Doing zero damage
joluv
Member Posts: 2,137
You guys may have noticed I that like unconventional playthroughs.
Right now I'm thinking about trying one where I do zero damage -- all kills will have to happen via death magic, stat drain, level drain, imprisonment, or petrification (et cetera?). I might start with SoA, because I can't think of a way to get past Mulahey in BG1.
The only methods I know for lowering stats without doing damage are Ray of Enfeeblement and Contagion. Anyone know anything I'm missing, or have other ideas? I expect success to depend heavily on enemies' (particularly bosses') immunities, and I'm not very knowledgeable about those.
Right now I'm thinking about trying one where I do zero damage -- all kills will have to happen via death magic, stat drain, level drain, imprisonment, or petrification (et cetera?). I might start with SoA, because I can't think of a way to get past Mulahey in BG1.
The only methods I know for lowering stats without doing damage are Ray of Enfeeblement and Contagion. Anyone know anything I'm missing, or have other ideas? I expect success to depend heavily on enemies' (particularly bosses') immunities, and I'm not very knowledgeable about those.
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First of all, stat drain, my personal favorite. An Archer at level 12 can use Called Shot to deal 1 STR damage per hit, for 12 seconds, stackable. But that STR drain itself only lasts 10 seconds, so you have to deal the enemy's total STR within 1.667 rounds. And Haer'dalis Chaos Blade, only usable by Haer'dalis and characters with UAI, drains 2 DEX per hit, and can be blocked by magic resistance. This DEX drain lasts 30 seconds, so you have more leeway in terms of APR.
If an enemy has 10 Stoneskins, the Chaos Blade can drain 20 DEX before causing damage. That should be enough for almost any enemy, but you're going to have problems with MR and Haer'dalis' lousy THAC0. Tenser's Transformation will help, but ideally, you'd have another character wielding it. A Fighter/Thief at epic levels can get 10 APR with the Chaos Blade. Instant death for any high-level mage, as long as you keep other characters from breaking through its Stoneskins, and as long as you don't get the DEX drain blocked by MR.
The Archer has an extra means of avoiding dealing damage: Fire Seeds. They ONLY deal fire damage, which means you can cast Protection from Fire on an enemy, it it's not already immune, and avoid dealing any damage, even as you drain its Strength.
Two problems: first, Fire Seeds have no proficiency, and therefore an Archer has terrible APR with Fire Seeds. You can bypass this problem with Greater Whirlwind Attack, though this will mean you can't stack two Called Shots in one round. With Vhailor's Helm and two rounds preparation, one for Called Shot and one for GWW, you can deal 20 STR damage in one round, or 22, if you throw a Fire Seed from the Archer and clone right before activating Greater Whirlwind Attack. That's just shy of the 25 STR maximum.
Second problem: at level 16, Archers deal an extra 2 missile damage when using Called Shot. This extra damage does not bypass Stoneskin, nor does it remove Stoneskins. But it does grant area-effect physical damage to Fire Seeds, which means they can remove, but not bypass, Stoneskins when trying to use Fire Seeds for STR drain.
So what do you do?
LEVEL DRAIN YOUR ARCHER. It won't take away their Called Shots or HLAs, but it will remove the extra damage from your Fire Seeds and allow you to drain STR while dealing no damage, as long as the target is immune to fire. Spell Protections can also block the fire damage, but not for long: the fire damage counts as a 6th level spell.
Enemies immune to missile damage can also be drained of their STR without dealing damage, even with conventional missiles.
Ray of Enfeeblement will dramatically lower the threshold for STR drain. But it allows a save, does not bypass MR, and hits as a level 2 spell, meaning many critters will either resist it or be completely immune.
You can also use Kachiko's Wakizashi, which drains WIS. But that grants a save vs. death. Only really useful against Firkraag and Saladrex, who have 3 WIS, and even then, it's hard to hit them and make them fail their saves.
Or, you could use INT drain, only available through Mind Flayer form. This also deals physical damage, so your target must have Stoneskins. The Mind Flayer attack counts as a +2 weapon, and will therefore not affect Melissan and some other enemies, like Iron Golems.
