Kagain had no choice but to hold this long enough for his allies to wake up from Confusion, and that's exactly what he did ! Thanks to many Healing Potions and his second Defensive Stance, he bought enough time for Anselm and Vynd to recover.
Kagain's a boss!
Anyway, nice to see you roleplay the party true to its members' alignments. Severe suffering is being administered to the denizens of the Sword Coast.
I finally got tired of all the nymphs crowding up the place and boxing Poppy in, so I devised a custom spell, copied over the Shillelagh spell so it could be cast via hotkey, to get rid of the nymphs all at once. At first I planned on just using a party-only Death Spell (or Banishment spell, since I'm using SR), but that would destroy all of my summons, and not just the nymphs. Instead, I changed the Shillelagh spell to be an area-effect, partly only WIS drain of 1 point for 1 second, and edited the nymphs to have precisely one point of WIS. This way, all nymphs within range will automatically die, while leaving the rest of our party and our summons untouched, save for a brief and negligible drop in WIS.
They make quite the racket when they all die at once. Poppy likes the sounds they make.
Anyway, we've got some slavers to murder. Since we're taking on a bigger challenge than before, I make sure the whole party is mobilized, and we're not just using the nymphs for everything. We enter the room while invisible and Azama (I almost wrote Imber, since it's my sorceror) casts Fireball to soften up the cleric.
Azama has taken on her Salamander form, finally making use of her Avenger kit. Notice also the big flaming Fire Elemental thrashing around to the right. Fobie has just hit level 11 (druids level so fast until level 13 and 14) and has gained two 6th-level spell slots thanks to his memorization bonuses, which he is using for Fire and Earth Elementals. SR also adds in a nice Air Elemental form, with 3 APR, but I need these summons more as tanks than anything else, and the Earth Elemental's physical damage resistances, at 40%, are the more useful option for me.
Somehow, Poppy ends up in the middle of Azama's Fireball.
That could have been the end of the run--Poppy doesn't have a huge weakness to fire damage, but her HP is quite low--but the enemy wasn't able to capitalize on Poppy's weakness, and she was able to restore her health completely with a Potion of Extra Healing, which in IR heals 30 HP because round numbers.
What was Poppy doing in the range of the Fireball? Well, I had ordered her to attack Captain Haegan, but when our summons got in the way, she tried walking around the crates and barrels in the center of the room, and therefore ended up just a few steps away from the Cleric of Cyric that Azama was targeting.
It's not a good sign. As a Wizard Slayer, Poppy can't equip many items to boost her resistances, and because she's invisible, we can't target her with buffs! On top of that, Azama's INT is so low (at 2) that she can't even use IR mage scrolls, which could let her cast situational buffs on Poppy. I'm going to have to keep Poppy well out of the way if she is to survive with 30 base HP and a save vs. breath of 12 (and SR damage spells basically all use save vs. breath).
She gets savaged again by a Slaver Guard with a scimitar, again, despite her lacking any major weaknesses to the damage type. She has to down another potion to escape alive.
We have no thief, so Snowy Tae, as the party member with the highest HP, has to trigger the trap leading to the next section.
Since Snowy Tae has fantastic saves when fully buffed (save vs. death at -6, save vs. spell at 1), I decide to let her walk through the Prismatic Spray trap as well, which only takes out a third of her HP, and allows her to direct a horde of animal summons against the second half of the area's enemies.
In SR, druids get summoning spells at every level, and Fobie is stuffed with them. He can't stop enemy archers or mages from targeting Snowy Tae, but he can box in enemy warriors and set up a wall against the rest, allowing Snowy Tae to retreat into the Yuan-ti's room when she gets hurt. Poppy adds nymphs and spirit animals (like Imber, she's a Totemic Druid) to the fray when necessary. The enemy mages make a whole lot of saves against the nymphs' spells, but they can only last so long before our summons break through their defenses.
Once the mages are gone, I have Snowy Tae lead a few more critters around the room to clear up the remaining guards. Finally, Fobie summons an Earth Elemental and we bring down the trolls, with SR's new Sunscorch spell for the final blow.
The nymphs comfort the children and we set them free. We sure made an awful lot of widows, but we got three kids out of slavery, and more importantly, we got some minor loot and XP.
We camp out in the sewers because we're too lazy to talk to Bernard for a room, and the first dream cutscene triggers. For some reason, Imoen is talking to herself.
Normally Charname would be in that screenshot, but Poppy is mostly transparent due to her invisibility, and her colors blend right in with the ground. Can you see her?
Back in the Copper Coronet, we attack the next group of guards unbuffed. Somehow I forgot that Tactics throws in a whole bunch of extra enemies to this fight. Going in without buffs was a mistake. Azama fails a save against Chromatic Orb. It isn't pretty.
SR gives random effects to Chromatic Orb. Apparently one of them is poison. Problem is, Poppy, the only party member with an Elixir of Health, is hidden in the next room, trapped behind a wall of nymphs that she led inside in the hopes that the nymphs would take care of everything. Meanwhile, Snowy Tae and Fobie have already cast their spells for the round, and they have two extra guards to deal with. Azama is poisoned, has no Stoneskin, is already at low HP by virtue of having about 30 max HP (like Poppy, and also Fobie), and she has a buffed mage right in front of her.
If she stays in Salamander form, the haste effect will increase the damage from her poison. If she reverts to natural form, then she has 14 base AC. Yes, 14.
I keep her alive with potions, since any Stoneskin she might try to cast would be interrupted by the poison damage (she has a casting penalty of 2) and she needs healing more than she needs any spells. Meanwhile, I get the harem to cast Sphere of Chaos, pacifying the guards in the other room.
Azama gets pummeled by the enemy mage, since she can't cast Stoneskin, but eventually the harem teleports in to help her out, casting Mass Cure and slaying the mage that poisoned her.
Now all that's left is the Beastmaster. Fobie summons some of his animal buddies and runs over to the Beastmaster under the effects of Azama's invisibility spell. His summons follow after him, and attack the Beastmaster while Fobie stays hidden. Poppy, for her party, keeps the exit blocked off with nymphs, who will serve both as our defensive wall and our disablers.
Turns out Fobie's summons just weren't up to the task.
But then, I didn't use the best he had. Since he can't summon anything else without breaking his invisibility, I have Poppy use Hide in Shadows and lead her harem over to the Beastmaster. They cause all kinds of chaos, giving Fobie the breathing room to use some offensive spells. The tide turns in our favor.
We free Hendak, slay some more hapless guards on the way to Lehtinan, and sell off everything we can. We've built up a nice stash of gold, but then I discover that Snowy Tae--who as an Archer and a cleric has been placing lots of pips into Slings--cannot use slings.
I thought Cavaliers were just unable to specialize in missile weapons; I didn't know they couldn't use them at all. Maybe this is just an Item Revisions change, but either way, Snowy Tae is missing the single best way to utilize her massive 23 STR without putting her in range of the melee weapons to which she is so vulnerable.
The item restrictions in these randomized runs are pretty severe. We've had at least one Wizard Slayer every run, and in the current one, there's not a single person in the party that can wear metal armor. As a sorcerer, Azama can't wear anything. As a Kensai, Fobie can't wear anything, although he has 25 CHA as an excuse. As a Totemic Druid, Poppy must also run around naked, at least to fit in with the harem. And as an Archer, Snowy Tae is restricted to leather.
I suppose it's appropriate to have a strong woman in leather dominating a harem with a token pretty boy thrown in the mix, but it means Snowy Tae can't take advantage of the metal armors that give boosts to physical damage resistance in Item Revisions. Armor of Faith is also nerfed to 10% resistance and is non-stackable, which means we can't capitalize on the few positive resistances that we have. Resistance stacking brings increasing returns, but our resistances start out so low that we can't get much benefit from them, even with items and spells to help out. We're going to have to keep relying on summons and careful positioning if we want to avoid taking damage. Besides, Snowy Tae is too warm and fuzzy to be a good dominatrix, leather or no leather. We may need some outside help for that.
I always have the nymphs, but I don't want to solve every problem by summoning hordes of hot women to tackle the enemy. This isn't a roleplaying run.
@Blackraven It certainly is kind of refreshing to do an evil run. Makes for a very fun experience.
I'll try my best to destroy the city of Baldur's Gate.
Concerning your run, I think you hit the difficulty spike at the start of BG2, especially for casters. Suddenly all your foes have good saves, HP, and most of them have MR compared to BG1. The Robe of Vecna you bought will certainly help until you get access to most level 7 and 8 spells. I hope you'll be able to use Time Stop soon
I thought Cavaliers were just unable to specialize in missile weapons; I didn't know they couldn't use them at all. Maybe this is just an Item Revisions change, but either way, Snowy Tae is missing the single best way to utilize her massive 23 STR without putting her in range of the melee weapons to which she is so vulnerable.
I couldn't help but smile when your assumption about the game proved to be wrong. Happens to me quite often.
@Gotural, you're right about the first part being so hard. Especially as a multi having over 1 million XP in earlyish Chapter 2 doesn't mean that much.
Kathlen, Gnome Cleric/Illusionist, 3rd BG2 update
At the city gates, ready for your journey to the Umar Hills where Valygar the murderer is supposed to have a hideout, your plans change when Flydian from Trademeet urges you to stop in his town first. It's being attacked by endless hordes of animals, he tells you. High Merchant Logan Coprith tells you of people's suspicion of Druids in a nearby Grove. He introduces you to Cernd, an outsider Druid sent to investigate the Druids' acitivities. You escort him out of town, and he travels ahead of you to the Grove. When you enter the area, you cast invisibility on yourself. It allows you to reach the Druids' shelter unmolested by Spiders, Trolls, Spores, Shambling Mounds, wild animals or patrolling Druids.
In a Troll lair you cast Sanctuary and snatch a pair of Bracers of Archery), in an abandoned tower you find an enchanted scimitar, and in a shed you meet an elderly lady who sells potions. You meet with Cernd close to the entrance, where the two of you rest for a bit and prepare your spells in case the encounter with the Druids ends in hostilities. Invisibily, the two of you enter the shelter. You reveal yourself when you speak to their apparent leader, a woman named Faldorn. She tells you she took the Grove by force and she will defend it that way as well. The only way to get rid of her is through another Druid in a duel. This is where Cernd comes into play. He's still invisible when he steps into the small arena that seems to be made for the confrontation. He waits for Faldorn's Improved Invisibilities to expire before he casts Insect Plague on her. It shuts down his opponent's casting, buying him all the time he needs to summon Bears and Fire Elemental to defeat the woman.
I made a mistake in Kathlen's tackling of the Druid Grove: I forgot to have her fight Dalok: It meant she would never acquire the Gnasher Club. (Naturally Dalok is gone after Faldorn's demise.) With Item Upgrades that club can be forged by Cromwell into a better club, with either Blackblood or the Bone Club. Kathlen will have to become proficient in another weapon: Maces or Flails (Staves are scheduled for later).
You return to Trademeet to inform the High merchant and to deal with another problem of the townspeople: three Dao Djinn's that have monopolized trade. You buff with Stoneskin, Mirror Image and MSD, and assault the first Djinn with Minor Sequencered Magic Missiles. The creature casts Stoneskin and Improved Haste but soon panicks, and falls to your barrage of Magic Missiles.
An Efreeti bottle is your prize. Inside a tent, you face two more Djinns. You cast a Cloudkill and show them your Divine Wrath (twice).
You take one or two hits from your foes, and your Cloudkill's acidic vapors afflict you, if slightly. The Dao Djinns do not cope that well:
High Merchant Coprith and his people are most grateful for your help. They shower you with compliments, gold, jewellery, and the Shield of Harmony. With your new wealth you indulge in a small shopping spree. You acquire the Belt of the Inertial Barrier and the Blackblood Club from one of the merchants, several scrolls from another vendor and at the local smithy (including one of Spell Shield, I wonder if that's thanks to a mod), and some of many potions of mind focusing and genius that are for sale at the Temple of Waukeen. Your first spell scribing session since your arrival in Amn sees you copy the following spells to your spellbook: Teleport Field, Wizard Eye, Breach, Lower Resistance, PfNW, Spell Immunity, Spell Shield, Contigency, Death Fog, Flesh to Stone, Improved Haste, Pierce Magic, Protection from Magic Energy, PfMW, Stone to Flesh, Summon Nishruu, and Summon Hakeashar.
You rid the realms of Riejek Hidesman and an associate (whom you run into completely by accident), saving the life of their last victim, a girl named Raissa you restore. A Stoneskin and a Haste, complemented by the powers of of your deity Baravar Cloakshadow (DUHM, Holy Power, Righteous Magic) enable you to destroy two Skeleton Warriors and the Skeletons they spawn.
Amongst the remains of one of the Skeletal Warriors, you find the Mantle of Waukeen, the object of a longstanding feud between two of the town's most prominent families: the Lurraxols and the Alibakkars. Both have asked you to retrieve the mantle for them, but you're unwilling to pick sides and decide to leave the mantle in the care of the High Merchant.
With that business behind you, you finally travel to the Umar Hills to see if you can find Valygar. You stop in a small village in the hills called Imnesvale, and learn that the people there are greatly upset due to a number of killings and disappearances. You explore the village and its surroundings for a bit. You help some of the villagers with their own, more personal problems. For example, you buy a Beljuril gem off a farmer in need of coin, and for a fellow wizard named Jermien you slay a Killer Mimic and later, barely in time, the dysfunctional Golem that Jermien creates with the Mimic's blood.
