TOB Mage battles - Invisibility/Mislead/fear woes

the_spyder

Any way around these spells? Seems like every mage battle I fight starts off with contingency spells on the enemy mage including improved invisibility or Mislead. After which, even if I have multiple True seeing spells up, the enemy is still untargetable by protection removal spells.

In one battle against a Green Dragon, every round he pops invisible. I can't target him with removal spells fast enough and even if I do, he usually has a second or third round contingency ready to once again make him immune to my attacks. Area of effect spells only damage my party and every time the enemy goes invisible, my fighters stop fighting and just stand there.

Also, fear seems to be quite a problem as well. Only if they somehow get fear cast on my people, they run around so quickly (boots of speed) that there is no way to cast remove fear. It is quite annoying the fact that simple low level spells like invisibility and fear are so devastatingly powerful.

Shin

With mislead, you don't actually dispel the invisibility of the caster with spells like true seeing, you need to use it to dispel the decoy created by the spell. So make sure you're close enough to the decoy when true seeing ticks. (This also opens up for famously cheesy exploits like casting mislead a couple of rooms away and storing the decoy there while enjoying undispellable invisibility.)

Another solid option is using @Demivrgvs's Spell Revisions mod that make protection piercers work through invisibility.

As for fear, you can simply cast remove fear before the battle starts. Also there are items that protect against it, like the dragonslayer set found in the Windspear Hills dungeon iirc.

pixie359

Am I right in thinking that the thief skill ticks over more quickly than true sight? If they have enough skills in it, this is really useful.

the_spyder

@Shin - Thanks for the info on the MOD. I might have to download that and try it. Yeah, I know about fear. It just pisses me off that I have to Meta-game that aspect.

Seems to me that if someone had true seeing up, that invisiblity and any illusions should simply fail to fire, rather than it having to tick every round.

I faced an Imp in Watcher's keep that every round would go invisible. I literally couldn't kill him. After about 20 minutes of trying, I gave up and left him there. This dragon is doing the same thing. Only he is permanently hasted and hits for insane amounts of damage. Ugh.

Lord_Tansheron

True Sight is the most valuable tool for such scenarios. As pointed out above, make sure that in case of Mislead you are close to the copy, not the original. You can also kill the copy to end the Mislead (it is usually not protected).

Detect Illusions from a thief works similarly to True Sight, but I can't say for sure what the frequency of its "ticks" is; tentatively, I would think it's about the same as True Sight, once per round. It may also be connected to your skill level, I don't know for sure. What I do know is that unlike True Sight, the thief skill is *not* considered to be of the Divination school. That means you can use a thief to dispel invisibility even if the enemy has cast Spell Immunity: Divination. This is hardly relevant in the vanilla game, but a fairly common occurrence with the SCSII mod.

I agree that certain situations are a little ridiculous. The Imps in WK are the prime example, as they just... sit there, going invisible over and over again with *very* little time to react and kill them. I'd suggest either ignoring them, or using area of effect spells to hit them even while invisible. You can also herd them into a corner, box them in with your characters, and have your finger ready to pause->attack as soon as they appear. It might take a while, but you'll hit them eventually.

Corvino

I remember hearing that dispel illusions checks twice per round as opposed to true seeing's once, but I cannot prove that.

As for remove fear - it's one of my standard prebuffs, and gets thrown on in addition to Chant, Bless, Haste etc whenever combat is likely.

ZanathKariashi

Detect illusion ticks every 3 seconds vs every 6 like TS, making 100 DI utterly superior..and even 55+ rivals TS in the speed at which it dispels stuff.


Never had a problem with fear before, so...dunno. Remove fear is a decent low level way to handle it, while CC protects against damn near everything.

Lord_Tansheron

How do you Detect Illusion and keep attacking by the way? I recall dimly that there's a way to do it, but I'm not sure on the details and the - humm humm - "legality" of it. Because that's one obvious advantage of True Sight, you cast it, and stop worrying. Not sure if that's the case with Detect Illusion as well.

lamaros

I believe it's Attack -> Detect.

I've not done it much, though my Thief/Illusionist is pumping DI so I'll be able to confirm its effectiveness soon. I figure you'll be able to do it like you use the bard song, in the you put it on whenever you're not actively casting and get a tick in the casting cooldown. Hopefully, anyhow.

Lord_Tansheron

Sounds more like a bug than intended behavior, though. Fair enough, I'll try it out myself later.

lunar

Pause the game, order your thief to attack and then detect. Unpause the game. The thief will both attack and detect illusions. Melee weapons work better as thief needs to be pretty close to the target for detecting illusions to work.

the_spyder

Corvino said:

As for remove fear - it's one of my standard prebuffs, and gets thrown on in addition to Chant, Bless, Haste etc whenever combat is likely.

Mine as well, but it requires a level of meta-gaming that I wasn't prepared for in this encounter. Literally he is the only opponent on the board and by the time you are close enough to see him, you are automatically forced into conversation followed by combat. But still, I can almost see "Hey. That looks like an awfully spooky temple. Better cast protection from fear or it will be brown trousers time all over again." It just took an outlook adjustment. And considering the duration of the spell, I guess I can just keep a permanent supply on hand with very little change to my spell list.

Yeah, taking out the human isn't as difficult as the Dragon. The fact that he has PFMW on contingency twice and is permanently hasted and hits for insane amounts of damage with an impressive number of attacks per round AND the fact the is apparently immune to AOE Magic attacks and can see invisibility AND can uses invisibility every single round means that (as far as I have been able to tell) the only strategy is to bulk up one guy and have him take the punishment and hope he doesn't die, until the PFMW dies. Then pound on him till the second one triggers and do the same thing all over again.

Oh, and on appearance, any summonables automatically disappear really only adds to the equation.

I did download the Spell modifications mod so we will see how that works. Thanks for everyone who chimed in.

Shin

Draconis is usually considered one of the trickiest challenges (if not the trickiest) in the vanilla game, so don't get too down about it.

the_spyder

LOL. thanks for that. I admit to moments of doubt in my ability to surpass him.

On the whole though, I am (once again) finding TOB not quite up to the standards of the rest of the series as a whole. it seems that "Tricky" is the name of the game as far too many of the enemies are concerned. I get that beyond a certain level that in order to make things tough they had to do something different, but there is a difference between different and cheap.

And I guess I never realized how powerful invisibility/miss-direction really can be, for the enemy. With the number of enemies who can see invisible targets though, it doesn't appear to be a strategy that can be turned on them though... Shame really.

Shin

Well, though some components of increased difficulty can be frustrating rather than fun, on the flipside of that coin you should attempt to savour it while it lasts. As you learn more about the game mechanics, it'll be rare that you go into a battle without already knowing almost all the angles.

And yeah, I think the Spell Revisions mod should work well for you. It also turns some summons (like djinni, efreeti, some of the elementals iirc) into gated creatures rather than summoned, meaning they can't instantly be nullified by death spell, which is what is most likely happening to your summons now.

the_spyder

Oh, I am fully aware of my own limitations as far as the game (I am not a great player by any means), but I am still having fun or i wouldn't be bemoaning this issue. I want to say that 95% of the battles up to this point I have been able to bull or endure or otherwise defeat. And I am set on finally finishing the game, so....

Looking forward to the spell revisions mod. What I read about it really peaks my interest. Revisions to save or die, revisions to summonables, revisions to spell removal spells, etc... Worth it in my book. And hopefully I am picking up some new tactics along the way...