Iam not familiar with the settings you use as i dont play lob and scs, but possibly there is an easy fix for the planetar problem.
In the planar prison there are plenty of little sub areas, the optional ones you can access trough the flashy doors. It should not be a problem to hide inside one of that rooms and just wait for the planetar spell to expire.
I dont regard to trigger enemy spells and summons then wait them to expire as cheese, but your opinion on what is cheese and what is not can be different from mine.
An other possible tactic can be to stack many web spells, even a planetar should fail some save and as he is stuck his AC is no more effective, so good ranged power can erode his 700hp.
Also harm can be very effective against enemies with a lot of hp, and with a webbed enemy you are sure to connect.
As i told i am only guessing and lack of a real experience on how that setting work.
It has been a while, but IIRC it makes no difference whether or not you do the Master of Thralls part first, except that the Warden may be unkillable until you do - but it'll fight using the same things either way, including the Fallen Planetar.
Depending on your mod setup and personal strategy, some areas may be harder or easier than expected. For me personally, the hardest pre-Underdark fight has always been TorGal, because I go there early; but if you save it for later, it'll be fairly trivial. Similarly, deferring the Planar Prison until you've got more meat on your bones will make it a very different experience from hopping in there right away in Chapter 2.
If you don't want to cheese the Planetar by waiting in the above-mentioned rooms, there's various other strategies to try. I generally kite it away and either kill it far from the action on its own, or entertain it with a party member while the rest of the group deals with the Warden & co. and basically finishes the dungeon (so I never have to directly fight the Planetar). You can also keep it busy with summons, and so on.
Of course that's how it USED to be; I see there's been quite a lot of updates with many new SCS versions etc. out since I last played. It may be very different now, I don't know. I'll see if I can dust off the ol' BG2 and take it for another spin.
I dont see how to kite the planetar is less cheese then to hide the party, but yes, so many tactics possible, and that dungeon allow so many not conventional tactics, i had so much fun with tactics mod, that is an easier setting then lob and scs, it is even possible to go directly N from the spawning point.
Also farsight and a summon probably is good to trigger the planetar and some other spell, and if the summon is a simulacrum hasted and polymorphed to be immune to magic he can suck a lot of enemy spells, making the battle quite easier.
I dont see how to kite the planetar is less cheese then to hide the party
Possible failure state, basically. It actually requires player skill to do, whereas sitting in a room you know the enemy can't enter no matter what... doesn't. But as always, cheese is in the eye of the beholder (probably left there from Friday's pizza party).
Also farsight and a summon probably is good to trigger the planetar and some other spell, and if the summon is a simulacrum hasted and polymorphed to be immune to magic he can suck a lot of enemy spells, making the battle quite easier.
Summons in general are absurdly strong in LoB (even with diminished HP). There's twelve dozen ways to use them *ahem* "creatively". I personally refuse to use summons at all of any kind, but that's just a personal choice. Everyone has to figure out what they want for their own game.
I generally don't restrain myself from using summons.I tend to use them a lot in BG1 mostly because of the ridiculous -11AC bonus. I do this because I play for fun and can't be arsed to kite enemies forever. Once my fighter/mages can tank on their own I use them less and less.
In SOD and early BG I do it pretty rarely but in general I only use them on very big fights.
What I do not use are save-or-die spells. They just feel stupid, regardless of difficulty you play they will trivialize fights. I mean even big5 are not immune for feeblemind.
Sooo I just put on Legacy of Bhaal mode to one day get the platinum on PS4 for Baldur's Gate 1 aaaaand how am I suppose to do any of this?
I went a beastmaster and my Thaco can't hit Carbos/Shanks for like 5 minutes straight until I am dead. The Pseudo Dragon can hit them but what the hell am I suppose to do for the rest of the game does it ever get even a bit easier?
@spacejaws: A single-classed solo character shouldn't be fighting in LoB mode until high levels. Regular gameplay flat-out won't work in LoB mode; LoB mode is too punishing. LoB mode is better suited for full parties with lots of summoned critters and some very precise powergaming. Beastmasters won't be well-suited to do much in LoB mode until level 8, when they can summon more critters.
It's worth pointing out that LoB mode isn't supposed to be balanced; it was mostly just the porting of Heart of Fury mode over to Baldur's Gate, and HoF mode was designed for level 10+ parties. LoB gameplay is very different from normal gameplay, and I personally wouldn't recommend LoB mode for the vast majority of players. Even I seldom ever use it, and experimental gameplay is kind of my thing.
@spacejaws: A single-classed solo character shouldn't be fighting in LoB mode until high levels. Regular gameplay flat-out won't work in LoB mode; LoB mode is too punishing. LoB mode is better suited for full parties with lots of summoned critters and some very precise powergaming. Beastmasters won't be well-suited to do much in LoB mode until level 8, when they can summon more critters.
It's worth pointing out that LoB mode isn't supposed to be balanced; it was mostly just the porting of Heart of Fury mode over to Baldur's Gate, and HoF mode was designed for level 10+ parties. LoB gameplay is very different from normal gameplay, and I personally wouldn't recommend LoB mode for the vast majority of players. Even I seldom ever use it, and experimental gameplay is kind of my thing.
But in the PS4 version you can't make a full party you can only create a single character. No mulitplayer features.
I don't plan on playing solo I'll recruit the ingame NPC's but what the hell do I do about the extra AC the enemies obviously have? Bless obviously but to spend 5 minutes without getting a single hit against the weakest enemies in the game boggles my mind how I'm supposed to get through any of this.
@spacejaws: No matter what you do, fights will take time. That is simply the nature of LoB mode; there is no way to get through it quickly without some tricks and exploits in the incredibly narrow pathway we've carved in the solo LoB thread. You can get through enemies faster with the right options, but it will ALWAYS take longer to win fights in LoB mode.
Not every fight needs to take 5 minutes, and lots of fights can be skipped using stealth, but if your patience isn't long enough for the fights you do need to tackle, then LoB mode can't be made fun without investing lots of time learning the solo method, which is really precise and not fun for most people.
With only a single player-created character, a Beastmaster, you have some more limited options:
1. Rely heavily on stealth and charm from Algernon's Cloak to get around key fights until you collect several thousand gold and a few levels. Use a Protection from Magic scroll from Hafiz and use it to kill Denak with ranged attacks and the One Gift Lost (a long process), then recharge the Ring of Energy and use a Protection from Undead scroll to get through the Warder level of Durlag's Tower until you fight Love, which you can kill by running away and using the Ring of Energy on it, with Oil of Speed->Potion of Freedom->Potion of Clarity/Greenstone Amulet charges to avoid getting charmed or slowed by Love.