You speak with a band of well-meaning monsters led by an Ogre Mage, that have suffered losses of their own. They speak of shadowy creatures, undead. Your visit to the lodge of Merella, Ranger-Protector of Imnesvale confirms this. Her diary points toward Temple Ruins north-west of Imnesvale. You inform the mayor and do not tarry in traveling to the Temple Ruins. The area is very dark and inhabited by Shade Wolves, Shadows, and Anath, a Lycanthrope that you follow into her cave. She speaks of a powerful Shade Lord, backed by an even mightier creature of darkness, as the source of the recent evil that has spread throughout the hills. She shifts into Wolf form to guide you toward the entrance to the Ruins. However before you leave a glittering circlet stashed away in an opening in the wall catches your keen Gnomish eye. Identification with your Glasses teaches you you've found a Circlet of the Archmagi.
It becomes your new headwear. I had to google to find the source of this item: Erephine's 1PP4 mod. Interestingly, in the unmodded EEs, the item can be found in the game files (and thus in EEKeeper), possibly because some of the EEs' visual enhancements (paperdolls, icons, etc) were taken from said excellent mod. I had to adjust the item in NearInfinity to make it behave in accordance with the item description in the above screenshot. It did not increase intelligence and saving throws by 1 but set saving throws vs. death, petrify and wands to 1 instead. I'm aware that the Helm of Balduran is superior, because the out-of-combat utility of +1 INT isn't as good as the Helm's in-combat advantage of +1 Thac0, but for RP/style purposes I prefer the circlet.
Before entering the Ruins you use one of three scrolls in your possession that protect against undead. Creatures that would normally cause trouble, such as Skeleton Warriors, Shadow creatures, Mummies, they all remain calm, as if they can't see you. You don't bother with fighting them, because as soon as you attack, they run. The only creature you kill is a Shadow Jailor, whose key you use to set a captured Halfling free from her cell. The Temple was previously dedicated to Amaunator. With logic and with your lore from Candlekeep you manage to solve a number of riddles so as to allow you access to the Shade Lord's dwelling. You pass through a large hall where you find the 'mightier creature of darkness' Anath told you about, nothing less than a Shadow Dragon. Thankfully a Shadow Dragon Wardstone you acquired from a Child Spirit Amauna keeps you from being noticed by the dragon. You rest and prepare lots of fire spells for your impending confrontation with the Shade Lord. Protected from Undead again, you leave the dragon's lair and find the Shade Lord next to a Shadow Altar. The Shade Lord is impassive, but the altar keeps spawning Shadows. You cast Greater Malison on the Shade Lord and Lower Resistance (2x). You then bombard the creatures in front of you with Fireballs, Flamestrikes and Holy Smites. Thus you slay the Shade Lord.
The Shadow Altar lasts a bit longer, but you manage to destroy it with Blackblood well before your protection from undead wears off.
The sky immediately brightens and you see Merella, Imnesvale's Ranger dying on the ground in front of you. Sadly, you're too late to save her. The mayor of the town is nevertheless pleased with your good work for the village, and rewards you with a suit of leather armor that you can sell. The initial objective of visiting the Umar Hills, finding Valygar, remains unfulfilled.
Back in Athkatla you lose more than 4,000 GP on a Scimitar you buy from a desperate man who needed the coin for medical care for his father, when an Abraxxi pretty much forces you to hand over the blade.
And at Cromwell's renowned smithy you spend another ten thousand on Improved Kitthix and an upgrade of the Weary Cudgel club acquired at the Shadow Thief Guild Hall.
You accept two tasks for the Temple of Helm: investigating the sewers for leads to a cult that orders its members to remove their eyes, and procuring 200 lbs of pure illithium ore for a sculpture by the artist Sir Sarles. In the sewers you use both your summons to deal with a Rakshasa. First your Efreeti. When you cast a Holy Smite on the Rakshasa, it angers the Efreeti summon, which tells you much about its alignment. Kitthix, more trustworthy, finishes the Rakshasa for you.
Here Kathlen's current Character Record (no buffs), and Inventory Screen:
I can just imagine what the people in the inn are thinking when they see Anslem and co. walk in. Especially as they'd have known that there was a flaming fist squad waiting for the murderers. Poor denizens of the sword coast...they still don't know what's hitting them.
This is starting to sound like a roleplaying run, but I swear I'll get back to the powergaming as soon as possible.
Snowy Tae just wasn't cutting it as the party's master, but she's the understanding type and wasn't offended when we decided to seek some outside help. After casting some divinations to figure out where to go, we head to the graveyard, informed of a potential friend we might meet under the crypts.
We find ourselves on a massive network of bridges made of grey silk, and get periodically ambushed by monstrous spiders. In a yawning cavern in the middle of the web, we spot a drow female playing with her spiders. We sneak in, unsure of her motives, and summon some critters in case things get violent.
When the drow notices our presence, she attacks, calling on her spiders to burst out of their human hosts and swarm us. We issue forth a trio of Leopards to tangle with the spiders, but hold them back from the drow.
Poppy calls in her nymphs to defuse the situation. In the heat of the battle, the nymphs manage to seduce the drow.
It doesn't work at first--this woman is quite stubborn--but after she and Fobie flood the air the insects, we decide to call it quits, and suffer through the insect bites together without fighting.
The drow's spiders perished in the battle, which is unfortunate. They might have been able to gobble up some the insects who were plaguing us at the time.
We give the drow our "greetings" and over the course of several rest periods we get to know the drow druid named Pai'Na. She has a wide variety of spells, including SR and vanilla druid and cleric spells, plus her Avenger spells, and is a pretty tough cookie when fully buffed and in spider form.
She also has a whole bunch of extra spell slots, and between Fobie, Pai'Na, and Snowy Tae, we can fully buff everyone but our perpetually invisible sprite, Poppy. With only one casting of Azama's recently attained Dispelling Screen and a Magic Resistance spell, Azama can reach over 90% MR. Pai'Na also has a base 50 MR.
Pai'Na also introduces us to a close friend of hers, a spider we nickname Kitty. Kitty doesn't last very long when she's summoned, but she's very enthusiastic about her new friends. Pai'Na is actually very inexperienced--she's level 12, but her XP is at 0--but she agrees to help discipline the harem every now and then to blow off steam in between encounters. She's awfully sweet, but she can be quite the demanding mistress when she wants to be.
She was trained as a cleric of Lolth back in her youth, but her tutors felt that her affection for spiders was inappropriate and misplaced. She managed to escape her home, taking some of her spiders with her, and nearly starved in the Underdark wilds before being taken in by some svirfneblin she coerced into feeding her and her spiders. The deep gnomes knew something was off, though--the svirfneblin are known as very wise folk, a wisdom without which they could not survive surrounded by the many nasty denizens of the Underdark--and after performing a divination spell, they discovered she was not an evil woman. After questioning her, they discovered she was an outcast from drow society, and decided to let her stay in their village if she and her spiders helped out the gnomes. She lived with the svirfneblin for many years before they asked her to leave. As much as she had tried to fit in, her relationship with her spiders was simply too unnerving for some of the gnomes.
On the way to Athkatla, she further developed her talents as a druid, though she could never truly shake her affection for Lolth, since she would never have met any of her spider friends if Lolth had not brought them into drow society. Since Pai'Na has helped spread her spiders wherever she treads, and since she has demonstrated her strength as a drow female, Lolth has seen fit to overlook her less than evil tendencies, and forgive her unorthodox affection for spiders, and so has continued to grant Pai'Na her cleric spells, even as Pai'Na pursues a different path.
Poppy, though, is a passionate follower of Sune and Lliira, and between the constant presence of nymphs and her fellow druid Fobie's disarming goofiness and natural charisma, Pai'Na may have trouble with her mother goddess. Lolth is not known for her tolerance of heretics.
@Gotural, thanks! I went for fast solutions because Kathlen still lacked the firepower for swift elimination of large groups of semi-powerful creatures like Spirit and Spectral Trolls, Bone Golems, Greater Mummies etc. With my warriors and rogues I normally fight such creatures, since they give good XP.
You're right about her AC. I had her buy the Bracers of AC3 quite early on, mainly because low AC helps Stoneskins last longer and because there aren't many other good Bracers/Gauntltets for Mages anyway. 18 Dex, Shield of Harmony, Cloak of the Sewers, Ring of the Princes, Claw of Kazgaroth, and the Circlet of the Archmagi all contribute as well in that respect of course. Question: do you (or anyone else) know whether the Reflection Shield only returns missiles that actually hit the shieldbearer, or does every missile bounce back to the attacker, regardless of whether the missile would normally hit? In the second first case, which sounds most realistic, Kathlen would actually have to worsen her AC against ranged attackers to take optimal advantage of the shield. Maybe I should test this.
As to the Circlet. It's quite possible it was introduced in BP2, but I have little experience with BP2 so couldn't tell for sure.
@Blackraven: I'm reasonably certain the Shield of Reflection only bounces missiles that hit. If you want to test it, you could just grab Nalia and have her take a few shots at you and see how long it takes for her to get hit.
@semiticgod, true, just tested ut with Korgan and his throwing axes. I also found that when Stoneskinned the hits do not bounce back (but strip the Stoneskins instead). Guess it's time for Kathlen to change her Boots of Avoidance a pair of Boots of Grounding.
@Demivrgvs: IR Arbane's Sword has a bonus to hit and save vs. breath on self per hit, but the probability is zero. The description doesn't mention this, so there's no incongruency, but I thought I'd mention it. I assume the sword was supposed to give those bonuses in an earlier version, but the probability was reduced to zero instead of removing them.
Things got a little weird in Poppy's run. But first, the normal stuff.
I got a little tired of Pai'Na's default voice set, which mirrors a standard drow female's (and for some reason did not include the "All glory for the dark mother" line that is my favorite), so I decided to change it around. I couldn't do so within the game, since Pai'Na doesn't count as a player-generated chracter (which is why you can't change, say, Minsc's voice options), nor could I do so when I switched the party over to my "mpsave" folder. I tweaked Pai'Na's file in Near Infinity, only to find that it didn't affect the Pai'Na in my party. I had to spawn a new copy, use CTRL-Q on her, and kick out the old Pai'Na, to get the new soundset. Now she uses the lines you hear from the soft-voiced Shadow Thief ladies ("An excellent day, for whatever you're after"). Now she sounds a little less shouty.
We got into some trouble with Suna Seni and her fellow slavers, with Fobie getting knocked out in round 2.
Fortunately for us, our token boy toy is immune to nonmagical weapons, and didn't take much damage after getting disabled. Pai'Na poisoned Suna Seni repeatedly, while Poppy called in the harem. We muddled through the fight.
We stopped by the Bridge District and looked into the local murders. A few minutes later, we solved the mystery Aegisfield was too understaffed to handle. We had to attack Rejiek Hidesman, who fled the scene. Close and detailed inspection of the man's bed uncovered a smooth leather gimp suit of human skin. Pity that a fellow connoisseur of the human form turned out to be a murderous psychopath. We tuck the suit back under the covers. We have no use for it now.
We also rescued a lady who had been kidnapped by some completely unrelated murderers (the Bridge District sure is a violent place), secreted away upstairs in a dilapidated building. For a moment, we were tempted to take advantage of the situation.
But she really didn't seem interested. Maybe we should have brought the nymphs along, and our encounter wouldn't have ended so abruptly.
Aegisfield gave us a big cash money wad for failing to nab Rejiek. With nothing more to do in the Bridge District for the time being, we headed to the Government District to rescue a fellow drow.
Apparently, SR's Chromatic Orb, even the druid version, counts as a mage spell, since the spell operates by casting one of many different spells, all of which are classified as mage spells. The Cowled Wizard appear to attack, since I accidentally cast Flame Arrow earlier on, and had received a warning already.
Since this is an unintended thingy, I used CTRL-Y on them and finished off the fanatics with divine spells.
I take the group to the Gate District, hoping to trigger the Renfeld ambush. But things didn't go quite like I planned.
We had some problems with the Renfeld ambush. And not for the reasons you'd expect.
Since I didn't want to arrive at the battle unbuffed, but was worried that the travel time would cause our buffs to wear off by the time the ambush triggered, I decided to cast one single defensive spell before leaving for the De'Arnise Hold. Since Azama has lots of spell slots, I decide it is safe to cast one Stoneskin spell, only to realize that I just broke the laws against magic. This time, for real. The Cowled Wizards are going to spawn in any second now.
Since I had no interest in fighting any high-level mages, with none of my buffs active and no summons on the map, I decided to flee rather than face the wizards. I leave Athkatla and trigger the Renfeld ambush.
Problem is... the Cowled Wizards aren't shy about chasing down rogue mages who are trying to flee town.
I didn't stick around long enough for them to spawn in the Gate District, and they don't spawn immediately. The net result is that they appeared right after I arrived in the Renfeld ambush area, and promptly joined the fight. And since I started casting my spells before I arrived, they got one round of free spellcasting. It doesn't look good.
Things start to go bad very fast. Aware of Poppy's poor HP and lack of immunities, I smuggle our favorite nymph away to the southeast and have her drink an Oil of Speed, which in IR are usable by Wizard Slayers.
Why an Oil of Speed? Well, haste effects have the peculiar effect of increasing not simply regeneration and poison effects, but also increasing the frequency of opcode 272, which can trigger an effect at regular intervals... and which is the very same opcode Poppy is supposed to use to summon nymphs. This means that I can justifiably summon more than one nymph per second if Poppy is hasted. The harem arrives in record numbers.
You see that Balor over to the left? Yeah, that's a Balor, with all the immunities and sky-high MR and combat stats and teleporting powers and, worst of all, the ability to see through invisibility. Poppy can't hide from a Balor. The odd thing is that these wizards shouldn't be able to summon Balors, since the SR description of Summon Fiend and Gate is that they summon Glabrezus and Pit Fiends, not Balors.
