I was too quick to finish the quest. It could have gone so much better.
Why didn't I just call in the harem and seduce Faldorn? She has 3 million XP according to her .cre file. I could have gotten a new druid.
I suppose it's just as well. An epic-level druid would be kind of game-breaking.
Anyway, after watching Cernd maul Faldorn, we talked it over with Pai'Na and agreed we should take separate paths. As much as we enjoyed her company, she just wasn't satisfied with the harem she had. Nobody in our party can cast Spider Spawn. She let us keep Kitty as a farewell gift, and in exchange we gave her a couple dozen nymphs to keep her company.
We now have lost a valuable source of divine buffs. Without Pai'Na, we only have 5th-level Protection from Fire spells; the 3rd-level version is now out of reach. Worse yet, I just realize Fobie is supposed to have a -3 penalty to his 5th-level spell slots! He's not supposed to be casting Stoneskin or Insect Plague until epic levels. I empty his spell slots, but he has plenty more.
This means Fobie will no longer be able to function as a tank. No Stoneskin, low HP, mediocre resistances, and bad AC all make Fobie a fantastically squishy character. Snowy Tae isn't much better, as her AC isn't too great--she's especially vulnerable to crushing damage, against which she has a -5 AC penalty--but she at least can turn into a rat with the Cloak of Sewers.
We attack the djinn, who fail some very important saves in the first round.
The fight is a breeze, and we net an Efreeti Bottle and Rashad's Talon (which has a 20% chance of adding 1 APR per hit) for our trouble. The Efreeti Bottle, notably, has no weight, and therefore our pretty boy waif Fobie will be able to carry it around. Unbuffed, his STR is 2, which means he can only carry a couple potions and a pair of bracers. Normally his inventory is filled with scrolls and gems; he can't carry anything heavier.
We report our success to Lord Logan Coinpurse and Guildmistress Busybody and get another big cash money wad for being awesome heroes and stuff. We also clear out the Trademeet crypt thingy, and Fobie almost dies when he gets smacked by a Skeleton Warrior.
Snowy Tae hits level 11, finally, but her spell picks aren't too swell. Heal is an excellent spell, and in SR only has a casting time of 6, but since everybody in our party has such low HP (potions restore about half our HP on average), and Poppy can summon nymphs at will to cast Mass Cure, Heal won't add that much to our healing power. Blade Barrier is another strong choice, but Snowy Tae won't be able to cast it reliably in the middle of battle, since she has high AC and a casting speed penalty. Our best bet is Physical Mirror, which in SR lasts 2 turns and gives enemies a 50% miss chance against the caster. It's the best we can do to keep Snowy Tae's spells from being interrupting, unless we use finite resources. Item Revisions tweaks the Potion of Stone Form to give 5 Stoneskins instead of giving AC and saving throw bonuses, so that's another strong way to ensure successful spellcasting. But there are only so many such potions, and it's not clear when I should use them.
I returned the dryad's acorns to Vaelasa and briefly brought the nymph queen into the group. Unfortunately, it wasn't very interesting. Vaelasa was little more than a level 10 unkitted druid with a couple castings of Improved Invisibility and Dire Charm. She just seemed boring compared to Pai'Na. I removed her from the party soon afterwards. I have another couple of ideas for who to bring into the party, anyway.
The reason why I came to Firkraag's dungeon now is because I was hoping to avoid the vampire spawns, since Protection from Undead scrolls in IR only give combat bonuses against undead, and no longer any invisibility. Visiting the dungeon at a lower level (or tweaking my install, which I normally don't bother doing) will ensure the random spawns aren't too strong.
But I ended up not triggering the encounter at all. If you use CTRL-4 in the hallway right before the vampire room, you can see where the trigger is, and you can walk around it by hugging the right side of the hallway. I've tried this multiple times and it seems to always work, though I normally step on the trigger anyway to fight the vampires. If you have SR, you can also use Dimension Door (a 1st-level spell, depending on your install) to hop over the trigger. I probably would have encountered some ghouls and mummies, but avoiding the trigger is worth it, just in case there were vampires there.
As usual, I decided to let Samia ambush me early rather than trudging through the maze and have her appear with her goons behind me. If you pick the right dialogue options, she and her buddies will spawn right on top of you.
I brought out a bunch of nymphs in the first round, who quickly began to wreck the enemy party. Even Kaol ended up disabled; the harem's Confusion spells go right through his MGOI. The harem charmed Samia a couple of times while the rest of the party worked on slaying Chak, Legdoril, Akae, Ferric Ironblade, and eventually Kaol.
The battle ended in a decisive victory. Samia recovered from the nymphs' spells to find her party already defeated. She surrendered her arms, and after some divination magic, we discovered she was not actually evil... she's Chaotic Neutral. We are in desperate need of a good frontliner, and asked Samia if she was willing to join the group. She agreed! Although more out of a sense of profit than an interest in the harem. Without Pai'Na we're still lacking a proper dominatrix. But Samia isn't a good fit for the job anyway... we don't know yet if we can trust this woman.
Still, Samia is well-suited to the group. She's a 13th-level fighter with grandmastery in scimitars, and with her ludicrous ability scores--her stat total is a whopping 94--she can dual-class to thief, rendering her zero starting XP a non-issue. Once we take a tour around the maze, she levels up enough to start detecting and disarming some traps.
Now that we have a thief, we can finally stop worrying about traps and locks. It'll take another 880,000 XP before she regains her fighter levels, but with the De'Arnise Hold, Planar Sphere, Planar Prison, and Unseeing Eye quests still wide open, it is by no means too late to dual-class one of our party members.
Firkraag's dungeon has another nasty sticking point besides the vampires and Samia's ambush: in the hallway right after completing the Mask of King Strohm quest, there are three Greater Wolfwere spawns, with outrageous regeneration and MR that caster-heavy parties like ours have trouble overcoming. The harem ends up solving the problem: By throwing out several Hold Monster spells at once, the nymphs can successfully disable the monsters, and therefore get automatic hits with their Cause Critical Wounds spell. Two hits spell the victim's demise.
Cause Critical Wounds is a monster in Spell Revisions. The damage is crazy and the weapon lasts a whole turn, giving the caster much more freedom in determining when to strike. The one drawback the nymphs have is their awful base THAC0. But they don't need an attack roll if the target is paralyzed.
After trashing Firkraag's dungeon, the dragon orders one last goon to try and kill us. He barely puts up a fight.
He wakes up a round later, but by then, his Stoneskins are gone and he has a massive spell failure penalty thanks to being hit by a bunch of darts from a Wizard Slayer. He crumples seconds later, and the quest is one.
As usual, I leave Firkraag well alone. I have no need of Carsomyr, at least not this early in the game.
By the way... @Demivrgvs, the Potion of Regeneration stacks with itself as well as the Regeneration spell. The POTN42 spell gives no immunity to the cleric or druid regeneration spells, and vice versa.
Thanks to Samia's 12 INT, she is able to use some if not all of IR's wands, which are tweaked to be usable by thieves if they have high enough INT. The Wand of Lightning is tweaked to only fire 3 lightning bolts instead of 6 (how did you do that, @Demivrgvs?), but the Wand of Lightning trick still works, and I might have Samia drink triple-strength regeneration potions for the tougher battles.
On the way back from Firkraag's dungeon, we are greeted by a familiar face: Kuroisan, the Acid Kensai. He asks us to hand over Malakar, and he will leave us alone.
For those of you who aren't aware, Kuroisan is a Kensai(13)/Mage(14) from the Tactics mod, who attacks you if you don't hand over Malakar or Celestial Fury (I think other katanas he doesn't care about). He is notable for casting PFMW via scrolls, having end-game equipment (Robe of Vecna, Amulet of Power, Cloak of Mirroring), and for wielding the infamous Sanchuudoku, a +4 katana that fires off a tiny acid arrow spell at anyone who harms the wielder, whether the attack is from a melee weapon, a ranged weapon, or a spell. And Sanchuudoku also lowers acid resistance on hit, so boosting your acid resistance is not a permanent fix. He's a ludicrously powerful character with tons of immunities and a LOT of attack power.
I decide to go ahead and fight him. Not because I particularly cared about Malakar, but because I was kind of afraid I might not get to see him again, and might therefore lose the opportunity to get Sanchuudoku.
Problem is, I'm honestly not sure how to kill this guy. So right after the dialogue ends, I have everybody flee. Mr. Cookies wastes some PFMW scrolls while nobody is attacking him, then starts to chase Poppy, who calls in the harem. Poppy hides while her nymphs slow down the kensai.
Cookies expends his Acid Arrow and Magic Missile spells on the nymphs, then switches to his katana. He deals about 40 damage per hit, not counting the 2d4 acid damage on hit, so that's basically an instant kill on Poppy.
I check Cookies' files--I'm not really familiar with this guy--and find that he has a -20 bonus to all his saves, as if he had drunk a Potion of Magic Shielding. So my nymphs are never, ever going to disable him. But wait! Item Revisions tweaks the Cloak of Mirroring on his back--it doesn't deflect spell damage anymore. It just gives physical attacks against the wearer a 50% miss chance. I rally the nymphs to cast Call Lightning. I wasn't expecting much, but it still goes much worse than I expected.