But that's Love in SCS, and I don't know how it fights without SCS. Once you kill Love (the other enemies can be ignored), you can grab the ward stone and enter the next level to nab Kiel's Helmet and Durlag's Goblet. Durlag's Goblet can be recharged at low cost and will impose no fear on a character with Kiel's Helmet or some other immunity to fear, so the goblet is a great way to tank enemies in melee and survive long enough to land enough hits.
This would let you solo much the game, but keeping some party members on hand could prove useful when dealing with optional but tricky stuff like Durlag's Tower traps or helping shoot down Denak and such.
2. Grab the Protection from Petrification green scroll and clear up some basilisks, then recruit Branwen, Viconia, and Tiax if you have SCS. Those characters should be able to cast Animate Dead and in Tiax's case also summon a ghast, and those summons will take a lot of the heat as you gather resources and XP.
Once you have 10,000 XP, you can go slay the hordes of gibberlings near the Larswood Tower over the course of several rests, and once the gibberlings are clear, you can recruit Baeloth, who has no small amount of big spells to even the playing field. Protection from Fire on a group of skeletons from Animate Dead will let you bomb enemies with Fireball repeatedly while they struggle to kill your summons.
3. Grab a Wand of Monster Summoning from the undead at the Narcillicus area (you don't need to fight them) or from the Warder level of Durlag's Tower. Once you have LOTS of money from selling the Ring of Wizardry and looting Durlag's Tower with the help of a thief (Potions of Perception and Mastery Thievery are for sale outside and can be found in chests in the tower itself), you can afford to recharge the Wand of Monster Summoning.
Recruit a bard or mage or a dual-classed Imoen, hand them the wand, and rely on the summons from the wand to take the heat from enemies. If you have high reputation and strong CHA on a party member and ranged support from a mid-level party, you can farm ankhegs for less money than it takes to summon monsters from the wand to kill them, allowing you to keep the wand fully charged at the cost of a little grinding time. That wand will keep you afloat for a long while until you can get your footing and rely less heavily on the wand to win fights.
If none of this seems like it could be fun or interesting, I wouldn't recommend playing in LoB mode. It's only fun in certain narrow contexts, and BG1 and SoD are especially rough.
@semiticgod Thanks! It definitely gives me an idea how to start. I really appreciate the input.
I do have one more question and I feel like a dumbass, but how are you recharging the ring of energy? I thought once it was out of charges it was done. I never knew there was a way to restore charges on items.
@spacejaws: Sell it to a merchant and buy it back! Some items are really expensive to recharge, though, since they have unusually high maximum charges. The Wand of Monster Summoning is the most expensive, at over 10 grand, due to having 100 charges. The Ring of Energy has 50 max charges and can cost less than 4 grand with high enough reputation and CHA.
The Ring of Energy can also bring down Davaeorn because it goes past MGOI (and GOI in EE), but it does take a LOT of charges in LoB mode. The Warders are very dangerous in SCS; you have to run around a lot and stay out of range of Avarice, Fear, and especially Pride.
Holy crap why didn't I know this. I always strictly rationed my stuff because I thought it would be done for good. I never made the connection that if you sold them the store can't really differwntiate between a half used wand and a full one so they just get refilled. Mental. Cheers again!
BG1 and SoD are quite difficult with LoB, to the point where it involves too many "creative" solutions for me to enjoy. I'm not a fan of farming gold to recharge items and that sort of thing, but that's just me.
I focus on BG2/ToB because your toolbox is bigger there from the get-go, and there's more ways to deal with things that don't involve excessively cumbersome solutions (though these still exist, of course).
Personal preference > all. Find out how it's the most fun for YOU.
Something bugged out with my account and I had an unexpected post come out on 10/14. I originally attempted to post and edit it on 10/9 and ran into issues. I was able to post/edit the content later that day and got all of my concerns resolved with semiticgod’s feedback and additional testing.
In summary, the bloated enemy stats and HLAs I encountered were confirmed as legit by semiticgod, prompting me to start testing the Guarded Compound encounter with a 1.5 million XP party. With the right tactics, these enemies were reduced to high-HP loot pinatas.
I was never notified via e-mail of any posts since 10/14 and got a flurry of notifications today, so looks like both e-mail notifications and the errant post got stuck in the system. Apologies to anyone distracted by that post and thank you for your input. I’m unable to delete posts, so I updated it to “Please remove” in case a mod wants to clear it.
Even if the topic is late, we are always interested how people approach certain problems. My own runs have stalled so I happily check the threads in my five minutes between meetings.
The holidays have - at last - allowed me to get some more time in with the new mods. My goal, for now, is twofold: 1) explore the changes made by the "Revised" versions of Spell/Item Revisions (as the original mod creator seems to be on hiatus) as well as the new SCS version; and 2) try and make Monk work. As always, mod settings are to the max (the new SCS interface integration and difficulty-slider based scaling makes this very easy!) and it's on LoB mode. No traps, no summons, no use of (either) Wish for combat, no in-combat triggers/contingencies, no egregious cheese (Wand of Lightning trick, etc.), and no repeated zoning to drain enemy spells or buffs. No XP cap.
First phase was theory. I built on my previous, largely tentative approaches (lack of time forced me to abandon), and also looked through stuff on EEKeeper/NearInfinity to get an idea about what's going on. The Revised mods seem largely the same, with some minor changes. But looking at the items in detail made me stumble across something I'd overlooked.
Under IRR (possibly already IR?), the Ring of the Ram has an extra ability that passively gives Monks a 33% chance to knock down the target for 1 round (save vs. death negates). This looked extremely interesting, but upon some quick testing proved to... just not work. I checked the item code with NI, and it seems the associated spell effect is missing. Not to worry - I replaced it with a 1-round stun (resistances apply, save vs. death negates) which is functionally identical I think (is knockdown different?), and now it does work. Given that you can pickpocket the Ring off Tolgerias very early in the game, this seems like a very attractive tool in favor of the Monk.
