I think the real advantage of playing solo or with 2 characters is more about the itemization than the experience gain.
If you split your gear evenly between 4 characters, they will never be as strong as one or two characters in my opinion, especially some key items (the Cloak of Mirroring comes to my mind).
It depends of your setup like you said, but if you use the NPC of the game, then I'm sure playing solo is better. I agree that level 25+, characters don't change much. But this represents a short portion of the game (ToB) and a good solo character is still far enough to deal with it (because he will have all the gear available).
PS : I think it is a very interesting debate, most of the time people argue about the best character, but it's rare to have a debate about the most optimal party size.
I think the real advantage of playing solo or with 2 characters is more about the itemization than the experience gain.
Actually, no, well, at least not that only one. I played solo a lot, and I can tell that both are very influential. I think that the best party size is either 1 or 2 characters.
I think the real advantage of playing solo or with 2 characters is more about the itemization than the experience gain.
Actually, no, well, at least not that only one. I played solo a lot, and I can tell that both are very influential. I think that the best party size is either 1 or 2 characters.
I agree its probably one or two ! Even more true with SoA and ToB merged together, you can reach the maximum level way before beginning ToB, its almost an issue tho, you are much stronger than the enemies you will face at this point, making the game with not much challenges left.
Playing solo also offers the opportunity to kill annoying NPC ! Dont forget to kill minsc while he is stucked in his jail ! Go for the eyes if you wish
You can easily edit a WS/Assassin with EEKeeper as soon as you dual-class. And what's the sense of a magic casting failure while using a Carsomyr? If you manage to hit your target once, even if he has Stoneskin/Mirror Image, the next attacks will most probably deal damage. Honestly, it will be long time dead before reaching a 100% magic casting failure. The few exceptions to this are Demiliches and some bosses.
Since we're talking about powergaming, any other Fighter kit would be stronger in a */Thief dualclass.
Its actually useless on demi-liches, after a full GWW they can still cast their crap, i guess their spell is more an ability than an actual spell, i checked by teaming with Kangaax (the demi-liche) and hit him with my sword, the casting failure is working so far but somehow he doesnt get interrupted, his spellbook is empty but active. (maybe its because the spell is instacast also, i dont know) Also 100% MR doesnt help with him, i have yet to find a way to kill him with the Wizard Slayer Thief without scrolls or cheesy tactics.
On the other hand any other mage is a walk in the park, liches as well, there's nothing they cast that 100% MR doesnt counter.
Honestly i dont know if any other fighter/thief would be better, my goal was to get 100% MR at all times, i am sure you are aware with the "issue" that carsomyr is setting your MR to 50 rather than adding 50 (from what i've read its intended but i have no idea myself), So the only class that can have 100% MR AND switch weapons at all times is the wizard slayer and only him, giving him the advantage of Backstab and ranged weapons without going through the pain of swapping items all the time to get back his MR (which you cant do while fighting concerning the chest).
37% from Wizard Slayer natural MR at lvl 25 10% hell 5% from machine of the lum 50% Carsomyr ----------- 102%
This means you do not need any item adding MR in your setup, you now have a wide variety of items you can choose to make you own build.
About the casting failure, well its working, quite often even but thats not the point of this character to be honest since he's immune to magic anyway (most).
I think the real advantage of playing solo or with 2 characters is more about the itemization than the experience gain.
If you split your gear evenly between 4 characters, they will never be as strong as one or two characters in my opinion, especially some key items (the Cloak of Mirroring comes to my mind).
I strongly disagree. There are enough very powerful items to equip several characters, and having more targets for enemies to hit also means that you can focus more on offense over defense because individual characters get hit less, on average, and because you can control mob positioning better.
Also, I think you are grossly overestimating the power of additional characters. Most of the damage output of a character does not actually come from a weapon, it comes from the static bonuses applied to the base weapon damage. That means that additional characters do a LOT more damage than you may think, even with gear that is not optimal from a solo perspective.
It depends of your setup like you said, but if you use the NPC of the game, then I'm sure playing solo is better. I agree that level 25+, characters don't change much. But this represents a short portion of the game (ToB) and a good solo character is still far enough to deal with it (because he will have all the gear available).
See above, same thing. The game NPCs are far from min/max optimized, but you still get to min/max your PC and can pick some of the good NPCs to go along. It won't be as good as all-custom, but it'll still be better than solo (assuming you pick the proper NPCs).
(A bit off-topic, but I'd just like to point out at this juncture that you can use EEKeeper to modify the game NPCs, if you want to play with custom stats but retain NPCs for story/RP etc. It's very easy to do.)
It seems to me like you're generally overvaluing the importance of XP, and the loss of XP due to party splits. Unlike BG1, BG2 has a SUBSTANTIAL number of quests with individual XP gains that are not shared - this is a significant bonus to larger parties, as you essentially increase overall available XP. Even during the early game, a medium-sized party will not be far behind a solo player thanks to the plethora of quests during early SoA.