Apparently Cookies has a spell reflection effect active, which I overlooked earlier. All those lightning bolts bounced right back at the nymphs. Even after I burn through this defense, though, he refuses to get hurt. I can tell from his files that he doesn't have 100 MR, but the nymphs never do any damage to him.
I give up on the nymphs' spells and decide to just have them attack Cookies directly. He chunks them one after another.
Then he curses at me and vanishes, saying he's not done with me. Apparently he got tired of slashing up the nymphs and decided to come back to kill me later. Not a good sign. I don't know where he might show up again. If it's Athkatla, I can always just turn invisible--Cookies can't see through invisibility, nor can he dispel it--or run away and block him in with the harem, but if it's in a dungeon, god forbid, then I might not have enough room to make my escape.
I go through my spells and items and find little that can help me against Cookies. This is a long section explaining why I can't beat him:
I can think of two possibilities. First, the Shield of Reflection, if I buy it, bounces the green arrow projectile that his "Acidic Backlash" uses, but when I cheat the shield and Sanchuudoku in for testing, Acidic Backlash goes right through the shield, and the wielder of Sanchuudoku is unharmed... perhaps because, as I later discovered, Sanchuudoku makes the wielder immune to that projectile, and therefore it cannot be reflected.
The other possibility is a weird trick involving Fire Shield. Those who have used Sanchuudoku might have noticed that if one critter with Sanchuudoku and another critter with a Fire Shield hit one another, then the Fire Shield and Acidic Backlash will trigger each other infinitely, dealing tons of damage to both critters... usually killing one or both of them within a few seconds.
Nobody can cast Fire Shield in my party, since the only arcane caster is Azama, who can't use scrolls due to her 2 INT, but Azama does have the Salamander shapeshift due to her Avenger kit, and gets a constant effect Fire Shield as a result. When I give Sanchuudoku to Samia, she kills herself on Azama's Fire Shield, though Azama takes heavy damage as well.
Azama has a little under 50 base acid resistance, but she can't get to 100 and therefore make herself immune to Acidic Backlash, at least not without Snowy Tae's aid (and we want Snowy Tae to stay invisible during any fight with Cookies). Why not? Well, we do have scrolls of Protection from Acid, but she needs 9 INT to cast those. Snowy Tae can use them, but in IR, they can only target the caster.
I can still have Azama use them with the potion swap glitch, however. I spawn in Cookies to test it out.
Basically, the plan is to have everyone drink Potions of Invisibility when Cookies appears. Then Azama boosts her acid resistance over 127 (capped) with the potion swap glitch and a green scroll. She also casts Stoneskin. After waiting a few seconds to refresh her aura, she attacks Cookies, invariably missing. Eventually Cookies attacks her back, and hits her, dropping her acid resistance down to 120. Azama drinks a Potion of Invisibility right as this happens. The net result? Azama gets hit by infinite Acidic Backlashes, but is immune to acid. Meanwhile, Cookies gets hit by infinite Fire Shield damage, as well as some electrical damage thanks to Nature's Vengeance, the IR version of the Cloak of the Stars, which has a 20% chance of zapping any attacker every hit (unlike the IWD inspiration, this cloak is usable by non-druids).
But during testing, Azama dies. Cookie doesn't even get hurt.
Some poking around reveals that Azama died because Cookies had two invisible Fire Shields out, and hence killed Azama with cold damage. So why did Cookies survive?
He has a sword alongside Sanchuudoku that lets him toggle immunity to fire, electricity, and cold damage. So, he's immune to all Fire Shields, plus Nature's Vengeance.
But this doesn't mean these things are worthless. I can still lock him with the repeated damage. I repeat the test, this time with Azama immune to all of the elements, and have Cookies get hit by an invisible foe many times per second. Success!
I let Poppy out of invisibility to chip at him with her bow, but he manages to chase after her, eventually escaping Azama's damage lock. Poppy goes invisible and Azama re-establishes the damage lock to try again, but then Cookies casts Shadow Door, casting time 0.
Shadow Door has a maze effect on nearby enemies in SR. Since Azama has a base INT of 2, that's identical to an SR Imprisonment spell: 7200 rounds of Maze.
So I'm not really sure how we're going to deal with Cookies. The solution might just be running away from him every time he appears, until we reach some crazy new abilities that might actually hurt him.
Because right now, he has an all but guaranteed kill on Poppy, and Poppy appears to be his default first target.
And there is a trail of nymph chunks that Cookies left on the map, plus a huge pile where Poppy banished them in the front of the Adventurer's Mart. Here's the trail superimposed on the map.
With the Cookie Monster having fled the scene, we returned to the De'Arnise Keep, where we had been steadily clearing out the Trolls for the past several days. We only returned to Athkatla to get prices for our loot from Ribald, since Garlena appears to be buying our stuff for much less (120 gold for a suit of Plate Mail, to Ribald's 150).
We open the gate and fight some minor skirmishes on the way to the "cellars." Hordes of summons pave the way through the first pack of Spirit Trolls, and since we emerge from the fight in good shape, we continue on to the Umber Hulks without resting. Now all that's left is Torgal.
Torgal in Tactics is a Spirit Troll, with the irritating invisibility effect, but without the irritating spells. He's an absolute monster, but the AI in this battle is stunted somehow: if you approach Torgal while invisible, he will sniff you out and chase you, but his allies will not follow along. This allows us to tackle Torgal without worrying about the other critters.
Torgal crumples under a pile of summons. Fobie brings in three Fire Elementals, Snowy Tae brings in two Aerial Servants and four Greater Skeletons (basically, just tougher versions of the vanilla Skeletons), Poppy brings in a couple spirit animals, and Samia, using the Wand of Lightning trick, contributes three copies of Kitty.
Since we slay Torgal without much fuss, we decide to take on his buddies as well, without resting first. The last time I fought Torgal, I had to flee his friends, as they were too tough for me. But this time, I think we're strong enough to take them on.
Torgal's buddies include two or three Yuan-ti Mages, several Spirit Trolls, and an Elder Umber Hulk. It's a pretty diverse mix, and makes a coordinated strategy fairly difficult. It's hard to break down two enemy mages, for one thing, and the Spirit Trolls are all immune to single-target spells by virtue of their ability to turn invisible at will. Flame Arrow won't be much use on them, nor will Azama be able to freely use Fireball, given our reliance on summons. She sticks with Slow instead.
As usual, we struggle to kill the Spirit Trolls. Their invisibility at will is a nightmare, consistently screwing up normal targeting and causing both party members and summons to waste several seconds every round, severely reducing our melee power. It's the one reason I don't recommend using the Tactics mod with the De'Arnise Hold. It's deeply frustrating to notice your party members have been spreading their damage across multiple Spirit Trolls when all you want to do is focus on one.
The Yuan-ti Mages make a habit of dispelling our buffs, but Snowy Tae, our lone Inquisitor cleric, isn't able to keep their buffs down. I'm still not sure if an Inquisitor's Dispel Magic in SR or SCS2 actually takes down MGOI.
Without our buffs, we are quite vulnerable to disablers. Snowy Tae has a spectacular save vs. spell, and Azama has 33 base MR thanks to IR's Robe of the Weave, but for the most part, our saves are pretty weak, and SR spells have hefty save penalties. Since we've been fighting Trolls for quite some time--who are immune to hold and many other disablers--I fail to consider summoning the harem to hassle the Yuan-ti Mages. Thus, the Coiled Cabal is free to mess with our functioning.
It doesn't help matters that our Efreet do not seem to understand the concept of friendly fire. For the second time, one of them blasts the party with a loose Fireball.
Poppy is under the effects of Chaos, and therefore cannot heal herself--nor can Snowy Tae target her--but thankfully she's stuck in the previous room, and therefore is distanced from the enemy.
Azama breaks down some of the mages' defenses, but we don't quite manage to kill them, leaving two fully functional mages still in action, protected by a Teleport Field that frustrates the only weapons we have. Our two ranged attackers, Poppy and Samia, who might be able to harm the Coiled Cabal despite the Teleport Field, are both disabled: confused and unconscious, respectively.
Then Azama herself loses consciousness. Snowy Tae brings her back with Break Enchantment, hoping that Azama could use Dispel Magic (Snowy Tae already cast all of her own), but then I realize I was wrong about Azama's kit. She has the Cleric of Helm kit, not the Inquisitor kit, and therefore has True Sight, but not Dispel Magic.
Then Azama fails a save against Chaos. She's still the most valuable of our disabled characters, so Snowy Tae casts her last Break Enchantment spell. It's lucky Snowy Tae spent the first few rounds of combat hanging back and attacking with Spiritual Hammer from a distance, or else her buffs, including Chaotic Commands, might have been dispelled, too.
Our summons are confused, and we have no means of bringing them back. We've been struggling to kill a Yuan-ti Mage limping along at Near Death for the past three rounds or so, but finally, Samia wakes up, and finishes the job with the Crimson Dart.
Fobie, too, gets confused, and starts a fight with an Efreeti. At 40 HP. With no Stoneskin. The Efreeti drops him down to a quarter of his HP with one swing of its blade.
Then it swings again.
Fobie, our favorite goofball and the favorite of the harem, has popped like a balloon. He is gone.
The Efreeti is no more trouble, however. The battle has been won. The last Yuan-ti Mage is gutted at the feet of Lord De'Arnise, and the last Spirit Troll is beaten into a corner. Samia recovers from a Domination spell, we pick up Fobie's things, and report the news to Nalia.
