@Enuhal : sad news indeed. I've a strong feeling of deja-vu this time - an unexpected/unexplained (at first) behaviour, a frustration, reluctance if you wish to continue after you've already got accustomed with the team and lost one of them... Alesia is right explaining how it was last time - Corey joined at the same XP level as the rest of the party and it was just because we wanted a full team back then (I don't like to run a reduced teams in general). It's your choice of course in the end. Maybe it's Avatar's runs carma - if you want to succeed you need to sacrifice something...
I think I will definitely need the 5th party member if the run is to make it further into the game - btw, how do you add a new player character into an ongoing game?
@jmerry All right, thanks! The halfling fighter/thief definitely sounds like something I could work with - To create the character, I'd only need infos on gender, alignment, attribute spread and starting abilites (though these are not that important with the levels we are currently at) - or you could just send me a zipped .chr file of the character as you imagine them (at level 1).
@Enuhal : I don't know if it suitable for EE but in vanilla it's something like that:
Copy your latest save game back to mpsave folder > Start MP game > Connect > Create game > Load game > Create Character > Import from Chr File > Start Session > Save and copy back to single save folder > Done.
Btw, I'm really enjoying your runs. They remind me of how I used to play before my break. Sorhsa has been wonderful so far. You have an excellent command of the class. Keep it up!
Thank you, I'm truly humbled to hear that (coming from someone who's consistently been my biggest no-reload inspiration over the years).
Just a note on Sorsha's game: Things might have been a bit slow lately, in particular in terms of my pending write-ups, but for the time being I can confirm that we've made it to Amn in one piece. My plan is now to use my spare time over the next week or so to try and make further progress with SoA ahead of my trip to Iceland - assuming from previous experience that the weather is not going to be stellar at all times (for hikes and so), I'm planning to catch up with the posting from there (though I'll not be playing).
@Enuhal Sorry to hear about Grond0 the barbarian! Just so you know that it wasn't all for naught, I'm definitely going to bookmark SCS fell cats in my memory (in case I ever make it to ToB). I hope you'll find a fitting replacement soon - I don't really have any suitable character up my sleeve, so I'm not sure I could be of much help, though I understand that @jmerry is already on the case. Looking forward to see you back in action!
Using the "no difficulty-based bonus damage" option turns off the level 1 protection.
Interesting. I didn't know that (obviously). The mechanic always struck me as odd given how uncompromising the game tends to be towards new players otherwise so I actually remembered it after years of absence.
Concerning wolves: I knew they hit hard and have a surprising amount of HP, making them formidable opponents in melee, but I underestimated their reach and weapon speed and therfore felt no need to equip a melee weapon. I don't even know if that specific wolf was affected by my song when it killed me since a save is allowed. Still, I'll look into this later as I don't want to deal with the additional challenge of a messed up setup and my song having somewhat... unpredictable effects. Though the the idea of a song randomly buffing or debuffing sounds hilarious and somewhat thematic for a chaotic jester.
@Alesia_BH & @Grond0 Thank you for your kind words. The portrait is what inspired me to play a jester in the first place, though he looks somewhat deranged and closer to chaotic evil to me. But I was afraid of an evil/low reputation run as I have vague memories of hard to avoid reputation traps added by SCS as well as considerably buffed Flaming Fist soldiers.
@Alesia_BH The portrait is what inspired me to play a jester in the first place
Very cool! And I identify: I did the exact same thing years ago. I rolled a jester inspired by this portrait:
Her name was Alisa. She completed the challenge in a SCS-Ascension install about 10 years ago. She continues to be one of my favorite characters, second only to my bounty hunter, Alesia. I hope you and Cedric will develop a similar bond!
Mods: SCS 34.3, Ascension, G3 Fixpack- FreeAction Protects Against Stun
Difficulty: Hardcore (All tactical components, most nerfs, no Icewind Dale spells)
Gaming Notes: Ayla's run was pleasant and did fulfill its purpose of helping me refamiliarize myself with the game. That said, from a gameplay perspective it wasn't entirely satisfying. Ayla used aggressive rogue tactics that weren't suited to the modest difficult setting she was playing on. Far too many gameplay questions were answered by the simple move of opening combat with a backstab on the mage. Ayla also made heavy use of item recharge in BG1 and in BG2, via the Staff of Striking. Item recharge has always felt questionable to me at best. With Amelie I hope to leverage what I recently learned with Ayla while redressing some of the aspects of Ayla's run that I found less than satisfying. Amara will not be allowed to attack neutral enemies, with rare exceptions. She will instead be expected to initiate dialogue and allow her opponents buffs to fire. Additionally, Amara will not be recharging items, although I may relax this restriction in ToB.
This will be my first run with a swashbuckler, although I did roll and then abandon one a couple years before my break. I've long been curious about single class swashbucklers, although I loathe -loathe- the idea of playing a thief that can't backstab, lol. We'll see how it goes
Character Description: As many of you know, I often compose a description for my characters. Amara has insisted on writing that description herself. I'm not surprised. She's irrepressible. And so here she is, in her own world. Please forgive her flair for the dramatic. It's who she is.
“Fantasy has a way of becoming reality. How many times have you seen in your mind’s eye a path you would soon walk? Do the fates touch our visions, hinting at our destiny? Or do we the dreamers turn our imaginings to truth, guided by a hunger to be?
It’s a good question. But alas: I have no answers. I am a wit, not a philosopher; a woman of action, not of knowledge. And even if I did have an answer, what would it matter? Answers are final. They disappoint. It’s the game of asking that intrigues.
And so I ask of you this: Can you imagine a halfling whose dreams aren’t bound by home? Can you imagine a halfling bold and free, daring and vibrant? Can you imagine a halfling making her mark on the Sword Coast- not as a footnote or a sidekick but as a legend in her own right, a hero true? If so -if you can imagine these things- then you, my friends, can imagine me. I, Amara Lightfoot, am the reality to your visions. I will not disappoint.”
Amara Lightfoot, DR 1368
Personal Item: Swish-Swash
The library fortress of Candlekeep never suited Amara, but her imagination took flight within its stacks. Amara spent her youth devouring tales of adventure and often re-enacted scenes, standing atop her bed, watching herself in her mirror. Amara’s buckler, Swish-Swash, was a key prop, wielded alongside a wooden sword, fancifully dubbed Rascal.
Rascal is by now long lost, a plaything of youth. But Swish-Swash, a modest but viable tool of combat, remains with Amara. In anyone else’s hands, Swish-Swash would function like a normal buckler. Amara, however, derives confidence and aplomb from the comfort of her childhood companion, aiding her in all her endeavors. Amara also has a preternatural sense of Swish-Swash's dimensions and balance, stemming from all those years of childhood play. For her and her alone, it functions more like a small shield than a buckler.
@Alesia_BH : Great! I'm looking forward for Amelie's run. More so with her new 'restrictions', which are mostly close to my own.
Safe travels!
Thanks, Serg!
As I mentioned in Ayla's Davaeorn post, I've long been conflicted about the blue circle issue in the case of thieves. The game world expects you to initiate dialogue before attacking. Subverting that expectation unbalances the scales, especially with SCS installed. At the same time, it's implausible that, say, an assassin or bounty hunter would roll up to a mage and introduce herself. There's a conflict there and it's not clear how to resolve it. Enter Amelie the Swashbuckler. As a swashbuckler it makes perfect sense for Amelie to announce herself. Swashbucklers are bold and debonair, showy and charmingly arrogant, daring and prone to risk. With a swashbuckler the conflict evaporates since the natural combat style or a swashbuckler accords with the expectations of the game world. That's precisely why I gave her the swashie kit.
Amelie will have a tough road in BG and early SoA. A low level swashbuckler is just a thief that can't backstab. Yuck, lol. That inherent weakness, intersected with the restrictions, will make the early game much more challenging. If she survives to mid-late SoA, though, I expect that Amelie will come in to her own. We'll see how it goes!
@Enuhal@Serg_BlackStrider I believe in the last Avatar set of runs 10 years ago Serg use EE Keeer or equivalent to set my character to the average experience of the party. I don't see a problem with that or whatever character you add to the party.
Quick Note: Shortly after introducing my new character I decide that her portrait, name and stats were all wrong for her kit, swashbuckler. I decided to re-vamp her.
Instead of submitting a new entry post, I edited the first one. Amelie is now Amara, and she's better for it. I'm a lot more excited about this character. She has a character description and a personal item, like my characters of old.
Good luck to all the new characters and thanks for your kind words and help everyone. We're back on the road!
