a long time, everyone wakes up, and we can leave this cursed place. While we're in the area though, we might as well take care of Greywolf. Thankfully, he falls a lot easier than Zordral:
We depart for yet another small area (home of the xvart-targetted cow), and that's as far as we make it this time around. Evander is now a fourth level Totemic Druid.
I'm having trouble following this thread now, because it's got way too many screen shots in it. They won't all load, and the page keeps skipping up and down. In a post with more than one screenshot, placing spoiler tags around the screenshots is a nice courtesy to readers and their browsers.
Question: Since you had so many points to spare, why didn't you give him a 16 constitution for max hp? Were you planning for the tome or something like that? Also, higher stats wouldn't have saved you against Silke's Emotion:Hopeless spell. The only way to win an SCS no-reload (which I haven't - I know this from reading the runs of successful no-reloaders) is to memorize all the encounters, and then prepare ahead with the correct potions or scrolls.
I believe you need a green protection from magic scroll, or a potion of magic blocking, to defend against Emotion:Hopeless. Other tactics might include sending in summonses to try to draw out the spells (although I've heard that SCS mages will not waste their spells on summonses), sending in an invisible thief for a backstab, taking your party out of range and casting a cloud spell into the area, (or Silence, or Web, or some other disabler). Hold your main character out of range sometimes. Try sending in party members one at a time as "sacrificial lambs" to the stronger spells. It's doable, but it takes a lot of memorization and a lot of planning.
Good luck to your new totemic druid! I look forward to seeing how you do.
I'm having trouble following this thread now, because it's got way too many screen shots in it. They won't all load, and the page keeps skipping up and down. In a post with more than one screenshot, placing spoiler tags around the screenshots is a nice courtesy to readers and their browsers.
Question: Since you had so many points to spare, why didn't you give him a 16 constitution for max hp? Were you planning for the tome or something like that? Also, higher stats wouldn't have saved you against Silke's Emotion:Hopeless spell. The only way to win an SCS no-reload (which I haven't - I know this from reading the runs of successful no-reloaders) is to memorize all the encounters, and then prepare ahead with the correct potions or scrolls.
I believe you need a green protection from magic scroll, or a potion of magic blocking, to defend against Emotion:Hopeless. Other tactics might include sending in summonses to try to draw out the spells (although I've heard that SCS mages will not waste their spells on summonses), sending in an invisible thief for a backstab, taking your party out of range and casting a cloud spell into the area, (or Silence, or Web, or some other disabler). Hold your main character out of range sometimes. Try sending in party members one at a time as "sacrificial lambs" to the stronger spells. It's doable, but it takes a lot of memorization and a lot of planning.
Good luck to your new totemic druid! I look forward to seeing how you do.
I'll go back and edit in spoiler tags when I get a chance, didn't realize my plethora of screenshots would render the thread hard to follow. I actually had difficulties uploading a few screenshots, maybe it doesn't handle the load well...
Yep, I'm planning for the tome. I could have easily spared a point of charisma to boost constitution to 16, but the stat screen just looked so pretty with 4 stats at 18...
I know stats wouldn't have saved me, but poor Archibald was going to meet his end sooner or later. Crappy HP notwithstanding, that party setup would have a very harsh time until our three arcane casters reached respectable (5+) levels, and even then we'd be very vulnerable if caught without our most powerful spells prepared. Not ideal for SCS. While I obviously don't have every SCS encounter memorized, I do know every powerful enemy mage in the game by heart, and will be taking extra care when I'm about to engage one. Whether or not this will be enough to get by remains to be seen. Probably not, but it'll be fun nonetheless.
It's true that SCS mages typically won't use spells on summons, but that doesn't mean they're useless. Absurdly prebuffed or not, a mage is still a mage, with crappy hitpoints... send up a few summons (under the watchful gaze of someone with Invisibility on) and watch them tear through the mage's Stoneskins/Mirror Images as the mage futilely try to take them down with Melf Minute Meteors or just his staff.
Of course, if he does kill your summons, he's going to come looking for you next...
When last we saw our hero, he and his companions were preparing to cleanse the cow-area (I haven't got a better name for it). Which went fine, except a small miscalculation.. yes, once again the bloody ogre berserkers demand a tribute. Somehow, one of them made his way past 2 Grease and 2 Entangle, and clobbered Ajantis silly:
I think that, after casters of any kind, those damnable berserkers are my most feared enemy. You simply cannot stand up to them, and with random HP they'll rip even fighters apart with ease...
Anyway, Ajantis was left in mostly one piece, and so we were able to raise him. After returning and eradicating all opposition with a vengeance, the party heads north of the Friendly Arm Inn to gather materials for a lovely new set of armor for Evander (not to mention assorted loot and experience).
A large number of Command, Blindness and the like later (Dynaheir not having access to Enchantment and thereby lacking Sleep), Evander finally turns from low-powered healer to moderately useful in a fight:
With the bonus from 18 wisdom, we wind up with 2 L3 slots for Evander. Finally we've got some options... Invisibility Purge (meh), Miscast Magic (little less meh), Call Lightning (nice!) and Summon Insects (not bad either). This'll spruce up our potential tactics a bit. You'll also notice Imoen is invisible in that screenshot. Yep, she was dual-classed at L5, so we're thief-less for a while. Should be fine though, and we'll probably need the added arcane firepower.
A number of dead ankhegs later, we're still in cleanup mode. Given that we now have the two key ingredients to defeating Silke (being able to dispel invisibility and having access to two mages with MM to bring down her Mirror Images), we go after her. Of course, with a party at L4-5 it's a bit overkill: We successfully interrupt her Haste, followed by landing a Silence, and down she goes.
Might as well finish the Beregost circuit. A pack of wolves at the Temple fall, mostly thanks to Evander's downright nasty Call Lightning:
One more small adventure before we retire for the moment.. the (former) home of the Amazon Assassins. Of course, even though the Amazons are now roaming, waiting to track us down until we move into chapter 3, we still have to contend with Narcillicus. Still, we're decent level and should be able to overpower him. Let's see what happens.
Cripes.. look at those buffs. OK, run away, fast.
After disposing of our spirit snake, Narcillicus goes on the prowl, trying to track us down. Which he eventually does... so we send a sacrificial pawn (Ajantis) in, with a Potion of Magic Shielding active.
Amazingly, Narcillicus seems to have spent nearly all his high-level slots on his protections and the Melf's Minute Meteors he wasted killing our snake. After tossing a Web and Charm Person at Ajantis, he seems to run out of spells. More importantly, his MGoI wears off.. and he traps himself in his own Web. Check mate, little wizard.
Yeah, it was probably not the brightest of ideas to take him on at this level. Still, what's a no-reload worth if you never take any risks? Just adds to the excitement. All is still well, and the party cleans out the remainder of the area with little trouble (Ajantis gets Held by three ghasts in one of the tombs, but foresight has armed Branwen with a Remove Paralysis, which clears the situation right up).
After all this, Evander is still level 5, and closing rapidly on 6.
Quite a short Evander update this time around (don't worry, he's alive).
Alright, Evander is running out of low-risk areas in which to practice... but Ulcaster still remains. Icharyd poses no real issue, even though there's a decided lack of weapons on our team that can harm him (Ajantis borrows Ashideena from Branwen, and Minsc swipes Dynaheir's Quarterstaff +1). Given that he's immune to normal weapons and has serious magic resistance, there's really not much tactic involved.. just hit him until he falls over:
Even without a thief, Ulcaster proper is cleansed without incident. A large part of that is probably due to having Ajantis quaff a Potion of Freedom prior to taking on the improved Vampiric Wolf at the end of it however, as that paralysing bite can wreck havoc otherwise.
What did I do about the traps? Sent the paladin to trip them, of course. Though we almost had a mishap: the fireball trap in front of the final treasure pile zinged Ajantis for almost 40 damage after he had gulped a Potion of Fire Resistance, pretty gruesome. Should've probably boosted him to 100%+ resistance, but at least he survived.
Following turning the book in to Ulcaster himself, the party roams for a few minutes, and a poor kobold commando provides Evander with the miniscule XP he needs to hit level 6:
Another third level spell slot, and we're one step closer to fourth level spells, and the phenomenal cosmic power (or something like that) they bring!
OK, so.. we're basically out of safe stuff to do. Most remaining areas have at least one powerful mage or other nasty critter (such as sirines, doomguard etc). With this in mind, now seems a good a time as any to progress the plot a bit.
In keeping with this thought, the party at long last descends into the Nashkel Mine. Though the kobolds have no chance at all of wiping us out by now, they are still a menace given their numbers and propensity to aim for our mages, but we laboriously clear a path down to Mulahey without losing anyone.
Once again, I opted to try the battle without disabling the buggy component. Once again, we come through alright. Given that we intend to fry Mulahey's reinforcements with a Wand of Fire, it's probably a good idea if as few of us as possible are present near the entrance to his cave, where said reinforcements appear. Imoen, Dynaheir, Evander and Branwen are all rendered invisible. Minsc stealthily sneaks up alongside us, leaving a somewhat buffed Ajantis (Protection from Fire, Potion of Defense) to hold the entrance.
Once we break out of our concealment, Mulahey drops like a rock. The never-ending spawning of kobolds begins.. and we actually manage to stop it again, by simultaneously frying every critter at the entrance with a well-placed Fireball.
