@Myrag: Most of my post came from yours; I just added a few more numbers showing the DD's advantages.
@Lord_Tansheron: Testing would need to find whether Stoneskin or Defensive Stance is a higher deterrent to enemies, but the data on a Dwarven Defender suggests that it would be an ideal choice for a solo LoB build, or part of a smaller party. If enemies prefer to attack Stoneskins rather than DS, however, a Dwarven Defender would not be a reliable tank in a party.
But with Item Revisions, or the Full Plate and Packing Steel mod, a party of Dwarven Defenders could all reach 90% resistance, negating that issue.
Finished Mae'var questline, last of so called "easy questlines in ch2". It was indeed very easy, I must say true sight is indeed rogue killer combo. Mae'var himself was a mage instead of thief which surprised me greatly as I always thought he was simply a rogue (probably SCS doing).
Mage in the docks was also very easy, times have changed as I've played this game many many many times I always had issues at this stage with that mage. My guess is that preparing for SCS mage chess I created decent anti-mage party capable of handling multiple SCS mages at the same time so a singular mage dies within a round or two.
I've checked list of Mae'var instacast prebuffs (he had spell truning and other buffs) which gave a me a green light to breach immediately after true sight removed his improved invisibility since spell turning only protects against 4 spell levels. After he got stripped of buffs it was seconds before he died, mages with no contigency die so quick.
Off to do minor quests then going to start Valygar questline.
Always good to see more people go with Lob+SCS combo, it's so much fun I don't know if I would switch back to originals after that, next run is definitely plus SR+IR
But with Item Revisions, or the Full Plate and Packing Steel mod, a party of Dwarven Defenders could all reach 90% resistance, negating that issue.
This is an interesting thought, however I foresee other trouble there. If only DD could dual! But I suppose that's part of why it's more powerful.
The issue with tanking is making me reconsider my entire tank + ranged concept. The entire reason for it was avoiding damage on the rest of the party almost entirely, if you cannot do that because enemies ignore you the moment you go full defense then what is the point. Might as well run with more heavily protected melee classes and spread the damage around, minimizing it that way. The F/M tank idea died with the new (or rather: not outdated) Dispelling Screen, I think. It would probably just fold in ToB where dispels get lobbed at you every 2 seconds and practically always work because of LoB levels.
But I'll have to test more. Maybe DD is still the way to go. Even without Defensive Stance up it has decent damage reduction (at least 50% at lvl20+ with full plate and Fortress Shield), and it gets completely out of control if you DO manage to find a choke point. Considering that any door will probably do, it makes me wonder how many fights there are with enemies hitting hard enough to be dangerous but no viable joke point in sight. Also wondering how exactly the aggro scripting works as it seemed to me that not ALL enemies were breaking off to go for the main party, only some of them. Maybe this can be controlled somehow.
The F/M tank idea died with the new (or rather: not outdated) Dispelling Screen, I think. It would probably just fold in ToB where dispels get lobbed at you every 2 seconds and practically always work because of LoB levels.
If my internet connection will allow, I'll upload a video of ToB Odamaron fight. Not LoB, but it doesn't make much difference as you'll see.....
Here you go. It's quite a short endeavor that explains why f/m multiclasses are hit so hard with Dispelling Screen tweak. PArty is f/m/c (protagonist), archer, sorcerer and shaman. It was a no-reload up to this point.
Here you go. It's quite a short endeavor that explains why f/m multiclasses are hit so hard with Dispelling Screen tweak. PArty is f/m/c (protagonist), archer, sorcerer and shaman. It was a no-reload up to this point.
It's hard to count, but I think it was upwards of 6 Dispel Magic during that fight *insert quote about firepower of that magnitude*
As it is, I think I'm not even memorizing Dispelling Screen. That's just way too weak outside of a few select encounters (mostly early game, like the city ambushes where you get one Dispel guaranteed, but likely no more than that).
You also nicely showcase the power of Banishment, which I find borderline cheese considering how often high-end summons are used in ToB (does it work properly now? I recall it just not doing anything a lot of the time during my outdated SR runs).
Yea, Banishment kills summons instantly. The additional difficulty factors here are that I use "dispellable potions" tweak for IR so I cannot rely on those and Refinements mod - I cannot use Deva or Planetar, and Shaman apperantly gets no Elemental Princes !!!! This is a huge, huge drawback of the class, since they have no reliable summons. Shambling Mound is great (I'll see if I can upload Yaga-Shura....that's one epic clusterf**k of a battle...Shambling was great there) if you can keep it online - but with Odamaron, his Apprentice, 2 pet vampire-mages and simularcums chances of gaining some use from summons in this battle are abysmal. Dispel Screen isn't an epic spell, in any case. Even early on you can meet things such as Tanova that have a triple Dispel sequencer, against which Dispel Screen is utterly moot.