Adding more in another post.
There are probably mods featuring items which do 0d6 damage, but still have a projectile (to make a bow or crossbow work without arrows, it must have a projectile type assigned to it), and those might also work well with Archers. But I can't think of an example. Too bad the Short Bow of Gesen does 2 base physical damage. Otherwise it would be an excellent choice.
Many bosses are immune to level drain, but you can kill most anything else with it. There are very few weapons that do level drain: Gram the Sword of Grief, Blackrazor, the Black Blade of Disaster, and the Short Sword of Mask. Gram is TOB, Mask needs a TOB upgrade, Blackrazor is end-game SoA, and BBoD requires 9th-level mage spells. Finally, all of these deal damage, and therefore can't be used on enemies without Stoneskin. You can also summon vampires using Limited Wish: have a character with low Wisdom talk to the djinni, choose protection from undead, and it will spawn 8-hour vampire summons. They're hostile, but you can take control of them with a high-level evil cleric. Viconia can do this. But the vampires will also do physical damage, so we still have the Stoneskin problem.
Energy Drain bypasses MR and offers no save. But it only drains 2 levels, and requires a 9th-level spell slot. Probably not a realistic option.
Another level-based method is Deathblow and Greater Deathblow. Greater Deathblow can take down almost all normal enemies, but still requires a melee or ranged hit. Death Spell covers fewer critters, but deals no damage and is area-effect.
Other instant death effects--Imprisonment, Flesh to Stone, Disintegrate, and Finger of Death--will also work. Aside from spells, you can also get them from the Vorpal Sword, Ravager, Axe of the Unyielding, and Mace of Disruption, which still suffer the damage problem. But many bosses are immune to these effects.
More to the point, some bosses have to die through damage, or important scripts won't activate. I know Lavok is one, and I believe one or more of the Irenicus fights also require a damage-based death: he is immune to instant death effects, but not stat drain, but stat drain will prevent an ending dialogue. Various other enemies may have the same thing, and I hear this also applies to two of the Five in TOB.
But you could justify bypassing that. Kill them with stat drain, reload, CTRL-Y. That allows you to kill them without dealing damage, but avoid dealing with game-breaking errors.
Note that the Wand of Wonder has a 12% chance of petrifying the target. That offers no save, bypasses MR, and counts as a level 0 effect. But it also has a 12% chance of casting Fireball, and another 12% chance of casting Lightning Bolt. So you might deal damage instead of killing the target, unless everyone in the path of the Lightning Bolt, or in the range of the Fireball, is immune to the damage or has MGOI active.
I have absolutely no idea how you would complete BG1 with such a challenge. Instant death effects do exist in BG1, but I don't believe you can gain access to them. BGTutu with no level cap could work, though, although it would be miserably difficult or impossible to reach the right spells without dealing damage.
But BG2 is possible to complete without dealing damage, as long as you reload and use CTRL-Y on certain critters with death-related dialogs or scripts, after breaking the game with stat drain.
And I'm not sure about Tranzig, since he has no allies. Maybe drain his spells, charm some other people into following you to his room, attack them to make them hostile, and confuse them so they kill Tranzig for you. But that's a pretty tall order.
I notice that the Wand of Wonder also sometimes casts Stoneskin on the target, which is another positive effect in this context. Using that wand after protecting a target from fire and electricity might be a viable strategy sometimes.
My second conclusion is that for a single-player campaign, Sorcerer is the only option. This means giving up on Archer strength drain, but an Archer has no way to get past the Mephit Portals. Regarding NPCs, picking up Anomen to chunk undead with is a possibility. If I got as far as ToB, I might dual-class a certain human Fighter to Thief so that he can eventually do 10 APR with the Chaos Blade, which sounds like it could be a necessary (if not sufficient) tactic to complete the game.
But yeah, this sounds really freaking difficult. I'm psyched!
