Wizard Slayers rock. Think not only of the item restrictions (many of which can be worked around with a good set of enchanted weapons and armor); think rather of the awesome concept. An awe-inspiring warrior that ends up fully magic resistant and beats the spellcasting ability right out of his prey: the hated wizard.
Maybe Inquisitors do it better, but you'd have to play a lawful goody-goody moral high horse riding prig.
@jesterdesu, the WS ends up with 84% which can of course easily be brought to 100+ with 10% in Hell, 5% from the Machine of Lum the Mad, 10% Amulet of Seldarine, and weapons such as the Sword of Balduran or the Flame of the North.
Just got console working in BGEE and tested this. Level 40 wiz slayer has 84% MR before Hell bonuses and Machine of Lum the Mad are taken into account.
Seldarine amulet is a no go, so max (excluding equipable items you may/ may not use) appears to be 99%... Those bastards never like giving 100% certainty to save! That said just one of the many MR items (theres shield of the lost also) can tip you over if the 1% fail chance messes with anybodies OCD.
Wizard Slayers rock. Think not only of the item restrictions (many of which can be worked around with a good set of enchanted weapons and armor); think rather of the awesome concept. An awe-inspiring warrior that ends up fully magic resistant and beats the spellcasting ability right out of his prey: the hated wizard.
Maybe Inquisitors do it better, but you'd have to play a lawful goody-goody moral high horse riding prig.
And Blackraven we see completely eye to eye on this. Wiz Slayer is awesome from an RP perspective. You should check out the "Mage Slayer" in ad&d 3.5 if you like that... they get some awesome stuff including this: http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Mage's_Disjunction , which, if you read up on it, is compared to arcane nuclear weapons, i.e. it screws everything, eternally (though the mage slayer would not mind).
Wizard Slayers that are rebalanced by this mod dominate any battle against spellcasting enemies. They will often completely ignore harmful spells cast at them as they remove one defense at a time with Shatter Magic. Its also worth keeping a mundane weapon around for when the enemy is protected by PfMW so Shatter Magic can remove it. Reflect Magic is a cool HLA that lets you reflect all harmful magic back to its source for 3 rounds, but by the time you get it, you are better off just tanking the spells with your 80%+ magic resistance instead.
Mages might be badasses, but rebalanced Wizard Slayers can walk right up to them and pimp-slap them across the face.
@Jesterdesu, WS can indeed use the Amulet of Seldarine (my no-reloaded Wizard Slayer Thani rocked that amulet in ToB). And yes, it's good to see people such as yourself acknowledge the awesomeness of the concept.
I second @Flashburn's recommendation to try the Rebalancing mod, for those who find the vanilla WS too underwhelming. It's a good mod, and it doesn't overpower the WS. They get an ability to take down wizards' protections but temporarily lose their own MR while dispelling mages. Even without the mod though I think wizard Slayers are cool. Not all classes need to be equally powerful.
I'm certainly not going to argue that you shouldn't play one if you concept speaks to you. I just find "guy who hates magic" to be a much less compelling starting point than "holy warrior charged with rooting out corrupt and evil mages wherever they hide." Obviously not everyone's gonna feel that way, but for me, I don't see much point to the WS. *shrug*
I'm certainly not going to argue that you shouldn't play one if you concept speaks to you. I just find "guy who hates magic" to be a much less compelling starting point than "holy warrior charged with rooting out corrupt and evil mages wherever they hide." Obviously not everyone's gonna feel that way, but for me, I don't see much point to the WS. *shrug*
This is legit. Its roleplay so gotta play how you feel and perfectly rational that some will prefer another cool class like Inquisitor on these grounds.
WS can indeed use the Amulet of Seldarine (my no-reloaded Wizard Slayer Thani rocked that amulet in ToB). And yes, it's good to see people such as yourself acknowledge the awesomeness of the concept.
Just checked these by loading a new game in ToB ee and it doesn't allow me to equip the amulet of seldarine (which is a starting item in that game).