Even early on you can meet things such as Tanova that have a triple Dispel sequencer, against which Dispel Screen is utterly moot.
That's true, but luckily buffs tend to matter less against pure mages. Hard fights are those where melee support exists alongside them.
I remember when I fought Odamaron I mostly ignored the adds and focused him down asap, pumping spell dispels into him and then Inquisitor I-Win-Button. It wasn't amazingly hard, but of course any spell-heavy fight is as annoying as it gets, pretty much. That was with outdated SR, of course.
At first I did a run of BP on Core to refresh my memory about the the game and to have a higher level party as I was afraid LoB might turn out too hard for level 1s. I was quite wrong, after doing some quick check with assassin and rats in Candlekeep I quickly restarted and this time went with levels 1.
I have reach the safety of Friendly Arm Inn. First map was fully explored, on second I only dared to clear NW part and find the ring hidden in stone. Since I have bonus XP enabled, I am at 6k XP per char already. This allows me to kill things quite quickly, but for now I am also in danger of dying as quick as well (luckily it didn't happen yet, but I definitely need to restock potions). I would say the battle with rats was most important so far. Why? I learnt a valuable lesson - carry spare weapons until I can get some unbreakable ones. So now all my melee fighters look like a medieval version of Neo from lobby scene (now I want to see whole movie again XD) and carrying as many spares I could get my hands on.
Few things I've noticed, singular mages don't last longer than two rounds but 3+ Yuan Ti mages at the same time in the back room were tricky. Happily, my party is filled up to the teeth with mage spells so FMT/FM/Sorc loaded with breaches are very strong here. True sight into three breaches on three mages followed by insect swarm were enough to win me a fight but it took me a reload to realize that three mages in confined space require my three mage classes to throw spell protection removals. Four rounds of just debuffing is too long to give them.
Planar sphere started off very easy, first encounter crushed hard regardless of two yuan-ti mages, one handled with dagger throws by WS locked him quickly from spell casting second failed save from celestial fury. Seconds later I was clear. A lot of OP loot suddenly on the floor, elven chain +3 for AC2 and spell casting for bards is amazing because it's equivalent of level 3 spell ghost armor and a BARD HAT woo hoo, I think the most OP item SOD brought to the game, I could see this bring also great for blade also, cast song and 3 rounds of damage or defensive spin and spell casting.
Encounters were decently hard but I would say nothing I couldn't handle, two fights that were difficult were thrall master with 3 yuan-ti mages, 4 spell casters makes it hard even for such heavily buffed group. Again, fully buffed group, true sight and breach on everyone for the win. Warden was somehow more difficult, my second enemy that did cast timestop. He has a lot of APR and great range of spells making summons great soakers, he again was accompanied by 3 yuan-ti. He also had triple remove magic in contigency which is nasty!
One thing so far that I found boring about SCS is that it adds difficulty by giving more spells and more mages at encounters. Which is of course hard don't get me wrong but it requires your party to be specifically crafted for anti-magic disablers which favors mage multi/duals rather than cool classes like F/D, archers, clerics, etc. There is so many cool classes in the game that I simply wouldn't bring to ascension/scs/lob simply because getting 1 more mage for spell breaking is of much more value. Feels like the best party would consist of F/M multis with one skald or maybe 1 more sorc for pure spell casting OPness with vecna. I just wish SCS would favor some encounters more for melee brutes, example of this would be rasaad final encounter where I had to save for later since I was too low level and got overrun. Of course at some point where you can disable all enemy buffs then other spots are free to distribute, for instance I have FMT/FM/Sorc and bard so I can disable spell protections from 4 mages easily meaning I have two spots for DD/WS but could be an archer or other class.
Interestingly I started paying attention to some fights and noticed there are times where I pop defensive stance and enemies switch off from DD to F/M... which brings me a great deal of sadness... if this continues I will ditch DD for FMC or FM tank. FMC would bring some utility and PFE 10y which is nice long-lasting buff.
I guess I'm going to go to meet the shade lord now.
ps. I love being able to leave DD with 83% DR in middle of enemies when they give me a taste of massive spell removal chain contigencies. It's decent value provided and with FOA he drops slow on difficult enemies even if they have protections up!