Bear in mind that Balors wear the RINGDEMN item, which grants them immunity to charm, confusion, poison, and hold. This makes them immune to all of the nymph's spells save one: Sphere of Chaos, which in SR as in vanilla has a chance of knocking the victim unconscious. Unfortunately for us, Sphere of Chaos no longer does any damage in SR, nor is it capable of disintegrating enemies. The positive effects, healing and haste, are also gone. It's strictly a disabling spell now.
The Cowled Enforcers have excellent saves, but their spell protections don't block Sphere of Chaos, a 7th-level spell. They get screwed up pretty bad. But the Balor remains perfectly functional, while our nymphs start panicking and fainting.
It's not clear how they got knocked out, but I believe one of the Sphere of Chaos spells belongs to the Cowled Enforcers, since that animation appeared before my nymphs started casting the spell. As for the fear effect, it might have been a Symbol spell, or the work of the Balor.
I completely flood our corner of the map with nymphs and Sphere of Chaos spells. But the Balor simply will not fall down. I know it's not immune to unconsciousness; I've already checked. Eventually I try something new: Balors are not immune to lightning damage, and every one of my nymphs has a Call Lightning spell memorized. I assign Fobie and about eight of the nymphs to cast the spell simultaneously. All of the lightning strikes come together to form a bright white glowing bolt, but it does little more than look pretty.
Instead, it simply prompts the Balor to target Fobie, who participated in the Call Lightning assault. And a wall of nymphs will do nothing to stop a teleportation spell.
Now Fobie is in direct peril. He has no possibility of surviving a Balor's claws. But the Balor gives up just seconds after Fobie starts to flee, and the beast is trapped behind a wall of nymphs, allowing Fobie to prance in the grass just a few steps away from the monster.
Then things get worse. It turns out one of the Cowled Enforcers managed to escape the field of magic, and adds another nasty critter to the party.
It's a Glabrezu, not a Balor, and though the Glabrezu isn't quite as strong, it does have the same teleportation powers and the same immunities to disablers as the Balor does.
I summon more nymphs and assign some of them to try Call Lightning on the Glabrezu. We break through its magic resistance!
Turns out Glabrezus, unlike Balors, are actually immune to electricity. Wow.
I've been considering fleeing the area for quite some time now, but I don't want to leave without Renfeld. If I don't carry him back to Athkatla, I miss out on the Harper quests. More importantly, if I left the battle early, then I would permanently lose all of the equipment that Azama and Snowy Tae lost upon their deaths. And one of the things I left on Snowy Tae's person was the Black Spider Figurine. Missing out on saving a man's life is one thing, but we are not leaving Kitty behind.
Pai'Na casts Sanctuary and scurries through the magical field to collect our lost equipment. Apparently one of the Cowled Enforcers has start whomping on Renfeld in her blind confusion.
Man, that guy has no luck.
Pai'Na brings back our equipment safely, including Kitty. The only thing we're missing is Renfeld. Then, we have a turning point.
The Balor falls unconscious, surrounded by nymphs. I order them to cast Cause Serious Wounds and attack the Balor. One of them lands a hit before it awakens. The damage is quite extreme.
Notice all the nymphs in the north half of the screen are confused. This is because Glabrezus can cast Confusion, and nymphs have terrible saving throws. There's actually a second Glabrezu running around by now, but it's been staying mostly out of sight.
I have some of the nymphs cast Mass Cure to heal up some of our injured friends. It's a very laggy and very pretty spell.
The Balor fades in and out of consciousness. I struggle to keep up the damage. Fobie summons an Air Elemental before getting dominated, knocked unconscious, and paralyed with fear all at once. The Air Elemental tries to hit the Balor, but the Balor keeps waking up, and we don't get automatic hits unless the Balor is unconscious.
I've been trying to conserve our summoning spells, since we need them to bring down the demons safely. We don't have the weapons to kill the demons, nor can our nymphs do the job, and the alternative is simply waiting until they despawn, which would be boring and take forever.
The Air Elemental hurts itself on the Balor's Aura of Flaming Death, so we have the nearby nymphs, who have already run out of Cause Serious Wounds spells, cast Mass Cure to keep the elemental alive. It slows down the computer a lot--the fan is running like crazy--but we really need that elemental alive. We've still got two more demons to take down.
One of the Cowled Enforcers dies offscreen. Apparently the nymphs to the northwest have run out of spells and started attacking the disabled wizards, and eventually broke through the mages' defenses. Another wizard falls a while later.
The computer is overheating. In order to avoid a crash, I have to clear some room. To do this, I teleport a group of nymphs from the southeast corner to the northwest corner of the map, to mimic the effects of having them walk across the map, without having to wait for them to make the trip. Unfortunately, I forgot to de-select Poppy and Pai'Na when I did so, and so they get transported to the corner as well. Renfeld's dialogue triggers, which shouldn't have happened until we walked over to him normally, so we have to pick him up before we fight our way through.
I teleport Poppy and Pai'Na back to the southeast corner to correct my mistake, but a Glabrezu follows after them. I summon more nymphs and have Pai'Na attack the Glabrezu. Some of the surrounding nymphs cast Call Lightning, while others cast Sphere of Chaos, but the nymphs are running out of spells. All the while, the spells active onscreen build up. We've only gotten one volley of Sphere of Chaos spells to wear off; the rest are all still floating around.
We knock out the Glabrezu, but have trouble dealing much damage to it. Most of our nearby nymphs don't have any more castings of Cause Serious Wounds, so Pai'Na has to bite at the snoozing demon's ankles on her own. She gets hit pretty bad whenever the Glabrezu wakes up, and half of the nymph army hurries over, or Dimension Doors over, to cast Mass Cure... another very visual-heavy spell.
BG2 stops responding. It comes back after a few seconds. It happens again.
I start spending more time looking at the northwest corner of the map, to minimize the processing power needed and prevent the computer from overheating. I only view the rest of the map while paused, also to minimize overheating.
Notice Fobie has managed to get hit by five separate disablers at once. Once he got hit by charm, he became vulnerable to all of our Sphere of Chaos spells, and he doesn't have 90% MR like the demons do. He's not going to do anything until that charm effect wears off.
BG2 stops responding again. I have to wait a little longer before I can pause it. I hit a lot of the nymphs with CTRL-Y, and accidentally slay a Glabrezu and a Cowled Enforcer. I unpause and let Pai'Na keep fighting the remaining Glabrezu. Meanwhile, the Balor is still stuck at Badly Injured, and I can't add any more nymphs to go hit it with Cause Serious Wounds, for fear that it would put too much pressure on my computer.
Another freeze. I remove some more nymphs with CTRL-Y. I close NI, DLTCEP, and Firefox. I've also turned off the space heater, since my apartment is normally too cold this time of year, but that's not enough. My laptop sits on a couple of books, which I flip over whenever the laptop starts overheating, to make sure it's on a reasonably cool surface, but that isn't enough, either. I move the computer to a new place, just to get away from any residual warmth it generated in my normal spot.
The Cowled Wizards are falling apart, and the demons are getting weaker, not even counting the accidental CTRL-Y kills. I consider fleeing the scene to avoid a crash, but we're finally winning the battle. The demons are tough, and we're having trouble dealing damage to them, but the nymphs are keeping them down, and even apart from the Mass Cure spells, we have lots of potions left. Meanwhile, the demons are approaching their despawning point. If we last long enough, they'll just vanish.
BG2 stops responding again. It recovers for a few seconds, then fades away for many more. It seems like the nymphs aren't the main cause of the slowdown. It's the Sphere of Chaos spells, which can even disable the computer itself. And unlike a Cloudkill or Stinking Cloud spell, there is no way to dispel the effect. They're stuck there and will remain for many more seconds. They're 10 rounds each in game time, and with the computer fading in and out of consciousness, that could take many minutes even without pauses.
I could flee the area, but we're winning the fight. And I don't want to leave before we do--I wasn't supposed to have been able to get Renfeld without visiting the far end of the map. I want to finish this battle.
Finally, I get a message from Windows saying BG2 is not responding. The program has fallen, and our save is lost.
I reload to try again, but this time, the Cowled Wizards don't spawn in, even though I loaded the Auto-Save from after Azama cast her Stoneskin spell and ostensibly triggered the Cowled Wizards' attack. I end up fighting the normal enemies instead, and deliver Renfeld to his friends without fighting the Cowled Wizards.
Technical limitations prevented our success. But I'm not willing to let the Cowled Wizards off that easy.
@Demivrgvs: IR Arbane's Sword has a bonus to hit and save vs. breath on self per hit, but the probability is zero. The description doesn't mention this, so there's no incongruency, but I thought I'd mention it. I assume the sword was supposed to give those bonuses in an earlier version, but the probability was reduced to zero instead of removing them.
Exactly. I left them there to quickly restore them if needed between beta builds. It was first supposed to just trigger a copy of Haste on hit (to replace vanilla's 1xDay Haste ability), then I opted for the current semi-unique variant. I also thought about simply putting on Arbane the permanent +1/2 apr of Kundane and change the latter into something more unique/useful (e.g. there's no short sword with elemental dmg or disabling effects).
I'll fix Avenger's copy of Chromatic Orb to not count as a mage spell. Thanks for pointing it out.
@semiticgod Incredible fight ! Somehow it looked like the Matrix to me. The Cowled Wizards were the Agents Smith and they knew they needed to make you stay here to prevent you to save Renfeld from the matrix, so they were summoning big baddies and force a lot of pressure on your computer. I don't know why but this is what it reminds me of. So many creatures and spell animations. Those are some amazing screenshots and a very very interesting story. It was a bit like a race against the clock except this time the clock was your computer overheating Also, thanks for the laugh !
It's the Sphere of Chaos spells, which can even disable the computer itself
Thanks @Arnaeus for your sympathies. Nice to see you here. I noticed your run. Will read later today @semiticgod, I agree traps are horrible. Very dangerous for me whenever I play a non-rogue solo. I generally know where the traps are, but am not very well aware of their effects. @Ygramul, I want to roll another Cleric/Illusionist. I think they're awesome. He or she would start in Candlekeep. How is your adventure going?
@Demivrgvs: Mazzy's Sword offers no save on its penalties, contrary to the description. Also, why remove the extra attack from the Shadow Thief Dagger? It's not like it's an overpowered item, considering the lack of STR bonuses.
After turning in Renfeld to Rylock, we sped through the Harper quests and paid a visit to Renal Bloodscalp and Mae'var. Poppy nearly died on the way to the Temple of Talos to fetch an amulet for Mae'var. We got caught in an ambush, and Poppy was backstabbed by a thief.
She has a slight weakness to piercing damage, on top of her low HP. But once she drank a potion, she was in good shape, and the thief lost interest in her after she started running away.
We also nabbed the Cloak of the Sewers on the way, though nobody in the party can identify it. I decide to have it identified later.
Rayic Gethras, as usual, is an issue. He shields himself with PFMW, and we don't really carry nonmagical weapons in this group (somehow I've forgotten to buy darts for Poppy, who has four pips in darts). Nor can we do much against his Improved Invisibility+SI: Divination Spell Trigger. The nymphs also fail to disable him with Sphere of Chaos (Ray-Ray has a save vs. spell of 1). But with our cleric buffs, we were able to wait out the duration of his PFMW spell, and he collapsed a few seconds after it wore off.
I did finish the Mae'var questline. I've died there once before, boxed in by an army of backstabbing thieves, and I am not interested in facing them again, despite the considerable XP and gold reward Renal gives you when Mae'var is dead. There is a potion in IR that prevents you from backstabbing--the Potion of Perception--and in IR, all potions are usable by Wizard Slayers like Poppy, but I don't think it would be enough. Even without a backstab multiplier, the thieves could still quite readily kill Poppy, and frankly I don't trust her to stay invisible, even if she drinks a potion.
Instead, I abandon the quest and side with Bodhi, and perform the first two quests, including sparing the life of the rich guy in the "unseemly task." Beyond that, I'm not interested in fussing with the Shadow Thieves just yet. I have to take down the Shade Lord first. There's a special cloak I need for Poppy.
I finally get the Cloak of the Sewers identified in Imnesvale. Snowy Tae can achieve immunity to damage with it, which I put to use only once in the Temple Ruins.
I don't know why I didn't try to make use of that cloak earlier. Maybe it's the same reason I forgot about Fobie's immunity to nonmagical weapons: I've just been too focused on Poppy and the harem.
I ponder many different possibilities for taking on the Shade Lord. Item Revisions gives a crippling nerf to Protection from Undead scrolls: instead of making the user invisible to undead, he or she merely gets some bonuses when fighting them. This time, I will not be able to take down the Shade Lord just by hiding behind a scroll. The scroll does, however, give immunity to level drain, but Spell Revisions makes that largely irrelevant for our group, since SR's Negative Plane Protection spell lasts 10 times as long as in the vanilla version: 50 rounds per casting.
But level drain is only one of many dangers of the SCS2 Shade Lord fight. The Shade Lord is a cleric/mage with access to the Black Blade of Disaster, which has gained a remarkable buff thanks to SR: instead of a 15% chance of disintegrating the target, it uses the SR disintegration method, which deals dozens of dice of damage on a failed save vs. spell, with a -2 penalty. And no, Death Ward does not protect against the IR/SR disintegration effect on the BBoD; it only gives immunity to the mage spell and the vanilla effect (opcode 238).
After poring over our spellbooks for a long while, I pick out a selection that seems to offer enough flexibility to survive a couple of Remove Magic spells. I don't have much defense against Black Blade of Disaster, but hopefully I won't have to deal with that.
I enter the area fully buffed and with everyone invisible. I need the extra time to seek out an advantageous position, at the south end of the map. This will force the Shade Lord to approach me.
