Going for a "balls to the wall" SCS2+ tactics insanity run. Id welcome powergaming advice
Perkyguy
Member Posts: 18
I will be a Tactics Anti-Paladin. Ill be facing untold cheeses, so I might as well play a cheesy class.
The biggest issue which has stopped me from starting the game for a whole day now is: should i Go for a human AP and dual to either mage or thief, or go Half orc pure class.
If I am to dual, it will be at level 13. I will be using a corrupted Soul Reaver+6 version of Carsomyr courtesy of the item upgrade mod, so that this beautiful weapon's 50 MR wouldnt go to waste.
Also, how does the dispel on hit on the sword work with the AP's own dispel on hit? Does it dispel 2 buffs per attack, or what is the deal with that?
The party will be valen, solaufein, viconia as a fighter/cleric, whatever sorcerer i pick from kelsey, tashia or adrian and the last spot will go to what I call "debuff monkey" its a dual or multi classed wizard whose entire spellbook is dedicated to breaching, piercing, dispeling,hasting and staying alive. Normally that role is filled by jansen untill i get ahold of Imoen.
Sequencers and continggencies are a big issue too. So far i just stick 2 pierce magics in them + 1 breach (or similarily themed anti-magic) and use them for exploding enemy mages before they can figure out whats going on, which doesnt seem like an optimum way to fill them.
I will be doing the tactics, chosen of Cyric and solaufein challenges, so thats something to plan around.
One thing to mention is that i dont have Spell Revisions installed, as I did not feel like getting to know and planning around an entirely diferent magic system.
Normally at high level special encounters what i do with my arcane spell casters is: blow all avaiable tiem stop+ dragon breaths, then proceed to focus on survival, as most mod scripted Ai goes tooth and nail for the mages.
I really feel like i could be doing more with them.
So this is it. Id welcome any and all tips on how to handle this.
EDIT: I should probably point out that im playing the Original BG2, not the EE version.
Its just that i couldnt find any active forums for the vanila
Post edited by Perkyguy on
1
Comments
I do not recommend a dual at 13 with your party size. 1/2 APR is not worth the steep XP increase, and will leave you very vulnerable in the early/mid game. If you do dual, AP->Mage is entirely insane, and ridiculously powerful. Cheese on whole new levels.
You will not have a hard time beating the game with your setup. AP and Valen are both laughably powerful, as is Solaufein's sword once you get it (*the* best weapon in the game by a large, large margin). I'm not going into the whole cheese discussion, that is entirely up to you. Your party setup is certainly well-equipped to handle anything coming their way. I do not foresee any problems.
If you have more concrete questions I'll be happy to answer them!
The only hint I feel to give you with a AP/whatever, is to keep always in your inventory a non-magical weapon.
In this way you'll be able to hit and dispell every mage that will use PfMW.
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Wouldn't the large amounts of GWW take care of that eventually?
Unless im wrong, ill only lose 1 main and 1 offhand attack, but i will be doing double dispels per hit with the Reaver which deals bonus magic dmg.
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I do not recommend a dual at 13 with your party size. 1/2 APR is not worth the steep XP increase, and will leave you very vulnerable in the early/mid game.
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You are sort of contradicting yourself. You suggest that a dual-wield route would be better because of the extra APR (btw, does soul reaver really get 2x dispels per hit on AP?) but counsel against the level 13 APR bonus.
I could just kick everyone out and read a ton of scrolls or leave quests unfinished and turn them in when it its appropriate.
Im still on the fence about dualing the AP or going half orc with it - Ill choose whatever is stronger.
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You will not have a hard time beating the game with your setup. AP and Valen are both laughably powerful, as is Solaufein's sword once you get it (*the* best weapon in the game by a large, large margin).
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I've always opted for Sola's other bonus, where he gets 2 extra slots for every spell level + that moonbeam thing that heals nearby party members. Is his Sword really that powerful to offset all this?
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I'm not going into the whole cheese discussion, that is entirely up to you. Your party setup is certainly well-equipped to handle anything coming their way. I do not foresee any problems.
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Way i see it - Westley knew he made a mod where monsters recieve cheap advantages, so he came up with his own fail-safe, with which you are supposed to counter them.
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If you have more concrete questions I'll be happy to answer them!
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Sequencer and Contingency suggestions!
EDIT: How do I use quotes properly here?