Dragon was much harder than Shade Lord but because of my stupidity I forgot to get main damage dealers protected with negative plane protection so her AOE level drain cost me few tries. Insane dps of dual WS->Druid with simulacra was really nice. Sadly AOE level drain is not illusion spell (maybe necromancy?) so Spell Protection didn't work and couldn't be arsed to check via near infinity if it's of any magic school.
I assume this fight takes 10 seconds with dual archer (or archer with simulacra) from stat draining but I don't like this tactic as it feels too easy.
Summons are decently good here for keeping her of ranged during wing buffets especially 90% magic immune skellies. My sorc is at 1,4mil xp so in 100k I will get level 7 spells and will be torn between project image and morde swords. Probably gonna grab morde as they are one of most OP spells in the game, LOB doesn't change much with them as they are nearly immortal, either die from death spell or don't. Never seen mage magic missile them anyway.
Shade lord was easier than expected, took him on first try without even maximum prebuffing. I was surprised that he has only spell turning and PFMW on himself so secret word into breach and he went down like a simple goblin. After he was down it was already 3 rounds so I had few of shades around, I quickly greater malison all of them info Sunray from daystar. This cleared entire room for me and It just took few rounds to finish summoning statue.
Easy peasy, dragon was nice challenge I wonder how mighty firkragg will be. My party struggled on this fight mostly because of level drain but then again firkragg has much better stats and powerful fire breaths. Hopefully by then I will have access to some better spells as my melee weapons are nearly as powerful as it gets before end of SOA.
What makes me wonder, are there any specific nice debuff (reducing power/disabling) spells that do work on dragons but are not ending fight like feeblemind? I can't check but slow from FOA seem to work but with their insane MR I had troubles to land anything else really. Even with greater malison and doom celestial fury proceed like once or twice. Yes I do know dragons are immune to stun, just saying 9APR beast landed it few times with save vs spell, that not good. What I'm basically getting at is, I wonder if I should focus on trying to debuff dragon or just breach into lower resistance spells into damage spells really. Nothing nearly comparable with what melee deals in that time. I guess this is why I have them and this is exactly why @Lord_Tansheron doesn't use pure spell casters, unless you get 8+ spells you need to be a buff bot nothing else, of course afterwards you are single man army.
My percentages didn’t change much
DD 14% down to 13% FM 21% no change FMT 36% up to 37% (staying strong with Day Star, lots of undead and evil lately) Skald 0% Sorc 5% no change WS->Druid 22% no change
I just wish SCS would favor some encounters more for melee brutes
There are some systemic problems at work there, namely that it's just way too easy to disable pure melees as a caster. If the enemy was all melee, casters on the player's side would trivialize things. That's why the difficult fights in BG2 almost always feature caster support, to even the odds. Of course, you're right in that this sometimes devolves into an arms race, where you bring more casters to counter their casters, and so on. But that's just a reality of the game as it is set up, I'm afraid, and won't go away unless you introduce some pretty massive changes to the underlying systems (e.g. adding more abilities to melee etc.).
Even enemies like golems, which are probably the hardest physical hitters, you can basically AFK against with a proper setup. Enough protection on a tank, and no matter how big and strong they are, if all they do is smash with fists the fight isn't a big deal.
I assume this fight takes 10 seconds with dual archer (or archer with simulacra) from stat draining but I don't like this tactic as it feels too easy.
I believe SCS makes a lot of enemies immune to stat drains, as my double Archer team chaining Called Shots never killed a boss enemy through stat drains from what I can remember.
Feels like the best party would consist of F/M multis with one skald or maybe 1 more sorc for pure spell casting OPness with vecna.
Sorc is an option, but maximizing it usually takes so many things I personally refuse to use that I'm rarely taking one alone (e.g. PI, Wish resting, etc.). F/Ms are great, however they're fairly weak defensively once tons of dispels are involved, since you obviously won't be in full plate with shields on someone who needs to actually cast. I do like F/M and F/M/C for damage dealers, though.
Pondering the tanking problem a little more, I'm thinking that maybe the solution could be as simple as using TWO Dwarven Defenders to tank. That would cut the number of battles without viable choke points drastically, as two characters are able to block most reasonably narrow passages and there are very few fights in actual wide, open fields - and in those, kiting becomes a very real possibility. Still, it would be quite micro intensive.