Fobie brings out an Earth Elemental. I've chosen this summons because it has the highest STR of Fobie's options, and therefore will be the least likely to die from the enemy Shadows' STR drain. Poppy calls in a few members of the harem, mostly just to form a wall. I'm fairly certain the Shade Lord and all of the enemies are completely immune to every disabler the nymphs have. But putting a few more bodies in between us and the enemy will at least buy us some time.
Shadow Patrick is close enough to spot our summons, and the Shade Lord comes over soon after. I had hoped the Shade Lord would take longer to arrive, but that is no longer an option. As always, the Shade Lord brings out a PFMW spell, as well as a Spell Deflection spell... but no Dispelling Screen! The Shade Lord therefore only has 50 MR, and is vulnerable to our damage spells.
Pai'Na disables Shadow Patrick and the Shadow Altar with Web. We're off to a strong start.
Pai'Na successfully casts Insect Plague. Normally Fobie would cast this spell due to his superior casting time, but I decided he needed an extra Stoneskin instead, since we want him out in front, despite his terrible AC, to protect Pai'Na, who has no Stoneskin despite being a druid.
The enemies fail their save! Most importantly of all, the Shade Lord's spellcasting is disabled. Azama breaks down his Spell Deflection with a Secret Word spell (a pre-cast True Seeing spell, courtesy of Azama's Inquisitor kit, also removes the Shade Lord's illusions), while Fobie tries out some Fire Seeds on the enemy.
Fire Seeds do area-effect fire damage in SR as in vanilla, but in SR, the caster can fire off five seeds in one round, although the number of seeds is still quite limited. Fobie, at level 12, can only conjure six.
Why Fire Seeds? Well, the fire damage they do is nonmagical, meaning it bypasses the Shade Lord's MR, and since it is an area-effect weapon, it also bypasses the Shade Lord's PFMW spell. Fobie lands a hit on the Shadow Altar, but it doesn't quite reach the Shade Lord. The area-effect isn't quite big enough. Instead, Fobie targets one of the nymphs, since he has poor THAC0 and he can't reliably hit Pai'Na with them, and he'll get automatic hits on any disabled critter. This time, he manages to damage the Shade Lord.
So why is Pai'Na right next to the Shade Lord, if I don't want her spells getting disrupted? Well, now that the Shade Lord is already up in our face, and the Shadow Altar is failing to send a bunch of shadows our way, Fobie's access to Stoneskin isn't quite so meaningful, as we don't need him to absorb any physical attacks. Instead, we need to keep the Shade Lord from hitting the party with his Darkling Aura. To do that, we need Pai'Na, protected by SR's extra-long Negative Plane Protection spell, to hold the Shade Lord's attention.
While the Shade Lord is occupied, and the Shadow Altar and Shadow Patrick are webbed, the rest of the party acts to deal some spell damage. Fobie uses Call Lightning on the Shadow Altar, while Azama casts Flame Arrow at Shadow Patrick. Snowy Tae, for her part, attacks the Shadow Altar from afar using Spell Revision's Spiritual Hammer, which strikes from a distance as in IWD2, but unfortunately does not benefit from her 23 base STR. Poppy has relatively little to do, as her nymphs aren't much help, so she just summons a spirit animal (immune to level drain, notably) and stays out the way.
Shadow Patrick dies. Fobie gets too close to the Shade Lord, and loses a level. I underestimated the range of Darkling Aura. But the Shade Lord is in poor shape, and Pai'Na has just erected a Blade Barrier--which in SR bypasses magic resistance, and strikes twice per round.
In between the Insect Plague, Pai'Na's Blade Barrier, and Pai'Na's spider attacks, bolstered by Holy Power and Righteous Magic, which in SR tacks on 1d6 nonmagical magic damage to each melee strike, the Shade Lord is well beyond any hope of casting a spell. Even if he had made his save against Insect Plague, we would have a fairly strong chance of interrupting his spells. Pai'Na has Chromatic Orb, Fobie has Sunscorch, and Azama has Flame Arrow, which together have a pretty strong chance of overcoming the Shade Lord's base 50 MR.
But these spells were not necessary to bring the Shade Lord down. One of Pai'Na's insects gets the final blow.
The Shadow Altar soon breaks down. The battle is won! I find the cloak I want on the Shade Lord's body and hurry back to Imnesvale to identify it.
Turns out IR doesn't have a Cloak of Stars. Instead, it has a cloak that fires off a lightning bolt against melee attackers 20% of the time. It's a pretty nice item, but it's really not what I was looking for. I was expecting Poppy to start using a bunch of +5 darts, breaking through SCS2 mage's Improved Mantles and such. Those darts are no longer available, and the other magical darts have gotten badly nerfed. Darts of Wounding only do a fraction of their vanilla damage, and Darts of Stunning now only stun for 1 round, instead of 7.
I don't want to drag a gimped Archer all the way through Shadows of Amn. I take Poppy's proficiencies in darts and switch them to short bows. As a halfling, Poppy is able to use Mazzy's short bow, which has taken on all of Mazzy's vanilla sword's immunities, plus a few more. Poppy will have free action, including immunity to stun, so long as she carries the Bow of Arvoreen. And it's exactly those kinds of immunities that Poppy needs, since her friends can't target her with any buffing spells.
Anselm third update : Investigating the iron crisis.
After they bought some new and shiny equipments, Anselm decided that they were going to look for who was sending these mercenaries against them. And so their researches began in the Nashkel Mines. Soon after they entered, they scooted a group of Dwarves, ready to ambush them. Vynd put some traps, Kagain rushed in while Dorn and Anselm were pelting them from afar with their ranged, poisoned weapons.
This fight reinforced Anselm's conviction. The iron crisis was linked somehow to him. They continued their exploration and fought many Kobolds and finally they reached Mulahey which proven to be nothing more than a puppet. After they eliminated him, the party exited the mines and explored the area around them.
They found some crypts and looted some treasure, gave back his dagger to a revenant and met Narcillicus Harwilliger, a Mage who was experimenting his new spells to create and dominate Mustard Jellys. The squad attacked him and his creatures for the tokens he could have and put him down with poisoned weapons.
Afterward they came back to Nashkel to claim the reward for solving the crisis. The mayor told them to talk to the blacksmith in Beregost about the contaminated ore to get more infos.
Back in the town, a little girl approached the evil party and escorted them to meet the officer Vai, she wanted to talk with Anselm. But as soon as they entered the inn, they were attacked by a huge group of Flaming Fist Enforcers and a powerful Morningmaster under a permanent Improved Alacrity effect (like many Dark Horizons spellcasters).
The battle raged and many spells were fired.
At first it seemed like the forces of the law had the advantage, until Edwin threw a Horror spell which turned the tides.
After dispatching most of them, they took down the Morningmaster and finished the remaining guards. Anselm wanted to make an example to inspire fear in the population, so he orderer Edwin to cast some Fireball spells in the inn, killing everyone around.
And finally, injured during the slaughter, Anselm drained the life of the last commoner alive to recover.
Beregost wasn't destroyed, but the Flaming Fist will now think about it twice before attacking them ...
I take it that normally Officer Vai doesn't attack you there but the on entrance spawning of the flaming fist due to reputation caused her to side with them due to faction scripting?
@Demivrgvs: Mazzy's Sword offers no save on its penalties, contrary to the description. Also, why remove the extra attack from the Shadow Thief Dagger? It's not like it's an overpowered item, considering the lack of STR bonuses.
- I'll fix Mazzy's sword. - I didn't even knew I touched the Shadow Thief Dagger. If that apr was there it was not documented and surely not intentional. Also, no idea why that dagger should not get STR bonus.
Few more things:
- Darts are far from nerfed imo. Wounding does less damage yes, but it no longer allows a save (that's a big deal imo), Stunning doesn't have vanilla's insane duration (3 apr and stunned for 7 rounds? yeah, sounds balanced) but it's a magical dart now which can be used against more creatures and with that apr you can still stun-lock targets with it. Asp's Nest got a +1 enchantment and Crimson now deals fire dmg. I would have done more, but the intention surely wasn't to nerf the weapon type.
- quite a few SR players asked me to reduce the extremely long duration of certain long-terms buffs. Should I assume you agree stuff like Negative Plane Protection should not last so long? Vanilla's few rounds duration was useless imo, but I was going to suggest something like 5 turns (it goes up to 20 turns at lvl 20 now).
- otoh, Protection from Undead scroll was simply ridiculous and exploitable. IR's version is still useful imo but no longer allows cheesy tactics. I hope we agree on this despite your power-playing love.
- I really don't know if Death Ward should block BBoD's disintegrating effect...
I take it that normally Officer Vai doesn't attack you there but the on entrance spawning of the flaming fist due to reputation caused her to side with them due to faction scripting?
As soon as she saw me she said "Impudence of the highest order! Do you think you could sneak past without me noticing? Your face is well-known among the Flaming Fist, and you crimes will be punished." then she became hostile aswell as her minions and only a split second after, the Flaming Fist Enforcers spawned. I think it's because my reputation was at 1 when she spoke to me.
The Buff Question: It's a really hard question about the duration of buffs. The balance is radically different depending on whether you pre-buff or not. If you don't, and only cast buffs after the fight has begun, then duration isn't relevant unless it's really tiny, and the weaker buffs will be ignored in favor of the big ones. This will also make bonus spell slots much less useful, since you'll be using much fewer spells per rest period.
If you do pre-buff, then long-duration buffs allow you to tack on lots and lots of little buffs, and the effect is pretty extreme. The improved duration of Aid, Luck, and Bless mean my whole party has +2 to saving throws and THAC0, and +1 to damage and luck, on top of some skill bonuses. Without those long durations, I'll basically never use those spells in the first place, unless I've got a single-classed cleric who has nothing better to do. It certainly broadens the pool of useful spells, and lets the player avoid fussing over which buffs to cast first, but it also incentivizes investing more time in casting pre-buffs, which is generally a chore.
The Dart Balance Thingy: Darts of Stunning in vanilla really are quite overpowered... more because of the APR than anything else. Even with only 1 round of stun on hit, they're better at disabling their target than Celestial Fury, since the effect of both is nonmagical and level 0. It's just that it's a bigger fuss with a shorter duration, since you don't have as much time to capitalize on the disabled opponent. The equation might change if we have enemy clerics and so forth casting Chaotic Commands, or an unstun spell.
Now that I think about it... an even bigger issue is the supply of the darts. I love darts, but I usually end up hoarding Darts of Stunning and Darts of Wounding (same goes for Kuo-toa Bolts), and so I barely ever use them in the first place, for fear that I won't have them when I really need them.
And Speaking of Ammunition: One of the things I've long wanted to implement is a streamlined system for ammunition. Buying and stacking ammo is a pain, even with a high stacking cap. Plus, the limited supply of certain forms of ammunition incentivizes hoarding. So why not fix up all forms of ammunition so that they never run out, as in Firetooth, or the Quiver of Plenty? This would eliminate all of the hassle over when and where to use the items.
To balance it out, we could decrease the power of the ammo (and also tweak the cost, since each would have a stack of one). Reduce the chance of stunning to a certain percent, say. This way, a dart user could more comfortably switch between Darts of Stunning and the Crimson Dart, without worrying too much about using too many of the former. The rationalization for the change would be that each item represents a certain stack of them, and you would collect anything you've fired or thrown after the battle, hence the non-finite supply. Who says the magic of a Dart of Stunning is lost when it hits, when Celestial Fury never loses its charges?
Death Ward: It's not clear if Death Ward should block the BBoD instant death effect. If it does, then I would add on some other ability to BBoD so it's more than just a super-big sword against foes with Death Ward. It seems a bit silly for a 7th-level priest to be able to block a 9th-level spell, but then, they already can! Because DW blocks PW: Kill. I guess the question is whether we want to let DW block BBoD disintegration, because otherwise BBoD is crazily overpowered, or whether we want BBoD disintegration to bypass DW, in order to keep BBoD scary and dangerous, as a 9th-level spell should be.
One More Thing: Thanks for the Bag Holding in the Adventurer's Mart.
The Druid Grove exterior is simple. I just corral the summons, buff the hell out of everybody, and keep Poppy well out of the way. The Spirit Trolls have Greater Command, Flame Strike, and Unholy Blight thanks to Tactics, but the first two are useless with Chaotic Commands and Protection from Fire. Kyland Lind gives us little trouble--he seems to always fail his saves against Web--and though Dalok hit us with Insect Plague, we did the same to him.
Then came Faldorn. Faldorn is bad news.
I usually have Cernd deal with her, since he has a guaranteed win if he's fighting Faldorn outside of the party, but I notice the dialogue options let me send Fobie or Pai'Na ahead instead.
Pai'Na promptly dies. Funny thing is, she loses her spider shapeshift item on being transferred to the tiny little arena with Faldorn.
See that little fist of hers, next to the Shadow Thief Dagger? Pai'Na comes with an unremovable spider shapeshift token. It's impossible to take it away, but the fight with Faldorn tries its best to do so. It's actually still in Pai'Na's inventory, but it's not visible on the in-game screen. Which means Pai'Na has a weapon slot that's permanently unusable.
So. Not only does Faldorn arrive fully buffed, and shapeshifted, with three Dread Wolves as her allies, and not only does Pai'Na arrive unbuffed, in natural form, with no allies... but Pai'Na also permanently loses a weapon slot.
The imbalance is unrealistic. I try again with Fobie, only to realize that I can actually arrive with buffs. So you have to fight without items, but you can still pre-buff.
Then I find that not all pre-buffs work.
See the little Harm icon in Pai'Na's weapon slot? That's a non-functional copy, it seems.
ALL items are removed on entering the arena. Including magical weapons. But since SCS2 uses item-based shapeshifting... this means Faldorn can arrive with an item--her shapeshifting token--but Pai'Na can't arrive with her own token, even if it serves the same purpose.