Fobie was inches away from level 14, and the horribly dangerous Earthquake spell I so wanted to use. Now he is dead, and the party is back down to four members.
The tactics mod looks horribly cheesy ... I might need to try it sooner or later, do you know if it is somehow compatible with the EEs @semiticgod ? Do you have a new plan to deal with Kuroisan if he comes back ? And are they other fights like this one with some nearly invincible opponent ? Great progress so far !
@Blackraven The trap in the Neb's house makes massive acid damage (50-75 in the Core settings) and holds the person disarming it.
This has reminded me your own advice from the Druid thread: "Hmm broader pictures are no doubt very interesting, but yours is a no-reload run remember? Please be careful, think about Charname s fans. They don't want to see him dying on them..."
@bengoshi, you're right I really want to try again with a Cleric/Illusionist, but I'm afraid that if I don't mess up with some battle, a trap will mean game over. I don't know very well what the effects of most traps are... (and I find it a bit immersion-breaking to buff with Stoneskins, MI, MSD etc each time I'm facing a trap). How do you do it with Yahiko? Do you do 'trap research' on each area before you take Yahiko there?
Prior to getting the Shield of Archons I checked (basing on my memory) which traps are on a location and where. Death Ward, Ironskins and Chaotic Commands were constantly on Yahiko and helped against 90% of dangers. Only petrification was a problem but I know only one petrification trap in the Copper's Coronet dungeon and that can be avoided by a bridge to the south.
But as soon as Yahiko got that spell, he didn't need any "meta-knowledge" of traps any more. The spell lasts long enough and when it's over Yahiko prefers to rest.
I imagine that Yahiko wants to survive in the first place, so he tries to be always protected from the majority of nasty effects. I don't find it immersion-breaking. Instead, I find it natural. My character is opposed by a whole world and he should at least use all his immunities to survive.
I imagine that Yahiko wants to survive in the first place, so he tries to be always protected from the majority of nasty effects. I don't find it immersion-breaking. Instead, I find it natural. My character is opposed by a whole world and he should at least use all his immunities to survive.
I struggle a bit with buffing because the player (not the character) knows that a trap is near. However having your character doing everything he can to survive makes a lot of sense. I think I'll have my next Cleric/Illusionist use the Priest spell Find Traps a lot, i.e. always in dungeons or areas where hostilities are to be expected.
I imagine that Yahiko wants to survive in the first place, so he tries to be always protected from the majority of nasty effects. I don't find it immersion-breaking. Instead, I find it natural. My character is opposed by a whole world and he should at least use all his immunities to survive.
I struggle a bit with buffing because the player (not the character) knows that a trap is near.
The thing is, my character is always under the effect of the Shield of Archons, so it's not connected to reaching the certain place/container/encounter and so on - it lasts long enough (Death Ward and Chaotic Commands last even longer, Ironskins is active for 12 hours).
The thing is, my character is always under the effect of the Shield of Archons,
Ok that's a very good solution. Though it must have meant an awful lot of resting at the lower levels (when it didn't last long and when you didn't have many lvl 7 slots). Anyway I have the same in mind for my Cleric/Illusionist, or at least always having Find Traps active once she has a couple of casts of that spell. (Especially in BG2, where traps are just terrible).
After the battle, Anselm remembered why they were back in Beregost. On Mulahey's body, he found a few letters which indicated that a Mage named Tranzig was resting in the Feldpost inn. The Blackguard always read the letters alone as he didn't want the others members of the group to know too much about his plans. Sometimes he would seek Edwin's advice as his sheer intelligence matched his own he thought. But this time it wasn't the case. He led the party to the inn and encountered the spellcaster.
Surrounded by six evil looking and well equipped individuals, Tranzig betrayed his master and told the party what they wanted to know. But as soon as they turned their back to him, he tried to use his magic to harm them.
Hopefully Dorn was faster, and chunked him instantly with his greatsword before the incantation was over.
The party was impressed. "Well done, my servant." told Anselm. He wanted to mock him, to gauge his behavior. Dorn looked angry, as expected, but remained silent.
Afterward, the party travelled to the east, they heard some rumors about powerful beasts waiting to be killed. These beasts were Basilisks, and Edwin made sure to prepare some Protection from Petrification spells in advance.
During the trip, they were assaulted by a group of mercenaries. But the combined assault of Vynd, Dorn and Anselm ranged poisoned weaponry fell them extremely fast.
Once they arrived to the Basilisks lair, Anselm prefered to hunt them alone. He asked Edwin and Viconia to use some of their magic on him, prepared his poisoned Arrows of Detonation and blasted the creatures away. He also encountered some adventurers and a mad gnome named Mutamin and proceeded to kill them all for their magical equipments.
The area cleared, they continue their trip to the north, in a forest infested with Giant Spiders and their Web traps. They also met a group of Red Wizards of Thay and dispatched them by breaching through their Stoneskin spells with their poisoned weapons, interrupting all their spellcasting. (Normally you can't fight them with Edwin in your party, that's why I kicked him out of the party, initiated the fight then took him back since I wanted the XP and the loot).
At some point Anselm wandered a bit too far alone and got caught in a Web trap while a few Spiders were heading his way. Kagain and Viconia rushed to help him in the Web, counting on their good saves or magic resistance. Viconia also got webbed but Kagain didn't and manage to tank the Spiders effectively except one Sword Spider which tried to evicerate Anselm but Dorn, Vynd and Edwin eliminated it before it was over.
The death squad then travelled south. Dorn told them he wanted to take his revenge against Kryll, a necromancer who betrayed him before he joined the party and according to his informations, she was somewhere east of Nashkel.
Another group tried in vain to stop them during their trip. This time around even Edwin provoked them before the slaughter.
Eventually they found her. Dorn, hidden by an Invisibility spell, sneaked upon her and chunked her instantly, exactly like Tranzig.
On her body, Dorn discovered some documents which could help him for his vendetta. Anselm allowed him to keep them since it was his quest.
Finally, the group came back to the Friendly Arm Inn before heading to the Bandit Camp.
Thinking of joining this party with a character idea I've been wanting to try out for some time. Human Mage (2) / Wizard Slayer. Studied magic under Gorion but hated it and now has a vicious prejudice against mages. He cannot cast any spells nor scribe into his spellbook (which is empty in any case). However he can use scrolls (use the tools of the enemy against them).
Haven't played a Wizard Slayer in years so will need to refresh knowledge. Might use the rebalancing mod for slightly better MR (1% per level seems pathetic). Main concern is not being able to use potions...I'm completely reliant on Invulnerability / Freedom to survive against mages and Invisibility to heal in the middle of fights or to get out of tough spots. I suppose the latter could be compensated by just buying every Invisibility scroll I come across but how do you improve your saving throws / avoid PW stun without the other potions? Serious planning needed...
@Jaheiras_Witness I'd like to see your adventure written here ! Your character concept is very interesting and shouldn't be too hard to play if you use a party, I was actually thinking about a ranged WS Charname for a future run. You could find a lot of informations about the Wizard Slayer no-reload here :
Thanks, may well write up here, but has to be solo, I only play solo these days. Will start in BG2 though and assume stat boosts. Will go 5* sbow and try ranged as much as possible, possibly switching to 2HS for upclose fighting (probably won't have enough proficiency points to dual wield effectively).
@Gotural: My only plan for Cookies is to bombard him with nymphs until he goes away. We can't handle him directly, with our HP as low as it is. Acidic Backlash does 7d2 damage per hit, or about 10.5 on average, spread over the course of a round.
It's not a complicated battle. It's just got huge numbers in it.
Ok fellow no re-loaders, I rolled a new gnomish Cleric/Illusionist, Scintilla Silverlock.
She's currently questing around in Beregost and vicinity.
Scintilla's a solitary type and strictly TN in an 'Everybody leaves everybody else alone' sense. That doesn't mean she won't help others, but merely that she doesn't consider herself obliged to do so. I'll try to make her extremely cautious, making her only take risks where I know the benefits are worth it. The idea is to go solo again, at least for the BG1 and SoA part. (Not sure about ToB due to improved Sendai etc, but let's first see if she can get there haha.) Hope to post an update soon.
We kill Valygar to nab his body and return to Athkatla. We are probably well-equipped enough to handle the Planar Sphere.
Kuroisan greets us at the south end of the Slums. We're in a pretty tight space, so we scurry over to the Graveyard and return when everyone is invisible. Cookies is still in the Slums when we get back, but he can't see us.
When Poppy summons some nymphs to go pester him, however, he immediately attacks Poppy, though he can't get anywhere near me before Poppy hides. It turns out he automatically targets Charname whenever Charname is visible. I test it out by hopping over to the Planar Sphere with CTRL-J, which forces all characters out of the shadows. Sure enough, he targets me, on the other side of the map.
Poppy hides again, ruining Cookies' strategy of hitting stuff with his sword. Samia lays a few traps a ways away, and we hide in the Planar Sphere to rest, hoping to lay more and lure Cookies into the traps, but he gets frustrated and leaves just as we're coming back out.
Cookies is pretty easy to avoid, actually, and since he never gives up, it means you don't have to worry about losing the loot from the fight with the guy.