My next test will probably involve something like this:
There's only 1 Fortress Shield, of course, for 100% immunity (20% level 20 + 20% full plate + 50% Defensive Stance + 10% shield) but 90% (or 93% if you have the SoD helmet) should be enough on the second. The Vampire's Revenge could possibly be swapped for Axe of the Unyielding later on (1hp/round may be enough sustain), but of course proficiency points should be plenty so you can swap a lot anyway.
Is there any analysis (deep dive) on Wild Mage mechanics for EE? I've seen quite few but a lot of them are outdated still saying about contigency 3x chaos shields.
Are all spells capped at level 20 in EE rendering -5/+5 caster level bonus useless after level 15/25 (depending on dice) also meaning wild surge cast at double the level being useless too? of course spells like dispel magic will still increase in power but what about others. I tested few like MMM or buffs and they were capped at 20.
Yes to capped at 20 and yes, the inability to stack chaos shields is a major nerf to the wild mage in the EE. In vanilla it was possible to no-reload on core with a wild mage with close to zero risk, but you need a bit of luck in the EE. The higher HPs for LoB also mean that a BG1 run relying solely on items is no longer an option, so that further increases the need for luck with surges. Progress is certainly still possible though - I'm not that far off completing BG1 no-reload using LoB/SCS with a solo wild mage and starting stats of 9 in intelligence and 3s in everything else ...
In vanilla, it was also possible for any mage to cast Nahal's Reckless Dweomer at will, as if under the effects of Improved Alacrity, if you mapped NRD to a hotkey.
I used it to do an insane solo poverty run of Throne of Bhaal with a ToB-created Wild Mage, killing Melissan with a bunch of Horrid Wilting spells. I went a little ways through SoA with an SoA-created Wild Mage, but got tired of spamming Skull Trap in every fight and getting paralyzed by surges when I was too low-level to cast Improved Chaos Shield.
Chain Contingency could also be cast via hotkey, and it even worked for druids and clerics.
Yes to capped at 20 and yes, the inability to stack chaos shields is a major nerf to the wild mage in the EE. In vanilla it was possible to no-reload on core with a wild mage with close to zero risk, but you need a bit of luck in the EE. The higher HPs for LoB also mean that a BG1 run relying solely on items is no longer an option, so that further increases the need for luck with surges. Progress is certainly still possible though - I'm not that far off completing BG1 no-reload using LoB/SCS with a solo wild mage and starting stats of 9 in intelligence and 3s in everything else ...
Exactly what I thought, so basically a wild mage is NRD for risk of surges, as simple as this. Of course this is still BIG, I mean it's X casts alacrity or additional wish resting but it makes me sad that some positive surges and effects are diminished because of spell level cap. Second thing is if you play with reloads you always can cast those amazing spells that would otherwise be yet unavailable for you... cloud kills in bgee, skeleton warriors in bg2 etc etc pewpew... still sorc seem to be stronger for
Still there always are those funny moments when you get AOE 60 yards surge on single target spells; spell strike woo! I once got magic missile is heavily crowded fight and it looked amazing
Sadly other than cool visual effects on casts I'm going to stick to sorc, I just feel like long LOB fights sometimes cause natural 5% spell cast loose you a fight which are already decently tough without additonal random effect.
If you do want to make a Wild Mage, Neera is the way to go. Her quests offer a lot of equipment that buffs wild surges (though they probably fixed the robe with passive Improved Chaos Shield stacking with the spell).
But personally, I feel that a Sorcerer is just Wild Mage done right, so if you do plan on making a pure caster that would be my choice.
If you do want to make a Wild Mage, Neera is the way to go. Her quests offer a lot of equipment that buffs wild surges (though they probably fixed the robe with passive Improved Chaos Shield stacking with the spell).
But personally, I feel that a Sorcerer is just Wild Mage done right, so if you do plan on making a pure caster that would be my choice.
Afaik the only item really worth it from neera questline is the circlet in TOB for +15% wild surge chance, although one need to remeber that the chance for wild surge is still 29% (71% success chance = 31 from levels, 15 circlet, 25 imp chaos shield) and 60% from regular casts (level bonus doesn't add for random surges, only NRD).
I don't think there aren't any other quests that give worthwhile items that specifically work in favor of wild mage. You could argue wild magic zone would be too but this depends on how many spell casters do you have in the party.
ps. Chaos Sorcerer is a thing in D&D E3 I believe, basically wild mage enabled sorc, I also tested this in BGEE and assigning wild mage kit to sorc works perfectly so you get wild mage rolls/NRD/chaos shields (every mechanic) just from having a kit assigned post creation. So you could always play a dream combination.