And creating a shapeshift token costs one round. So even if you do want to shapeshift, Faldorn gets one extra round of free action, since she doesn't spend her first round creating a shapeshift token. Another unfair advantage, alongside the three Dread Wolves.
Pai'Na apparently cannot attack with the Harm spell. Faldorn chunks her.
And yet... despite the battle clearly being over, with Pai'Na permanently dead... Faldorn does not reappear.
Faldorn is stuck in the arena. I can't even reach her with Dimension Door using Azama. Faldorn is simply gone. She broke the entire questline!
So we have four things going wrong, aside from chunking Pai'Na: (1) an understandable one, in which Pai'Na's unmovable item was moved, (2) Harm being disabled despite other pre-buffs working fine, (3) Faldorn getting an extra round, plus three allies, and (4) Faldorn breaking the quest if she chunks her enemy.
This is not acceptable. One weird quirk that cripples Pai'Na, a quasi-bug that weakens her further, an uneven fighting ground in which the whole point of the encounter is to have a fair fight (it's a one-on-one challenge with no items because it's a contest of power, independent of one's possessions and allies), and on top of that, a quest-breaking bug.
Out of curiosity, I try again. I want to see how the battle goes if Pai'Na's shapeshift token and Harm spell weren't removed. I give her a custom item with aura cleansing and casting speed bonus to cast her buffs at the start of the fight, including a Harm spell to use on Faldorn and a Fire Elemental summons to match Faldorn's Dread Wolves. I hit her with the Harm spell, which in SR deals 90 damage (Faldorn has 96 at most) but cannot reduce the target below 1 HP. Since Pai'Na has 0 THAC0 when she's using Harm, she easily lands a hit on Pai'Na. This is what happens.
See that little "1" right there? No, the Harm spell didn't do 1 damage instead of 90. Harm did absolutely nothing. That 1 damage is from Righteous Magic, which in SR adds 1d6 magic damage to every melee hit. Looking at Faldorn's files, I have no idea why she's immune to Harm. The only version of Faldorn that should be immune is the pre-challenge version, in which she's supposed to be invincible. Otherwise she's supposed to be vulnerable. Maybe it's a bug. So that's five things going wrong.
I keep fighting anyway, disabling her repeatedly with Web. Somehow, Pai'Na gets webbed, too.
The spider shapeshift token is supposed to grant immunity to Web spells, but it only protects against mage versions. It offers no protection against the Avenger version, which Pai'Na uses.
But Pai'Na is supposed to be immune anyway, since her shapeshift token isn't the standard SCS2 one. Her token gives immunity to Web's opcodes, and therefore protects against all forms of Web. She can conjure the standard one, since she's an Avenger, but I can't give her her own unique version, with its full immunity to webs, because her version is unmovable. After she fails her save four rounds in a row, and then a fifth time shortly after, I finally decide to give her a Ring of Free Action to mimic the effects of her own token, to which she's supposed to have access.
She still loses the fight (the Web spell eventually went away), but only just barely. If she had had her own shapeshift token, the way Faldorn does, and if she had her buffs up and allies ready, the way Faldorn does, she should have killed Faldorn two times over: first, with Harm, and a second time while Faldorn was webbed and Pai'Na got automatic hits in. But a fair fight between Faldorn and Pai'Na isn't possible without cheating in the right items. I decide to let Cernd have the kill. He fights outside the party, and survives despite taking hundreds of damage because of an item that prevents him from dropping below 1 HP.
I've actually seen him fail this fight before, due to some other bug in which he wasn't rendered unkillable, but this time he succeeded. Now the quest can be completed.
Losing Pai'Na is one thing. I can always add on some other random NPC (I already have one idea of who to pick). But losing her because of an error in the scripting (SCS2 naturally doesn't account for non-joinable NPCs like Pai'Na joining the party) and an engine limitation (Harm being removed when it's not supposed to be an item conceptually) and a conceptual problem with Faldorn's token and summons (the purpose of the challenge is to have a fair fight, and Faldorn gets her token and her allies without having to spend rounds conjuring them) and an immunity of unknown source (it's not clear where Faldorn got any immunity to the Harm effect, which just uses the normal damage opcode)... and then having a quest-breaking bug happen on top of that, ruining the entire questline... is another thing entirely.
I think I'll drop Pai'Na from the party anyway, despite all the nonsense that led to her permanent death. But I'm not willing to tolerate Faldorn breaking the questline. I'll permit myself a reload in order to complete the quest.
Comments
Anyway, nice to see you roleplay the party true to its members' alignments. Severe suffering is being administered to the denizens of the Sword Coast.
They make quite the racket when they all die at once. Poppy likes the sounds they make.
Anyway, we've got some slavers to murder. Since we're taking on a bigger challenge than before, I make sure the whole party is mobilized, and we're not just using the nymphs for everything. We enter the room while invisible and Azama (I almost wrote Imber, since it's my sorceror) casts Fireball to soften up the cleric.
Azama has taken on her Salamander form, finally making use of her Avenger kit. Notice also the big flaming Fire Elemental thrashing around to the right. Fobie has just hit level 11 (druids level so fast until level 13 and 14) and has gained two 6th-level spell slots thanks to his memorization bonuses, which he is using for Fire and Earth Elementals. SR also adds in a nice Air Elemental form, with 3 APR, but I need these summons more as tanks than anything else, and the Earth Elemental's physical damage resistances, at 40%, are the more useful option for me.
Somehow, Poppy ends up in the middle of Azama's Fireball.
That could have been the end of the run--Poppy doesn't have a huge weakness to fire damage, but her HP is quite low--but the enemy wasn't able to capitalize on Poppy's weakness, and she was able to restore her health completely with a Potion of Extra Healing, which in IR heals 30 HP because round numbers.
What was Poppy doing in the range of the Fireball? Well, I had ordered her to attack Captain Haegan, but when our summons got in the way, she tried walking around the crates and barrels in the center of the room, and therefore ended up just a few steps away from the Cleric of Cyric that Azama was targeting.
It's not a good sign. As a Wizard Slayer, Poppy can't equip many items to boost her resistances, and because she's invisible, we can't target her with buffs! On top of that, Azama's INT is so low (at 2) that she can't even use IR mage scrolls, which could let her cast situational buffs on Poppy. I'm going to have to keep Poppy well out of the way if she is to survive with 30 base HP and a save vs. breath of 12 (and SR damage spells basically all use save vs. breath).
She gets savaged again by a Slaver Guard with a scimitar, again, despite her lacking any major weaknesses to the damage type. She has to down another potion to escape alive.
We have no thief, so Snowy Tae, as the party member with the highest HP, has to trigger the trap leading to the next section.
Since Snowy Tae has fantastic saves when fully buffed (save vs. death at -6, save vs. spell at 1), I decide to let her walk through the Prismatic Spray trap as well, which only takes out a third of her HP, and allows her to direct a horde of animal summons against the second half of the area's enemies.
In SR, druids get summoning spells at every level, and Fobie is stuffed with them. He can't stop enemy archers or mages from targeting Snowy Tae, but he can box in enemy warriors and set up a wall against the rest, allowing Snowy Tae to retreat into the Yuan-ti's room when she gets hurt. Poppy adds nymphs and spirit animals (like Imber, she's a Totemic Druid) to the fray when necessary. The enemy mages make a whole lot of saves against the nymphs' spells, but they can only last so long before our summons break through their defenses.
Once the mages are gone, I have Snowy Tae lead a few more critters around the room to clear up the remaining guards. Finally, Fobie summons an Earth Elemental and we bring down the trolls, with SR's new Sunscorch spell for the final blow.
The nymphs comfort the children and we set them free. We sure made an awful lot of widows, but we got three kids out of slavery, and more importantly, we got some minor loot and XP.
We camp out in the sewers because we're too lazy to talk to Bernard for a room, and the first dream cutscene triggers. For some reason, Imoen is talking to herself.
Normally Charname would be in that screenshot, but Poppy is mostly transparent due to her invisibility, and her colors blend right in with the ground. Can you see her?
Back in the Copper Coronet, we attack the next group of guards unbuffed. Somehow I forgot that Tactics throws in a whole bunch of extra enemies to this fight. Going in without buffs was a mistake. Azama fails a save against Chromatic Orb. It isn't pretty.
SR gives random effects to Chromatic Orb. Apparently one of them is poison. Problem is, Poppy, the only party member with an Elixir of Health, is hidden in the next room, trapped behind a wall of nymphs that she led inside in the hopes that the nymphs would take care of everything. Meanwhile, Snowy Tae and Fobie have already cast their spells for the round, and they have two extra guards to deal with. Azama is poisoned, has no Stoneskin, is already at low HP by virtue of having about 30 max HP (like Poppy, and also Fobie), and she has a buffed mage right in front of her.
If she stays in Salamander form, the haste effect will increase the damage from her poison. If she reverts to natural form, then she has 14 base AC. Yes, 14.
I keep her alive with potions, since any Stoneskin she might try to cast would be interrupted by the poison damage (she has a casting penalty of 2) and she needs healing more than she needs any spells. Meanwhile, I get the harem to cast Sphere of Chaos, pacifying the guards in the other room.
Azama gets pummeled by the enemy mage, since she can't cast Stoneskin, but eventually the harem teleports in to help her out, casting Mass Cure and slaying the mage that poisoned her.
Now all that's left is the Beastmaster. Fobie summons some of his animal buddies and runs over to the Beastmaster under the effects of Azama's invisibility spell. His summons follow after him, and attack the Beastmaster while Fobie stays hidden. Poppy, for her party, keeps the exit blocked off with nymphs, who will serve both as our defensive wall and our disablers.
Turns out Fobie's summons just weren't up to the task.
But then, I didn't use the best he had. Since he can't summon anything else without breaking his invisibility, I have Poppy use Hide in Shadows and lead her harem over to the Beastmaster. They cause all kinds of chaos, giving Fobie the breathing room to use some offensive spells. The tide turns in our favor.
We free Hendak, slay some more hapless guards on the way to Lehtinan, and sell off everything we can. We've built up a nice stash of gold, but then I discover that Snowy Tae--who as an Archer and a cleric has been placing lots of pips into Slings--cannot use slings.
I thought Cavaliers were just unable to specialize in missile weapons; I didn't know they couldn't use them at all. Maybe this is just an Item Revisions change, but either way, Snowy Tae is missing the single best way to utilize her massive 23 STR without putting her in range of the melee weapons to which she is so vulnerable.
I suppose it's appropriate to have a strong woman in leather dominating a harem with a token pretty boy thrown in the mix, but it means Snowy Tae can't take advantage of the metal armors that give boosts to physical damage resistance in Item Revisions. Armor of Faith is also nerfed to 10% resistance and is non-stackable, which means we can't capitalize on the few positive resistances that we have. Resistance stacking brings increasing returns, but our resistances start out so low that we can't get much benefit from them, even with items and spells to help out. We're going to have to keep relying on summons and careful positioning if we want to avoid taking damage. Besides, Snowy Tae is too warm and fuzzy to be a good dominatrix, leather or no leather. We may need some outside help for that.
I always have the nymphs, but I don't want to solve every problem by summoning hordes of hot women to tackle the enemy. This isn't a roleplaying run.
I'll try my best to destroy the city of Baldur's Gate.
Concerning your run, I think you hit the difficulty spike at the start of BG2, especially for casters. Suddenly all your foes have good saves, HP, and most of them have MR compared to BG1. The Robe of Vecna you bought will certainly help until you get access to most level 7 and 8 spells. I hope you'll be able to use Time Stop soon
@Gotural, you're right about the first part being so hard. Especially as a multi having over 1 million XP in earlyish Chapter 2 doesn't mean that much.
Kathlen, Gnome Cleric/Illusionist, 3rd BG2 update
At the city gates, ready for your journey to the Umar Hills where Valygar the murderer is supposed to have a hideout, your plans change when Flydian from Trademeet urges you to stop in his town first. It's being attacked by endless hordes of animals, he tells you. High Merchant Logan Coprith tells you of people's suspicion of Druids in a nearby Grove. He introduces you to Cernd, an outsider Druid sent to investigate the Druids' acitivities. You escort him out of town, and he travels ahead of you to the Grove.
When you enter the area, you cast invisibility on yourself. It allows you to reach the Druids' shelter unmolested by Spiders, Trolls, Spores, Shambling Mounds, wild animals or patrolling Druids.
He's still invisible when he steps into the small arena that seems to be made for the confrontation. He waits for Faldorn's Improved Invisibilities to expire before he casts Insect Plague on her. It shuts down his opponent's casting, buying him all the time he needs to summon Bears and Fire Elemental to defeat the woman.
You return to Trademeet to inform the High merchant and to deal with another problem of the townspeople: three Dao Djinn's that have monopolized trade. You buff with Stoneskin, Mirror Image and MSD, and assault the first Djinn with Minor Sequencered Magic Missiles. The creature casts Stoneskin and Improved Haste but soon panicks, and falls to your barrage of Magic Missiles.
You rid the realms of Riejek Hidesman and an associate (whom you run into completely by accident), saving the life of their last victim, a girl named Raissa you restore. A Stoneskin and a Haste, complemented by the powers of of your deity Baravar Cloakshadow (DUHM, Holy Power, Righteous Magic) enable you to destroy two Skeleton Warriors and the Skeletons they spawn.
With that business behind you, you finally travel to the Umar Hills to see if you can find Valygar. You stop in a small village in the hills called Imnesvale, and learn that the people there are greatly upset due to a number of killings and disappearances. You explore the village and its surroundings for a bit. You help some of the villagers with their own, more personal problems. For example, you buy a Beljuril gem off a farmer in need of coin, and for a fellow wizard named Jermien you slay a Killer Mimic and later, barely in time, the dysfunctional Golem that Jermien creates with the Mimic's blood.
