If you had to choose only 1 magic school
mumumomo
Member Posts: 635
Blackraven's thread on a mage only party gave me an idea : a solo run with a mage / sorc that could cast spells only from 1 school (no use of scrolls for casting. ok to use wands)
Which school would be the best for that challenge ?
My best bet would be evocation :
level 1 : shield / MM / chromatic orb -> great choice
level 2 : web = crowd control. Mandatory since there will be no defensive spells
level 3 : MMM, works great with web
level 4-5-6 : nothing great there. just more Direct Damage
level 7 : mordy sword
level 8 : good DD (incendiary cloud) and crowd control (bigby)
level 9 : chain contigency
That makes for a glass canon build. I am quite sure it will be viable until mid soa but i am afraid that the lack of protective spells will make my life very very hard in tob
Any advice?
Which school would be the best for that challenge ?
My best bet would be evocation :
level 1 : shield / MM / chromatic orb -> great choice
level 2 : web = crowd control. Mandatory since there will be no defensive spells
level 3 : MMM, works great with web
level 4-5-6 : nothing great there. just more Direct Damage
level 7 : mordy sword
level 8 : good DD (incendiary cloud) and crowd control (bigby)
level 9 : chain contigency
That makes for a glass canon build. I am quite sure it will be viable until mid soa but i am afraid that the lack of protective spells will make my life very very hard in tob
Any advice?
3
Comments
A multi/dual as some people are suggesting would take away much of the challenge. As @Ygramul said, a Fighter/Abjurer with all the buffs and debuffs of the Abjuration school would be outright powerful. And a Cleric multi would work with pretty much any school I think. Unlike @elminster I would go Cleric/Abjurer I guess. That school's buffs and debuffs are simply amazing. You could use your cleric spells to deal damage (Holy Smite, Blade Barrier, Sunray), for conjuring summons (Skeleton Warrior, Conjure Animals, Invisible Stalker) and to transform yourself into a warrior to deal physical damage (DUHM, Holy Power, Righteous Magic). I think the advantages of the Aburation spells (i.e. to become pretty much unkillable while you can strip enemies of all their protections) outweigh the Necromancy school's advantages of more damaging spells.
Of course a mullticlass Mage/Thief (with traps, stealth and backstabs) could also be taken into consideration. Would go well with your Invoker I think: stealth + non-detection provide some protection plus allow you to strike first.
As to single classes, an Invoker would indeed become a glass canon. You'd rely on items & potions (plus green scrolls if you allow those) to protect yourself as much as possible.
Don't underestimate the Transmuter (my current charname) btw. I think they're somewhat slow starters (although Color Spray at lower levels, and Burning Hands have their uses.) But Haste, Stoneskin, Lower Resistance (before using wands), the Polymorph spells if used wisely, Tenser's, Improved Haste, Ruby Ray of Reversal and Timestop and Chapechange (Mind Flayer, to go and eat some brains) are all powerful spells.
I've never been much of a summoner, but I can imagine that spamming your enemies with summons as a Conjurer could also work. At later levels you'd conjure the weakest summons first (Monster Summoning I/II), to sacrifice them to your opponents' Death Spells, and after that you summon your spiders, elementals, invisible stalkers and nishurus and genies to your aid.
Not sure how tough TOB would become, the Quest spells have no school, so all of those would be available to you.
edit: it would also make the character more interesting in my opinion.
In NWN2, I played such a Necromancer. He only ever cast from necromancy school, with a very rare few exceptions like Identify. I played it on a Persistent world (and one where necromancy was frowned upon) so I can't say how effective it would be in BG, but it was loads of fun and quite an interesting Role playing experience.
A Mage/Thief multi-class should go Illusionist, you'll have pretty meh defenses and stuff, but you won't be missing Mislead.
@Blackraven IIRC Non-detection is also Illusion, I might be wrong as I think I never used that spell :P
Edit: I'm not sure whetehr a Thief multi would have to be Illusionist. I'm sure that would be a good option, but so would be an Invoker/Thief, operating as an arcane sniper of sorts.
Cleric/mage with 1 single school would be OK but i don't think cleric spells would bring much in that case (nercromancy being the only really good cleric school and it does not bring that much compared to the necromancy mage spell list)
That being said, going pure evoker would make fighting the magic resistant ennemies very difficult
I am pondering to allow the use of 2 schools but then using abjuration and evocation would probably
make the game too close to the standard.
Other schools i consider :
Necromancy :
+ : 1 very good summon (animate dead)
+ : best direct damage spells (skull trap, ADHW)
- : almost no defensive spells (spirit armor)
- : no way to deal with MR
- : very little crowd control (horror)
Transmutation, with a strong focus on shapechanging :
+ 1 very good defensive spell (stoneskin)
+ some very good buffs to go nicely with shapechanging (strength, haste, improved haste, tenser)
+ end game would be very easy (timestop / mind flayer)
+ Shapechange and polymorph are very versatile
- no crowd control
- no summons
- no level 5, no level 8 spells
Conjuration :
+ plenty of summons (although not the best ones)
+ very good crowd control (power words, symbols)
- lack of high level damage spells (can be dealt with crowd control and summons)
- no way to deal with MR
Overall i lean more and more toward transmuter (for a totally different style of play) but i am worried that the lack of THACO would make it quite weak. Any idea on that?