Afaik the only item really worth it from neera questline is the circlet in TOB for +15% wild surge chance
Passive Improved Chaos Shield on the robe is also very useful. Either way, the alternative is nothing at all so... :P
But yeah, I am just not fond of Wild Mage competitively. It's fun, though. Sometimes whacky things are what you want, outside of powergaming. Wild Mage is great for that.
(71% success chance = 31 from levels, 15 circlet, 25 imp chaos shield) and 60% from regular casts (level bonus doesn't add for random surges, only NRD).
Using NRD, your level is added to the wild surge roll. 31 is the maximum level a Mage can reach under the ToB experience cap (8m XP).
Regular wild surges don't get a level bonus at all. Of course, regular spells are also only 5% to even be a wild surge, whereas NRD will always be one (in return, it can cast any spell you have, at any level).
@Lord_Tansheron Ok, so if I understand right, there're actually two kinds of levels we are talking about here: 1. casting level, which capped at 20, regular WS uses that, so max variety is from 60-100. 2. caster's level, which is 31, NRD uses that (or may use both, but takes the higher number and don't stack), so max variety is 71-100.
@islandking the casting level isn't used at all by wild surges. It's simply that most spells are capped at level 20 (some less, e.g. fireball and some uncapped, e.g. dispel magic, but most capped at 20). Whenever a spell is cast by a wild mage the casting level is randomly adjusted by +/- 5. However, if a wild mage is at level 25 or above that adjustment makes no difference for most spells as they're capped at 20 anyway.
For NRD that does indeed use caster's level (not casting, i.e. not subject to the adjustment factor). The final die roll would thus be 72-100 for the situation shown above. I think that would give a 76% chance of the spell successfully casting (some of the table results allow the spell to cast even with an adjusted die roll of less than 100).
The 60% chance relates to the probability of an adjusted roll being 100 or less on the wild surge table, i.e. it's the same figure as the 29% quoted for NRD - you just don't get the caster level bonus.
The chance of a normal spell actually casting successfully in the above scenario would be about 97.5% - there's only a 5% chance of a surge to start with, and if there is a surge there's a 40% chance you'll get an adjusted roll of over 100 and some of the table results allow the spell to cast anyway.
@Grond0 Thanks but why Myrag says "60% from regular casts" ? Which means 20 from xxxx, 15 circlet, 25 imp chaos shield right?
There are two events when wild surge procs
#1 from NRD casting; chance of wild surge: 100% wild surges are then subject of a d100 roll minus (caster level which at max level is 31, circlet which is 15 and improved chaos shield 25), this totals into d100 - 71 means all rolls from 1 to 71 (or 72, we don't know if base is 0% or 1%) will land a successful cast at 71% chance so a 29% to get surge effect.
#2 from memorized spells, through regular casts chance for wild surge to happen from any memorized spells is 5% wild surges are then subject of a roll of d100 is made minus (circlet 15 and improved chaos shield 25 - as per wiki, caster level bonus is not included in random wild surge). This means you get d100 - 40 so a 40% for successful so a 60% chance to get surge effects.
of course those 29% (surge table from 72 to 100) and 60% (surge table from 61 to 100) surges are not always a fail but that's a subject of how many from the table are cosnidered positive effects
Comments
@Lord_Tansheron: Testing would need to find whether Stoneskin or Defensive Stance is a higher deterrent to enemies, but the data on a Dwarven Defender suggests that it would be an ideal choice for a solo LoB build, or part of a smaller party. If enemies prefer to attack Stoneskins rather than DS, however, a Dwarven Defender would not be a reliable tank in a party.
But with Item Revisions, or the Full Plate and Packing Steel mod, a party of Dwarven Defenders could all reach 90% resistance, negating that issue.
Mage in the docks was also very easy, times have changed as I've played this game many many many times I always had issues at this stage with that mage. My guess is that preparing for SCS mage chess I created decent anti-mage party capable of handling multiple SCS mages at the same time so a singular mage dies within a round or two.
I've checked list of Mae'var instacast prebuffs (he had spell truning and other buffs) which gave a me a green light to breach immediately after true sight removed his improved invisibility since spell turning only protects against 4 spell levels. After he got stripped of buffs it was seconds before he died, mages with no contigency die so quick.
Off to do minor quests then going to start Valygar questline.
