Scare tactics (no, not that idiotic show on Syfy)

Zarakinthish

While my knowledge of the game is fairly good, I'm nowhere near an expert. So, in an effort to improve my efficiency, I'd like to hear what some of you experts do to effectively use spells and abilities that scare enemies (e.g. horror). For the most part, I never end up using them because of the problems it creates, such as chasing down an enemy only to be drawn in to more enemies. So what are your secrets?

Corvino

Spook is arguably the best of the bunch. It's single target but gets a hefty save modifier (up to -6) as you level up. It's very useful against tough enemies that cast or have special abilities, because enemies that are panicked usually stop using their casting scripts and will often just stick to melee.

So hitting Firkraag with Greater Malison, Doom and then a couple of Spooks to beat his MR turns a nasty dragon who uses wing buffets, dragon breath and various spells into a frightened melee target. He hits hard, but at least he's not toasting your mages for giggles.

Pantalion

Personally I prefer blind and confusion to fear, since they all do the important job of stopping things using their special abilities, but generally the solution is ranged weaponry and to just sit tight. Focus on any targets that resisted the fear, then pick off feared targets as and when they become available. By the time horror wears off, you've probably scattered their forces on most maps, so when you do follow them you're only going to be fighting one or two targets instead of full groups.

lunar

Emotion:hopelessness is a very powerful spell, cast it after a greater malison and most enemies will fall to the floor, uncouncious, they are effectively dead. Pound them until they bleed no more.

Chaos is also very powerful to disable groups of enemies, it has a set-in -4 penalty to saving throw, so if you cast it after a greater malison it has a -8 to save penalty. This is huge, most enemies will fail their throws. When an enemy is confused, its usual script stops working:no spell casting or special attacks (wing buffet, breath weapon, gaze attack) is possible.

Slow spell greatly hinders enemies too, and it has -4 penalty to save as well. It will reduce the lethaliness of most melee enemies considerably. A fast meleer can hit a slowed target, run around and then hit again, avoiding all of its blows.

Teleport field also allows vast tactical battlefield control, stack 2-3 of them on top of each other and all enemies will be teleporting randomly 2-3 times a round, this will ensure they can't reach your ranged attackers or spellcasters to melee them.

Web+Spider spawn and Stinking Cloud+Animate dead are good combos, as spiders are immune to web and undead skeletons are immune to poison vapors, they can beat helpless enemies easily.

Quartz

@lunar All your talk of party-friendly debuff spells is making me very hot and bothered.

booinyoureyes

Also, if you cast slow and then make them afraid/crazy the problem of them running away would become somewhat less annoying, right?

nano

You don't have to chase them; just proceed as normal and they will come back one at a time to be cut down. Chaos (and SCS blindness) is problematic too because enemies will run around willy-nilly and might go after your characters anyways. At least fear is predictable. They always run away and don't attack (or do they? I've never see them do it but @Corvino says feared Firkraag can melee). You can also stick to using it in enclosed areas, like fights in inns and bandit tents and so on.

the_spyder

Quartz said:

@lunar All your talk of party-friendly debuff spells is making me very hot and bothered.

I suppose there had to be a fetish for that as well. Although, really?

Dragonspear

While I love all the mage combos (disclaimer: I tend towards more melee oriented parties than casters), they often take forever to get off, and by the time I would (assuming I don't start just out of range due to scouting) finish the combo, they're already dead cause team Melee came in, looked at the pesky wizard and snickered.

It doesn't help that most of my arcane casters have somewhere between 25-50% of their spells devoted to protection removal spells, and most of my clerics are built as the "just buff yourself up more for melee" peeps.