You can easily edit a WS/Assassin with EEKeeper as soon as you dual-class. And what's the sense of a magic casting failure while using a Carsomyr? If you manage to hit your target once, even if he has Stoneskin/Mirror Image, the next attacks will most probably deal damage. Honestly, it will be long time dead before reaching a 100% magic casting failure. The few exceptions to this are Demiliches and some bosses.
Since we're talking about powergaming, any other Fighter kit would be stronger in a */Thief dualclass.
Its actually useless on demi-liches, after a full GWW they can still cast their crap, i guess their spell is more an ability than an actual spell, i checked by teaming with Kangaax (the demi-liche) and hit him with my sword, the casting failure is working so far but somehow he doesnt get interrupted, his spellbook is empty but active. (maybe its because the spell is instacast also, i dont know) Also 100% MR doesnt help with him, i have yet to find a way to kill him with the Wizard Slayer Thief without scrolls or cheesy tactics.
On the other hand any other mage is a walk in the park, liches as well, there's nothing they cast that 100% MR doesnt counter.
Honestly i dont know if any other fighter/thief would be better, my goal was to get 100% MR at all times, i am sure you are aware with the "issue" that carsomyr is setting your MR to 50 rather than adding 50 (from what i've read its intended but i have no idea myself), So the only class that can have 100% MR AND switch weapons at all times is the wizard slayer and only him, giving him the advantage of Backstab and ranged weapons without going through the pain of swapping items all the time to get back his MR (which you cant do while fighting concerning the chest).
37% from Wizard Slayer natural MR at lvl 25 10% hell 5% from machine of the lum 50% Carsomyr ----------- 102%
This means you do not need any item adding MR in your setup, you now have a wide variety of items you can choose to make you own build.
About the casting failure, well its working, quite often even but thats not the point of this character to be honest since he's immune to magic anyway (most).
I guessed you play with SCS installed, sorry. With that, Demi-liches DO cast spells and high-level mages DO bypass MR with Dragon Breath.
PS. If you equip Carsomyr and THEN the other items, MR will increase normally.
PPS. The only way for a F>T to beat Kangaxx (with SCS) is to have UAI enabled or by setting traps in the right way and spots.
PPPS. The most efficient party size should be 4. One Sorcerer, one heavy armor user, one dual/multi thief and one bard.
I think the real advantage of playing solo or with 2 characters is more about the itemization than the experience gain.
If you split your gear evenly between 4 characters, they will never be as strong as one or two characters in my opinion, especially some key items (the Cloak of Mirroring comes to my mind).
I strongly disagree. There are enough very powerful items to equip several characters, and having more targets for enemies to hit also means that you can focus more on offense over defense because individual characters get hit less, on average, and because you can control mob positioning better.
Also, I think you are grossly overestimating the power of additional characters. Most of the damage output of a character does not actually come from a weapon, it comes from the static bonuses applied to the base weapon damage. That means that additional characters do a LOT more damage than you may think, even with gear that is not optimal from a solo perspective.
It depends of your setup like you said, but if you use the NPC of the game, then I'm sure playing solo is better. I agree that level 25+, characters don't change much. But this represents a short portion of the game (ToB) and a good solo character is still far enough to deal with it (because he will have all the gear available).
See above, same thing. The game NPCs are far from min/max optimized, but you still get to min/max your PC and can pick some of the good NPCs to go along. It won't be as good as all-custom, but it'll still be better than solo (assuming you pick the proper NPCs).
(A bit off-topic, but I'd just like to point out at this juncture that you can use EEKeeper to modify the game NPCs, if you want to play with custom stats but retain NPCs for story/RP etc. It's very easy to do.)
It seems to me like you're generally overvaluing the importance of XP, and the loss of XP due to party splits. Unlike BG1, BG2 has a SUBSTANTIAL number of quests with individual XP gains that are not shared - this is a significant bonus to larger parties, as you essentially increase overall available XP. Even during the early game, a medium-sized party will not be far behind a solo player thanks to the plethora of quests during early SoA.
The amount of XP you lose if you play in a party is huge. You can start BG2 with 1.2M xp if you soloed BG1, then you do something like 6-7 quests in Chapter 2 and you already have your HLA.
Plus playing with more characters also means you can lose your power over the course of a fight. Everytime the enemy cast a spell like Chaos, Wail of the Banshee, Web, etc, you will lose control of a character or more, because there is no way to protect and prebuff 6 characters everytime. While a solo character can very easely become resilient to every spell thrown at him.
My Viconia is getting backstabbed to death in every encounters with thieves in my actual evil playthrought and there is nothing I can do about it, she can't cast Mirror Image or Stoneskin and doesn't have enough AC and HP to tank it. While Korgan and my own Charname (Blackguard) are good in melee (Korgan has -13 AC unbuffed while my character has -8), Dorn is useless, and I seriously think about kicking him out of the party simply because everytime we encounter some Knights (our reputation is at 1), they simply kill him in about 1 round because he only has -4 AC and 100 HP and there is nothing I can do about it. He is honestly just eating our XP for no reason.
Individual characters get hit less, on average. That's true. But 1 character invincible (Mirror Image / Stoneskin / PfMW / -20 AC) will still take less damage (zero damage in fact).