The Planar Sphere is usually a pretty calm run for me. The only two problems are the Tanar'ri and the halfling cannibals: Entu, Togan, Mogadish, and Kayardi. On the way, we meet some outerplanar knights.
Azama is in a sour mood from Fobie's loss, but manages to avoid snapping at poor Reyna.
Before the fight with Togan and the other halflings, we summon a bunch of critters, same as we used on Torgal, and buff everyone up. Poppy sends in some nymphs to soak up some spells. Kayardi summons a Bone Fiend offscreen, which quickly teleports to the front of the battle, in the convenient choke point all of us have used.
The Bone Fiend is a major issue for us. We just don't have much melee power, and Bone Fiends are quite resilient. Meanwhile, Mogadish has hurried to the front, and unlike Togan and Entu, he has some defenses. But a Breach from Azama brings down his Physical Mirror, rendering him vulnerable to Poppy's arrows and Azama's Flame Arrow spell.
Notice that Snowy Tae is in rat form. This is because she took a swing at the Bone Fiend with Spiritual Hammer, and it teleported over to harass her. When it took out more than half her HP in a single blow, and only dealt a single point of cold damage in the process, I knew she could tank its attacks in rat form. She has immunity to physical damage in rat form, and although her cold resistance is almost -50%, the Bone Fiend only does 1 cold damage per hit. Potions could handle the rest.
Then the Bone Fiend casts Cone of Cold. Snowy Tae nearly dies. Another potion later, it casts Cone of Cold again, nearly killing her once more. Poppy starts summoning nymphs so we have extra castings of Mass Cure.
The Bone Fiend teleports over to Poppy and hits her, also taking out more than half of Poppy's HP with a single blow. Poppy tries to drink a potion, but she can't. The way I implemented the nymph summoning spell has a limitation: aura cleansing still won't let you drink a potion or use an item until 6 seconds after the last spell. Even though Poppy was supposed to have her aura clear, since the nymph summoning is supposed to be a passive process requiring no action, she still can't drink a potion.
Instead, I have her run away, to buy enough time for her to drink a potion and get back to summoning.
The Bone Fiend casts Cone of Cold, with an apparent casting time of 1. Thankfully, Poppy has magic resistance, thanks to her Wizard Slayer kit and also her innate bonuses.
But Poppy also has a -3 penalty to her save vs. breath. And -24% weakness to cold damage. And about 10 HP left.
The Cone of Cold goes right through Azama's Fire Shield and freezes Poppy solid, along with one of her nymphs.
Arguably, Poppy should have been allowed to drink the potion, since summoning the nymphs was supposed to be a free action. But the way I implemented it prevented that from happening, and in any case I have an opportunity to start a new run. Losing Fobie was a tremendous setback. Of the 10 characters I generated for this run, only four of them were actually worth using, and according to my rules, I can't just pick up Cernd when my normal druid explodes.
The randomized characters have been treated really poorly by Item Revisions. A fighter with low DEX can no longer get 18 DEX just from the Gauntlets of Dexterity. A mage with 12 INT can no longer get to 20 with a couple of Potions of Genius. That means bad AC for the fighters, and few spells for the mages. Base stats really, really matter in IR, especially since we're doing a no-reload run, and scroll scribing failure is unavoidable.
Come to think of it, the list of challenges in my last few runs are kind of excessive. Core Rules; SCS2 with pre-buffing; Tactics; two rebalancing mods, IR and SR, that I have never played before; no reloads allowed; and on top of all that, I've been saddling my characters with messed-up stats. We get really crazy abilities with randomization, the most extreme example being the infinite nymph summoning, but we also get crippling weaknesses, and IR and SR close a lot of the opportunities to compensate for those weaknesses. Multiple kits are usually a bonus, since so many item restrictions overlap and some of the drawbacks are not relevant (thieves only benefit from the Stalker kit; Monks don't suffer from Kensai item restrictions), but randomizing other stuff makes our characters awfully easy to kill.
Fobie and Poppy both got killed in two hits. That's just what you get when you've got no CON bonuses, no Stoneskin or Mirror Image, no armor, AC penalties, negative resistances, and a -30% penalty to your maximum HP.
It's hard to tell from the screenshots with an infinite harem crowding up the battles, but beneath these crazy powers are some very fragile characters.
@Gotural How are you finding Vynd as a companion, I've installed him but not picked him up yet. Does he fit well with the feel of the base game?
My current setup allows humans to multiclass and every race to dual class. I'm very tempted to give Vynd the int tome and dual him to a wizard as a homage to Proesis, the first playthrough I read on these forums.
@Arnaeus To be honest he is quite the best NPC I have ever seen. He has a lot of banters and interjections with everyone, EE or non-EE characters, he's funny and witty. He is very well balanced because single class Thieves aren't too overpowered which compensates the fact he is a Drow. I'm also playing with BG1 NPC Project and I think he has more dialogues than any other characters.
I was also tempted to dual him, Assassin dualed to Mage is such a fun and powerful combo. But he is my only Thief so I need him to stay single class for the utility. I'm happy you read about Proesis, it was a fun playthrought !
@Gotural thanks for the feedback, sounds like I definitely need to give him a shot. Also from what you're saying if I dual him to a mage he'll be ridiculous lol... I'm probably going to do it anyway
@Arnaeus To be honest he is quite the best NPC I have ever seen. He has a lot of banters and interjections with everyone, EE or non-EE characters, he's funny and witty. He is very well balanced because single class Thieves aren't too overpowered which compensates the fact he is a Drow. I'm also playing with BG1 NPC Project and I think he has more dialogues than any other characters.
I was also tempted to dual him, Assassin dualed to Mage is such a fun and powerful combo. But he is my only Thief so I need him to stay single class for the utility. I'm happy you read about Proesis, it was a fun playthrought !
I think when you reach BG2, you can try a new mod assassin NPC, Alexia, by @CoM_Solaufein :
I'm afraid she isn't going to be powerful enough for the no reload run. Anselm has no reason to keep someone he doesn't consider strong enough in his party.
@Arnaeus I'm probably going to play with Korgan, Dorn, Edwin, Viconia and Hexxat. Hexxat is going to be keepered into a Shadowdancer/Mage or an Assassin/Mage. Viconia into a Fighter dualled into Priest like in my BG1 game.
@Gotural, nice progress you're making. I like seeing your party convincingly impose their will upon others. Vynd looks interesting indeed. I always considered doing a truly evil playthrough with an Assassin Charname. However it's great to have Vynd (or maybe Alexia) around so that I can use whatever class/kit I want for Charname. @semiticgod, are you still enjoying your experimental playthroughs? Maybe you could stick to ranomized characters that are not almost completely useless or treated poorly by IR? Arnaeus, thank you! I'll post a first brief installment below, and will catch up with your FIghter/Sorcerer after that
After Gorion's shocking death on the Lion's Way at the hands of a warrior-led group of brigands that were after her, Scintilla ran into Imoen and brought the well-meaining but impetuous girl back to Candlekeep, and made arrangements for Gorion's burial. The Gnome herself was not welcomed back into the citadel, so she traveled to Beregost to meet with her old acquaintance Firebead Elvenhair. She would have preferred living in the woods, but her knowledge of herbalism, foods and potions was insufficient for that due to having lived a cloistered life for as long she could remember. Instead, she followed Firebead's advice to deal with four Huge Spiders for his neighbor Landrin, a Gnome like herself who had taken refuge at the FAI. She put the Spiders to Sleep easily enough, but found herslef exceedingly slow at killing them, so she asked her rabbit familiar Gale to help out. He did so reluctantly.
Scintilla did a number of simpler errands, including enabling the reclusive mage Thalantyr to restore his chickenated apprentice, and then traveled to the FAI with some of Landrin's possessions. On her way she put a rogue Ogre to Sleep, and at the inn she encountered an evil-looking wizard in front of the entrance. Scintilla walked past him, Sanctuaried. Inside she was dismayed with the fact that the otherwise friendly inkeeper Bentley dispelled her Sanctuary with an Oracle. (I understand that enemies can do this sometimes as well. A frightening thought, and a phenomenon I don't agree with.) She met with two old friends of Gorion's but politely declined their offer to travel with her. She then handed Landrin's belongings to her fellow Gnome, had a brief chat, and left again. She was astounded to see that the man was still there waiting at the entrance because hours had passed. It turned out he had been waiting for her. Like the bandits on the Lion's Way, this man wanted her head.
She was low on memorized spells (hadn't rested), but found herself almost instinctivley cast Blindness on her foe while he was in the process of casting a spell himself.
This resulted in the wizard's spell being cancelled and in a race that ended with Scintilla silencing her opponent for good.
North of the FAI, Scintilla retrieved a bowl from three evil fishermen for a young cleric named Tenya
before she traveled south again, this time all the way to Nashkel. There she slew another Bounty Hunter together with Gale.
She also accepted a commission for the Amnish guard: to bring back their former captain, Brage, who had gone on a murdering spree. She found him west of Nashkel, close to the shores of the south Sword Coast, after she helped an archaeologist there and after she slew Brage's hostile cousin (due to a misclick on my part)) with a Blindness and two Hold Persons. It yielded her an enchanted Small Shield. Brage himself was remarkably calm, and willing to return to Nashkel with her to atone for his actions that had been the consequence of wielding a cursed greatsword rather than manifestations of his own will. Another job she completed was to retrieve two stolen emeralds from an artist named Prism, after defeating a contender for the bounty, Greywolf.