There were some items WS could use in vanilla, this was often thought to be a bug though.
@Jarrakul: A Wizard Slayer needn't be just "a guy who hates magic". Their backstory, personality and motives can be fleshed out to make them more interesting. What is more, the idea that a Paladin be guided by the will of their deity and the tenets of their faith doesn't make necessarily make them more interesting to me. A morally grey Wizard Slayer guided by their own will rather than that of some deity, and their own life experiences, traumas etc. can be just as compelling to me, if not more. But that's probably subjective. My earlier comment re: Inquisitors was said partly in jest, hence the smiley.
Learning to resist magic to such a high degree seems a smart choice in a world so governed by it. It might not come from hatred or fear, but rather from a desire to compete and protect yourself from magic users, whilst not wishing to use the same tools they do.
@Jarrakul: A Wizard Slayer needn't be just "a guy who hates magic". Their backstory, personality and motives can be fleshed out to make them more interesting. What is more, the idea that a Paladin be guided by the will of their deity and the tenets of their faith doesn't make necessarily make them more interesting to me. A morally grey Wizard Slayer guided by their own will rather than that of some deity, and their own life experiences, traumas etc. can be just as compelling to me, if not more. But that's probably subjective. My earlier comment re: Inquisitors was said partly in jest, hence the smiley.
I actually agree with this entirely. It's absolutely possible for a Wizard Slayer to be quite complex and compelling. My point was more that classes often provide a starting point for the roleplaying possibilities, and that I don't find the WS a particularly interesting starting point. That certainly isn't to say that I don't think it can be fleshed out in an interesting way. A good roleplayer can make a wet sock compelling, and the WS offers a lot more meat than that.
What give force to my playthroughs is the main character evolution. Today i experienced this game so many times that how i build my character is more important than anything else (after all i already know the history so much that i can even close my eyes and simulate in my mind an entire playthrough).
Character evolution in BG is somehow complicated, characters of the same class hadly will differ from others, so the main issues that drag my focus to the game are: Romances (even repeated they're still interesting), crazy party formation (no more minsc, aerie, jaheira, yoshimo parties), and above all, HOW I EQUIP MY CHARACTER.
Item equipment today is one of the main issues in new games, and when i meet a class that has rescrition exactly in what gives me motivation to play... i simply will not chose it!
I see myself using a wizard slayer in Black Pits and Black Pits 2... for now, but in main saga? No way!
Edit: To any Dev reading this, add magic damage resistance at the same rate of magic resistance, give the WS a double save x spell (anytime a save x spell fails the WR repeat the saving throw) and make 10% spell failure be applied even if the attack receive the weapon inefective message.
Even then i will be still a lot uninterested, at least until the game differ magic items from artifacts and both from technology (adding some of these last ones so we can equip something on the WR).
Wizard Slayers that are rebalanced by this mod dominate any battle against spellcasting enemies. They will often completely ignore harmful spells cast at them as they remove one defense at a time with Shatter Magic. Its also worth keeping a mundane weapon around for when the enemy is protected by PfMW so Shatter Magic can remove it. Reflect Magic is a cool HLA that lets you reflect all harmful magic back to its source for 3 rounds, but by the time you get it, you are better off just tanking the spells with your 80%+ magic resistance instead.
Mages might be badasses, but rebalanced Wizard Slayers can walk right up to them and pimp-slap them across the face.
Yes, the Wizard Slayer Rebalancing mod can be a compromise for those who feel this kit is underperforming. It grants nice abilities and makes a wizard slayer a much stronger character than the vanilla version.
Yet in the same time it leads to wizard slayers losing their underperfoming status so that soloing as a wizard slayer stops being as hard as it is in the vanilla game (and I like the difficulties it brings more than anything).
The one thing that would"fix" the class would be making all that MR available sooner, say 5% per level until lvl 12, then 1% a level after.
At present they only really shine at max level, meaning they're pretty disadvantaged for much of the game and soloing is the only way to get value out of them.