The very first time I played through BG2, I played a solo FMT and I reloaded only once. I didn't know anything about the encounters, it was my first time doing the game and I reloaded only once (against an Elder Orb in the Underdark who cast Emprisonnement at me) simply because every fights was about using 6-10 buffs which make me invincible then hack and slash my way to victory. Even BG1 was so easy, my strategy for the Demon Knight ? One shot him with a backstab. My strategy for Aec'Latec ? One shot him with a backstab. My strategy for Sarevok ? One shot him with a backstab. My godlike character could instantly kill any foe of the game with one hit.
Speaking of backstabs, this character also killed Irenicus instantly, in both fights. He killed Demogorgon on first try (I never did it before) simply by autoattacking it.
The only thing I would fear with a mix/max solo character would be the final Ascension mod fight, because at this stage of the game, even a full party would have at least 6M+ XP and be powerful. While the solo character can't gain much more power after 8M XP, even if uncapped.
And xp from quests is about 10% of the total XP of BG2, it won't increase much the power of a party in SoA compared to a solo character.
I'm sorry if I sound harsh or if my english is bad, I'm really tired, it is very late here and my comment was a bit rushed. Time to go to sleep ! I apologize again.
PS. And then decrease when you reload, when you load a new map, when you switch weapon etc… not really convenient and on top of that not intended.
PPS. you can also use smite and stun HLA, that will give you enough time to kill it.
PPPS. Personnal preferences i guess cause i know i wouldn't grab a sorcerer nor a bard.
Stun doesn't work on fixed demi-liches. We're talking about the most efficient party and Sorcerer is simply the strongest class of the game, if you know how to play it. So why not?
@Gotural Try to play BG2:EE with SCS + aTweaks. Then tell if you managed to clean up the demon world of the Planar Sphere and maybe even the Planar Prison with a 6M xp FMT. After that try with a 3 chars party with 2M each and let me know how easier it was
Stun doesn't work on fixed demi-liches. We're talking about the most efficient party and Sorcerer is simply the strongest class of the game, if you know how to play it. So why not?
Stun works in my game
Its just that i find an inquisitor for instance to be much more useful than a sorcerer especially in team, everyone talks how backstab is not efficient anymore endgame but same goes for magic imo, how many creatures are actually immune to magic or have a very high resistance ? quite a lot, drows, mind flayers, liches and many more, how many bosses immune to magic, time stop etc… ? Yeah you can debuff them, you could do damage as well.
Also, when i played a Dragon Disciple with a team i held myself a lot of times from throwing things like fireballs, skull traps and so on because it would have hurt my team as well, i tried soloing with one but got bored after a few hours to be honest (thats why i said it comes down to personal preferences). But yeah i know they can do amazing stuff but they just don't fit my play style i guess (any pure caster).
I didn't find the demon world hard at all even with the mods you listed, in my opinion the real challenge in the Planar Sphere is the Cowled Wizards fight, Tolgerias comes buff like mad with SCS and he summon a Dark Planetar (which is the real baddie) in my setup, which instacasts Insect Plague and Globe of Blade at will and wields a vorpal sword.
Then there is the Lavok fight, but he is a bit easier because he is alone.
The amount of XP you lose if you play in a party is huge. You can start BG2 with 1.2M xp if you soloed BG1, then you do something like 6-7 quests in Chapter 2 and you already have your HLA.
Are you going to lose XP? Without a doubt. It's a trade-off, I never denied that; I simply said that it's a trade-off that is worth making. Additional characters add more damage and resilience to the party than the additional XP of a solo/smaller party (until the break-even point).
Plus playing with more characters also means you can lose your power over the course of a fight. Everytime the enemy cast a spell like Chaos, Wail of the Banshee, Web, etc, you will lose control of a character or more, because there is no way to protect and prebuff 6 characters everytime. While a solo character can very easely become resilient to every spell thrown at him.
Another trade-off. Is it easy/feasible to protect/buff all characters? No. Is it NECESSARY to have higher performance? Also no. In fact, it can be faster and easier with a party, because you can just skip buffs/protections. You can afford to have people incapacitated because others are there to do work in the meantime; whereas solo, you often cannot risk going in unprotected because one failed save can mean game over. Remember that efficiency includes the time spent pre-buffing etc.!
Individual characters get hit less, on average. That's true. But 1 character invincible (Mirror Image / Stoneskin / PfMW / -20 AC) will still take less damage (zero damage in fact).
Don't need to be invincible when there's party members to spread the damage/CC. You still deal more damage, and spend less time getting all buffs/immunities up = more efficient.
The very first time I played through BG2, I played a solo FMT and I reloaded only once. [...]
I think we can agree that the vanilla game is stupidly easy. BG2 has been beaten with starting-level parties, with naked characters, etc. etc. It is super easy. Most powergaming discussions focus on the high-difficulty setups, including mods, Insane difficulty, etc.
Not to mention that "I beat this easily solo" doesn't magically translate to "solo is better". Can you beat even the highest difficulty setups solo? Totally. But that's not the point of this discussion; it's about what's most EFFICIENT.