The Avatars (Enuhal's version) - Update XXIX
After the devastating loss of Grond0, the party made their way back to meet up with Nyalee at the ancient Temple of Bhaal - there, Corey's sharp eyes were surprised to spot a lonely, but heavily armed halfling, having set up a small campside hidden in the dark ruins. The inquisitor used his divine abilities conclude that she was of a noble disposition, and the party approached. They learned that she had succeeded in sneaking out of the besieged Saradush, determined to pay back Yaga-Shura and the other Bhaalspawn ravaging the countryside for all the harm they had caused. With one man down and no one else to turn to, Enuhal offered the unassuming woman a place amonst his comrades, telling her about his plans to take down the fire giant leader once and for all. She introduced herself as Jmerry:
Well, we're back to five again. The loss of Grond0 will certainly hurt the party, though - the way I set up the other characters was kind of centered around the barbarian with his supreme physical damage resistance and hit points - also, equipment and weapon choices, what we bought and what we already sold - all these things were, of course, done with Grond0 in mind. I used the console to get Jmerry to the same experience as the remaining party, which got her the two profiency points in flails to make use of Grond0's old FoA +4. In terms of HLAs, I gave her UIA and a timetrap, followed by a few hardinesses and critical strikes, and the same two greater deathblows I had given to Grond0.
Nyalee fell quickly - the traps Alesia had prepared killed one of her shambling mounds and took her to near death, allowing for Corey to finish the job with a single hit:
Cleanup was no trouble after that - we travelled to the Siege Camp, returned to the pocket plane, rested and buffed up. No short-duration buffs yet, because it always takes a while for Yaga-Shura to re-appear. After quickly hitting the giant once, we had to contend with a bunch of his allies, including his wizards, who predictably were able to dispel some of our fighter's buffs. I usually took them out with inquisitor dispel, and eventually made sure to re-buff fire resistance at least. We made our way slowly towards the bottom left corner of the screen as Yaga-Shura finally returned to our north:
Crucially, the party quickly ran further into the bottom left corner, leaving a deva in place to keep the various soldiers busy. Yaga-Shura himself seemingly hadn't spotted us yet - indeed, we were able to hide for two rounds at least, allowing us to cast a few crucial buffs (such as entropy shields) and finish with mass invisibility. The giant and his lieutenants were stumped - none of them even casting true sight:
Well, all the better. This allowed me to get both Alesia and Jmerry into position for an opening backstab - I chose the thief and the wizard as my targets:
My goal for Yaga-Shura was to keep him blinded - opening up with the power word, following up with Nature's beauty for the remaining group of soldiers:
Jmerry started using greater deathblow to deal with all the minor foes here as Corey GWW'd the lieutenant fighter - as we took down the cleric, the blinded Yaga-Shura fled further up north:
Our main trouble here was that, even blinded, Yaga-Shura still could deal a ton of damage to anyone daring to get close, as Jmerry was soon to find out - new groups of soldiers and giants approached, Enuhal used his second nature's beauty to deal with them:
With Jmerry being quite vulnerable, Corey used one GWW after the other to deal at least some damage to the giant. Things started to look not too great when two more mages appeared, but Grim Face was able to deal with them by throwing down flaming clouds, which they weren't protected against:
Finally, Corey and Jmerry were able to deal the last bit of required damage:
A tough battle despite our great opening position. This might not bode well. In any case, we decided to quickly add on the second pocket plane challenge to this session, with Alesia sneaking in hasted to place some spike traps for Semaj, turning this into a rather trivial encounter:
With the level up here, Corey got the required proficiency points to change his weapon setup. Let's see what he can do with Foebane + Kundane.
I let our new recruit, Jmerry, have some fun at the oasis, taking out key spellcasters with a bit of invisibility potion backstabbing:
In Amkethran, we did a bunch of sidequests and got our hands on the Cloak of Mirroring by shamelessly killing Vongoethe via traps:
I thought about our next target - 3 possibilities: Abazigal's Lair, Sendai's Enclave and Watcher's Keep III-VI. Abazigal's Lair was right out - arguably the most dangerous place of these, with the lizardmen shaman group and the quadruple dragon ambush plus the Abazigal battle itself being amongst the most dangerous pre-Throne encounters. Watcher's Keep seemed mostly doable, but the no-magic zones are always scary, as is the glabrezu room, the demon wraith, the dragons and the demi-lich. Sendai's Enclave, in the end, seemed like the most reasonable choice to me, because I've always done well there in the past, and, unlike in the other zones, never lost a run there.
Outside, we placed some traps near the woodcutter before going after the hive mother at the first ambush site, with only Jmerry losing her buffs:
Inquisitor dispels were used for the wizard at the second ambush site, the one near the woodcutter died to traps. We entered and fought our way through the entrance area before obtaining the key to the tunnels with the help of another double backstab - taking out the wizard and cleric in the room at the same time:
Invisibility 10' radius for the slave tunnel to get to their overseer immediately:
We also cleared out the spider tunnels for extra experience:
We fought our way towards Odamaron without any trouble, rested and returned fully buffed to fight the lich. Our wizards finally got access to 9th level spells now, so timestop is an option. However, the first thing we did was notice a gaping hole in the defenses of Odamaron - despite his impressive list of pre-buffs which included a spell trap, protections against any type of magical damage and the like, he had no SI:A, so as Alesia got busy disarming the two traps leading to his platform, Corey dispelled him, while Grim Face and Jmerry, targets of a triple remove magic spell trigger, ran away to the side of the room:
We were able to take out our main enemy right away thanks to the successful dispel:
The other lich got busy dispelling Corey, but Grim Face took the opportunity of the vampire apprentice being nearby to cast his first timestop and turn undead for an instant kill (the vampire is a level 16/16 multiclass):
The timestop also aided in running out the unnamed liches PFMW:
We had prepared a bunch of traps for the drow party that spawns in after killing Odamaron, so they were already dead when we arrived. Ogremoch was our next target - we aimed to get him to attack Grim Face, using divine protection, before the others went in to breach and kill him with fighter HLAs:
Finally, we summoned a planetar + elemental prince and planted some time&spike traps for Diaytha. Jmerry is obviously capable of doing quite a bit of damage during a timetrap:
As we charged the hive mother, she quickly got vorpaled by the planetar:
We rested before Enuhal took on Captain Egeissag - while energy blades by themselves weren't enough, the addition of an elemental prince and lion statue certainly did the job:
We buffed up for the mind flayer ambushes - easy enough by now, we have faced much bigger numbers of mind flayers before. Inquisitor dispel for the enslaved mages was certainly helpful, we only needed to make sure that Jmerry wouldn't die from the enslaved fighter's GWWs:
Finally, we rested again before buffing up for Sendai. Nothing too special here. I opened combat by summoning in a planetar, taking out the cleric while noticing a lack of SI:A on the first wizard Sendai, allowing for a quick inquisitor dispel and interrupt on the timestop:
That is certainly helpful! Adding in an elemental prince helped with our speed of taking down incoming drow, and when the second wizard Sendai got activated, she lacked SI:A as well and was quickly dispelled and killed:
The remaining Sendai's aren't really threatening, especially with true sight going. We made sure to activate SI:A on Alesia before the final Sendai appeared. She did actually have all the pre-buffs one might imagine for a high-level mage/cleric, so I had to dispel her slowly - going for my secret word sequencers and pierce magic spell triggers - this gave Sendai the time to timestop after having dispelled Corey (though not Jmerry, who must've been out of range - a lucky happenstance, as I didn't pay attention to their positioning). Her timestop was surprisingly weak, despite going for improved alacrity right away - greater malison, unholy word, that's it? I assume she must've had the FoA slow active due to an incoming hit before her pre-buffs fired up. Well, spell pierce for her final spell protection and breach allowed us to quickly start dealing damage:
A second later, the battle was over:
We also quickly completed the next pocket plane challenge:
Two things to do before closing the session: a) learning 9th level spells at Amkethran, now that we can actually cast them and have the gold for all the scrolls, and b) moving to Watcher's Keep to save and quit. Well... I'm not sure how that one will turn out next time, because our Watcher's Keep is bugged. I assume this is due to the "make Watcher's Keep accessible between SoA and ToB component", which I've used before - I really had no reason to install this, but also no reason not to, because unlike what SCS claims, it doesn't shut off access to WK in SoA. However, when I returned here, the inside of WKIII was unexplored, despite having been there in SoA - I only had entered Yakmann's room before, acquiring the scepter, the bard's gloves and healing the elf before leaving. However, all these items are now here again:
Of course, I'm not picking them up, but I hope this bug (which I haven't experienced in previous playthroughs despite a similiar WK timing) won't negatively effect the fortress any further.
@Enuhal I've not come across that bug before, but have had one where ankheg shells taken from the cave floor were there when I returned. I could have become VERY wealthy. However that is not the way to play bugged games.
In my Freda game Alora was killed by a trap in Durlag's that I thought that she had dealt with. She was 200exp points away from levelling up to level 7.
We are now leaving Durlag's not to return until after Candlekeep as the things that I really wanted to do are finished. There is some decent armour down there, but it's not THAT great.
Alora was raised, items identified, Dynaheir freed..
We already have the wand of monster summoning from Duralgs so no need to go back for that.
Here we are in BG2! Moth Sibula has gotten through BG1 and SoD pretty cleanly, but all the items we've been hoarding are now gone. We need to be extra careful until we have some good rescue options.
I don't know if you're supposed to be able to rest more than once in Chateau Irenicus in SCS these days, but I still try to complete the dungeon with only one rest. That's a bit tricky since my install includes the ability to customize NPCs, which means Imoen and Jaheira start out the game with zero memorized spells--and Imoen has no spells in her spellbook at all.