Yeah... it took two fireballs (didn't aim the first one properly). Still, the party is alive and well, aside from Ajantis exuding a barbeque-like odor.
Lots of looting later, we're back in Nashkel. Poor Nimbul is completely overwhelmed, despite doing a pretty good job of selecting his defensive spells. Should've packed a Shield in there as well Nimbul... you'd have lived longer.
So, the party retires to the Nashkel Inn. We are now being actively hunted, meaning we must always have the resources on hand to defeat an entire enemy party with superior positioning. I think we'll be alright, though. Evander is currently a level 6 Totemic Druid.
Comments
Well been a while since I updated Lian - they progressed a bit further in small segments over the past couple weeks - but their progress is too vague to journal it properly so I'll just summarize -we did some shopping at Ulgoths Beard then finished Dorns quest and entered BG City - took on Merchants League and Seven Suns and just finished the sewers but have not reported back to Scar yet.
Dorn has shared a bit more about his meek and unassuming personality along with some amusing tales involving a small insignificant village - Lian wonders if he is trying to impress him...perhaps putting Dorn in the lead slot has gone to his head...
Just accepted Razzys quest for the nymph which will probably be our next destination after rest at Elfsong.
In case you forgot the party consists of
Dorn (6)
Kagain (6)
Viconia (just went to 7 in the sewers)
Edwin (6)
Baeloth (7)
Lian Longshot F5/T6
There's not much that has challenged the group to any degree in BG City so far and most of the time Dorn, Kagain, and Viccy stomp in with weapons swinging while Lian and the two magelings add arrows, stones, and darts to the mix with the occasional spell cast. The three tanks got held in the sewers with the carrion crawlers and ogre and the other three bailed them out - was probably the most spells used in battle since we hit town. Maybe I'll recruit Tiax to take Baeloths place for a while (assuming Baeloth won't leave for good) Rep is 10 now.
Well BG City has a dwindling population of mages thanks to Lian & Co's recent excursions - Both Ragefast and Razzy have gone on to a better place as well as thier new freind Baeloth. Ragefast never got a spell off but Lian took pity on the nymph and set her free. This of course did not set well with thier employer Razzy who taunted them to follow him up to his tower lair if they dared.
As it turned out they had to find the way on their own as poor Razzy never made it off the ground floor but Baeloth fell to a couple of the ghasts as the party made their way to Razzys penthouse and the group decided they were tired of his overbearing manner anyway.
They stumbled on to the Helm & Cloak Inn after Razzys lair and managed to take down the riff raff that showed up in spite of their wounds from Razzys minions and Baeloths absence. On a breif visit to the bridge area they spoke to a gnomish fellow named Quayle and Lian was so entertained by his banty rooster style he hired him immediately. A mage and cleric he will no doubt prove useful in battle as well as keeping the party entertained - a very suitable replacement for Baeloth no doubt.
*********************
The group continues to be near indestructable - a bad sign for a no reload group as it usually leads to over confidence and an untimely end but we shall hope for the best. Not sure what we will do next.
If only home welcomed her.
My self-imposed restrictions and rules:
I'll be playing on core rules at all times, so randomized HP rolls and chance to learn spells.
Protagonist may not have a better stat role than the minimum of 75, the stats of which may not be altered, but I can reroll until I get a distribution I'm satisfied with.
I'll be roleplaying my alignment to the best of my ability. Given that I mostly play Good characters, that means no robbing every house blind, threatening Borda to get to kill him for XP and items etc.
No easter-eggs. That means no early Ring of Evermemory, or Ankheg Plate, Ring of Fire Resistance etc... if my character couldn't reasonably expect there to be a powerful magical item somewhere (like under a tree in the middle of a forest), he won't pick it up.
Some minor metagaming will be OK (mainly to know where quest NPC's are holed up), because otherwise you pretty much miss out on half the quests. All in the spirit of my character's alignment though, as stated above.
I'll also be running a full SCS ( http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/16019/sword-coast-stratagems-now-available-in-beta-for-bgee/p1 ) install
WeiDu modlist:
// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1000 // Initialise mod (all other components require this): v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1910 // Protection from Normal Missiles also blocks Arrows of Fire/Cold/Acid and similar projectiles without pluses: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2020 // Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2030 // Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2111 // Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic -> Inquisitors dispel at their level (not twice their level): v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2120 // Slightly weaken insect plague spells, and let fire shields block them: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2150 // Make spell sequencers, spell triggers, and contingencies learnable by all mages: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3000 // Replace BG1-style elemental arrows with BG2 versions: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3010 // Replace +1 arrows with nonmagical "fine" ones: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3021 // Replace many +1 magical weapons with Fine ones -> Fine weapons are immune to the iron crisis: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3030 // Re-introduce potions of extra-healing: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3040 // Reduce the number of Arrows of Dispelling in stores -> Remove Arrows of Dispelling from stores: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // Faster Bears: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4010 // Grant large, flying, non-solid or similar creatures protection from Web and Entangle: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5010 // Move Boo into Minsc's pack: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6030 // Smarter Mages -> Mages cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6040 // Smarter Priests -> Priests cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6104 // Potions for NPCs -> All of the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity party: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v23(BETA)
I'm a novice to SCS having only played it a few times and never gotten past chapter 2, and fully expect to have a number of early casualties. Still, why not make this a real challenge...
For my first attempt, I'm resurrecting one of my favorite characters: Odrelomp Gogglebur, the Neutral Good halfling Priest of Lathander!
Stats actually didn't turn out awful, although they're certainly not good. Decent Wisdom for the vital early bonus spells, and +2 HP per level from Constitution (which matters quite a bit with SCS and random HP on level up). Unfortunately he won't be wearing plate any time soon.. or medium shields, for that matter.
At a stretch (and after the Strength tome) he could wear magical chainmail/splintmail, but until then, looks like he's stuck with studded leather and the magic variants thereof. That plus no Dexterity bonus to armor class means I'll have to be very careful with him around archers.
Starting proficiencies went into Sling and Sword and Shield style. Reasons being he won't be able to hit anything that isn't held or sleeping in meele this early regardless, and the extra -1 to ranged AC might save him at some point in the future. Maybe not sound reasoning, but L4 should come rather rapidly if he survives, at which point I'll pick up War Hammer proficiency.
And so, on to the actual attempt!
Danger didn't take long to find Odrelomp. In fact, there were three separate attempts on his life within the very walls of Candlekeep (one by a nefarious cabal of rats, of all things). One of those attempts actually turned into our first semi-close call.
Carbos was easily dispatched by a Command and a sling bullet to the vital parts. Shank, being an Elf and therefore almost immune to the sleep effect, was a different matter. After getting off a Magical Stone that only did 2 damage, Odrelomp tried to keep his distance from Shank while pelting him with bullets. This was the result:
Yep, as soon as Shank was out of Odrelomp's line of sight, the sneaky bastard actually hid in shadows and pulled off a backstab! Scary stuff when you only have 10 HP. Shank landed another blow for 1 HP before Odrelomp could best him, so it was a profusely bleeding halfling that limped out of that priests' quarters.
Having (narrowly) survived the attempts on his life, Odrelomp follows the regular routine: Sleeps to regain spells, goes off with Gorion only to witness him die, and teams up with Imoen. Aside from a Diseased Gibberling, the pair arrive at the Friendly Arm Inn without incident.
Of course, you know what's coming. Yep, that bane of 1st-level characters, Tarnesh. Being a decidedly good-natured fellow, it would never occur to Odrelomp to use Xzar and Montaron as meatsacks/spellsponges (although they probably deserve it), so our resources for this fight are rather thin.
Thankfully, even though SCS Tarnesh is far more dangerous than the vanilla version, he has one weakness: He's not 6th level or above, and so does not get to make a saving throw against Command. Which ultimately proves to be his downfall:
Following this, cleaning up the hobgoblins around the Inn and returning Joia's ring with the help of Khalid and Jaheira is virtual child's play. One well-deserved rest later, the heroic quartet make their way south to Beregost, stopping on the way to relieve an ogre of his belts (Command once again proving absolutely invaluable, both against the ogre and his wolf friend).
The party are currently recovering from their escapades at Feldepost's Inn, Jaheira having turned L2 Fighter/L2 Druid by Odrelomp skillfully delegating the task of talking Marl down to Imoen.
More to come, for sure.
However, taking on the halfling-murdering ogrillons south of Beregost netted the desired result: Level 2 for Odrelomp and Imoen, with Odrelomp rolling 6 for HP before Con bonus, putting him at a respectable 18 HP total and therefore empowering him with the ability to survive two arrows without complaint, which is a 100% improvement to the previous arrow-surviving-situation!
With that necessary level up out of the way, the gang pressed south for Nashkel, and (naturally) picked up Minsc. Following a quick rest, it was off at double pace towards the Gnoll Stronghold. While en route, a pleasant surprise: A winter wolf volunteered a nice chunk of XP, putting Khalid at level 2. Sadly, he only rolled a 3 for HP before Con bonus, but oh well... at least he's going places.
Upon arriving at the Gnoll Stronghold (and resting.. always with the resting), the fighting was actually pretty stiff. Given that Khalid was still wearing splint mail at the time, he was getting beat on a lot, and healing spells ran dry during the fight with the chieftain.