Maybe a cleric / transmuter could work even if the alteration cleric spells are not very good to say the least but that would improve the THACO and righteous magic may be nice with shapechanging.
Or maybe a RDD sorceror using only transmutation spells.
Any idea on the transmuter/shapeshifter?
If you do, Summon Planetar will enable indirect access to a whole bunch of spells, many of which can be from other schools.
- what happens if you cast strength and then polymorph? Do you keep the 18/50 strength or not? I think not but i would like to be sure.
- same question with DUHM? Also, can you cast the ability DUHM once polymorphed? I think yes.
- given that this character would not be able to cast web, is sword spider the best form for fighting regular monsters? It seems that mustard jelly should be the best for mages.
- can i cast polymorph then tenser, then change into whichever form i prefer ? I think (and hope for) yes
As for the plan to go through the game with a solo RDD casting transmutation spells only (minimum reload):
BG1 should pose no major difficulty thanks to wands and potions
Early BG2, i would rely mostly on polymorph self/haste/stoneskin/DUHM (if it works).
If you add debuffing with slow, it should be pretty viable. Traps would be dealt with mustard jelly
Doing easy quests, i should be able to reach level 12-13 with little difficulty. At level 12, using tenser (if it works) and improved haste should improve greatly the character's fighting capacities.
13-17 would be a very long time since neither level 7 nor level 8 spells are interesting at all for a transmuter.
From level 18, things get a lot brighter with the access to shapechange and timestop. Summon planetar alone turns SOA into a joke (i am wondering if i should skip the HLA all together to avoid that)
In TOB, i expect no problem at all before the end-game since time stop/mind flayer will easily kill everything apart from :
- sendai last form cannot be killed by timestop/mindflayer or it blocks the game.
- same for abazigail
these would have to be dealt with differently but it is probably doable using timestop/improved alacrity/dragon breath or comet (not sure if they are fire immune though).
- balthazar/melissane being immune to timestop would kill the character very quickly (stoneskin being not that useful against the boss). Still unsure on how to deal with them without PFMW.
(my tactic against them rely on PFMW, project image/pfmw/improved alacrity/skull trap x6 at point blank but none of these spells would be available...). Any idea for these?
Use Sleep\Emotion or Domination and just have them hang around while everyone else beats on it.
Quite good for BG1 however
Casting only from the specialization school, for the entire saga Abjuration gives you spells that are badly needed in SoA/ToB such as Breach and Spellstrike. But I don't think the overall spell selection would be much fun...
Necromancer looks like the most fun, I would say.
Some spells are missing (like knock and lower resist for alteration)
I have started my RDD alteration only run.
Now level 5 thanks to the basilisks.
Level 1 spell selection is quite ok with color spray and shocking grasp.
Level 2 is terrible however.
If I were you i would accept at least one or two spells at levels 5 and 8. (I noticed that Lower Resistance is Abjuration only, despite its description). I'll pick spells that could be Alteration spells. For example, at level 8 my Transmuter is going to have at least Spell Trigger (with Alteration spells in it).
It seems that strength does not carry on while shapechanged.
Tenser apparently does not allow abilities to be cast. This is such a crappy spell. Useless even for a transmuter. This one is a major drawback i must say since the thaco of the character will always be very very bad.
I may do as a you propose and take 1 utility spell like spell trigger which could help a lot (i have to test to cast tenser from a sequencer after being polymorphed)
Therefore i would probably allow taking spell trigger as a level 8 spells.
Early on Skip Time lets you avoid damage when surrounded, like a mini two-rounds Stone Skin.
Alacrous Intent lets you become very hard to hit while permitting an extra lower level spell to be cast per round (at the cost of a 7th level spell).
At end game Stasis is arguably more useful than Time Stop in controlling the battle field.
For HLAs, Temporal Reversal is the ultimate friend of no-reload challenges, literally permitting you to rewind your mistakes in the last three rounds, or scout ahead difficult encounters briefly.
(Late game, cast Giant Stride along with Side Step on your frontline tank FTW!)
But they never implemented sprite-resizing in BGEE, so Distortion spells don't work as they should (a STR bonus is not the same as actually having longer reach).
(Well, I had to pick only a single school.)
SCS mages in TOB are pretty good at "reloading" encounters that they are about to lose using Temporal Reversal. (But, AIs don't learn lessons like humans do, so they usual try the same strategy with some randomness.)
A cleric/mage casting Temporal Reversal and Miracle would be very hard to beat short of cheese. Thankfully, there aren't many high level NPC cleric/mages specializing in the Temporal school.
Not many sounds like a huge overstatement :-D
Anyway, few people play BG with the 3rd ed. Mod
I tried the 3E MOD a few years ago and hated it. To be clear, I am not saying it is bad or that it isn't fun to play. I am saying that my personal opinion was that I didn't like it. Stuff was changed in pursuit of 3E that just left me hollow. I tried to play Viccy as I normally do, with Gaunts of Ogre power, only to find that they give +2 (3?) to STR instead of giving the 18/00 and that broke that concept. There were other things as well. It just wasn't BG. Which is strange because I enjoyed NWN(1/2). Just didn't like the way BG got altered by 3E.
A Time Rift using Warlock could probably solo any mage battle in SOA.