The other thing I noticed in my previous partial runs is the value of vorpal weapons, and pure damage output in general. While defenses remain paramount (or things like golems will just stomp you in 3 hits), the massive HP pools resulting from LoB + max HP on everything (and HP buffs via SCS, I think Dragons are +200% HP?) make damage quite important. At the same time, IRR nerfs many forms of APR (-0.5 base APR on all bows, APR offhands nerfed to +0.5 or none), while SRR nerfs Improved Haste (+1 flat APR rather than x2, but +2 thac0/dmg as well; regular haste is +0.5 flat). This made me switch completely to pure warriors or warrior multiclasses to make use of Whirlwind Attack, because sometimes you really just need to delete something (beholders come to mind). No more Kensai->Mage duals for me! This is the current party:
Fighter/Mage/Cleric
Fighter/Illusionist
Dark Moon Monk
Skald
Archer
Archer
(80 roll on everyone except CHARNAME at 90. BG1 tome bonuses distributed at my discretion. Stat minimums are 3, class restrictions on stats are ignored; racial stat maximums are in place.)
Skald math still checks out, even though the second Archer diminishes the value of the thac0 bonus somewhat for overall throughput. Second Archer is being revisited to make use of Heartseeker, the earliest vorpal weapon (15%, save neg.) alongside the trusted Strong Arm (which still has absurd damage). Archer continues to be the single highest source of damage for most of the game (previous playthroughs with single Archer had it at 35-40% party kills after Underdark). I will have to see how they do in ToB, I don't get there nearly enough due to time constraints. FMC and FI are fairly self-explanatory, though I'm not sure the Cleric part is really needed. I want to experiment with more self-buffing and spamming a LOT of dispel protection (SRR mod has party-wide Dispel Screen). Fighter is there for Whirlwind above all else, while Mage carries the heavy load of killing other mages and providing protections.
Dark Moon Monk was the obvious Monk choice for me, not only because of better defenses (Blur/Mirror Image) but most importantly because of Detect Illusions, which is absolutely crucial for SCS as all the mages are spamming invis contingencies like crazy, and Improved Invisibility+Non-Detection is also ubiquitous. Area dispels are mostly useless since Remove/Dispel Magic check against level, and LoB makes those virtually impossible to land. Inquisitor I did not really think was an option, because enemies also use Dispel Screen a lot and Dispel Magic is not party friendly.
The strategy for the Monk will largely consist of stacking every defensive item available. Ring of Earth Control (Stoneskin), Ilbratha in offhand (-2 AC, Mirror Image), eventually Gargoyle Boots (Stoneskin) as well. Rasaad's quest also has a possible Ring of Duplication (more Mirror Image). Will it be enough? Hard to say. One of my characters in previous games had -19 AC and still got pounded when defenses were down. Enemy thac0s are through the roof. The damage is certainly alluring. Haste immunity doesn't matter thanks to the IH nerf (Fists reach 4 APR naturally, +1 for OH means capped anyway) and the Gauntlets of Crushing add +4 dmg/+4 thac0 to fists that max at 1d20+4 naturally (and crushing, the best damage type). That's just about the highest average per-hit damage short of Black Blade of Disaster. Will it be curbed by lack of defenses, as it has previously been when I tried Monk? Maybe the Ring of the Ram will make the difference. High APR means that 33% stun chance should trigger a fair bit. I remember Celestial Fury locking from long, long ago...
What do people think? I'll give it a whir regardless so I'll see over the next few days how many times I get to reload after my Monk becomes a smear on the dungeon wall.
Interesting stuff.
Usually, knockdown in the Infinity Engine means the sleep/unconsciousness opcode. Notably, demons are immune to this while still being vulnerable to stun.
I couldn't find it, but maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough. No real reason demons in particular should be immune to a Monk going ham on their butt, though, so I'm fine with just using stun.
I finished most of SoA now, and I'm probably not going to be able to do ToB until the weekend.
It's worked basically entirely as expected, except for the Monk - which worked BETTER than expected. I think the key is careful balancing of AC across the melee characters; not just stacking high AC on the Monk, but also purposely LOWERING the AC on the other melee, which can rely on spell protections to tank. This will make the SCS scripts prioritize targets other than the Monk a lot of the time. I don't know how it works exactly (there might be a threshold involved there somewhere like with physical resistance) but it was reliable enough to let the Monk survive purely with the help of item-fueled Stoneskin + Mirror Image.
Damage output for that party is absurd. As predicted, the HLAs are what hard-carries everything. I cannot even begin to imagine what it would look like with un-nerfed Improved Haste. With Greater Whirlwind alone, I was able to kill Thaxll'ssillyia in a single round once its PFWM was dispelled (though this was post-Underdark), despite the SCS HP bonus to dragons on top of LoB (which adds up to something like +600% I think?). Aside from raw damage, access to two vorpal weapons (Heartseeker + Silver Sword) as well as Quivering Palm and Slay Living allowed for a huge amount of "virtual" damage as well (Deathblow of course doesn't really work in LoB due to the global level increase).
The two Archers certainly pulled their weight, but the micromanagement resulting from only having one Quiver of Plenty really annoys me. In ToB, there's also a single Bowstring of Gond to look forward to, which is used for basically any of the endgame bows/xbows - they REALLY do not want you to have two bow users. I'm fine using Heartseeker until the end of time so one improved bow only is fine, but I might consider just adding another Quiver of Plenty for myself to not go insane with constant ammo management, given you need so many more shots on LoB. Two Archers can do insane things with HLAs - not just GWW, but also Smite, which can allow you to control an entire room full of high-threat enemies like beholders or mind flayers by bouncing them all over the place as you finish off priority targets with the rest of the group.
The FMC turned out very well. The Cleric spells provided much needed resilience at various stages of the game, and of course GWW is just so much sweeter with 25 STR and the per-hit magic damage from RF. It remains to be seen whether it's worth giving up the ol' Time Stop + GWW shenanigans, not to mention the fun to be had with Black Blade of Disaster (both of which are more of a ToB thing). Given that many bosses gain immunity to Time Stop in Ascension, though, perhaps that's not that big a deal.
Overall I'm quite happy with how the setup turned out. Monk definitely is becoming a favorite quite rapidly, though it requires some commitment and care early in the game where it remains somewhat squishy. Mine sits at -19 AC at the moment, but largely survives based on spells and script-target management - in a head-to-head, it can still get stomped easily, and did regularly drop to dangerous levels unexpectedly despite the massively low AC. Its damage definitely delivers, though.
Speaking of damage, the nerf to many weapons in Item Revisions seems to have led me almost naturally to stacking non-weapon based sources of damage - Skald song, Monk fists, Archer ranged bonus, Cleric buffs, etc. The Fighter/Illusionist is the only "classical" damage dealer, and is indeed lagging behind by a noticeable margin. Which makes me wonder if there's some other class combo I could be using instead to exploit this even further. I definitely want to maintain at least 3 arcane casters, though, which makes it a little tricky to find a good option. I'm open to suggestions!
