BG 2 Magical Combat - Dealing with Stealth/Invisible/Mislead

Heindrich

I'm making reasonable progress in my first ever BG 2 playthrough (which incidentally I am still recording), I have recently just reached Spellhold, and although I've suffered a couple of party wipes, I have yet to be totally stuck against a particular foe. However...

I am starting to regularly run into enemy mages/clerics (mostly mages) of obviously higher level than my casters (lv11 is the highest mage level I have in my party), who inevitably pump out Contingencies and Chain-Contingencies with ever more impressive protections. I've learnt to throw 'Breach' at most of them... but I can't 'Breach' somebody who is 'invisible' or 'sanctuary'd' in some way. On a related note, although I've not encountered it too many times, I'm also having trouble against assassin-types who drink invisibility potions repeatedly and backstab for massive damage.

So... any advice for dealing with the above? (Preferably with Arcane spells lv5 and lower, and Cleric/Druid spells lv 6 or lower.) Also a few more specific questions...

1) When an enemy uses 'Mislead', he goes invisible, and then a copy appears. Should I bother trying to kill the copy, in fact, is there any way to target the real mage at all? I've tried using True Sight, but I either used it wrong, or it didn't work...

2) ... which leads onto... 'How does True Sight' work? Is the affect shared between all party members, or only the caster? I often use Anomen/Jaheira for True Sight, and Aerie/Charname for Breach, but they still cannot target the enemy mage.

Thanks in advance!

elminster

True sight should be working. How far away is your cleric when it first casts it?

Also do you have the fixpack installed?

Tresset

True sight is the only answer for illusionary crap like that. It casts itself on the caster. Every round for its duration it dispels pretty much every illusion in the area around that caster. Awesome!

Breach is a really nice spell that will dispel some of the worst of the combat protections that you can find on enemy mages all at once, especially good for stoneskins and prot. from magical weapons. Be careful with liches though. They are totally immune to normal weapons and spells level 1-5 including breach, and they LOVE to abuse that power.

For spell protections like the ever present spell turning (the spell that bounces spells back at the caster) the 4th level spell secret word works great. It will only strip the target of the most powerful protection they have so it won't take both a globe of invulnerability AND a spell turning away; just the spell turning. You may eventually need more potent spell protection remover spells to get rid of the most powerful protections like spell trap (or remove them from liches who I think are immune to secret word). Few spells can remove spell trap but so read the list of removed protections carefully. I believe the lowest level spell that can kill spell trap is ruby ray of reversal at level 7.

Tresset

As for the assassins, try to get them to waste their backstabs on a mage with mirror images or stoneskins.

Heindrich

elminster said:

True sight should be working. How far away is your cleric when it first casts it?

Also do you have the fixpack installed?

I should have fixpack installed (Corefix only), but I'm not sure how to verify this.

As for True Sight... I don't remember exactly. Sometimes I cast True Sight in anticipation of a Mage battle, sometimes I cast it once an enemy has already gone invisible. The battle that really messed me up and took a few attempts was ...

The Guarded Compound second floor, where one of them (Ketta?) repeatedly drinks Invisibility potions and backstabs for huge damage. I had Anomen on 'True Sight duty', and it was definitely at close range cos I didn't move far from the stairs (tryin to avoid traps), but he seemed totally incapable of detecting the rogue in question. I was forced to just unload everything at him in the brief moments between potions, which wasn't easy when also trying to deal with 4 or 5 of his mates, who were also kickin' my ass.

To this day, I still don't know why I went in there... or what it's about... I had thought it had something to do with the Cult of the Unseeing Eye, but apparently not... Anyways I don't wanna be spoiler'd if the compound is still relevant to the plot. At least I found a nice katana there.

Tresset

The guarded compound is... unfinished content I believe... There are several unfinished things in the game.

By the way... carry a rouge stone with you in the bridge district and look at stuff. Just a tip... Won't say any more...

Heindrich

Tresset said:

The guarded compound is... unfinished content I believe... There are several unfinished things in the game.

By the way... carry a rouge stone with you in the bridge district and look at stuff. Just a tip... Won't say any more...