And xp from quests is about 10% of the total XP of BG2, it won't increase much the power of a party in SoA compared to a solo character.
Any source on that number? I'm loath to state concrete numbers until I have the data to back them up. Still, nobody is talking about having equal XP - I'm talking about the XP sacrifice being worth it for what you get (up to a certain point, depending on setup).
One of the problem is the NPCs, they are totally unefficient compared to created PCs.
You are right about the vanilla game being too easy, I shouldn't have extrapolated like this.
Let's take an extreme example, the Sorcerer. There is no way a party of 3-4 characters could be stronger than this machine alone. You just reached 1M xp ? He can already stops time, use Improved Alacrity and casts multiple ADHW with Robe of Vecna to annihilate everything in sight. This guy could even already solo ToB while you are still in early Chapter 2 of SoA with Project Image / Chain Contingency / Mordenkainen's Sword etc.
And I think losing control of your character can't be considered efficient. What are their purposes ? If Valygar can't protect himself from magic and can't tank neither in melee, what is his purpose ? Kick him out of the party and let Charname enjoys a little bit more of xp. If CC spells disable half your party, you are effectively wasting half of your xp because the other half of your party (generally arcane magic user, the overlords) have only half the xp they could have. You can reproduce this schema until you have only two characters left (Which I find the most efficient as I said earlier).
One of the problem is the NPCs, they are totally unefficient compared to created PCs.
You are right about the vanilla game being too easy, I shouldn't have extrapolated like this.
Let's take an extreme example, the Sorcerer. There is no way a party of 3-4 characters could be stronger than this machine alone. You just reached 1M xp ? He can already stops time, use Improved Alacrity and casts multiple ADHW with Robe of Vecna to annihilate everything in sight. This guy could even already solo ToB while you are still in early Chapter 2 of SoA with Project Image / Chain Contingency / Mordenkainen's Sword etc.
And I think losing control of your character can't be considered efficient. What are their purposes ? If Valygar can't protect himself from magic and can't tank neither in melee, what is his purpose ? Kick him out of the party and let Charname enjoys a little bit more of xp. If CC spells disable half your party, you are effectively wasting half of your xp because the other half of your party (generally arcane magic user, the overlords) have only half the xp they could have. You can reproduce this schema until you have only two characters left (Which I find the most efficient as I said earlier).
thanks for putting this up man, thats what i wanted to say about the sorcerer in my own way ;D i find them more efficient alone rather than with a full party because they interfere with each other somewhat.
Let's take an extreme example, the Sorcerer. There is no way a party of 3-4 characters could be stronger than this machine alone. You just reached 1M xp ? He can already stops time, use Improved Alacrity and casts multiple ADHW with Robe of Vecna to annihilate everything in sight. This guy could even already solo ToB while you are still in early Chapter 2 of SoA with Project Image / Chain Contingency / Mordenkainen's Sword etc.
A common misconception. Sorcerer is undoubtedly powerful, but also not very efficient. Spellcasting in general isn't, as it's not very good DPT due to the 1-spell/turn limit. The only time it's good damage is against large numbers of enemies. There's also several types of enemies that are a pain to kill as a Sorcerer, mostly anything with high magic resistance. Considering that F/M hybrids (various configurations) can easily deal 30 damage per hit at 10 APS makes Sorcerer damage output seem pitiful by comparison.
Sorcerers are at their most powerful in solo play, because they have EVERYTHING at their disposal. That's great for solo challenges, but not actually needed with a party. You can easily configure your loadout to be targeted to what you are about to face, making most of the Sorcerer's flexibility redundant.
And I think losing control of your character can't be considered efficient. What are their purposes ? If Valygar can't protect himself from magic and can't tank neither in melee, what is his purpose ? Kick him out of the party and let Charname enjoys a little bit more of xp. If CC spells disable half your party, you are effectively wasting half of your xp because the other half of your party (generally arcane magic user, the overlords) have only half the xp they could have. You can reproduce this schema until you have only two characters left (Which I find the most efficient as I said earlier).
Uh, what? Do your battles usually involve constant CC all day every day? Mine don't. There's CC every now and then, and it'll hit some people every now and then. The time they spend CCed is minuscule in the long run; in fact, the whole reason you can just skip immunities/protections is because the time you spend CCed is LESS than the time it would take to buff. Not an option in solo mode, of course, because CCed = GGed.
I appreciate arguments and discussion, but please do try to think a bit before you put stuff like that out there.
Well he said extreme example but i quite agree with him in the way that CC is one of the deadliest thing in the game (solo for sure), i think he wanted to say you can't equip every party members to be able to resist all spells thrown at you, so its most likely one or two will be out for a few rounds making their presence in the party questionable in regards of efficiency min/max party members.
Even when i play with a party i end up soloing most of the content while my team stay back because of this very reason, one get backstabbed to death while i am fumbling my contingency because i already have one, the thief get CC'd, another one i didn't notice stayed back and get owned by his own stupidity while the "you must gather your party" keeps running !