To make the most of our first rest, I try to fight through the duergar until the party really needs a full heal. Moth Sibula's crummy thief AC means we approach the brink pretty easy.
Moth Sibula has 19 Strength, but it takes more than a high bonus to hit and damage to be a fighter.
Chateau Irenicus is messy and takes a lot of potions, but once we finally rest, we have a Chaotic Commands spell to cover Minsc, which means the Radiant Mephit can't wreck us. Jaheira's nymph summons also helps us clear the remaining duergar safely.
Once we're out, I spend a LOT of time thinking about whether to tackle the circus. I lost a run to an Icelance by Kalah in the past, and now I view him as a much greater threat than I used to. Remove Magic and disablers are super scary and we have few tools to defend ourselves.
To make sure we have a shot if things go awry, we burn a chunk of our gold supply to purchase the Ring of Energy, which is powerful in BG2 even if it's not as gamebreaking as it is in BG1. When we face down Kalah, I have Moth Sibula activate rage to make sure our ringbearer is always active. But thanks to heavy buffs, a fast approach, and Moth Sibula's 100% Detect Illusions skill, we cut through Kalah's defenses all the same.
Detect Illusions is one of my staples, a tool I try to have in every party. True Seeing is more convenient, but Detect Illusions cost no spell slots and is available very early.
We have Aerie in hand, which means we have the spellpower to keep Moth Sibula and the party a lot safer in BG2's dicey early game. I'm not yet decided on our party makeup, but Aerie is just a brilliant toolkit character and she has no troublesome mandatory personal quests like some other NPC's.
The next goal is improving our reputation to save money long-term. That means tackling the slaver stockade. We've got the tools to handle the enemy spellcasters around here, but without plate armor or midgame-grade stats, we struggle to compete in combat.
We burn a LOT more potions here than I like, and ultimately I have to bring Moth Sibula of all people over to tank Captain Haegan, taking Minsc's place.
It takes time to kill the westernmost archer, which means Yoshimo's vicious Special Snares don't come online until late in this fight. Yoshimo can fire them off at range, but not if we've got a red circle within his field of vision. But once Yoshimo is up to bat...
...he really messes up these humanoid enemies that make up a lot of early SoA. He even manages to paralyze one of the mages in the slaver stockade after Moth Sibula kills the other with a backstab!
With the mages down, the rest of the quest isn't too spooky. We backstab the Beastmaster several times in a row, since for some reason he doesn't turn hostile when Moth Sibula hides the instant she lands the hit. It's a little cheesy, but also kinda cute and unexpected that it was possible.
Suna Seni gets really chaotic. We Slow most of their party, but the wizard makes its save, responds with a Slow of its own, and we struggle to bring down any of the enemies. We don't have the APR to cut through the wizard's defenses (not when our fighters are slowed!), but our buffs hold out just long enough to clear the field a little. The Ring of Energy ends the fight before it can get any scarier.
Yoshi would have made that fight a lot simpler if he had been able to use his traps, but the enemies chased after him, and it took time for him to find space to throw a trap.
We want Belm for Jaheira, but we don't want to mess with trolls given our lack of anti-troll gear. We do have the Efreeti Bottle, courtesy of Aerie's Protection from Petrification spells and Haste, but I am terrified of Spirit Trolls and don't want to tank without better AC. So, we sneak through the druid grove with invisibility, again courtesy of our friend Aerie, whose Sanctuary also lets her loot the troll mound safely. We still want to kill Dalok, so I approach him with our thieves, both under stealth.
Or so I thought. Yoshimo was hidden. Moth Sibula was not.
This could be really bad, but Moth Sibula uses Trickery to escape, letting us reset the situation. Yoshimo's Special Snare paralyzes one of the enemies, the Efreeti adds a little damage with Fireball, and then Moth Sibula deploys Shatter Spell to debuff Dalok!
The rest of the fight is a bitter grind due to some wandering grizzly bears joining the fray, but we scrape by.
Shatter Spell is a Breach effect on hit. You get 12 seconds to land a hit, and the first hit debuffs the target as well as imposing spell failure on a failed save. The spell failure is irrelevant in my eyes--too unreliable to count on--but testing finds that only Spell Shield can block Shatter Spell. SI: Abjuration, spell turning/deflection/trap, and Entropy Shield all appear to be unable to stop a Shatter Spell hit.
You do need to land a hit for Shatter Spell to do anything, so PFMW and good AC can both thwart it. But Moth Sibula can guarantee a critical hit using Trickery, and eventually we will have four methods of getting past weapon immunities: +5 darts from the Cloak of Stars for Improved Mantle, nonmagical darts for PFMW, a nonmagical short sword to get past Pro Normal Missiles, and best of all, Fire Seeds.
I discovered the power of Fire Seeds a few years ago and came to view them as devastating in the narrow situations where they're useful at all. Their projectile is area-effect, which means you only need to land a hit against a nearby target in order to debuff an otherwise-invincible mage. Shatter Spell should be able to break the difficulty of a lot of tough fights in BG2.
Assuming we execute it well.
We have Cernd fight Faldorn, get a chunk of XP and gold and reputation, and head back to Athkatla for chores. A backstab and a snare kill Rayic Gethras, more traps kill Mae'Var, and we get another big chunk of XP and gold from Renal Bloodscalp.
Now we need to start thinking about party composition. Yoshimo is dead weight now that Moth Sibula has some decent utility skills (and most locks and traps in Athkatla are already gone by now), and I have to figure out who to replace him with. I'm a little tired of Mazzy and Keldorn, two of my common picks in the past, but I still want somebody who's a safe pick.
That means Korgan. Rage immunities and a decent suit of armor will let Korgan soak up a lot of pressure and keep the party safe. All we need to is to get through his personal quest, which requires walking past multiple creatures that can drain levels--very scary stuff.
Then I remember that the wight and vampyre can't see through invisibility. We only need to slay a single undead enemy.
We do have to fight Korgan's old buddies, but they're humanoid critters with minimal spellpower and we get to approach them on our own terms, so some disablers are enough to break the fight and earn us the loyalty of one of the best tanks in the saga.
It's high time we got Jaheira a suit of full plate. Let's tackle Mencar Pennypincher and the gang!
Korgan unfortunately triggers the fight the moment dialog starts, but we're still in good condition to handle the fight, despite the mediocre start. Aerie hits Smelly Porkslicer with Remove Curse, disarming him, and we move in our fighters to pin down Brennan Risling before he can escape his Sandthief Ring.
Poor positioning gets Moth Sibula a lot of damage from Mencar, but when she runs away, she fortunately gets away from a Remove Magic that debuffs Minsc and Korgan. Aerie has SI: Abjuration active and Korgan has rage, so we are still safe for now.
To make sure it stays that way, we need to finish off Amon and Pooky. Moth Sibula removes their Mirror Images with Detect Illusions, then uses Trickery to get a guaranteed critical hit against Pooky with some +1 arrows. We close in with our fighters and seal the deal.
I'm undecided on who else to bring into the party, but while I figure that out, we're heading to the Umar Hills. We want 20 reputation, and the Shade Lord is standing in the way.
By the way: while we killed Prebek and Sanasha, we haven't finished Xzar's quest. This is because apparently Jaheira's lengthy Harper Hold questline, and the scary ambushes that it can entail, only trigger after giving Xzar the bird.
I don't want to see Reviane and her goons popping up on us after an area transition and pouncing on us while we're unbuffed, and I want to be able to boot Jaheira from the party without it being permanent, so we're forgoing the extra loot and XP from that questline for the sake of convenience and safety.
The Legend of Amara, Swashbuckler of the Sword Coast: Early Adventures, Part 1 (Or A Coin on its Edge)
I’d like to begin by apologizing for the grandiose title. Amara insisted. I guess I’m going to have to get used to that. She’s taken an interest in happenings in our world. None of my characters have done that before. I’m not sure what to make of it.
Amara doesn't entirely understand the connection between her and I. How could she? She lives in Faerun. She doesn't even know what a computer is, let alone a computer game or an online forum. What she does understand is that I live in a different world, and yet somehow influence her fate in hers. She also gets that I'm kind of like her biographer in this world, our world- that I'm recording her adventurers for others to read. Now, that’s not unusual- all of my characters have gotten that, to some extent. What’s unique about Amara is that she seems to care about her legacy here, in our world, almost as much as her fate in hers. Strange. And so for this run, I guess I have a writing assistant? Or an editor? Or a taskmaster? I’m not sure which, to be honest. I guess we’ll just have to see. In any case, she'll make requests from time to time, and I think it best that I oblige her. She is the hero, after all.
So: back to the title. I usually title my posts with my character's name, race and class, ex - Ayla, Halfling Thief: Part 1. You get the idea.
Well, Amara didn’t like that. Amara said her race is irrelevant- that she should be defined by her actions, not her origins. Fair point. She also said my usual style lacks pizzazz, panache- je ne sais quoi. That hit close to home. I’ve been doing this for years, and I like to think of myself as a stylish player. I’ll admit she has a point, though. And so we’ll do it her way. It’s for the best.