This is what all other implementations of them do (pnp 3.5 and dragon age origins Templar)
I am currently maining a Wizard Slayer Charname in BG2, albeit modded with Wizard Slayer Rebalancing. It's pretty fun that way; it adds an interesting element to the Fighter, and it is a cool opportunity for RP (especially with a villain like Irenicus).
But vanilla Wizard Slayer? I'd never consider it; far too weak while lacking decent benefits.
Lose the penalties or add some other buff to balance them out more. I find the class interesting, but feel that a vanilla fighter, Beserker or Dwarven Defender are better all round.
I think it's one of the more interesting classes to play no-reload solo - you have to work hard to make progress for much of the game, but you get rewarded by seeing a real powerhouse character by the start of ToB as the 100% magic resistance kicks in.
In a party the miscast magic ability is a bigger benefit than the magic resistance. There's a lot of misinformation in this thread about that not working - it is applied whenever an arcane caster is hit, irrespective of whether the hit causes damage or not. Unlike elemental damage it doesn't just have a chance of disrupting a spell during casting, but can prevent future spells as well (thus reducing the chances for mages to buy time in the middle of a conflict by casting PfMW for instance). It doesn't entirely eliminate the threat from arcane casters (due to the use of items, special abilities, scripted spells and sequencers) and doesn't work at all against divine casters, but there are a lot of arcane casters in the game and this ability does make progress for the party significantly easier.
I made some discoveries about Wizard Slayers that I haven't yet posted in this thread. Long story short, Wizard Slayer spell failure can bypass ALL of a mage's defenses, even weapon immunities, if you use the right weapons.
WS spell failure is 25%, stackable, and applies to all weapons in EE. This include area-effect weapons like Fire Seeds, and area-effect weapons bypass all weapon immunities on any nearby targets. In my last no-reload run of BG2, my Wizard Slayer and her Vhailor's Helm clone took down an SCS lich with zero risk by hurling Fire Seeds at our Flesh Golem (an easy hit, with the golem's 10 AC) while the golem stood next to the lich.
A Wizard Slayer can take down an SCS lich (with all its many layers of pre-buffs) at level 7, on a Chapter 1 budget, without using any finite resources. No other class can do that.
The Fire Seed trick is when you apply an "on-hit effect" to Fire Seeds. Fire Seeds strike as area-effect projectiles, so any on-hit effects you apply to them will also have an area effect.
This works with all on-hit effects. This includes: Poison Weapon (from Assassin or Blackguard) Wizard Slayer spell failure Power Attack (the warrior HLA) Smite (the warrior HLA)
The deal with Fire Seeds is that any character can use them, even a Kensai that can't use missile weapons normally. They're not limited to the druid that creates them.
To apply poison with Fire Seeds, you just need a druid to create the Fire Seeds, hand them over to an Assassin or Blackguard, have the Assassin or Blackguard activate Poison Weapon, and then throw the Fire Seeds at whoever you want. If the target is immune to +6 weapons (either from Protection from Magical Weapons or SCS Absolute Immunity), or if you miss the target, the attack will fail. But if it's successful, both the initial target and everyone nearby will get hit by all on-hit effects the attacker is using.
Fire Seeds have poor THAC0 and don't benefit from proficiency bonuses, so their base APR (attacks per round) is just 1, but Fire Seeds let you apply on-hit effects even against stuff like liches with Protection from Magical Weapons, who normally would resist any weapon, by throwing a Fire Seed at a critter right next to the lich. A lich should be immune to Poison Weapon, but Power Attack and Smite will stun a lich and a Wizard Slayer will inflict spell failure on a lich if you catch the lich in the area of effect of a Fire Seed.
How many hits can a squishy mage take anyway? A caster would be long dead before that bonus would start to matter.
As it stands, if you want to kill a caster, your best bet are one of these three classes:
1. Inquisitor - about a thousand times better and slaying Wizards due to uber-dispel and true sight. 2. Berserker - much better at killing Wizards due to the sheer amount of immunities granted by Rage. 3. Blackguard - poison weapon + darts = bye bye mages. The poison tick from every hit is FAR more effective at neutralizing enemy casters than a Wizard Slayer could ever even dream.