With potions in short supply, Odrelomp figures he might as well save on the party's precious few resources and send a raging Minsc to the front. This... was a mistake.
Oh, Minsc cut a bloody swath across the battlefield alright. Unfortunately Odrelomp forgot to aim the dangerous end at the gnolls before instructing Minsc to rage, which of course means this happens:
Quite a bit of undignified screaming and running later, Minsc was eventually persuaded to stop killing the party and start killing the enemy. Bit of a miracle only Jaheira went under... and even more of a miracle she wasn't chunked.
Fortunately, the party managed to not only save Dynaheir after this (with Jaheira still dead, of course) but also returned to Nashkel and raised the unfortunate druidess without incident.
As a fitting finale to this session, Odrelomp decides to head towards the Nashkel Mines. Not to go through them mind you, but rather to trigger Dorn's ambush so we can get a suit of plate mail for Khalid off the female elf (here's that tiny bit of metagaming I was talking about earlier).
Of course, Dorn is quite sloppy and always leaves two archers alive. Which is somewhat of a problem when you have one very squishy, very low level (1) mage with you.
At first I was fully expecting Minsc to go berserk and bisect poor Odrelomp, but thankfully he kept his cool. Back to Nashkel again for another resurrection, fortunately with no added complications along the way.
However, all clouds have a silver lining, and in this case, it comes in the form of mighty Odrelomp now being a level 3 Priest of Lathander. 4 HP rolled before Con bonus.. acceptable, and he now sports a respectable 24 HP.
The party is now recovering at the Nashkel Inn. Two party deaths in such a short span of time can put anyone on edge...
Having recovered his halfling gusto (aided by a number of alcoholic drinks) at the Nashkel Inn, Odrelomp & Co. set out to further assist the beleaguered citizens of Beregost, starting with cleansing the hills of a clan of Half-Ogres.
Unfortunately, the entire party had to turn around within minutes of arriving at the scene: While battling an obscene amount of gnolls advancing from the north, the party was encircled by a vanguard of cunning Flinds from the south, and the same thing happened that always seems to happen when there are enemy combatans of any kind, shape or color around: Dynaheir bit the dust.
OK, technically the Flinds just spawned behind the party, but I like the explanation above better. I noticed them when Dynaheir took a critical hit for 5 damage, told her to move (not much point popping a potion when she has 6 max HP against Flinds that are in meele range) and Odrelomp to Command a Flind.. and there goes a second critical hit, and she's gone.
Back to Nashkel for a quick Raise Dead, and then straight back to fighting gnolls and Half-Ogres. With better results this time, although Dynaheir was reduced to 1 HP and poisoned by a hobgoblin while running away from that mace-wielding bandit and 3 gnolls... the party doesn't have enough disablers (only brave Odrelomp) to completely hold down a battlefield yet.
Following this, it seemed a natural course to go after Bassilus. Unfortunately, before reaching Bassi the party decides to take on some lowly hobgoblins (one of whom has a Shortsword +2), resulting in Dynaheir once again displaying her propensity for catching arrows with vital organs, and subsequently dying:
You'll note that Khalid is dead in that photo as well. Yep, turns out he is just enough of a wuss to get beaten to death in melee by a single archer hobgoblin who got tired of being chased and turned around to fight. No joke. And before that he came very close to dying when fighting a bandit. Come on Khalid, you're just embarassing the party...
So, two Raise Deads later, we finally get to engage Bassilus. Bit of a bug here as his servants did not turn hostile (which I reckon they're supposed to), which made the fight a lot easier. Bassi failed his save against Silence with a Doom stacked on him beforehand, and so was no longer a credible threat:
Following turning Bassilus' bounty in, the party took down Silke, who never got an offensive spell off. Not for lack of trying, though: With SCS she starts with Stoneskin active, has an Invisibility/Mirror Image minor sequencer prepared, another Mirror Image memorized AND healing potions (which she'll quaff while invisible), so it was basically a LOT of shooting/magic missile'ing before she went down.
Not feeling quite done for the moment, the party decided to tackle that weird little area with the cow being attacked by xvarts. Which was a bit scary when it comes to the ogres, as they had an Ogre Berserker mixed in with them. Again, SCS makes it more frightening, since they now get the Berserk ability, have a ton of hitpoints, and will gladly one-shot your fighter regardless of HP and armor class. Thankfully, our one and only Blindness scroll did its work, and the party (though scattered from frantically trying to flee the morningstar-wielding monstrosity) was eventually able to pelt it down. Although its Berserk wore off before we could finish it and the damage killed it, thereby denying the party XP. Hmph.
Another area cleaned, and another level! Odrelomp just managed to scrounge enough experience to hit level 4, rolling a five for hitpoints before con modifier, which puts him at 31 HP total (and now with war hammer proficiency). Not bad, not bad.. soon he might even have a chance of surviving an errant lightning bolt.
Its work for the time being done, the party has retreated to Nashkel. Khalid will be getting instructions on how not to be such a massive wimp as to be undone by a single rabid hobgoblin in meele, and Dynaheir will be pining for reaching level 3 and being able to just stay invisible rather than acting as a pincushion.
+
I still think this mod gives the AI a pretty serious advantage though, rather than put us on equal footing. They can always blow their entire spellbook and all their resources (enemies above the lowly ranks of bandits/hobgoblins tend to get a lot of potions now, most notably oil of speed and healing potions) on a single fight, whereas I have to try and conserve a bit. It is good fun though, and especially mages become a LOT more lethal.
When last we saw our intrepid heroes, they were gathering their wits in Nashkel. Opting for some diversions before battling demons and the like in the depths of Nashkel's mines, Odrelomp heads out to the west, followers in tow.
Of course, these were familiar stomping grounds for the party, having passed through weeks ago while on a quest to save Dynaheir. This time, they were being serious about it though.. not a monster nor scrap of treasure would be left in their wake.
Not much to write about Xvart Village, really. The party as it was, even back then, could have probably handled 50-60 of them at once without much trouble. At least the spawns are fixed though, as the screenshot illustrates.
The party didn't press their luck with Borda. Not only because I'd rather not fight a high-level mage with near 100% spell resistance just for a magical shortsword and a few easily attainable spell scrolls, but also because it'd be really freaking evil to try and rob someone... Odrelomp simply declined Borda's offer politely and went on his way.
The area north of the Gnoll Stronghold provided a few minor battles. Neville and his chumps are actually a moderate challenge now, primarily because they get better positioning (his 5 hobgoblins surround the party), and because Neville himself always has a few potions available. Still, judicious application of a Potion of Defense, stealth for Imoen and Sanctuary for Odrelomp secured the victory.
Finally, there were the ogre berserkers and hobgoblins blockading the bridge. Apart from one berserker killing himself by having Berserk expire though, it was quite easy, primarily because Minsc is a surprisingly effective archer (and Jaheira helped with Entangle x2):
Clearing out the Xvart's at Gnoll Stronghold and stealing their stuff (mostly low-level spell scrolls, a few healing potions and the Charisma tome) was without incident. However, while traveling to the area east of Gnoll Stronghold, there was a pretty unwelcome ambush.
I'll admit I was a bit worried there. Fortunately, even though the Ogre Magi managed to sleep half the party, brave Minsc (who is probably the most powerful in the party by a factor of three) got in a nice juicy hit for 19 damage while raging, and that put the fell beast down.
Sendai also proved challenging. I actually had an internal debate about whether or not Odrelomp should engage her (as you can get by without having her go hostile), but arrived at the conclusion that it was motivated, even for a Good PC. She's rude (not a big deal), threatening (this is a big deal) and you don't even have to threaten her back to have her attack you, just say that you don't want to leave the area and she'll charge.
Her archer buddies caused a bit of a headache, and Dynaheir once again came close to taking a dirtnap, but the party pulled through:
And with that, the party had completed the lower Nashkel circuit. Odrelomp still wasn't confident about going in the mines however; not only because of the kobolds, but due to another reason which will become apparent at the end of this post.
Thus wanting another level for all concerned, the party headed off to do some Ankheg hunting. No screenshots here, as we never came even close to dying.. Khalid had to chug a few healing potions occasionally, but Ankhegs are as vulnerable as any low-HD critter to Command. Having cleared the Ankheg's out, the party of course also invested in having some nice Ankheg plate made (and passed by Ulgoth's Beard as well to grab the lovely cloak there). They also cleared out some zombies real quick-like near Baldur's Gate, and helped the lesser of two evils gain control of some golden bowl.
Somewhere around there, Odrelomp (and indeed, the entire party) gained a level, and he now has access to 3rd level spells (though he could cast only one per day, given that he doesn't have fantastic wisdom).
This experience under his belt, Odrelomp finally had the confidence to move in on the mines. Though he might as well take care of Zordral first while he's in the area:
You'll notice that the friendly witch is dead. Apparently, when you select the calm, good options with Zordral, as opposed to taunting him, he'll always kill her. Meh. At least a few extra potions and a robe were gained. Zordral proved a little challenging, but nothing the party couldn't stomach (indeed, as can be gleaned from the screenshot, half of them slept through the entire fight).
Alright! Finally time to clean out some kobolds! With a brief stop to handle Greywolf first of course, whom (due to failing his saving throw against Hold Person) wasn't a threat, oil of speed nonwithstanding.