You might consider looking into the large number of new kits in the Expanded Classes mod. Notably, the Archer fighter kit can dual-class and achieve Grandmastery in slings and darts; the Sword Dancer kit can achieve 30 attacks per round at the cost of an 80% reduction in physical damage output (the damage reduction doesn't apply to on-hit effects like the magic damage from the Voidsword or an Alchemist's Plasma item), the Stone Dancer can also get triple a monk's normal APR and can trigger that IR knockdown effect much more often, the Fighter/Cleric/Druid/Mage/Thief can combine Righteous Magic with earth elemental form (base 2d10 damage) and GWW or Assassination, and a War Hulk can deal truly heroic damage if it is damaged frequently enough. In fact, there's an expensive but curious exploit where a War Hulk->Cleric can use one of the new SCS v32 cleric buffs to get immunity to berserk and then spam Refined Ectoplasm from an Alchemist in the party so it can maintain perpetual invulnerability while it gains a 15% damage bonus for every hit it takes for 2 rounds (which a Sword Dancer could further add to).
Not all of it might be to your tastes, but the Sword Dancer (the fighter kit with triple APR and free dual-wielding) and Stone Dancer (the monk kit with triple APR and one casting of Stoneskin) kits might be fairly balanced for a lot of the new changes in IR.
That might be something interesting to toy around with in the future, but it would probably take me a lot of work to properly assess the wealth of combinations added by that mod. I don't know how soon I can get around to doing that. Thanks for the suggestion, though!
Side rant: I'm getting REAL tired of some of these scripts that basically involve nothing but spamming endless amounts of summoned monsters. Vampires are bad enough when they summon 10+ rats to clog up tight corridors, but there's numerous casters that apparently do little other than summon after summon after summon. Particularly bad are the mages in Qilue's home in Ust Natha, and the demons in the obelisk room in the WK teleport maze. I eventually just ran away, because what is the point in trying to navigate 20+ enemies crammed into a space where you couldn't walk side by side on the best of days (and of course summons don't even give XP). That just doesn't seem like particularly engaging design to me.
And of course SRR's Banishment allows a save so you can't even kill summons efficiently.
Side rant over. ToB in a few days, I hope. I still have a week of holiday.
The FMC turned out very well. The Cleric spells provided much needed resilience at various stages of the game, and of course GWW is just so much sweeter with 25 STR and the per-hit magic damage from RF. It remains to be seen whether it's worth giving up the ol' Time Stop + GWW shenanigans, not to mention the fun to be had with Black Blade of Disaster (both of which are more of a ToB thing).
FMC can not cast TS and BBoD, but at high enough level he can cast simulacrum and, if your mods setting allows it, the clone can use without expending them both the scrolls from the quick slot.
a full buff FMC clone with a BBoD, a couple of TS scrolls and some WW-GWWW can carve trough enemy hp like butter.
even if he loose a round to cast again the TS he has 50 attacks with BBoD and kai like effect + 25 str bonus.
if your mods settings or your player's pride don't allow to use scrolls trough the clones quick slots forget it, but if it is possible simulacrum is the best FMC spell overall.
A Fighter/Mage/Cleric won't be able to cast Simulacrum until 6.75 million XP, and Item Revisions removes the clone scrolls trick, just like SCS. Also, IR might change Vhailor's Helm.
Otherwise, yes, Vhailor's Helm makes anything with fighter and mage levels overpowered without IR and SR, since you could always combine a BBoD scroll with GWW, and maybe use a Tenser's Transformation scroll on top of Hardiness to improve its durability (or just carry a stack of PFMW scrolls for your clone).
Note that clones have weird spellbooks in EE because they're memorized alphabetically. Thus, if your FMC has Chaotic Commands memorized, its clone might lose access to a Righteous Magic spell slot. Also bear in mind that Righteous Magic doesn't grant the same effect as Kai in Spell Revisions; it gives you extra magic damage per hit instead.
While there's no "Vhailor's Helm" in IR, there *is* a helm with Simulacrum on use x1/day (I believe it drops in ToB? forgot). But in any case, I don't use summons and I include Sim/PI under that. Just a personal restriction, they're undeniably powerful.
Also, magical weapons like BBoD don't give STR bonuses in SRR from what I can tell (Phantom Blade mentions it in the spell description; BBoD doesn't but from the numbers it puts out seems to work that way). BBoD is still a longsword+5 with 2d12 base and 15% for 40d6 magic (save breath at -2 for 5d6) which is pretty good, but clearly not as busted as it'd be with STR bonuses on top.
Honestly the biggest bottleneck so far have been simply enemy numbers. It's really hard sometimes to burst down priority targets in LoB before they become a problem. Irenicus in hell was a tough nut given that the demons he comes with have vorpal attacks and spam dispels like there's no tomorrow, and each can take several rounds to kill. And that's only 5 enemies, it gets a lot gnarlier when there's 10-15 or more involved. A lot of it also comes down to the environment you fight in, wide spaces make it easier than tight quarters.
Enemies are also virtually guaranteed to make critical saves like death at those levels, I got a vorpal hit on a Balor exactly ONCE in maybe 10 reloads, and near permanent GWW. That also makes Ring of the Ram on Monk far less good than it first seemed, it barely ever happens at all past the midgame despite the 33% chance.
SCS v32 introduces IWD spells that penalize saves--does that still hold true when combined with SR? Curse imposed -1, Prayer imposes -1, and Recitation imposes -2. Put together, they almost negate LoB save bonuses. Greater Malison and Chant bring the total to -7, or -9 with an unnerfed Greater Malison outside of SR, though none of them bypass MR.
The Bone Club imposed -1 cumulative save penalties on a failed save vs. spell last I checked. That could mean guaranteed failed saves for anything if prepped with Called Shot.
There are ways to lower saves, but when the problem is being overrun very quickly then setting up combos over several turns just to be able to crowd control will often not be fast enough. I found the most reliable way was to use Smite with the Archers, and simply bounce critical enemies across the map to buy time (and occasionally also interrupt them). Smite also is the best way I found to handle Demiliches with ease.
I haven't tried the IWD spells at all yet. I have played IWD and I know there's some pretty ridiculous spells around. It's hard to say how those work with SRR in terms of balance (let alone technical issues) but I might look into it in the future.
There is the tweaks component that adds save penalties to things based on level, but that's probably way too powerful with all the hard disablers around.