NB: i also find the game 10 times faster when playing solo or with a very small party, you lose so much time gathering your party "you must gath…", buffing up, managing the inventory etc… is it just me or ?
For you, efficiency looks like it is linked with the amount of time in fight because you are talking about damage output per round and the limit of 1 spell per round.
For me, efficiency is not about time, it is more about the amount of risks involved and the amount of damage you will take in a fight. With a Sorcerer, both are equal to zero. Plus I could argue that a good Sorcerer can bypasses the 1 spell per round limit very easely, casting 4 or more spells each round without Improved Alacrity. I could also argue that Chain Contingency : ADHW x3 on sight is the fastest way to win nearly every battles of SoA.
But no, let's ignore this and continue to move forward.
So, according to what you wrote earlier, the vanilla game is easy. That's right. And that most powergaming discussions focus on the high-difficulty setup. That's right.
Now tell me, which mod greatly enhances the difficulty of the game ? SCS, that's right.
And what does the mod do ? It enhances the AI of the game, that's right.
And what will do smarter enemies every fights, every rounds ? They will cast crowd control spells at you, that's totally right.
And how long do these spells last ? Starting from BG1, the Sleep spell, which mages love to throw at you with SCS lasts 5 rounds per level. Then both the spells Horror and Web last 1 Turn (10 rounds). After that, we have Slow which also lasts 10 rounds and Chaos which last 5 rounds +1/6 levels. Then we can approach the end of the game with the Symbol : Stun which lasts 2 rounds +1/3 levels. During all this time you are going to be affected by a lot of Silence spells, which last 2 rounds per level.
It is pretty frequent for a character CCed to stay CCed for the entire duration of the battle.
Even the shortest of these spells, Chaos, is going to last at least 6-7 rounds. Prebuffing for more than 4 rounds is very rare in my opinion. And what will you do if the "wrong" character get CCed ? What will happen to your party if your mages are stuck and can't Breach the PfMW of your foe ? If your cleric is CCed and your party is getting eaten by Level Drain ?
To me, it seems you are taking too many risks. It looks like you are playing the Russian Roulette.
These kinds of strategy won't work for long in a no-reload run, and that's how I define efficiency in Baldur's Gate. Feel free to disagree and enjoy the game.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge."
Well he said extreme example but i quite agree with him in the way that CC is one of the deadliest thing in the game (solo for sure), i think he wanted to say you can't equip every party members to be able to resist all spells thrown at you, so its most likely one or two will be out for a few rounds making their presence in the party questionable in regards of efficiency min/max party members.
Even when i play with a party i end up soloing most of the content while my team stay back because of this very reason, one get backstabbed to death while i am fumbling my contingency because i already have one, the thief get CC'd, another one i didn't notice stayed back and get owned by his own stupidity while the "you must gather your party" keeps running !
NB: i also find the game 10 times faster when playing solo or with a very small party, you lose so much time gathering your party "you must gath…", buffing up, managing the inventory etc… is it just me or ?
That's very true. How many times did I struggle to do the Iron Throne fight with an entire party, then did it without taking a single point of damage by simply going in with only my Charname or Khalid, heavely buffed with two Potions of Magic Resistance, hacking and slashing everything in a few rounds.
That's very true. How many times did I struggle to do the Iron Throne fight with an entire party, then did it without taking a single point of damage by simply going in with only my Charname or Khalid, heavely buffed with two Potions of Magic Resistance, hacking and slashing everything in a few rounds.
Sorcerers can perfectly play in party. The only spell that requires some "eye" is Skull Trap. Fireball is not even in my spell list. And Sunfire isn't anymore, since they fixed its MR bypassing effect.
As regards the DPS, there's nothing that can deal more damage in a single round than a Sorc. 10 apr/round dealing 30 dmg each you say... A high level Sorcerer can release at least 600 damage in one round, which is the double.
EDIT: Forgot to say that, as @Gotural pointed out, they are AoE damage. So there's really no comparison with any fighter class. And yes, there are enemies with high MR, like there are many with physical ones. The difference is that a mage can lower/nullify it
Sorcerers can perfectly play in party. The only spell that requires some "eye" is Skull Trap. Fireball is not even in my spell list. And Sunfire isn't anymore, since they fixed its MR bypassing effect.
As regards the DPS, there's nothing that can deal more damage in a single round than a Sorc. 10 apr/round dealing 30 dmg each you say... A high level Sorcerer can release at least 600 damage in one round, which is the double.
EDIT: Forgot to say that, as @Gotural pointed out, they are AoE damage. So there's really no comparison with any fighter class. And yes, there are enemies with high MR, like there are many with physical ones. The difference is that a mage can lower/nullify it
And yea of course they can do heavy damage but you will probably lose at least one round casting a defensive spell first, dropping you immediately to 300/round no ? While with a berserker/mage you would do physical dmg right away after casting something without waiting the next turn. Now i am gonna talk from ingame experience rather than raw numbers and from my experience, sorcerers are way way slower at killing things overall than a melee/mage character. I cannot say otherwise cause i tried a lot of different characters and that is my conclusion from different runs.