With the entire party around L4-5, the kobolds couldn't do much, even though they came in prodigious numbers. A lucky commando burned off half of Imoen's hitpoints with a nasty critical hit, but that was about it.
Alright, so, about Mulahey.. this fight seems a little bugged in SCS currently. I decided to try it anyway without uninstalling the component. What happens is, once Mulahey spots you and gives his Evil Rant, he calls for help. Which keeps spawning. Indefinitely. With the party cornered by a few dozen Kobold Commandos, Guards and Skeletons, Dynaheir panicked and used her Wand of Fire to discharge a massive fireball on the poor critters. Note that the "poor critters" includes Khalid, who was standing a little close to the epicentre and got a bad tan. Bad as in killing him.
However, the good news is that this seemed to fix the bug. All the kobolds and skeletons were killed, and no more spawned. Hence, the party could (aided by lots of Invisibility and Sanctuary) move in close to Mulahey and finish him off with ease:
The return to Nashkel actually went off without a hitch. Khalid was raised, and Nimbul easily put down. I was worried he'd rip the party apart given how low they were on offensive/buffing magic, but SCS has him use his spells almost exclusively for defense, and try to fight in melee instead. A single melee enemy, no matter how buffed, isn't very dangerous any more. Although he did discharge a Chromatic Orb x 2 trigger at Imoen, she lived to tell about it.
Alright, so we're high(ish) level, might as well get on with the plot. The party moves to Beregost, rests up, then goes to confront Tranzig. Who talks to us the second he spots us on the stairwell, then throws up a myriad of protections and Horrors the entire party (clever that Odrelomp forgot to cast Remove Fear). Fortunately, Imoen makes her save, and in another twist of good fortune, scores a couple quick critical hits on Tranzig, who panics, preventing him from magic missile'ing Imoen down.
That could've gone a lot worse. Anyway, the party is safe and sound.
Remember how I said there was another reason behind the party clearing out Ankhegs before proceeding with the mines? That reason is about to rear its ugly head. As the party leaves Feldepost's Inn... this happens:
Yep, those are the Amazons. They and the party you find outside Gullykin no longer just stand around waiting to be killed in SCS; they'll instead search out and ambush your party at random times once you get into chapter 3. The reason you can't see the two female thieves is that they've just stealthed and are moving into position to get some backstabs off...
Alright, don't panic. Odrelomp's nerves of steel will see him through. He quickly casts Sanctuary, instructing Dynaheir to go invisible, and both spells go off without a hitch. Minsc starts plinking away at the plated cleric with Khalid lending a melee hand, while Jaheira and Imoen try to disrupt the cleric in chain.
This battle was a bit of a mess. Both clerics got several spells off (Unholy Blight and Hold person mostly). Both thieves managed to land backstabs. However, they lacked potent fighter-types. With a lot of healing potions and a Holy Smite from Odrelomp, the party eventually managed to turn the tides. I'm actually thankful the thieves were dumb enough to try and backstab: They have some very nasty magical ammunition (Arrows of Fire and Darts of Wounding), and I'd really have hated for them to go to town on my squishies with them.
Anyway, at long last (felt long but was probably only around 4-5 rounds) the party finishes their would-be assassins off.
And with that, Odrelomp felt he had pushed his luck enough for one day, and retired to the Jovial Juggler to overcome his by now quite deep-seated paranoia.
Odrelomp yet lives, and is now a mighty 5th level Priest of Lathander.
Alright, the party were about to embark on the main quest, at long last. However, given that the plan has always been to dualclass Imoen, a decision was reached to at the very least pillage Ulcaster before she turned into a mage and the party were robbed of their resident thief for quite some time.
Not before cleaning out another few simple areas though. Starting with the Samuel/Hafiz one, where Odrelomp got to see his alignment come back to bite him in parts best left unmentioned.
Accidentally passing the patrolling Flaming Fist with Samuel in the backpack, the party were unable to convince said officer of the law that Samuel was not who he appeared to be. This of course meant one angry Flaming Fist, and one massive reputation loss for the party when they defended themselves.
Simple stupidity at work there.. the party could've just headed north and had not a care in the world. Still, what's done is done. Samuel was handed over to Gellana at the Friendly Arm Inn, and the party headed back down towards Amnish territory.
This is where the true drama of this little update unfolds. As the party was rummaging around the area containing a few tombs and one jelly-experimenting wizard, something unexpected occured.
Just a quick rundown: Halacan is the enemy party's arcane caster, in the bottom left of the picture. Morvin is the dwarven fighter, top middle. Drakar is their cleric, top left, and Molkar is their dualwielding human fighter, top right.
OK, we'll get through this. We knew they'd come for us sooner or later. Minsc quaffs an Oil of Speed and starts firing at Halacan, while Odrelomp, Imoen and Jaheira aim for Drakar. Khalid is just trying to draw as much ire as possible to keep Molkar and Morvin off the easier targets.
Unfortunately, Halacan's first choice of spell to cast is Sleep. Which goes off successfully, and... well, you can see for yourselves.
Lovely. Absolutely lovely! Minsc fails his save, Khalid fails his save, Dynaheir fails her save. ALL of our heavy hitters are incapacitated for the duration of the fight and then some, all because Odrelomp was too stupid to pack a Dispel Magic. To make things EVEN better, we now have two skeletons incoming from the east as well.
OK. It's not over yet. Odrelomp and Imoen are L5 and so immune to sleep, and thus still ambulatory. Amazingly, Jaheira made her save against Sleep, so we're at half strength (at least with regard to numbers).
Send Jaheira to the north to hold off Drakar and Morvin, and have her chug whatever potions will help. Before the battle is over, she'll have downed about 3000 GP worth of potions (Cloud Giant Strength, Potion of Power, Stone Form, Magic Protection, and lots of healing potions). She's temporarily managing to hold her own; Drakar's spells bounce off her, and she's actually putting out a lot of hurt with that club of hers now that she's at 23 Strength.
Imoen isn't of much use; all our magic arrows were on Minsc and he's happily asleep. She gets to distract Molkar, basically running in circles, while Odrelomp hits Halacan with everything he's got.
Very slowly, the tide of battle starts to turn in our favor. Jaheira eventually chunks (!) Drakar, and goes to work on Morvin. Halacan amazingly fails his save against Hold Person, and is ground down by Odrelomp's mighty hammer. Morvin is really hurting Jaheira, but she's keeping up (barely) with healing potions and occasional retreats.
Odrelomp turns on Molkar, who is still fruitlessly chasing Imoen. Amazingly, Molkar ALSO fails his save against Hold Person. Odrelomp and Imoen combine (ranged) forces, and eventually pelt him down.
With none but Morvin of the enemy team left standing, the battle is decided. A few rounds later, the dwarf falls, and our heroes stand triumphant! Huzzah!
We are very lucky Odrelomp is such a tough cookie. 16 constitution, good HP rolls, good saves thanks to the shorty bonus, and surprisingly decent armorclass considering his dexterity (magic chainmail isn't horrible, actually) enabled him to basically hold off Halacan, two wild dogs and two skeletons on his own. Jaheira, completely pumped up on potions, held the northern front, and Imoen played fighter-bait to the east. Close but no cigar, evil bountyhunters!
After a fight like this, there's really nothing this side of the Cloakwood Forest that can even compare. Our heroes easily dispatch Narcillicus, but that's probably largely due to him failing his save against Silence:
The rest of the area is a cakewalk. Ghouls and ghasts do not react favorably to a sanctuaried halfling Turning them.
Then it's off to Ulcaster, again not a big deal. Supposedly Icharyd and the vampiric wolf at the end of the dungeon should now have some powers, but Odrelomp never noticed any.. they just had absurd amounts of hitpoints, and Icharyd hits every single time he swings. Oh, and he now has a dozen kobold buddies. Nothing a charge from our Wand of Sleep can't handle.
Towards the end of the dungeon, Imoen hits L6 thief, bumping her scores to 90 Open Locks/95 Find Traps, and it's time to dualclass. She's now a very weak little mage, and will so remain for quite a while.
OK, we have two arcane casters (one's very weak, but she can at least use some of our fancy wands, like Wand of Fire and Wand of Summoning). Odrelomp decides it is at long last time.. these bandits must be ousted from their stronghold!
Larswood beckons first. By now, bandits are just laughable, and the party plow through them with ease.
However, on the same map, we've got one deranged and one murderous druid. While a bit of a joke normally, Osmadi is quite nasty with this SCS setup. He tosses up a ton of protections (as do all casters), but also includes a summon. And targets the weakest party member he can see with an, as far as I could tell, uninterruptable Call Lightning. And we know who the weakest party member is...
When will Odrelomp learn to just let the mages, nowadays including Imoen, stay invisible during the opening moves of tougher fights? Never, never will he learn this.
Trivia: The fourth (neutral) bear in that screenshot is Corsone. Apparently he didn't like his chances fighting Osmadi's cave bears with spells, and instead elected to shapeshift to fight fire with fire. I found it kind of funny.
We were actually very lucky there. Dynaheir only has 25 HP total; another 1-2 points of damage and she'd have been fried permanently. One laborious backtrack to the Friendly Arm Inn later, she's back on her feet, and the party proceeds to Peldvale. Somewhere around here, Dynaheir did manage to hit L5, so she's now both sleep-immune and packing a little artillery of her own that's not wand-dependent. Nice.