I'm not a big fan of the save system in general, it's a bit silly to have so many effects that amount to a binary win/lose based on a single roll. On a number of fights I got lucky with Quivering Palm, for example, and it really felt almost like cheating to just kill multiple enemies in a single round on LoB (the party on the WK final seal for example was like that).
I'm skeptical of the skald that seems to have become a staple of some people's LoB parties. Is it really optimal? Presumably noone brings the class because it's fun, the character just kind of stands there, so it must be a min-max choice. Having tried it in half of a playthrough, I didn't feel like it added more than the sum of its parts. I suppose it depends on party setup, but here's how I see it:
Assuming a 6-man party, how many really benefit from it? The song does practically nothing for the skald itself, for obvious reasons. Same goes for any pure spellcasters you might have in the party, so if you run a sorcerer or something, we're down to four characters who make use of the buff. If you run an archer (let alone two), that's another one that makes minimal use of the Thac0 and AC portion, thought the damage buff of course still helps. So for most parties, three or four characters will benefit from a skald.
AC is pretty bad in LoB. You want to tank with mage layers or damage reduction because even -20 AC won't cut it against the enemies that really matter. We don't min-max for the sake of beating hobgoblins a little more efficiently, after all. So if you only have, say, three melee characters who get something meaningful out of the skald's song, is that really better than a 6th party member? I know theorycrafting has been put into the skald concept, but it's not all about DPS. Adding a bersage or kensage or something to the party gives you a lot more than just their damage output whereas the skald contributes with little more than the occasional casting of Haste or whatever their spell levels amount to.
I'm skeptical of the skald that seems to have become a staple of some people's LoB parties. Is it really optimal? Presumably noone brings the class because it's fun, the character just kind of stands there, so it must be a min-max choice.
Without going into discussions of what is or isn't fun (because that's obviously subjective), the Skald does a lot more than just "standing there". While singing is definitely their main job, they are also a major spellcaster - both by using their arcane magic, and by using Bard instruments, Pandemonium Harp above all else. You can usually pop out a spell and resume singing before the song drops, and if you import the Bard Hat from SOD it's even easier.
Assuming a 6-man party, how many really benefit from it? The song does practically nothing for the skald itself, for obvious reasons. Same goes for any pure spellcasters you might have in the party, so if you run a sorcerer or something, we're down to four characters who make use of the buff. If you run an archer (let alone two), that's another one that makes minimal use of the Thac0 and AC portion, thought the damage buff of course still helps. So for most parties, three or four characters will benefit from a skald.
It does depends on the number of party members, that is for sure. Getting an EXACT conversion of the song benefits is complicated, but a good heuristic is simply counting the APR across the board and multiplying them by the song damage bonus, and then comparing that to the average damage * APR you would get from the Bard if it was an attacker instead; controlling, of course, for the value of THAC0 bonuses and the defensive bonuses. 4 attackers is usually enough for this to be in favor of the Bard, with 3 it might go either way. depending. But this is only a rough approximation, you should give a lot of thought to this based on what your proposed party setup is.
I'm personally not a fan of pure casters in LoB mode, but that's a biased opinion based on my preferences; YMMV considerably. Skald is the best compromise for me.
AC is pretty bad in LoB. You want to tank with mage layers or damage reduction because even -20 AC won't cut it against the enemies that really matter.
Yes and no. AC is a weakness to be sure, but relying purely on buffs to tank is highly susceptible to dispels; how much of a problem that is varies with mod setups, but with the latest SCS at least there's plenty of fights where enemies just SHOWER you in dispels. Demon Knights, demons/fiends, enemy mages, etc. are all equipped with massive amounts of dispels, often in the form of innate abilities or triggers so you can't even interrupt them. This doesn't invalidate magical protections by any means, but it does often force you to rely more on AC than you would think.
I know theorycrafting has been put into the skald concept, but it's not all about DPS. Adding a bersage or kensage or something to the party gives you a lot more than just their damage output whereas the skald contributes with little more than the occasional casting of Haste or whatever their spell levels amount to.
Most of the important buffs and debuffs are in the mid levels, so Skald has access to everything a mage would - and usually with a higher caster level. That's not to say lvl 7-9 spells don't have amazing stuff, but there's a surprising amount of extremely useful spells before that, most of which retain their utility all the way through ToB (especially with the SR(R) mod).
That being said, what I mentioned above still applies: YMMV depending on your party setup. If you want to run with 5 Sorcerers, maybe a Skald is not what that party needs in its 6th slot. If you have 5 attackers, maybe there's nothing better.
It does depends on the number of party members, that is for sure. Getting an EXACT conversion of the song benefits is complicated, but a good heuristic is simply counting the APR across the board and multiplying them by the song damage bonus, and then comparing that to the average damage * APR you would get from the Bard if it was an attacker instead; controlling, of course, for the value of THAC0 bonuses and the defensive bonuses.
true and if the defensive bonuses can (maybe) not be so relevant in LoB the Thac0 buff is very relevant as better thac0 means to hit more often, so at least part of the attacks missed by not having a fighter more is compensated by less attacks missing.
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In the planar prison there are plenty of little sub areas, the optional ones you can access trough the flashy doors. It should not be a problem to hide inside one of that rooms and just wait for the planetar spell to expire.
I dont regard to trigger enemy spells and summons then wait them to expire as cheese, but your opinion on what is cheese and what is not can be different from mine.
An other possible tactic can be to stack many web spells, even a planetar should fail some save and as he is stuck his AC is no more effective, so good ranged power can erode his 700hp.
Also harm can be very effective against enemies with a lot of hp, and with a webbed enemy you are sure to connect.
As i told i am only guessing and lack of a real experience on how that setting work.
Depending on your mod setup and personal strategy, some areas may be harder or easier than expected. For me personally, the hardest pre-Underdark fight has always been TorGal, because I go there early; but if you save it for later, it'll be fairly trivial. Similarly, deferring the Planar Prison until you've got more meat on your bones will make it a very different experience from hopping in there right away in Chapter 2.
If you don't want to cheese the Planetar by waiting in the above-mentioned rooms, there's various other strategies to try. I generally kite it away and either kill it far from the action on its own, or entertain it with a party member while the rest of the group deals with the Warden & co. and basically finishes the dungeon (so I never have to directly fight the Planetar). You can also keep it busy with summons, and so on.
Of course that's how it USED to be; I see there's been quite a lot of updates with many new SCS versions etc. out since I last played. It may be very different now, I don't know. I'll see if I can dust off the ol' BG2 and take it for another spin.