The last one is particularly damaging to the Wizard Slayer's viability, because while one might think to specialize in darts for Wizard Slayer (more APR), a Blackguard (or even an Assassin) can utilize them far more effectively.
In IWDEE, the class is even worse. Like beyond worthless type of worse.
The best thing would be to either eliminate the class altogether (noob trap) or buff it drastically. Make it 50% spellcasting failure per hit (and even that might not save the class due to how crippling it is to lose magic items).
Except a mage can survive a great many hits. Stoneskin, Mirror image, protection from weapons. Even if no damage is done, that miscast will stack quickly.
How many hits can a squishy mage take anyway? A caster would be long dead before that bonus would start to matter.
As it stands, if you want to kill a caster, your best bet are one of these three classes:
1. Inquisitor - about a thousand times better and slaying Wizards due to uber-dispel and true sight. 2. Berserker - much better at killing Wizards due to the sheer amount of immunities granted by Rage. 3. Blackguard - poison weapon + darts = bye bye mages. The poison tick from every hit is FAR more effective at neutralizing enemy casters than a Wizard Slayer could ever even dream.
For the Inquisitor, I would say you're right in vanilla, where dispel has a great chance of stripping the mage buffs in one action outright, but not so much with SCS, where mages are higher level and where you can tone down the power of Inquisitor's dispel (which should be done IMO, because while still useful, dispel doesn't trivialize mage fights anymore that way).
For the Blackguard and Berserker ? None of these guys can do anything to a fully buffed mage but wait, while the Wizard slayer's miscast % ability apply even if his attack is blocked. A WS with darts will shut down a high level mage, even if the mage is protected. That's better than having to wait for your mage (or time) to take down combat protections before being able to do anything.
At higher level, where a WS can get to 100 Magic Resistance easily, he becomes even sturdier against magic than the berserker, because Zerke's Rage eventually fade during longer fights, while 100 MR is always on. WS is definitivelty a niche class, but a good niche class.
If I'm going to roll up a fighter type, I prefer a kensai, dwarven defender, cavalier, or inquisitor. Occasionally I will try something unusual like a straight halfling fighter or gnome barbarian just for a change of pace. But honestly, I don't see what I get out of the wizard slayer that justifies the loss of, say, the potion of frost giant strength, etc. Please, someone convince me to try the wizard slayer again.
As a wiz slayer apr and surprise are your buds. Between two bow shots giving 50% casting failure and the chance of failure from the damage you can stop most every caster instantly in BG. By SOD/BG2 you can dual wield efficiently and invisibility is easy to obtain from divine or arcane spells, so the same premise applies.
By using the Helm of Vhailor (if you can do so, i totally forget whether they can use helmets or just cloaks and boots at the moment) and giving yourself another Wiz Slayer you can subdue all dangerous casters pretty quickly with minor planning. By TOB as has been stated you can be 100% magic resistant so you can focus on resisting physical damage, being an excellent mix of tank, disabler, and damage dealer.
I like this kit, but I admite that it could be better.
I'm working on two solutions for the WS:
First solution: Can use anything but rings and amulets.
Second solution: WS from WSR able to use any item, except for any ring or amulet. When it comes to Potions, the WS can use anything that doesn't have an arcane magical effect. So he/she could use a Potion of Freedom (Free Action) or Clarity (Chaotic Commands), but not an Oil of Speed (Haste) or Potion of Invisibility.
Neither will be able to Dual-Class to anything but Cleric.