Right then: Let’s get to the action, shall we? Oh! But first: Actually, one more request from Amara. She wanted me to share a passage from The History of the Fateful Coin. She's an avid reader, and apparently it conveys how she felt in those early days. Here it is:
For some rare beings, the coin lands edge on, and these luckless few can forge their own fates, for they have more freedom over their destinies than the powers themselves.
I may be over analyzing, but I think that Amara’s way of dealing with how vulnerable she was in those early days- an attempt to find power in powerlessness. After all, she was very small and the world seemed big. A coin on its edge, unsure how she’d land.
Ok! To the adventure! And this time I mean it!
The road from Candlekeep heads in only one direction: east. And so Amara went. East to the Coast Way, then north to the Friendly Arm Inn. She found a diamond, a ring and then another ring along the way. Fortunate was with her. Or was it fate?
Her finds made her rich. Potions proffered from fellow adventurers gave her a workable kit. Two days from Candlekeep and things were looking up. The coin leans true.
South to Beregost, where Marl and Firebead brought level 2. Thief points went to move silently and find traps.
Amara’s next stop was High Hedge: wand of sleep, potion of mirror eyes, protection from undead and fire darts.
The wand of sleep would see immediate use in the grounds south of High Hedge. One wand of sleep charge, twelve darts: one wolf killed, one chicken saved.
Amara hoped rescuing Melicamp would get her to level 3. Alas, her luck had run out.
Intelligence, then. Like fighting slow footed ogrillions with darts…
Racing away from fleet footed xvarts with fast blades…
Finally, a proper score: a speed factor zero dagger, and a tomb ripe for exploration.
Tombs can be dangerous. But Amara came prepared: protection from undead and fire darts won the day. Amara reached level three.
Level four followed soon after. Suddenly the world didn’t seem so big, or at least Amara didn’t feel so small. Thief points went to set traps and move silently, once again. Her proficiency point went to short bows.
Amara was feeling better about herself. And yet she was still at risk, oh so at risk. A bandit ambush proved that. Sometimes you can’t run away quick enough.
Licking her wounds, Amara spoiled herself with a royal room at the Feldepost. She then planned her next move. She needed a shield amulet, a necklace of missiles and a magical bow. More importantly, she needed more experience and a better reputation. She started small, talking to Oublek and recovering Joia’s flamedance ring.
Next, the belt ogre and his much desired girdle of piercing.
Caldo and Krum followed. They went quietly, thanks to Amara’s wand of sleep
Onto Drienne. With Amara’s reputation at fifteen, Drienne gifted Amara a protection from undead scroll, a timely replacement for the one just spent.
Now at level five, Amara was ready for her first big adventure: A basilisk hunt. With a protection from petrification scroll, and her new friend Korax, Amara was unstoppable.
Amara appreciates a helping hand, especially when its paralytic. Good dog, Korax! Good dog!
Mutamin was defeated, Tamah was freed; Amara reached level six. The coin, it seems, has landed. Amara is heads up.
Beggar's Opera {58} - poverty run (1st and final update)
After a brief hiatus playing a solo monk, I loaded this up again. A promising start ended when I used a group attack on a sleeping wolf, close to another wolf that was blinded. Usually I wait until Hardup dances up a spirit to kill enemies beaten unconscious, but this time I was impatient and finished it off with a magic missile. I didn't then react quickly enough when Pauper auto-changed targets to the nearby blinded wolf and its fast attack speed allowed it to get an attack in.
The next one ended in a hobgoblin ambush when coming back from the basilisk area and another to a movement error allowing one of the High Hedge golems to attack. I was taking them on at level 1, which made things more complex, but the idea was to ensure that I was up to 10k XP each before dealing with the basilisk area - allowing invisible travel and avoiding the possibility of a hobgoblin archer ambush.
Trying again, I successfully got up to the 10k XP mark prior to going to the basilisks. That felt like pretty good play, but had an unfortunate end when the Opera rested up after finishing off the wolf pack in the Beregost Temple area. The rest was successful, but a hobgoblin group must have respawned nearby, as one of them suddenly appeared and shot Aspire - I noticed it coming just too late to do an area transition.
Another go and I once more got up to 10k XP. This time I finished off the basilisk area and had nearly dealt with the ghasts at Durlag's Tower, but suffered from another oddity there. Skint had already cast two lots of magic missiles on a ghast blocked in a doorway. Neither she not the ghast appeared to have moved at all, but a 3rd cast saw her moving towards the ghast rather than casting the spell - presumably having somehow lost her line of sight. If that had happened with the first cast I would have been ready for it and retreated before she got within reach, but the movement this time caught me by surpise and the delay was just long enough for the ghast to get an attack in.
I still don't feel I've met my expectations for these no-damage runs, but I think I've had enough of them for now. I will though have one more attempt with this party, using my standard no-reload rules, to see if I can give them a decent run ...
Dynaheir was freed and is well equipped. Whilst there we also rescued Aaron and gave him his ring. He was distraught upon discovering the death of his fiancee.
Alora bought Shadow Armour after selling surplus equipment. Wands still need recharging.
We went down the mines and killed Mulahey and returned to the carnival where we rested.
On this occasion Dynaheir's web was enough to render the Duerger Clerics harmless though Tenya had silence memorised in case it was needed. It wasn't. Dynaheir still level 5, the others level 7.
@Alesia_BH Looking forward to the new run. @semiticgoddess Good progress in SoA. I love the aggressive "remove curse" to disarm the guy with the cursed berserking sword. Didn't know that would work.
Well... We're not done with Watcher's Keep yet, but we sadly need another replacement. As we cleared the mind flayer compound on level 4, approaching the final room of about 12 ulitharids/mind flayers, upon entering, every single one of these foes decided to use their ballistic attack, all targeting Jmerry - resulting in her immediate death and chunking due to extensive crushing damage:
In hindsight, I should've entered with hardiness active, but I just didn't expect the sheer amount of concentrated fire on one character here. Jmerry filled a crucial hole in our party setup and helped us immensely in taking down Yaga-Shura, Sendai and Watcher's Keep level 3 (where we would definitely have perished with only 4 party members, as you will see) and most of level 4. She will be missed.
@Borco@semiticgoddess@Wise_Grimwald Would any one of you to be willing to provide me with a fighter-type Avatar character to enter into the run? I would just need the basic info for any kind of fighter type you'd like to represent yourself (gender, race, class/kit (non-modded), statspread, alignment, abilities, portrait) or simply a zipped .chr file instead. The level doesn't matter, it can just be a level 1 character.
The Avatars (Enuhal's version) - Update XXXI
So, how did we get there? Level 3 was extremely tough on us, even though we started out doing rather well. The randomized maze sometimes offers up rather unforunate sequences of rooms, and the fact that you could always just land in a no-magic zone doesn't help, especially because it can make pre-buffing frustrating and pointless, while on the other hand, there are some rooms you do NOT want to face without buffs.
The first room we encounter - Cornugons fighting the Balor, a no-magic zone. We had a 3*Mordy Sword chain contingency here, which helped in safely taking down the Balor:
Next room: The glabrezu summoners. Well, luckily this room is easy to recognize with the obelisk in the center, and we weren't in enemy line of sight upon entering, so we could return to pocket plane, rest and buff up. Inquisitor dispel is really good here. Usually, it just takes so long to breach all of these PFMWs one by one, but getting to dispel half of the room with one cast makes sniping the glabrezus so much easier:
After taking out the first three, the party gathered up at the north to get out of the way of a second inquisitor dispel for the other half of the room - after we got that, we started tearing through the summons to get the now-vulnerable glabrezus, aided by some ADHWs:
Next, we encountered the second no-magic zone, making sure to disarm the traps here before approaching the demons:
Some easy rooms after that - the demon knights, where we could just return to pocket plane and buff up again before facing them, and soon after, the tieflings, with our buffs still going:
We also found Kara'shur and made a deal with him, but got back into the pit fiend no-magic zone after that. Trying to find a new room, I unfortunately encountered the demon wraith, with the no-magic effect still on the party for one more round:
This was NOT good. I drank some invulnerability potions while still being unable to use magic, following up with stoneskins and planetar + dragon's breath - the latter being pointless, with every foe in the room being immune to fire. The potions and stoneskins ended up pretty pointless as well due to what the demon wraith was doing: First, he opened with PW:Blind on Corey. He then approached our party instead of going for more spells. Because he was lacking SI:A, I decided to go for inquisitor dispel - I had barely any buffs going anyway, and this would get rid of PW:Blind and dispel the demon wraith:
Now, Jmerry and Corey tried to do as much damage as possible to our primary foe, using their fighter HLAs. I soon realized why the demon wraith was approaching - he started casting an abjuration spell, and the only one it could be due to his movement was imprisonment. Corey seemed to be his target - he was, at least, able to get a full round of GWW attacks in before the spell hit. Meanwhile, we cast improved haste on Jmerry. All hopes rested on our new recruit as Corey got imprisoned (for the second time - he was also the one to get hit in Saradush):
We activated energy blades and summoned in an elemental prince. With the FoA slow and constant hits, the demon wraith was unable to do anything else before we were able to destroy it:
We wanted to disarm the traps in the room before returning to pocket plane to memorize freedom. A rather hilarious failure on my part here, as I walked Alesia right into a petrification trap - down to three party members, though only for a moment:
Grim Face used freedom and stone to flesh, lesser restoration for the level drains and finally, the party was as good as new:
Well, we stumbled into another no-magic room after that, and right from that one, straight to Tahazzar. After the terrible experience with the demon wraith, I wasn't about to fight Tahazzar with zero buffs and the magic failure effect still on the party, so I immediately retreated through the same portal, moving to the quasits:
We eventually encountered the succubi (once again from a no-magic zone, but we have helmets of charm protection for everyone), so we had seen all the rooms, but I still tried to find another way towards Tahazzar - which I eventually found, approaching him from the demon knight room, though with very little buffs - only stoneskins, pfe, and remove fear (which I all used against the succubi, buffing during the battle). Now, the correct decision here was to retreat through the portal once more, make my way all the way back to the demon knight room, rest at the pocket plane, buff up to the max and destroy Tahazzar with ease. However, I lacked the patience for that, which is never a good sign. I decided that just these few buffs and the fact that we didn't start with magic failure should be enough for us.