The area is very dark and inhabited by Shade Wolves, Shadows, and Anath, a Lycanthrope that you follow into her cave. She speaks of a powerful Shade Lord, backed by an even mightier creature of darkness, as the source of the recent evil that has spread throughout the hills. She shifts into Wolf form to guide you toward the entrance to the Ruins. However before you leave a glittering circlet stashed away in an opening in the wall catches your keen Gnomish eye. Identification with your Glasses teaches you you've found a Circlet of the Archmagi.
I had to google to find the source of this item: Erephine's 1PP4 mod. Interestingly, in the unmodded EEs, the item can be found in the game files (and thus in EEKeeper), possibly because some of the EEs' visual enhancements (paperdolls, icons, etc) were taken from said excellent mod. I had to adjust the item in NearInfinity to make it behave in accordance with the item description in the above screenshot. It did not increase intelligence and saving throws by 1 but set saving throws vs. death, petrify and wands to 1 instead.
I'm aware that the Helm of Balduran is superior, because the out-of-combat utility of +1 INT isn't as good as the Helm's in-combat advantage of +1 Thac0, but for RP/style purposes I prefer the circlet.
Before entering the Ruins you use one of three scrolls in your possession that protect against undead. Creatures that would normally cause trouble, such as Skeleton Warriors, Shadow creatures, Mummies, they all remain calm, as if they can't see you. You don't bother with fighting them, because as soon as you attack, they run. The only creature you kill is a Shadow Jailor, whose key you use to set a captured Halfling free from her cell.
The Temple was previously dedicated to Amaunator. With logic and with your lore from Candlekeep you manage to solve a number of riddles so as to allow you access to the Shade Lord's dwelling. You pass through a large hall where you find the 'mightier creature of darkness' Anath told you about, nothing less than a Shadow Dragon. Thankfully a Shadow Dragon Wardstone you acquired from a Child Spirit Amauna keeps you from being noticed by the dragon. You rest and prepare lots of fire spells for your impending confrontation with the Shade Lord. Protected from Undead again, you leave the dragon's lair and find the Shade Lord next to a Shadow Altar. The Shade Lord is impassive, but the altar keeps spawning Shadows. You cast Greater Malison on the Shade Lord and Lower Resistance (2x). You then bombard the creatures in front of you with Fireballs, Flamestrikes and Holy Smites. Thus you slay the Shade Lord.
Back in Athkatla you lose more than 4,000 GP on a Scimitar you buy from a desperate man who needed the coin for medical care for his father, when an Abraxxi pretty much forces you to hand over the blade.
In the sewers you use both your summons to deal with a Rakshasa. First your Efreeti. When you cast a Holy Smite on the Rakshasa, it angers the Efreeti summon, which tells you much about its alignment. Kitthix, more trustworthy, finishes the Rakshasa for you.
Here Kathlen's current Character Record (no buffs), and Inventory Screen:
Also, I think I saw the Circlet of the Archimagi somewhere in the unmodded game, maybe Black Pits 2 ?
Good progress !
Snowy Tae just wasn't cutting it as the party's master, but she's the understanding type and wasn't offended when we decided to seek some outside help. After casting some divinations to figure out where to go, we head to the graveyard, informed of a potential friend we might meet under the crypts.
We find ourselves on a massive network of bridges made of grey silk, and get periodically ambushed by monstrous spiders. In a yawning cavern in the middle of the web, we spot a drow female playing with her spiders. We sneak in, unsure of her motives, and summon some critters in case things get violent.
When the drow notices our presence, she attacks, calling on her spiders to burst out of their human hosts and swarm us. We issue forth a trio of Leopards to tangle with the spiders, but hold them back from the drow.
Poppy calls in her nymphs to defuse the situation. In the heat of the battle, the nymphs manage to seduce the drow.
It doesn't work at first--this woman is quite stubborn--but after she and Fobie flood the air the insects, we decide to call it quits, and suffer through the insect bites together without fighting.
The drow's spiders perished in the battle, which is unfortunate. They might have been able to gobble up some the insects who were plaguing us at the time.
We give the drow our "greetings" and over the course of several rest periods we get to know the drow druid named Pai'Na. She has a wide variety of spells, including SR and vanilla druid and cleric spells, plus her Avenger spells, and is a pretty tough cookie when fully buffed and in spider form.
She also has a whole bunch of extra spell slots, and between Fobie, Pai'Na, and Snowy Tae, we can fully buff everyone but our perpetually invisible sprite, Poppy. With only one casting of Azama's recently attained Dispelling Screen and a Magic Resistance spell, Azama can reach over 90% MR. Pai'Na also has a base 50 MR.
Pai'Na also introduces us to a close friend of hers, a spider we nickname Kitty. Kitty doesn't last very long when she's summoned, but she's very enthusiastic about her new friends. Pai'Na is actually very inexperienced--she's level 12, but her XP is at 0--but she agrees to help discipline the harem every now and then to blow off steam in between encounters. She's awfully sweet, but she can be quite the demanding mistress when she wants to be.
She was trained as a cleric of Lolth back in her youth, but her tutors felt that her affection for spiders was inappropriate and misplaced. She managed to escape her home, taking some of her spiders with her, and nearly starved in the Underdark wilds before being taken in by some svirfneblin she coerced into feeding her and her spiders. The deep gnomes knew something was off, though--the svirfneblin are known as very wise folk, a wisdom without which they could not survive surrounded by the many nasty denizens of the Underdark--and after performing a divination spell, they discovered she was not an evil woman. After questioning her, they discovered she was an outcast from drow society, and decided to let her stay in their village if she and her spiders helped out the gnomes. She lived with the svirfneblin for many years before they asked her to leave. As much as she had tried to fit in, her relationship with her spiders was simply too unnerving for some of the gnomes.
On the way to Athkatla, she further developed her talents as a druid, though she could never truly shake her affection for Lolth, since she would never have met any of her spider friends if Lolth had not brought them into drow society. Since Pai'Na has helped spread her spiders wherever she treads, and since she has demonstrated her strength as a drow female, Lolth has seen fit to overlook her less than evil tendencies, and forgive her unorthodox affection for spiders, and so has continued to grant Pai'Na her cleric spells, even as Pai'Na pursues a different path.
Poppy, though, is a passionate follower of Sune and Lliira, and between the constant presence of nymphs and her fellow druid Fobie's disarming goofiness and natural charisma, Pai'Na may have trouble with her mother goddess. Lolth is not known for her tolerance of heretics.
You're right about her AC. I had her buy the Bracers of AC3 quite early on, mainly because low AC helps Stoneskins last longer and because there aren't many other good Bracers/Gauntltets for Mages anyway. 18 Dex, Shield of Harmony, Cloak of the Sewers, Ring of the Princes, Claw of Kazgaroth, and the Circlet of the Archmagi all contribute as well in that respect of course.
Question: do you (or anyone else) know whether the Reflection Shield only returns missiles that actually hit the shieldbearer, or does every missile bounce back to the attacker, regardless of whether the missile would normally hit? In the second first case, which sounds most realistic, Kathlen would actually have to worsen her AC against ranged attackers to take optimal advantage of the shield. Maybe I should test this.
As to the Circlet. It's quite possible it was introduced in BP2, but I have little experience with BP2 so couldn't tell for sure.
Guess it's time for Kathlen to change her Boots of Avoidance a pair of Boots of Grounding.
Things got a little weird in Poppy's run. But first, the normal stuff.
I got a little tired of Pai'Na's default voice set, which mirrors a standard drow female's (and for some reason did not include the "All glory for the dark mother" line that is my favorite), so I decided to change it around. I couldn't do so within the game, since Pai'Na doesn't count as a player-generated chracter (which is why you can't change, say, Minsc's voice options), nor could I do so when I switched the party over to my "mpsave" folder. I tweaked Pai'Na's file in Near Infinity, only to find that it didn't affect the Pai'Na in my party. I had to spawn a new copy, use CTRL-Q on her, and kick out the old Pai'Na, to get the new soundset. Now she uses the lines you hear from the soft-voiced Shadow Thief ladies ("An excellent day, for whatever you're after"). Now she sounds a little less shouty.
We got into some trouble with Suna Seni and her fellow slavers, with Fobie getting knocked out in round 2.
Fortunately for us, our token boy toy is immune to nonmagical weapons, and didn't take much damage after getting disabled. Pai'Na poisoned Suna Seni repeatedly, while Poppy called in the harem. We muddled through the fight.
We stopped by the Bridge District and looked into the local murders. A few minutes later, we solved the mystery Aegisfield was too understaffed to handle. We had to attack Rejiek Hidesman, who fled the scene. Close and detailed inspection of the man's bed uncovered a smooth leather gimp suit of human skin. Pity that a fellow connoisseur of the human form turned out to be a murderous psychopath. We tuck the suit back under the covers. We have no use for it now.
We also rescued a lady who had been kidnapped by some completely unrelated murderers (the Bridge District sure is a violent place), secreted away upstairs in a dilapidated building. For a moment, we were tempted to take advantage of the situation.
But she really didn't seem interested. Maybe we should have brought the nymphs along, and our encounter wouldn't have ended so abruptly.
Aegisfield gave us a big cash money wad for failing to nab Rejiek. With nothing more to do in the Bridge District for the time being, we headed to the Government District to rescue a fellow drow.
Apparently, SR's Chromatic Orb, even the druid version, counts as a mage spell, since the spell operates by casting one of many different spells, all of which are classified as mage spells. The Cowled Wizard appear to attack, since I accidentally cast Flame Arrow earlier on, and had received a warning already.
Since this is an unintended thingy, I used CTRL-Y on them and finished off the fanatics with divine spells.
I take the group to the Gate District, hoping to trigger the Renfeld ambush. But things didn't go quite like I planned.
Since I didn't want to arrive at the battle unbuffed, but was worried that the travel time would cause our buffs to wear off by the time the ambush triggered, I decided to cast one single defensive spell before leaving for the De'Arnise Hold. Since Azama has lots of spell slots, I decide it is safe to cast one Stoneskin spell, only to realize that I just broke the laws against magic. This time, for real. The Cowled Wizards are going to spawn in any second now.
Since I had no interest in fighting any high-level mages, with none of my buffs active and no summons on the map, I decided to flee rather than face the wizards. I leave Athkatla and trigger the Renfeld ambush.
Problem is... the Cowled Wizards aren't shy about chasing down rogue mages who are trying to flee town.
I didn't stick around long enough for them to spawn in the Gate District, and they don't spawn immediately. The net result is that they appeared right after I arrived in the Renfeld ambush area, and promptly joined the fight. And since I started casting my spells before I arrived, they got one round of free spellcasting. It doesn't look good.
Things start to go bad very fast. Aware of Poppy's poor HP and lack of immunities, I smuggle our favorite nymph away to the southeast and have her drink an Oil of Speed, which in IR are usable by Wizard Slayers.
Why an Oil of Speed? Well, haste effects have the peculiar effect of increasing not simply regeneration and poison effects, but also increasing the frequency of opcode 272, which can trigger an effect at regular intervals... and which is the very same opcode Poppy is supposed to use to summon nymphs. This means that I can justifiably summon more than one nymph per second if Poppy is hasted. The harem arrives in record numbers.
You see that Balor over to the left? Yeah, that's a Balor, with all the immunities and sky-high MR and combat stats and teleporting powers and, worst of all, the ability to see through invisibility. Poppy can't hide from a Balor. The odd thing is that these wizards shouldn't be able to summon Balors, since the SR description of Summon Fiend and Gate is that they summon Glabrezus and Pit Fiends, not Balors.
Bear in mind that Balors wear the RINGDEMN item, which grants them immunity to charm, confusion, poison, and hold. This makes them immune to all of the nymph's spells save one: Sphere of Chaos, which in SR as in vanilla has a chance of knocking the victim unconscious. Unfortunately for us, Sphere of Chaos no longer does any damage in SR, nor is it capable of disintegrating enemies. The positive effects, healing and haste, are also gone. It's strictly a disabling spell now.
The Cowled Enforcers have excellent saves, but their spell protections don't block Sphere of Chaos, a 7th-level spell. They get screwed up pretty bad. But the Balor remains perfectly functional, while our nymphs start panicking and fainting.
It's not clear how they got knocked out, but I believe one of the Sphere of Chaos spells belongs to the Cowled Enforcers, since that animation appeared before my nymphs started casting the spell. As for the fear effect, it might have been a Symbol spell, or the work of the Balor.
I completely flood our corner of the map with nymphs and Sphere of Chaos spells. But the Balor simply will not fall down. I know it's not immune to unconsciousness; I've already checked. Eventually I try something new: Balors are not immune to lightning damage, and every one of my nymphs has a Call Lightning spell memorized. I assign Fobie and about eight of the nymphs to cast the spell simultaneously. All of the lightning strikes come together to form a bright white glowing bolt, but it does little more than look pretty.
Instead, it simply prompts the Balor to target Fobie, who participated in the Call Lightning assault. And a wall of nymphs will do nothing to stop a teleportation spell.
Now Fobie is in direct peril. He has no possibility of surviving a Balor's claws. But the Balor gives up just seconds after Fobie starts to flee, and the beast is trapped behind a wall of nymphs, allowing Fobie to prance in the grass just a few steps away from the monster.
Then things get worse. It turns out one of the Cowled Enforcers managed to escape the field of magic, and adds another nasty critter to the party.
It's a Glabrezu, not a Balor, and though the Glabrezu isn't quite as strong, it does have the same teleportation powers and the same immunities to disablers as the Balor does.
I summon more nymphs and assign some of them to try Call Lightning on the Glabrezu. We break through its magic resistance!
Turns out Glabrezus, unlike Balors, are actually immune to electricity. Wow.