---
Recently I did a trilogy run using a Thief -> Wizard Slayer (EEKeepered) with 100% on detect illusions. It was awesome - not only a powerhorse against wizards, but also against thieves. Nothing like starting a battle giving the enemy wizard a miscast spell-backstab.
my solution has been to add a few items that help with mage slaying to my mod project. you know, minor poison and disease damage and other things which hinder spellcasting but don't do overblown amount of damage or do something OP like dispel on hit
1. The harsh magic item restriction just limit his potential massively. You'll come across bunch of cool gear through out your adventures, but can't use 90 % of them? Kind of sucks. Why not have some fun gear designed just for Wizzard slayers? There could be still some fun ways to allow wizzard slayer use some gear without making him overpowered. Like with the monk class. Or maybe just make those restriction less restrictive.
2. And he is kind of boring to play because his internal abilities are not that overwhelming. There is a mod which tries to fix him by giving him more powerfull abilities to offset his massive item disadvantage.
3. Many other classes can do pretty much what he does and more. Inquisitor, fighter-mage just to name a few.
4. It just doesn't seem like a belivable backround for the main character. I just can't picture a character name being immune to magic. He pretty much radiates magic of some kind.
Comments
1% magic resistance until lvl 19, then alternating 1 and 5% from 20.
Adds up to 84%. I think the 98% was only possible in vanilla where the kit got 2% per level despite the tooltip.
Add 5% from Lum's machine in WK for 89%... are there any more?
Maybe Inquisitors do it better, but you'd have to play a lawful goody-goody moral high horse riding prig.
@jesterdesu, the WS ends up with 84% which can of course easily be brought to 100+ with 10% in Hell, 5% from the Machine of Lum the Mad, 10% Amulet of Seldarine, and weapons such as the Sword of Balduran or the Flame of the North.
Seldarine amulet is a no go, so max (excluding equipable items you may/ may not use) appears to be 99%... Those bastards never like giving 100% certainty to save! That said just one of the many MR items (theres shield of the lost also) can tip you over if the 1% fail chance messes with anybodies OCD.
Fyi wiz slayer can still use boots of speed.
Wizard Slayers that are rebalanced by this mod dominate any battle against spellcasting enemies. They will often completely ignore harmful spells cast at them as they remove one defense at a time with Shatter Magic. Its also worth keeping a mundane weapon around for when the enemy is protected by PfMW so Shatter Magic can remove it. Reflect Magic is a cool HLA that lets you reflect all harmful magic back to its source for 3 rounds, but by the time you get it, you are better off just tanking the spells with your 80%+ magic resistance instead.
Mages might be badasses, but rebalanced Wizard Slayers can walk right up to them and pimp-slap them across the face.
I second @Flashburn's recommendation to try the Rebalancing mod, for those who find the vanilla WS too underwhelming. It's a good mod, and it doesn't overpower the WS. They get an ability to take down wizards' protections but temporarily lose their own MR while dispelling mages.
Even without the mod though I think wizard Slayers are cool. Not all classes need to be equally powerful.
There were some items WS could use in vanilla, this was often thought to be a bug though.
Character evolution in BG is somehow complicated, characters of the same class hadly will differ from others, so the main issues that drag my focus to the game are: Romances (even repeated they're still interesting), crazy party formation (no more minsc, aerie, jaheira, yoshimo parties), and above all, HOW I EQUIP MY CHARACTER.
Item equipment today is one of the main issues in new games, and when i meet a class that has rescrition exactly in what gives me motivation to play... i simply will not chose it!
I see myself using a wizard slayer in Black Pits and Black Pits 2... for now, but in main saga? No way!
Edit: To any Dev reading this, add magic damage resistance at the same rate of magic resistance, give the WS a double save x spell (anytime a save x spell fails the WR repeat the saving throw) and make 10% spell failure be applied even if the attack receive the weapon inefective message.
Even then i will be still a lot uninterested, at least until the game differ magic items from artifacts and both from technology (adding some of these last ones so we can equip something on the WR).
Yet in the same time it leads to wizard slayers losing their underperfoming status so that soloing as a wizard slayer stops being as hard as it is in the vanilla game (and I like the difficulties it brings more than anything).
At present they only really shine at max level, meaning they're pretty disadvantaged for much of the game and soloing is the only way to get value out of them.
