The cheapest (unfair) fights and encounters in the BG saga contrasted with the "fair" fights.
Cershen
Member Posts: 27
There are several threads about hard and frustrating battles and encounters in BG (Draconis, Mindflayers) throughout various forums on the net. Just for enjoyment, I'd like to start a small discussion on a variation of this theme: the unfair and frustrating encounters compared to those you found "fair" and balanced.
What do I mean by that? By unfair I mean encounters in which you're very likely to lose on the first try even if you have a party with a diverse selection of spells, equipped items, quick items etc... which makes sense based on the dungeon you're currently in and the monsters and characters you've been encountering up to that point (plus any quest knowledge you might have). The outcome of these battles is usually decisively established within the first few rounds (your mage is interrupted while casting a critical spell, enemy spawn points cause one of your party members to be focus-fired without chance of escape, etc..) and there is no often no chance of a comeback even if you make good tactical decisions with the options that you have remaining.
Just to be clear, this isn't a complaint about BG's difficulty (I've already completed the entire saga, without cheese or power-gaming). I'm just curious about which encounters you think fall into which category. What are your thoughts?
Some "unfair" examples:
I find the ambush by three greater doppelgangers in Kiel's room of Durlag's Tower a bit cheap (some might find this laughable as an example but oh well). 2-3X Stinking Cloud + Cloudkill force-cast throughout the entire hall-way followed by an Improved Haste assault on the nearest party member (quite likely an unconscious mage who might have been able to caste Dispel or Remove Magic).
The fight against the Ravager in TOB: it isn't immediately obvious that his minions respawn infinitely, absurd resistances, spells which affect him seem to be arbitrary (only Bigby's is of any use if I remember correctly). The fight doesn't feel tactical really, and HLA spam (mostly by warriors) seems to be the most reliable key to victory, which is very unsatisfying.
Some "fair" examples:
The fight against Yaga-Shura and his army. This is by far one of the best encounters in the entire-trilogy. Every spell and ability from the weakest to the strongest feels like it could be potentially useful during this fight. The fight starts off slow and ramps up gradually as Yaga's troops start streaming in in greater numbers. You can slowly reposition your party throughout the battlefield and hold off incoming troops with area of effect spells and summons. Different members can try and hold different "lanes" whilst 1 or 2 of your characters try and take down Yaga-Shura. Can be seemingly beaten in various ways and with all sorts of spell loadouts. (I"m aware you can also just bum-rush Yaga Shura with every party member, but that's just a bit anti-climactic in my opinion.)
All encounters against Harper parties trying to kill Charname in SOA. Your spells work against them and theirs work against you. Neither side has ass-pull immunities or resistances (at least not extreme ones). Like the Yaga-Shura one, these are enjoyable because they can be beaten in several ways with various party compositions whilst still remaining challenging.
What do I mean by that? By unfair I mean encounters in which you're very likely to lose on the first try even if you have a party with a diverse selection of spells, equipped items, quick items etc... which makes sense based on the dungeon you're currently in and the monsters and characters you've been encountering up to that point (plus any quest knowledge you might have). The outcome of these battles is usually decisively established within the first few rounds (your mage is interrupted while casting a critical spell, enemy spawn points cause one of your party members to be focus-fired without chance of escape, etc..) and there is no often no chance of a comeback even if you make good tactical decisions with the options that you have remaining.
Just to be clear, this isn't a complaint about BG's difficulty (I've already completed the entire saga, without cheese or power-gaming). I'm just curious about which encounters you think fall into which category. What are your thoughts?
Some "unfair" examples:
I find the ambush by three greater doppelgangers in Kiel's room of Durlag's Tower a bit cheap (some might find this laughable as an example but oh well). 2-3X Stinking Cloud + Cloudkill force-cast throughout the entire hall-way followed by an Improved Haste assault on the nearest party member (quite likely an unconscious mage who might have been able to caste Dispel or Remove Magic).
The fight against the Ravager in TOB: it isn't immediately obvious that his minions respawn infinitely, absurd resistances, spells which affect him seem to be arbitrary (only Bigby's is of any use if I remember correctly). The fight doesn't feel tactical really, and HLA spam (mostly by warriors) seems to be the most reliable key to victory, which is very unsatisfying.
Some "fair" examples:
The fight against Yaga-Shura and his army. This is by far one of the best encounters in the entire-trilogy. Every spell and ability from the weakest to the strongest feels like it could be potentially useful during this fight. The fight starts off slow and ramps up gradually as Yaga's troops start streaming in in greater numbers. You can slowly reposition your party throughout the battlefield and hold off incoming troops with area of effect spells and summons. Different members can try and hold different "lanes" whilst 1 or 2 of your characters try and take down Yaga-Shura. Can be seemingly beaten in various ways and with all sorts of spell loadouts. (I"m aware you can also just bum-rush Yaga Shura with every party member, but that's just a bit anti-climactic in my opinion.)