This took a long time, because Scintilla and Gale failed to kill Blinded and then Held Greywolf before the Hold effect wore off. It caused still Blinded Greywolf to run around a lot. The same strategy worked better in Beregost's Red Sheaf inn against yet another bounty hunter, Karlat, thanks to the confinement of the inn.
With a good reputation plus Friends she acquired a Helm of Charm Protection, a Sling +1, a Shield Amulet, a Necklace of Missiles and three containers (potion bag, scroll case, gem bag) at very reasonable prices. At Thalantyr's Scintilla purchased a number of scrolls, but she scribed only spells of the Illusion/Phantasm school (which thanks to her being an Illusionist required no INT buffs for 100% certainty of successful copying into spellbook). Her most important new spells are Invisibility and Mirror Image.
South of Thalantyr's abode, Scintilla ran into Bassilus the murdere of whom she had heard mention in Beregost. She Silenced, Held, and Blinded him, interrupted his Sanctuary with the last charge of her Wand of MMs, and pelted him with sling bullets until he went down.
The only spells Bassilus managed to cast were two Unholy Blights but they didn't affect Scintilla. She took the priest's enchanted Warhammer and his holy symbol, and then returned to Beregost where she received from Keldath Ormlyr the Morninglord a 5000 GP reward for having dealt with Bassilus.
Character record and inventory screen:
In my playthrough with Kathlen I had her specialize in dualwielding (possible with BG2 Tweaks) and use various items upgraded by Thalantyr (Thalantyr item upgrades mod). This time I want to take a more vanilla approach, at least in BG1. So no Thalantyr items, and no more than one pip in TWS. For this reason, Scintilla's third pip (after her starting profs of Clubs and Slings) went to Warhammers, for the Ashideena. Her robe of choice will be the Robe of the Neutral Archmagi. In BG2 I do want to get Cromwell to craft ItemUpgrades' Fulcrum Club +4, because it such a cool weapon (sets proficiency in clubs to grandmastery, and deals extra damage depending on alignment in the same way the Equalizer does).
Edit: changed last screenshot for one with Scintilla sporting Robe of Neutral Archmagi. Love the way she looks, straight out of a fairy tale
@Blackraven: I've been giving a lot of thought to the randomized runs. It has some different properties depending on the system I use.
When I first started using randomization, all I did was randomize ability scores and classes, and only permitted legal combinations (Fighter/Mage rather than Ranger/Bard). Basically, it was just a method to start using new classes, with some unusual abilities on top. It didn't make the game much harder.
Then I started randomizing resistances, HP, casting time, saves, to hit and damage bonuses, movement rate, AC, and spell slots. And they varied a lot. You could have -120% weakness to electricity and 120% resistance to fire, or -9 to hit and +7 to damage. Those characters were almost unworkable, because randomization was catastrophic to their functioning. What good is a sorceror with a +7 penalty to casting time? What good is any character with -80% HP? I've rolled dozens or hundreds of characters that I never used, just because they weren't viable.
Then I started tacking on independent effects, which had a marginal effect on the system. The characters were still mostly crippled, with a few absolute gods among the masses.
Finally I reduced the effects, so you get at most -50% or +50% resistances, and -5 to +5 to your saves, to hit, damage, etc. I also allowed illegal combinations. It greatly strengthened the resulting characters, but they're still weaker than normal characters. Even a plain Fighter with 10/10/10/10/10/10 stats would be more useful overall.
The basic problem is that weaknesses matter more than strengths.
Let's say your at a higher difficulty setting. No resistances? You'll scrape by the Trolls' piercing damage, and also scrape by the Golems' crushing damage. What if you have a 50% weakness to crushing damage, but a 50% resistance to piercing damage? Well, the Trolls are going to be an absolute breeze. But the Golems are going to wreck you. And for a no-reload run... well, the normal character will scrape by. But the randomized character will die the moment it runs into its weaknesses.
I just tweaked the system once more, removing the irrelevant and instant kill effects from the list of effects I can use. The result? Some pretty decent characters. One of them is a dwarven sorceror with some extra spell slots.
And a +12 bonus to casting time.
And immunity to non-silver weapons.
But has -50 to MR. And is a Wizard Slayer. And with horrible elemental resistances.
What does this mean? It means this character is immune to basically all weapons in the game, and once it gets Improved Alacrity, it will be able to empty its entire spell book, even the level 9 spells, within a couple rounds. But if an enemy Lich casts Horrid Wilting... this character will almost assuredly die. If I played this character, I could expect to complete most of the game with no difficulty at all. Then I would die against an enemy spell damage, just like Poppy did. Lots of boring stuff, then sudden death and an end to the run.
People don't seem to have much interest in the randomized runs, I don't think, probably because the strategies don't really apply to non-randomized runs, which most people do. I think I will try a non-randomized run next time. But I'm not sure what to pick.
I'd like to try an insane solo poverty run, but that was hard enough in vanilla, with reloads. It wouldn't be a sorceror, since they're already kind of the default character for ISP runs and it seems unoriginal. I've considered a Cleric/Thief, Bounty Hunter/Cleric, Conjurer/Cleric, Fighter/Druid, and Ranger/Cleric, but none of them seem viable for the entire game.
For a non-ISP run, I thought I might try a solo Cleric of Lathander/Mage, but it might be too similar to Sil's run, even with SR and IR. I've gone through the possibilities, and it seems that resistances are just plain hard to get in SR and IR, which makes me leery of a solo character.
A Fighter/Cleric with full plate, the Fortress Shield, and Armor of Faith gets 40% resistance to physical damage. A Barbarian in leather armor gets 30%, or 40% if we use the Orc Leather, which seems to have an extra 15% resistance tacked on for some reason. A Fighter/Druid with full plate, the Fortress Shield, Armor of Faith, and Earth Elemental form gets 90% resistance. A Cleric dualed to Mage using Ghost Form, Armor of Faith, and the Fortress Shield gets 70%. Same goes for a Cleric/Mage using Iron Golem form, but with only 45% for crushing damage. Magic resistance is easier to get in SR for mages, thanks to Dispelling Screen, but it's harder to melee characters, thanks to Carsomyr's new 20% MR. I'd really want to get to 100 for a no-reload run, but maybe subzero saves would be easier, since there are more ways to get save bonuses in IR and SR.
Long story short, I'm not sure what to pick. But I'm tired of randomized characters and their crippling weaknesses. They're great characters and they're really interesting, but they're just really not well-suited to a no-reload run, at least with the mods I've got.
I'll be creating my own characters instead. But which classes? I'm weary of sorcerors, I've played too many Archers, I'm tired of multiclasses' slow spell progression, I don't like thieves or bards, druids will get stuck at that irritating level 13/14/15 XP gap, single-classed clerics seem kind of boring, fighters won't get to use the new SR spells, mages won't get to use the new IR weapons, Fighter/Mages seem too easy, Kensais can't use the new IR armors... I've thought of using some illegal combinations, like a Monk/Sorceror, but the coolest combinations tend to be multiclasses, and I've been at low levels for far too long.
I've even considered a solo Fighter/Ranger/Paladin/Thief/Bard/Monk/Mage/Sorceror/Cleric/Druid, or a character with all of the kits, but the former will be stuck with low-level spells, and the latter won't get to use any armor, any magic items, and the only weapon it could use would be a club, since Beastmasters can't use metal stuff, Monks can't use two-handed weapons, and Cavaliers can't use slings.
I've also considered just creating whichever party seems most powerful in IR and SR, and blasting through the game. But I'm not a big fan of Inquisitors or Berserker/Clerics or Kensai/Mages or Sorcerors or Assassin/Mages... they seem overdone, even reductive. But I've already gone to the opposite extreme--using pathetically weak randomized characters--and all they do is struggle through the little battles and die in the big ones.
And if I try a roleplaying run, I'd have to write at least four sex scenes before we even escaped the first dungeon.
Comments
Why didn't I just call in the harem and seduce Faldorn? She has 3 million XP according to her .cre file. I could have gotten a new druid.
I suppose it's just as well. An epic-level druid would be kind of game-breaking.
Anyway, after watching Cernd maul Faldorn, we talked it over with Pai'Na and agreed we should take separate paths. As much as we enjoyed her company, she just wasn't satisfied with the harem she had. Nobody in our party can cast Spider Spawn. She let us keep Kitty as a farewell gift, and in exchange we gave her a couple dozen nymphs to keep her company.
We now have lost a valuable source of divine buffs. Without Pai'Na, we only have 5th-level Protection from Fire spells; the 3rd-level version is now out of reach. Worse yet, I just realize Fobie is supposed to have a -3 penalty to his 5th-level spell slots! He's not supposed to be casting Stoneskin or Insect Plague until epic levels. I empty his spell slots, but he has plenty more.
This means Fobie will no longer be able to function as a tank. No Stoneskin, low HP, mediocre resistances, and bad AC all make Fobie a fantastically squishy character. Snowy Tae isn't much better, as her AC isn't too great--she's especially vulnerable to crushing damage, against which she has a -5 AC penalty--but she at least can turn into a rat with the Cloak of Sewers.
We attack the djinn, who fail some very important saves in the first round.