The fight was a mess. I don't have screenshots for the earliest parts, but what really hurt us was the lack of fire resistance buffs. We had to contend with multiple firestorms, which really hurt, as did the aura of flaming death on Tahazzar. I first tried to take down the named balor first with fighter HLAs, but our melee characters just took too much damage. I summoned in a planetar, but somehow, the planetar turned hostile (I didn't use any AoE spells that could've turned it against us, and aren't planetars supposed to be immune to charm effects?).
Soon, Corey was near death while trying to take out some of the minor demons, avoiding the aura of flaming death. Alesia lost her stoneskins and was in big trouble. Grim Face got entangled by something while casting energy blades in an attempt to finish the job against Tahazzar himself. Alesia had tried to cast timestop, which would've been a huge help, but got interrupted:
I was able to get Corey out of immediate danger:
Enuhal followed, casting the heal spell on him and getting himself to a safer position. Alesia was still struggling, getting trapped by multiple demons, drinking healing potions, trying to re-apply stoneskins. Jmerry used the Helm of Vhailor to get more damage on our side, but Corey's re-entry and attempt to finally kill Thazzar after drinking a quick healing potion failed (stupidly, I didn't wait for Enuhal's heal spell to finish), as he took way more fire damage than I had expected and died very quickly:
Jmerry got low in hitpoints as well, which allowed a glabrezu to hit her with PW:Stun. At this point, I had the sinking feeling that the run might end here. Still, I decided to just try my best, having Enuhal use the RoR on Corey:
Corey was back, but Alesia' stoneskin attempt got interrupted. Meanwhile, Grim Face did the most important job: Keeping the attention of most enemies and protecting himself with greater divine protection:
Corey's return at full hitpoints meant that we were finally able to deal some damage to Tahazzar again. However, the stunned Jmerry was killed, and Alesia wasn't looking good:
Alesia fell as well as Enuhal used the RoR to raise Jmerry:
Another incredibly close call here, as Corey was able to FINALLY kill Tahazzar with the last attack he could land before the aura or the firestorm would propably have killed him:
Corey was even able to save his life by running out of the firestorm. Meanwhile the hostile planetar's firestorm started to work in our favor a bit - together with the resurrected Jmerry, it dealt significant damage to the remaining demons. Grim Face, who stood tall (well, as tall as gnomes can stand) even after all that, ensured his continuing survival by casting divine protection as I suspcted the greater divine protection was about to run out:
Finally, Enuhal used his third RoR charge to raise Alesia as well, and we applied death ward and improved haste on Jmerry to help out Grim Face who was still dealing with the planetar:
And she did the job - victory, after a truly terrible and devastating battle:
We stumbled around in the maze a bit more, finally finding Aesgareth at literally the only portal we hadn't checked yet. While we lost the first wager, we were able to win the spectral brand on the second one:
Entering level 4, we quickly moved towards the githyanki compound, which was cleared with relative ease, though we left Saladrex and the demi-lich for later:
And here's where we come back to the beginning of our post - we rested, buffed up and started working our way through the mind flayer compound - it was easy enough until the final room, where the aforementioned chunking of Jmerry occured:
It wasn't even all that difficulty to clear up that room with dual dragon's breath:
And while we didn't want to activate Lum's machine or fight Saladrex/the demi-lich yet without a fifth party member, we did obtain the hammer from the minotaur duo:
So, once more, the run is on hold until we find a new fighter willing to join us. I'm not going to lie, the prospects aren't great, and it's looking more and more like a suicide mission. However, hope is not lost, and I'm going to give it my best shot either way.
Unlike recent attempts, this run won't be ended by anyone simply taking damage. However, I still started the run off trying to avoid any damage, to see how far I could get - and have had a good first session.
From Candlekeep, the Opera went south to High Hedge and used magically created weapons to kill the golems, while those were concentrating on spirits.
At Beregost they calmed down Marl, stole a book to give to Firebead and slept some spiders. At that point I remembered I had not picked up Perdue's sword from some gnolls killed at High Hedge. Fortunately that was still there and was duly returned to its owner after Karlat was blinded.
Silke is potentially dangerous even when blinded, but a general attack killed her before she could complete a lightning bolt spell.
Sleep and command dealt with Mirianne's ogrillons and Zhurlong's hobgoblins.
They travelled down to Nashkel during the day, picking up Mr Colquetle's amulet on the way. I made a first mistake there against Neira. She was blinded and then commanded, but not quite finished off and I didn't retreat a spirit snake quickly enough - resulting in that being affected by rigid thinking. That could have been bad news for a few innocents, but I managed to avoid that by blinding the snake.
Noober provided a bit more XP before Oopah was blinded & commanded and Vitiare magic-missiled.
On the way to the FAI, a sleeping ogre provided a belt for Unshey - I remembered just in time to pick that up before leaving the area. On arrival, Joia got her ring back, but I had to get past Tarnesh to find Unshey. Washout could not yet safely lay traps, so Skint took advantage of the fact that failed attempts to blind don't cause hostility (in the unmodded game) and blinded Tarnesh at the 3rd attempt - though unfortunately that led to a guard getting the XP for him.
While there Landrin also got his goods back.
At the Lake area Bjornin's half-ogres were slept. That provided enough XP for everyone to take a level.
In the case of Washout that was 2 levels, allowing him to get set traps to 100% and demonstrate his new proficiency on Drizzt.
Teyngan's group was also dealt with before the Opera went north again to show Elminster how traps work.
That meant everyone had the XP to take another level, but I postponed doing that for the moment.
At the Beregost temple, traps, sleep and blind dealt nicely with the wolf pack.
That took everyone over 10k XP, allowing the sorcerers to learn invisibility.
As we cleared the mind flayer compound on level 4, approaching the final room of about 12 ulitharids/mind flayers, upon entering, every single one of these foes decided to use their ballistic attack, all targeting Jmerry - resulting in her immediate death and chunking due to extensive crushing damage:
Knowing the SCS AI as I do ... here's how you could have prevented that.
Don't cast Chaotic Commands on her.
With every member of the party having specific protections from Chaotic Commands, the illithids know their psionic status spells won't work, and thus they all go for damage spells. Remove that specific protection, and you'll see a more diverse - and less effective - selection of spells.
As a high-level halfling fighter with 15 Con, she has a base spell save of 2. The Amulet of the Seldarine and the Ring of Gaxx improve that to -1. Add in the Protection from Evil bonus, and it's -3. No risk of failed saves against any psionic status effects, since none of them have worse than a -4 save penalty.
And of course, the more characters you can get to this level of passive safety, the more you reduce the risk of ballistic attacks and detonations.
Then again, I didn't really know this AI trick back when I played Magpie, the character this version of jmerry was based on. Magpie just had to settle with not having Chaotic Commands because her party was forbidden from casting spells. My next run had much more spellcasting and could maintain permanent buffs due to wish-resting, which led to a room-entry scare in the Underdark lair. I added physical resistance buffs after that - rather easy to do when you frequently have party-wide Hardiness from Wish sequences.
(Deaths in illithid encounters in my last two SCS runs, both at Insane difficulty and clearing everything:
- Wee Cant Spell: Korgan dead in Hexxat's first tomb. Cause: brain-sucked by three hits in quick succession. No debuffs involved, just multiple mind flayers in melee.
- Wee Cant Spell: Haer'Dalis dead in the Athkatla sewers. Cause: Low health from ballistic attacks, alhoon cast Power Word: Kill. I could have saved him by using a stronger healing potion.
- Kill It With Fire: Nalia dead in the Underdark lair. Cause: Friendly fire, after her Protection from Fire spell lapsed and I didn't notice.
That's it. No troubles raising anybody, either.)
Skint had now learnt PfP, but that wasn't actually used in the basilisk area - Korax making things easy enough without spell use while taking down all the basilisks and Mutamin. Baerin resisted attempts to charm him, but he, Lindin & Peter were all blinded and slowed by a special trap before Korax paralysed Kirian. She was then blinded as well and the lot of them finished off by a fog.