I dont see how to kite the planetar is less cheese then to hide the party, but yes, so many tactics possible, and that dungeon allow so many not conventional tactics, i had so much fun with tactics mod, that is an easier setting then lob and scs, it is even possible to go directly N from the spawning point.
Also farsight and a summon probably is good to trigger the planetar and some other spell, and if the summon is a simulacrum hasted and polymorphed to be immune to magic he can suck a lot of enemy spells, making the battle quite easier.
Summons in general are absurdly strong in LoB (even with diminished HP). There's twelve dozen ways to use them *ahem* "creatively". I personally refuse to use summons at all of any kind, but that's just a personal choice. Everyone has to figure out what they want for their own game.
In SOD and early BG I do it pretty rarely but in general I only use them on very big fights.
What I do not use are save-or-die spells. They just feel stupid, regardless of difficulty you play they will trivialize fights. I mean even big5 are not immune for feeblemind.
I went a beastmaster and my Thaco can't hit Carbos/Shanks for like 5 minutes straight until I am dead. The Pseudo Dragon can hit them but what the hell am I suppose to do for the rest of the game does it ever get even a bit easier?
It's worth pointing out that LoB mode isn't supposed to be balanced; it was mostly just the porting of Heart of Fury mode over to Baldur's Gate, and HoF mode was designed for level 10+ parties. LoB gameplay is very different from normal gameplay, and I personally wouldn't recommend LoB mode for the vast majority of players. Even I seldom ever use it, and experimental gameplay is kind of my thing.
But in the PS4 version you can't make a full party you can only create a single character. No mulitplayer features.
I don't plan on playing solo I'll recruit the ingame NPC's but what the hell do I do about the extra AC the enemies obviously have? Bless obviously but to spend 5 minutes without getting a single hit against the weakest enemies in the game boggles my mind how I'm supposed to get through any of this.
Not every fight needs to take 5 minutes, and lots of fights can be skipped using stealth, but if your patience isn't long enough for the fights you do need to tackle, then LoB mode can't be made fun without investing lots of time learning the solo method, which is really precise and not fun for most people.
With only a single player-created character, a Beastmaster, you have some more limited options:
1. Rely heavily on stealth and charm from Algernon's Cloak to get around key fights until you collect several thousand gold and a few levels. Use a Protection from Magic scroll from Hafiz and use it to kill Denak with ranged attacks and the One Gift Lost (a long process), then recharge the Ring of Energy and use a Protection from Undead scroll to get through the Warder level of Durlag's Tower until you fight Love, which you can kill by running away and using the Ring of Energy on it, with Oil of Speed->Potion of Freedom->Potion of Clarity/Greenstone Amulet charges to avoid getting charmed or slowed by Love.
But that's Love in SCS, and I don't know how it fights without SCS. Once you kill Love (the other enemies can be ignored), you can grab the ward stone and enter the next level to nab Kiel's Helmet and Durlag's Goblet. Durlag's Goblet can be recharged at low cost and will impose no fear on a character with Kiel's Helmet or some other immunity to fear, so the goblet is a great way to tank enemies in melee and survive long enough to land enough hits.
This would let you solo much the game, but keeping some party members on hand could prove useful when dealing with optional but tricky stuff like Durlag's Tower traps or helping shoot down Denak and such.
2. Grab the Protection from Petrification green scroll and clear up some basilisks, then recruit Branwen, Viconia, and Tiax if you have SCS. Those characters should be able to cast Animate Dead and in Tiax's case also summon a ghast, and those summons will take a lot of the heat as you gather resources and XP.
Once you have 10,000 XP, you can go slay the hordes of gibberlings near the Larswood Tower over the course of several rests, and once the gibberlings are clear, you can recruit Baeloth, who has no small amount of big spells to even the playing field. Protection from Fire on a group of skeletons from Animate Dead will let you bomb enemies with Fireball repeatedly while they struggle to kill your summons.
3. Grab a Wand of Monster Summoning from the undead at the Narcillicus area (you don't need to fight them) or from the Warder level of Durlag's Tower. Once you have LOTS of money from selling the Ring of Wizardry and looting Durlag's Tower with the help of a thief (Potions of Perception and Mastery Thievery are for sale outside and can be found in chests in the tower itself), you can afford to recharge the Wand of Monster Summoning.
Recruit a bard or mage or a dual-classed Imoen, hand them the wand, and rely on the summons from the wand to take the heat from enemies. If you have high reputation and strong CHA on a party member and ranged support from a mid-level party, you can farm ankhegs for less money than it takes to summon monsters from the wand to kill them, allowing you to keep the wand fully charged at the cost of a little grinding time. That wand will keep you afloat for a long while until you can get your footing and rely less heavily on the wand to win fights.
If none of this seems like it could be fun or interesting, I wouldn't recommend playing in LoB mode. It's only fun in certain narrow contexts, and BG1 and SoD are especially rough.
I do have one more question and I feel like a dumbass, but how are you recharging the ring of energy? I thought once it was out of charges it was done. I never knew there was a way to restore charges on items.
The Ring of Energy can also bring down Davaeorn because it goes past MGOI (and GOI in EE), but it does take a LOT of charges in LoB mode. The Warders are very dangerous in SCS; you have to run around a lot and stay out of range of Avarice, Fear, and especially Pride.
I focus on BG2/ToB because your toolbox is bigger there from the get-go, and there's more ways to deal with things that don't involve excessively cumbersome solutions (though these still exist, of course).
Personal preference > all. Find out how it's the most fun for YOU.
In summary, the bloated enemy stats and HLAs I encountered were confirmed as legit by semiticgod, prompting me to start testing the Guarded Compound encounter with a 1.5 million XP party. With the right tactics, these enemies were reduced to high-HP loot pinatas.
I was never notified via e-mail of any posts since 10/14 and got a flurry of notifications today, so looks like both e-mail notifications and the errant post got stuck in the system. Apologies to anyone distracted by that post and thank you for your input. I’m unable to delete posts, so I updated it to “Please remove” in case a mod wants to clear it.
First phase was theory. I built on my previous, largely tentative approaches (lack of time forced me to abandon), and also looked through stuff on EEKeeper/NearInfinity to get an idea about what's going on. The Revised mods seem largely the same, with some minor changes. But looking at the items in detail made me stumble across something I'd overlooked.
