Must see! - A single bard crushes Sarevok and his crew
SharGuidesMyHand
Member Posts: 2,582
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6a6uCpFAXYThe person who made this video believed that the bard was the most powerful class in BG, and to illustrate his point he did a solo run as a vanilla bard.
There are 8 parts to his solo run, but I love re-watching his final battle with Sarevok. He makes it look so easy. In the comments of his vid, he admits to making some mistakes (like trying to use wands after casting protection from magic on himself), but overall it is still a very impressive performance IMO.
1
Comments
Edit: Of course, I haven't seen the rest of the videos.. I don't doubt that bards are well equipped to handle the game solo.
Can't hit something? Use arrows of detonation. Unless they changed those in BG:EE, which I doubt.
10th
I did learn something from it, though - I didn't know the undisarmable temple traps would hurt the bad guys. I always just stay off of that circle, so I didn't even know you could set off a bunch of lightning bolts. That would work as well with a mage, Boots of Speed, and a Minor Globe of Invulnerability. You wouldn't even have to give up potions by using the green scroll.
I still think Bards are useless outside of Blades though, unless you're using Rogue Rebalancing.
As others have said though he really doesn't use anything any other class couldn't use besides casting an invisibility spell on himself. If he did the same tactics but with an Archer I think it would have gone down even more easily.
You can't use wands without identifying them first, but I've been able to get magical bonuses (or curses, for that matter) from weapons, rings, boots, etc. just by equipping them.
i heard someone meleed sarevok with pure mage and won
lol
That's vanilla BG. In Vanilla BG you didn't have to identify items to use or equip them, except for non-potion quick slot items (like the Tomes).
And no, you ALWAYS get the passive bonuses for worn unidentified gear, you just can't use activated abilities for items that aren't identified in BG2.
They can use every weapon!! They just can't hit anything with them.
They can wear chainmail!!! Can't use pick pockets or cast spells with it on.
They can cast spells!! Just not very many of them.
They can pick pockets!! So can any thief with 20% skill and charm spells.
They can sing!! And do absolutely nothing else in the process, a first level spells does the same thing, only better.
Eventually they can identify items! Again, first level spell does it better.
I just don't see the point. Fighter/thief or mage/thief are actually useful.
I'm far more impressed by winning encounters without metagaming to specifically prepare for them.
Where is this can't hit anything coming from? Very few enemies in the series actually have significant AC and rogue thac0 is perfectly fine for hitting them (not to mention they can buff themselves to counter pretty much any short coming). The only reason they typically avoid melee is due to lack of APR, which is the only reason fighters are actually good at melee...thac0 is just a slight icing on the cake. Not to mention that TWF has been nerfed with no compensation.
Elven Chain. And technically bards are supposed to be able to use thief skills in chainmail, even the game continues to say so, even though shoddy programming prevents it (items currently only have a flag to allow it or not rather then on class by class basis, a F/T cannot use thief skills in normal chain, but a bard could due to specialized training).
They're also not completely useless when out of spells. And actually don't get that many less per day, except at higher levels which doesn't even have proper Bard spell-casting (they're supposed to get casting up to 8th level, and reach 5 spells per spell level up to 6th level, which means at cap bards would have the same amount of spells per day as a mage up to 6th, one less 7th, and 2 less 8th).
If all their thief skills were implemented, they're better at each then a thief is. The only thing a thief can do better is locks/traps/stealth, because the bard can't attempt those till 10+ and requires use of NCP that are VERY inefficient per point spent. The lack of the NCP system also cut out literally 35% of the Bard's strengths.
Their song isn't implemented properly (doesn't even have the correct benefit). Blame the developers. It's supposed to last 1 round/level after they stop singing.
Blame lack of rest limits and the ease at which items can be identified on that. Lack of rest limits removes the main balancing factor for magic in general (which also undermines the Bard's not being useless when out of spells benefit). Identifing items should be restricted to mage shops only, and cost 550 gold per item with a 50% chance of failure, or 1200 gold for 90% chance of success. And the spell itself when cast by you should cost 450 gold per use (assuming use of a luckstone for all properties being revealed), cause 8 temp Con damage (disappears after 24 hours) and have a 10% chance of success per caster level to a maximum of 90%).
In short...Bioware absolutely hates bards and purposely gimped them.
My latest example is being ambush by 5 (FIVE!) Demon Knights in the Underdark... Maybe I'm a noob, maybe my party isn't strong enough for the encounter (I rescued Imoen fairly early), but that battle seems impossible without proper preparation using short-term buffs and summoning everything available. Which Charname would never do unless he knew the magnitude of the danger he faced.
On this occasion I didn't fully expect summoning a monster would work, as I thought the 'animal sacrifice' might be a quest item I had yet to find. I also assumed I'd have to kill whatever animal I summoned before the Demagorgon's 'children' awoke. My final justification/excuse is that the statues resembled mindflayers, kuo-tuans and other humanoids.. quite nasty, but certainly not 5 Demon Knights nasty. lol
and i think he will have higher HP?
f/t is really good but bard has spells from mages and this is pretty awesome
I sympathise with you, I think the game has failed to adhere to many ADnD rules and bards suffer greatly for it. However, for the most part, those are irrelevant arguments when accepting the game for what it IS and not what it might one day become.
You make a good point about the APR and I suppose a 10th level bards 16 thac0 isn't that far removed from a 7 level fighters 14 thac0, but they still do miss quite often without the training and advanced strength. And they simply do not want to stand in there toe to toe without a helmet on.
A level 6 thief could max out 2 thief skills like find and set traps and still hit level 9 as a mage. That bards extra d6 helps but not that much.
Keep in mind, I have hard and fast rest limits about only resting in Inns and only when the party is fatigued. Which means you have to ask yourself, is this really the time to a use a spell..or should I save it for later....and there's several spells that any experienced adventuring party should have memorized at all times. Anyone above lvl 8 is a grizzled veteran as far as roleplaying is concerned.
I make some exceptions though, like resting in the undercity after coming through the coronation, thieves' maze and clearing out Rahvin's party + undead. My character wants to be at his best, and it seems fairly reasonable given that Sarevok's waiting for me to come to him, and won't be escaping that place either way.
I used to read the old TSR modules to learn how dungeon masters did stuff and to see what life was like on the other side of the cardboard screen. Very frequently, they would say stuff like "If your players are foolish enough to not see all the above hints and to press this red button, then here is what will happen:"....
And it would go on to detail what was clearly written as an unwinnable encounter, such as ..."an ancient red dragon with 20 hit dice will immediately appear and initiate combat with its breath weapon, doing 20d6 fire damage..." And this sort of thing would be in modules written for characters of levels 4-6 or thereabouts.
Anyway, of course, in a computer game, players are going to figure out how to beat the "unbeatable" encounter, usually through cheese and exploit, just because it's there.
I don't mean any of the above to say that the game doesn't throw in a lot of encounters that you can't avoid, and that you really can't win without getting killed a few times and building up some foreknowledge of what is about to happen. Those are in there, and I agree that it's very discouraging to feel like you were cautious and were roleplaying the game well, and then you get punished for it.
The encounter with Sarevok shown in the OP is an example. I think anybody who beats Sarevok the first time they ever try it is very, very lucky.