Things in Peldvale proceed with no particular difficulty. Several Black Talon Elites are actually defeated without them firing even one of their lovely little arrows.. all these Arrows of Ice will no doubt come in handy when we take on the camp proper. Raiken and his merry gang of worthless thugs are dispatched:
Having also rescued but not recruited Viconia, we leave the party in Peldvale, pondering in great detail how to properly dismantle the prodigious bandit presence in the camp to the north.
Odrelomp is still a level 5 Priest of Lathander, but creeps ever closer to that glorious level 6...
Re Bassilus undead troops not going hostile - I think this is a feature of BGEE - in Vanilla if you choose the correct dialoge choices his minions all die and you face him alone (or perhaps with just the non-skeleton minions) - in BGEE they just don't go hostile unless you directly attack them - so you can kill Bassilus without thier interference and leave the minons alone or take them out as well.
(Or thats the way they work for me anyway)
Great run so far Aldain!
OK, Odrelomp plows onward. The bandit camp is next....
The rules are simple: Once you attack any bandit in the camp, they'll all come after you. You CAN sneak past the ones in the camp and just kill the guards in Tazok's tent, then sneak back out.. but why not clean house while you're at it?
The party set up shop in the northwestern corner of the map. The enemy can only come at them from two directions, and if things look really bad, there's the possibility of an emergency retreat.
This turns out to be unnecessary. Huge numbers or not, most of the bandits have terrible saves, and a few Webs in conjunction with Wands of Fire basically spell their doom. Some of the Black Talon Elites manage to get occasional shots off, but nothing even comes close to threatening Odrelomp.
A few rests later (we're running on Knock and bashing after all, what with Imoen dualed) Cloakwood Forest is coming up.
The first area is nothing special. For once Seniyad CAN actually get interrupted while casting his spells, and the party brings him down in short order. Once he's gone, his minions last all of two rounds on their own.
The spider-infested part of the forest proves a lot more deadly. Immediately upon entering, the party is beset by three Phase Spiders, one of whom manages to repeatedly poison Odrelomp:
The spiders are eventually beaten back, but that was a closer call than I like. Improved Spiders are no joke.
Having cleared all spiders from the area, the party engages Centeol. She never gets to cast any of her new spells, but her Giant Spiders manage to Web Khalid, with somewhat predictable results.
Should have splurged and let him down a Potion of Freedom.. ah well. A quick trip to the FAI and back, and we're moving into druid territory.
All of the druids here have been beefed up though. The one who accosts you at the bridge is allowed to walk away (a +2 quarterstaff would be nice, but Odrelomp typically doesn't lie, so we end up with a Potion of Invulnerability instead). The other two cause some havoc with Call Lightning, but are disposed of in rapid order nonetheless.
Finally, it is time to tackle Amarande, the Shadow Archdruid. Now, in vanilla BG:EE, he's a complete joke. That is no longer the case. Immediately upon turning red, he calls in two lesser druids (shapeshifters, who turn into werewolves and start attacking the party). There's no room to move around, and they're causing serious damage to our squishies.
Then, his defensive spells kick in. Armor of Faith, Bless, Barkskin, freakin' Iron Skins and yes... Improved Invisibility, the latter causing all our targetted spells against him to fail. Apparently, Amarande is now an Avenger. But wait, it gets better.
His first spell, which he casts with ease since no one in the party can hit him with his by now very low AC, is Chain Lightning. Great, we're fighting a druid that is at least level 11...
This spell is followed by Insect Plague, which panics the entire group and completely shuts down any chance at spellcasting. Then, adding insult to injury, Amarande throws out a Chaos. Which everyone fails their save against (no wonder, since it's made at -4).
In between completely shutting down the party with his spells, Amarande also shapeshifts into a Fire Salamander and proceeds to torch pretty much everyone. This is our mighty party roughly 4 rounds into the battle:
What can we do? The entire party is confused, frightened and has 100% spell failure. Minsc is killing Khalid, who is in turn killing Minsc. Amarande is laughing in our face while he and his two cronies take their time destroying us in meele. We can't even quaff a potion or beat an unglorified retreat. Will the cunning halfling finagle his way out of this most dire situation?
No. No, he will not. A few confused rounds later, Amarande lands a crushing blow against Odrelomp's woefully inadequate chainmail, and it is over.
It is a small comfort that the confused party somehow accidentally killed the cronies. This was a humiliating end to what at first glance looked like a grand adventure, and Odrelomp's spirit cannot rest quietly until he is avenged!
In retrospect, something as simple as having Invisibility Purge or Detect Invisibility prepared might have saved us. Amarande led with Chain Lightning, which would've given us another round to hit him with more spells after dispelling his Invisibility before he managed to throw Insect Plague at us. Still, it would have been very touch and go regardless.. in that cramped space, there was no possibility to maneuver, and Odrelomp was a prime target throughout the fight.
So, there we have it. One halfling bites the dust, and probably a lot later than he should have, by all rights (given our 4-5 close calls). I guess I'll start thinking up a new character...
In unmodded Vanilla BG they all died (with the proper dialoge options) - in unmodded BGEE they don't die but they don't go hostile either when Bassilus does (with the right dialoge option).
I'm guessing they changed this so you have to kill them to get thier weapon drops which is pretty substantial early in the game.
As for the SCS component I've never used it but I suspect it was not changed to reflect the BGEE changes that keeps them from going hostile (with the right dialoge choices).
But a chain lightning killed my pc numerous times too. Maybe the best strategy would be sending a tank with potion of magic shielding to soak up all nasty spells.
Amarande grants pathetic amount of xp when killed anyway, and no decent loot. Not really worth it.
Yeah, going after Amarande was mostly about being a completionist, with his +2 Club being a consolation prize.
The latter of which seems ridiculous in retrospect since Jaheira (the intended recipient) is just no bloody good in meele without lots of buffs/potions, +2 Club or no.. at a stretch she can clobber the odd hobgoblin. I'm not even sure sending a lone character with magic shielding in would work... SCS AI is pretty smart and would probably just have him shapeshift and beat on the poor tank until the potion expired.
In the next run, I'll just leave him to his own devices until I'm absolutely confident I can take him down.
Same restrictions and mod as last time (reposting for convenience):
My self-imposed restrictions and rules:
I'll be playing on core rules at all times, so randomized HP rolls and chance to learn spells.
Protagonist may not have a better stat total than the minimum of 75, and the roll may not be altered. I may, however, reroll until I get a distribution I am satisfied with.
I'll be roleplaying my alignment to the best of my ability. No meta-gaming to get better rewards, more XP etc.
No easter-eggs. That means no early Ring of Evermemory, or Ankheg Plate, Ring of Fire Resistance etc... if my character couldn't reasonably expect there to be a powerful magical item somewhere (like under a tree in the middle of a forest), he won't pick it up.
Some minor meta-gaming will be OK (mainly to know where quest NPC's and party members to be are holed up, or how to recruit the latter). All in the spirit of my character's alignment though, as stated above.
I'll also be running a full SCS ( http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/16019/sword-coast-stratagems-now-available-in-beta-for-bgee/p1 ) install.
WeiDu modlist:
// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1000 // Initialise mod (all other components require this): v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1910 // Protection from Normal Missiles also blocks Arrows of Fire/Cold/Acid and similar projectiles without pluses: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2020 // Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2030 // Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2111 // Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic -> Inquisitors dispel at their level (not twice their level): v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2120 // Slightly weaken insect plague spells, and let fire shields block them: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2150 // Make spell sequencers, spell triggers, and contingencies learnable by all mages: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3000 // Replace BG1-style elemental arrows with BG2 versions: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3010 // Replace +1 arrows with nonmagical "fine" ones: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3021 // Replace many +1 magical weapons with Fine ones -> Fine weapons are immune to the iron crisis: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3030 // Re-introduce potions of extra-healing: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3040 // Reduce the number of Arrows of Dispelling in stores -> Remove Arrows of Dispelling from stores: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // Faster Bears: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4010 // Grant large, flying, non-solid or similar creatures protection from Web and Entangle: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5010 // Move Boo into Minsc's pack: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6030 // Smarter Mages -> Mages cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6040 // Smarter Priests -> Priests cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6104 // Potions for NPCs -> All of the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity party: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v23(BETA)
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v23(BETA)
Enter Archibald, the Chaotic Good Human Sorcerer (I forgot to grab a screenshot when starting, so this is a little ways into our adventure):
Not.. exactly a poster child for powerful sorcerers, now is he. I found this roll absolutely hilarious; mechanically speaking, he's got next to zero advantage from his stats, aside from a pitiful boost to lore.
At least there's no subtle pressure to squander all the Tomes on him; they'll be distributed among the party to help our chances of actually making it through the game.
Roleplay-wise, however, that intelligence means he's pretty much a genius. An almost instinctual understanding of the finer points of tactics and utilization of obscure spells will certainly come in handy, provided our mighty hero isn't slain by a rabid gibberling right out the gate. Let's see what happens.