The issue with tanking is making me reconsider my entire tank + ranged concept. The entire reason for it was avoiding damage on the rest of the party almost entirely, if you cannot do that because enemies ignore you the moment you go full defense then what is the point. Might as well run with more heavily protected melee classes and spread the damage around, minimizing it that way. The F/M tank idea died with the new (or rather: not outdated) Dispelling Screen, I think. It would probably just fold in ToB where dispels get lobbed at you every 2 seconds and practically always work because of LoB levels.
But I'll have to test more. Maybe DD is still the way to go. Even without Defensive Stance up it has decent damage reduction (at least 50% at lvl20+ with full plate and Fortress Shield), and it gets completely out of control if you DO manage to find a choke point. Considering that any door will probably do, it makes me wonder how many fights there are with enemies hitting hard enough to be dangerous but no viable joke point in sight. Also wondering how exactly the aggro scripting works as it seemed to me that not ALL enemies were breaking off to go for the main party, only some of them. Maybe this can be controlled somehow.
As it is, I think I'm not even memorizing Dispelling Screen. That's just way too weak outside of a few select encounters (mostly early game, like the city ambushes where you get one Dispel guaranteed, but likely no more than that).
You also nicely showcase the power of Banishment, which I find borderline cheese considering how often high-end summons are used in ToB (does it work properly now? I recall it just not doing anything a lot of the time during my outdated SR runs).
AAARGH I really want to test more
This is a huge, huge drawback of the class, since they have no reliable summons. Shambling Mound is great (I'll see if I can upload Yaga-Shura....that's one epic clusterf**k of a battle...Shambling was great there) if you can keep it online - but with Odamaron, his Apprentice, 2 pet vampire-mages and simularcums chances of gaining some use from summons in this battle are abysmal.
Dispel Screen isn't an epic spell, in any case. Even early on you can meet things such as Tanova that have a triple Dispel sequencer, against which Dispel Screen is utterly moot.
I remember when I fought Odamaron I mostly ignored the adds and focused him down asap, pumping spell dispels into him and then Inquisitor I-Win-Button. It wasn't amazingly hard, but of course any spell-heavy fight is as annoying as it gets, pretty much. That was with outdated SR, of course.
At first I did a run of BP on Core to refresh my memory about the the game and to have a higher level party as I was afraid LoB might turn out too hard for level 1s. I was quite wrong, after doing some quick check with assassin and rats in Candlekeep I quickly restarted and this time went with levels 1.
I have reach the safety of Friendly Arm Inn. First map was fully explored, on second I only dared to clear NW part and find the ring hidden in stone. Since I have bonus XP enabled, I am at 6k XP per char already. This allows me to kill things quite quickly, but for now I am also in danger of dying as quick as well (luckily it didn't happen yet, but I definitely need to restock potions). I would say the battle with rats was most important so far. Why? I learnt a valuable lesson - carry spare weapons until I can get some unbreakable ones. So now all my melee fighters look like a medieval version of Neo from lobby scene (now I want to see whole movie again XD) and carrying as many spares I could get my hands on.
Few things I've noticed, singular mages don't last longer than two rounds but 3+ Yuan Ti mages at the same time in the back room were tricky. Happily, my party is filled up to the teeth with mage spells so FMT/FM/Sorc loaded with breaches are very strong here. True sight into three breaches on three mages followed by insect swarm were enough to win me a fight but it took me a reload to realize that three mages in confined space require my three mage classes to throw spell protection removals. Four rounds of just debuffing is too long to give them.
Planar sphere started off very easy, first encounter crushed hard regardless of two yuan-ti mages, one handled with dagger throws by WS locked him quickly from spell casting second failed save from celestial fury. Seconds later I was clear. A lot of OP loot suddenly on the floor, elven chain +3 for AC2 and spell casting for bards is amazing because it's equivalent of level 3 spell ghost armor and a BARD HAT woo hoo, I think the most OP item SOD brought to the game, I could see this bring also great for blade also, cast song and 3 rounds of damage or defensive spin and spell casting.
Encounters were decently hard but I would say nothing I couldn't handle, two fights that were difficult were thrall master with 3 yuan-ti mages, 4 spell casters makes it hard even for such heavily buffed group. Again, fully buffed group, true sight and breach on everyone for the win. Warden was somehow more difficult, my second enemy that did cast timestop. He has a lot of APR and great range of spells making summons great soakers, he again was accompanied by 3 yuan-ti. He also had triple remove magic in contigency which is nasty!
