The death of the city gates lich (SCS)!

vangoat

My undead hunter PC had heard of a terrible evil living in the basement of the Crooked Crane inn. Brave and valiant Sir Anomen volunteered to investigate the menace. He knew this would be a terrible foe indeed, so like any knight he took precautions. He called upon almighty Helm to aid him (Holy Power + Draw Upon Holy Might + Bless + Chant), bringing his strength up to godlike proportions (25) and thac0 to -1. Aerie was still very concerned about him, so she cast protection from undead on him too. For the final touch he cast harm and blade barrier (The latter was completely unnecessary, but whatever).

He storms in to confront the evil lich, who just stands there. Walks right up to him:
Lich - Hit points reduced by Harm
Sir Anomen did 150 damage to lich
Lich - Death
Anomen is showered in bloody chunks of glory.

Soooo satisfying.

Before this I tried sending Aerie in with pro-undead, SI: Abjuration to prevent dispel and protection from evil, aiming to eventually beat him down using a combination of MMM and phantom blade. I forgot that enhanced fiends ignore the protection from evil, so poor Aerie was soon surrounded by 4(!) cornugons summoned in by the lich.

Now that the mighty weapon of undead-slaying has been obtained, my PC wishes to cleanse Athkatla of all the undead filth so the next stop will be the bridge district lich, then Kangaxx himself.

moody_mage

Try that with SCS and pre-buffing installed.

xzar_monty

I don't mean to rain on your parade, but if the lich "just stands there", you've got a problem and something's bugged. He should be very quick in his initial action regardless of whether you play with SCS or vanilla.

vangoat

SCS and prebuffing is installed, did you not read the thread title? The protection from undead scroll means that he isn't "aware" I'm there until I attack, at which point his contingency fires and all his protections kick in, but by then he's already dead.

kryptix

You can get the same result with a backstab, maybe even open the chest, grab daystar and vs with it

vangoat

That's true, but unfortunately Nalia is all the thief I have in my goody two shoes party and I don't think one of her backstabs would cut it

nano

Haha, gotta love Harm. I think the SCS version of Harm is actually stronger than the vanilla one because 150 damage will pop 90% of the things in the game. But watch out, spell turning can reflect Harm and you may end up chunking yourself

Lesse

Sort of confused now - shouldn't harm heal undead things? I thought they were healed by negative energy, and heal would pretty much one shot them.

xzar_monty

@vangoat: Ok, thanks for the clarification. I've never used protection from undead scrolls so I wasn't aware that they also act like invisibility to undead scrolls.

It's kinda funny that the game gives you n+1 possibility for just about everything.

vangoat

nano said:

Haha, gotta love Harm. I think the SCS version of Harm is actually stronger than the vanilla one because 150 damage will pop 90% of the things in the game. But watch out, spell turning can reflect Harm and you may end up chunking yourself

Thanks for the tip, didn't know spell turning could affect harm.

Yeah I can't think of too many things that have more than 150hp. Yaga-Shura, dragons and some assorted ToB foes? I guess with the original version of harm you can have it as basically an instakill on anything if you use Harm + ring of the ram to finish that last hp.

nano

Thief trap is good too, to finish that last bit of HP. I tried ring of the ram but some enemies could block it (e.g. if you try and Harm a lich when he spawns and follow up with a Ring blast, his spell protections will block the Ring)

Also SCS enemies will chug a potion right after you Harm them if they're still alive, very annoying. At least it's not too much HP and a trap will still finish them most of the time.

vangoat

I thought nothing blocked the ring blast? Do you know which protections stop it? I remember using it way back in vanilla to interrupt enemy mages when they had a bunch of protections up

nano

My guess is that Protection from Magical Energy stops it