Doom Dwarves in DT

Kneller

My party is around level 7ish and we're taking a crack at DT. I'm at Kiel's resting place and those Dwarven Doom Guards are real tough little bastards. They're even tougher than the Doom Knights. I've tried a variety of tactics, and all have failed. My party is Me (Cav), Imoen (Thief 7/Mage 8), Jah, Khalid, Minsc, Dynaheir.

1) Straight up man-to-man. That was a silly mistake. I was dead within a couple rounds.
2) Loading up my best AC fighter with fire/lightning resist (he's a Cav, so that's easy) and free action (Spider's Bane) with protection from evil, using him as bait, then spamming Web/FB/LB with Imoen and Dyna. They still take me down before I can even take one of them out.
3) Trying to lure one at a time, out of sight from the others. As soon as one goes hostle, all the others jump to his aid no matter where they are (out of sight or not), and then I'm hamburger.
4) Using summons as meat shields. Ok, I actually haven't tried this, but considering my party's summoning potential (low) with their ranged capability (also kinda low), this isn't likely to work. Tactic #2 had at least twice the damage potential of this and it totally flopped.

I shouldn't be losing this fight so poorly. I'm only a level (two at the most) away from the XP cap. Is there some other trick I haven't considered?

jhneoh

Yes, you're missing out on buffs.

Doomguards have really low Thaco, your frontliners (I'm guessing your Cav and Khalid) should have Improved Invisibility and Protection from Evil otherwise they'll get squashed in short order.

Use Potions of Haste and Potions of XXX Giant Strength to burst them down one at a time.

Lateralus

Monster/unead Summoning is your best bet. You want to occupy them with fodder for 2 or 3 rounds so you can soften them up with missile fire. Really try hard to deploy only one tank and of course you better maximize his defenses well ahead of time. Prepare a cure critical wounds spell and use it as soon as he gets hit.

Obviously, bring at least 2 reliable archers. Superior missile fire is undeniably effective in BG1.

nano

From what I remember they go down pretty easily to various forms of magic damage. I usually do the same thing as #2 so I think you're just not doing it hard enough. More buffs, more CC, cast bless, haste and anything else you have. You can stack webs. I'd use more fireballs instead of lightning bolt. For non-spellcasters there's potions of explosions, necklace of missiles, arrows of detonation etc. If you have a wand of the heavens Jaheira can use that.

Kneller

nano said:

I usually do the same thing as #2 so I think you're just not doing it hard enough.

Still not working. I'm literally throwing everything I have at these guys. I'm not holding back anything. I can either get one of them to near death or a bunch of them to barely injured.

I don't have improved invis., and because it's a canon party, I don't have summon undead either. It would be handy if I did as I could send the undead into a cloudkill. Oh, wait, the dwarves are undead, too. I tried some other tactics and found out they were effectively immune to almost all my missile weapons, the only exceptions being the elemental damage from bolts/arrows.

So, here's what worked. I basically setup my two tanks in a doorway to block them and had them each drink an invis potion. The dwarves crowded against my invisible tanks unable to attack while Khalid picked away at them with (well over 200) elemental arrows. I also had Imoen on the xbow of speed, but she only hit on a critical, so I eventually gave up with her. Finally, I had to burn through a wand of frost and half a wand of the heavens to speed things up a bit (and I ran out of ammo anyway). Cheese? Probably, but since there's no way in hell this encounter is of an appropriate level for a BG1 party, I don't feel bad about it.

After all that BG has the balls to tell me that Seniyad is still the most powerful foe Khalid has taken down. As if...

Corvino

I second @nano. Bless, Protection from Evil, Haste, Defensive Harmony, Improved Invisibility, Strength on low Str NPCs should be enough to kill just about anything.

Wands of Monster Summoning are very useful to tie up 1 or 2 while you take down the rest.

Kneller

@Corvino I tried both of those suggestions in combination. They carved through the monster summons within a single round, maybe two. Then they carved through my party. It was pretty ridiculous.

Corvino

Hmm, I ran a very similar party a couple of months back and didn't have too much trouble there. Might be worth trying a potion of heroism on your main and the NPC with the best THAC0 to see if you can mow through them a bit quicker.

You're not playing on insane difficulty or anything, are you?

Madhax

My PC Dragon Disciple nearly solo'd them. High melee stats plus Stoneskin plus Fireshield plus Mirror Image plus casting fireball on himself plus Draw Upon Holy Might and whacking away with a +3 Quarterstaff between casts was pretty good.

Obviously that sort of strategy isn't possible for every party, but I don't remember the entirety of my strategy because the fight went very well for me. What AC are your tanks at? If all of your guys are using two-handers, they won't last long. Do you have one tank with max dexterity, heavy armor, and a big shield to hold a couple dwarves off with?

Kneller

The difficulty is only core. I don't recall this fight ever being so difficult. The dwarves were immune to most of what I threw at them. It took over 200 shots from Khalid with wands on top of it, after all.

My main tank (Cav) has around -10 AC depending on the damage type, but at least -8 for everything. He can last about three or four rounds. Everyone else is (or would be) dead within 2. Before this fight, almost everything needed a critical to hit him.

LordRumfish

Last time I went through there was on "Normal" difficulty so I was only taking 75% damage and had a lot of HP, and I still recall those bastards being a tough fight. With potions and/or buffs I usually tanked with Minsc at around -7 AC or a little better if I pulled out the stops. I did have him using a 2-hander rather than a shield. I remember kiting them out of the room with a haste-speed character if memory serves, and... I guess I killed them faster than they killed me. Your missiles might not have been working because they need to be magic weapons possibly? Or just because they have very high AC compared to most things in-game. For those fights I'd quaff whatever potions I could find, honestly I usually carried more offensive than defensive potions. Like I said, I killed them faster than they killed me, my party was quite aggressive. Now, the optional fight over near the stairs where there are about 4 of them all clustered together? That one I had to reload a lot, there must be some way of finding better tactics against them. Perhaps something like what @Madhax suggested.

I dread to think how difficult it's going to be now that I've gone back to core rules once and for all.

Kneller

Actually, I think I came up with a non-cheese tactic. It's similar to what I did before but instead you use the teleporter across the level. The trick is to have your party on the other side of it, using only a single party member (preferably using the boots of speed) to lure them back to that room. When you get there, teleport to the other side. Then you should be able to pick them off at range. This way, you still have a wall between you, but you don't have to exploit the invisibility bug to do so.

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GoodSteve

Strange, I don't recall having much of an issue with the Dwarf Doom Guards. They're definitely not the scariest things in Durlags. Much like everyone else seems to have said I sent in my tanks, buffed as much as possible and hasted everyone. I chewed through them easily enough.

LordRumfish

GoodSteve said:

Strange, I don't recall having much of an issue with the Dwarf Doom Guards. They're definitely not the scariest things in Durlags. Much like everyone else seems to have said I sent in my tanks, buffed as much as possible and hasted everyone. I chewed through them easily enough.

Interesting. I think the only thing in Durlag's Tower I had more trouble with was the Demon Knight fight. Everything else died readily enough.