This might just be my personal preference speaking, but I'd strongly recommend adding an Archer to the group, if only to use GWW with Fire Seeds. Called Shot also lowers the target's save vs. spells (!) at level 8, which greatly empowers all of your spells. For mages, who have spell protections, Stoneskin, and low STR, the Archer can attack directly, draining STR through Stoneskin. For non-mages, who can be targeted with Protection from Fire, and therefore safely hit with Fire Seeds, you can soften them up for instant death spells like Finger of Death. An Archer is worth a -4 to -6 save penalty on your spells against the toughest enemies. And at level 12 and on, it has an instant death option against enemy mages. The +5 darts, as I've said elsewhere, bypass Improved Mantle, which vanilla mages love so much, and they can be made permanent by tossing them in an ammo belt. An Archer will boost your sorcerer's power and also offer an area-effect stat drain option that bypasses magic resistance, weapon immunities, and spell protections. It will also make a decent supplementary tank for other encounters, given its high HP pool (a human Archer with the right stats can wear Valygar's armor, by the way, and you always have Spirit Armor), and can also serve as a good scout from the beginning of BG2.
You can avoid the multiplayer pause thing by copying a multiplayer save and pasting it into the normal save folder in your BG2 directory. This will let you play custom NPCs without fussing with multiplayer's pause delays, if that's why you're using single player mode.
Keep us informed. I want to hear about this!
Regarding Fire Seeds, could I use the Gesen bow in the same way? Or does proficiency/Archer bonus damage get added on as physical damage?
Edit: Never mind, I forgot it also does 2 piercing damage... and you already said that. Oops.
Don't forget to keep the Death spell handy. Slays Trolls and Yuan-ti, except for the mages, plus a whole bunch of other stuff. I don't think we mentioned that spell. Wail of the Banshee is a more expensive area-effect option, and unlike Finger of Death, it doesn't deal damage on a successful save.
I assume you won't be bringing along anyone else, to make sure Anomen can get the levels to chunk undead.
How are you going to get Nalia up to level 12 for instant death spells, and your Archer to 12 for stat drain? Just go after golems and undead until you have enough XP? Nalia might get impatient and leave for the de'Arnise Hold before she gains 6th-level spells and can therefore take down the Trolls in her home. Have you considered Edwin?
Although your "they feel no pain" logic makes sense, I'm trying to do this without damaging golems or undead. Plan A is to get Anomen up to a level where he can chunk Shadows via non-combat experience, then hang out at the Temple Ruins.
Good thinking on the gate. I almost never remember to open it. I'd suggest cooking dinner for the Umber Hulks for some more XP, but that's another four critters you'd have to kill. And you can't pickpocket the meat off the dogs; I checked. I hear you can pickpocket blood from Adalon in vanilla BG2, or steal the head off of Adratha and Draconis; but DLTCEP says the dog meat can't be stolen.
Come to think of it, pickpocketing Adratha's and Draconis' head would be great ways to avoid a couple fights. I checked the files and neither head is tagged as unstealable.
Glaicas is optional, but he just gives you the flail head if you charm him.
I never knew you could charm Glaicas into giving you the flail head. Cool!
Charm seems to have a lot more uses than just turning enemies against each other. Recently I managed to get the Government District guards to kill Tolgerias by charming lots of people and moving them around. First I charmed Tolgerias, brought him outside by ordering him to attack me and walking out, and then had him target himself with Flame Arrow, turning him hostile. Then I just waited out all his spells, got some summons to soften him up, and lured him over to a non-hostile Amnish Soldier, who finished off Tolgerias without costing me a single point of Reputation.
But it took ages to kill Tolgerias, and even longer to move all the now-hostile people on the map over to a secluded corner. It's probably a better idea just to pickpocket the ring.
Do you know about Arkanis Gath and killing Renal Bloodscalp for his Boots of Speed? As an Archer, with allies who can cast Death Ward and Improved Haste, you should be able to take down Arkanis Gath, and get away with killing Renal Bloodscalp.
It got boring fast. Imoen found me, but I couldn't find Gorion.
I'd cheat in the seeds once you can get them. Faster than casting the spell.