Elite Fire Giants Are Cheaters *spoilers*
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I just spent 10 minutes banging my head against a group of fire giants in Yaga-Shura's lair...the ones in the first area, up the staircase and second door on the right. There are two elite fire giants (plus 3 regular ones), and I never saw either of them miss my Charname. She was sitting at -13 AC (17 Dex, Armor of the Hart +3, Helm of Balduran, Dragon Scale Shield +2, Ring of Gaxx, Ring of Earth Control, Cloak of the Sewers and wielding the Flail of Ages +3). I even set the game to show To Hit Rolls, and then auto-pause after every round. Never once did they miss; every single roll was over 10 base (plus their 3 adjustment for whatever). I suppose it's feasible that I got screwed by random numbers, but we're talking about dozens of rounds where both elite giants had every single roll in the top half of the possibility range.
So my question is, what kind of cheating is built into these guys? And what's the point? Seriously, with them drinking potions of speed, five fire giants are harder than any dragon in the game.
Note: I am not complaining that it's unbeatable, etc. I could very well have loaded my mages up with chain contingencies full of Abi's and the usual cheese. My question is why elite fire giants need to hit every single time they swing.
So my question is, what kind of cheating is built into these guys? And what's the point? Seriously, with them drinking potions of speed, five fire giants are harder than any dragon in the game.
Note: I am not complaining that it's unbeatable, etc. I could very well have loaded my mages up with chain contingencies full of Abi's and the usual cheese. My question is why elite fire giants need to hit every single time they swing.
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-13 is pretty high though. It might be enough to deflect some of the mooks but fire giant elites are, well, elites. The best way is not to rely on AC past this and focus on damage resistance and blocking their hits.
What kind of character are you using? If you're a mage you have PfMW and stoneskin. If you're a fighter you can use Defender of Easthaven + Hardiness. Cleric, DoE + armor of faith.
My main is a ranger; I was using Flail of Ages to slow them down (since they start off hasted) rather than the Defender of Easthaven. The normal tactics for slowing them down don't really work, because there are more than one and they're magic resistant. So trying to lower resistance/greater malison/slow only works if you hit each of them with lower resistance; by then you're into round three and your tank is dead or nearly dead. I was also using Hardiness, as well as Armour of Faith.
According to NearInfinity, these things have a THAC0 of 2 and Str 23 (+5 to hit), which would put them at an effective THAC0 of -3. To hit a -13 AC, they would need to roll at least a 10. Strange how they never actually rolled lower than that, isn't it? I mean, not a single critical miss (natural 1) in 10 minutes of play.
Again, I can think of any number of ways to deal with this, it just seems silly that killing this group efficiently requires as much preparation as a boss fight.
They also use whirlwind. I doubt the slowing does that much for you because it'll set their attacks to 10 anyways (or is it 5 under slow? it'll hurt either way). If your character isn't super tanky it's worth backing off when you see them cast it because it only lasts a round.
The best way IMO is just to kill them before they kill you while continually chugging potions. When I went through that area Mazzy took them out pretty well - though she doesn't have as much damage reduction as your character she just killed them faster than they killed her.
If those are their stats then I guess they should be missing occasionally, but I can't say I ever saw them miss either.
Fire Giants are notorious for being extremely accurate and damaging, but they aren't exactly mashing defensive spells against you. Use some of those powerful offensive spells your mages have for once.
@GamingFreak You're right, I do have a mild tendency to go overboard when frustrated.
There is, so far as I know, no way within the game engine to label a creature as not rolling critical misses (certainly no way that won't show up in an editor).
That's part of why AC is maligned late game- it's fairly hard to hit -24 and even when you do a number of enemies still have decent chances to hit. 50% is still better than 95% though.
Honestly never found a better way to deal with trash mobs
The general rule of thumb in tob combat, as stupidly designed as it is, is to kill stuff before it kills you.
Playing the endurance game is not a good way to win
Epic "tank" fighters being the worst tanks makes so much sence am I right?
It's been a while but I think it actually works like this:
-20 cap + dex bonus + single weapon style bonus + specific weapon type bonus (e.g. vs slashing). With that you should be able to get -26 at least. Gonna test it later.
That mod alone is reason enough to play a tanky character. Give your tank the heaviest plate armor available, and deck him out with +HP items (the IWD Wolf Talisman comes to mind). Between Hardness, Defensive Stance, potions, party buffs, and the armor's built-in damage resistance, I find that my tank is literally the last person standing after shit has hit the fan. Squishy DPS machines like Kensai and Assassins are the ones who usually get creamed.
One could argue that DR-increasing armor is imbalanced, but I think it's just realistic (especially since enemies wear the same types of armor as your party), and since every mage and his mother have survivability flying out the wazoo. Giving armor built-in DR just levels the field a bit. Although, if you really wanted to cheese it and breeze through late-game, Fighter/Mages are so overpoweringly survivable that it's not even funny.
On a semi-related note, is there any way to obtain 'dodge chance' in BG2EE? Like, having N% to actually dodge an attack? I think the Blur spell in IWD2 functions like that, but the BG2 one just adds AC (if I'm not mistaken). I've always wondered if it'd be possible to give rogues something like +20% innate dodge rating. It's kind of unfair that fighters (in the unmodded game) get to have much lower AC than rogues while running around with much more robust HP pools as well.
Armor Class should've given damage resistance (a la the FP&PS mod), while *increasing* the chance to get hit.
Just my $0.02
In the overall gameplay, korgan had a lot more staying power than sarevok, sarevok hp would just go low, and i had to make him back up while korgan keeps swinging... in the end, in the information tab, korgan had a lot more killing blows than sarevok, even with ravager with it's vorpal hits
Tvrtko, as far as dodge chances goes... 1AC is pretty much 5% chance to be missed, so you could theorically just use EEKeeper to edit your thief and give him 4 more AC if you wanted to. Then again, if your AC is 2 and the enemy has a Thac0 of 2, you'll still be hit 100% of the time even if you went from 6 to 2... Thieves are just bad in BG outside of lockpicking, disarming traps, and traps + backstabs, basically only good outside of fights and at the beginning of a fight.