I've been considering fleeing the area for quite some time now, but I don't want to leave without Renfeld. If I don't carry him back to Athkatla, I miss out on the Harper quests. More importantly, if I left the battle early, then I would permanently lose all of the equipment that Azama and Snowy Tae lost upon their deaths. And one of the things I left on Snowy Tae's person was the Black Spider Figurine. Missing out on saving a man's life is one thing, but we are not leaving Kitty behind.
Pai'Na casts Sanctuary and scurries through the magical field to collect our lost equipment. Apparently one of the Cowled Enforcers has start whomping on Renfeld in her blind confusion.
Man, that guy has no luck.
Pai'Na brings back our equipment safely, including Kitty. The only thing we're missing is Renfeld. Then, we have a turning point.
The Balor falls unconscious, surrounded by nymphs. I order them to cast Cause Serious Wounds and attack the Balor. One of them lands a hit before it awakens. The damage is quite extreme.
Notice all the nymphs in the north half of the screen are confused. This is because Glabrezus can cast Confusion, and nymphs have terrible saving throws. There's actually a second Glabrezu running around by now, but it's been staying mostly out of sight.
I have some of the nymphs cast Mass Cure to heal up some of our injured friends. It's a very laggy and very pretty spell.
The Balor fades in and out of consciousness. I struggle to keep up the damage. Fobie summons an Air Elemental before getting dominated, knocked unconscious, and paralyed with fear all at once. The Air Elemental tries to hit the Balor, but the Balor keeps waking up, and we don't get automatic hits unless the Balor is unconscious.
I've been trying to conserve our summoning spells, since we need them to bring down the demons safely. We don't have the weapons to kill the demons, nor can our nymphs do the job, and the alternative is simply waiting until they despawn, which would be boring and take forever.
The Air Elemental hurts itself on the Balor's Aura of Flaming Death, so we have the nearby nymphs, who have already run out of Cause Serious Wounds spells, cast Mass Cure to keep the elemental alive. It slows down the computer a lot--the fan is running like crazy--but we really need that elemental alive. We've still got two more demons to take down.
One of the Cowled Enforcers dies offscreen. Apparently the nymphs to the northwest have run out of spells and started attacking the disabled wizards, and eventually broke through the mages' defenses. Another wizard falls a while later.
The computer is overheating. In order to avoid a crash, I have to clear some room. To do this, I teleport a group of nymphs from the southeast corner to the northwest corner of the map, to mimic the effects of having them walk across the map, without having to wait for them to make the trip. Unfortunately, I forgot to de-select Poppy and Pai'Na when I did so, and so they get transported to the corner as well. Renfeld's dialogue triggers, which shouldn't have happened until we walked over to him normally, so we have to pick him up before we fight our way through.
I teleport Poppy and Pai'Na back to the southeast corner to correct my mistake, but a Glabrezu follows after them. I summon more nymphs and have Pai'Na attack the Glabrezu. Some of the surrounding nymphs cast Call Lightning, while others cast Sphere of Chaos, but the nymphs are running out of spells. All the while, the spells active onscreen build up. We've only gotten one volley of Sphere of Chaos spells to wear off; the rest are all still floating around.
We knock out the Glabrezu, but have trouble dealing much damage to it. Most of our nearby nymphs don't have any more castings of Cause Serious Wounds, so Pai'Na has to bite at the snoozing demon's ankles on her own. She gets hit pretty bad whenever the Glabrezu wakes up, and half of the nymph army hurries over, or Dimension Doors over, to cast Mass Cure... another very visual-heavy spell.
BG2 stops responding. It comes back after a few seconds. It happens again.
I start spending more time looking at the northwest corner of the map, to minimize the processing power needed and prevent the computer from overheating. I only view the rest of the map while paused, also to minimize overheating.
Notice Fobie has managed to get hit by five separate disablers at once. Once he got hit by charm, he became vulnerable to all of our Sphere of Chaos spells, and he doesn't have 90% MR like the demons do. He's not going to do anything until that charm effect wears off.
BG2 stops responding again. I have to wait a little longer before I can pause it. I hit a lot of the nymphs with CTRL-Y, and accidentally slay a Glabrezu and a Cowled Enforcer. I unpause and let Pai'Na keep fighting the remaining Glabrezu. Meanwhile, the Balor is still stuck at Badly Injured, and I can't add any more nymphs to go hit it with Cause Serious Wounds, for fear that it would put too much pressure on my computer.
Another freeze. I remove some more nymphs with CTRL-Y. I close NI, DLTCEP, and Firefox. I've also turned off the space heater, since my apartment is normally too cold this time of year, but that's not enough. My laptop sits on a couple of books, which I flip over whenever the laptop starts overheating, to make sure it's on a reasonably cool surface, but that isn't enough, either. I move the computer to a new place, just to get away from any residual warmth it generated in my normal spot.
The Cowled Wizards are falling apart, and the demons are getting weaker, not even counting the accidental CTRL-Y kills. I consider fleeing the scene to avoid a crash, but we're finally winning the battle. The demons are tough, and we're having trouble dealing damage to them, but the nymphs are keeping them down, and even apart from the Mass Cure spells, we have lots of potions left. Meanwhile, the demons are approaching their despawning point. If we last long enough, they'll just vanish.
BG2 stops responding again. It recovers for a few seconds, then fades away for many more. It seems like the nymphs aren't the main cause of the slowdown. It's the Sphere of Chaos spells, which can even disable the computer itself. And unlike a Cloudkill or Stinking Cloud spell, there is no way to dispel the effect. They're stuck there and will remain for many more seconds. They're 10 rounds each in game time, and with the computer fading in and out of consciousness, that could take many minutes even without pauses.
I could flee the area, but we're winning the fight. And I don't want to leave before we do--I wasn't supposed to have been able to get Renfeld without visiting the far end of the map. I want to finish this battle.
Finally, I get a message from Windows saying BG2 is not responding. The program has fallen, and our save is lost.
I reload to try again, but this time, the Cowled Wizards don't spawn in, even though I loaded the Auto-Save from after Azama cast her Stoneskin spell and ostensibly triggered the Cowled Wizards' attack. I end up fighting the normal enemies instead, and deliver Renfeld to his friends without fighting the Cowled Wizards.
Technical limitations prevented our success. But I'm not willing to let the Cowled Wizards off that easy.
I'll fix Avenger's copy of Chromatic Orb to not count as a mage spell. Thanks for pointing it out.
The Cowled Wizards were the Agents Smith and they knew they needed to make you stay here to prevent you to save Renfeld from the matrix, so they were summoning big baddies and force a lot of pressure on your computer. I don't know why but this is what it reminds me of.
So many creatures and spell animations. Those are some amazing screenshots and a very very interesting story.
It was a bit like a race against the clock except this time the clock was your computer overheating
Also, thanks for the laugh !
(The trap on the painting in Neb's house, which I knew was there, proved quite deadly, which is something I didn't know.)
She had come far.
Will you go back to BG1 or roll from BG2?
@semiticgod, I agree traps are horrible. Very dangerous for me whenever I play a non-rogue solo. I generally know where the traps are, but am not very well aware of their effects.
@Ygramul, I want to roll another Cleric/Illusionist. I think they're awesome. He or she would start in Candlekeep. How is your adventure going?
She has a slight weakness to piercing damage, on top of her low HP. But once she drank a potion, she was in good shape, and the thief lost interest in her after she started running away.
We also nabbed the Cloak of the Sewers on the way, though nobody in the party can identify it. I decide to have it identified later.
Rayic Gethras, as usual, is an issue. He shields himself with PFMW, and we don't really carry nonmagical weapons in this group (somehow I've forgotten to buy darts for Poppy, who has four pips in darts). Nor can we do much against his Improved Invisibility+SI: Divination Spell Trigger. The nymphs also fail to disable him with Sphere of Chaos (Ray-Ray has a save vs. spell of 1). But with our cleric buffs, we were able to wait out the duration of his PFMW spell, and he collapsed a few seconds after it wore off.
I did finish the Mae'var questline. I've died there once before, boxed in by an army of backstabbing thieves, and I am not interested in facing them again, despite the considerable XP and gold reward Renal gives you when Mae'var is dead. There is a potion in IR that prevents you from backstabbing--the Potion of Perception--and in IR, all potions are usable by Wizard Slayers like Poppy, but I don't think it would be enough. Even without a backstab multiplier, the thieves could still quite readily kill Poppy, and frankly I don't trust her to stay invisible, even if she drinks a potion.
Instead, I abandon the quest and side with Bodhi, and perform the first two quests, including sparing the life of the rich guy in the "unseemly task." Beyond that, I'm not interested in fussing with the Shadow Thieves just yet. I have to take down the Shade Lord first. There's a special cloak I need for Poppy.
I finally get the Cloak of the Sewers identified in Imnesvale. Snowy Tae can achieve immunity to damage with it, which I put to use only once in the Temple Ruins.
I don't know why I didn't try to make use of that cloak earlier. Maybe it's the same reason I forgot about Fobie's immunity to nonmagical weapons: I've just been too focused on Poppy and the harem.
I ponder many different possibilities for taking on the Shade Lord. Item Revisions gives a crippling nerf to Protection from Undead scrolls: instead of making the user invisible to undead, he or she merely gets some bonuses when fighting them. This time, I will not be able to take down the Shade Lord just by hiding behind a scroll. The scroll does, however, give immunity to level drain, but Spell Revisions makes that largely irrelevant for our group, since SR's Negative Plane Protection spell lasts 10 times as long as in the vanilla version: 50 rounds per casting.
But level drain is only one of many dangers of the SCS2 Shade Lord fight. The Shade Lord is a cleric/mage with access to the Black Blade of Disaster, which has gained a remarkable buff thanks to SR: instead of a 15% chance of disintegrating the target, it uses the SR disintegration method, which deals dozens of dice of damage on a failed save vs. spell, with a -2 penalty. And no, Death Ward does not protect against the IR/SR disintegration effect on the BBoD; it only gives immunity to the mage spell and the vanilla effect (opcode 238).
After poring over our spellbooks for a long while, I pick out a selection that seems to offer enough flexibility to survive a couple of Remove Magic spells. I don't have much defense against Black Blade of Disaster, but hopefully I won't have to deal with that.
I enter the area fully buffed and with everyone invisible. I need the extra time to seek out an advantageous position, at the south end of the map. This will force the Shade Lord to approach me.
Fobie brings out an Earth Elemental. I've chosen this summons because it has the highest STR of Fobie's options, and therefore will be the least likely to die from the enemy Shadows' STR drain. Poppy calls in a few members of the harem, mostly just to form a wall. I'm fairly certain the Shade Lord and all of the enemies are completely immune to every disabler the nymphs have. But putting a few more bodies in between us and the enemy will at least buy us some time.
Shadow Patrick is close enough to spot our summons, and the Shade Lord comes over soon after. I had hoped the Shade Lord would take longer to arrive, but that is no longer an option. As always, the Shade Lord brings out a PFMW spell, as well as a Spell Deflection spell... but no Dispelling Screen! The Shade Lord therefore only has 50 MR, and is vulnerable to our damage spells.
Pai'Na disables Shadow Patrick and the Shadow Altar with Web. We're off to a strong start.
Pai'Na successfully casts Insect Plague. Normally Fobie would cast this spell due to his superior casting time, but I decided he needed an extra Stoneskin instead, since we want him out in front, despite his terrible AC, to protect Pai'Na, who has no Stoneskin despite being a druid.
The enemies fail their save! Most importantly of all, the Shade Lord's spellcasting is disabled. Azama breaks down his Spell Deflection with a Secret Word spell (a pre-cast True Seeing spell, courtesy of Azama's Inquisitor kit, also removes the Shade Lord's illusions), while Fobie tries out some Fire Seeds on the enemy.
Fire Seeds do area-effect fire damage in SR as in vanilla, but in SR, the caster can fire off five seeds in one round, although the number of seeds is still quite limited. Fobie, at level 12, can only conjure six.
Why Fire Seeds? Well, the fire damage they do is nonmagical, meaning it bypasses the Shade Lord's MR, and since it is an area-effect weapon, it also bypasses the Shade Lord's PFMW spell. Fobie lands a hit on the Shadow Altar, but it doesn't quite reach the Shade Lord. The area-effect isn't quite big enough. Instead, Fobie targets one of the nymphs, since he has poor THAC0 and he can't reliably hit Pai'Na with them, and he'll get automatic hits on any disabled critter. This time, he manages to damage the Shade Lord.
So why is Pai'Na right next to the Shade Lord, if I don't want her spells getting disrupted? Well, now that the Shade Lord is already up in our face, and the Shadow Altar is failing to send a bunch of shadows our way, Fobie's access to Stoneskin isn't quite so meaningful, as we don't need him to absorb any physical attacks. Instead, we need to keep the Shade Lord from hitting the party with his Darkling Aura. To do that, we need Pai'Na, protected by SR's extra-long Negative Plane Protection spell, to hold the Shade Lord's attention.
While the Shade Lord is occupied, and the Shadow Altar and Shadow Patrick are webbed, the rest of the party acts to deal some spell damage. Fobie uses Call Lightning on the Shadow Altar, while Azama casts Flame Arrow at Shadow Patrick. Snowy Tae, for her part, attacks the Shadow Altar from afar using Spell Revision's Spiritual Hammer, which strikes from a distance as in IWD2, but unfortunately does not benefit from her 23 base STR. Poppy has relatively little to do, as her nymphs aren't much help, so she just summons a spirit animal (immune to level drain, notably) and stays out the way.
Shadow Patrick dies. Fobie gets too close to the Shade Lord, and loses a level. I underestimated the range of Darkling Aura. But the Shade Lord is in poor shape, and Pai'Na has just erected a Blade Barrier--which in SR bypasses magic resistance, and strikes twice per round.