Under IRR (possibly already IR?), the Ring of the Ram has an extra ability that passively gives Monks a 33% chance to knock down the target for 1 round (save vs. death negates). This looked extremely interesting, but upon some quick testing proved to... just not work. I checked the item code with NI, and it seems the associated spell effect is missing. Not to worry - I replaced it with a 1-round stun (resistances apply, save vs. death negates) which is functionally identical I think (is knockdown different?), and now it does work. Given that you can pickpocket the Ring off Tolgerias very early in the game, this seems like a very attractive tool in favor of the Monk.
The other thing I noticed in my previous partial runs is the value of vorpal weapons, and pure damage output in general. While defenses remain paramount (or things like golems will just stomp you in 3 hits), the massive HP pools resulting from LoB + max HP on everything (and HP buffs via SCS, I think Dragons are +200% HP?) make damage quite important. At the same time, IRR nerfs many forms of APR (-0.5 base APR on all bows, APR offhands nerfed to +0.5 or none), while SRR nerfs Improved Haste (+1 flat APR rather than x2, but +2 thac0/dmg as well; regular haste is +0.5 flat). This made me switch completely to pure warriors or warrior multiclasses to make use of Whirlwind Attack, because sometimes you really just need to delete something (beholders come to mind). No more Kensai->Mage duals for me! This is the current party:
Fighter/Mage/Cleric
Fighter/Illusionist
Dark Moon Monk
Skald
Archer
Archer
(80 roll on everyone except CHARNAME at 90. BG1 tome bonuses distributed at my discretion. Stat minimums are 3, class restrictions on stats are ignored; racial stat maximums are in place.)
Skald math still checks out, even though the second Archer diminishes the value of the thac0 bonus somewhat for overall throughput. Second Archer is being revisited to make use of Heartseeker, the earliest vorpal weapon (15%, save neg.) alongside the trusted Strong Arm (which still has absurd damage). Archer continues to be the single highest source of damage for most of the game (previous playthroughs with single Archer had it at 35-40% party kills after Underdark). I will have to see how they do in ToB, I don't get there nearly enough due to time constraints. FMC and FI are fairly self-explanatory, though I'm not sure the Cleric part is really needed. I want to experiment with more self-buffing and spamming a LOT of dispel protection (SRR mod has party-wide Dispel Screen). Fighter is there for Whirlwind above all else, while Mage carries the heavy load of killing other mages and providing protections.
Dark Moon Monk was the obvious Monk choice for me, not only because of better defenses (Blur/Mirror Image) but most importantly because of Detect Illusions, which is absolutely crucial for SCS as all the mages are spamming invis contingencies like crazy, and Improved Invisibility+Non-Detection is also ubiquitous. Area dispels are mostly useless since Remove/Dispel Magic check against level, and LoB makes those virtually impossible to land. Inquisitor I did not really think was an option, because enemies also use Dispel Screen a lot and Dispel Magic is not party friendly.
The strategy for the Monk will largely consist of stacking every defensive item available. Ring of Earth Control (Stoneskin), Ilbratha in offhand (-2 AC, Mirror Image), eventually Gargoyle Boots (Stoneskin) as well. Rasaad's quest also has a possible Ring of Duplication (more Mirror Image). Will it be enough? Hard to say. One of my characters in previous games had -19 AC and still got pounded when defenses were down. Enemy thac0s are through the roof. The damage is certainly alluring. Haste immunity doesn't matter thanks to the IH nerf (Fists reach 4 APR naturally, +1 for OH means capped anyway) and the Gauntlets of Crushing add +4 dmg/+4 thac0 to fists that max at 1d20+4 naturally (and crushing, the best damage type). That's just about the highest average per-hit damage short of Black Blade of Disaster. Will it be curbed by lack of defenses, as it has previously been when I tried Monk? Maybe the Ring of the Ram will make the difference. High APR means that 33% stun chance should trigger a fair bit. I remember Celestial Fury locking from long, long ago...
What do people think? I'll give it a whir regardless so I'll see over the next few days how many times I get to reload after my Monk becomes a smear on the dungeon wall.
Usually, knockdown in the Infinity Engine means the sleep/unconsciousness opcode. Notably, demons are immune to this while still being vulnerable to stun.
It's worked basically entirely as expected, except for the Monk - which worked BETTER than expected. I think the key is careful balancing of AC across the melee characters; not just stacking high AC on the Monk, but also purposely LOWERING the AC on the other melee, which can rely on spell protections to tank. This will make the SCS scripts prioritize targets other than the Monk a lot of the time. I don't know how it works exactly (there might be a threshold involved there somewhere like with physical resistance) but it was reliable enough to let the Monk survive purely with the help of item-fueled Stoneskin + Mirror Image.
Damage output for that party is absurd. As predicted, the HLAs are what hard-carries everything. I cannot even begin to imagine what it would look like with un-nerfed Improved Haste. With Greater Whirlwind alone, I was able to kill Thaxll'ssillyia in a single round once its PFWM was dispelled (though this was post-Underdark), despite the SCS HP bonus to dragons on top of LoB (which adds up to something like +600% I think?). Aside from raw damage, access to two vorpal weapons (Heartseeker + Silver Sword) as well as Quivering Palm and Slay Living allowed for a huge amount of "virtual" damage as well (Deathblow of course doesn't really work in LoB due to the global level increase).
The two Archers certainly pulled their weight, but the micromanagement resulting from only having one Quiver of Plenty really annoys me. In ToB, there's also a single Bowstring of Gond to look forward to, which is used for basically any of the endgame bows/xbows - they REALLY do not want you to have two bow users. I'm fine using Heartseeker until the end of time so one improved bow only is fine, but I might consider just adding another Quiver of Plenty for myself to not go insane with constant ammo management, given you need so many more shots on LoB. Two Archers can do insane things with HLAs - not just GWW, but also Smite, which can allow you to control an entire room full of high-threat enemies like beholders or mind flayers by bouncing them all over the place as you finish off priority targets with the rest of the group.
The FMC turned out very well. The Cleric spells provided much needed resilience at various stages of the game, and of course GWW is just so much sweeter with 25 STR and the per-hit magic damage from RF. It remains to be seen whether it's worth giving up the ol' Time Stop + GWW shenanigans, not to mention the fun to be had with Black Blade of Disaster (both of which are more of a ToB thing). Given that many bosses gain immunity to Time Stop in Ascension, though, perhaps that's not that big a deal.
Overall I'm quite happy with how the setup turned out. Monk definitely is becoming a favorite quite rapidly, though it requires some commitment and care early in the game where it remains somewhat squishy. Mine sits at -19 AC at the moment, but largely survives based on spells and script-target management - in a head-to-head, it can still get stomped easily, and did regularly drop to dangerous levels unexpectedly despite the massively low AC. Its damage definitely delivers, though.
