A big success against Kangaxx and the Twisted Rune, @Blackraven. Of course, I'm interested in knowing the order of your buffs
As for the group of Lucius, Hadhod, Drassisseilla, Elian and Scvertvdendinw, it met its premature end fighting an ordinary foe - Sunin, a mage, who carries Evermemory.
The fail feels as bad as it looks. We went in the building, Drassisseilla started to attack the mage without any dialogue, the mage hasted himself, threw Minor sequincer at Lucius, inflicting 30+ damage and then, before my character could replenish his health, Sunin casted fireball centered on Drassisseilla, but Lucius was in the area of the spell...
This loss came completely, uttely unexpected and ... silly. We had a lot of crashes before that, so I guess it played its part. Maybe because of those crashes I became a little bit incautious. I didn't even take a screenshot - so shocking the whole event was. We just defeated Davaeorn, survived a great scare against the Drasus party, and this happened.
Thank you @Musigny. I'm looking forward to trying EETactics! It's gonna be hrad though... Btw how is your run going?
I stopped playing. I covered chapter 5 and 6. Honestly there was no tipping point or perhaps the battle with Sunin when my initial strategy failed. The iron throne battle was nice as usual but it was quite deterministic despite the number of actors. I want to defeat Kahrk (I realized he is still there) and perhaps Daitel then I will rush through the BG city, leaving the vast majority of the ToSC areas unexplored. I will try to resume Jurs run this weekend.
At the moment I am investigating @Gotural 's findings on Ilyich. I am done with the obvious things and now I am tuning Zhivago the cleric. He cheats a bit but he is also severely crippled ... trying to find something more appropriate without denaturing the original script and mod. I am also trying to create a game crash with the gnomish illusionist, unsuccessfully so far. Fixed a couple of minor issues.
@bengoshi and other multiplayers, I'm sorry about your loss. It's easy to say in hindsight how it could have been prevented, but it's hard to always make the right decisions in battle, to position the characters in the best possible way etc. The good thing is that there's always a next attempt, no? I'm looking forward to it!
As to Bardin, yes I'm quite pleased with his progress. Both Kangaxx and Twisted Rune were tricky battles, and both yielded Bardin some nifty gear of course. Having a few HLAs under his belt really helped btw.
I'm not sure whether Bardin's buffing habits are anything special, but since you asked, I'll deliver.
First of all spell levels 6 and 7 offer little to nothing for Bardin in terms of buffs/protections. Level 6 has Physical Mirror, but Bardin prefers to work with the Reflection Shield to cover his defense against missiles. That way he has more Aerial Servants and Harms to cast. Level 7 has the Shield of the Archons, which offers nice protection against a lot of dangerous spells, but I haven't used it yet. This is thanks to the Shield of Fyrus Khal with its free casting of Spell Turning once per day, and also because Bardin's level 1-5 buffs, his fine Gnomish saves, and his stealth ability give him sufficient protection for now. Still, I expect Bardin to be using the spell later on. While sadly SotA doesn't ward off Dispel/Remove Magic, at least those spells don't remove the Shield itself. This means if I'm not mistaken, that once Bardin has been injured and Free Action and Chaotic Commands have been dispelled with Remove Magic, enemies still can't PW:Stun or Maze Bardin.
Ok, so what buffs does Bardin use? In the city he doesn't buff unless he expects a fight, but he tends to move around hidden in shadows. Also, Amulet of Power + Robe of Vecna means insta-cast Sanctuaries. In dungeons Bardin tends to activate protections with a longish duration: Chaotic Commands, Death Ward and PfEvil 10' Radius. (The latter spell has recently become somewhat less important to Bardin thanks to his procuring of the Staff of the Magi. He'll still cast it on summons though.)
In combat situations, the buffing depends (1) on whether there's time and RP-wise cause to prepare, and (2) on the nature of the enemies. At this stage I find that I'm becoming more flexible with the RPing though, as I don't want Bardin to die. Against non-caster types such as warriors, demons etc, HP + Righteous Magic + DUHM (in that order, because DUHM has the shortest duration) are Bardin's routine buffs. So far those spells, preferably combined with a Haste effect and with a speed weapon in the off-hand, have been working very well. I expect ToB to be another matter though, with tough and deadly warriors with Hardiness and Whirlwind HLAs. I'm afraid Bardin wil have to come up with other tactics there such as summons, crowd spells, sneak attacks, traps. Even with 45 to 70 physical resistance (Armor of Faith, Defender of Easthaven, Jan's Armor), I'm disinclined to have Bardin rely on damage resistance in ToB battles.
It's not surprisingly against casters and hostile parties containing casters that Bardin buffs the most. In addition to the already mentioned Chaotic Commands, Death Ward and PfE, he'll always cast Resist Fire/Cold (lvl 2 spell) and PfFire (lvl 3 spell) on himself because together those two spells completely neutralize Comet and Dragon's Breath and they also limit the impact of (sequencered) Flame Arrows. I actually have two of each memorized, and a stash of fire resistance potions in Bardin's potion bag in case his protections get repeatedly dispelled. Bardin also tends to cast PfLightning, even though enemy casters don't frequently use lightning spells. Remove Fear is another staple, and so has Free Action been thus far. However Bardin will start using Free Action reactively rather than proactively as soon as he acquires a pair of boots of speed, so as not to negate the movement speed advantage of said boots. Barkskin (slight AC bonus at higher level, +1 to saves vs everything except magic), Armor of Faith, which reduces not only physical but also magical and elemental damage (didn't know that until recently), and Aid, Chant and Bless (especially with summons around) complete the list. Those last three spells and Barkskin give only minor buffs, but together their effect is quite substantial: +3 to attack rolls, +3 to damage rolls, and +3 to saves (+2 vs spells). When combined with HP+RM+DUHM the offensive bonuses can make a difference e.g. with an opening backstab or a dispelling SotM attack, and the saves bonuses can make a Greater Malison less alarming.
The following would be a good casting order, from longest to shortest duration:
PfE 10' Radius (1 t/l) Chaotic Commands (1 t/l) Death Ward (1 t/l) PfLightning (5 r/l) Remove Fear (5 t) Free Action (1 t + 1 r/l) Barkskin (4 r + 1 r/l) Armor of Faith (3 r + 1 r/l) PfFire (3 r + 1 r/l) Shield of the Archons (3 r/l) Aid (1 r + 1 r/l) Resist Fire/Cold (1 r/l) Holy Power (1 r/l) Righteous Magic (1 r/l) DUHM (1 t) Chant (1 t) Bless (6 r)
I don't always adhere to this list though. Sometimes it's not necessary to cast all these spells for example, and besides some situations call for the inclusion of other buffs from items or potions, such as green scrolls, oils of speed, the Shield of Fyrus Khal's Spell Turning, etc. EDIT: I forgot to mention that it can be advantageous to not pre-buff beyond PfE 10' Radius, Chaotic Commands, Death Ward and maybe Remove Fear, because many enemy mages like to cast Remove Magic early on in battles. It's nice to not see all those carefully activated buffs removed at once.
Importantly Bardin memorizes at least two of each of the above spells (except for now Barkskin, Aid, Chant, Bless, and as mentioned SotA) because of the risk of Remove Magic.
I have re-started my old underused items and spells run. The rules are that I cannot use the 5 mage and priest spells of each spell level that I use most often, or the 1 items of each type and HLAs of each class that I use most often. This means no Potions of Extra Healing, nonmagical darts, Flail of Ages, nonmagical Full Plate Mail, Stoneskin, Mirror Image, PFMW, SI, Time Stop, Wish, Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, Remove Fear, or Animate Dead, among many, many other things.
I have also installed BP2 (not just Ascension), ATweaks, Rogue Rebalancing, and EETactics, to add more diversity to gameplay. I haven't installed SR or IR because I'm trying to use underpowered items and SR and IR make a lot of weak options much more viable.
This time our Charname is an Archer I will dual-class to mage. I don't have screenshots for the characters just yet, so I'll just say we have two Archers to dual-class to mage, a Fighter/Mage, a Cleric of Talos, and a Skald, with one character slot for NPCs. The reason I have so many mages is because ATweaks gives a PnP edit for Dimension Door and it lets you teleport anywhere on the map that you can currently see; not just within the caster's range. I will be abusing this at sub-optimal potential (that is, I won't be using a Fighter/Mage/Thief or Thief/Mage to backstab people and then incessantly teleport away).
I have never played ATweaks demons or Mephits or fey before. Turns out Lightning Mephits can't miss with their Lightning Bolts. Also, they have an electrical Fire Shield effect. And they can gate in other Mephits.
We got lucky with that one, but others will be tougher, particularly as they come in larger groups. Next up is a minor fight with some Duergar. Our Cleric of Talos grants himself immunity to the enemy's bolts, which can get really nasty in SCS.
SCS enemies are smart and know enough to attack our Fighter/Mage, who has the worst AC.
We muddle through and bring down the Duergar. One of the important things I do in these fights is run up the crossbowmen and attack them in melee, forcing them to switch to a weaker weapon, without a shield.
I forgot several rules during Chateau Irenicus. Specifically, the only armor I should be able to wear at this stage is leather armor and chain mail; no others.
Why? The most common splint mail I use is the nonmagical kind, which is the only kind around. Same goes for studded leather. But the most common non-studded leather and chain mail armors I use are the Night's Gift and Mail of the Dead, so I can wear the nonmagical versions. I also use Potions of Extra Healing, which I'm not supposed to.
I equip our Archers with crossbows, even though neither has any pips in them. Turns out Mineral Mephits are immune to both missile and piercing damage. This Mephit summons two others, so the battle lasts longer than I'd hoped.
As usual, Imoen sneaks past the next group of Duergar to nab the Activation Stone. We tackle the Lesser Clay Golems, and our Fighter/Mage again gets singled out as the character with the worst AC.
The Otyugh is a problem. Its slow effect on hit is unavoidable, and our AC isn't reliable enough to escape getting hit. So our Cleric of Lathander zaps it to death, using his superior movement speed to stay out of reach during casting.
I decide to take on Ilyich and his gang, and in the process cast a spell I'm not supposed to use.
This time I notice the mistake, but decide to run with it.
The first group of Duergar, in the library itself, fails to spawn. I run ahead to Ilyich himself. A bunch of melee Duergar run up to us, allowing our Charname to blast them with Divine Wrath.
This is the first time I've used this spell. The only reason I know how it works is because of @Blackraven's runs.
We fail to kill the enemy mage with missiles, costing our own Fighter/Mage a lot of HP. Meanwhile, the Duergar who failed to spawn before, spawn now, and run in to flank us.
Imoen tries to stop the enemy behind us with Stinking Cloud, but it doesn't work very well. We use another Divine Wrath spell and cut down Ilyich early in the hopes that he'll drop some nice potions.
The enemy mage gets a Horror spell off the ground. Mercifully, only one of us is affected, and the rest tear down the mage's Mirror Images and then the mage himself.
The enemy starts wearing thin. Imoen tries to clear them up with a Lightning Bolt, but Obwa, one of our Archers, gets caught in the middle.
We slowly wear down the remaining enemies, some of whom get caught in the Stinking Cloud. By the portal to the next floor, I use another forbidden spell by accident: Web.
The first level complete, we finally rest and move on to the Mephit Portal room. Knowing that the Mephits here are going to be a huge problem, we disable them first with a Horror spell from our Fighter/Mage.
We can then destroy the portals without resistance.
The Ellesime clone dies right after declaring her attack dialogue.
Even though EE added a comma to her final sentence, I still have no idea what she's saying.
The Salt Mephit up ahead can stun-lock basically any character without fail. Summons will soak up the attack.
Two tough battles remain. First is another pack of Duergar and another level 4 mage. Disablers work well against the first wave.
Hold Person is another spell I'm not supposed to use. I can use the mage version, but not the cleric version.
Imoen disables the mage with another Stinking Cloud (I've often used Web but not Stinking Cloud), but he gets back up shortly afterwards, and charms our Cleric of Lathander.
The mage proves hard to kill; we have trouble breaking through its Mirror Image spells. It weakens our Fighter/Mage and then stops one of his spells with a lucky attack roll.
Imoen finally brings him down with Chromatic Orb.
We're not allowed to use Magic Missile, but Chromatic Orb is fine. I don't use it often because the save bonus is so large.
Our Fighter/Mage gets torn to pieces, but because our party members are unconscious, he can't run away, even when he ditches his equipment to avoid getting over-encumbered. Imoen runs ahead and manages to draw the Duergar's attention, saving our Fighter/Mage's life.
Next, we face the Assassins on the way out. We Fireball and paralyze the mage, but the thieves get some backstab on Imoen and nearly kill her.
Since we're doing pretty okay, I decide we're strong enough to handle the Cambion.
Turns out the Cambion uses teleportation to buff himself in safety. I don't think I'm going to feel too bad about using Dimension Door for the same purpose.
He Slows half our party, but we outlast him. He has excellent damage output, but our numbers outweigh his.
Before we leave, I go back and free Minsc. I had originally planned on using Minsc as a tank until he got killed, and then doing much the same to Jaheira, but I couldn't have done so without kicking out Imoen, as I only had one space left for other party members.
As for the group of Lucius, Hadhod, Drassisseilla, Elian and Scvertvdendinw, it met its premature end fighting an ordinary foe - Sunin, a mage, who carries Evermemory.
I don't think Sunin is an ordinary foe, he is a level 11 mage with artificially low spell saving throws. After all Davaeorn has the same level with a different saving throw distribution. It is one of the hardest fights in chapter 5, if not the hardest for some party composition. No space to move and the room layout often interrupts the line of sight. With my duo I tried to isolate Sunin with a group of summoned creatures and this turned against me. Imoen had to leave the house, unexpectedly blinded. Charname survived because of several buffs including shield, minor deflection, high resistance to fire and electric damages.
EDIT: I am referring to SCS Sunin, the original mage is lvl 6.
Well, we'll see how the third attempt will go. But there's no doubt about it - the third attempt will happen. I thought it would be fair that somebody else took the Bhaalspawn role - this time Tresset.