Moving on to Durlag's Tower, invisible blockers were used to magic missile the battle horrors. One point I don't think I've referred to previously is a change in the way invisibility is treated in the last update - it's now possible to cast invisibility on something else, without the mage becoming visible. That makes its use a bit more convenient generally, as well as safer if using invisibility to forestall attack in a battle situation - for instance when someone is held or paralyzed.
Inside the Tower, some of the ghasts were similarly blocked off to allow me control of the battlefield, but I was getting a bit slapdash by now and took my first damage as a result - Pauper getting hit by a blinded ghast that unexpectedly switched target from an attacking spirit, when Pauper was outside its sight range (presumably a belated reaction to being hit by him a few seconds earlier).
Even though I wasn't intending this as a no-damage run, that felt rather demotivating so I think I'll end the run here and give this party a rest for a while ...
I'm not going to lie, the prospects aren't great, and it's looking more and more like a suicide mission. However, hope is not lost, and I'm going to give it my best shot either way.
I love it! Rogue One is my favorite Star Wars movie by far, so I'm all in on this adventure, lol.
It's been an amazing run so far, and it still will be, regardless of how it ends. We'll all be rooting for you, for sure. Go Avatars Team E!
Comments
@jmerry All right, thanks! The halfling fighter/thief definitely sounds like something I could work with - To create the character, I'd only need infos on gender, alignment, attribute spread and starting abilites (though these are not that important with the levels we are currently at)
Copy your latest save game back to mpsave folder > Start MP game > Connect > Create game > Load game > Create Character > Import from Chr File > Start Session > Save and copy back to single save folder > Done.
We tried to help Tonder with a Guril berry potion. It didn't work!
We then went in search of Shoal and killed both Droth and Shoal before killing three sirine.
Ajantis was VERY badly injured.
We proceeded to the basilisk area.
Upon returning toBeregost we killed Silke and Karlat.
Thank you, I'm truly humbled to hear that (coming from someone who's consistently been my biggest no-reload inspiration over the years).
Just a note on Sorsha's game: Things might have been a bit slow lately, in particular in terms of my pending write-ups, but for the time being I can confirm that we've made it to Amn in one piece. My plan is now to use my spare time over the next week or so to try and make further progress with SoA ahead of my trip to Iceland - assuming from previous experience that the weather is not going to be stellar at all times (for hikes and so), I'm planning to catch up with the posting from there (though I'll not be playing).
Interesting. I didn't know that (obviously). The mechanic always struck me as odd given how uncompromising the game tends to be towards new players otherwise so I actually remembered it after years of absence.
Concerning wolves: I knew they hit hard and have a surprising amount of HP, making them formidable opponents in melee, but I underestimated their reach and weapon speed and therfore felt no need to equip a melee weapon. I don't even know if that specific wolf was affected by my song when it killed me since a save is allowed. Still, I'll look into this later as I don't want to deal with the additional challenge of a messed up setup and my song having somewhat... unpredictable effects. Though the the idea of a song randomly buffing or debuffing sounds hilarious and somewhat thematic for a chaotic jester.
@Alesia_BH & @Grond0 Thank you for your kind words. The portrait is what inspired me to play a jester in the first place, though he looks somewhat deranged and closer to chaotic evil to me. But I was afraid of an evil/low reputation run as I have vague memories of hard to avoid reputation traps added by SCS as well as considerably buffed Flaming Fist soldiers.
Very cool! And I identify: I did the exact same thing years ago. I rolled a jester inspired by this portrait:
Her name was Alisa. She completed the challenge in a SCS-Ascension install about 10 years ago. She continues to be one of my favorite characters, second only to my bounty hunter, Alesia. I hope you and Cedric will develop a similar bond!
Best,
A.
Meet Ayla's successor, everyone! Amara, Halfling Swashbuckler
Proficiencies: Daggers, Darts
Mods: SCS 34.3, Ascension, G3 Fixpack- FreeAction Protects Against Stun
Difficulty: Hardcore (All tactical components, most nerfs, no Icewind Dale spells)
Gaming Notes: Ayla's run was pleasant and did fulfill its purpose of helping me refamiliarize myself with the game. That said, from a gameplay perspective it wasn't entirely satisfying. Ayla used aggressive rogue tactics that weren't suited to the modest difficult setting she was playing on. Far too many gameplay questions were answered by the simple move of opening combat with a backstab on the mage. Ayla also made heavy use of item recharge in BG1 and in BG2, via the Staff of Striking. Item recharge has always felt questionable to me at best. With Amelie I hope to leverage what I recently learned with Ayla while redressing some of the aspects of Ayla's run that I found less than satisfying. Amara will not be allowed to attack neutral enemies, with rare exceptions. She will instead be expected to initiate dialogue and allow her opponents buffs to fire. Additionally, Amara will not be recharging items, although I may relax this restriction in ToB.
This will be my first run with a swashbuckler, although I did roll and then abandon one a couple years before my break. I've long been curious about single class swashbucklers, although I loathe -loathe- the idea of playing a thief that can't backstab, lol. We'll see how it goes
Character Description: As many of you know, I often compose a description for my characters. Amara has insisted on writing that description herself. I'm not surprised. She's irrepressible. And so here she is, in her own world. Please forgive her flair for the dramatic. It's who she is.
“Fantasy has a way of becoming reality. How many times have you seen in your mind’s eye a path you would soon walk? Do the fates touch our visions, hinting at our destiny? Or do we the dreamers turn our imaginings to truth, guided by a hunger to be?
It’s a good question. But alas: I have no answers. I am a wit, not a philosopher; a woman of action, not of knowledge. And even if I did have an answer, what would it matter? Answers are final. They disappoint. It’s the game of asking that intrigues.
And so I ask of you this: Can you imagine a halfling whose dreams aren’t bound by home? Can you imagine a halfling bold and free, daring and vibrant? Can you imagine a halfling making her mark on the Sword Coast- not as a footnote or a sidekick but as a legend in her own right, a hero true? If so -if you can imagine these things- then you, my friends, can imagine me. I, Amara Lightfoot, am the reality to your visions. I will not disappoint.”
Amara Lightfoot, DR 1368
Personal Item: Swish-Swash
The library fortress of Candlekeep never suited Amara, but her imagination took flight within its stacks. Amara spent her youth devouring tales of adventure and often re-enacted scenes, standing atop her bed, watching herself in her mirror. Amara’s buckler, Swish-Swash, was a key prop, wielded alongside a wooden sword, fancifully dubbed Rascal.
Rascal is by now long lost, a plaything of youth. But Swish-Swash, a modest but viable tool of combat, remains with Amara. In anyone else’s hands, Swish-Swash would function like a normal buckler. Amara, however, derives confidence and aplomb from the comfort of her childhood companion, aiding her in all her endeavors. Amara also has a preternatural sense of Swish-Swash's dimensions and balance, stemming from all those years of childhood play. For her and her alone, it functions more like a small shield than a buckler.
AC + 1
Luck + 1
Usable by Amara
Safe travels!
We returned Perdue's sword before heading south where we killed Vax and Zal.
To the west we rescued a dryad's tree and killed Ingot.
We picked up Neera before going in search of Lethe who killed her with ice.
We took on more assassins in Gullykin
Nearby ankhegs that were new to me were slain.
We went to the Nashkel Carnival where we sold and bought the necklace of missiles. Afterwards we were without any gold whatsoever.
The gnoll stronghold then beckoned us.
We then went to Gullykin where Alora was enlisted. She is a good thief but rather poor at stealth.
Smeagol wants us to find his precious.
We did
Thanks, Serg!
As I mentioned in Ayla's Davaeorn post, I've long been conflicted about the blue circle issue in the case of thieves. The game world expects you to initiate dialogue before attacking. Subverting that expectation unbalances the scales, especially with SCS installed. At the same time, it's implausible that, say, an assassin or bounty hunter would roll up to a mage and introduce herself. There's a conflict there and it's not clear how to resolve it. Enter Amelie the Swashbuckler. As a swashbuckler it makes perfect sense for Amelie to announce herself. Swashbucklers are bold and debonair, showy and charmingly arrogant, daring and prone to risk. With a swashbuckler the conflict evaporates since the natural combat style or a swashbuckler accords with the expectations of the game world. That's precisely why I gave her the swashie kit.
Amelie will have a tough road in BG and early SoA. A low level swashbuckler is just a thief that can't backstab. Yuck, lol. That inherent weakness, intersected with the restrictions, will make the early game much more challenging. If she survives to mid-late SoA, though, I expect that Amelie will come in to her own. We'll see how it goes!
Best,
A.
Instead of submitting a new entry post, I edited the first one. Amelie is now Amara, and she's better for it. I'm a lot more excited about this character. She has a character description and a personal item, like my characters of old.
I'll start posting on her adventure soon.
Best,
A.