In between the Insect Plague, Pai'Na's Blade Barrier, and Pai'Na's spider attacks, bolstered by Holy Power and Righteous Magic, which in SR tacks on 1d6 nonmagical magic damage to each melee strike, the Shade Lord is well beyond any hope of casting a spell. Even if he had made his save against Insect Plague, we would have a fairly strong chance of interrupting his spells. Pai'Na has Chromatic Orb, Fobie has Sunscorch, and Azama has Flame Arrow, which together have a pretty strong chance of overcoming the Shade Lord's base 50 MR.
But these spells were not necessary to bring the Shade Lord down. One of Pai'Na's insects gets the final blow.
The Shadow Altar soon breaks down. The battle is won! I find the cloak I want on the Shade Lord's body and hurry back to Imnesvale to identify it.
Turns out IR doesn't have a Cloak of Stars. Instead, it has a cloak that fires off a lightning bolt against melee attackers 20% of the time. It's a pretty nice item, but it's really not what I was looking for. I was expecting Poppy to start using a bunch of +5 darts, breaking through SCS2 mage's Improved Mantles and such. Those darts are no longer available, and the other magical darts have gotten badly nerfed. Darts of Wounding only do a fraction of their vanilla damage, and Darts of Stunning now only stun for 1 round, instead of 7.
I don't want to drag a gimped Archer all the way through Shadows of Amn. I take Poppy's proficiencies in darts and switch them to short bows. As a halfling, Poppy is able to use Mazzy's short bow, which has taken on all of Mazzy's vanilla sword's immunities, plus a few more. Poppy will have free action, including immunity to stun, so long as she carries the Bow of Arvoreen. And it's exactly those kinds of immunities that Poppy needs, since her friends can't target her with any buffing spells.
After they bought some new and shiny equipments, Anselm decided that they were going to look for who was sending these mercenaries against them.
And so their researches began in the Nashkel Mines.
Soon after they entered, they scooted a group of Dwarves, ready to ambush them. Vynd put some traps, Kagain rushed in while Dorn and Anselm were pelting them from afar with their ranged, poisoned weapons.
This fight reinforced Anselm's conviction. The iron crisis was linked somehow to him.
They continued their exploration and fought many Kobolds and finally they reached Mulahey which proven to be nothing more than a puppet. After they eliminated him, the party exited the mines and explored the area around them.
They found some crypts and looted some treasure, gave back his dagger to a revenant and met Narcillicus Harwilliger, a Mage who was experimenting his new spells to create and dominate Mustard Jellys. The squad attacked him and his creatures for the tokens he could have and put him down with poisoned weapons.
Afterward they came back to Nashkel to claim the reward for solving the crisis. The mayor told them to talk to the blacksmith in Beregost about the contaminated ore to get more infos.
Back in the town, a little girl approached the evil party and escorted them to meet the officer Vai, she wanted to talk with Anselm.
But as soon as they entered the inn, they were attacked by a huge group of Flaming Fist Enforcers and a powerful Morningmaster under a permanent Improved Alacrity effect (like many Dark Horizons spellcasters).
The battle raged and many spells were fired.
At first it seemed like the forces of the law had the advantage, until Edwin threw a Horror spell which turned the tides.
After dispatching most of them, they took down the Morningmaster and finished the remaining guards.
Anselm wanted to make an example to inspire fear in the population, so he orderer Edwin to cast some Fireball spells in the inn, killing everyone around.
And finally, injured during the slaughter, Anselm drained the life of the last commoner alive to recover.
Beregost wasn't destroyed, but the Flaming Fist will now think about it twice before attacking them ...
I take it that normally Officer Vai doesn't attack you there but the on entrance spawning of the flaming fist due to reputation caused her to side with them due to faction scripting?
- I didn't even knew I touched the Shadow Thief Dagger. If that apr was there it was not documented and surely not intentional. Also, no idea why that dagger should not get STR bonus.
Few more things:
- Darts are far from nerfed imo. Wounding does less damage yes, but it no longer allows a save (that's a big deal imo), Stunning doesn't have vanilla's insane duration (3 apr and stunned for 7 rounds? yeah, sounds balanced) but it's a magical dart now which can be used against more creatures and with that apr you can still stun-lock targets with it. Asp's Nest got a +1 enchantment and Crimson now deals fire dmg. I would have done more, but the intention surely wasn't to nerf the weapon type.
- quite a few SR players asked me to reduce the extremely long duration of certain long-terms buffs. Should I assume you agree stuff like Negative Plane Protection should not last so long? Vanilla's few rounds duration was useless imo, but I was going to suggest something like 5 turns (it goes up to 20 turns at lvl 20 now).
- otoh, Protection from Undead scroll was simply ridiculous and exploitable. IR's version is still useful imo but no longer allows cheesy tactics. I hope we agree on this despite your power-playing love.
- I really don't know if Death Ward should block BBoD's disintegrating effect...
The Buff Question:
It's a really hard question about the duration of buffs. The balance is radically different depending on whether you pre-buff or not. If you don't, and only cast buffs after the fight has begun, then duration isn't relevant unless it's really tiny, and the weaker buffs will be ignored in favor of the big ones. This will also make bonus spell slots much less useful, since you'll be using much fewer spells per rest period.
If you do pre-buff, then long-duration buffs allow you to tack on lots and lots of little buffs, and the effect is pretty extreme. The improved duration of Aid, Luck, and Bless mean my whole party has +2 to saving throws and THAC0, and +1 to damage and luck, on top of some skill bonuses. Without those long durations, I'll basically never use those spells in the first place, unless I've got a single-classed cleric who has nothing better to do. It certainly broadens the pool of useful spells, and lets the player avoid fussing over which buffs to cast first, but it also incentivizes investing more time in casting pre-buffs, which is generally a chore.
The Dart Balance Thingy:
Darts of Stunning in vanilla really are quite overpowered... more because of the APR than anything else. Even with only 1 round of stun on hit, they're better at disabling their target than Celestial Fury, since the effect of both is nonmagical and level 0. It's just that it's a bigger fuss with a shorter duration, since you don't have as much time to capitalize on the disabled opponent. The equation might change if we have enemy clerics and so forth casting Chaotic Commands, or an unstun spell.
Now that I think about it... an even bigger issue is the supply of the darts. I love darts, but I usually end up hoarding Darts of Stunning and Darts of Wounding (same goes for Kuo-toa Bolts), and so I barely ever use them in the first place, for fear that I won't have them when I really need them.
And Speaking of Ammunition:
One of the things I've long wanted to implement is a streamlined system for ammunition. Buying and stacking ammo is a pain, even with a high stacking cap. Plus, the limited supply of certain forms of ammunition incentivizes hoarding. So why not fix up all forms of ammunition so that they never run out, as in Firetooth, or the Quiver of Plenty? This would eliminate all of the hassle over when and where to use the items.
To balance it out, we could decrease the power of the ammo (and also tweak the cost, since each would have a stack of one). Reduce the chance of stunning to a certain percent, say. This way, a dart user could more comfortably switch between Darts of Stunning and the Crimson Dart, without worrying too much about using too many of the former. The rationalization for the change would be that each item represents a certain stack of them, and you would collect anything you've fired or thrown after the battle, hence the non-finite supply. Who says the magic of a Dart of Stunning is lost when it hits, when Celestial Fury never loses its charges?
Death Ward:
It's not clear if Death Ward should block the BBoD instant death effect. If it does, then I would add on some other ability to BBoD so it's more than just a super-big sword against foes with Death Ward. It seems a bit silly for a 7th-level priest to be able to block a 9th-level spell, but then, they already can! Because DW blocks PW: Kill. I guess the question is whether we want to let DW block BBoD disintegration, because otherwise BBoD is crazily overpowered, or whether we want BBoD disintegration to bypass DW, in order to keep BBoD scary and dangerous, as a 9th-level spell should be.
One More Thing:
Thanks for the Bag Holding in the Adventurer's Mart.
Then came Faldorn. Faldorn is bad news.
I usually have Cernd deal with her, since he has a guaranteed win if he's fighting Faldorn outside of the party, but I notice the dialogue options let me send Fobie or Pai'Na ahead instead.
Pai'Na promptly dies. Funny thing is, she loses her spider shapeshift item on being transferred to the tiny little arena with Faldorn.
See that little fist of hers, next to the Shadow Thief Dagger? Pai'Na comes with an unremovable spider shapeshift token. It's impossible to take it away, but the fight with Faldorn tries its best to do so. It's actually still in Pai'Na's inventory, but it's not visible on the in-game screen. Which means Pai'Na has a weapon slot that's permanently unusable.
So. Not only does Faldorn arrive fully buffed, and shapeshifted, with three Dread Wolves as her allies, and not only does Pai'Na arrive unbuffed, in natural form, with no allies... but Pai'Na also permanently loses a weapon slot.
The imbalance is unrealistic. I try again with Fobie, only to realize that I can actually arrive with buffs. So you have to fight without items, but you can still pre-buff.
Then I find that not all pre-buffs work.
See the little Harm icon in Pai'Na's weapon slot? That's a non-functional copy, it seems.
ALL items are removed on entering the arena. Including magical weapons. But since SCS2 uses item-based shapeshifting... this means Faldorn can arrive with an item--her shapeshifting token--but Pai'Na can't arrive with her own token, even if it serves the same purpose.
And creating a shapeshift token costs one round. So even if you do want to shapeshift, Faldorn gets one extra round of free action, since she doesn't spend her first round creating a shapeshift token. Another unfair advantage, alongside the three Dread Wolves.
Pai'Na apparently cannot attack with the Harm spell. Faldorn chunks her.
And yet... despite the battle clearly being over, with Pai'Na permanently dead... Faldorn does not reappear.
Faldorn is stuck in the arena. I can't even reach her with Dimension Door using Azama. Faldorn is simply gone. She broke the entire questline!
So we have four things going wrong, aside from chunking Pai'Na: (1) an understandable one, in which Pai'Na's unmovable item was moved, (2) Harm being disabled despite other pre-buffs working fine, (3) Faldorn getting an extra round, plus three allies, and (4) Faldorn breaking the quest if she chunks her enemy.
This is not acceptable. One weird quirk that cripples Pai'Na, a quasi-bug that weakens her further, an uneven fighting ground in which the whole point of the encounter is to have a fair fight (it's a one-on-one challenge with no items because it's a contest of power, independent of one's possessions and allies), and on top of that, a quest-breaking bug.
Out of curiosity, I try again. I want to see how the battle goes if Pai'Na's shapeshift token and Harm spell weren't removed. I give her a custom item with aura cleansing and casting speed bonus to cast her buffs at the start of the fight, including a Harm spell to use on Faldorn and a Fire Elemental summons to match Faldorn's Dread Wolves. I hit her with the Harm spell, which in SR deals 90 damage (Faldorn has 96 at most) but cannot reduce the target below 1 HP. Since Pai'Na has 0 THAC0 when she's using Harm, she easily lands a hit on Pai'Na. This is what happens.
See that little "1" right there? No, the Harm spell didn't do 1 damage instead of 90. Harm did absolutely nothing. That 1 damage is from Righteous Magic, which in SR adds 1d6 magic damage to every melee hit. Looking at Faldorn's files, I have no idea why she's immune to Harm. The only version of Faldorn that should be immune is the pre-challenge version, in which she's supposed to be invincible. Otherwise she's supposed to be vulnerable. Maybe it's a bug. So that's five things going wrong.
I keep fighting anyway, disabling her repeatedly with Web. Somehow, Pai'Na gets webbed, too.
The spider shapeshift token is supposed to grant immunity to Web spells, but it only protects against mage versions. It offers no protection against the Avenger version, which Pai'Na uses.
But Pai'Na is supposed to be immune anyway, since her shapeshift token isn't the standard SCS2 one. Her token gives immunity to Web's opcodes, and therefore protects against all forms of Web. She can conjure the standard one, since she's an Avenger, but I can't give her her own unique version, with its full immunity to webs, because her version is unmovable. After she fails her save four rounds in a row, and then a fifth time shortly after, I finally decide to give her a Ring of Free Action to mimic the effects of her own token, to which she's supposed to have access.
She still loses the fight (the Web spell eventually went away), but only just barely. If she had had her own shapeshift token, the way Faldorn does, and if she had her buffs up and allies ready, the way Faldorn does, she should have killed Faldorn two times over: first, with Harm, and a second time while Faldorn was webbed and Pai'Na got automatic hits in. But a fair fight between Faldorn and Pai'Na isn't possible without cheating in the right items. I decide to let Cernd have the kill. He fights outside the party, and survives despite taking hundreds of damage because of an item that prevents him from dropping below 1 HP.
I've actually seen him fail this fight before, due to some other bug in which he wasn't rendered unkillable, but this time he succeeded. Now the quest can be completed.
Losing Pai'Na is one thing. I can always add on some other random NPC (I already have one idea of who to pick). But losing her because of an error in the scripting (SCS2 naturally doesn't account for non-joinable NPCs like Pai'Na joining the party) and an engine limitation (Harm being removed when it's not supposed to be an item conceptually) and a conceptual problem with Faldorn's token and summons (the purpose of the challenge is to have a fair fight, and Faldorn gets her token and her allies without having to spend rounds conjuring them) and an immunity of unknown source (it's not clear where Faldorn got any immunity to the Harm effect, which just uses the normal damage opcode)... and then having a quest-breaking bug happen on top of that, ruining the entire questline... is another thing entirely.
I think I'll drop Pai'Na from the party anyway, despite all the nonsense that led to her permanent death. But I'm not willing to tolerate Faldorn breaking the questline. I'll permit myself a reload in order to complete the quest.