Speaking of damage, the nerf to many weapons in Item Revisions seems to have led me almost naturally to stacking non-weapon based sources of damage - Skald song, Monk fists, Archer ranged bonus, Cleric buffs, etc. The Fighter/Illusionist is the only "classical" damage dealer, and is indeed lagging behind by a noticeable margin. Which makes me wonder if there's some other class combo I could be using instead to exploit this even further. I definitely want to maintain at least 3 arcane casters, though, which makes it a little tricky to find a good option. I'm open to suggestions!
Not all of it might be to your tastes, but the Sword Dancer (the fighter kit with triple APR and free dual-wielding) and Stone Dancer (the monk kit with triple APR and one casting of Stoneskin) kits might be fairly balanced for a lot of the new changes in IR.
And of course SRR's Banishment allows a save so you can't even kill summons efficiently.
Side rant over. ToB in a few days, I hope. I still have a week of holiday.
a full buff FMC clone with a BBoD, a couple of TS scrolls and some WW-GWWW can carve trough enemy hp like butter.
even if he loose a round to cast again the TS he has 50 attacks with BBoD and kai like effect + 25 str bonus.
if your mods settings or your player's pride don't allow to use scrolls trough the clones quick slots forget it, but if it is possible simulacrum is the best FMC spell overall.
Otherwise, yes, Vhailor's Helm makes anything with fighter and mage levels overpowered without IR and SR, since you could always combine a BBoD scroll with GWW, and maybe use a Tenser's Transformation scroll on top of Hardiness to improve its durability (or just carry a stack of PFMW scrolls for your clone).
Note that clones have weird spellbooks in EE because they're memorized alphabetically. Thus, if your FMC has Chaotic Commands memorized, its clone might lose access to a Righteous Magic spell slot. Also bear in mind that Righteous Magic doesn't grant the same effect as Kai in Spell Revisions; it gives you extra magic damage per hit instead.
Also, magical weapons like BBoD don't give STR bonuses in SRR from what I can tell (Phantom Blade mentions it in the spell description; BBoD doesn't but from the numbers it puts out seems to work that way). BBoD is still a longsword+5 with 2d12 base and 15% for 40d6 magic (save breath at -2 for 5d6) which is pretty good, but clearly not as busted as it'd be with STR bonuses on top.
Honestly the biggest bottleneck so far have been simply enemy numbers. It's really hard sometimes to burst down priority targets in LoB before they become a problem. Irenicus in hell was a tough nut given that the demons he comes with have vorpal attacks and spam dispels like there's no tomorrow, and each can take several rounds to kill. And that's only 5 enemies, it gets a lot gnarlier when there's 10-15 or more involved. A lot of it also comes down to the environment you fight in, wide spaces make it easier than tight quarters.
Enemies are also virtually guaranteed to make critical saves like death at those levels, I got a vorpal hit on a Balor exactly ONCE in maybe 10 reloads, and near permanent GWW. That also makes Ring of the Ram on Monk far less good than it first seemed, it barely ever happens at all past the midgame despite the 33% chance.
The Bone Club imposed -1 cumulative save penalties on a failed save vs. spell last I checked. That could mean guaranteed failed saves for anything if prepped with Called Shot.
I haven't tried the IWD spells at all yet. I have played IWD and I know there's some pretty ridiculous spells around. It's hard to say how those work with SRR in terms of balance (let alone technical issues) but I might look into it in the future.
There is the tweaks component that adds save penalties to things based on level, but that's probably way too powerful with all the hard disablers around.
I'm not a big fan of the save system in general, it's a bit silly to have so many effects that amount to a binary win/lose based on a single roll. On a number of fights I got lucky with Quivering Palm, for example, and it really felt almost like cheating to just kill multiple enemies in a single round on LoB (the party on the WK final seal for example was like that).
Assuming a 6-man party, how many really benefit from it? The song does practically nothing for the skald itself, for obvious reasons. Same goes for any pure spellcasters you might have in the party, so if you run a sorcerer or something, we're down to four characters who make use of the buff. If you run an archer (let alone two), that's another one that makes minimal use of the Thac0 and AC portion, thought the damage buff of course still helps. So for most parties, three or four characters will benefit from a skald.
AC is pretty bad in LoB. You want to tank with mage layers or damage reduction because even -20 AC won't cut it against the enemies that really matter. We don't min-max for the sake of beating hobgoblins a little more efficiently, after all. So if you only have, say, three melee characters who get something meaningful out of the skald's song, is that really better than a 6th party member? I know theorycrafting has been put into the skald concept, but it's not all about DPS. Adding a bersage or kensage or something to the party gives you a lot more than just their damage output whereas the skald contributes with little more than the occasional casting of Haste or whatever their spell levels amount to.
It does depends on the number of party members, that is for sure. Getting an EXACT conversion of the song benefits is complicated, but a good heuristic is simply counting the APR across the board and multiplying them by the song damage bonus, and then comparing that to the average damage * APR you would get from the Bard if it was an attacker instead; controlling, of course, for the value of THAC0 bonuses and the defensive bonuses. 4 attackers is usually enough for this to be in favor of the Bard, with 3 it might go either way. depending. But this is only a rough approximation, you should give a lot of thought to this based on what your proposed party setup is.
I'm personally not a fan of pure casters in LoB mode, but that's a biased opinion based on my preferences; YMMV considerably. Skald is the best compromise for me.
Yes and no. AC is a weakness to be sure, but relying purely on buffs to tank is highly susceptible to dispels; how much of a problem that is varies with mod setups, but with the latest SCS at least there's plenty of fights where enemies just SHOWER you in dispels. Demon Knights, demons/fiends, enemy mages, etc. are all equipped with massive amounts of dispels, often in the form of innate abilities or triggers so you can't even interrupt them. This doesn't invalidate magical protections by any means, but it does often force you to rely more on AC than you would think.
Most of the important buffs and debuffs are in the mid levels, so Skald has access to everything a mage would - and usually with a higher caster level. That's not to say lvl 7-9 spells don't have amazing stuff, but there's a surprising amount of extremely useful spells before that, most of which retain their utility all the way through ToB (especially with the SR(R) mod).
That being said, what I mentioned above still applies: YMMV depending on your party setup. If you want to run with 5 Sorcerers, maybe a Skald is not what that party needs in its 6th slot. If you have 5 attackers, maybe there's nothing better.