Oh... that's a bit of a shame. I've noticed quite a few places where there's messages like 'this corridor leads to a room with nothing of interest.' I guess those are also incomplete stuff. Man it's crazy to think of how much more epic this game could have been. I hope they 'finish' the unfinished business in BG 2 EE.

As for the rogue stone, I've just entered Spellhold

'Holy Crap!' moment for so many reasons...

and got no idea when/if I will get out lol. Seeing as I am playing roleplay focused, I see no reason Charname would do something like that anyway.

I don't mind if I miss out on some nice Easter Egg, I think I'm doin' pretty good for a first blind run, I can always do a more 'completionist' run on my second playthrough.

zur312

true sight works but
you seems to have some crazy mods if your oponents are using potions of invisibility
chain contingencies with invisibility

what mod setup do you use?

Heindrich

zur312 said:

true sight works but
you seems to have some crazy mods if your oponents are using potions of invisibility
chain contingencies with invisibility

what mod setup do you use?

Ah... sorry if my description was misleading. I just listed all the things I had come across so far that was challenging or troublesome to deal with. (Thankfully) no one individual opponent did everything all at once.

I don't have any mods except BG 2 fixpack (Corefixes only).

The only one (so far) who really abused the 'drink invisible potion and backstab repeatedly' was Ketta at the Guarded Compound. He/she used it at least 4 or 5 times before I managed to kill him/her, and still had 8 potions of invisibility left! (Not sure if potion drops are affected by use during battle.)

Chain Contingency is a relatively new one I've come across, and hasn't caused major problems on its own, just off the top of my head, I think Perth the Adept used it. He used Mislead as well, which was more annoying cos I dunno how to target the real mage, so had to 'kill him twice'

Tresset

@zur312 Most thieves/assassins spam potions of invisibility and that is just the vanilla behavior. He is doing his run with just the fixpack installed I believe.

The rouge stone bit is, well... without spoiling anything lets just say you will be kicking yourself once you find out what you missed out on...

possibly the single most useful item in the game for mages of any kind

Anyway, that bit is also unfinished content, and yes there is pretty much no roleplaying reason to do that unless you just happen to have a rogue stone on you at the time or you save them in case you think they would come in handy later (both of those reasons applied to me when I first found out about that;)).

Edit: People keep ninja-ing me today.

Wisp

Bear in mind True Sight dispels illusions when cast, and every 6 seconds thereafter for an additional 9 rounds. It doesn't let you continuously see through illusions, so it is entirely possible for a thief to go invisible and backstab while True Sight is active, provided they are quick enough.

With Mislead, you want to get rid of the copy ASAP. The Misled creature is totally invisible as long as the copy is still around.

A good way to deal with backstabbing thieves is AoE disabling spells, like Chaos. AoE spells don't care about invisibility and a confused thief will be much more cooperative. The same tactic can also work pretty well against spellcasters. AoE spells also bypass protections like Spell Turning and a confused spellcaster casts no spells. Greater Malison is a very handy spell in these situations. However, Improved Invisibility (but not regular Invisibility) grants a +4 save bonus, so you may want to dispel that first.

You should be able to dispel Sanctuary with True Sight or Oracle. Otherwise, it's pretty close to 1 turn of being untouchable. You can dispel it, but due to caster levels and dispel being bugged in BG2 [1], you will have poor success.

1. If your caster level is lower than the caster level of whoever you are trying to dispel, your chances of success are infinitesimal, much, much smaller than the spell description claims. This bug is fixed by ToBEx, which also fixes many other hardcoded bugs. It is also fixed in BGEE.

Heindrich

Wisp said:

1. If your caster level is lower than the caster level of whoever you are trying to dispel, your chances of success are infinitesimal, much, much smaller than the spell description claims. This bug is fixed by ToBEx, which also fixes many other hardcoded bugs. It is also fixed in BGEE.

