Divine Casters and Class-Defining Spells

Nifft

I'm trying to nail down which spells are critical to each spellcasting class for the purpose of modding -- I don't want to give powerful options without also taking away options of roughly equal power.


My spell list varies with level -- at low level, Hold Person is solid gold, while at high level it's trash and Draw Upon Holy Might is the hot level 2 slot choice.

It also varies with alignment: Holy Smite is great, while Unholy Blight seems much less useful.


Which spells do you always pick?
Which spells are generally useless?

Thanks, -- N

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Lord_Tansheron

Combat buffs: Armor of Faith, Draw upon Holy Might, Righteous Magic, Iron Skins, Regeneration

Party buffs: Resist Fear, Chaotic Commands, Protection from Fire/Cold, Protection from Evil 10' Radius, Negative Plane Protection

Offensive spells: Holy Smite, Firestorm

Debuffs: Doom, Insect Swarm, Creeping Doom, Nature's Beauty

Utility: Dispel Magic, Remove Paralysis, Lesser Restoration, True Sight

Healing: Mass Cure, Heal, Greater Restoration

Did I forget anything?

Nifft

subtledoctor said:

(Frankly I think SR is great, and rather than reinvent the wheel with a new spells mod, I would help make SR compatible with BGEE.)

SR is great, but that mod improves all casters, which is different from what I'm planning. Just because two mods both involve spells doesn't mean they are the same mod. ;-)

@Lord_Tansheron: Regeneration, huh, I've seldom used that. In contrast, I don't see Animate Dead on your list, which is usually one of my spell picks.

Thanks!

KidCarnival

I'd put all summons except maybe the animals on the list - undead, forest creature, elementals.

Lemernis

I don't use druids much at all, mainly because I don't connect as well with the class (compared with cleric) from the RP vantage.

For a BG:EE cleric, these are in order of value to me:

L1 - Cure Light Wounds, Command, Sanctuary, Armor of Faith, Bless, Doom
L2 - Hold Person, DUHM, Aid, Chant, Barkskin
L3 - Cure Medium Wounds, Miscast Magic, Invisibility Purge
L4 - Cure Serious Wounds, Cloak of Fear, Holy Power
L5 - Mass Cure, Cure Critical Wounds, Iron Skins, Greater Command, Righteous Magic

In BG:EE you're probably only going to get 1 L5 spell, and there's a lot of useful ones to choose from, but some can be cast from scrolls (eg, Chaotic Commands).

In addition to healing, obviously, I think my favorite cleric spells are:

Command Word: Die, Sanctuary, Hold, DUHM, Miscast Magic, and Cloak of Fear.

A Sanctuaried cleric is great to use in combination with backstabbing thieves. With a cleric attacking immediately from the front and thief hitting from behind it's often over in 1-2 rounds.

And I've found that in some tough battles to emerge from Sanctuary with a martial attack then immediately cast Cloak of Fear can tip the scales.

Nifft

@KidCarnival - Huh, not the animal ones? Are they too weak?

@Lemernis - thanks, that's exactly the kind of list I'm looking for!

I've never used Sanctuary for that kind of tactical face-stabbing, so it sounds like that spell is better than I gave it credit for.

Cloak of Fear, huh. I'll have to give that a try.

Lemernis

With Cloak of Fear you have to be within 3 ft of the target, so it's a good one to use out of Sanctuary right up on top of the enemy. Maybe I've just been lucky with it so far, but in my experience a lot of badass enemy tanks seem to fail the save on it. The not only panic for 4 rounds but they may drop their weapons.

KidCarnival

I frankly rarely ever use the animal summons, since I play clerics rather than druids. I know clerics can summon animals, too, but it feels wrong. So from my cleric perspective, it's not class defining and I can't say much about the effectiveness. I had a druid in Black Pits, and used the forest creature/being there, and one elemental. Of which the casting time was too long to really change anything in the fight, but I can see how it would be useful in some BG battles. I'm going purely by the difference to mages here and that divine casters don't have to stay focussed after casting.
In other words, I excluded animals because I never used that spell and don't know if it's any good.

Nifft

Understood. The animals look somewhat weak for their level, but you often get two of them, so they're at least possible meat-shields.