One thing so far that I found boring about SCS is that it adds difficulty by giving more spells and more mages at encounters. Which is of course hard don't get me wrong but it requires your party to be specifically crafted for anti-magic disablers which favors mage multi/duals rather than cool classes like F/D, archers, clerics, etc. There is so many cool classes in the game that I simply wouldn't bring to ascension/scs/lob simply because getting 1 more mage for spell breaking is of much more value. Feels like the best party would consist of F/M multis with one skald or maybe 1 more sorc for pure spell casting OPness with vecna. I just wish SCS would favor some encounters more for melee brutes, example of this would be rasaad final encounter where I had to save for later since I was too low level and got overrun. Of course at some point where you can disable all enemy buffs then other spots are free to distribute, for instance I have FMT/FM/Sorc and bard so I can disable spell protections from 4 mages easily meaning I have two spots for DD/WS but could be an archer or other class.
Interestingly I started paying attention to some fights and noticed there are times where I pop defensive stance and enemies switch off from DD to F/M... which brings me a great deal of sadness... if this continues I will ditch DD for FMC or FM tank. FMC would bring some utility and PFE 10y which is nice long-lasting buff.
I guess I'm going to go to meet the shade lord now.
ps. I love being able to leave DD with 83% DR in middle of enemies when they give me a taste of massive spell removal chain contigencies. It's decent value provided and with FOA he drops slow on difficult enemies even if they have protections up!
Dragon was much harder than Shade Lord but because of my stupidity
I assume this fight takes 10 seconds with dual archer (or archer with simulacra) from stat draining but I don't like this tactic as it feels too easy.
Summons are decently good here for keeping her of ranged during wing buffets especially 90% magic immune skellies. My sorc is at 1,4mil xp so in 100k I will get level 7 spells and will be torn between project image and morde swords. Probably gonna grab morde as they are one of most OP spells in the game, LOB doesn't change much with them as they are nearly immortal, either die from death spell or don't. Never seen mage magic missile them anyway.
Shade lord was easier than expected, took him on first try without even maximum prebuffing. I was surprised that he has only spell turning and PFMW on himself so secret word into breach and he went down like a simple goblin. After he was down it was already 3 rounds so I had few of shades around, I quickly greater malison all of them info Sunray from daystar. This cleared entire room for me and It just took few rounds to finish summoning statue.
Easy peasy, dragon was nice challenge I wonder how mighty firkragg will be. My party struggled on this fight mostly because of level drain but then again firkragg has much better stats and powerful fire breaths. Hopefully by then I will have access to some better spells as my melee weapons are nearly as powerful as it gets before end of SOA.
What makes me wonder, are there any specific nice debuff (reducing power/disabling) spells that do work on dragons but are not ending fight like feeblemind? I can't check but slow from FOA seem to work but with their insane MR I had troubles to land anything else really. Even with greater malison and doom celestial fury proceed like once or twice. Yes I do know dragons are immune to stun, just saying 9APR beast landed it few times with save vs spell, that not good. What I'm basically getting at is, I wonder if I should focus on trying to debuff dragon or just breach into lower resistance spells into damage spells really. Nothing nearly comparable with what melee deals in that time. I guess this is why I have them and this is exactly why @Lord_Tansheron doesn't use pure spell casters, unless you get 8+ spells you need to be a buff bot nothing else, of course afterwards you are single man army.
My percentages didn’t change much
DD 14% down to 13%
FM 21% no change
FMT 36% up to 37% (staying strong with Day Star, lots of undead and evil lately)
Skald 0%
Sorc 5% no change
WS->Druid 22% no change
Even enemies like golems, which are probably the hardest physical hitters, you can basically AFK against with a proper setup. Enough protection on a tank, and no matter how big and strong they are, if all they do is smash with fists the fight isn't a big deal. I believe SCS makes a lot of enemies immune to stat drains, as my double Archer team chaining Called Shots never killed a boss enemy through stat drains from what I can remember.
Sorc is an option, but maximizing it usually takes so many things I personally refuse to use that I'm rarely taking one alone (e.g. PI, Wish resting, etc.). F/Ms are great, however they're fairly weak defensively once tons of dispels are involved, since you obviously won't be in full plate with shields on someone who needs to actually cast. I do like F/M and F/M/C for damage dealers, though.
Pondering the tanking problem a little more, I'm thinking that maybe the solution could be as simple as using TWO Dwarven Defenders to tank. That would cut the number of battles without viable choke points drastically, as two characters are able to block most reasonably narrow passages and there are very few fights in actual wide, open fields - and in those, kiting becomes a very real possibility. Still, it would be quite micro intensive.