In the meantime, I returned to the single player attempt with Hades, and the difference struck me like a lightning. Even with the insane damage, even with full-prebuffs from enemies, when you control everything and can pause whenever you wish, and not whenever the game lets you to do it, everything is easier.
The fight against the undercellar group (the last group before Sarevok) - took actually not more than 10 minutes.
We enter the fight fully ready - Hades is right behind the enemy mage.
The next second she's severely wounded by the backstab and poisoned by Dorn:
After that Dorn poisons the second caster:
A Safana's backstab is nowhere near the ones made by Hades - the difference between a thief and a thief with a fighter part is huge. Edwin lowers everyone's saving throws, and Baeloth tries his luck with the wand of paralysis on the warrior fighting with skeletons.
The wand works. The enemy mage is dead - the Dorn's poison did its work.
We have lots of invisibility potions so Hades and Safana can try a backstab after a backstab. Edwin casts Confusion.
The second arcane caster is dead.
The rest of the group followed swiftly.
This fight, coupled by yesterday's MP fiasco, made me think that actully when you play with the full-prebuffing component, in BG1 (I'm not speaking about BG2 here), and counter it your own prebuffing, the game is easier than when you play without this component and go into encounters without buffs.
I decided to try the party against Kahrk, to only see the same awesome results.
This is us entering the fight - BTW, the game tells that Kahrk has MGoI, not GoI:
Then Hades dispells illusions with his thieving ability - for a FMT, I put points only into stealth and Detect Illusion skills. The Detect Illusion works superbly.
After Edwin lowers Kahrk's saving throws, Baeloth tries his wand. And it sticks again.
So basically the fight was won before our mage, Edwin, finished casting his second battle spell, Confusion.
We enter the final building. Hades shoots Diarmid - the only enemy who can be seen besides Sarevok, and retreats the same moment the shot has been made.
Diarmid stands where he was, but this way we get the attention of Angelo.
I usually don't want to fight the whole Sarevok's band at once, and try to lure enemies, even while I don't solo. It's much safer this way.
While Angelo tries to come closer to our mages, Baeloth is casting Invisibility, radius, so that only skeletons should remain visible. Hades dispels Angelo's illusions.
After that Angelo casts his illusions again, Hades dispels them again, and both Hades and Dorn try to poison Angelo, who is busy with skeletons.
Both Hades and Dorn succeed in their poison.
Despite the poison, Angelo manages to cast Chaos. But exactly that time Hades gulps a Potion of Clarity - again, I wonder if it would be possible to react in time if it was a MP game.
Angelo was defeated.
Next, Hades attacks Diarmid - every time from the shadows, everytime from the distance of the line of sight, with constant retreating - Boots of Speed and a Potions of Speed make the process possible. It requires a little bit more than 50 arrows - Hades doesn't have any proficiencies in bows but his elf bonus, DEX and a potion of DEX+3 help to hit more often than not to hit. Diarmid three times gulped a potion of healing but in the end he was dead.
I deliberately gave a skeleton who was summoned on the Diarmid's corpse, a chance to see Hades and follow him. Tazok followed too and let me see him:
A huge backstab from Hades (with his triple multiplier, this actually was the biggest damage by Hades with one hit in the whole run) finished Tazok:
Usually Hades backstabbed at 30-40 damage. As a FMT, his multiplier was not superb. Also, he used short swords - not the optimal choice. But still these backstabs happened very often and nearly always hit.
Baeloth detected invisibility to see Semaj. Then Baeloth casted Invisibility on Dorn, Dorn activated his poison, and with 21 DEX (from Potions) the half-orc hit Semaj with his crossbow. Then I repeated the process.
Only Sarevok was left. Hades gulped a 23 STR potion and went on a backstabbing spree. Hades had a lot of Invis potions, so there was no risk.
As you see, even with not more than 115k of XP, a FMT managed to be amazingly effective in the party.
A FMT is a very, very, very strong character. And the fact he had a party around him actually made him stronger, not weaker.
These are his stats:
Even with not a maximum backstab multiplier, even with not the most optimal weapons from the damage point of view, a FMT managed to get 47 % of kills in the game, and this with Dorn and his Poison.
I actually enjoyed using short swords. The +2 sword is available ridiculously early, from a hobgoblin, and the +3 sword comes exatly before the final fights. The speed factor of magical short swords is awesome - it lets to backstab as fast as possible after the actual command. Also, dualwielding a +3 and +2 weapons with ** in them and ** in dualwielding gave good results in melee fighting. An Elf bonus to THAC0 helped here too.
I've become stronger in my feeling that if you prebuff then the fact enemies also prebuff doesn't matter much (for BG1, at least). If you use the right spells, your party just becomes as strong as it could be. 2 mages (besides a FMT) are needed for the best results.
These are the spells I used:
The 5th arcane spell level wasn't even needed. Reaching XP cap, getting the maximum level wasn't even needed.
BG1 can't beat you when you go into each fight with the following prebuffs:
Haste, Protection from Fear, Protection from Evil, Radius, (Shield, Mirror Image, Minor Spell Deflection for mages), Chant, Aid, (Holy Power, DUHM, Armor of Faith for clerics), Strenght (for those whose STR is less than 18, especially thieves), Improved Invisibility.
Add to that Poison weapons and backstabs with a Fighter THAC0.
Congrats @bengoshi! Beating the first game on no-reload and in nightmare mode is still a feat, even though you made it look easy
Nice analysis also. What you say about pre-buffing interests me. I wonder what your experience of the difference between no pre-buffs and full pre-buffs will be like in BG2.
As you know, I went from full enemy pre-buffing to 'Mages only insta-cast short-duration spells if created in sight of the PC'. My experience with Bardin compared for example to my previous run with Gerland with full-prebuffs, has thus far been that the difference isn't that noticeable since enemy mages have contingencies, sequencers and triggers containing the most important protections (think PfMW, Shadow Door, SI:Divination) to buy time with, and they tend to occupy Charname with minions (Fiends, Efreetis, Mordy Swords, and Simulacra that summon even more minions). Thus, they still get to cast a lot of their protections. Since I restrict pre-buffing on my own character, the main difference is that part of the buffing on either side takes place in the heat of combat rather than before/at the outbreak of battle. Buffing becomes an integral part of combat instead of a pre-battle routine that often takes as long as the actual battle if not longer. I do think that character class (when solo) or party composition can make a difference. For Gerland enemy pre-buffs weren't much of an issue because as a Skald he had a powerful Remove Magic, and he had Jan, Aerie, and Imoen with him, who all had Breaches, Pierce Magics, Ruby Rays etc. But for a solo Druid, like your Totemic, the difference between full pre-buffs and pre-buffs in sight of the PC may well be the difference between seeing an Insect Plague thwarted by a Fireshield and seeing an Insect Plague actually cause enemy mages a lot of trouble.
Now that Bardin has the SotM, limited pre-buffs might actually be harder to play than full pre-buffs, because with full pre-buffs Bardin's opening strike is likely to get rid of a longer list of enemy protections.
enemy mages have contingencies, sequencers and triggers containing the most important protections (think PfMW, Shadow Door, SI:Divination) to buy time with, and they tend to occupy Charname with minions (Fiends, Efreetis, Mordy Swords, and Simulacra that summon even more minions). Thus, they still get to cast a lot of their protections.
Exactly. And this is my view as well. Even in BG1, in the MP run, we saw it - enemy mages still succeed in triggering their protections because we can't kill them in the first couple of rounds. And if the party members weren't pre-buffed, you'll most likely won't be able to repeat enemies' speed so in the end it becomes harder, not easier to fight.
With Yahiko, it was full prebuffing from both sides, and actually I think that it helped me more, either than helped enemies more.
Both options can be viable. It's just that with full prebuffing you first learn your scheme and then improve it and after that repeat every time. I partly think it makes the game more mechanical, less intuitive.
For example, I enjoyed being able to defeat the Iron Throne party, the Undersellar party and Kahrk without much problem but some part of me felt a little bit strange everytime I started prebuffing.
On the contrary, the MP run is VERY intuitive. Of course, other participants play here a major role, with all their humour and commentaries, with all twists and turns in any second. But still, no prebuffing adds to the fun, I feel it. So maybe, actually, we're playing with the harder setting than we could, but in the same time it's more appealing. I would happily listen to other people, @Gotural , @Tresset, @CrevsDaak about this particular thing.
I forgot several rules during the first dungeon. These are all of the things I cannot use. Not all of them are the most powerful necessarily, but they are the ones I rely on the most often. I've changed a few since my previous underused items and spells run, and some I haven't decided on yet.
Weapons:
Frostreaver Jhor the Bleeder Namarra Arbane's Sword Poisoned Throwing Daggers Staff of Striking Tuigan Bow Heartseeker Firetooth (crossbow) Gnasher Runehammer Mace of Disruption Flail of Ages Belm Celestial Fury Spear of the Unicorn Duskblade Sling of Everard Darts (nonmagical) Arrows (nonmagical) Bolts (nonmagical) Bullets (nonmagical)
Equipment:
The Night's Gift Studded Leather Mail of the Dead Splint Mail Plate Mail +1 (any version?) Full Plate Mail Helm of Balduran Pale Green Ioun Stone Amulet of Power Robe of Vecna Buckler +1 Shield of Harmony Shield of the Lost Large Shield +1, +4 vs. Missiles Girdle of Bluntness Boots of Speed Ring of Protection +1 Gauntlets of Weapon Skill Bracers of Defense AC 6
Other Items:
Potions of Extra Healing Protection from Undead scroll Wand of Spell Striking Rod of Resurrection
Mage Spells:
Level 1: Magic Missile, Shield, Spook, Blindness, Protection from Petrification Level 2: Invisibility, Mirror Image, Web, Agannazar's Scorcher, Melf's Acid Arrow Level 3: Invisibility 10' Radius, Slow, Haste, Protection from Fire, Minor Spell Deflection/Melf's Minute Meteors Level 4: Stoneskin, Teleport Field, Secret Word, Greater Malison, Minor Sequencer Level 5: Spell Immunity, Breach, Sunfire, Feeblemind, Hold Monster/Minor Spell Turning Level 6: Protection from Magical Weapons, Improved Haste, Pierce Magic, Contingency, Protection from Magical Energy Level 7: Project Image, Ruby Ray of Reversal, Limited Wish, Spell Sequencer, Mordenkainen's Sword/Khelben's Warding Whip Level 8: Horrid Wilting, Power Word: Blind, Maze, Pierce Shield, Summon Fiend/Spell Trigger Level 9: Time Stop, Wish, Shapechange, Chain Contingency, Spelltrike
Priest Spells:
Level 1: Armor of Faith, Command, Sanctuary, Remove Fear, Bless/Doom Level 2: Draw Upon Holy Might, Slow Poison, Hold Person, Silence 15' Radius, Chant/Charm Person or Mammal Level 3: Animate Dead, Remove Paralysis, Cure Disease, Zone of Sweet Air, Protection from Fire Level 4: Death Ward, Call Woodland Beings, Farsight, Protection from Lightning, Free Action/Neutralize Poison/Holy Power Level 5: Chaotic Commands, Mass Cure, Ironskins, True Seeing, Pixie Dust Level 6: Wondrous Recall, Conjure Fire Elemental, Heal, Harm, Fire Seeds Level 7: Nature's Beauty, Earthquake, Holy Word, Firestorm, Gate
HLAs (Rogue Rebalancing will have changed these):
Set Spike Trap Greater Whirlwind Attack Improved Bard Song Summon Planetar Summon Deva (Paladin/Blackguard version) Summon Deva (Druid/Cleric version)
Some of these I actually only started using because my last underused spells run showed me how valuable they were, like Chant. I will probably bend the rules when it comes to the fifth/sixth/seventh forbidden spells. Also, I think I will be avoiding casting PFMW and the like even through scrolls.
Our Charname this time is Valos, an Archer I will dual-class to Mage at level 9. The Generic Archer kit is from Tactics.
She specializes in bastard swords (for once I'll be using Foebane) and shortbows. She can't use the Tuigan Bow, so Tansheron's Bow will have to do.
Our second Archer/Mage is Obwa, whom I originally designed to be an Archer/Druid.
I've since Keepered her stats to make her into a Fighter/Mage, and because she and Valos both had 89 stat rolls, their scores are identical.
Then we have Porago, a Fighter/Mage. I normally don't take Fighter/Mages, but I want somebody who can use Ghoul Touch and Chill Touch effectively, and I didn't want a Conjurer/Fighter dual-class because that would take forever.
At some point I'll get him dual-wielding with Kundane, because my most commonly-used short sword is actually Arbane's Sword, not Kundane.
Then we have Laosha, our maniacal Cleric of Talos.
I'm a little weary of his voice and may turn him into a Cleric of Lathander. Mostly I just picked Talos because I'd never tried it before. Note that Laosha doesn't mean old fool this time; it means old murderer this time because Chinese is weird.
Finally, we have Ruva, who is now a Skald.
She used to be a goblin named Bergamot but I decided I didn't like the only goblin-y soundset we had.
How am I supposed to deal with enemy mages if I can't cast Breach or any other magic attacks, via wand or scroll or spell? That's why we have Ruva. As a Skald, she will have high-level Remove Magic spells, and we still have Spell Thrust to remove SI: Abjuration. We're going to have to find lots of substitutes like that.
I decided to try the party against Kahrk, to only see the same awesome results. This is us entering the fight - BTW, the game tells that Kahrk has MGoI, not GoI:
There is a quirk here. I do not know if kahrk always benefits from a MGoI as part of his prebuff spells. However he will always start with mGoI on, this is granted by an item. Theoratically he can also cast GoI because he has one L6 spell memorized - not as part of the prebuffs.
@bengoshi@Blackraven I like where this discussion is going, but first and foremost you have my hearty congratulations for completing BG1 in No-Reload Insane with a full party and defeating Kangaxx/Twisted Rune as a Cleric/Thief.
-About the Insane mode: I never tried to do a full run in Insane difficulty but I think it should be a lot harder than a solo because it is more difficult to protect all your different party members while in a solo environement protecting Charname can be easy, especially if you are able to cast some Arcane spells.