I never use mages as pure classes, because spells are inherently limited in their efficacy by the one spell per round limit. Improved Alacrity is an exception to that, but as a HLA it's fairly limited and inaccessible for a long time. All my mages are fighter-duals (usually Kensais), and use melee attacks as their primary source of damage. I use spells for buffing/debuffing/dispelling, and only as needed. As such, contingencies aren't usually in my strategies. The brute-force approach works just fine for me most of the time.
However, do keep in mind that this does not affect the AP's on-hit dispel, only the innate ability Dispel Magic. The on-hit dispel is automatic, same as Carsomyr (no save either). That is sufficient to dispel (read: DESTROY) all mages except for those naturally immune to normal weapons AND under the effect of Protection from Magical Weapons/Mantle/Improved Mantle/Absolute Immunity. This does happen, but not very often, and not for very long.
You could argue for a 13 dual with that, but as mentioned above, even 13x2 is "only" 26, so by no means a guaranteed dispel. Also, given how infrequently (though regularly) you encounter enemies that you cannot dispel by hitting them, in my opinion at least it's not enough of a reason to take the substantial XP hit of a later dual.
I will put the question on my to-do list, though, and will test in the future how the innate Dispel Magic behaves with dual classes so we know for sure.
I suspect that whereas mage spells scale with your mage level and priest spells your priest level any "innate" ability checks your highest level in any class. Wonder if this holds true for a mod-induced class
So. when would you suggest to dual?
Remember, the game takes place over *all* levels, not just the late ones. In fact, I frequently find that the early/mid game is actually the most challenging part because you don't have all the tools at your disposal yet.
It will annoy me alot more being 9/25 as opposed to 13/24 ( or whatver the xp gap is), once ive reached that stage, because ill know i wont be as strong as i coudl've, if i havent wussed out on dualing at the maximum best.
No compromises when building perfection, or those tiny, irreversible flaws in final result will vex me to no end with a voice saying "you could've done better", "you may have had more attacks and better thaco", "you are not playing this at its maximum potential".
Its a quirk of mine
Not a very good solution but I hate dual classing
As for the min/maxing, I am of a similar mindset. However, you have to keep in mind that this is not an "endgame" game. The part spent at lvl30+ is a very small portion of the game. Aiming to maximize efficiency for that portion is not perfection, it's narrow-sighted. Perfection is finding the right balance to be as powerful as you can THROUGHOUT the series.
That's the reason I dual at 9, and also the reason I take Archers; yes they're not the best at endgame, but they completely and utterly destroy the early/mid game. And that is the bulk of the game, and the parts where you're actually in a tight spot. It's funny really how I reload ten times on a silly city ambush fresh out of the starting dungeon, but can oneshot Lunar Eclipse without breaking a sweat... Same with Tor'Gal, who's by far the enemy I struggle the most with - simply because I do him at very low levels, and with only half the tools in my box.
Still didnt stop me from claiming CF from the compound (whose mage used 2 time stops btw) straight out of chateau Irenicus, but still, its annoying. What i dont like about the current strategical situation in the game is that True Sight has been elevated to a vital neccesity. It indeed does imply that the AP has been planned to be played within this setting. There's also that gnome in the Docks who fires a meteor swarm spell at my 8 level party.
I was attacked with something whose spell level was higher than my party level.
...wow
One thing that bothers me: This TobEx Console thing just spams the following message:
"DETOUR_CDderivedStats::DETOUR_GetStat(): n0pcode out of bounds (403; expected 1-400)"
Should I be worried?
Detecting invisibility is certainly something you should bring along for the fights in your setup. True Sight does the job very well, a thief with Detect Illusions can also do it (and bypasses SI:Div). You can also just guess the location and spam in a dispel, or be ready for a dispelling strike with your AP.
Most fights that you feel a need to "cheese" are meant for much higher levels (like the gnome in the Docks) and cheese is usually the only way to do them at low levels. That being said, OP-ness was your premise, so that's fine.
Offtopic: Yasraena's fireflower sword deals damage to her everytime a load or re-equip it. Same with the flametongue sword. In BG2-Fixpack, some items were changed so that instead of using EFFs in the "equipped effects" area, they have them in the "extended effect" area. I think this change was done so that effects aren't also applied to the offhand sword.
Is there any way i can manually fix this?