My next test will probably involve something like this:
Dwarven Defender (Foebane)
Dwarven Defender (The Vampire's Revenge)
Inquisitor (Carsoymr)
Fighter/Mage/Cleric (Crom Faeyr)
Skald (Looking Pretty)
Archer (Gesen/Strong Arm/Taralash)
There's only 1 Fortress Shield, of course, for 100% immunity (20% level 20 + 20% full plate + 50% Defensive Stance + 10% shield) but 90% (or 93% if you have the SoD helmet) should be enough on the second. The Vampire's Revenge could possibly be swapped for Axe of the Unyielding later on (1hp/round may be enough sustain), but of course proficiency points should be plenty so you can swap a lot anyway.
Are all spells capped at level 20 in EE rendering -5/+5 caster level bonus useless after level 15/25 (depending on dice) also meaning wild surge cast at double the level being useless too? of course spells like dispel magic will still increase in power but what about others. I tested few like MMM or buffs and they were capped at 20.
I used it to do an insane solo poverty run of Throne of Bhaal with a ToB-created Wild Mage, killing Melissan with a bunch of Horrid Wilting spells. I went a little ways through SoA with an SoA-created Wild Mage, but got tired of spamming Skull Trap in every fight and getting paralyzed by surges when I was too low-level to cast Improved Chaos Shield.
Chain Contingency could also be cast via hotkey, and it even worked for druids and clerics.
Still there always are those funny moments when you get AOE 60 yards surge on single target spells; spell strike woo! I once got magic missile is heavily crowded fight and it looked amazing
Sadly other than cool visual effects on casts I'm going to stick to sorc, I just feel like long LOB fights sometimes cause natural 5% spell cast loose you a fight which are already decently tough without additonal random effect.
But personally, I feel that a Sorcerer is just Wild Mage done right, so if you do plan on making a pure caster that would be my choice.
I don't think there aren't any other quests that give worthwhile items that specifically work in favor of wild mage. You could argue wild magic zone would be too but this depends on how many spell casters do you have in the party.
ps. Chaos Sorcerer is a thing in D&D E3 I believe, basically wild mage enabled sorc, I also tested this in BGEE and assigning wild mage kit to sorc works perfectly so you get wild mage rolls/NRD/chaos shields (every mechanic) just from having a kit assigned post creation. So you could always play a dream combination.
But yeah, I am just not fond of Wild Mage competitively. It's fun, though. Sometimes whacky things are what you want, outside of powergaming. Wild Mage is great for that.
So it's 31 for NRD and 20 for other spells ?
Regular wild surges don't get a level bonus at all. Of course, regular spells are also only 5% to even be a wild surge, whereas NRD will always be one (in return, it can cast any spell you have, at any level).
Ok, so if I understand right, there're actually two kinds of levels we are talking about here:
1. casting level, which capped at 20, regular WS uses that, so max variety is from 60-100.
2. caster's level, which is 31, NRD uses that (or may use both, but takes the higher number and don't stack), so max variety is 71-100.
For NRD that does indeed use caster's level (not casting, i.e. not subject to the adjustment factor). The final die roll would thus be 72-100 for the situation shown above. I think that would give a 76% chance of the spell successfully casting (some of the table results allow the spell to cast even with an adjusted die roll of less than 100).
Thanks but why Myrag says "60% from regular casts" ?
Which means 20 from xxxx, 15 circlet, 25 imp chaos shield right?
The chance of a normal spell actually casting successfully in the above scenario would be about 97.5% - there's only a 5% chance of a surge to start with, and if there is a surge there's a 40% chance you'll get an adjusted roll of over 100 and some of the table results allow the spell to cast anyway.
#1 from NRD casting;
chance of wild surge: 100%
wild surges are then subject of a d100 roll minus (caster level which at max level is 31, circlet which is 15 and improved chaos shield 25), this totals into d100 - 71 means all rolls from 1 to 71 (or 72, we don't know if base is 0% or 1%) will land a successful cast at 71% chance
so a 29% to get surge effect.
#2 from memorized spells, through regular casts
chance for wild surge to happen from any memorized spells is 5%
wild surges are then subject of a roll of d100 is made minus (circlet 15 and improved chaos shield 25 - as per wiki, caster level bonus is not included in random wild surge).
This means you get d100 - 40 so a 40% for successful
so a 60% chance to get surge effects.
of course those 29% (surge table from 72 to 100) and 60% (surge table from 61 to 100) surges are not always a fail but that's a subject of how many from the table are cosnidered positive effects
OK thanks, that is clear.
I think I'm confused from your answer to my previous question, in which you mentioned "capped at 20"