The Avatars (Enuhal's version) - Update XXIX
After the devastating loss of Grond0, the party made their way back to meet up with Nyalee at the ancient Temple of Bhaal - there, Corey's sharp eyes were surprised to spot a lonely, but heavily armed halfling, having set up a small campside hidden in the dark ruins. The inquisitor used his divine abilities conclude that she was of a noble disposition, and the party approached. They learned that she had succeeded in sneaking out of the besieged Saradush, determined to pay back Yaga-Shura and the other Bhaalspawn ravaging the countryside for all the harm they had caused. With one man down and no one else to turn to, Enuhal offered the unassuming woman a place amonst his comrades, telling her about his plans to take down the fire giant leader once and for all. She introduced herself as Jmerry:
Well, we're back to five again. The loss of Grond0 will certainly hurt the party, though - the way I set up the other characters was kind of centered around the barbarian with his supreme physical damage resistance and hit points - also, equipment and weapon choices, what we bought and what we already sold - all these things were, of course, done with Grond0 in mind. I used the console to get Jmerry to the same experience as the remaining party, which got her the two profiency points in flails to make use of Grond0's old FoA +4. In terms of HLAs, I gave her UIA and a timetrap, followed by a few hardinesses and critical strikes, and the same two greater deathblows I had given to Grond0.
Nyalee fell quickly - the traps Alesia had prepared killed one of her shambling mounds and took her to near death, allowing for Corey to finish the job with a single hit:
I let our new recruit, Jmerry, have some fun at the oasis, taking out key spellcasters with a bit of invisibility potion backstabbing:
Outside, we placed some traps near the woodcutter before going after the hive mother at the first ambush site, with only Jmerry losing her buffs:
In my Freda game Alora was killed by a trap in Durlag's that I thought that she had dealt with. She was 200exp points away from levelling up to level 7.
We are now leaving Durlag's not to return until after Candlekeep as the things that I really wanted to do are finished. There is some decent armour down there, but it's not THAT great.
Alora was raised, items identified, Dynaheir freed..
We already have the wand of monster summoning from Duralgs so no need to go back for that.
Part 5
Here we are in BG2! Moth Sibula has gotten through BG1 and SoD pretty cleanly, but all the items we've been hoarding are now gone. We need to be extra careful until we have some good rescue options.
To make the most of our first rest, I try to fight through the duergar until the party really needs a full heal. Moth Sibula's crummy thief AC means we approach the brink pretty easy.
Chateau Irenicus is messy and takes a lot of potions, but once we finally rest, we have a Chaotic Commands spell to cover Minsc, which means the Radiant Mephit can't wreck us. Jaheira's nymph summons also helps us clear the remaining duergar safely.
To make sure we have a shot if things go awry, we burn a chunk of our gold supply to purchase the Ring of Energy, which is powerful in BG2 even if it's not as gamebreaking as it is in BG1. When we face down Kalah, I have Moth Sibula activate rage to make sure our ringbearer is always active. But thanks to heavy buffs, a fast approach, and Moth Sibula's 100% Detect Illusions skill, we cut through Kalah's defenses all the same.
We have Aerie in hand, which means we have the spellpower to keep Moth Sibula and the party a lot safer in BG2's dicey early game. I'm not yet decided on our party makeup, but Aerie is just a brilliant toolkit character and she has no troublesome mandatory personal quests like some other NPC's.
The next goal is improving our reputation to save money long-term. That means tackling the slaver stockade. We've got the tools to handle the enemy spellcasters around here, but without plate armor or midgame-grade stats, we struggle to compete in combat.
It takes time to kill the westernmost archer, which means Yoshimo's vicious Special Snares don't come online until late in this fight. Yoshimo can fire them off at range, but not if we've got a red circle within his field of vision. But once Yoshimo is up to bat...
Suna Seni gets really chaotic. We Slow most of their party, but the wizard makes its save, responds with a Slow of its own, and we struggle to bring down any of the enemies. We don't have the APR to cut through the wizard's defenses (not when our fighters are slowed!), but our buffs hold out just long enough to clear the field a little. The Ring of Energy ends the fight before it can get any scarier.
We want Belm for Jaheira, but we don't want to mess with trolls given our lack of anti-troll gear. We do have the Efreeti Bottle, courtesy of Aerie's Protection from Petrification spells and Haste, but I am terrified of Spirit Trolls and don't want to tank without better AC. So, we sneak through the druid grove with invisibility, again courtesy of our friend Aerie, whose Sanctuary also lets her loot the troll mound safely. We still want to kill Dalok, so I approach him with our thieves, both under stealth.
Or so I thought. Yoshimo was hidden. Moth Sibula was not.
Shatter Spell is a Breach effect on hit.
You do need to land a hit for Shatter Spell to do anything, so PFMW and good AC can both thwart it. But Moth Sibula can guarantee a critical hit using Trickery, and eventually we will have four methods of getting past weapon immunities: +5 darts from the Cloak of Stars for Improved Mantle, nonmagical darts for PFMW, a nonmagical short sword to get past Pro Normal Missiles, and best of all, Fire Seeds.
I discovered the power of Fire Seeds a few years ago and came to view them as devastating in the narrow situations where they're useful at all. Their projectile is area-effect, which means you only need to land a hit against a nearby target in order to debuff an otherwise-invincible mage. Shatter Spell should be able to break the difficulty of a lot of tough fights in BG2.
Assuming we execute it well.
We have Cernd fight Faldorn, get a chunk of XP and gold and reputation, and head back to Athkatla for chores. A backstab and a snare kill Rayic Gethras, more traps kill Mae'Var, and we get another big chunk of XP and gold from Renal Bloodscalp.
Now we need to start thinking about party composition. Yoshimo is dead weight now that Moth Sibula has some decent utility skills (and most locks and traps in Athkatla are already gone by now), and I have to figure out who to replace him with. I'm a little tired of Mazzy and Keldorn, two of my common picks in the past, but I still want somebody who's a safe pick.
That means Korgan. Rage immunities and a decent suit of armor will let Korgan soak up a lot of pressure and keep the party safe. All we need to is to get through his personal quest, which requires walking past multiple creatures that can drain levels--very scary stuff.
Then I remember that the wight and vampyre can't see through invisibility. We only need to slay a single undead enemy.
It's high time we got Jaheira a suit of full plate. Let's tackle Mencar Pennypincher and the gang!
Korgan unfortunately triggers the fight the moment dialog starts, but we're still in good condition to handle the fight, despite the mediocre start. Aerie hits Smelly Porkslicer with Remove Curse, disarming him, and we move in our fighters to pin down Brennan Risling before he can escape his Sandthief Ring.
To make sure it stays that way, we need to finish off Amon and Pooky. Moth Sibula removes their Mirror Images with Detect Illusions, then uses Trickery to get a guaranteed critical hit against Pooky with some +1 arrows. We close in with our fighters and seal the deal.
I don't want to see Reviane and her goons popping up on us after an area transition and pouncing on us while we're unbuffed, and I want to be able to boot Jaheira from the party without it being permanent, so we're forgoing the extra loot and XP from that questline for the sake of convenience and safety.
I’d like to begin by apologizing for the grandiose title. Amara insisted. I guess I’m going to have to get used to that. She’s taken an interest in happenings in our world. None of my characters have done that before. I’m not sure what to make of it.
Amara doesn't entirely understand the connection between her and I. How could she? She lives in Faerun. She doesn't even know what a computer is, let alone a computer game or an online forum. What she does understand is that I live in a different world, and yet somehow influence her fate in hers. She also gets that I'm kind of like her biographer in this world, our world- that I'm recording her adventurers for others to read. Now, that’s not unusual- all of my characters have gotten that, to some extent. What’s unique about Amara is that she seems to care about her legacy here, in our world, almost as much as her fate in hers. Strange. And so for this run, I guess I have a writing assistant? Or an editor? Or a taskmaster? I’m not sure which, to be honest. I guess we’ll just have to see. In any case, she'll make requests from time to time, and I think it best that I oblige her. She is the hero, after all.
So: back to the title. I usually title my posts with my character's name, race and class, ex - Ayla, Halfling Thief: Part 1. You get the idea.
Well, Amara didn’t like that. Amara said her race is irrelevant- that she should be defined by her actions, not her origins. Fair point. She also said my usual style lacks pizzazz, panache- je ne sais quoi. That hit close to home. I’ve been doing this for years, and I like to think of myself as a stylish player. I’ll admit she has a point, though. And so we’ll do it her way. It’s for the best.
Right then: Let’s get to the action, shall we? Oh! But first: Actually, one more request from Amara. She wanted me to share a passage from The History of the Fateful Coin. She's an avid reader, and apparently it conveys how she felt in those early days. Here it is:
For some rare beings, the coin lands edge on, and these luckless few can forge their own fates, for they have more freedom over their destinies than the powers themselves.
I may be over analyzing, but I think that Amara’s way of dealing with how vulnerable she was in those early days- an attempt to find power in powerlessness. After all, she was very small and the world seemed big. A coin on its edge, unsure how she’d land.
Ok! To the adventure! And this time I mean it!
The road from Candlekeep heads in only one direction: east. And so Amara went. East to the Coast Way, then north to the Friendly Arm Inn. She found a diamond, a ring and then another ring along the way. Fortunate was with her. Or was it fate?
Her finds made her rich. Potions proffered from fellow adventurers gave her a workable kit. Two days from Candlekeep and things were looking up. The coin leans true.
South to Beregost, where Marl and Firebead brought level 2. Thief points went to move silently and find traps.