The fight is a breeze, and we net an Efreeti Bottle and Rashad's Talon (which has a 20% chance of adding 1 APR per hit) for our trouble. The Efreeti Bottle, notably, has no weight, and therefore our pretty boy waif Fobie will be able to carry it around. Unbuffed, his STR is 2, which means he can only carry a couple potions and a pair of bracers. Normally his inventory is filled with scrolls and gems; he can't carry anything heavier.
We report our success to Lord Logan Coinpurse and Guildmistress Busybody and get another big cash money wad for being awesome heroes and stuff. We also clear out the Trademeet crypt thingy, and Fobie almost dies when he gets smacked by a Skeleton Warrior.
Snowy Tae hits level 11, finally, but her spell picks aren't too swell. Heal is an excellent spell, and in SR only has a casting time of 6, but since everybody in our party has such low HP (potions restore about half our HP on average), and Poppy can summon nymphs at will to cast Mass Cure, Heal won't add that much to our healing power. Blade Barrier is another strong choice, but Snowy Tae won't be able to cast it reliably in the middle of battle, since she has high AC and a casting speed penalty. Our best bet is Physical Mirror, which in SR lasts 2 turns and gives enemies a 50% miss chance against the caster. It's the best we can do to keep Snowy Tae's spells from being interrupting, unless we use finite resources. Item Revisions tweaks the Potion of Stone Form to give 5 Stoneskins instead of giving AC and saving throw bonuses, so that's another strong way to ensure successful spellcasting. But there are only so many such potions, and it's not clear when I should use them.
I returned the dryad's acorns to Vaelasa and briefly brought the nymph queen into the group. Unfortunately, it wasn't very interesting. Vaelasa was little more than a level 10 unkitted druid with a couple castings of Improved Invisibility and Dire Charm. She just seemed boring compared to Pai'Na. I removed her from the party soon afterwards. I have another couple of ideas for who to bring into the party, anyway.
The reason why I came to Firkraag's dungeon now is because I was hoping to avoid the vampire spawns, since Protection from Undead scrolls in IR only give combat bonuses against undead, and no longer any invisibility. Visiting the dungeon at a lower level (or tweaking my install, which I normally don't bother doing) will ensure the random spawns aren't too strong.
But I ended up not triggering the encounter at all. If you use CTRL-4 in the hallway right before the vampire room, you can see where the trigger is, and you can walk around it by hugging the right side of the hallway. I've tried this multiple times and it seems to always work, though I normally step on the trigger anyway to fight the vampires. If you have SR, you can also use Dimension Door (a 1st-level spell, depending on your install) to hop over the trigger. I probably would have encountered some ghouls and mummies, but avoiding the trigger is worth it, just in case there were vampires there.
As usual, I decided to let Samia ambush me early rather than trudging through the maze and have her appear with her goons behind me. If you pick the right dialogue options, she and her buddies will spawn right on top of you.
I brought out a bunch of nymphs in the first round, who quickly began to wreck the enemy party. Even Kaol ended up disabled; the harem's Confusion spells go right through his MGOI. The harem charmed Samia a couple of times while the rest of the party worked on slaying Chak, Legdoril, Akae, Ferric Ironblade, and eventually Kaol.
The battle ended in a decisive victory. Samia recovered from the nymphs' spells to find her party already defeated. She surrendered her arms, and after some divination magic, we discovered she was not actually evil... she's Chaotic Neutral. We are in desperate need of a good frontliner, and asked Samia if she was willing to join the group. She agreed! Although more out of a sense of profit than an interest in the harem. Without Pai'Na we're still lacking a proper dominatrix. But Samia isn't a good fit for the job anyway... we don't know yet if we can trust this woman.
Still, Samia is well-suited to the group. She's a 13th-level fighter with grandmastery in scimitars, and with her ludicrous ability scores--her stat total is a whopping 94--she can dual-class to thief, rendering her zero starting XP a non-issue. Once we take a tour around the maze, she levels up enough to start detecting and disarming some traps.
Now that we have a thief, we can finally stop worrying about traps and locks. It'll take another 880,000 XP before she regains her fighter levels, but with the De'Arnise Hold, Planar Sphere, Planar Prison, and Unseeing Eye quests still wide open, it is by no means too late to dual-class one of our party members.
Firkraag's dungeon has another nasty sticking point besides the vampires and Samia's ambush: in the hallway right after completing the Mask of King Strohm quest, there are three Greater Wolfwere spawns, with outrageous regeneration and MR that caster-heavy parties like ours have trouble overcoming. The harem ends up solving the problem: By throwing out several Hold Monster spells at once, the nymphs can successfully disable the monsters, and therefore get automatic hits with their Cause Critical Wounds spell. Two hits spell the victim's demise.
Cause Critical Wounds is a monster in Spell Revisions. The damage is crazy and the weapon lasts a whole turn, giving the caster much more freedom in determining when to strike. The one drawback the nymphs have is their awful base THAC0. But they don't need an attack roll if the target is paralyzed.
After trashing Firkraag's dungeon, the dragon orders one last goon to try and kill us. He barely puts up a fight.
He wakes up a round later, but by then, his Stoneskins are gone and he has a massive spell failure penalty thanks to being hit by a bunch of darts from a Wizard Slayer. He crumples seconds later, and the quest is one.
As usual, I leave Firkraag well alone. I have no need of Carsomyr, at least not this early in the game.
By the way... @Demivrgvs, the Potion of Regeneration stacks with itself as well as the Regeneration spell. The POTN42 spell gives no immunity to the cleric or druid regeneration spells, and vice versa.
Thanks to Samia's 12 INT, she is able to use some if not all of IR's wands, which are tweaked to be usable by thieves if they have high enough INT. The Wand of Lightning is tweaked to only fire 3 lightning bolts instead of 6 (how did you do that, @Demivrgvs?), but the Wand of Lightning trick still works, and I might have Samia drink triple-strength regeneration potions for the tougher battles.
On the way back from Firkraag's dungeon, we are greeted by a familiar face: Kuroisan, the Acid Kensai. He asks us to hand over Malakar, and he will leave us alone.
For those of you who aren't aware, Kuroisan is a Kensai(13)/Mage(14) from the Tactics mod, who attacks you if you don't hand over Malakar or Celestial Fury (I think other katanas he doesn't care about). He is notable for casting PFMW via scrolls, having end-game equipment (Robe of Vecna, Amulet of Power, Cloak of Mirroring), and for wielding the infamous Sanchuudoku, a +4 katana that fires off a tiny acid arrow spell at anyone who harms the wielder, whether the attack is from a melee weapon, a ranged weapon, or a spell. And Sanchuudoku also lowers acid resistance on hit, so boosting your acid resistance is not a permanent fix. He's a ludicrously powerful character with tons of immunities and a LOT of attack power.
I decide to go ahead and fight him. Not because I particularly cared about Malakar, but because I was kind of afraid I might not get to see him again, and might therefore lose the opportunity to get Sanchuudoku.
Problem is, I'm honestly not sure how to kill this guy. So right after the dialogue ends, I have everybody flee. Mr. Cookies wastes some PFMW scrolls while nobody is attacking him, then starts to chase Poppy, who calls in the harem. Poppy hides while her nymphs slow down the kensai.
Cookies expends his Acid Arrow and Magic Missile spells on the nymphs, then switches to his katana. He deals about 40 damage per hit, not counting the 2d4 acid damage on hit, so that's basically an instant kill on Poppy.
I check Cookies' files--I'm not really familiar with this guy--and find that he has a -20 bonus to all his saves, as if he had drunk a Potion of Magic Shielding. So my nymphs are never, ever going to disable him. But wait! Item Revisions tweaks the Cloak of Mirroring on his back--it doesn't deflect spell damage anymore. It just gives physical attacks against the wearer a 50% miss chance. I rally the nymphs to cast Call Lightning. I wasn't expecting much, but it still goes much worse than I expected.
Apparently Cookies has a spell reflection effect active, which I overlooked earlier. All those lightning bolts bounced right back at the nymphs. Even after I burn through this defense, though, he refuses to get hurt. I can tell from his files that he doesn't have 100 MR, but the nymphs never do any damage to him.
I give up on the nymphs' spells and decide to just have them attack Cookies directly. He chunks them one after another.
Then he curses at me and vanishes, saying he's not done with me. Apparently he got tired of slashing up the nymphs and decided to come back to kill me later. Not a good sign. I don't know where he might show up again. If it's Athkatla, I can always just turn invisible--Cookies can't see through invisibility, nor can he dispel it--or run away and block him in with the harem, but if it's in a dungeon, god forbid, then I might not have enough room to make my escape.
I go through my spells and items and find little that can help me against Cookies. This is a long section explaining why I can't beat him:
I can think of two possibilities. First, the Shield of Reflection, if I buy it, bounces the green arrow projectile that his "Acidic Backlash" uses, but when I cheat the shield and Sanchuudoku in for testing, Acidic Backlash goes right through the shield, and the wielder of Sanchuudoku is unharmed... perhaps because, as I later discovered, Sanchuudoku makes the wielder immune to that projectile, and therefore it cannot be reflected.