This is what all other implementations of them do (pnp 3.5 and dragon age origins Templar)
But vanilla Wizard Slayer? I'd never consider it; far too weak while lacking decent benefits.
In a party the miscast magic ability is a bigger benefit than the magic resistance. There's a lot of misinformation in this thread about that not working - it is applied whenever an arcane caster is hit, irrespective of whether the hit causes damage or not. Unlike elemental damage it doesn't just have a chance of disrupting a spell during casting, but can prevent future spells as well (thus reducing the chances for mages to buy time in the middle of a conflict by casting PfMW for instance). It doesn't entirely eliminate the threat from arcane casters (due to the use of items, special abilities, scripted spells and sequencers) and doesn't work at all against divine casters, but there are a lot of arcane casters in the game and this ability does make progress for the party significantly easier.
As it stands, if you want to kill a caster, your best bet are one of these three classes:
1. Inquisitor - about a thousand times better and slaying Wizards due to uber-dispel and true sight.
2. Berserker - much better at killing Wizards due to the sheer amount of immunities granted by Rage.
3. Blackguard - poison weapon + darts = bye bye mages. The poison tick from every hit is FAR more effective at neutralizing enemy casters than a Wizard Slayer could ever even dream.
The last one is particularly damaging to the Wizard Slayer's viability, because while one might think to specialize in darts for Wizard Slayer (more APR), a Blackguard (or even an Assassin) can utilize them far more effectively.
In IWDEE, the class is even worse. Like beyond worthless type of worse.
The best thing would be to either eliminate the class altogether (noob trap) or buff it drastically. Make it 50% spellcasting failure per hit (and even that might not save the class due to how crippling it is to lose magic items).
For the Blackguard and Berserker ? None of these guys can do anything to a fully buffed mage but wait, while the Wizard slayer's miscast % ability apply even if his attack is blocked. A WS with darts will shut down a high level mage, even if the mage is protected. That's better than having to wait for your mage (or time) to take down combat protections before being able to do anything.
At higher level, where a WS can get to 100 Magic Resistance easily, he becomes even sturdier against magic than the berserker, because Zerke's Rage eventually fade during longer fights, while 100 MR is always on. WS is definitivelty a niche class, but a good niche class.
By using the Helm of Vhailor (if you can do so, i totally forget whether they can use helmets or just cloaks and boots at the moment) and giving yourself another Wiz Slayer you can subdue all dangerous casters pretty quickly with minor planning. By TOB as has been stated you can be 100% magic resistant so you can focus on resisting physical damage, being an excellent mix of tank, disabler, and damage dealer.
I'm working on two solutions for the WS:
First solution: Can use anything but rings and amulets.
Second solution: WS from WSR able to use any item, except for any ring or amulet. When it comes to Potions, the WS can use anything that doesn't have an arcane magical effect. So he/she could use a Potion of Freedom (Free Action) or Clarity (Chaotic Commands), but not an Oil of Speed (Haste) or Potion of Invisibility.
Neither will be able to Dual-Class to anything but Cleric.
---
Recently I did a trilogy run using a Thief -> Wizard Slayer (EEKeepered) with 100% on detect illusions. It was awesome - not only a powerhorse against wizards, but also against thieves. Nothing like starting a battle giving the enemy wizard a miscast spell-backstab.
1. The harsh magic item restriction just limit his potential massively. You'll come across bunch of cool gear through out your adventures, but can't use 90 % of them? Kind of sucks. Why not have some fun gear designed just for Wizzard slayers? There could be still some fun ways to allow wizzard slayer use some gear without making him overpowered. Like with the monk class. Or maybe just make those restriction less restrictive.
2. And he is kind of boring to play because his internal abilities are not that overwhelming. There is a mod which tries to fix him by giving him more powerfull abilities to offset his massive item disadvantage.
3. Many other classes can do pretty much what he does and more. Inquisitor, fighter-mage just to name a few.
4. It just doesn't seem like a belivable backround for the main character. I just can't picture a character name being immune to magic. He pretty much radiates magic of some kind.