For the record, Yami was never hit during all of BG1 except against Kahrk when a spell surge made his own Lance of Disruption hit him instead of the Ogre-Mage, then he suffered from a melee hit from the same foe. Apart from this instance, Yami was uninjured during most (all?) of the first game, so the Insane difficulty didn't change much (I blame F/M/T OPness).
Right now in BG2 in Insane Nightmare mode I thought at first that it would be very difficult, and while Improved Ilyich was really hard and took me some thinking, now I don't even need to use HiPS anymore, I can face and defeat Nightmare/Insane enemies in melee without prebuffs, I already have an AC of -20/saves of -6 and lower just after completing Irenicus's dungeon (once again, I blame F/M/T OPness) so nothing can hit me anyway, fights are only slightly longers as most foes have 300+ HP but I never get hit except if I want to to speed up fights instead of running away to recast some buffs.
I already found scrolls of Mislead, Spell Shield, Spell Immunity, etc which means the character is pretty much invincible and right now the game is actually easier because the Nightmare mode is giving me a LOT of xp, I'm already at 5,000,000+ and I still never left Athkatla (and didn't do any hard encounters).
So for a solo F/M/T my experience is that the Insane difficulty doesn't change much, but for a party it's a very different equation; characters like Safana/Hexxat/Dorn/Kivan and so forth will take a lot of punishment and it only takes a volley of arrows from a bunch of bandits to instantly kill your Edwin/Dynaheir. Later in BG2, the Dragon's Breath + Comet HLAs are going to be very dangerous, slaying all party members not protected against them. So congrats Ben and keep up the good work in Amn!
-Concerning Kangaxx/Twisted Rune, you did an outstanding job here Blackraven, completing these encounters in SCS No-Reload as a Cleric/Thief solo before Chapter 6 is a real feat of strenght. Your approach was excellent, your reactivity amazing and even from a RP point of view it was simply the most perfect Kangaxx's kill I ever seen with the Demi-Lich going outdoors, trapping the soul of innocents, the hero who asked the smith to craft the powerful weapon which will help him to defeat the evil creature, Kangaxx who answered by trying to actually kill Cromwell and so forth. Holy Cow this story was superb!
The same is true for the Twisted Rune, the use of Farsight beforehand, the Meteor Swarm + Fire Storm combo against the Beholder, then your ability to respond after the very damaging 85 damage backstab from Shyressa, etc. Bardin really deserves his new items and from my experience with Anselm, the Ring of Gaxx's regeneration really helps in ToB with all the heavy physical fights.
-Now for the main topic of this discussion, I agree that full prebuffing for both the player and the enemy results in a easier game in my opinion because if both sides are well protected, pretty much no one should die in the few first rounds and the goal of a No-Reload run is to not die, so you control how the fight is going, more or less.
While if both sides fight unprepared, all it takes is some bad luck, a Chaos spell quickly casted toward your party, a nasty backstab and that's it, your run can pretty much end like that.
And I like where the discussion is going because I would like to share with you something I actually have been thinking about for a few months now: I think the game is easier with SCS than without. Yes I said it
The reason behind my thinking is that I think that SCS Mages focus too much on defense and they don't really try to harm to player if they are not protected enough. This create a game where you need to learn how to play, how to deal with Mages and their spell protections like Spell Immunity : Abjuration but once you have 'mastered' this chess game, you really control how the game is going and there are not a lot of surprises.
The vanilla game is I think more 'random' because casters will often try to do some dumb and risky moves, but if they manage to pull these tricks they can damage you heavily. My main example would be the Sunis fight which caused the loss of our second MP attempt. All he did was Mirror Images then Magic Missiles X2 on Lucius, then a random Fireball spell not even targeted at our Bhaalspawn (he even hit himself with his own spell), he had a behavior really close to a vanilla Mage, focusing mostly on quick damage without casting Remove Magic, Minor Spell Deflection, Fireshield, Chaos, and so forth. He simply blasted Lucius to death in a few rounds and the general reaction was "what happened?" as it was really unexpected.
But still, this 'dumb approach' worked and we were defeated. There are also examples of Mages / Elder Orbs randomly casting Imprisonment on Charname in the vanilla game, which are also very dangerous if you are not 100% prepared for it.
In the end, I think SCS is a fantastic mod but it is a bit too much 'logical' and even if the AI is partially random, it is still previsible enough to learn how to counter it.
Well, I wouldn't go out and say that it's harder without the SCS - better general AI and better calls for help, along with tougher encounters still outweight the mages' behaviour, if it's indeed more defensive than offensive as you say, I think.
And their behaviour is meant to simulate the player's one - for example, a no-reload player will think about protecting himself first instead of fireballing an enemy.
But I feel there's a lot of truth in what you say about Sunin and his surprising choice of what to do.
The vanilla game is I think more 'random' because casters will often try to do some dumb and risky moves, but if they manage to pull these tricks they can damage you heavily. My main example would be the Sunis fight which caused the loss of our second MP attempt. All he did was Mirror Images then Magic Missiles X2 on Lucius, then a random Fireball spell not even targeted at our Bhaalspawn (he even hit himself with his own spell), he had a behavior really close to a vanilla Mage, focusing mostly on quick damage without casting Remove Magic, Minor Spell Deflection, Fireshield, Chaos, and so forth. He simply blasted Lucius to death in a few rounds and the general reaction was "what happened?" as it was really unexpected.
I don't think there are similarities (or a fair comparison) between Stratagems Sunin and a vanilla mage. I need a long explanation to illustrate the point which can be extended to many other cases.
An AI script (btw all scripts) is a list of blocks. Blocks are written using a very limited script language. The structure is always the same: IF "trigger list" THEN series of weighted RESPONSEs "action list" END Usually there is a single RESPONSE. If not, they are mutually exclusive and one of them is executed. The trigger list are conditions linked with logical AND / OR / negation. This is sequentially evaluated and thus quite limited. The action list is just that: a list of basic instructions to be executed sequentially.
In your mage case: -Triggers are typically used to detect a threat and/or select a target. -Actions are typically the spell(s) cast on self or on the selected target.
Vanilla Sunin concentrates its spellcaster AI in one script made of 8 blocks. One single block is sufficient to manage one particular spell.
With stratagems in my game there are more blocks. I think this may slightly vary based on the selected components (and perhaps the mage school is random, not verified, thus changing its base script): Here Sunin Stratagems script has 664 blocks. Several blocks are often required to manage one particular spell. A basic case such as magic missiles may use 6 blocks whereas more complex cases such as flame arrows use more (19 in that case).
A rich selection of triggers means that not only Stratagems offers a better target selection but it also offers a less linear spellcasting sequence. Having so many cases/blocks influences the variability in the chosen spells. Even if you consider that it requires ten or even twenty more blocks for one particular action, it is still a lot more options.
That's not an absolute generalisation but scs spellcaster scripts often have 20000 lines of code or so, corresponding to hundreds of blocks. The historical version of the game never offered such a thing. This is quite different with the new content, clearly underestimated from the AI point of view.
Script length is obviously not the absolute criterion. You can do wonderful things with only tens of blocks. However I wanted to illustrate a different view. For sure, the offensive/defensive options are influenced by the author preferences and understanding but, even with this fact being accounted, it is difficult for me not to see the better and wider possibilities implemented by Stratagems.
Believing that SCS makes a few foes easier to beat is no heresy. I am more inclined to think this comes from a couple of rule changes. (in BG2)
Back to Sunin's case, the following sequence (the one you describe, not something read in a script) does not look like a bad strategy: -precast defensive spells/buff, -use a sequencer/trigger early on (usual in SCS script) here necessarily a couple of L1 / L2 spells based on either magic damage or disablement (blind, web) -IF there are unprotected PCs: use an area spell in a small area thus impacting everyone, moreover change the damage type : elemental -Then debuff the few of them being enhanced. Not a bad start.
To clarify my views, SCS fights are 'harder' but not necessarily 'more dangerous', you usually have more time to prepare and react as the enemies won't attack you straight but will first dispell you, protect themselves etc.
SCS will force you to become a lot better at the game, using spells you aren't obliged to use in the vanilla game like Chaotic Command, Death Ward, Spell Immunity and so forth but if you use all these spells correctly the element of surprise is, once again in my opinion, less present.
All of this is assuming you have access to arcane spells. Fighting SCS Mages who know what they are doing when you cannot cast Breach, Ruby Ray of Reversal and the other important spells is I think a lot more difficult.
@Gotural, hehe am not sure whether to click like, agree, or insightful below your post.
I like your appreciation of my work with Bardin, especially your epical conception of the Kangaxx encounter. Both Kangaxx and Twisted Rune are indeed dangerous for most solo characters, especially in Chapter 2. I do think awareness of the power of those enemies ensures a certain carefulness on my part, something I ehm often lack when playing. I agree with your finding that vanilla wizards' often suboptimal, suicidal behavior makes vanilla no-reload as risky as SCS. In addition to @Musigny's comments, I'd like to point out that it's probably also a matter of being used to SCS behavior and not so much to vanilla behavior anymore, at least in my case. Once you're accustomed to Sunin's pyromaniacal tendencies, he should become a lot easier to handle (unless you're doing a role-played run with a somewhat naive, unsuspecting character). Your analysis of Nightmare mode was insightful for me, so I ended up clicking Insightful. What your setup, and mine too to some extent (with SCS components like HLAs for all eligible casters in SoA and caster HLAs as innates), seems to be doing is to turn SoA into ToB: everyone, including your PC, is of higher level than normal, casters have more spells (BG2 Tweaks' p&p spell tables), enemies have a lot more HPS, etc. I'm sure it's not for everyone. Many players will prefer the more gradual power increase of unmodded SoA, or enjoy mid-level gameplay more than epic level game play. I personally don't mind a 'ToB in SoA approach', as it basically guarantees more epic battles. I'm not sure if I want to play Nightmare, but I will include p&p spell tables in my next install and I might also return to full pre-buffs while sticking to my rule own limited pre-buffing principles.
Baldur's Gate, a wonderful city with weird folks. Here is a sample, in no particular order. Ahh sweet Tenya, we were just trying to help Ghorak, the same way we helped you. Your last words will be remembered. Jurs has many qualities but also a few defaults, you'll see he is often rancorous.
That's also a city of challenges and battles. Imoen and Jurs want to know everything about the city. They anatomize the city like a corpse and this leads them to trespass on private properties. This is how they find Sunin, a rather aggressive mage. Jurs currently memorized spells are not best suited for a fight with a mage, so let's use cunning instead, or should I say try to use cunning... Seeing a mage and knowing he is not welcome, Jurs moves to the smallest room (bedroom) followed by the mage. There, he expects to trap him, should something go wrong. Meanwhile Imoen hides in one of the main room corner. This action probably is another infuriating factor and the mage quickly shows his intent after a terse exchange. Jurs takes the first action activating the wand of summoning. Luckily a horde of wolves appears. Jurs is sure they are going to keep the mage neutralized for a while, not only because they surround the mage in a very small room but also because these are solid summons able to stand the fire. Unfortunately he is just plain wrong. Two other guys appeared in the main room. Imoen still invisible enters into a fight with the closest guy and Jurs starts moving toward the second guy. Unluckily they meet at the start of the corridor and Sunin who was able to escape the small room after a solid buffing session and a first strike at the wolves, has Jurs in sight. Imoen skids unexpectedly (read: someone **ahum** mishandled the mouse). Fortunately Sunin turns back and attacks the wolves while Jurs repositions and chops at Joular. Soon, too soon, Sunin reappears and he blinds Imoen. Jurs is not impressed, he is too slightly buffed (basically a shield) but he has plenty of hitpoints to survive a first damage attack. The worst thing would be to face a disabling attack and to fail the saves. That's why he commands all the wolves to attack Sunin even if he cannot see them. Imoen is in difficulty but not heavily hurt yet. Joular collapses, good! Jurs hesitates between buffing himself and helping Imoen who can gulp a potion of invisibility if needs be. Same last resort option for Jurs, should Sunin reapears. He finally opts for attacking Maka with missiles and arrows. The guy collapses too. Sunin is back in no one line of sight but he seems able to spot Imoen. (Imoen is blinded that's why we can't see him, bad surprise). She is hurt, moves back and successfully attempts to hide in the corner, not without one last pointed look at Jurs. She is ready to escape and won't take part in the fight any longer. Jurs retreats too, he knows some wolves are still alive and will slow down Sunin. That's the moment to gulp potions (invulnerability noticeably) and to cast a few defensive barriers, a useful minor spell deflection then remove fear. The former spell takes effects just before being struck by a lightning bolt from Sunin. "Hey Sunin, It puzzles you" he says. A second lightning bolt strikes Jurs without damage, annihilating the deflection while Jurs casts a third spell (one of the last defensive options he has: mirror image). One the wolves which got confused before Imoen left, now attacks Jurs. Jurs does not answer the threat yet, he knows another spell is coming. Ready to gulp another potion, it is a kind of relief to see it's a fireball. Not only he is likely to make his save with a high reserve of hitpoints to absorb the first half of the damages but this is likely to get rid of the wolf. He stoically waits for for the explosion. Time to revert the situation. Jurs attacks, a scorcher is very useful as it allows him to follow the mage movements in this room where the line of sight is easily broken. By the way Sunin lost his minor globe of invulnerability. He is not without resources though. When Jurs reaches Sunin, the mage goes invisible instantly (sequencer). When Sunin finally surfaces, Jurs switches his weapons and fires the bow. This little delay also helped him to strenghten his fire resistance by casting his sole L4 spell, fireshield. That's a quite fortunate choice because Suni goes mad and attacks Jurs with his staff! Jurs tries to cast the few remaining spells such as spook with no effect. That's ok mister mage you are going to die by the sword anyway. Jurs thought Sunin had run out of spells but that's wrong he still had a stoneskins in reserve as well as another invisibility. This just delays the fatal outcome. Without wasting his wands, Jurs calmly tracks down Sunin, certain of his victory. After a few rounds, Sunin silently falls.