The other possibility is a weird trick involving Fire Shield. Those who have used Sanchuudoku might have noticed that if one critter with Sanchuudoku and another critter with a Fire Shield hit one another, then the Fire Shield and Acidic Backlash will trigger each other infinitely, dealing tons of damage to both critters... usually killing one or both of them within a few seconds.
Nobody can cast Fire Shield in my party, since the only arcane caster is Azama, who can't use scrolls due to her 2 INT, but Azama does have the Salamander shapeshift due to her Avenger kit, and gets a constant effect Fire Shield as a result. When I give Sanchuudoku to Samia, she kills herself on Azama's Fire Shield, though Azama takes heavy damage as well.
Azama has a little under 50 base acid resistance, but she can't get to 100 and therefore make herself immune to Acidic Backlash, at least not without Snowy Tae's aid (and we want Snowy Tae to stay invisible during any fight with Cookies). Why not? Well, we do have scrolls of Protection from Acid, but she needs 9 INT to cast those. Snowy Tae can use them, but in IR, they can only target the caster.
I can still have Azama use them with the potion swap glitch, however. I spawn in Cookies to test it out.
Basically, the plan is to have everyone drink Potions of Invisibility when Cookies appears. Then Azama boosts her acid resistance over 127 (capped) with the potion swap glitch and a green scroll. She also casts Stoneskin. After waiting a few seconds to refresh her aura, she attacks Cookies, invariably missing. Eventually Cookies attacks her back, and hits her, dropping her acid resistance down to 120. Azama drinks a Potion of Invisibility right as this happens. The net result? Azama gets hit by infinite Acidic Backlashes, but is immune to acid. Meanwhile, Cookies gets hit by infinite Fire Shield damage, as well as some electrical damage thanks to Nature's Vengeance, the IR version of the Cloak of the Stars, which has a 20% chance of zapping any attacker every hit (unlike the IWD inspiration, this cloak is usable by non-druids).
But during testing, Azama dies. Cookie doesn't even get hurt.
Some poking around reveals that Azama died because Cookies had two invisible Fire Shields out, and hence killed Azama with cold damage. So why did Cookies survive?
He has a sword alongside Sanchuudoku that lets him toggle immunity to fire, electricity, and cold damage. So, he's immune to all Fire Shields, plus Nature's Vengeance.
But this doesn't mean these things are worthless. I can still lock him with the repeated damage. I repeat the test, this time with Azama immune to all of the elements, and have Cookies get hit by an invisible foe many times per second. Success!
I let Poppy out of invisibility to chip at him with her bow, but he manages to chase after her, eventually escaping Azama's damage lock. Poppy goes invisible and Azama re-establishes the damage lock to try again, but then Cookies casts Shadow Door, casting time 0.
Shadow Door has a maze effect on nearby enemies in SR. Since Azama has a base INT of 2, that's identical to an SR Imprisonment spell: 7200 rounds of Maze.
So I'm not really sure how we're going to deal with Cookies. The solution might just be running away from him every time he appears, until we reach some crazy new abilities that might actually hurt him.
Because right now, he has an all but guaranteed kill on Poppy, and Poppy appears to be his default first target.
That's the Cookie Monster for you.
We open the gate and fight some minor skirmishes on the way to the "cellars." Hordes of summons pave the way through the first pack of Spirit Trolls, and since we emerge from the fight in good shape, we continue on to the Umber Hulks without resting. Now all that's left is Torgal.
Torgal in Tactics is a Spirit Troll, with the irritating invisibility effect, but without the irritating spells. He's an absolute monster, but the AI in this battle is stunted somehow: if you approach Torgal while invisible, he will sniff you out and chase you, but his allies will not follow along. This allows us to tackle Torgal without worrying about the other critters.
Torgal crumples under a pile of summons. Fobie brings in three Fire Elementals, Snowy Tae brings in two Aerial Servants and four Greater Skeletons (basically, just tougher versions of the vanilla Skeletons), Poppy brings in a couple spirit animals, and Samia, using the Wand of Lightning trick, contributes three copies of Kitty.
Since we slay Torgal without much fuss, we decide to take on his buddies as well, without resting first. The last time I fought Torgal, I had to flee his friends, as they were too tough for me. But this time, I think we're strong enough to take them on.
Torgal's buddies include two or three Yuan-ti Mages, several Spirit Trolls, and an Elder Umber Hulk. It's a pretty diverse mix, and makes a coordinated strategy fairly difficult. It's hard to break down two enemy mages, for one thing, and the Spirit Trolls are all immune to single-target spells by virtue of their ability to turn invisible at will. Flame Arrow won't be much use on them, nor will Azama be able to freely use Fireball, given our reliance on summons. She sticks with Slow instead.
As usual, we struggle to kill the Spirit Trolls. Their invisibility at will is a nightmare, consistently screwing up normal targeting and causing both party members and summons to waste several seconds every round, severely reducing our melee power. It's the one reason I don't recommend using the Tactics mod with the De'Arnise Hold. It's deeply frustrating to notice your party members have been spreading their damage across multiple Spirit Trolls when all you want to do is focus on one.
The Yuan-ti Mages make a habit of dispelling our buffs, but Snowy Tae, our lone Inquisitor cleric, isn't able to keep their buffs down. I'm still not sure if an Inquisitor's Dispel Magic in SR or SCS2 actually takes down MGOI.
Without our buffs, we are quite vulnerable to disablers. Snowy Tae has a spectacular save vs. spell, and Azama has 33 base MR thanks to IR's Robe of the Weave, but for the most part, our saves are pretty weak, and SR spells have hefty save penalties. Since we've been fighting Trolls for quite some time--who are immune to hold and many other disablers--I fail to consider summoning the harem to hassle the Yuan-ti Mages. Thus, the Coiled Cabal is free to mess with our functioning.
It doesn't help matters that our Efreet do not seem to understand the concept of friendly fire. For the second time, one of them blasts the party with a loose Fireball.
Poppy is under the effects of Chaos, and therefore cannot heal herself--nor can Snowy Tae target her--but thankfully she's stuck in the previous room, and therefore is distanced from the enemy.
Azama breaks down some of the mages' defenses, but we don't quite manage to kill them, leaving two fully functional mages still in action, protected by a Teleport Field that frustrates the only weapons we have. Our two ranged attackers, Poppy and Samia, who might be able to harm the Coiled Cabal despite the Teleport Field, are both disabled: confused and unconscious, respectively.
Then Azama herself loses consciousness. Snowy Tae brings her back with Break Enchantment, hoping that Azama could use Dispel Magic (Snowy Tae already cast all of her own), but then I realize I was wrong about Azama's kit. She has the Cleric of Helm kit, not the Inquisitor kit, and therefore has True Sight, but not Dispel Magic.
Then Azama fails a save against Chaos. She's still the most valuable of our disabled characters, so Snowy Tae casts her last Break Enchantment spell. It's lucky Snowy Tae spent the first few rounds of combat hanging back and attacking with Spiritual Hammer from a distance, or else her buffs, including Chaotic Commands, might have been dispelled, too.
Our summons are confused, and we have no means of bringing them back. We've been struggling to kill a Yuan-ti Mage limping along at Near Death for the past three rounds or so, but finally, Samia wakes up, and finishes the job with the Crimson Dart.
Fobie, too, gets confused, and starts a fight with an Efreeti. At 40 HP. With no Stoneskin. The Efreeti drops him down to a quarter of his HP with one swing of its blade.
Then it swings again.
Fobie, our favorite goofball and the favorite of the harem, has popped like a balloon. He is gone.
The Efreeti is no more trouble, however. The battle has been won. The last Yuan-ti Mage is gutted at the feet of Lord De'Arnise, and the last Spirit Troll is beaten into a corner. Samia recovers from a Domination spell, we pick up Fobie's things, and report the news to Nalia.
Fobie was inches away from level 14, and the horribly dangerous Earthquake spell I so wanted to use. Now he is dead, and the party is back down to four members.
And are they other fights like this one with some nearly invincible opponent ?
Great progress so far !
This has reminded me your own advice from the Druid thread: "Hmm broader pictures are no doubt very interesting, but yours is a no-reload run remember? Please be careful, think about Charname
s fans. They don't want to see him dying on them..."
How do you do it with Yahiko? Do you do 'trap research' on each area before you take Yahiko there?
But as soon as Yahiko got that spell, he didn't need any "meta-knowledge" of traps any more. The spell lasts long enough and when it's over Yahiko prefers to rest.
I imagine that Yahiko wants to survive in the first place, so he tries to be always protected from the majority of nasty effects. I don't find it immersion-breaking. Instead, I find it natural. My character is opposed by a whole world and he should at least use all his immunities to survive.
Anyway I have the same in mind for my Cleric/Illusionist, or at least always having Find Traps active once she has a couple of casts of that spell. (Especially in BG2, where traps are just terrible).
After the battle, Anselm remembered why they were back in Beregost. On Mulahey's body, he found a few letters which indicated that a Mage named Tranzig was resting in the Feldpost inn. The Blackguard always read the letters alone as he didn't want the others members of the group to know too much about his plans.
Sometimes he would seek Edwin's advice as his sheer intelligence matched his own he thought. But this time it wasn't the case.
He led the party to the inn and encountered the spellcaster.
Surrounded by six evil looking and well equipped individuals, Tranzig betrayed his master and told the party what they wanted to know. But as soon as they turned their back to him, he tried to use his magic to harm them.