Then where i am wrong is that you can abuse of contingencies and sequencers with a sorcerer, simulacrums and so on, but it takes time to prepare and very solid knowledge of the game to do so while it takes a lot less knowledge and time to just pop berserker state, hack you enemies, cast pfmw when getting in troubles, all enemies are dead, next map. That is where the efficiency lies in my opinion, in the cheese !
nb: sun fire still hurts your team no ? its a question :P
@xav Sorcerer doesn't need any preparation. Prebuffs help, but for sure they aren't a must. But you're right, you need to have an idea of what you're facing. That's why I like it: the more strategically you play it, the stronger it is.
The first time I played BP2, I tried it with a solo Sorcerer. I died 2 times before finishing it. The first because my projected image was trapped by the demiliches, my char was unable to move because my pi was actually "still in game". They destroyed my Spell Trap and trapped me too Didn't thought about that. And the second time because I was curious to use the scroll on the golem-guy during the final battle... No need to say that my new golem form got obliterated by The Winged and his party.
So yes, knowledge is everything for this class. But once you know enough there's no comparison in terms of raw power. Does the enemy see through invisibility? Is it a fighter, a spellcaster or both? What's the main source of his damage? (fire, blunt, evocation, etc) Can I tank it or do I have to summon a sword/planetar to keep it busy? Does it have resistances? If yes, what kind of damage would be better against it?
These are some of the questions that will allow your sorc to overcome every situation, provided that you have an answer for them xD
3x familiar in a sequencer ! here's your powergaming !
i have to confess once with the help of CluaConsole i made a full team of berserkers with one dragon disciple, all fighters wearing the red dragon armor, ring of fire resist etc to get to 127% wielding harbinger (the 2handed sword spamming fireballs from time to time). Sorcerer with incendiary clouds and the like in sequencers/contingencies, that was fun hehe, i didn't play it for long because it was just for the heck of it but it was quite efficient !
Comments
If you split your gear evenly between 4 characters, they will never be as strong as one or two characters in my opinion, especially some key items (the Cloak of Mirroring comes to my mind).
It depends of your setup like you said, but if you use the NPC of the game, then I'm sure playing solo is better. I agree that level 25+, characters don't change much. But this represents a short portion of the game (ToB) and a good solo character is still far enough to deal with it (because he will have all the gear available).
PS : I think it is a very interesting debate, most of the time people argue about the best character, but it's rare to have a debate about the most optimal party size.
I think that the best party size is either 1 or 2 characters.
Er, carry on then.
Playing solo also offers the opportunity to kill annoying NPC ! Dont forget to kill minsc while he is stucked in his jail ! Go for the eyes if you wish
Also 100% MR doesnt help with him, i have yet to find a way to kill him with the Wizard Slayer Thief without scrolls or cheesy tactics.
On the other hand any other mage is a walk in the park, liches as well, there's nothing they cast that 100% MR doesnt counter.
Honestly i dont know if any other fighter/thief would be better, my goal was to get 100% MR at all times, i am sure you are aware with the "issue" that carsomyr is setting your MR to 50 rather than adding 50 (from what i've read its intended but i have no idea myself), So the only class that can have 100% MR AND switch weapons at all times is the wizard slayer and only him, giving him the advantage of Backstab and ranged weapons without going through the pain of swapping items all the time to get back his MR (which you cant do while fighting concerning the chest).
37% from Wizard Slayer natural MR at lvl 25
10% hell
5% from machine of the lum
50% Carsomyr
-----------
102%
This means you do not need any item adding MR in your setup, you now have a wide variety of items you can choose to make you own build.
About the casting failure, well its working, quite often even but thats not the point of this character to be honest since he's immune to magic anyway (most).
Also, I think you are grossly overestimating the power of additional characters. Most of the damage output of a character does not actually come from a weapon, it comes from the static bonuses applied to the base weapon damage. That means that additional characters do a LOT more damage than you may think, even with gear that is not optimal from a solo perspective. See above, same thing. The game NPCs are far from min/max optimized, but you still get to min/max your PC and can pick some of the good NPCs to go along. It won't be as good as all-custom, but it'll still be better than solo (assuming you pick the proper NPCs).
(A bit off-topic, but I'd just like to point out at this juncture that you can use EEKeeper to modify the game NPCs, if you want to play with custom stats but retain NPCs for story/RP etc. It's very easy to do.)
It seems to me like you're generally overvaluing the importance of XP, and the loss of XP due to party splits. Unlike BG1, BG2 has a SUBSTANTIAL number of quests with individual XP gains that are not shared - this is a significant bonus to larger parties, as you essentially increase overall available XP. Even during the early game, a medium-sized party will not be far behind a solo player thanks to the plethora of quests during early SoA.
With that, Demi-liches DO cast spells and high-level mages DO bypass MR with Dragon Breath.
PS. If you equip Carsomyr and THEN the other items, MR will increase normally.
PPS. The only way for a F>T to beat Kangaxx (with SCS) is to have UAI enabled or by setting traps in the right way and spots.
PPPS. The most efficient party size should be 4. One Sorcerer, one heavy armor user, one dual/multi thief and one bard.