Sunin is not the only challenge they face in Baldur's Gate. They meet Jardak a very solid fighter, hitting hard and magic resistant. They get involved in an indirect mage duel. One of the contender, Ragefast, is easy to convince but Ramazith feels betrayed and attacks. This is where Jurs secret word comes into play and it seriously shortens the fight duration. The mage owned several exceptional objects: a ring+2, several scrolls and a tome enhancing Jurs intelligence. At one of the nearby inn, a spectacular ogre is waiting for them, a kind of bounty hunter whose attacks are ... brutal. That's the right moment to use the wand of paralyzation, ready to run if it fails twice.
In this world it is good to rely on some solid help. When the Maulers of Undermountain try to mug Jurs, Gorpel Hind and his team do not hesitate to take part in the fight. This was much appreciated because Imoen and Jurs were caught unprepared and if Jurs was not exposed to a direct threat, Imoen got hold. What an opportunity to fail the no-reload challenge - need a cold shower to wake up!
Another danger awaits at Degrodel's house. Jurs underestimates the threat and is quickly surrounded by doomguards, helmet horrors and servants. He wastes two precious extra healing potions. Funny to see that even those horror's weapon can break. Degrodel sends them on a mission but they smell a rat. They decide to fool everyone, thus collecting a prized helm and cloak. On the way back, Imoen kills Degrodel before he can flee. Then she goes invisible in a timely manner (hit by the servants) and leaving Jurs alone to finish the job.
Later on, a thief admits they were poisonned and he can help acquire the antidote. Whilst Jurs scrupulously follows the instructions, there is no doubt he will avenge. And that's a triple deal. First they pay a visit to the local temples. At Umberlie's house Tenya the arrogant is not there but they leave the temple with a heap of corpses in its center. No need to summon us Tenya, we came willingly. They meet Lothander at the blade and stars Inn. A group of dogs help them to prevent the thief from escaping. The guy is swift but not enough to survive. That's how they get a second pair of boots of speed. The other thief still lives but it is just a matter of minutes, Marek joins Lothander in death.
Imoen is eager to contact the local thieves guild. This is just an opportunity for Jurs to discover and relax in several inns of the city while Imoen is "busy" ouside. Not a bad plan because one of the thieves provide them with some interesting information about the Iron throne but the big surprise is to find a tome enhancing Jurs dexterity.
This chapter 5 was a series of sloppy performances. Imoen and Jurs must be concentrated. They will have no second chance.
Scar and the Duke Eltan want them to investigate the Iron Throne where a competent group is ready to oppose them. At first, there is a meager resistance and they easily progress but on the upper floor the fight is to be played at a different scale. I follow a kind of principle and this is not a position on fairness or ethics or whatever even though from a coding perspective, it is better if everything takes place in the appropriate zone. Just my pleasure to play this way: I dislike the ability to enter a room, start a fight, retreat and then come back. Of course, there are exceptions, noticeably when the zone is too small for the fight to correctly develop. However in this fight, I sent Imoen downstairs once. Retrospectively I think the initial plan had all the chance to succeed but too many foes turned against Imoen at once and this was not expected.
Imoen detects the presence of many foes on the next floor, she informs Jurs who starts casting many spells and drinking several potions. In particular he becomes immune to fire and electricity, he also has a solid AC against most damage types and even a supernatural resistance to crushing. Jurs will go upstairs using the stairs at the right while Imoen will show up at the left with a slight delay. The strategy is rather elementary. Unless he finds himself debuffed, Jurs will activate a wand every round and use the sword in-between. The corner is a nice place to be even if you cannot retreat once the assault starts, reason being that it offers an opportunity for the lightning bolts to bounce in an effective manner.
And that's exactly what Jurs does. Jurs the new emissar politely asks where to cast the first fireball to enter the negotiations. After that, he moves to the corner and starts throwing lightning bolts anf fireballs like confetti at the carnival. Imoen goes upstairs too. Unfortunately her own fireball from the necklace brings too much attention to her. She is wearing the boots of speed and the plan is to quickly reach the central corridor where she has room to move and hide and harass the opponents. Her mistake was to come too early and to launch the fireball from afar with no place to move back. Moreover she got hit by lucky arrows. Seeing that many guys are likely too attack her instead of Jurs, she has two options, wait for the round to end and gulp a potion of invisibility or go downstairs and let the foes refocus on Jurs who enjoys every second of the iron throne stampede to come. With basically no distance available for her to move back, she goes downstairs. Not for long though: there is no reason to not enjoy the fight and if Jurs gets debuffed he may require Imoen's assistance to divert the foes attention. She re-enters the fight, repositions in the center and participates to the feast with arrows/fireballs/potions of fiery burning oil or the like. Jurs is so effective that the five guys successively surrounding him quickly collapse and those still at the center of the room are not flamboyant (or are they?). One spellcaster hides, leaving Zhalimar alone caught by an opportunistic double flame scorcher (wand and ring) incidentally killing Alai who is also hit by the beam. One mage remains but someone else is missing. Probably a thief who followed Imoen downstairs. Imoen, your mistake, your problem. She moves to the next floor where she meets a soon to be dead female thief. She was already so weakened that 12 points of damage suffice to end her life. On the top floor Jurs plays a cat and mouse game with the spellcaster. It is Imoen who finally breaks his cover. After a rather fruitless pursuit, Naaman expires.
I think it illustrates why I dislike those movements between areas. In this case a thief was trapped downstairs unable to come back. It did not influence the fight (this thief would have been killed by the next fireball) but I might have faced a more tricky situation. Whilst I am in favor of playing divide and conquer from time to time, using area transitions to do so is not the best way to reach that goal.
Crippled mages and bad trick are the name of the opening and ending sequences of the chapter 6.
Imoen and Jurs are ambushed as soon as they arrive at Candlekeep. 5 mage ogres. This is expected to be hard but those guys really want to rely on physical damage. Too overpowered but too shy. That's just 4 more deads. One mage is missing! Not sure I am going to install this component in my next playthrough, it seems weird even if the idea makes sense.
Big news. Candlekeep has a gigantic crypt and a secret passage that no one previously used to invade the keep or steal books. Well koveras minions did it but they probably can't read that's why Jurs was able to find two valuable tomes while fleeing. In the cave labyrinth Imoen is seen by yet another group of murderers. Their leader, Prat rushes on Imoen ... alone. When Jurs comes to help her he disappears! His three companions are patiently waiting for him to return. Instead they see Imoen and Jurs sending a double fireball as a friendly hello. They quickly die and this is the time Prat chooses to come back, quite unexpected. He is not so easy to take down and is able to deal a large amount of damage.
Before returning to Baldur's Gate, a mysterious force leads the heroes to the firewine bridge. Who knows why...
Beneath the Copper Coronet, we rely on damage spells to deal with the Hobgoblins, as the disablers I normally use are now forbidden due to the rules of my run.
We've only got two magical weapons in this group, and Valos can't use Varscona very well due to a lack of pips in longswords. To substitute, Laosha breaks out the Spiritual Hammer, which in my install deals magic damage and strikes from a distance.
The damage bypasses MR and spell protections, but not weapon immunities. Too bad we'll never be able to cast Breach, ever.
We blast our way through the other minor battles of the area and move on to the Slaver stockade. We have lots of arrows to deal with in this fight.
How do we deal with the cleric? A Fireball from our Fighter/Mage, Porago, a Holy Smite from our Cleric of Talos, Laosha, and a Remove Magic from our Skald, Ruva, damage and debuff the enemy.
Since Laosha is immune to normal missiles, I send him over to Captain Haegan and his archer buddy, where Laosha can attack the enemy cleric with a Spiritual Hammer from a short distance. Meanwhile, the rest of the party re-casts their damage spells, with a Horror spell thrown in the mix.
The enemy cleric tries to escape, but Holy Smite bypasses Sanctuary.
The party finishes off the wounded guards to the southwest, while Laosha zaps the guards to the northeast.
Captain Haegan is missing. We find him in the sewers and blind him with Glitterdust. He runs, but we chase after, torching him with another Fireball and then closing in on him.
I want to finish this questline, but no one in the party has any thief levels. I was planning to bypass traps using Dimension Door. But Obwa and Valos, our Archers, haven't even dualed to mage yet, much less hit level 7. We have to get help from Jan, lest we get petrified by the Prismatic Spray trap.
Why don't we just cast Protection from Petrification? I'm afraid that's one of my 5 most common mage spells, so it's forbidden. The restrictions on this run impose limitations on every single battle.
After grabbing Jan, I stop by to help out Viconia. One of my favorite things to do in this fight is to charm the enemy cleric and use his Animate Dead and Hold Person spells against the others (my spell and item restrictions don't apply to charmed enemies, since I can't give them any alternatives).
Jan disables the last remaining enemy. His flashers aren't my most commonly-used bolt and are therefore acceptable in this run, but I'm not sure I'm going to keep Jan for very long.
His flashers help out a lot against the Yuan-ti back at the Slaver Stockade, as they bypass the enemy's magic resistance.
Jan enters the next room under Improved Invisibility--the only kind we can cast--to guide a summoned puppy dog to its demise.
When the dog expires, the enemy comes looking for us. We've got two mid-level mages coming our way. But Jan's flashers bypass their defenses, and Ruva's Remove Magic can dispel them. We get dispelled in turn, but the loss isn't that bad. Their buffs are really valuable and it's costly for the enemy to lose them. Our buffs are terrible; it barely matters at all if we get debuffed.
Note that dispel magic cannot remove the stun effect from Jan's flashers.
Ranged ammunition is scarce this early in the run, since I can't use nonmagical arrows, darts, bolts, or bullets, but we do have some high-quality arrows for when we need to disrupt spells.
Porago cuts down the mage. The rest of the enemies follow.
Back at the Copper Coronet, I decide the "Improved Copper Coronet" fight from Tactics might be too hard for this party. A guard fails a save against Chromatic Orb, which means we don't spawn in any new enemies.
Jan comes with Confusion, conveniently enough, but Porago's Fireball proves more meaningful in the fight against the Beastmaster and his animal friends.
We stun the survivors with flashers and Chromatic Orb.
We complete the slaver questline and gain Kondar, the +1 bastard sword that Valos will be using until we get the far superior Foebane much later on. I elect not to purchase the Army Scythe, as we will not be keeping Jan around for much longer, and neither of our Archers specialize in crossbows.
Nice progress @Musigny (I liked how Jurs handled Sunin and Ramazith), and you too @semiticgod. It would be very hard not to automatically use forbidden spells or items, btut you seem to adapt quite fast.
Bardin, LN Cleric/Thief, in SoA (Part 7)
Alhtough I have quite some ground to cover, I'm going to try and make this a quick update because if I don't post now, it will be in a few days when my memory of things won't be as fresh.
d'Arnise Hold
Bardin had no difficulty with the Trolls thanks to AoE spells like Storm of Vengeance and Fire Storm, snares, and thanks to his acidic damage dealing club. The Yuan-Ti Mage saw its Stoneskins repeatedly dispelled by the SotM before it fell to a melee attack. Bardin took the Golems on one or two at a time, and had an Aerial Servant help him with the Iron Golem. A Charm Person from scroll brought Glaicus back to his senses (after failed attempts with the Nymph Cloak and Ring of Human Influence). The five Umber Hulks managed to injure Bardin, but buffed with the holy triumvirate, the Gnome was deadlier than the five monsters combined.
Bardin was in hidden in shadows but detected by TorGal when he entered the head Troll's room. He managed to drop a Storm of Vengeance that instantly killed several Trolls and (slightly) injured an Umber Hulk Elder, and then retreated to cast Sanctuary and cast HP+RM+DUHM. Thus buffed, he barely managed to finish off the Umber Hulk Elder before TorGal appeared.
Bardin suffered several blows, but with his increased HPs thanks to his buffs and with improved combat prowess the Gnome still defeated TorGal with relative ease.
This fight neverteless made me wonder how Bardin is supposed to stand up against ToB's tough warriors whenever melee happens to prove inevitable due to a cramped space or sloppy positioning on my part. Perhaps the Gnome will experiment with Jan's Armor and the Defender of Easthaven (combined with Armor of Faith) after all. Also, his AC with AC 3 Gloves isn't that great. It would be nice if Barksin lasted a little longer so that he wouldn't have to recast in prolonged battles. At least the spell sets AC to 1 as of level 20. There's still the (Improved) Cloak of Protection, and the possibility to metagame a bit in Hell thanks to the Revised Hell Trials mod. Finally, Bardin dealt with two surviving Yuan-Ti Mages relying on surprise attacks and damage spells (Fire Storm, Implosion).
Planar Prison
At Mekrath's abode Bardin called an Ultroloth to help him out against a group of Yuan-Ti that included two Mages.
Mekrath was returned his Mirror, but slain shortly after that (Spike Trap) when he thought he could pay Bardin with a Slave.
Bardin rested at the Five Flagons and entered the Planar Prison invisibly thanks to the SotM. He relied a lot on that staff either attacking with it, or using it to set up backstabs, in the battle with the Bounty Hunters. This cautious approach was because of the presence of two Yuan-Ti Mages in particular.
Who needs a backstab modifier with a critical hit like this?
He snuck past Thralls and Yuan-Ti toward the Master of Thralls, whom he approached fully buffed.
Those stats look pretty impressive:
The Master of Thralls summoned two Air Elementals with its staff. Bardin first took those two down.
The Master of Thralls and a warrior Thrall landed a couple of hits, but nothing to worry over. Even with its ability to go ethereal and restore its health, the Master of Thralls was no match for Bardin.
The Gnome destroyed the demon's orb and discovered with a casting of Farsight that the Thralls had rather unsuccessfully rebelled against the Warden.
Bardin wanted to intervene but before he could do so he saw himself surrounded by no less than six errorlessly teleporting Nabassus, gated by the Warden's Yuan Ti lackeys.
As it was hard to kill the fiends, due to their ability to go ethereal, Bardin decided to cast Tenser's Transformation from scroll, giving himself a huge HP buffer that would allow him to await his foes' return to the Abyss while he occupied himself with the Yuan-Tis.