For our two starting spells, Archibald elects to go for Shield and Spook. Shield gives us MM immunity (important), and improves our absolutely abyssal AC against all attacks, but especially missile ones (very important). Spook is just great for temporarily disabling anything from casters to ogres, and the built-in save penalty as you level means it never goes obsolete.
Anyway, on to the game proper. Somewhat surprisingly, Archibald survives the pitfalls of Candlekeep. Shank fails his save against Spook, and takes a sling bullet to the forehead. Carbos actually makes his save, but we have a spot of good luck wherein he only manages to slice Archibald for 1 damage before being put down.
Once outside Candlekeep and having joined with Imoen. Archibald reviews his options. Our first priority must be to gather allies, and we know where there are such to be found: the Friendly Arm Inn. Off we go.
En route we actually run into a Xvart, who surrenders his short sword to Imoen for safe keeping.
Now standing at the Inn's gates, Archibald utilizes a scrying cantrip with which he is so familiar as to being able to cast it at will (yeah yeah, metagaming...), and realizes there lies an insidious and relatively powerful Mage in wait for us.
Let's review possible tactics and the likely outcome of each:
Option 1: Charge in with Shield up, all guns blazing. Tarnesh will respond by instantly casting Shield and Mirror Image (which he always does), making it almost impossible for us to hit him. He will then Sleep us, which we are highly unlikely to resist, and either club us to death with his quarterstaff, or if we're still awake, Horror us and start unloading Acid Arrows/Magic Missiles. Our Wand of Magic Missiles will be ineffective, since his Shield renders him immune to them. Even if we manage to Spook him, we still lack a way to really hurt him before he hurts us (ie killing us).
Probability of success: Somewhere around 1%, if we get a ranged critical hit in that hits him instead of a mirror image.
Option 2: Send Imoen in stealthed. Have her backstab Tarnesh, and hope she rolls high enough on the damage die to instantly kill him. We don't know his exact HP, but given that he casts L2 spells, we know he is at least L3 and so has a minimum of 6-12 HP. Meaning Imoen pretty much has to roll a 6 for damage on her short sword, and of course land the backstab to begin with, for us to be somewhat safe.
Probability of success: Say 10%. A 16% chance of Imoen rolling max damage for the hit, reduce it by say one-third to account for the risk of her missing (we don't know Tarnesh's unbuffed armor class).
Option 3: Run off, find more help, and return in force. Probability of success: 100% if we grab a cleric, since Tarnesh is a sucker for Command. Still, this is the sissy option, and Archibald is anything but a sissy.
Having discarded option 3, Archibald reasons that 10% is a lot better odds than 1%, so option 2 it is.
Imoen sneaks up, oil of speed active (to give her a chance to land a second hit if the backstab fails to kill Tarnesh, even though her odds to hit after his defenses go up are next to non-existent), and engages. She lands her backstab, but probability bites us in the rear.
OK.. OK, we can fix this. Imoen might get a lucky critical hit. Archibald moves up and adds his paltry sling bullets to the mix. Tarnesh sleeps Imoen, Archibald counters with a Spook, which Tarnesh saves against. At this point our brave hero basically panics and beats a disorganized retreat. The round after, Tarnesh tosses out a Magic Missile, and Imoen drops:
Crap on a stick. Tarnesh is now hunting us. We're immune to his Magic Missiles, but he still has Horror, an Acid Arrow, and that damnable quarterstaff (we only have 4 HP after all, so even a staff-wielding mage is a danger). Trying to avoid him only works so long, and eventually he finds us cowering in a corner.
However, this is where our luck changes. Tarnesh fails his save against Spook, and while he's running around, his Mirror Image wears off on its own. Once he recovers, Archibald miraculously scores a hit with his sling at just the right time, interrupting Tarnesh's Horror. By now the three guards in the courtyard have noticed the commotion and are swinging wildly at the would-be assassin. Unfortunately, he gets off his Acid Arrow.. which hits Archibald for 3 damage. Down a healing potion, and we're back to 4 HP. The Acid Arrow ticks again.. and again only hits for 3 damage! Another healing potion and a LOT of running around later, the guards finally manage to take Tarnesh down.
I guess it IS better to be lucky than good. The guards didn't even move on top of where the now deceased Tarnesh was standing, so we get to swipe his gold and spell scrolls. Imoen is raised, and Khalid/Jaheira recruited.
From here, it's quite smooth sailing. Archibald decides to shake things up a bit however; Khalid will be our resident archer, while Jaheira takes point. Once you get him to L6 and thereby 3 pips in Longbow, Khalid is actually a pretty mean sniper. Even meaner now that the dexterity tome is up for grabs, which will eventually push him to 17 natural dexterity. As for Jaheira, she has the advantage of getting to cast Armor of Faith a large number of times per day. Once she hits L5 druid, that's 10% damage resistance to almost everything, which will doubtless come in handy against some of the heavy hitters.
The party clears out hobgoblins, the belted ogre, and Beregostian spiders in short order. Next on the agenda is filling up the party roster. The idea here, again in keeping with somewhat unusual combinations, is grabbing Branwen and Xan, and eventually dual-classing Imoen. In the end, assuming we survive the very harsh early levels, we'll have three full arcane casters, one full cleric and half a druid. Not bad.. only Khalid will be stuck without magic.
But that's a long way into the future. For now, we make our way down to Nashkel, easily cleansing the hobgoblins blocking our progress (Khalid doing 95% of said cleansing with his bow). We grab a scroll from the local temple, and free Branwen. A quick rest later, Neira falls to our might:
Our immediate goals are now, in order:
#1. Get everyone at least one more level (Jaheira and Imoen have already leveled, but more is always better).
#2. Gather enough gold to afford the Wand of Sleep from High Hedge. Why? See goal #3.
#3. Pick up Xan to finish our party lineup. This is what goal #1 and #2 are all about. We need more HP to improve our chances of surviving stray kobold arrows, and we need access to Sleep to have even a shot at pushing through the improved Nashkel Mine with this poor, squishy party.
We won't actually kill Mulahey when we pick up Xan. As we learned from Odrelomp's example, those bounty hunters (which only hunt you down once you've started chapter 3 and are level 3 or higher) are truly nasty, even for a sturdy halfling. Imagine what they'll do to a frail Sorcerer...
No, we'll pick up Xan, then have him cast Invisibility on himself from a scroll (Branwen talking to him under Sanctuary), and simply walk past Mulahey. Get powerful by adventuring around the Sword Coast, then return with a vengeance to lay Mulahey low.
But that is in the future. For now, Archibald and friends will enjoy a few drinks and warm, safe beds at the Nashkel Inn. Archibald remains a level 1 Sorcerer.
Archibald and gang moves north of Nashkel, to hunt some half-ogres and bandits. The first encounter goes well enough, with Teyngan failing his save against first Spook, then Command, thus becoming an easy target.
The half-ogres are another story. Jaheira takes hit upon hit upon hit; we're basically exhausting all our potions. And as if that isn't enough, a bloody cave bear decides to crash the party, homing in on Archibald like a heatseeker:
Having burned all but two of our healing potions, we finally clear out the half-ogres and turn upon the cave bear, who is still wildly chasing Archibald around. It's a victory, but Archibald comes perilously close to those claws on several occasions.
Following this, we interrupt our standard route of going north to tackle Bassilus (since at the moment, he would probably kill us quite handily). We opt instead to turn in some more easy quests around Beregost, and grab the spider extermination rewards.
Not before we take out Silke and Karlat though. Sure, Silke's an L7+ Mage with a sequencer and Stoneskin up, but how bad can it possibly be?
It can actually be very bad. She gets off a Haste before our Magic Missile (cast from a scroll) interrupts her, naturally also making her save against Command. After turning invisible and healing, she throws out an Emotion at us (while saving against another Command), incapacitating the entire party except Branwen. Two rounds later, Branwen's futile effort at a defense meets its preordained end, and the entirety of our sleeping party is unceremoniously clubbed to death.
How embarassing... though I guess this was destined to be a short run. Given that it'd be nice if I could actually COMPLETE a run, I'll probably loosen the stat restriction for the next one. Anyway, Archibald and his unconventional gang are now history.
Enter a serious contender to complete a run, Evander the True Neutral Totemic Druid:
Roll is legit, took about half an hour to scrounge up (96 total). He has almost no weakness, barring only being able to survive 1 Illithid hit once we move into BG2. He'll get all the tomes as well, and once he's swiped the strength/constitution ones, I may even be able to let him lose in melee occasionally with Barkskin and a Flame Blade. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
As a Totemic Druid, we have no regular shapeshifts. This doesn't really matter, since they're not all that great. What we do have is the ability to summon a spirit animal once per day for every 5 character levels.
These spirit animals level with us: At levels 3, 5, 7 and 10, their hit dice goes up to equal our level (they start at 1HD at level 1), and each variant (snake, bear, lion, wolf) has a different ability. At L10 they're essentially as powerful, or more so, than a full-fledged Skeleton Warrior. Very nice, and at the end of BG:EE we'll be able to summon 3 of them per day.
On to the story. Candlekeep comes and goes, as it is wont to do. Carbos is clubbed to death with a Shillelagh, and Shank proves no match for a spirit lion. We embark upon our quest, picking up Imoen along the way.