All encounters against Harper parties trying to kill Charname in SOA. Your spells work against them and theirs work against you. Neither side has ass-pull immunities or resistances (at least not extreme ones). Like the Yaga-Shura one, these are enjoyable because they can be beaten in several ways with various party compositions whilst still remaining challenging.
Post edited by Cershen on
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Comments
Sarevok cheats and can't be killed in that encounter, but a first timer doesn't know that.
The chess board fight in Durlag's Tower is a little weak too. The game takes the time to set up this interesting idea of using your characters as chess pieces and potentially having to out think your opponent using superior strategy only to have the entire other side of the board bum rush you as soon as they see you with no regard for where they are stepping and when you move up to meet them in battle you are completely destroyed by lightning bolts.
But not Melissan. You can behead her and she'll just keep going in a show of ultimate bullcrap.
Not that that changes the cheesiness of "immunity to death".
Especially when you have no idea what will happen and you go into that room...Though the voice actor that plays her does a fabulous job.
The Solar at the end says so that she cannot die.
And I will agree that Aec'Letec is cheap. He's like "hello, screw you, you're a ghoul now, reload".
And unless you've slept down there you're guaranteed to be banged up from and having used spells on the other inhabitants of that level, too.
Also, I've noticed that people haven't really mentioned any fights that they found to be refreshingly balanced yet. No contributions for the other side of the coin?
Unfair battles , IMO, are the ones you can't do anything but run and kite your enemy . Kiting is only fun when we fighting big and slow creatures like ogres , otherwise it looks like I'm playing survival horror.
There simply aren't any way I'm aware of to take them down 100% reliably.
But his idea of fair... Or game balance.... Oy!
His modules are so ridiculous they're better as satire than actual games.
I like to game WITH my players, not against them.
Yeah.
Anyway, fair and enjoying battles with plenty of strategy: Sendai, Iron Throne penthouse and all of Watchers keep spring to mind.
The most cheesy encounter award goes without a doubt to... the Ravager in the pocket plane.
BG1 - two random greater basilisks at the exit from Candlekeep catacombs. Have fun if you weren't prepared for that.
BG2 - any large group of beholders, unless you have a cloak of mirroring.
ToB - the entire game is so cheesy, it's hard to pick a particular fight.
Even after years of experience with the game, this fight just feels misplaced. And I usually intentionally avoid it until going back to Nashkel once.
BG1 loves to throw these encounters at you when your party is tired and weary. Tarnesh, Karlat, Neira, Nimbul, and so on, all love to pounce on you just before you get to rest. I generally think these are all fair fights when it's just one assassin to deal with (though Karlat tests my patience at times), but when there's a group of them coming at you just after you just fought a boss, it's hard to think the DM isn't a dick.
Information is the strongest weapon you have in your arsenal. The second-strongest is "Load Game."
the way i look at it, i don't mind losing fights if i go in completely unprepared, and even with spell/potions/tactics use during battle and still lose, that is what reload is there for
but if i go into a fight, completely buffed up, and use said strategies and still lose, then i have a problem with it
now with that being said, i don't know about normal difficulties but on insane difficulty some fights are just impossible without exploits ( and to me, a successful fight is one that keeps all 6 members alive after battle )
bg1;
from what i can remember, absolutely any fight in bg1 with the right preparations is not only winnable but easily so, usually every battle some enemy some where has some sort of weakness ( and especially enemies in bg1 their saves for the most part are crap and wands are absolute menaces in bg1 ) with realistically the only battles that even require some sort of micro management are; the demon knight, ( where you can use the mirror against it for weaker teams that can't survive the silly 120 damage power word kill ) Aec'Letec ( which you don't even need to use the potion of mirrored eyes to win, which i only recently heard works, usually what i do is just buff up my melee chums with potions of cloud giant STR/heroism/invulnerability and then just haste them and let those 3 go to town and the battle is won ) and then the final battle with sarevok ( take out angelo who will cast a remove magic that won't fail, but if he dies before that, the battle is over, because at this point you will have cast and drank every potion and spell imaginable to win, and especially if you saved all your good stuff for this battle, this battle is pie, even with sarevok dealing 50 damage a hit )
SoD;
haven't played this game enough to know it ( i've only ever did maybe 3 full play throughs ), although i did find this game to be the hardest on insane out of bg1/SoD/SoA/ToB
SoA;
pretty much the same as bg1- as long as you came prepared you should win any battle even with relative ease, with some exceptions;
dragons; for whatever reason im pretty sure beamdog made the dragons why stronger in the EEs, but with that came a glaring weakness; the level 1 spell blindness, now it seams the only way i can win against dragons is to blind them, because if not, no matter what i do they just annihilate me otherwise
liches; because they are immune to breach, that means they will always get their time stop off and start doing bad things to good people, but weapons like the improved mace of disruption is practically mandatory against these guys or else you might as well reload
every other battle ( even the final battle ) again, prepare correctly, and victory should be yours
ToB;
now this is where things get kind of whacky, because some enemies are just stupid strong in of themselves and if they come with comrades then it gets to the point where only exploits can win, so from memory;
chapter 8 is fine, as far as i remember proper preparation is all that is needed and you should be fine