When the fiends were all gone Bardin defeated a few more Yuan-Ti and then finally appeared before the Warden, with an Astral Deva (not the best of the P&P Celestials, mainly a healer), an Ultraloth and Skeleton Warriors. The Skeletons defeated a Greater Wyvern, and the Ultraloth slightly injured the Warden, but an ADHW followed by the summoning of a Dark Planetar suddenly forced Bardin to be on the defensive. The Fallen Planetar went straight after Bardin, but the Gnome successfully distracted the creature with an Efreeti that actually managed to land a nice hit.
Bardin then summoned Kitty and approached the Warden from the other side (south). The Warden greeted the two with a surprisingly effective Spell Trigger (Breach + Chain Lightning + Death Spell). The Gnome timely quaffed a potion of absorption and saw Kitty disappear. Around this time, the Dark Planetar defeated the Efreeti, and made Bardin's Ultroloth its next target.
Bardin alternated between removing the Warden's protections with his SotM, and placing traps out of the Warden's line of sight. The first trap the Warden triggered upon pursung the Gnome, was a time trap. Bardin dispelled any buffs with his SotM and then finished the already injured creature dual-wielding his club and the Scarlet Ninja-To.
As he still had several snares ready to be triggered, Bardin tried to lure the Fallen Planetar into them, but the creature was unsummoned before that.
Windspear Hills
Bardin killed the Ogrish Paladins as well as Firkraag's bandits with a Storm of Vengeance and (in the case of Plath Rededge) an Implosion,
delivered acorns to a Dryad queen, and entered the dungeon. A Ruhk Transmuter fell to SotM dispels and melee attacks, while Golems were no match for buffed Bardin.
However the Vampires were the cause of some consternation as they targeted invisible Bardin with (mostly harmless) spells: Vampire Fear, Command, Globe of Darkness, and - not as harmless - Doom. The Gnome in return Sunrayed the Vampires, killing some and injuring and blinding others.
The blindness effect was really nice as it allowed Bardin to battle the surviving Vampires one at a time.
Two level-ups before Bardin proceeded to meet Samia, saw his HLA arsenal enriched with another time trap and a Globe of Blades. He killed three Greater Wolfweres with traps, an Adamantite Golem with the Sling of Everard, and a fourth Greater Wolfwere in melee.
Tazok suffered defeat once more, this time during a time stop.
Conster was treated to a Storm or Vengeance, debuffed with the SotM while casting a detection spell, knocked out by a Divine Wrath and finished off with the Sling of Everard.
Bardin then defeated six Guardian Djinns with Staff of Power backstabs / sneak attacks, a Director Beholder during two time stops (time traps always trigger one after the other, never simultaneously), and a Fire Elemental in straight melee.
The priest didn't really get to fight Samia's gang on his terms, since they blocked a doorway and forced the Gnome to battle some of them in the small treasure room. Bardin buffed while invisible, and took on Samia and Akae with Staff of Power backstabs, quaffing invisibility potions whenever necessary.
Chak was finished with a backstab plus slingshot, after which a Divine Wrath paved the way for Bardin toward freedom.
Another backstab took Legdoril out of the equation while a Storm of Vengeance proved lethal for Kaol the Mage.
Running into Bardin's traps ended Ferric Ironblade's life.
Bodhi's Lair
Bodhi's lair posed not much of a threat to Bardin. In front of it he saved Arledrian from attacking Vampires with traps.
And inside the lair he defeated Grimwarders in melee, and blew up all the Vampires, even the named ones.
This surprised me. I had expected that higher Cleric levels than level 20-21 would be needed. The only foe that posed a threat was guildmistress Bodhi. Bardin had her trigger a time trap, used his time to place a number of spike traps but when Bodhi triggered them she wasn't so discouraged as to give up.
The Gnome retreated further, had Bodhi trigger another time trap and cast Implosion on her.
This still wasn't enough for Bodhi to yield. Bardin left the lair to see Bodhi trigger another spike trap. This seemed to make her thirsty, as she started drinking Haz's blood. When she was done with Haz, she told Bardin she had learned enough.
Bardin reported back to Aran Linvail, who informed the Gnome of the readiness of a ship to take him to Spellhold. However, the Gnome first went on a shopping spree, spending about 100k GP on the Defender of Easthaven, a Citadel Helmet (combining by Cromwell of the Helms of Defense and Charm Protection), the Sword of Arvoreen +5, Blessed Bracers, and lots of scrolls and potions. He could have stolen a lot of those scrolls and potions, I even invested skill points in pickpockets, but stealing doesn't go with Bardin's character. As a consequence he's now almost broke. In the Government District the priest kept a fellow Gnome out of the hands of the tax authorities. (As a servant of Gaerdal Ironhand, Bardin's duty and loyalty are with his Gnomish kin.) The Gnome, Jan Jansen, offered Bardin his companionship, and told the priest to at least accept a suit of damage resistant armor for his help.
Every no-reloader is welcome here, @Pteran. You can continue your own thread (and blog) with excellent writings, and here you can post parts of them (or the whole things). If you wish, of course.
I find the quality of your blog entries to be amazing, and more people should see (and read) them.
Comments
As for the group of Lucius, Hadhod, Drassisseilla, Elian and Scvertvdendinw, it met its premature end fighting an ordinary foe - Sunin, a mage, who carries Evermemory.
The fail feels as bad as it looks. We went in the building, Drassisseilla started to attack the mage without any dialogue, the mage hasted himself, threw Minor sequincer at Lucius, inflicting 30+ damage and then, before my character could replenish his health, Sunin casted fireball centered on Drassisseilla, but Lucius was in the area of the spell...
This loss came completely, uttely unexpected and ... silly. We had a lot of crashes before that, so I guess it played its part. Maybe because of those crashes I became a little bit incautious. I didn't even take a screenshot - so shocking the whole event was. We just defeated Davaeorn, survived a great scare against the Drasus party, and this happened.
I covered chapter 5 and 6. Honestly there was no tipping point or perhaps the battle with Sunin when my initial strategy failed. The iron throne battle was nice as usual but it was quite deterministic despite the number of actors. I want to defeat Kahrk (I realized he is still there) and perhaps Daitel then I will rush through the BG city, leaving the vast majority of the ToSC areas unexplored.
I will try to resume Jurs run this weekend.
At the moment I am investigating @Gotural 's findings on Ilyich. I am done with the obvious things and now I am tuning Zhivago the cleric. He cheats a bit but he is also severely crippled ... trying to find something more appropriate without denaturing the original script and mod.
I am also trying to create a game crash with the gnomish illusionist, unsuccessfully so far. Fixed a couple of minor issues.
As to Bardin, yes I'm quite pleased with his progress. Both Kangaxx and Twisted Rune were tricky battles, and both yielded Bardin some nifty gear of course. Having a few HLAs under his belt really helped btw.
I'm not sure whether Bardin's buffing habits are anything special, but since you asked, I'll deliver.
First of all spell levels 6 and 7 offer little to nothing for Bardin in terms of buffs/protections. Level 6 has Physical Mirror, but Bardin prefers to work with the Reflection Shield to cover his defense against missiles. That way he has more Aerial Servants and Harms to cast.
Level 7 has the Shield of the Archons, which offers nice protection against a lot of dangerous spells, but I haven't used it yet. This is thanks to the Shield of Fyrus Khal with its free casting of Spell Turning once per day, and also because Bardin's level 1-5 buffs, his fine Gnomish saves, and his stealth ability give him sufficient protection for now. Still, I expect Bardin to be using the spell later on. While sadly SotA doesn't ward off Dispel/Remove Magic, at least those spells don't remove the Shield itself. This means if I'm not mistaken, that once Bardin has been injured and Free Action and Chaotic Commands have been dispelled with Remove Magic, enemies still can't PW:Stun or Maze Bardin.
Ok, so what buffs does Bardin use? In the city he doesn't buff unless he expects a fight, but he tends to move around hidden in shadows. Also, Amulet of Power + Robe of Vecna means insta-cast Sanctuaries.
In dungeons Bardin tends to activate protections with a longish duration: Chaotic Commands, Death Ward and PfEvil 10' Radius. (The latter spell has recently become somewhat less important to Bardin thanks to his procuring of the Staff of the Magi. He'll still cast it on summons though.)
In combat situations, the buffing depends (1) on whether there's time and RP-wise cause to prepare, and (2) on the nature of the enemies. At this stage I find that I'm becoming more flexible with the RPing though, as I don't want Bardin to die.
Against non-caster types such as warriors, demons etc, HP + Righteous Magic + DUHM (in that order, because DUHM has the shortest duration) are Bardin's routine buffs. So far those spells, preferably combined with a Haste effect and with a speed weapon in the off-hand, have been working very well. I expect ToB to be another matter though, with tough and deadly warriors with Hardiness and Whirlwind HLAs. I'm afraid Bardin wil have to come up with other tactics there such as summons, crowd spells, sneak attacks, traps. Even with 45 to 70 physical resistance (Armor of Faith, Defender of Easthaven, Jan's Armor), I'm disinclined to have Bardin rely on damage resistance in ToB battles.
It's not surprisingly against casters and hostile parties containing casters that Bardin buffs the most. In addition to the already mentioned Chaotic Commands, Death Ward and PfE, he'll always cast Resist Fire/Cold (lvl 2 spell) and PfFire (lvl 3 spell) on himself because together those two spells completely neutralize Comet and Dragon's Breath and they also limit the impact of (sequencered) Flame Arrows. I actually have two of each memorized, and a stash of fire resistance potions in Bardin's potion bag in case his protections get repeatedly dispelled. Bardin also tends to cast PfLightning, even though enemy casters don't frequently use lightning spells. Remove Fear is another staple, and so has Free Action been thus far. However Bardin will start using Free Action reactively rather than proactively as soon as he acquires a pair of boots of speed, so as not to negate the movement speed advantage of said boots. Barkskin (slight AC bonus at higher level, +1 to saves vs everything except magic), Armor of Faith, which reduces not only physical but also magical and elemental damage (didn't know that until recently), and Aid, Chant and Bless (especially with summons around) complete the list. Those last three spells and Barkskin give only minor buffs, but together their effect is quite substantial: +3 to attack rolls, +3 to damage rolls, and +3 to saves (+2 vs spells). When combined with HP+RM+DUHM the offensive bonuses can make a difference e.g. with an opening backstab or a dispelling SotM attack, and the saves bonuses can make a Greater Malison less alarming.
The following would be a good casting order, from longest to shortest duration:
PfE 10' Radius (1 t/l)
Chaotic Commands (1 t/l)
Death Ward (1 t/l)
PfLightning (5 r/l)
Remove Fear (5 t)
Free Action (1 t + 1 r/l)
Barkskin (4 r + 1 r/l)
Armor of Faith (3 r + 1 r/l)
PfFire (3 r + 1 r/l)
Shield of the Archons (3 r/l)
Aid (1 r + 1 r/l)
Resist Fire/Cold (1 r/l)
Holy Power (1 r/l)
Righteous Magic (1 r/l)
DUHM (1 t)
Chant (1 t)
Bless (6 r)
I don't always adhere to this list though. Sometimes it's not necessary to cast all these spells for example, and besides some situations call for the inclusion of other buffs from items or potions, such as green scrolls, oils of speed, the Shield of Fyrus Khal's Spell Turning, etc.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that it can be advantageous to not pre-buff beyond PfE 10' Radius, Chaotic Commands, Death Ward and maybe Remove Fear, because many enemy mages like to cast Remove Magic early on in battles. It's nice to not see all those carefully activated buffs removed at once.
Importantly Bardin memorizes at least two of each of the above spells (except for now Barkskin, Aid, Chant, Bless, and as mentioned SotA) because of the risk of Remove Magic.
I have also installed BP2 (not just Ascension), ATweaks, Rogue Rebalancing, and EETactics, to add more diversity to gameplay. I haven't installed SR or IR because I'm trying to use underpowered items and SR and IR make a lot of weak options much more viable.
This time our Charname is an Archer I will dual-class to mage. I don't have screenshots for the characters just yet, so I'll just say we have two Archers to dual-class to mage, a Fighter/Mage, a Cleric of Talos, and a Skald, with one character slot for NPCs. The reason I have so many mages is because ATweaks gives a PnP edit for Dimension Door and it lets you teleport anywhere on the map that you can currently see; not just within the caster's range. I will be abusing this at sub-optimal potential (that is, I won't be using a Fighter/Mage/Thief or Thief/Mage to backstab people and then incessantly teleport away).
I have never played ATweaks demons or Mephits or fey before. Turns out Lightning Mephits can't miss with their Lightning Bolts. Also, they have an electrical Fire Shield effect. And they can gate in other Mephits.
We got lucky with that one, but others will be tougher, particularly as they come in larger groups. Next up is a minor fight with some Duergar. Our Cleric of Talos grants himself immunity to the enemy's bolts, which can get really nasty in SCS.
SCS enemies are smart and know enough to attack our Fighter/Mage, who has the worst AC.
We muddle through and bring down the Duergar. One of the important things I do in these fights is run up the crossbowmen and attack them in melee, forcing them to switch to a weaker weapon, without a shield.
I forgot several rules during Chateau Irenicus. Specifically, the only armor I should be able to wear at this stage is leather armor and chain mail; no others.
Why? The most common splint mail I use is the nonmagical kind, which is the only kind around. Same goes for studded leather. But the most common non-studded leather and chain mail armors I use are the Night's Gift and Mail of the Dead, so I can wear the nonmagical versions. I also use Potions of Extra Healing, which I'm not supposed to.
I equip our Archers with crossbows, even though neither has any pips in them. Turns out Mineral Mephits are immune to both missile and piercing damage. This Mephit summons two others, so the battle lasts longer than I'd hoped.
As usual, Imoen sneaks past the next group of Duergar to nab the Activation Stone. We tackle the Lesser Clay Golems, and our Fighter/Mage again gets singled out as the character with the worst AC.
The Otyugh is a problem. Its slow effect on hit is unavoidable, and our AC isn't reliable enough to escape getting hit. So our Cleric of Lathander zaps it to death, using his superior movement speed to stay out of reach during casting.
I decide to take on Ilyich and his gang, and in the process cast a spell I'm not supposed to use.
This time I notice the mistake, but decide to run with it.
The first group of Duergar, in the library itself, fails to spawn. I run ahead to Ilyich himself. A bunch of melee Duergar run up to us, allowing our Charname to blast them with Divine Wrath.