But there is good news: In my evil playthrough atm, I'm running with Edwin (so I feel legit using summons) and Viconia (who I doubt would mind summoning the dead as much). Also I plan on running the canon party with a F/C, so I'll have Aerie and Jaheria to add more spells to that list.

booinyoureyes

@dragonspear its interesting how you put Aerie in your "canon party". I notice a lot of people do that with her or Anomen/Nalia. I think its because they are the first available NPCs, so people feel like Bioware wanted you to have them.

the_spyder

@Dragonspear - I know exactly what you are saying. I spend a LOT of potentially needless space protecting my wizard where I could probably be more aggressive and put those protections into offensive (or at least combo style) spell castings. Even though my Charname is almost always a wizard, he ends up being more of a backup than anything. I 'imagine' him being the general who directs others, which explains why I am not that great a player.

Quartz

the_spyder said:

Quartz said:

@lunar All your talk of party-friendly debuff spells is making me very hot and bothered.

I suppose there had to be a fetish for that as well. Although, really?

sry i just rly like party dbuff spiels

deltago

Location, location, location.

If it is a wide open map, I usually don't use fear attacks. Having the enemies run around in different directions and out of sight lines can be annoying and their are more efficient ways to handle outside mobs.

Closed off indoor areas are ideal (think cloudpeak monastery or Windspear dungeon) as it is easier to contain and pick off fleeing enemies with range weapons andn it is also party friendly unlike other AoE spells.

However, closed off areas with a lot of corners (such as below candlekeep) can be even more annoying than wide open spaces because once the sight line is broken, your characters will stop attacking even if the target re-enters sight range. This makes it difficult to track down that one remaining enemy especially if there are traps in the area. Once again, it is more efficient to use other disabling tactics in these types of areas.

Dragonspear

@The_Spyder

I'm not talking about wizard protection spells (it's rare I memorize more than Stoneskin, Mirror Image and Blur), but rather things like breach, spell thrust, remove magic, and other such protection stripping spells. I don't like encoutering a nasty that uses them and being like "well derp, guess I'm SoL".

Also I consider the PC canon party to be:
PC
Jaheria
Minsc
Imoen/Yoshimo
Aerie
Haer'dalis (possibly replaced with some guy in ToB).

I choose Aerie because she becomes Minsc new witch, and I don't think Nalia is capable of doing that without a mod. Then I pick up Aerie because of how "close" she is to Haer'dalis even sending you to find him. I'm trying to avoid Anomen and Nalia this time because I've taken them on so many runs. Well that's not exactly fair to Nalia, I rarely take her for long, but I find her as annoying as Anomen.

Only downside to this party is that my poor dwarf priest will get no love (female).

FatalApocalypse

Swords, not words!

booinyoureyes

Dragonspear said:

Only downside to this party is that my poor dwarf priest will get no love (female).

There is always Sylvanus

I consider Aerie canon for the same reason, but not Haer-Dalis. I'd probably say Aerie for males and Anomen for females, with Nalia and Keldorn being the other two candidates. Keldorn because of his interaction with Anomen and the fact that the pc kinda needs a new father figure (he's still supposed to be quite young). Nalia because she's the first to encounter you (you can't even avoid it... believe me I've tried so many times)

My world's canon Bhaalspawn is definitely good-aligned. For male charnames I am undecided about whether in my world the Jaheira or Aerie romances are more fitting. If the character is Lawful Good I take Aerie, If he's NG I take Jaheira and if he is CG I dunno

nano

Aw, I like Nalia
I know she's a bit clueless but she means well and she tries so hard...

Bigfish

My favorite at the moment is spamming web spells and using rings of free action and spiders bane.

abacus

the_spyder said:

Quartz said:

@lunar All your talk of party-friendly debuff spells is making me very hot and bothered.

I suppose there had to be a fetish for that as well. Although, really?

I invoke Rule 34.

Corvino

Dammit @abacus now I both really want to Google that, but fear the results.

Dragonspear

@Booinyoureyes

Ugh.........I've done the Anomen romance......multiple times unfortunately. To think that he would be canon for female bhaalspawn makes me shudder. No romance is better than that romance.

booinyoureyes

Dragonspear said:

@Booinyoureyes

Ugh.........I've done the Anomen romance......multiple times unfortunately. To think that he would be canon for female bhaalspawn makes me shudder. No romance is better than that romance.

