[BG:EE] Arcane spellcasters and their valuable skills

Urd1en

The enemy approaches. You see him, then you'll have either your miss with sling bullet, or a dart being thrown nowhere, or a useless knife, or you even haven't made a try, whatever.

What next? What are you going to perform next?
Yes, as you already have guess, I'm talking about your mages.

How do you use your mages and bards? Could you arrange valuable skills your arcane spellcasters possess?


1. Wands.
"Fireball Staff" for a plain, "Lightning Rode" for narrow placements. Out of charges - go and recharge the staff. Strait, deadly, almost unlimited.

2. Scrolls.
Not so easy to find/buy in large quantities, not so easy in use, tricky and requires mastery. Harder and attractive path is to use most of them, not sell.

3. Spellcasting.
Unlimited, free. Got out of spells - sleep and get them back. Several days per area instead of realistic half a day. Greedy path full of gold from sold scrolls and wands.


Example: 1-3-2.
Wands are the main force, some portion of spellcasting then, no confidence in scrolls - sell them all.

Djimmy

3...2...1...

actually it is 5... 4... 3... 1... See
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrKz-HotSp8&feature=youtu.be&t=52s

Awong124

Wands of Fire are pretty plentiful from midpoint of the game on, I like to use it to soften up a group.

franco

I started out very conservatively with arcane magic. I think my feelings were:

1) Spells are renewable with rest, but still the mages have very few of them at lower levels. So if a battle looks like it can be handled by melee or ranged weapons without any serious damage, then do that.

2) Wands have their charges consumed, so using spells should be preferred. Wands would be conserved for the battles that appear very difficult and might not be won without the additional magic. I always thought that I wanted to conserve some of the wand magic for the bigger battles near the end of the game. (I didn't know that the charges on wands could be renewed by purchasing them. Was this a new feature of BGEE? It might not be a good one).

3) Scrolls have multiple uses. First they are important for the mage to scribe into his book if he wants to know the spell. This turns the scroll from a one-shot consumable to a renewable source of the spell. Also some scrolls cannot be duplicated easily even at stores in the early game. So the conservative tendency is to use scrolls in a battle as a last resort when things might get a really desperate.

But, on reading some of the descriptions from @Urdlen above, as well as some recent threads on the subject, I'm beginning to wonder whether the hoarder (more conservative) approach is always best. Certainly you would gain items and finish quests faster by using more of your arcane magic arsenal earlier.
The question I guess hinges on how easy is it to replace or recharge wands. Since they appear to be rechargeable for a fee in BGEE, then I would consider using them more often. (But then, I might restrict the recharging of wands sometimes because it just doesn't feel realistic to me in the medieval fantasy world.)

Teflon

It would be good if there is an fourth option - Potion. Well, looks like you consider potion as spellcasting though.
Reason why is I don' like use consumables .

Mortianna

I tend to conserve my wands until I really need them in a battle.

Although there are enough wands of fear to obviate memorizing Horror (especially since it's now one of innate abilities you can get through the dream sequences) and enough wands of fire to preclude memorizing Fireball.

I find myself collecting so many scrolls throughout the game through random treasure drops that I have to use them to make space in my scroll case. In the latter chapters of the game, my mage/specialist wizard is pretty much casting spells/scrolls, or using wands nearly every round during battles.

Mornmagor

I charge at them ;p

Berserker/Mage for the win

But other than that, 3-2-1 when i'm a mage (sort of ;p)

karnor00

Mages for me are like heavy artillery support. Most fights I don't need them so they stand at the back with their (almost) useless slings.

But when the big fights come along - BOOM!!!

And given that I don't use them very often, my party doesn't need to rest particularly frequently. Typically I need to rest to clear fatigue more than to get spells back.

Unfortunately this usage doesn't fit into your poll at all.

DJKajuru

Since I'm not a hoarder, I try to use all my cool items because the game ends.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Son_of_Imoen

Like in real life, I like renewables and dislike using fuels (wands) that get depleted. I stockpile wands and end up not using them.

elminster

I almost never use wands unless I have party members under the effects of silence. That or I want nuke a group of enemies from a distance with fireballs without using up spells.

Malicron

elminster said:

That or I want nuke a group of enemies from a distance with fireballs without using up spells.

This is almost always the fate of the bandit camp in my playthroughs.

Drugar

It's really more like 3-3-3-3-3-3-1-3-3-2

Wands and scrolls cost money! And they expend so easily, I might need them later!

(And yes, I also think this in the final battle when it doesn't matter)

ZanathKariashi

I tend to be frugal. One of the biggest things about magic is knowing when NOT to use it.

Magic is surgical and strategic in use. If i have wands or extra scrolls, then I don't memorize those spells, or memorize less of them, instead focusing on spells I either know I'll need, or think might be useful for a broad list of possible scenarios and can't reproduce via other means.

PnP casting is also a bit different. Rest is heavily restricted (most of the time, anyway), making scrolls and wands much more viable for their respective spells. But there's also a little trick that BG doesn't include. Memorizing spells only takes about 15 minutes....the 8 hours of rest is required to replenish the used slots. You could technically leave several slots open if you weren't sure what you'd need aside from frequently used spells, and then once you had a better grasp of the situation, take a few minutes to memorize spells suited to the situation.

BelgarathMTH

I find wands to be very useful, but also incredibly expensive to keep charged, and I'm as frugal with money in BG as I am in real life, so I conserve wand charges like crazy - for emergencies only.

I hold a huge collection of scrolls in my scroll case, but I almost never use any of them except for scribing. I keep thinking I may want to recruit a new party mage who will need them. I also don't like that they take a full combat round to cast. I often sell the more common ones for extra gold.

My first go-to when arcane magic is needed is always my memorized spells. And I'm still quite conservative in using those, too. "There's always a bigger fish."

Mostly I stand in the back and throw rocks. Then, as @karnor00 said, at just the right moment, I make things go BOOM. Or, wait until that one fight when my fighters get overwhelmed with superior numbers, and make all the enemies fall asleep, freeze, or fight each other.

If the scout reports a numerically superior force ahead, I might sneak up close enough to blast them or web them from a distance.

So, yeah, I'm a 3-1-2. Looks like I'm in the majority on that, although we could use a bigger sample of answers.