This is the first time I've used this spell. The only reason I know how it works is because of @Blackraven's runs.
We fail to kill the enemy mage with missiles, costing our own Fighter/Mage a lot of HP. Meanwhile, the Duergar who failed to spawn before, spawn now, and run in to flank us.
Imoen tries to stop the enemy behind us with Stinking Cloud, but it doesn't work very well. We use another Divine Wrath spell and cut down Ilyich early in the hopes that he'll drop some nice potions.
The enemy mage gets a Horror spell off the ground. Mercifully, only one of us is affected, and the rest tear down the mage's Mirror Images and then the mage himself.
The enemy starts wearing thin. Imoen tries to clear them up with a Lightning Bolt, but Obwa, one of our Archers, gets caught in the middle.
We slowly wear down the remaining enemies, some of whom get caught in the Stinking Cloud. By the portal to the next floor, I use another forbidden spell by accident: Web.
The first level complete, we finally rest and move on to the Mephit Portal room. Knowing that the Mephits here are going to be a huge problem, we disable them first with a Horror spell from our Fighter/Mage.
We can then destroy the portals without resistance.
The Ellesime clone dies right after declaring her attack dialogue.
Even though EE added a comma to her final sentence, I still have no idea what she's saying.
The Salt Mephit up ahead can stun-lock basically any character without fail. Summons will soak up the attack.
Two tough battles remain. First is another pack of Duergar and another level 4 mage. Disablers work well against the first wave.
Hold Person is another spell I'm not supposed to use. I can use the mage version, but not the cleric version.
Imoen disables the mage with another Stinking Cloud (I've often used Web but not Stinking Cloud), but he gets back up shortly afterwards, and charms our Cleric of Lathander.
The mage proves hard to kill; we have trouble breaking through its Mirror Image spells. It weakens our Fighter/Mage and then stops one of his spells with a lucky attack roll.
Imoen finally brings him down with Chromatic Orb.
We're not allowed to use Magic Missile, but Chromatic Orb is fine. I don't use it often because the save bonus is so large.
Our Fighter/Mage gets torn to pieces, but because our party members are unconscious, he can't run away, even when he ditches his equipment to avoid getting over-encumbered. Imoen runs ahead and manages to draw the Duergar's attention, saving our Fighter/Mage's life.
Next, we face the Assassins on the way out. We Fireball and paralyze the mage, but the thieves get some backstab on Imoen and nearly kill her.
Since we're doing pretty okay, I decide we're strong enough to handle the Cambion.
Turns out the Cambion uses teleportation to buff himself in safety. I don't think I'm going to feel too bad about using Dimension Door for the same purpose.
He Slows half our party, but we outlast him. He has excellent damage output, but our numbers outweigh his.
Before we leave, I go back and free Minsc. I had originally planned on using Minsc as a tank until he got killed, and then doing much the same to Jaheira, but I couldn't have done so without kicking out Imoen, as I only had one space left for other party members.
With my duo I tried to isolate Sunin with a group of summoned creatures and this turned against me. Imoen had to leave the house, unexpectedly blinded. Charname survived because of several buffs including shield, minor deflection, high resistance to fire and electric damages.
EDIT: I am referring to SCS Sunin, the original mage is lvl 6.
In the meantime, I returned to the single player attempt with Hades, and the difference struck me like a lightning. Even with the insane damage, even with full-prebuffs from enemies, when you control everything and can pause whenever you wish, and not whenever the game lets you to do it, everything is easier.
The fight against the undercellar group (the last group before Sarevok) - took actually not more than 10 minutes.
We enter the fight fully ready - Hades is right behind the enemy mage.
The next second she's severely wounded by the backstab and poisoned by Dorn:
After that Dorn poisons the second caster:
A Safana's backstab is nowhere near the ones made by Hades - the difference between a thief and a thief with a fighter part is huge. Edwin lowers everyone's saving throws, and Baeloth tries his luck with the wand of paralysis on the warrior fighting with skeletons.
The wand works. The enemy mage is dead - the Dorn's poison did its work.
We have lots of invisibility potions so Hades and Safana can try a backstab after a backstab. Edwin casts Confusion.
The second arcane caster is dead.
The rest of the group followed swiftly.
This fight, coupled by yesterday's MP fiasco, made me think that actully when you play with the full-prebuffing component, in BG1 (I'm not speaking about BG2 here), and counter it your own prebuffing, the game is easier than when you play without this component and go into encounters without buffs.
I decided to try the party against Kahrk, to only see the same awesome results.
This is us entering the fight - BTW, the game tells that Kahrk has MGoI, not GoI:
Then Hades dispells illusions with his thieving ability - for a FMT, I put points only into stealth and Detect Illusion skills. The Detect Illusion works superbly.
After Edwin lowers Kahrk's saving throws, Baeloth tries his wand. And it sticks again.
So basically the fight was won before our mage, Edwin, finished casting his second battle spell, Confusion.
Diarmid stands where he was, but this way we get the attention of Angelo.
I usually don't want to fight the whole Sarevok's band at once, and try to lure enemies, even while I don't solo. It's much safer this way.
While Angelo tries to come closer to our mages, Baeloth is casting Invisibility, radius, so that only skeletons should remain visible. Hades dispels Angelo's illusions.
After that Angelo casts his illusions again, Hades dispels them again, and both Hades and Dorn try to poison Angelo, who is busy with skeletons.
Both Hades and Dorn succeed in their poison.
Despite the poison, Angelo manages to cast Chaos. But exactly that time Hades gulps a Potion of Clarity - again, I wonder if it would be possible to react in time if it was a MP game.
Angelo was defeated.
Next, Hades attacks Diarmid - every time from the shadows, everytime from the distance of the line of sight, with constant retreating - Boots of Speed and a Potions of Speed make the process possible. It requires a little bit more than 50 arrows - Hades doesn't have any proficiencies in bows but his elf bonus, DEX and a potion of DEX+3 help to hit more often than not to hit. Diarmid three times gulped a potion of healing but in the end he was dead.
I deliberately gave a skeleton who was summoned on the Diarmid's corpse, a chance to see Hades and follow him. Tazok followed too and let me see him:
A huge backstab from Hades (with his triple multiplier, this actually was the biggest damage by Hades with one hit in the whole run) finished Tazok:
Usually Hades backstabbed at 30-40 damage. As a FMT, his multiplier was not superb. Also, he used short swords - not the optimal choice. But still these backstabs happened very often and nearly always hit.
Baeloth detected invisibility to see Semaj. Then Baeloth casted Invisibility on Dorn, Dorn activated his poison, and with 21 DEX (from Potions) the half-orc hit Semaj with his crossbow. Then I repeated the process.
Only Sarevok was left. Hades gulped a 23 STR potion and went on a backstabbing spree. Hades had a lot of Invis potions, so there was no risk.
As you see, even with not more than 115k of XP, a FMT managed to be amazingly effective in the party.
Now I have an evil party ready for SoD.
@semiticgod If you'll ever change idea please tag me so I can follow the run more closely.
A FMT is a very, very, very strong character. And the fact he had a party around him actually made him stronger, not weaker.
These are his stats:
Even with not a maximum backstab multiplier, even with not the most optimal weapons from the damage point of view, a FMT managed to get 47 % of kills in the game, and this with Dorn and his Poison.
I actually enjoyed using short swords. The +2 sword is available ridiculously early, from a hobgoblin, and the +3 sword comes exatly before the final fights. The speed factor of magical short swords is awesome - it lets to backstab as fast as possible after the actual command. Also, dualwielding a +3 and +2 weapons with ** in them and ** in dualwielding gave good results in melee fighting. An Elf bonus to THAC0 helped here too.
I've become stronger in my feeling that if you prebuff then the fact enemies also prebuff doesn't matter much (for BG1, at least). If you use the right spells, your party just becomes as strong as it could be. 2 mages (besides a FMT) are needed for the best results.
These are the spells I used:
The 5th arcane spell level wasn't even needed. Reaching XP cap, getting the maximum level wasn't even needed.
BG1 can't beat you when you go into each fight with the following prebuffs:
Haste, Protection from Fear, Protection from Evil, Radius, (Shield, Mirror Image, Minor Spell Deflection for mages), Chant, Aid, (Holy Power, DUHM, Armor of Faith for clerics), Strenght (for those whose STR is less than 18, especially thieves), Improved Invisibility.
Add to that Poison weapons and backstabs with a Fighter THAC0.
Nice analysis also. What you say about pre-buffing interests me. I wonder what your experience of the difference between no pre-buffs and full pre-buffs will be like in BG2.
As you know, I went from full enemy pre-buffing to 'Mages only insta-cast short-duration spells if created in sight of the PC'. My experience with Bardin compared for example to my previous run with Gerland with full-prebuffs, has thus far been that the difference isn't that noticeable since enemy mages have contingencies, sequencers and triggers containing the most important protections (think PfMW, Shadow Door, SI:Divination) to buy time with, and they tend to occupy Charname with minions (Fiends, Efreetis, Mordy Swords, and Simulacra that summon even more minions). Thus, they still get to cast a lot of their protections. Since I restrict pre-buffing on my own character, the main difference is that part of the buffing on either side takes place in the heat of combat rather than before/at the outbreak of battle. Buffing becomes an integral part of combat instead of a pre-battle routine that often takes as long as the actual battle if not longer.
I do think that character class (when solo) or party composition can make a difference. For Gerland enemy pre-buffs weren't much of an issue because as a Skald he had a powerful Remove Magic, and he had Jan, Aerie, and Imoen with him, who all had Breaches, Pierce Magics, Ruby Rays etc. But for a solo Druid, like your Totemic, the difference between full pre-buffs and pre-buffs in sight of the PC may well be the difference between seeing an Insect Plague thwarted by a Fireshield and seeing an Insect Plague actually cause enemy mages a lot of trouble.
Now that Bardin has the SotM, limited pre-buffs might actually be harder to play than full pre-buffs, because with full pre-buffs Bardin's opening strike is likely to get rid of a longer list of enemy protections.
With Yahiko, it was full prebuffing from both sides, and actually I think that it helped me more, either than helped enemies more.
Both options can be viable. It's just that with full prebuffing you first learn your scheme and then improve it and after that repeat every time. I partly think it makes the game more mechanical, less intuitive.
For example, I enjoyed being able to defeat the Iron Throne party, the Undersellar party and Kahrk without much problem but some part of me felt a little bit strange everytime I started prebuffing.
On the contrary, the MP run is VERY intuitive. Of course, other participants play here a major role, with all their humour and commentaries, with all twists and turns in any second. But still, no prebuffing adds to the fun, I feel it. So maybe, actually, we're playing with the harder setting than we could, but in the same time it's more appealing. I would happily listen to other people, @Gotural , @Tresset, @CrevsDaak about this particular thing.
Weapons:
Frostreaver
Jhor the Bleeder
Namarra
Arbane's Sword
Poisoned Throwing Daggers
Staff of Striking
Tuigan Bow
Heartseeker
Firetooth (crossbow)
Gnasher
Runehammer
Mace of Disruption
Flail of Ages
Belm
Celestial Fury
Spear of the Unicorn
Duskblade
Sling of Everard
Darts (nonmagical)
Arrows (nonmagical)
Bolts (nonmagical)
Bullets (nonmagical)
Equipment:
The Night's Gift
Studded Leather
Mail of the Dead
Splint Mail
Plate Mail +1 (any version?)
Full Plate Mail
Helm of Balduran
Pale Green Ioun Stone
Amulet of Power
Robe of Vecna
Buckler +1
Shield of Harmony
Shield of the Lost
Large Shield +1, +4 vs. Missiles
Girdle of Bluntness
Boots of Speed
Ring of Protection +1
Gauntlets of Weapon Skill
Bracers of Defense AC 6
Other Items:
Potions of Extra Healing
Protection from Undead scroll
Wand of Spell Striking
Rod of Resurrection
Mage Spells:
Level 1: Magic Missile, Shield, Spook, Blindness, Protection from Petrification
Level 2: Invisibility, Mirror Image, Web, Agannazar's Scorcher, Melf's Acid Arrow
Level 3: Invisibility 10' Radius, Slow, Haste, Protection from Fire, Minor Spell Deflection/Melf's Minute Meteors
Level 4: Stoneskin, Teleport Field, Secret Word, Greater Malison, Minor Sequencer
Level 5: Spell Immunity, Breach, Sunfire, Feeblemind, Hold Monster/Minor Spell Turning
Level 6: Protection from Magical Weapons, Improved Haste, Pierce Magic, Contingency, Protection from Magical Energy
Level 7: Project Image, Ruby Ray of Reversal, Limited Wish, Spell Sequencer, Mordenkainen's Sword/Khelben's Warding Whip
Level 8: Horrid Wilting, Power Word: Blind, Maze, Pierce Shield, Summon Fiend/Spell Trigger
Level 9: Time Stop, Wish, Shapechange, Chain Contingency, Spelltrike
Priest Spells:
Level 1: Armor of Faith, Command, Sanctuary, Remove Fear, Bless/Doom
Level 2: Draw Upon Holy Might, Slow Poison, Hold Person, Silence 15' Radius, Chant/Charm Person or Mammal
Level 3: Animate Dead, Remove Paralysis, Cure Disease, Zone of Sweet Air, Protection from Fire
Level 4: Death Ward, Call Woodland Beings, Farsight, Protection from Lightning, Free Action/Neutralize Poison/Holy Power
Level 5: Chaotic Commands, Mass Cure, Ironskins, True Seeing, Pixie Dust
Level 6: Wondrous Recall, Conjure Fire Elemental, Heal, Harm, Fire Seeds
Level 7: Nature's Beauty, Earthquake, Holy Word, Firestorm, Gate
HLAs (Rogue Rebalancing will have changed these):
Set Spike Trap
Greater Whirlwind Attack
Improved Bard Song
Summon Planetar
Summon Deva (Paladin/Blackguard version)
Summon Deva (Druid/Cleric version)
Some of these I actually only started using because my last underused spells run showed me how valuable they were, like Chant. I will probably bend the rules when it comes to the fifth/sixth/seventh forbidden spells. Also, I think I will be avoiding casting PFMW and the like even through scrolls.