Oh... that may explain why I am finding 'Dispel' to be frustratingly ineffective. It's obvious that my casters are lower level than enemies cos they often use spells I've never seen before, let alone use, like Spell Trap, Mantle etc I even struggle to dispel Chaos effects on my party members. Quite often all I achieve with Dispel is to strip my own party of buffs and protections, whilst the confused characters are still confused -.-

I guess that mod only works for a new game? I'd be wary of installing a mod in the middle of a run.

Wisp

Heindrich1988 said:

I guess that mod only works for a new game? I'd be wary of installing a mod in the middle of a run.

You can install it without needing to start a new game. The fixes are contained in the core part, though some of the extras might qualify as fixes as well (e.g., "Blindness As Spell Description").

ZanathKariashi

Thief with 100 Detect Illusion. Allows you to completely ignore memorizing divination spells and hostile illusions. Just toggle find traps for 3 seconds every time an enemy tries to pop up an illusion and continue massacring.

If you're not a thief yourself, just bring Jan "Most Powerful F'ing Character in the Game" Jansen along for the ride. He only need 1 level worth of thief points to hit 100 with his goggles, and anything over 50 is still highly likely to dispel each round.

Yoshimo can also be used in a pinch, but he has no points in it, so it'll take 5 levels to hit 100, though as above, anything over 50 is basically as good as true-sight, and for him you really need to prioritize getting set trap and open lock to 100).

Imeon and Nalia are worthless for it, since they have no points in it and can never add any more.

Heindrich

ZanathKariashi said:

Thief with 100 Detect Illusion. Allows you to completely ignore memorizing divination spells and hostile illusions. Just toggle find traps for 3 seconds every time an enemy tries to pop up an illusion and continue massacring.

If you're not a thief yourself, just bring Jan "Most Powerful F'ing Character in the Game" Jansen along for the ride. He only need 1 level worth of thief points to hit 100 with his goggles, and anything over 50 is still highly likely to dispel each round.

Yoshimo can also be used in a pinch, but he has no points in it, so it'll take 5 levels to hit 100, though as above, anything over 50 is basically as good as true-sight, and for him you really need to prioritize getting set trap and open lock to 100).

Imeon and Nalia are worthless for it, since they have no points in it and can never add any more.

Unfortunately it looks like those solutions will not be available to me. As somebody new to the world of D&D, I just cannot take Gnomes seriously... and as for Yoshimo...

I just reached Spellhold and discovered his treachery. I don't know if I will see him again, but if I do, it will only result in his death! That bastard stole a lot of good equipment when he left, including Ring of Invisibility, Ring of Danger Sense, Tuigun Bow and a Short Sword I had carried around for Imoen for ages for 'when I rescue her'. *sighs* and *shakes fist in anger*

ZanathKariashi

That's pretty obvious, as Gnomes aren't MEANT to be taken seriously. Their entire culture is pretty much comedy-relief incarnate, aside from a few oddball boring types who try too hard to be human-ish.

And no playthrough of BG can truly be considered complete without Jan Jansen. And just one likely won't be enough....he banters EXTENSIVELY with literally EVERYONE, no matter your party combination.

sarevok57

for spells like spell trap and spell turning, ruby ray of reversal works great, and infact, there are 2 powerful dispelling type magics: breach, ruby ray of reversal, breach will dispell their highest level "protection from some sort of physical type damage" spell ( protection from weapons, stoneskin etc...) ruby ray will dispell their highest level " protection from some sort of magic type damage spell" ( spell turning, spell trap, etc) and if you cant break through ( liches for example) then a good tactic could be summon 5 monsters, and send in 1 at a time to soak up death spell/ high level AoE spells from an enemy caster, and while that is happening, enemy caster shields will start to deplete ( protection from any sort of magical weaponry have very short durations, 4 rounds) and then rush in with haste and hopefully overwhelm them, plus casting protection from fire on your front line fighters is always good, since enemy casters love dealing fire damage to your par-tay

zur312

there is 1 more thing

in vanilla breaches lvl5 are not working vs liches or working not 100% of a time because liches are immune to spells level 1-5

in scsii this can be changed to breaches always working

also liches have defensive mechanism like spell traps spell shield and other bouncing spells so they are really pain even without invisibility