Amara’s next stop was High Hedge: wand of sleep, potion of mirror eyes, protection from undead and fire darts.
The wand of sleep would see immediate use in the grounds south of High Hedge. One wand of sleep charge, twelve darts: one wolf killed, one chicken saved.
Amara's next stop is the Black Alaric Cave.
Best,
A.
After a brief hiatus playing a solo monk, I loaded this up again. A promising start ended when I used a group attack on a sleeping wolf, close to another wolf that was blinded. Usually I wait until Hardup dances up a spirit to kill enemies beaten unconscious, but this time I was impatient and finished it off with a magic missile. I didn't then react quickly enough when Pauper auto-changed targets to the nearby blinded wolf and its fast attack speed allowed it to get an attack in.
The next one ended in a hobgoblin ambush when coming back from the basilisk area and another to a movement error allowing one of the High Hedge golems to attack. I was taking them on at level 1, which made things more complex, but the idea was to ensure that I was up to 10k XP each before dealing with the basilisk area - allowing invisible travel and avoiding the possibility of a hobgoblin archer ambush.
Trying again, I successfully got up to the 10k XP mark prior to going to the basilisks. That felt like pretty good play, but had an unfortunate end when the Opera rested up after finishing off the wolf pack in the Beregost Temple area. The rest was successful, but a hobgoblin group must have respawned nearby, as one of them suddenly appeared and shot Aspire - I noticed it coming just too late to do an area transition.
Another go and I once more got up to 10k XP. This time I finished off the basilisk area and had nearly dealt with the ghasts at Durlag's Tower, but suffered from another oddity there. Skint had already cast two lots of magic missiles on a ghast blocked in a doorway. Neither she not the ghast appeared to have moved at all, but a 3rd cast saw her moving towards the ghast rather than casting the spell - presumably having somehow lost her line of sight. If that had happened with the first cast I would have been ready for it and retreated before she got within reach, but the movement this time caught me by surpise and the delay was just long enough for the ghast to get an attack in.
Dynaheir was freed and is well equipped. Whilst there we also rescued Aaron and gave him his ring. He was distraught upon discovering the death of his fiancee.
Alora bought Shadow Armour after selling surplus equipment. Wands still need recharging.
We went down the mines and killed Mulahey and returned to the carnival where we rested.
On this occasion Dynaheir's web was enough to render the Duerger Clerics harmless though Tenya had silence memorised in case it was needed. It wasn't.
@semiticgoddess Good progress in SoA. I love the aggressive "remove curse" to disarm the guy with the cursed berserking sword. Didn't know that would work.
Well... We're not done with Watcher's Keep yet, but we sadly need another replacement. As we cleared the mind flayer compound on level 4, approaching the final room of about 12 ulitharids/mind flayers, upon entering, every single one of these foes decided to use their ballistic attack, all targeting Jmerry - resulting in her immediate death and chunking due to extensive crushing damage:
@Borco @semiticgoddess @Wise_Grimwald Would any one of you to be willing to provide me with a fighter-type Avatar character to enter into the run? I would just need the basic info for any kind of fighter type you'd like to represent yourself (gender, race, class/kit (non-modded), statspread, alignment, abilities, portrait) or simply a zipped .chr file instead. The level doesn't matter, it can just be a level 1 character.
The Avatars (Enuhal's version) - Update XXXI
So, how did we get there? Level 3 was extremely tough on us, even though we started out doing rather well. The randomized maze sometimes offers up rather unforunate sequences of rooms, and the fact that you could always just land in a no-magic zone doesn't help, especially because it can make pre-buffing frustrating and pointless, while on the other hand, there are some rooms you do NOT want to face without buffs.
The first room we encounter - Cornugons fighting the Balor, a no-magic zone. We had a 3*Mordy Sword chain contingency here, which helped in safely taking down the Balor:
The fight was a mess. I don't have screenshots for the earliest parts, but what really hurt us was the lack of fire resistance buffs. We had to contend with multiple firestorms, which really hurt, as did the aura of flaming death on Tahazzar. I first tried to take down the named balor first with fighter HLAs, but our melee characters just took too much damage. I summoned in a planetar, but somehow, the planetar turned hostile (I didn't use any AoE spells that could've turned it against us, and aren't planetars supposed to be immune to charm effects?).
Soon, Corey was near death while trying to take out some of the minor demons, avoiding the aura of flaming death. Alesia lost her stoneskins and was in big trouble. Grim Face got entangled by something while casting energy blades in an attempt to finish the job against Tahazzar himself. Alesia had tried to cast timestop, which would've been a huge help, but got interrupted:
Unlike recent attempts, this run won't be ended by anyone simply taking damage. However, I still started the run off trying to avoid any damage, to see how far I could get - and have had a good first session.
From Candlekeep, the Opera went south to High Hedge and used magically created weapons to kill the golems, while those were concentrating on spirits.
They travelled down to Nashkel during the day, picking up Mr Colquetle's amulet on the way. I made a first mistake there against Neira. She was blinded and then commanded, but not quite finished off and I didn't retreat a spirit snake quickly enough - resulting in that being affected by rigid thinking. That could have been bad news for a few innocents, but I managed to avoid that by blinding the snake.
On the way to the FAI, a sleeping ogre provided a belt for Unshey - I remembered just in time to pick that up before leaving the area. On arrival, Joia got her ring back, but I had to get past Tarnesh to find Unshey. Washout could not yet safely lay traps, so Skint took advantage of the fact that failed attempts to blind don't cause hostility (in the unmodded game) and blinded Tarnesh at the 3rd attempt - though unfortunately that led to a guard getting the XP for him.
At the Lake area Bjornin's half-ogres were slept. That provided enough XP for everyone to take a level.
At the Beregost temple, traps, sleep and blind dealt nicely with the wolf pack.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L4, 37 HPs, 1 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L4, 33 HPs, 5 kills, 3 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L4, 37 HPs, 0 kills, 0 deaths
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L5, 32 HPs, 7 kills, 0 deaths
Aspire, Sorcerer - L4, 21 HPs, 8 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L4, 21 HPs, 6 kills, 0 deaths
Don't cast Chaotic Commands on her.
With every member of the party having specific protections from Chaotic Commands, the illithids know their psionic status spells won't work, and thus they all go for damage spells. Remove that specific protection, and you'll see a more diverse - and less effective - selection of spells.
As a high-level halfling fighter with 15 Con, she has a base spell save of 2. The Amulet of the Seldarine and the Ring of Gaxx improve that to -1. Add in the Protection from Evil bonus, and it's -3. No risk of failed saves against any psionic status effects, since none of them have worse than a -4 save penalty.
And of course, the more characters you can get to this level of passive safety, the more you reduce the risk of ballistic attacks and detonations.
Then again, I didn't really know this AI trick back when I played Magpie, the character this version of jmerry was based on. Magpie just had to settle with not having Chaotic Commands because her party was forbidden from casting spells. My next run had much more spellcasting and could maintain permanent buffs due to wish-resting, which led to a room-entry scare in the Underdark lair. I added physical resistance buffs after that - rather easy to do when you frequently have party-wide Hardiness from Wish sequences.
(Deaths in illithid encounters in my last two SCS runs, both at Insane difficulty and clearing everything:
- Wee Cant Spell: Korgan dead in Hexxat's first tomb. Cause: brain-sucked by three hits in quick succession. No debuffs involved, just multiple mind flayers in melee.
- Wee Cant Spell: Haer'Dalis dead in the Athkatla sewers. Cause: Low health from ballistic attacks, alhoon cast Power Word: Kill. I could have saved him by using a stronger healing potion.
- Kill It With Fire: Nalia dead in the Underdark lair. Cause: Friendly fire, after her Protection from Fire spell lapsed and I didn't notice.
That's it. No troubles raising anybody, either.)
Previous updates
Skint had now learnt PfP, but that wasn't actually used in the basilisk area - Korax making things easy enough without spell use while taking down all the basilisks and Mutamin. Baerin resisted attempts to charm him, but he, Lindin & Peter were all blinded and slowed by a special trap before Korax paralysed Kirian. She was then blinded as well and the lot of them finished off by a fog.
Moving on to Durlag's Tower, invisible blockers were used to magic missile the battle horrors. One point I don't think I've referred to previously is a change in the way invisibility is treated in the last update - it's now possible to cast invisibility on something else, without the mage becoming visible. That makes its use a bit more convenient generally, as well as safer if using invisibility to forestall attack in a battle situation - for instance when someone is held or paralyzed.
Inside the Tower, some of the ghasts were similarly blocked off to allow me control of the battlefield, but I was getting a bit slapdash by now and took my first damage as a result - Pauper getting hit by a blinded ghast that unexpectedly switched target from an attacking spirit, when Pauper was outside its sight range (presumably a belated reaction to being hit by him a few seconds earlier).
That's starting to look like a rough gig, lol.
I love it! Rogue One is my favorite Star Wars movie by far, so I'm all in on this adventure, lol.
It's been an amazing run so far, and it still will be, regardless of how it ends. We'll all be rooting for you, for sure. Go Avatars Team E!
Best,
A.