Turn Undead in HOF mode
supposedly
Member Posts: 206
I have a level 8 cleric and it seems to do absolutely nothing against "low level" undead in HOF mode.
How does turn undead actually work? Is it based on monster level vs. cleric level? Hit die? Or something else entirely?
Is this a useless skill in HOF mode?
How does turn undead actually work? Is it based on monster level vs. cleric level? Hit die? Or something else entirely?
Is this a useless skill in HOF mode?
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Fair enough considering how much xp could have been just chunked, but I would have appreciated fair warning.
Seriously ? Just slay them... I remember I tried the similar thing back in the day once , the same thing here. But your Cleric might be busy with boosting , so don't bother.
At level 22 I was able to affect (not control) the wights on the Burial Isle. They were properly running away from the cleric. I don't know what level they are supposed to be but they have 260 HP.
Advantages:
- righteous wrath of the faithful
- Druid
- rabbit familiar for traps while swashbuckler duals
- clerics can cast the greatest variety of spells
- no Paladins or Rangers mean no one falls if you kill characters like the paladin in ToL (who has some sweet gear)
Disadvantages:
- no shimmering sash
- ??
Thoughts?
What is the alignment of summons, especially Skeleton Warriors? You can get serious mileage out of one of them fully buffed I bet.
is I think chants' OP part , it helps a lot.
From theory of probability , okay now bear with me , word by word : If you can hit 8 dices in 20 and have 2 APR already , the chances you hit them all will be %16 ( %40 x %40 , there are 0.4 situations ( boxes , groups , ... ) of 0.4 ). Increasing your APR by 1 will not change your chance to hit in the first 2 APR . If your hit dice is increased by 2 , simply by reciting , the chances you will hit all 2 APR will increase to %25. Now , the interesting thing is that , that is MORE possible than , with unrecited THAC0 , to miss your first attack ( %60 chance ) and scoring the second ( %40 of course ) , which is %24 ! If you had 3 APR and missed 2 of them and scored the third ? That would be %14.4 , so it is still easier for you to comeby more damage with Chants , because missing 1 of them and scoring the other two will even drop lower to %9.6. Now , hitting nothing will not help , so speed is less important than a success. I leave that part of joy for you who are interested to turn this problem into Pn(t) [d] { an array of probabilities of certain damages in due time , where n denoting the only hasted or the nonhasted recited cases } and introduce time factor with the investigation portraited herein. I guess for the only hasted case it will grow very weak very quickly for high damages needed , which is the HoF case where monster HD's are monstrously monstering , which is nice.
(edit : By introducing DPM to no-nerd desolate D&D , I think I revealed my identity as a ruthless powergamer.)
Mage for Hope , Courage , Oracle , etc. should be enough. Personally I think HoF IWD is a better game than BG , not only but because it portraits mages better , they are so fragile and zero if they are on their own in combat situations considering advancement , they do a invisibility and poof or just simply run away , they must retreat , they are book freaks in warm beds. Combat is for fighters and alike.
Invisibility , Improved Invisibility and Mass Invisibility are all tactic broadeners and in some situtations they save you from a lot of hassle. Consider the possibility of facing your enemies , awkward like you get face to face with your old friend in a night pub suddenly , Mass Invisibility can help you to deploy yourself easily.
Your numbers are way off from real situations in my opinion, and you chose values that are biased towards THAC0 in the first place. Plus you downplayed APR scaling, which is crucial for IH since it doesn't simply add APR like normal Haste, but DOUBLES existing APR, meaning it scales much more with high APR (easy to do in a game with half a dozen +APR weapons). If you check values in game, you'll see that you can easily have fighters with upwards of 75% hit rate and 5 APR, which makes IH *CRAZY* good, and certainly magnitudes better than THAC0 buffs (which to be sure are rarely mutually exclusive, but for this argument let's assume so).
Just think simple that the hit is the success determiner not the speed ; this included with situations that you can miss ? Well the first thing you should think , I would say , is to get that miss chances lower. It is as easy as that.
And my point was the combat heat. In the combat heat , you'll need to focus your mage onto only one companion , wasting some 3 valuable seconds that most likely will not be a good option for high heat battles. I did not say IH was useless. But , compared to Courage and Hope which has lesser cast times , and come on , can effect more than one fighter on your team , don't argue that IH will be more damaging. The thing is IH is okay of course may be if you want some more punching power when things settle down a bit on an already hit rate buffed PC or at least a good hitter PC , or as everybody knows , in precombat preparations where it is possible , however i don't know there may be other useful spells at that level ? ( Which I would prefer summons , if the only other option I have was that ) But in those situations (precombats) , you already throw everything you got at your party , so there is no tactic in there , apart from memorization choices. Just buffin' all'm up to hell as hard as you can.
Summary of the post : Cutaway a face from the dice , and save yourself from some wrist pain.
( edit : grammar , visuals & minor corrections )
It's not "as easy as that", because you're missing the point entirely. Speed, hit chance, whatever, it's all just means to an end: dealing damage. Now if I do 2 attacks at 50% hit or 5 attacks at 30% hit, which sequence do you think will do more damage in the end? It's about the EV, *especially* on long fights. And that can go either way, depending on the factors involved. It's just that IH is such a massive boost that it's very hard to find THAC0/AC numbers in the actual game for THAC0 buffs to compete with IH.
What do you even mean by this? IWD is thoroughly scripted and utterly predictable, what "combat heat" are you talking about? You know you can pre-buff, right? And that IH lasts a considerable time? And that you can use pause during a fight to caaaarefully caaarefully place buffs and stuff if you really need to? And that since you're tanking anyway and tanking is really easy it's trivial to keep people buffed? And... do I really have to go on? I don't get why we are comparing two non-mutually exclusive buffs (in any way, shape, or form), but just for the sake of argument, have you run the numbers on this? Could you just compare effective gains on a 5 APR fighter, and tell me what you find? Like literally add up the numbers. Heck you don't even need the numbers. Just think of this:
IH doubles APR, so it turns each hit a into 2*a.
So, you need the gains g of Hope+Courage to be g = a, in order for 2*a=a+g to be the case.
In other words, you need the bonus damage from Hope+Courage to equal at least an average weapon hit, or about 20-25 damage. You think that is realistic, even accounting for THAC0? Hope+Courage is +5 damage and +3 Thac0. That means you'd need the +3 THAC0 to equal 15-20 damage, or a 75-80% increase in hits. To get to that, your original THAC0 (resp. the enemy AC) would need to be RIDICULOUSLY bad - and that just doesn't happen in the game, unless you're doing things very, very wrong.
miss hit hit x3 ( combination )
miss miss hit x3 ( combination again )
hit hit hit ( this is only one )
Total miss chance : %12,5
compared to ,
hit hit ( once )
miss hit ( two possibilities )
Total miss chance : %16
So , when I added the possibilities up ( which was what I forgot ) , the 3 APR %50 is much a kicker than %60. Now because I forgot to add the possibilities , the thing I said there is actually the opposite. The higher HD you have to fight , the more APR you've got matters more , where more APR should always be uphand.
Actually hit is the name of the success , and speed here is denoting the tries. If you had 3 fighters in party , casting Hope or Courage is better. Lets get to my point for actually why I posted like that in the first place , saying IH is not as useful as Chants :
Well , my only playthrough , and all the games I play since my childhood I haven't looked at any walkthroughs. Every battle every after every inch you progress was a new sight. And add to this some instafacing scenarios , that's what I'm talking about. YOU WILL HAVE TO CHOOSE A SPELL FOR MAGE TO CAST , ain't I right ? Now , Improved Haste is imo not a good option for that , if of course you have some area of effect buffing spells instead. Because increasing hit chances still means more damage if not a higher boost than APR.
3 fighters + 5 damage , +15 damage per turn ( these have Hope? Courage? ) , lets calculate per max damage so 25 damage * 3 +15 = 90 , and lets say 1 turn 1 hit.
3 fighters with one of them like 2 fighters hasted , so 4 fighters just dealing 25 damage let's say each , so 25 * 4 = 100 damage
Now , the 90 party will definitely make hits more successful , because this time I transferred the extra APR's to make them act like an other fighter.
What I have all written is my tactical preference actually. So , will you choose 90 damage more probable , or 100 damage less probable ?
Thank you for your contribution by the way. I hadn't touched mathemathics this deep for 1 year or so , if it's not that clear for you enough
It kinda speaks for itself :P
->
edit : Yeah , I kinda speak for myself
edit2 : I was going to say that for "%15 Tansheron!" everybody guessed it I think , but no
Apart from most obvious "basic probability" errors I have done , this is actually why I back up probability over tries , in close cases like this of course. You wrote like I defended Hope or Courage only on 1 PC , but you're wrong there , besides I don't think with 1 or 2 melee ( or ranged ? ) PC's anyone can complete IWD HoF vanilla easily from start to end also , which was my case. Though everyone is free to do what they want fer of course , so why not , it can be tried. I had 3 fighters plus a druid so for 4 melee pushers , which area of effect is why "area" , so , I said , 'instead' casting IH , Hope and/or Courage might be better , if you were to choose between two. That's why I made them seperate cases.
additional math/game talk : With probability also , the least it has scalability to tries the better it will be , of course merging with high ratios. I was having Diablo 2 in mind for this , for example , with Amazon say you want to waste some points for Critical Strike. If 1 point will make from %51 to %53 that is completely useless , unless of course you have 9999 skill points so having no worries in spending. How ever , if that point would make from %49 to %51 , because you just passed the point that "in 2 hits I may score a critical hit" , that is the most valuable point there , I think. Of course with probability you can guarantee nothing. But at least you turn the dice on your hand to a coin, which Critical Strike is boolean too , to chop head off , or not to chop head off.
It's at least good to see that through the conversation you've started to piece things together somewhat.
Some points:
- pre buff before fights with long duration spells like hope and courage
- pre buff before fights with short duration spells like IH too when you can
- IH does add more damage than any other spell (more than +200 damage per round extra damage on a heavily buffed 5 APR kensei 9/cleric 12 character - though +100 per round is more reasonable). The only comparable ability is a level 15 Skald song who can also add +200/round to a party of 5 damage dealers with 10 APR.
Hmm ... Now that I think about it maybe I can just kill those damn rakshasas in ToL with overwhelming force rather than bothering with this pesky idea of "strategy".
When considering anything involving possibility , it is not good to say that "increasing tries will give me more results."
In general I like to isolate my tactics as far from probability as possible. Because luck is not a tactic. Luck is gamble. Do you know that you can fail 4 times even with a probability of %90 ? Because that is its name. Probability.
So , I agree with your first 2 entries , but not with the third. With a party of 5 damage dealers even , chants and buffs that "can get you closer to %100" will be better , and with just 1 IH compared to Hope/Courage ? Nope. As comparing two possibilities is "undefined" as I tried to explain above , because you can hit something with %20 probability , but can miss with %99 probability , it is not good to compare probabilistic ratios with each other. But the only goal to crawl to should be %100. As @Lord_Tansheron says , not I because I don't remember , THAC0 need is low for monsters , making this %100 should not be a big problem then. After that , let the enemies think...
Let me ask you all something then ,
If you have a probability of %80 and have 1 try , and %40 probability but 3 tries , which would you choose ?
If you think like your life depends on it , may be , then , you'll finally get me.
You see ? More probability , or more tries ? There is no remedy here , except trying to make %100 what you want , %0 what you don't want , or at least closer to them as much as you can. This is why gambling today is a business still. People , many people think trying more and more will help them score. I think you're beginning to get my point now.
(edit: tag edit )
You also can get access to RW earlier iirc, IH is pretty high level arcane and has 1 scroll I think?
80% by 1 try is 80%.
40% by 3 tries is best thought of in terms of the outcome not occurring which is 60%^3 or 21.6% chance that you don't get your result or 78.4% of success.
Based on probability I would choose the first option. Then again, I don't gamble.
I think the above character had -15 THAC0 so it's unlikely that there's any enemy in the game that he wouldn't hit on a 2 or above. At this point the only way to increase his damage is to increase his APR.
As above, the probability of failing something 4 times with a 90% success rate is .1^4 or 0.0001 which is 0.01% chance. Sure, it happens due to probability and bad RNG but odds are odds.
The thing you have done with the math , @Wowo dear , is AGAIN a probability
I never said IH was useless. It's just not a necessity , as the others I have stated works good enough , and they are even better in many cases in case of approaching unavoidable damage output ( grouped fighters concentrated on one monster ) , with considering probability , they are even better damagers BUT only if 3 fighters or so , and above in the case 20-25 damage put as above ; if you insist on comparing. Besides , I don't know about the EE game , aren't there other beautiful utility spells and alike at that level ? SummONS ?
SUMMONS ? No summons ?
( edit : the POSSIBILITIES of you all showing me as misunderstood over the time , yeaah ! hint : check what he quoted me as below. )
( edit 2 : latest adition research spells level 6 ? )
?
-Globe of Invulnerability
-Power Word Silence
-Invisible Stalker !!!!!!
-Antimagic Shell
-Tenser's Transformation , all of them look more useful to me than IH. I repeat my point again definitely again IH is not a game changer , and I agree with @DreadKhan. By the time you got IH , the game should already been turned to jelly. Besides , and still if you have oppurtunity to cast IH , it provides more tactical variation those spells above I listed , and +200 damage on one fighter ( remember if he hits them all ) , is not that great I think than to have 5 melee pushers dealing damage more reliably , getting closer to %100 ( even without small +5 bonuses ) , because of the lesser lesser spell slot it requires , and the longevity it has , if you are not facing with a small group but then why would you waste IH on that if not boss ? Idk. They have ruined the game much , from original. )
The only thing that can be better as was pointed out is Righteous Wrath of the Faithful but it's a cleric spell and will only be better if everyone is of the same alignment and gives fatigue afterwards.
Just please, enough of this nonsense?
(edit : grammar )
I don't know if IH is area of effect @Wowo. So how come it adds 200 damage per round ? We have an idiom in Turkish for that : " onu dedem de biliyor". Translates " even my grandpa knows that." If you have that much time in your hands well , there is no problem in the first place. I'm talking INSIDE the combat , picking ONE only ONE spell at a time , the choice of Hope would be better if applicable imo.
Thank you for your contribution too by the way.
100 on the other hand is almost comically easy, as any fighter can easily get to 5APR/20 dmg avg hits. I'd say 25 is a good average with some buffs, more with full buffs (ideally on F/C duals). That's +125 damage PER ROUND from a single spell, which you'll struggle to find anywhere.
Note that the average damage includes adjustment for misses, as the actual average hit range is slightly higher (though it depends a bit on buffs/stats/equipment). Enemy AC/party THAC0 progression remains reasonable all the way up to endgame (unlike ToB...), meaning that anyone reasonably buffed will hit at very high percentages. I think this is an excellent point, and the matter should be laid to rest here as ceremoniously as Deckard Cain.