Plus playing with more characters also means you can lose your power over the course of a fight. Everytime the enemy cast a spell like Chaos, Wail of the Banshee, Web, etc, you will lose control of a character or more, because there is no way to protect and prebuff 6 characters everytime. While a solo character can very easely become resilient to every spell thrown at him.
My Viconia is getting backstabbed to death in every encounters with thieves in my actual evil playthrought and there is nothing I can do about it, she can't cast Mirror Image or Stoneskin and doesn't have enough AC and HP to tank it. While Korgan and my own Charname (Blackguard) are good in melee (Korgan has -13 AC unbuffed while my character has -8), Dorn is useless, and I seriously think about kicking him out of the party simply because everytime we encounter some Knights (our reputation is at 1), they simply kill him in about 1 round because he only has -4 AC and 100 HP and there is nothing I can do about it. He is honestly just eating our XP for no reason.
Individual characters get hit less, on average. That's true. But 1 character invincible (Mirror Image / Stoneskin / PfMW / -20 AC) will still take less damage (zero damage in fact).
The very first time I played through BG2, I played a solo FMT and I reloaded only once. I didn't know anything about the encounters, it was my first time doing the game and I reloaded only once (against an Elder Orb in the Underdark who cast Emprisonnement at me) simply because every fights was about using 6-10 buffs which make me invincible then hack and slash my way to victory.
Even BG1 was so easy, my strategy for the Demon Knight ? One shot him with a backstab. My strategy for Aec'Latec ? One shot him with a backstab. My strategy for Sarevok ? One shot him with a backstab. My godlike character could instantly kill any foe of the game with one hit.
Speaking of backstabs, this character also killed Irenicus instantly, in both fights. He killed Demogorgon on first try (I never did it before) simply by autoattacking it.
The only thing I would fear with a mix/max solo character would be the final Ascension mod fight, because at this stage of the game, even a full party would have at least 6M+ XP and be powerful. While the solo character can't gain much more power after 8M XP, even if uncapped.
And xp from quests is about 10% of the total XP of BG2, it won't increase much the power of a party in SoA compared to a solo character.
I'm sorry if I sound harsh or if my english is bad, I'm really tired, it is very late here and my comment was a bit rushed. Time to go to sleep ! I apologize again.
PPS. you can also use smite and stun HLA, that will give you enough time to kill it.
PPPS. Personnal preferences i guess cause i know i wouldn't grab a sorcerer nor a bard.
We're talking about the most efficient party and Sorcerer is simply the strongest class of the game, if you know how to play it. So why not?
@Gotural Try to play BG2:EE with SCS + aTweaks. Then tell if you managed to clean up the demon world of the Planar Sphere and maybe even the Planar Prison with a 6M xp FMT.
After that try with a 3 chars party with 2M each and let me know how easier it was
Then there is the Lavok fight, but he is a bit easier because he is alone.
I should try the Planar Prison though.
Not to mention that "I beat this easily solo" doesn't magically translate to "solo is better". Can you beat even the highest difficulty setups solo? Totally. But that's not the point of this discussion; it's about what's most EFFICIENT. Any source on that number? I'm loath to state concrete numbers until I have the data to back them up. Still, nobody is talking about having equal XP - I'm talking about the XP sacrifice being worth it for what you get (up to a certain point, depending on setup).
You are right about the vanilla game being too easy, I shouldn't have extrapolated like this.
Let's take an extreme example, the Sorcerer. There is no way a party of 3-4 characters could be stronger than this machine alone. You just reached 1M xp ? He can already stops time, use Improved Alacrity and casts multiple ADHW with Robe of Vecna to annihilate everything in sight. This guy could even already solo ToB while you are still in early Chapter 2 of SoA with Project Image / Chain Contingency / Mordenkainen's Sword etc.
And I think losing control of your character can't be considered efficient. What are their purposes ? If Valygar can't protect himself from magic and can't tank neither in melee, what is his purpose ? Kick him out of the party and let Charname enjoys a little bit more of xp. If CC spells disable half your party, you are effectively wasting half of your xp because the other half of your party (generally arcane magic user, the overlords) have only half the xp they could have. You can reproduce this schema until you have only two characters left (Which I find the most efficient as I said earlier).
i find them more efficient alone rather than with a full party because they interfere with each other somewhat.
Sorcerers are at their most powerful in solo play, because they have EVERYTHING at their disposal. That's great for solo challenges, but not actually needed with a party. You can easily configure your loadout to be targeted to what you are about to face, making most of the Sorcerer's flexibility redundant. Uh, what? Do your battles usually involve constant CC all day every day? Mine don't. There's CC every now and then, and it'll hit some people every now and then. The time they spend CCed is minuscule in the long run; in fact, the whole reason you can just skip immunities/protections is because the time you spend CCed is LESS than the time it would take to buff. Not an option in solo mode, of course, because CCed = GGed.
I appreciate arguments and discussion, but please do try to think a bit before you put stuff like that out there.