watcher's keep, is also fine with the same idea; proper preparation and everything should be fine, even with the seal battles, although the final battle requires a bit of micro management because of some effects that have no save and kind of screw you over unless you have immunity ( like stun, disease, poison, level drain ) but can still be won first try
amkethran, all is good
sendai's enclave, again all is good, and i would even say the final battle in that enclave is right on the money with difficulty, fairness and everything, nothing unfair about it and its just where it needs to be
now this is when things start getting a little sour;
abizigal's enclave; this is usually where i stop playing the game because draconis is an absolute pain in the ass to take down, even with all the prep in the world, it doesn't matter, your stuff will somehow get dispelled, his breath weapon will impossibly reach you, and if anyone on your team has less than 150 HP their character portraits will soon disappear forever when they get hit by a breath weapon, pair that up with the fact that he uses invisibility so much it practically even makes true seeing useless so its even hard to target this guy with anything, and now there is a beautiful bug where when you fight the human form and "kill it" when he turns into a dragon, you are now stuck inside of him and can't move and get blasted with a remove magic that can't fail and take bajillions of acid damage, and then a smack or two and its over, party/ party member(s) dead with no way of countering, god is this fight terrible and boring
abizigal himself; holy moly, this guy is just plain stupid on insane, first you CANNOT go melee against this guy, because he CANNOT miss with that -26 or so thac0 and he deals 78 damge a hit, for 10 attacks per round and even with hardiness you still can't live for barely more than a round before he turns that character into chop suey, so that means you need to cast protection from magic weapons on your arcane caster and trick him into attacking the caster or else your characters get chunked
and then when you get to the dragon form, oi, just as bad as draconis in dragon form, first someone has to eat a remove magic or else everyone is just going to die from a breath weapon ( for some weird reason it doesn't matter where you are on screen, the breath weapon will hit you regardless i find ) and again, his remove magic works without fail so if you get hit by it EVERYONE in your team better have north of 150 HP or else its oblivion for them, so again exploits are needed to make sure that doesnt happen, plus i find that once he hits dragon form, if you can take him out in about 2 rounds, then its all good, but if the battle lasts longer, he just does so much nonsense BS that your team just dies AND on top of that for some reason the EE made him immune to timestop which he didn't have in vanilla, so i have no idea why they did that, it makes no sense for him to have that, but here it is, again, if i can even muster getting this far i just dread this fight because i find it so boring and stupid, i remember back in the day i would just crtl+y him just to get it over with
balthazar; amazingly enough, this guy is a piece of cake, again proper prep and he goes down in a round or 3, some people have made the EXTRAORDINARY claim that he is much more difficult to deal with that abizigal/draconis, and to me that is complete madness especially if they are talking about an unmodded game, balthazar one on one wouldn't even stand the slightest chance against abizigal, but anyway, that is that
oh, i guess i should talk about the challenge room fights;
first one; obvious, pretty simple/easy even with a fresh ToB team, again prep is key
second one; ironically i find this one the hardest, your "sarevok" version hits fast and hard and doesnt seem to miss and every hit causes a dispel magic and he seems to be faster than a hasted character, so this one actually requires quite a bit of micro managing to win without dying
third one; really, just a piece of cake, some hardiness and whirlwinds and the fight is over in a couple of rounds
fourth one; also really easy, they are just assassins, and aren't all that special, i think in the millions of times i did that fight ( okay, well maybe not millions, but probably at least multiple dozens ) i never had them land a backstab on anyone, and with a true seeing and some horrid wiltings and the battle is over
fifth one; for me, i don't find this battle all that difficult, again, its with the prep, with the proper prep you don't even need to worry about the bone blade guys around your weaker members because the ravanger should fall before they become a problem, with me i ALWAYS have 3 melee characters, so just keep using up the greater whirlwinds until he falls, and if too much damage is being taken, just have a cleric continually casting mass raise dead to refill everyone's HP when need be
final battle; for the most part, everything is fair here except for the.... third time you fight melissan i believe? the one where she casts time stop right away as soon as you see her, see on insane difficulty, enemies do insane damage, so what would happen normally is that you get teleported in from of her, she casts time stop, and when time is stopped, she just attacks your charname until it dies with no means of being able to protect yourself unless you have protection from magical weapons or absolute immunity, so on that one you have to fall back and make sure someone who can cast said spells is in front of her with said spells activated or else its over, you die and see the game over screen, but once you get pass that everything is good
so thats my experience the the BG series when it comes to fairness/unfairness on insane difficulty with no mods and keeping all 6 members alive after battle
i tried ascension years and years ago and while i didn't mind the demogorgon upgrade, the abizigal ascension fight was just plain stupid, where abizigal was blasting off imprisonments at almost the rate of a demilich and everything felt like it was immune to everything, and it was just a boring fight, i also noticed that when i was out of sight of the enemies, every X amount of rounds a stoneskin would just pop up on the dragons even outside of battle which i think is completely bogus, i remember beating that mod once and then getting rid of it afterwards for how frustrating and unfair it felt