Our Charname this time is Valos, an Archer I will dual-class to Mage at level 9. The Generic Archer kit is from Tactics.
She specializes in bastard swords (for once I'll be using Foebane) and shortbows. She can't use the Tuigan Bow, so Tansheron's Bow will have to do.
Our second Archer/Mage is Obwa, whom I originally designed to be an Archer/Druid.
I've since Keepered her stats to make her into a Fighter/Mage, and because she and Valos both had 89 stat rolls, their scores are identical.
Then we have Porago, a Fighter/Mage. I normally don't take Fighter/Mages, but I want somebody who can use Ghoul Touch and Chill Touch effectively, and I didn't want a Conjurer/Fighter dual-class because that would take forever.
At some point I'll get him dual-wielding with Kundane, because my most commonly-used short sword is actually Arbane's Sword, not Kundane.
Then we have Laosha, our maniacal Cleric of Talos.
I'm a little weary of his voice and may turn him into a Cleric of Lathander. Mostly I just picked Talos because I'd never tried it before. Note that Laosha doesn't mean old fool this time; it means old murderer this time because Chinese is weird.
Finally, we have Ruva, who is now a Skald.
She used to be a goblin named Bergamot but I decided I didn't like the only goblin-y soundset we had.
How am I supposed to deal with enemy mages if I can't cast Breach or any other magic attacks, via wand or scroll or spell? That's why we have Ruva. As a Skald, she will have high-level Remove Magic spells, and we still have Spell Thrust to remove SI: Abjuration. We're going to have to find lots of substitutes like that.
I do not know if kahrk always benefits from a MGoI as part of his prebuff spells.
However he will always start with mGoI on, this is granted by an item.
Theoratically he can also cast GoI because he has one L6 spell memorized - not as part of the prebuffs.
-About the Insane mode: I never tried to do a full run in Insane difficulty but I think it should be a lot harder than a solo because it is more difficult to protect all your different party members while in a solo environement protecting Charname can be easy, especially if you are able to cast some Arcane spells.
For the record, Yami was never hit during all of BG1 except against Kahrk when a spell surge made his own Lance of Disruption hit him instead of the Ogre-Mage, then he suffered from a melee hit from the same foe. Apart from this instance, Yami was uninjured during most (all?) of the first game, so the Insane difficulty didn't change much (I blame F/M/T OPness).
Right now in BG2 in Insane Nightmare mode I thought at first that it would be very difficult, and while Improved Ilyich was really hard and took me some thinking, now I don't even need to use HiPS anymore, I can face and defeat Nightmare/Insane enemies in melee without prebuffs, I already have an AC of -20/saves of -6 and lower just after completing Irenicus's dungeon (once again, I blame F/M/T OPness) so nothing can hit me anyway, fights are only slightly longers as most foes have 300+ HP but I never get hit except if I want to to speed up fights instead of running away to recast some buffs.
I already found scrolls of Mislead, Spell Shield, Spell Immunity, etc which means the character is pretty much invincible and right now the game is actually easier because the Nightmare mode is giving me a LOT of xp, I'm already at 5,000,000+ and I still never left Athkatla (and didn't do any hard encounters).
So for a solo F/M/T my experience is that the Insane difficulty doesn't change much, but for a party it's a very different equation; characters like Safana/Hexxat/Dorn/Kivan and so forth will take a lot of punishment and it only takes a volley of arrows from a bunch of bandits to instantly kill your Edwin/Dynaheir. Later in BG2, the Dragon's Breath + Comet HLAs are going to be very dangerous, slaying all party members not protected against them. So congrats Ben and keep up the good work in Amn!
-Concerning Kangaxx/Twisted Rune, you did an outstanding job here Blackraven, completing these encounters in SCS No-Reload as a Cleric/Thief solo before Chapter 6 is a real feat of strenght. Your approach was excellent, your reactivity amazing and even from a RP point of view it was simply the most perfect Kangaxx's kill I ever seen with the Demi-Lich going outdoors, trapping the soul of innocents, the hero who asked the smith to craft the powerful weapon which will help him to defeat the evil creature, Kangaxx who answered by trying to actually kill Cromwell and so forth. Holy Cow this story was superb!
The same is true for the Twisted Rune, the use of Farsight beforehand, the Meteor Swarm + Fire Storm combo against the Beholder, then your ability to respond after the very damaging 85 damage backstab from Shyressa, etc. Bardin really deserves his new items and from my experience with Anselm, the Ring of Gaxx's regeneration really helps in ToB with all the heavy physical fights.
-Now for the main topic of this discussion, I agree that full prebuffing for both the player and the enemy results in a easier game in my opinion because if both sides are well protected, pretty much no one should die in the few first rounds and the goal of a No-Reload run is to not die, so you control how the fight is going, more or less.
While if both sides fight unprepared, all it takes is some bad luck, a Chaos spell quickly casted toward your party, a nasty backstab and that's it, your run can pretty much end like that.
And I like where the discussion is going because I would like to share with you something I actually have been thinking about for a few months now: I think the game is easier with SCS than without. Yes I said it
The reason behind my thinking is that I think that SCS Mages focus too much on defense and they don't really try to harm to player if they are not protected enough. This create a game where you need to learn how to play, how to deal with Mages and their spell protections like Spell Immunity : Abjuration but once you have 'mastered' this chess game, you really control how the game is going and there are not a lot of surprises.
The vanilla game is I think more 'random' because casters will often try to do some dumb and risky moves, but if they manage to pull these tricks they can damage you heavily. My main example would be the Sunis fight which caused the loss of our second MP attempt. All he did was Mirror Images then Magic Missiles X2 on Lucius, then a random Fireball spell not even targeted at our Bhaalspawn (he even hit himself with his own spell), he had a behavior really close to a vanilla Mage, focusing mostly on quick damage without casting Remove Magic, Minor Spell Deflection, Fireshield, Chaos, and so forth. He simply blasted Lucius to death in a few rounds and the general reaction was "what happened?" as it was really unexpected.
But still, this 'dumb approach' worked and we were defeated. There are also examples of Mages / Elder Orbs randomly casting Imprisonment on Charname in the vanilla game, which are also very dangerous if you are not 100% prepared for it.
In the end, I think SCS is a fantastic mod but it is a bit too much 'logical' and even if the AI is partially random, it is still previsible enough to learn how to counter it.
And their behaviour is meant to simulate the player's one - for example, a no-reload player will think about protecting himself first instead of fireballing an enemy.
But I feel there's a lot of truth in what you say about Sunin and his surprising choice of what to do.
An AI script (btw all scripts) is a list of blocks. Blocks are written using a very limited script language. The structure is always the same:
IF "trigger list" THEN series of weighted RESPONSEs "action list" END
Usually there is a single RESPONSE. If not, they are mutually exclusive and one of them is executed. The trigger list are conditions linked with logical AND / OR / negation. This is sequentially evaluated and thus quite limited. The action list is just that: a list of basic instructions to be executed sequentially.
In your mage case:
-Triggers are typically used to detect a threat and/or select a target.
-Actions are typically the spell(s) cast on self or on the selected target.
Vanilla Sunin concentrates its spellcaster AI in one script made of 8 blocks. One single block is sufficient to manage one particular spell.
With stratagems in my game there are more blocks. I think this may slightly vary based on the selected components (and perhaps the mage school is random, not verified, thus changing its base script):
Here Sunin Stratagems script has 664 blocks.
Several blocks are often required to manage one particular spell. A basic case such as magic missiles may use 6 blocks whereas more complex cases such as flame arrows use more (19 in that case).
A rich selection of triggers means that not only Stratagems offers a better target selection but it also offers a less linear spellcasting sequence.
Having so many cases/blocks influences the variability in the chosen spells. Even if you consider that it requires ten or even twenty more blocks for one particular action, it is still a lot more options.
That's not an absolute generalisation but scs spellcaster scripts often have 20000 lines of code or so, corresponding to hundreds of blocks. The historical version of the game never offered such a thing. This is quite different with the new content, clearly underestimated from the AI point of view.
Script length is obviously not the absolute criterion. You can do wonderful things with only tens of blocks.
However I wanted to illustrate a different view. For sure, the offensive/defensive options are influenced by the author preferences and understanding but, even with this fact being accounted, it is difficult for me not to see the better and wider possibilities implemented by Stratagems.
Believing that SCS makes a few foes easier to beat is no heresy. I am more inclined to think this comes from a couple of rule changes. (in BG2)
Back to Sunin's case, the following sequence (the one you describe, not something read in a script) does not look like a bad strategy:
-precast defensive spells/buff,
-use a sequencer/trigger early on (usual in SCS script) here necessarily a couple of L1 / L2 spells based on either magic damage or disablement (blind, web)
-IF there are unprotected PCs: use an area spell in a small area thus impacting everyone, moreover change the damage type : elemental
-Then debuff the few of them being enhanced.
Not a bad start.
SCS will force you to become a lot better at the game, using spells you aren't obliged to use in the vanilla game like Chaotic Command, Death Ward, Spell Immunity and so forth but if you use all these spells correctly the element of surprise is, once again in my opinion, less present.
All of this is assuming you have access to arcane spells. Fighting SCS Mages who know what they are doing when you cannot cast Breach, Ruby Ray of Reversal and the other important spells is I think a lot more difficult.
I like your appreciation of my work with Bardin, especially your epical conception of the Kangaxx encounter. Both Kangaxx and Twisted Rune are indeed dangerous for most solo characters, especially in Chapter 2. I do think awareness of the power of those enemies ensures a certain carefulness on my part, something I ehm often lack when playing.
I agree with your finding that vanilla wizards' often suboptimal, suicidal behavior makes vanilla no-reload as risky as SCS. In addition to @Musigny's comments, I'd like to point out that it's probably also a matter of being used to SCS behavior and not so much to vanilla behavior anymore, at least in my case. Once you're accustomed to Sunin's pyromaniacal tendencies, he should become a lot easier to handle (unless you're doing a role-played run with a somewhat naive, unsuspecting character).
Your analysis of Nightmare mode was insightful for me, so I ended up clicking Insightful. What your setup, and mine too to some extent (with SCS components like HLAs for all eligible casters in SoA and caster HLAs as innates), seems to be doing is to turn SoA into ToB: everyone, including your PC, is of higher level than normal, casters have more spells (BG2 Tweaks' p&p spell tables), enemies have a lot more HPS, etc. I'm sure it's not for everyone. Many players will prefer the more gradual power increase of unmodded SoA, or enjoy mid-level gameplay more than epic level game play. I personally don't mind a 'ToB in SoA approach', as it basically guarantees more epic battles. I'm not sure if I want to play Nightmare, but I will include p&p spell tables in my next install and I might also return to full pre-buffs while sticking to my rule own limited pre-buffing principles.
Baldur's Gate, a wonderful city with weird folks. Here is a sample, in no particular order.
Ahh sweet Tenya, we were just trying to help Ghorak, the same way we helped you. Your last words will be remembered. Jurs has many qualities but also a few defaults, you'll see he is often rancorous.
That's also a city of challenges and battles.
Imoen and Jurs want to know everything about the city. They anatomize the city like a corpse and this leads them to trespass on private properties.
This is how they find Sunin, a rather aggressive mage. Jurs currently memorized spells are not best suited for a fight with a mage, so let's use cunning instead, or should I say try to use cunning...
Seeing a mage and knowing he is not welcome, Jurs moves to the smallest room (bedroom) followed by the mage. There, he expects to trap him, should something go wrong. Meanwhile Imoen hides in one of the main room corner. This action probably is another infuriating factor and the mage quickly shows his intent after a terse exchange.
Jurs takes the first action activating the wand of summoning. Luckily a horde of wolves appears. Jurs is sure they are going to keep the mage neutralized for a while, not only because they surround the mage in a very small room but also because these are solid summons able to stand the fire. Unfortunately he is just plain wrong. Two other guys appeared in the main room. Imoen still invisible enters into a fight with the closest guy and Jurs starts moving toward the second guy. Unluckily they meet at the start of the corridor and Sunin who was able to escape the small room after a solid buffing session and a first strike at the wolves, has Jurs in sight.
Imoen skids unexpectedly (read: someone **ahum** mishandled the mouse). Fortunately Sunin turns back and attacks the wolves while Jurs repositions and chops at Joular. Soon, too soon, Sunin reappears and he blinds Imoen. Jurs is not impressed, he is too slightly buffed (basically a shield) but he has plenty of hitpoints to survive a first damage attack. The worst thing would be to face a disabling attack and to fail the saves. That's why he commands all the wolves to attack Sunin even if he cannot see them. Imoen is in difficulty but not heavily hurt yet. Joular collapses, good! Jurs hesitates between buffing himself and helping Imoen who can gulp a potion of invisibility if needs be. Same last resort option for Jurs, should Sunin reapears. He finally opts for attacking Maka with missiles and arrows. The guy collapses too.
Sunin is back in no one line of sight but he seems able to spot Imoen. (Imoen is blinded that's why we can't see him, bad surprise). She is hurt, moves back and successfully attempts to hide in the corner, not without one last pointed look at Jurs. She is ready to escape and won't take part in the fight any longer.
Jurs retreats too, he knows some wolves are still alive and will slow down Sunin. That's the moment to gulp potions (invulnerability noticeably) and to cast a few defensive barriers, a useful minor spell deflection then remove fear. The former spell takes effects just before being struck by a lightning bolt from Sunin. "Hey Sunin, It puzzles you" he says.
A second lightning bolt strikes Jurs without damage, annihilating the deflection while Jurs casts a third spell (one of the last defensive options he has: mirror image). One the wolves which got confused before Imoen left, now attacks Jurs. Jurs does not answer the threat yet, he knows another spell is coming. Ready to gulp another potion, it is a kind of relief to see it's a fireball. Not only he is likely to make his save with a high reserve of hitpoints to absorb the first half of the damages but this is likely to get rid of the wolf. He stoically waits for for the explosion.