This time around, let's not rely on luck to see us through battles that we are simply not equipped to fight. Tarnesh is worth a paltry 120 XP but can easily kill us unless we get really lucky with rolls. The solution is simple: Don't fight Tarnesh yet. Given that a shakeup of party composition would also be nice, we opt to just skip past the FAI for now.
Instead, we head north and pick up Ajantis to be our meatshield, and make our way south to Beregost. On the way, we clear out a few hobgoblins (we're seriously strapped for cash, even a few coin drops and rings will be useful at this stage), and have a go at the by now familiar belted ogre.
Here we joyously discover the spirit bear's special ability: Save vs death or be panicked. That will probably come in handy at some point (and indeed, is quite nice even in this fight as it means the ogre runs right back into the two Entangle spells he just saved against).
Our intended party is our current three, as well as Minsc, Dynaheir and Branwen. Since they're all fairly easy to aquire, we skip doing the Beregost quests until we're at full capacity. We do clean out the two very minor areas south of Beregost though, starting by dealing with the halfling-murdering SCUM on the road:
I thought I'd really miss Command, but frankly, Entangle serves as a perfectly viable substitute when we're up against mean melee opponents. And unlike Command, Entangle can be used to lock down an entire group of melee hostiles for a long time. If something gets through, Ajantis (under his self-supplied Protection from Evil) handles it.
While in this area, we also clear out a few more hobgoblins, grab their boots and a few healing potions from their cave hidey-hole, and press southward. Even more hobgoblins, even more wanton violence, and we pick up a bloodstone amulet intended for Mr. Colquetle.
Alright, so we're in Nashkel, at long last. We swung by the Carnival and picked up Branwen before, and now Minsc is recruited and outfitted (he'll be using a Composite Longbow, hulking brute that he is).
With a party of five, we feel confident in taking on Neira. And indeed, as is always the case, she lacks the levels to resist Command.
I've had a go at her once around party level 1-2 with no Command, Hold Person etc. She'll typically destroy the entire party then, as one of the first spells she cast is Unholy Blight. Very fast casting time so difficult to interrupt through damage, and at the aforementioned levels, it'll kill anyone of good alignment caught in the area of effect, except very beefy fighters. Nasty.
Anyway, dead she is. We rest up, and then it's off to rescue Dynaheir. Barring a few gibberlings, we sneak through the two preceding areas to the Gnoll Stronghold unnoticed. Once there, it's another quick rest, followed by fighting. Since we're so very low level however, spawns are quite manageable.
We make our way to the Chieftain's group. A double Entangle allows us to control the battlefield, and we emerge victorious without much difficulty.
Dynaheir is rescued, and finally we are at full strength! We take the time to clear out a few Xvarts and steal their stuff (as we always do), then it's back to Nashkel.
Alright, so our party is gathered. Now would probably be a good time to level a bit and gain some gold.
We opt for taking the scenic route back up to Beregost. Teyngan and his friends as always prove more deadly than their experience value would seem to indicate, but with a lot of micromanaging and running, we prevail without any deaths.
Seriously: Don't let Teyngan close to melee range. He hits for 13+ damage and has a very good THAC0. Just have him chase one of your mages, don't try to stand up to him unless you're way overleveled.
Anyway, the half-ogres of the area are helpless before Entangle, and fall to focused fire:
Here Evander also gains a level, and is now level 2. Huzzah! Unfortunately, he rolls a 2 for HP before constitution modifier. Boo! This puts him at a total of 12 HP.
Now we're in Bassilus' area. Normally we'd rest and then tackle the entire area, but Branwen is literally a few hundred XP shy of level 3, which would mean Hold Person x3... undoubtedly useful when taking on Bassilus. So we go on a scavenger hunt for experience, and eventually she gains her precious level.
As we're trying to rest to clear the remainder of the area (hobgoblins and Bassilus still being at large), we are assaulted again and again by skeletons. Who prove that weak though they are, a second level Totemic Druid is actually weaker:
A single hit to the head forces Evander to run for his life. There's a lesson to be learned here: Evander is simply not ready for front-line duty yet, and likely won't be for some time. That was actually really lucky. Had one of the other skeletons decided to pelt Evander from range at that time, this run would likely have ended then and there. We'll need to be more careful from now on.
Anyway, eventually we manage to rest uninterrupted. While en route to destroy some over-equipped hobgoblins, we run into quite a nasty random group: Three bandits and a ghast.
Since we can't really close to melee with the ghast, our usual modus operandi of sending Ajantis to clobber the bandits in melee isn't viable. An alternative strategy is devised: Ajantis will draw off the ghast, while a stealthed Minsc chops up the bandits with a little ranged support from the rest of the party. This works out fine, until the ghast manages to get a swipe in at Ajantis, and he fails his save.
Branwen is sent in to draw the ghast off so it won't kill Ajantis, and.. is also hit, failing her save. Drat. We pull out all the stops, Dynaheir tossing a single Magic Missile in, and Imoen unloading her Wand of Magic Missiles. Amazingly, we put the fell beast down moments before it would have finished Ajantis off.
That bit of nastiness behind us, we heal up and engage the hobgoblins to the south. Who are just as annoying as always. Two archers whose arrows poison on hit, and a high-strength melee fighter. Trying to conserve offensive spells for Bassilus means we do this the hard way, and Branwen is poisoned. We wear our opponents down however, and come out still standing.
Alright, so time for the big star of this area, Bassilus. We toss up a quick Bless, and engage. Bassilus' first move is tossing an Unholy Blight, which we fail to interrupt. Thankfully, he aims it at Ajantis, who is the only one in the party with the HP to survive it (having leveled to 3 a while back and now sporting 28 HP).
After this, I'm not sure what happened. We simply can't land a hit on Bassilus to save our life, but at the same time we can't seem to fail our saves against his spells either. Even doomed, he makes every single save against Hold Person and Command too.
5-6 rounds later, Bassilus actually starts to run low on spells (we're completely out by now), and with our very occasional critical hits, we've got him down to badly wounded.
At this point, the bugger casts Sanctuary, followed by Cure Critical Wounds. Arg. We've had enough! Minsc quaffs our one and only oil of speed, and follows Bassilus around while we await his Sanctuary dropping. Once it does, we re-engage, and eventually manage to bring him down.. though a lot of healing potions were required.
Having finally bested the mad cleric, we complete our Beregost circuit. Melicamp actually survives his transformation, and provides us with 2000 XP, which is always a good thing. Every quest in or around Beregost is finished... except Silke. Confident or no, there's no way we're tackling her without some means of dispelling Invisibility. Not to mention a few Magic Missiles to punch through her Mirror Image.
Turning in quests actually accrues a fair bit of experience, and around here somewhere, Evander turns level 3, rolling an 8 (ie max) for HP before constitution modifier. Yay! And we get a new spell level too. Except most second level druid spells are highly situational... still, it's better than nothing. Third level also means our spirit animal grows in power, so it's all good.
We hop on over to the FAI, and at long last, Tarnesh gets what's coming to him.
Command is really the only guaranteed way of dealing with him. Sleep works too, but you may get unlucky with him making his saves... better to be certain.
Having turned in every quest at the FAI, the party relaxes for a bit, and here we leave them for the time being. Evander is now a third level Totemic Druid.
Exiting the FAI, the party heads southwards. More power is needed before proceeding, and the areas around Nashkel will provide us with that power.
First up, triggering Dorn's ambush. In a stunning turn of events, Dynaheir actually survives the initial volley, saving us a few hundred gold in Raise Dead costs.
And Ajantis finally gets to put on plate. Not bad.
Next up, cleansing the areas west of Nashkel. Once again the poor xvarts and their resident cavebears cannot stand against us. The mighty ogre berserkers just north of the stronghold are another story, however. Fortunately, a double heaping helping of Grease and Entangle spells their (slow but steady) ranged doom:
Not evident in the screenshot is Dynaheir's glee at surviving the hobgoblin ambush Neville put into play earlier. Shield and a spare Protection from Evil, along with an immediate casting of Larloch's Minor Drain, let her live just long enough for the party to put down her antagonists.
Anyway, forth we venture. Amazingly, just east of the stronghold Dynaheir finds a use for Power Word: Sleep, in that it can be utilized to keep pesky but dangerous gnolls from bothering Minsc:
I never thought I'd find a practical use for that spell, but what do you know.. of course it's still incredibly situational and probably not worth it once Dynaheir acquires Agannazar's Scorcher, but we can enjoy the cool graphics of it in the interim.
Gnolls put down, we proceed to deal with Sendai. As always with nasty SCS archers against a fairly low-level group, we take a good deal of lumps, but eventually come out on top. And hey, once again PW:S actually gets to do something (prevent an injured but hasted archer from running away to keep plinking at us):
Naturally, we take out Vax and Zal on the way. That bit of nastiness done with, we return to Nashkel, laden with valuable loot and everyone up by a level. Good.
Alright, so we're a full party of L3-L4 adventurers. I think we can handle one little mage that doesn't even have L4 spells available, namely Zordral. Unfortunately, we're about to find out what happens when we break what I now consider to be the cardinal rule of SCS runs: Don't assume any mage to be a pushover. Really, just don't.
We're outside the tent. Apply the standard buffs: Remove Fear, Chant, Bless, and CHARGE!