Even when i play with a party i end up soloing most of the content while my team stay back because of this very reason, one get backstabbed to death while i am fumbling my contingency because i already have one, the thief get CC'd, another one i didn't notice stayed back and get owned by his own stupidity while the "you must gather your party" keeps running !
NB: i also find the game 10 times faster when playing solo or with a very small party, you lose so much time gathering your party "you must gath…", buffing up, managing the inventory etc… is it just me or ?
For you, efficiency looks like it is linked with the amount of time in fight because you are talking about damage output per round and the limit of 1 spell per round.
For me, efficiency is not about time, it is more about the amount of risks involved and the amount of damage you will take in a fight. With a Sorcerer, both are equal to zero.
Plus I could argue that a good Sorcerer can bypasses the 1 spell per round limit very easely, casting 4 or more spells each round without Improved Alacrity.
I could also argue that Chain Contingency : ADHW x3 on sight is the fastest way to win nearly every battles of SoA.
But no, let's ignore this and continue to move forward.
So, according to what you wrote earlier, the vanilla game is easy. That's right. And that most powergaming discussions focus on the high-difficulty setup. That's right.
Now tell me, which mod greatly enhances the difficulty of the game ? SCS, that's right.
And what does the mod do ? It enhances the AI of the game, that's right.
And what will do smarter enemies every fights, every rounds ? They will cast crowd control spells at you, that's totally right.
And how long do these spells last ? Starting from BG1, the Sleep spell, which mages love to throw at you with SCS lasts 5 rounds per level. Then both the spells Horror and Web last 1 Turn (10 rounds). After that, we have Slow which also lasts 10 rounds and Chaos which last 5 rounds +1/6 levels. Then we can approach the end of the game with the Symbol : Stun which lasts 2 rounds +1/3 levels. During all this time you are going to be affected by a lot of Silence spells, which last 2 rounds per level.
It is pretty frequent for a character CCed to stay CCed for the entire duration of the battle.
Even the shortest of these spells, Chaos, is going to last at least 6-7 rounds. Prebuffing for more than 4 rounds is very rare in my opinion. And what will you do if the "wrong" character get CCed ? What will happen to your party if your mages are stuck and can't Breach the PfMW of your foe ? If your cleric is CCed and your party is getting eaten by Level Drain ?
To me, it seems you are taking too many risks. It looks like you are playing the Russian Roulette.
These kinds of strategy won't work for long in a no-reload run, and that's how I define efficiency in Baldur's Gate. Feel free to disagree and enjoy the game.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge."
The only spell that requires some "eye" is Skull Trap.
Fireball is not even in my spell list.
And Sunfire isn't anymore, since they fixed its MR bypassing effect.
As regards the DPS, there's nothing that can deal more damage in a single round than a Sorc.
10 apr/round dealing 30 dmg each you say...
A high level Sorcerer can release at least 600 damage in one round, which is the double.
EDIT: Forgot to say that, as @Gotural pointed out, they are AoE damage. So there's really no comparison with any fighter class.
And yes, there are enemies with high MR, like there are many with physical ones. The difference is that a mage can lower/nullify it
Now i am gonna talk from ingame experience rather than raw numbers and from my experience, sorcerers are way way slower at killing things overall than a melee/mage character. I cannot say otherwise cause i tried a lot of different characters and that is my conclusion from different runs.
Then where i am wrong is that you can abuse of contingencies and sequencers with a sorcerer, simulacrums and so on, but it takes time to prepare and very solid knowledge of the game to do so while it takes a lot less knowledge and time to just pop berserker state, hack you enemies, cast pfmw when getting in troubles, all enemies are dead, next map. That is where the efficiency lies in my opinion, in the cheese !
nb: sun fire still hurts your team no ? its a question :P
Yes, I've checked. The Sunfire spell is not party-friendly.
But you're right, you need to have an idea of what you're facing.
That's why I like it: the more strategically you play it, the stronger it is.
The first time I played BP2, I tried it with a solo Sorcerer. I died 2 times before finishing it.
The first because my projected image was trapped by the demiliches, my char was unable to move because my pi was actually "still in game". They destroyed my Spell Trap and trapped me too
And the second time because I was curious to use the scroll on the golem-guy during the final battle... No need to say that my new golem form got obliterated by The Winged and his party.
So yes, knowledge is everything for this class. But once you know enough there's no comparison in terms of raw power.
Does the enemy see through invisibility?
Is it a fighter, a spellcaster or both?
What's the main source of his damage? (fire, blunt, evocation, etc)
Can I tank it or do I have to summon a sword/planetar to keep it busy?
Does it have resistances? If yes, what kind of damage would be better against it?
These are some of the questions that will allow your sorc to overcome every situation, provided that you have an answer for them xD
i have to confess once with the help of CluaConsole i made a full team of berserkers with one dragon disciple, all fighters wearing the red dragon armor, ring of fire resist etc to get to 127% wielding harbinger (the 2handed sword spamming fireballs from time to time).
Sorcerer with incendiary clouds and the like in sequencers/contingencies, that was fun hehe, i didn't play it for long because it was just for the heck of it but it was quite efficient !
would love to throw familiars at irenicus' face !