@Dragonspear I have notice that only guys like the Anomen romance, and that chicks all HATE him, lol

Dragonspear

@booinyoureyes

I attribute the Anomen hate to 2 things:

1. He is the ONLY female romance from the original game, therefore any errors, or irritants get magnified. As you said, its pretty much assumed that a female will run with him.

2. Which means his overly misogynistic take on a female, and their accomplishments, while GROSSLY embellishing his own just strikes a chord.

That said, he's a fantastic fighter/cleric and my wizard slayer is almost done with a run including him. She's romancing Rasaad though.

Zarakinthish

abacus said:

I invoke Rule 34.

Rule 34 is truly a fearsome thing. I once came across a piece of "fan art" of Chell (the protagonist of the Portal series). I leave it to your imagination what Chell is able to do thanks to portals. That example is extremely mild compared to the disturbing story I was told by a classmate regarding him proving Rule 34 to someone. He told them to come up with something, and he would do a search. In Baldur's Gate terms, what ended up being found equates to doing unspeakable things with the corpse of Lord Binky the Buffoon.

Now that we have that out of the way, could we please get back to the topic at hand? These discussions about fetishes, canon parties, and romances have gone on long enough and have absolutely nothing to do with tactics regarding spells and abilities that scare.

Twani

I really think the Anomen hate is because he's the only BG2 romance. I'm sure JComptan could tell you more, but from what I understand, as soon as Kelsey came out, gals started leaning towards Anomen (though just as many leaned towards Kelsey). What was really appreciated was the option to choice- between Anomen, between Kelsey, between Solafien. Once us females got to see other options besides Anomen, we started to appreciate him a bit more. Anomen will never be a crowd favorite the way, say, Anders or Fenris from Dragon Age II were a crowd hit- but he is appreciated. As long as there's choice.

When he's the only choice, however, he lacks. Aerie, Jaheria, Viconia- sure, they're all elven (half-elven) gals, but at least they had different backgrounds. Anomen sits alone. Even comparing him to Hexxet, Rasaad, and Dorn, he's not as bad, because there are options. Anomen is not sitting alone as 'the only one your character can draw interest from'.

As soon as he's reduced to that, people will turn their head from him again, but as long as he's simply an option- no more, no less- I think he'll draw fans of sort.

Zarakinthish

@Twani
What did I just say? Please, take this to another topic and stop derailing mine. I'd say over 50% of this topic is already off topic.

Foggy

I understand why the ladies hate Anomen romance. He is a very well written and complex character, perhaps one of the very best NPCs, but he have issues and his romance is just a mentally distressed person falling in love with his shrink -which is Bioware standard for female romances too, come to think of it- It requires patience to look over his arrogance and self-righteousness and help him through his insecurities and daddy issues, to find a devoted companion, one with an interesting character development worth roleplaying. More choices were sorely needed for female players who turned to some not so well written NPC mods.
On the thread subject, I always devote one of my mages to debuff and CC. Spook and put the buggers to Sleep in BG1, Chaos and emotion: hopelessness are most useful for the rest of the game, and I sink my money on recharging the wands of Fear (and Cloudkill). Combined with another mage casting Greater Malison and Lower Resist and specializing in removing protections, all the melee party members have to do is finish the job, picking on panicked, laying down or fleeing enemies. I use Neera+Dynaheir replaced by Aerie in BG2, or Edwin+Xzar replaced by Jan for evil parties, and recruit Imoen after Spellhold as 3rd mage in all my playthroughs since at higher levels, mages rule supreme.

Zarakinthish

@Dee
Please close this thread, I'll start a new one that quotes the relevant content since apparently people can't keep on topic.

Dee

Will do.

Come on, folks; you all know better than that. Keep to the topic at hand (especially when the original poster asks you to).