Zordral, of course, takes one look at us, sniffs disdainfully, and incapacitates the whole damn party except Ajantis with a single sleep spell:
That was not even funny. Always assume every mage has Sleep available, and just do not go after them until at least your big bruisers are level 5 or higher! Arr!
OK, Ajantis is still up. This is going to come down to whether or not Zordral has any additional disabling spells prepared. Thank heaven for small mercies I guess, because he's a Conjurer. He tosses out two Summon Monster I while Ajantis tries to bring down his Mirror Images. A few dogs and a tasloi aren't going to kill Ajantis though, who keeps wailing on Zordral.
Zordral continues with Glitterdust, Melf's Acid Arrow, Charm Person and a solitary Magic Missile. Ajantis makes both saves, and just keeps pounding on the mad mage while downing a few healing potions. When Zordral pulls his quarterstaff and engages in melee, I realize it's over. We've won!
That was just way too close for comfort. If Ajantis had failed his initial Sleep save, we'd all be dead. Had he failed his save against Charm Person, we'd all be dead. This has further shored up my resolve to just leave Silke be until everyone is level 5 or higher.
Anyway, after quite a long time, everyone wakes up, and we can leave this cursed place.
While we're in the area though, we might as well take care of Greywolf. Thankfully, he falls a lot easier than Zordral:
We depart for yet another small area (home of the xvart-targetted cow), and that's as far as we make it this time around. Evander is now a fourth level Totemic Druid.
Question: Since you had so many points to spare, why didn't you give him a 16 constitution for max hp? Were you planning for the tome or something like that? Also, higher stats wouldn't have saved you against Silke's Emotion:Hopeless spell. The only way to win an SCS no-reload (which I haven't - I know this from reading the runs of successful no-reloaders) is to memorize all the encounters, and then prepare ahead with the correct potions or scrolls.
I believe you need a green protection from magic scroll, or a potion of magic blocking, to defend against Emotion:Hopeless. Other tactics might include sending in summonses to try to draw out the spells (although I've heard that SCS mages will not waste their spells on summonses), sending in an invisible thief for a backstab, taking your party out of range and casting a cloud spell into the area, (or Silence, or Web, or some other disabler). Hold your main character out of range sometimes. Try sending in party members one at a time as "sacrificial lambs" to the stronger spells. It's doable, but it takes a lot of memorization and a lot of planning.
Good luck to your new totemic druid! I look forward to seeing how you do.
Yep, I'm planning for the tome. I could have easily spared a point of charisma to boost constitution to 16, but the stat screen just looked so pretty with 4 stats at 18...
I know stats wouldn't have saved me, but poor Archibald was going to meet his end sooner or later. Crappy HP notwithstanding, that party setup would have a very harsh time until our three arcane casters reached respectable (5+) levels, and even then we'd be very vulnerable if caught without our most powerful spells prepared. Not ideal for SCS.
While I obviously don't have every SCS encounter memorized, I do know every powerful enemy mage in the game by heart, and will be taking extra care when I'm about to engage one. Whether or not this will be enough to get by remains to be seen. Probably not, but it'll be fun nonetheless.
It's true that SCS mages typically won't use spells on summons, but that doesn't mean they're useless. Absurdly prebuffed or not, a mage is still a mage, with crappy hitpoints... send up a few summons (under the watchful gaze of someone with Invisibility on) and watch them tear through the mage's Stoneskins/Mirror Images as the mage futilely try to take them down with Melf Minute Meteors or just his staff.
Of course, if he does kill your summons, he's going to come looking for you next...
When last we saw our hero, he and his companions were preparing to cleanse the cow-area (I haven't got a better name for it). Which went fine, except a small miscalculation.. yes, once again the bloody ogre berserkers demand a tribute. Somehow, one of them made his way past 2 Grease and 2 Entangle, and clobbered Ajantis silly:
I think that, after casters of any kind, those damnable berserkers are my most feared enemy. You simply cannot stand up to them, and with random HP they'll rip even fighters apart with ease...
Anyway, Ajantis was left in mostly one piece, and so we were able to raise him. After returning and eradicating all opposition with a vengeance, the party heads north of the Friendly Arm Inn to gather materials for a lovely new set of armor for Evander (not to mention assorted loot and experience).
A large number of Command, Blindness and the like later (Dynaheir not having access to Enchantment and thereby lacking Sleep), Evander finally turns from low-powered healer to moderately useful in a fight:
With the bonus from 18 wisdom, we wind up with 2 L3 slots for Evander. Finally we've got some options... Invisibility Purge (meh), Miscast Magic (little less meh), Call Lightning (nice!) and Summon Insects (not bad either). This'll spruce up our potential tactics a bit.
You'll also notice Imoen is invisible in that screenshot. Yep, she was dual-classed at L5, so we're thief-less for a while. Should be fine though, and we'll probably need the added arcane firepower.
A number of dead ankhegs later, we're still in cleanup mode. Given that we now have the two key ingredients to defeating Silke (being able to dispel invisibility and having access to two mages with MM to bring down her Mirror Images), we go after her. Of course, with a party at L4-5 it's a bit overkill: We successfully interrupt her Haste, followed by landing a Silence, and down she goes.
Might as well finish the Beregost circuit. A pack of wolves at the Temple fall, mostly thanks to Evander's downright nasty Call Lightning:
One more small adventure before we retire for the moment.. the (former) home of the Amazon Assassins.
Of course, even though the Amazons are now roaming, waiting to track us down until we move into chapter 3, we still have to contend with Narcillicus. Still, we're decent level and should be able to overpower him. Let's see what happens.
Cripes.. look at those buffs. OK, run away, fast.
After disposing of our spirit snake, Narcillicus goes on the prowl, trying to track us down. Which he eventually does... so we send a sacrificial pawn (Ajantis) in, with a Potion of Magic Shielding active.
Amazingly, Narcillicus seems to have spent nearly all his high-level slots on his protections and the Melf's Minute Meteors he wasted killing our snake. After tossing a Web and Charm Person at Ajantis, he seems to run out of spells. More importantly, his MGoI wears off.. and he traps himself in his own Web. Check mate, little wizard.
Yeah, it was probably not the brightest of ideas to take him on at this level. Still, what's a no-reload worth if you never take any risks? Just adds to the excitement. All is still well, and the party cleans out the remainder of the area with little trouble (Ajantis gets Held by three ghasts in one of the tombs, but foresight has armed Branwen with a Remove Paralysis, which clears the situation right up).
After all this, Evander is still level 5, and closing rapidly on 6.
Alright, Evander is running out of low-risk areas in which to practice... but Ulcaster still remains. Icharyd poses no real issue, even though there's a decided lack of weapons on our team that can harm him (Ajantis borrows Ashideena from Branwen, and Minsc swipes Dynaheir's Quarterstaff +1). Given that he's immune to normal weapons and has serious magic resistance, there's really not much tactic involved.. just hit him until he falls over:
Even without a thief, Ulcaster proper is cleansed without incident. A large part of that is probably due to having Ajantis quaff a Potion of Freedom prior to taking on the improved Vampiric Wolf at the end of it however, as that paralysing bite can wreck havoc otherwise.
What did I do about the traps? Sent the paladin to trip them, of course. Though we almost had a mishap: the fireball trap in front of the final treasure pile zinged Ajantis for almost 40 damage after he had gulped a Potion of Fire Resistance, pretty gruesome. Should've probably boosted him to 100%+ resistance, but at least he survived.
Following turning the book in to Ulcaster himself, the party roams for a few minutes, and a poor kobold commando provides Evander with the miniscule XP he needs to hit level 6:
Another third level spell slot, and we're one step closer to fourth level spells, and the phenomenal cosmic power (or something like that) they bring!
OK, so.. we're basically out of safe stuff to do. Most remaining areas have at least one powerful mage or other nasty critter (such as sirines, doomguard etc). With this in mind, now seems a good a time as any to progress the plot a bit.
In keeping with this thought, the party at long last descends into the Nashkel Mine. Though the kobolds have no chance at all of wiping us out by now, they are still a menace given their numbers and propensity to aim for our mages, but we laboriously clear a path down to Mulahey without losing anyone.
Once again, I opted to try the battle without disabling the buggy component. Once again, we come through alright. Given that we intend to fry Mulahey's reinforcements with a Wand of Fire, it's probably a good idea if as few of us as possible are present near the entrance to his cave, where said reinforcements appear.
Imoen, Dynaheir, Evander and Branwen are all rendered invisible. Minsc stealthily sneaks up alongside us, leaving a somewhat buffed Ajantis (Protection from Fire, Potion of Defense) to hold the entrance.
Once we break out of our concealment, Mulahey drops like a rock. The never-ending spawning of kobolds begins.. and we actually manage to stop it again, by simultaneously frying every critter at the entrance with a well-placed Fireball.
Yeah... it took two fireballs (didn't aim the first one properly). Still, the party is alive and well, aside from Ajantis exuding a barbeque-like odor.
Lots of looting later, we're back in Nashkel. Poor Nimbul is completely overwhelmed, despite doing a pretty good job of selecting his defensive spells. Should've packed a Shield in there as well Nimbul... you'd have lived longer.
So, the party retires to the Nashkel Inn. We are now being actively hunted, meaning we must always have the resources on hand to defeat an entire enemy party with superior positioning. I think we'll be alright, though. Evander is currently a level 6 Totemic Druid.