Time to revert the situation. Jurs attacks, a scorcher is very useful as it allows him to follow the mage movements in this room where the line of sight is easily broken. By the way Sunin lost his minor globe of invulnerability. He is not without resources though.
When Jurs reaches Sunin, the mage goes invisible instantly (sequencer). When Sunin finally surfaces, Jurs switches his weapons and fires the bow. This little delay also helped him to strenghten his fire resistance by casting his sole L4 spell, fireshield. That's a quite fortunate choice because Suni goes mad and attacks Jurs with his staff! Jurs tries to cast the few remaining spells such as spook with no effect. That's ok mister mage you are going to die by the sword anyway. Jurs thought Sunin had run out of spells but that's wrong he still had a stoneskins in reserve as well as another invisibility. This just delays the fatal outcome. Without wasting his wands, Jurs calmly tracks down Sunin, certain of his victory. After a few rounds, Sunin silently falls.
Sunin is not the only challenge they face in Baldur's Gate.
They meet Jardak a very solid fighter, hitting hard and magic resistant.
They get involved in an indirect mage duel. One of the contender, Ragefast, is easy to convince but Ramazith feels betrayed and attacks. This is where Jurs secret word comes into play and it seriously shortens the fight duration. The mage owned several exceptional objects: a ring+2, several scrolls and a tome enhancing Jurs intelligence.
At one of the nearby inn, a spectacular ogre is waiting for them, a kind of bounty hunter whose attacks are ... brutal. That's the right moment to use the wand of paralyzation, ready to run if it fails twice.
In this world it is good to rely on some solid help. When the Maulers of Undermountain try to mug Jurs, Gorpel Hind and his team do not hesitate to take part in the fight. This was much appreciated because Imoen and Jurs were caught unprepared and if Jurs was not exposed to a direct threat, Imoen got hold. What an opportunity to fail the no-reload challenge - need a cold shower to wake up!
Another danger awaits at Degrodel's house. Jurs underestimates the threat and is quickly surrounded by doomguards, helmet horrors and servants. He wastes two precious extra healing potions. Funny to see that even those horror's weapon can break.
Degrodel sends them on a mission but they smell a rat. They decide to fool everyone, thus collecting a prized helm and cloak.
On the way back, Imoen kills Degrodel before he can flee. Then she goes invisible in a timely manner (hit by the servants) and leaving Jurs alone to finish the job.
Later on, a thief admits they were poisonned and he can help acquire the antidote.
Whilst Jurs scrupulously follows the instructions, there is no doubt he will avenge. And that's a triple deal.
First they pay a visit to the local temples. At Umberlie's house Tenya the arrogant is not there but they leave the temple with a heap of corpses in its center. No need to summon us Tenya, we came willingly.
They meet Lothander at the blade and stars Inn. A group of dogs help them to prevent the thief from escaping. The guy is swift but not enough to survive. That's how they get a second pair of boots of speed. The other thief still lives but it is just a matter of minutes, Marek joins Lothander in death.
Imoen is eager to contact the local thieves guild. This is just an opportunity for Jurs to discover and relax in several inns of the city while Imoen is "busy" ouside. Not a bad plan because one of the thieves provide them with some interesting information about the Iron throne but the big surprise is to find a tome enhancing Jurs dexterity.
This chapter 5 was a series of sloppy performances. Imoen and Jurs must be concentrated.
They will have no second chance.
Scar and the Duke Eltan want them to investigate the Iron Throne where a competent group is ready to oppose them. At first, there is a meager resistance and they easily progress but on the upper floor the fight is to be played at a different scale.
I follow a kind of principle and this is not a position on fairness or ethics or whatever even though from a coding perspective, it is better if everything takes place in the appropriate zone. Just my pleasure to play this way: I dislike the ability to enter a room, start a fight, retreat and then come back. Of course, there are exceptions, noticeably when the zone is too small for the fight to correctly develop.
However in this fight, I sent Imoen downstairs once. Retrospectively I think the initial plan had all the chance to succeed but too many foes turned against Imoen at once and this was not expected.
Imoen detects the presence of many foes on the next floor, she informs Jurs who starts casting many spells and drinking several potions. In particular he becomes immune to fire and electricity, he also has a solid AC against most damage types and even a supernatural resistance to crushing.
Jurs will go upstairs using the stairs at the right while Imoen will show up at the left with a slight delay.
The strategy is rather elementary. Unless he finds himself debuffed, Jurs will activate a wand every round and use the sword in-between. The corner is a nice place to be even if you cannot retreat once the assault starts, reason being that it offers an opportunity for the lightning bolts to bounce in an effective manner.
And that's exactly what Jurs does. Jurs the new emissar politely asks where to cast the first fireball to enter the negotiations. After that, he moves to the corner and starts throwing lightning bolts anf fireballs like confetti at the carnival.
Imoen goes upstairs too. Unfortunately her own fireball from the necklace brings too much attention to her. She is wearing the boots of speed and the plan is to quickly reach the central corridor where she has room to move and hide and harass the opponents. Her mistake was to come too early and to launch the fireball from afar with no place to move back. Moreover she got hit by lucky arrows. Seeing that many guys are likely too attack her instead of Jurs, she has two options, wait for the round to end and gulp a potion of invisibility or go downstairs and let the foes refocus on Jurs who enjoys every second of the iron throne stampede to come. With basically no distance available for her to move back, she goes downstairs.
Not for long though: there is no reason to not enjoy the fight and if Jurs gets debuffed he may require Imoen's assistance to divert the foes attention. She re-enters the fight, repositions in the center and participates to the feast with arrows/fireballs/potions of fiery burning oil or the like.
Jurs is so effective that the five guys successively surrounding him quickly collapse and those still at the center of the room are not flamboyant (or are they?). One spellcaster hides, leaving Zhalimar alone caught by an opportunistic double flame scorcher (wand and ring) incidentally killing Alai who is also hit by the beam.
One mage remains but someone else is missing. Probably a thief who followed Imoen downstairs. Imoen, your mistake, your problem. She moves to the next floor where she meets a soon to be dead female thief. She was already so weakened that 12 points of damage suffice to end her life.
On the top floor Jurs plays a cat and mouse game with the spellcaster. It is Imoen who finally breaks his cover. After a rather fruitless pursuit, Naaman expires.
I think it illustrates why I dislike those movements between areas. In this case a thief was trapped downstairs unable to come back. It did not influence the fight (this thief would have been killed by the next fireball) but I might have faced a more tricky situation. Whilst I am in favor of playing divide and conquer from time to time, using area transitions to do so is not the best way to reach that goal.
Crippled mages and bad trick are the name of the opening and ending sequences of the chapter 6.
Imoen and Jurs are ambushed as soon as they arrive at Candlekeep.
5 mage ogres. This is expected to be hard but those guys really want to rely on physical damage. Too overpowered but too shy.
That's just 4 more deads. One mage is missing!
Not sure I am going to install this component in my next playthrough, it seems weird even if the idea makes sense.
Big news. Candlekeep has a gigantic crypt and a secret passage that no one previously used to invade the keep or steal books. Well koveras minions did it but they probably can't read that's why Jurs was able to find two valuable tomes while fleeing.
In the cave labyrinth Imoen is seen by yet another group of murderers. Their leader, Prat rushes on Imoen ... alone. When Jurs comes to help her he disappears!
His three companions are patiently waiting for him to return. Instead they see Imoen and Jurs sending a double fireball as a friendly hello. They quickly die and this is the time Prat chooses to come back, quite unexpected. He is not so easy to take down and is able to deal a large amount of damage.
Before returning to Baldur's Gate, a mysterious force leads the heroes to the firewine bridge. Who knows why...
We've only got two magical weapons in this group, and Valos can't use Varscona very well due to a lack of pips in longswords. To substitute, Laosha breaks out the Spiritual Hammer, which in my install deals magic damage and strikes from a distance.
The damage bypasses MR and spell protections, but not weapon immunities. Too bad we'll never be able to cast Breach, ever.
We blast our way through the other minor battles of the area and move on to the Slaver stockade. We have lots of arrows to deal with in this fight.
How do we deal with the cleric? A Fireball from our Fighter/Mage, Porago, a Holy Smite from our Cleric of Talos, Laosha, and a Remove Magic from our Skald, Ruva, damage and debuff the enemy.
Since Laosha is immune to normal missiles, I send him over to Captain Haegan and his archer buddy, where Laosha can attack the enemy cleric with a Spiritual Hammer from a short distance. Meanwhile, the rest of the party re-casts their damage spells, with a Horror spell thrown in the mix.
The enemy cleric tries to escape, but Holy Smite bypasses Sanctuary.
The party finishes off the wounded guards to the southwest, while Laosha zaps the guards to the northeast.
Captain Haegan is missing. We find him in the sewers and blind him with Glitterdust. He runs, but we chase after, torching him with another Fireball and then closing in on him.
I want to finish this questline, but no one in the party has any thief levels. I was planning to bypass traps using Dimension Door. But Obwa and Valos, our Archers, haven't even dualed to mage yet, much less hit level 7. We have to get help from Jan, lest we get petrified by the Prismatic Spray trap.
Why don't we just cast Protection from Petrification? I'm afraid that's one of my 5 most common mage spells, so it's forbidden. The restrictions on this run impose limitations on every single battle.
Jan disables the last remaining enemy. His flashers aren't my most commonly-used bolt and are therefore acceptable in this run, but I'm not sure I'm going to keep Jan for very long.
His flashers help out a lot against the Yuan-ti back at the Slaver Stockade, as they bypass the enemy's magic resistance.
Jan enters the next room under Improved Invisibility--the only kind we can cast--to guide a summoned puppy dog to its demise.
When the dog expires, the enemy comes looking for us. We've got two mid-level mages coming our way. But Jan's flashers bypass their defenses, and Ruva's Remove Magic can dispel them. We get dispelled in turn, but the loss isn't that bad. Their buffs are really valuable and it's costly for the enemy to lose them. Our buffs are terrible; it barely matters at all if we get debuffed.
Note that dispel magic cannot remove the stun effect from Jan's flashers.
Ranged ammunition is scarce this early in the run, since I can't use nonmagical arrows, darts, bolts, or bullets, but we do have some high-quality arrows for when we need to disrupt spells.
Porago cuts down the mage. The rest of the enemies follow.
Back at the Copper Coronet, I decide the "Improved Copper Coronet" fight from Tactics might be too hard for this party. A guard fails a save against Chromatic Orb, which means we don't spawn in any new enemies.
Jan comes with Confusion, conveniently enough, but Porago's Fireball proves more meaningful in the fight against the Beastmaster and his animal friends.
We stun the survivors with flashers and Chromatic Orb.
We complete the slaver questline and gain Kondar, the +1 bastard sword that Valos will be using until we get the far superior Foebane much later on. I elect not to purchase the Army Scythe, as we will not be keeping Jan around for much longer, and neither of our Archers specialize in crossbows.
Bardin, LN Cleric/Thief, in SoA (Part 7)
Alhtough I have quite some ground to cover, I'm going to try and make this a quick update because if I don't post now, it will be in a few days when my memory of things won't be as fresh.
d'Arnise Hold
Bardin had no difficulty with the Trolls thanks to AoE spells like Storm of Vengeance and Fire Storm, snares, and thanks to his acidic damage dealing club. The Yuan-Ti Mage saw its Stoneskins repeatedly dispelled by the SotM before it fell to a melee attack. Bardin took the Golems on one or two at a time, and had an Aerial Servant help him with the Iron Golem. A Charm Person from scroll brought Glaicus back to his senses (after failed attempts with the Nymph Cloak and Ring of Human Influence). The five Umber Hulks managed to injure Bardin, but buffed with the holy triumvirate, the Gnome was deadlier than the five monsters combined.
Finally, Bardin dealt with two surviving Yuan-Ti Mages relying on surprise attacks and damage spells (Fire Storm, Implosion).
Planar Prison
At Mekrath's abode Bardin called an Ultroloth to help him out against a group of Yuan-Ti that included two Mages.
The Skeletons defeated a Greater Wyvern, and the Ultraloth slightly injured the Warden, but an ADHW followed by the summoning of a Dark Planetar suddenly forced Bardin to be on the defensive. The Fallen Planetar went straight after Bardin, but the Gnome successfully distracted the creature with an Efreeti that actually managed to land a nice hit.
Windspear Hills
Bardin killed the Ogrish Paladins as well as Firkraag's bandits with a Storm of Vengeance and (in the case of Plath Rededge) an Implosion,
A Ruhk Transmuter fell to SotM dispels and melee attacks, while Golems were no match for buffed Bardin.
He killed three Greater Wolfweres with traps, an Adamantite Golem with the Sling of Everard, and a fourth Greater Wolfwere in melee.
Bodhi's Lair
Bodhi's lair posed not much of a threat to Bardin. In front of it he saved Arledrian from attacking Vampires with traps.
The only foe that posed a threat was guildmistress Bodhi. Bardin had her trigger a time trap, used his time to place a number of spike traps but when Bodhi triggered them she wasn't so discouraged as to give up.
Bardin reported back to Aran Linvail, who informed the Gnome of the readiness of a ship to take him to Spellhold. However, the Gnome first went on a shopping spree, spending about 100k GP on the Defender of Easthaven, a Citadel Helmet (combining by Cromwell of the Helms of Defense and Charm Protection), the Sword of Arvoreen +5, Blessed Bracers, and lots of scrolls and potions. He could have stolen a lot of those scrolls and potions, I even invested skill points in pickpockets, but stealing doesn't go with Bardin's character. As a consequence he's now almost broke.
In the Government District the priest kept a fellow Gnome out of the hands of the tax authorities. (As a servant of Gaerdal Ironhand, Bardin's duty and loyalty are with his Gnomish kin.) The Gnome, Jan Jansen, offered Bardin his companionship, and told the priest to at least accept a suit of damage resistant armor for his help.
(Edited, as usual, to correct grammar and typos)
Would it be ok to share links to mine as I add new entries? Or is there another thread for that?
I find the quality of your blog entries to be amazing, and more people should see (and read) them.
The fourth installment is up on my blog. Scarlett and Co. finally reach the end of Chateau Irenicus!
https://adventuresofscarlett.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/the-escape-part-3-the-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel/