Assassin Mage SoA items build

Xiaolin

After doing a quick run and trying out the 4 SoA dragons (firkraag, thaxll'ssillyia, adalon and nizidramanii'yt) I found that the assassin mage hit all 4 dragons reliably with poison weapon.

With the run I found these for my item build:
Bracers of Archery (+2 THAC0) in the druid grove
Pale Green Ioun Stone (+1 THAC0) in graveyard district
Potions of mind focusing (+3 dex each) any of the temples sells 13x each; Stack 2 potions to give +2 THAC0
Potion of Power (THAC0 bonus)

With 18 dex, by the time I got to underdark she had -2 THAC0


With my Blackguard partner -4 AC aura I can hit dragons reliably, buffing with Imp Haste that is anything from 6 to 10 attacks a round. Needless to say the fights with the dragons were short, having the dragon stoneskins wear out from missles in seconds was a good side effect too!

Now the two dragons in ToB are immune to poison, but the mage can still reach level cap with 9 levels of thief... I am sure she can get by with Project Image and Chain contingency cheese then.

Lord_Tansheron

I like missiles against dragons in general, most of my low level Firkraag kills depend heavily on my Archer. Poison is a fun thing to have in addition I suppose.

Blackraven

It's also a good combination with Melf's Minute Meteors, as @Gotural can attest.

Xiaolin

Not sure who this gotural fellow is, however each melf counts as one level 3 spell; you can use up the enemy spell deflection faster than dispelling it. To sum it up: Remove 10 stoneskins / 30 levels of spells deflection with attacks pers round, and have poisons on each successful hit.

lunar

Very impressive how you can reach a nice THAC0 of -2 from a base of abysmal 16.

Gotural

Yes, Poison Weapon with Melf's Minute Meteors is definitely something scary.

Thanks to the Gauntlets of Weapon Expertise, I was rocking 7-10 damage per hits, +12 damage from the poison if the enemy made his save, even more if he didn't. So at least 19-22 damage per hit, from range, 5 APR, very early in the game, bypasses Stoneskin / Mirror Image, disrupts spellcasting for the next few seconds.

My Assassin/Mage multi was one of my favorite character

Xiaolin

It also happens that all the female npc mages have high dex, making them useful melf cannons

Aerie 17
Neera 17
Nalia 18
Imoen 18

vs Edwin(a)'s 10 dex..

I do find it key to have a blackguard with her aura of despair; Otherwise melfs dosen't land everytime, on a dragon that is.

SymphonyofSwords

In addition, Aerie is also a milf cannon.

Sorry, couldn't resist. haha

FinneousPJ

Err, not.

mumumomo

The OPness of poison weapon is once more demonstrated.
To all of you out there who never tried it, you really should.

DreadKhan

SymphonyofSwords said:

In addition, Aerie is also a milf cannon.

Sorry, couldn't resist. haha

Only in ToB, and only if you romanced her.

CrevsDaak

You're missing the Staff of the Magi for insane backstabs when used together Shapeshift->Sword Spider, Improved Haste and Tenser's Transfomation (you don't even need Mislead!).

Nama

mumumomo said:

The OPness of poison weapon is once more demonstrated.
To all of you out there who never tried it, you really should.

Well, to be fair poison does not work for undead (Much of SoA), and without the right items to improve your THAC0 the melf won't hit consistently. Finally it is worthless by ToB as you have only 3 uses and in ToB the enemy hp scales to massive numbers, making the poison insignificant or just outright immunity.

To summarise, real nifty for the SoA dragons, needs proper item build + blackguard ability to work, useless from ToB onwards.

Blackraven

CrevsDaak said:

You're missing the Staff of the Magi for insane backstabs when used together Shapeshift->Sword Spider, Improved Haste and Tenser's Transfomation (you don't even need Mislead!).

Do you mean Staff of the Ram, @CrevsDaak? Because the (vanilla) game doesn't allow for backstabbing with weapons that cannot be used by striaght Thieves that don't have UAI. (You could backstab with the SotM, but the backstab modifier wouldn't apply.)

DreadKhan

Poison stacks with itself in my experience, and makes BG1 a breeze for an Assassin, and come ToB, if you stuck with Assassin long enough, you can get UAI. High level Assassin duals are a bad idea if you run a large party though, and can require a fair bit of skill to solo the new dualed to part... Mage is the most forgiving thing to dual to late, as you can actually do okay with lower level mage spells and some know-how, but fighter or cleric are hard, and fighter is incredibly boring to dual to. All you can do is hit things, and a low level fighter in SoA will have a hard time dealing with Muggers, let alone ACTUAL threats.

As for improving accuracy, remember to use debuffs like slow, Web, Chaos (if they aren't attacking you much, you don't need to hit quite as often to win!), Glitterdust, etc etc to offset things. -2 THAC0 isn't that bad in much of ToB, though you will miss occasionally I suppose. Lots of really unpleasant enemies do not rely on AC though, such as Mindflayers. Kensages operate without much better THAC0 iirc, and do great in SoA, though rely more on magic in ToB... which might be what this build has to do too eventually.

All else fails btw, at high levels you can Timestop and not worry about missing.

Pibaro

@Blackraven‌ if I understood correctly, he means this:
Wield the staff of magi => you are now invisible.
Shapeshift into a spider => you are now using using spider's weapon

Now you are invisible, you are a thief and you aren't attacking with the staff but with spider's weapon and, maybe, it's a weapon able to backstab

Blackraven

@Pibaro, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying. Afaik SotM-invisibility ends as soon as the staff is no longer wielded, which would seem to be the case if spiders's weapon is 'equipped', but I haven't tried this and it could be different with shapeshifts. Am tempted to try this myself sometime

Pibaro

we just need to try

CrevsDaak

Blackraven said:

CrevsDaak said:

You're missing the Staff of the Magi for insane backstabs when used together Shapeshift->Sword Spider, Improved Haste and Tenser's Transfomation (you don't even need Mislead!).

Do you mean Staff of the Ram, CrevsDaak? Because the (vanilla) game doesn't allow for backstabbing with weapons that cannot be used by striaght Thieves that don't have UAI. (You could backstab with the SotM, but the backstab modifier wouldn't apply.)

My procedence is:
1 - Shapeshift into Sword Spider
2 - Sequencer with Shocking Grasp, Imp. Haste and Tenser's Transformation
3 - We use SG on a party member, now our weapon slots are free
4 - We get near an enemy, our CC triggers
5 - Chain Contingency with PfMW, Mirror Image and SI:Divination trigger
6 - Equip SotM (in my last install, it isn't nerfed and it is usable for backstab, that's why I got confused)
7 - Enter inventory, equip SotR from there
8 - Attack
9 - Repeat 6-8 until enemy is dead

It's actually much better to use Mislead... Unles you can't cast Mislead because your Mageschool doesn't allow Illusion spells.

DreadKhan

10 - ?????
11 - Profit!

Blackraven

Wow @CrevsDaak! That's really smart.

CrevsDaak

Blackraven said:

Wow @CrevsDaak! That's really smart.

Thanks! It's the workaround I tend to use when I want to play a Necromancer dual/multiclassed with a Thief... I actually have never done so, lol (but I used that trick with Jan (I couldn't find another scroll of Mislead xD) in my first game, where I had infinite Chain Contingencies since keymapped spells that give submenus are automatically casted).