Hopefully Dorn was faster, and chunked him instantly with his greatsword before the incantation was over.
The party was impressed. "Well done, my servant." told Anselm. He wanted to mock him, to gauge his behavior. Dorn looked angry, as expected, but remained silent.
Afterward, the party travelled to the east, they heard some rumors about powerful beasts waiting to be killed. These beasts were Basilisks, and Edwin made sure to prepare some Protection from Petrification spells in advance.
During the trip, they were assaulted by a group of mercenaries. But the combined assault of Vynd, Dorn and Anselm ranged poisoned weaponry fell them extremely fast.
Once they arrived to the Basilisks lair, Anselm prefered to hunt them alone. He asked Edwin and Viconia to use some of their magic on him, prepared his poisoned Arrows of Detonation and blasted the creatures away. He also encountered some adventurers and a mad gnome named Mutamin and proceeded to kill them all for their magical equipments.
The area cleared, they continue their trip to the north, in a forest infested with Giant Spiders and their Web traps. They also met a group of Red Wizards of Thay and dispatched them by breaching through their Stoneskin spells with their poisoned weapons, interrupting all their spellcasting. (Normally you can't fight them with Edwin in your party, that's why I kicked him out of the party, initiated the fight then took him back since I wanted the XP and the loot).
At some point Anselm wandered a bit too far alone and got caught in a Web trap while a few Spiders were heading his way. Kagain and Viconia rushed to help him in the Web, counting on their good saves or magic resistance. Viconia also got webbed but Kagain didn't and manage to tank the Spiders effectively except one Sword Spider which tried to evicerate Anselm but Dorn, Vynd and Edwin eliminated it before it was over.
The death squad then travelled south. Dorn told them he wanted to take his revenge against Kryll, a necromancer who betrayed him before he joined the party and according to his informations, she was somewhere east of Nashkel.
Another group tried in vain to stop them during their trip. This time around even Edwin provoked them before the slaughter.
Eventually they found her. Dorn, hidden by an Invisibility spell, sneaked upon her and chunked her instantly, exactly like Tranzig.
On her body, Dorn discovered some documents which could help him for his vendetta. Anselm allowed him to keep them since it was his quest.
Finally, the group came back to the Friendly Arm Inn before heading to the Bandit Camp.
Haven't played a Wizard Slayer in years so will need to refresh knowledge. Might use the rebalancing mod for slightly better MR (1% per level seems pathetic). Main concern is not being able to use potions...I'm completely reliant on Invulnerability / Freedom to survive against mages and Invisibility to heal in the middle of fights or to get out of tough spots. I suppose the latter could be compensated by just buying every Invisibility scroll I come across but how do you improve your saving throws / avoid PW stun without the other potions? Serious planning needed...
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/32574/were-all-doomed-blackravens-no-reload-scs-runs-latest-charname-streg-half-orc-cleric-thief/p8 by @Blackraven who did an excellent job and bring this character to ToB !
I strongly advice you to use the Wizard Slayer Rebalancing mod and to loosen the rules (there are some options when installing the mod).
It's not a complicated battle. It's just got huge numbers in it.
Scintilla's a solitary type and strictly TN in an 'Everybody leaves everybody else alone' sense. That doesn't mean she won't help others, but merely that she doesn't consider herself obliged to do so.
I'll try to make her extremely cautious, making her only take risks where I know the benefits are worth it. The idea is to go solo again, at least for the BG1 and SoA part. (Not sure about ToB due to improved Sendai etc, but let's first see if she can get there haha.) Hope to post an update soon.
Kuroisan greets us at the south end of the Slums. We're in a pretty tight space, so we scurry over to the Graveyard and return when everyone is invisible. Cookies is still in the Slums when we get back, but he can't see us.
When Poppy summons some nymphs to go pester him, however, he immediately attacks Poppy, though he can't get anywhere near me before Poppy hides. It turns out he automatically targets Charname whenever Charname is visible. I test it out by hopping over to the Planar Sphere with CTRL-J, which forces all characters out of the shadows. Sure enough, he targets me, on the other side of the map.
Poppy hides again, ruining Cookies' strategy of hitting stuff with his sword. Samia lays a few traps a ways away, and we hide in the Planar Sphere to rest, hoping to lay more and lure Cookies into the traps, but he gets frustrated and leaves just as we're coming back out.
Cookies is pretty easy to avoid, actually, and since he never gives up, it means you don't have to worry about losing the loot from the fight with the guy.
The Planar Sphere is usually a pretty calm run for me. The only two problems are the Tanar'ri and the halfling cannibals: Entu, Togan, Mogadish, and Kayardi. On the way, we meet some outerplanar knights.
Azama is in a sour mood from Fobie's loss, but manages to avoid snapping at poor Reyna.
Before the fight with Togan and the other halflings, we summon a bunch of critters, same as we used on Torgal, and buff everyone up. Poppy sends in some nymphs to soak up some spells. Kayardi summons a Bone Fiend offscreen, which quickly teleports to the front of the battle, in the convenient choke point all of us have used.
The Bone Fiend is a major issue for us. We just don't have much melee power, and Bone Fiends are quite resilient. Meanwhile, Mogadish has hurried to the front, and unlike Togan and Entu, he has some defenses. But a Breach from Azama brings down his Physical Mirror, rendering him vulnerable to Poppy's arrows and Azama's Flame Arrow spell.
Notice that Snowy Tae is in rat form. This is because she took a swing at the Bone Fiend with Spiritual Hammer, and it teleported over to harass her. When it took out more than half her HP in a single blow, and only dealt a single point of cold damage in the process, I knew she could tank its attacks in rat form. She has immunity to physical damage in rat form, and although her cold resistance is almost -50%, the Bone Fiend only does 1 cold damage per hit. Potions could handle the rest.
Then the Bone Fiend casts Cone of Cold. Snowy Tae nearly dies. Another potion later, it casts Cone of Cold again, nearly killing her once more. Poppy starts summoning nymphs so we have extra castings of Mass Cure.
The Bone Fiend teleports over to Poppy and hits her, also taking out more than half of Poppy's HP with a single blow. Poppy tries to drink a potion, but she can't. The way I implemented the nymph summoning spell has a limitation: aura cleansing still won't let you drink a potion or use an item until 6 seconds after the last spell. Even though Poppy was supposed to have her aura clear, since the nymph summoning is supposed to be a passive process requiring no action, she still can't drink a potion.
Instead, I have her run away, to buy enough time for her to drink a potion and get back to summoning.
The Bone Fiend casts Cone of Cold, with an apparent casting time of 1. Thankfully, Poppy has magic resistance, thanks to her Wizard Slayer kit and also her innate bonuses.
But Poppy also has a -3 penalty to her save vs. breath. And -24% weakness to cold damage. And about 10 HP left.
The Cone of Cold goes right through Azama's Fire Shield and freezes Poppy solid, along with one of her nymphs.
The randomized characters have been treated really poorly by Item Revisions. A fighter with low DEX can no longer get 18 DEX just from the Gauntlets of Dexterity. A mage with 12 INT can no longer get to 20 with a couple of Potions of Genius. That means bad AC for the fighters, and few spells for the mages. Base stats really, really matter in IR, especially since we're doing a no-reload run, and scroll scribing failure is unavoidable.
Come to think of it, the list of challenges in my last few runs are kind of excessive. Core Rules; SCS2 with pre-buffing; Tactics; two rebalancing mods, IR and SR, that I have never played before; no reloads allowed; and on top of all that, I've been saddling my characters with messed-up stats. We get really crazy abilities with randomization, the most extreme example being the infinite nymph summoning, but we also get crippling weaknesses, and IR and SR close a lot of the opportunities to compensate for those weaknesses. Multiple kits are usually a bonus, since so many item restrictions overlap and some of the drawbacks are not relevant (thieves only benefit from the Stalker kit; Monks don't suffer from Kensai item restrictions), but randomizing other stuff makes our characters awfully easy to kill.
Fobie and Poppy both got killed in two hits. That's just what you get when you've got no CON bonuses, no Stoneskin or Mirror Image, no armor, AC penalties, negative resistances, and a -30% penalty to your maximum HP.
It's hard to tell from the screenshots with an infinite harem crowding up the battles, but beneath these crazy powers are some very fragile characters.
My current setup allows humans to multiclass and every race to dual class. I'm very tempted to give Vynd the int tome and dual him to a wizard as a homage to Proesis, the first playthrough I read on these forums.
I'm also playing with BG1 NPC Project and I think he has more dialogues than any other characters.
I was also tempted to dual him, Assassin dualed to Mage is such a fun and powerful combo. But he is my only Thief so I need him to stay single class for the utility. I'm happy you read about Proesis, it was a fun playthrought !
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/40896/alexia-an-npc-assassin-mod#latest
She's been in the works since 2008 (!) and this mod gives you assassination quests!
@blackraven just saw the new character, looking forward to it
Vynd looks interesting indeed. I always considered doing a truly evil playthrough with an Assassin Charname. However it's great to have Vynd (or maybe Alexia) around so that I can use whatever class/kit I want for Charname.
@semiticgod, are you still enjoying your experimental playthroughs? Maybe you could stick to ranomized characters that are not almost completely useless or treated poorly by IR?
Arnaeus, thank you! I'll post a first brief installment below, and will catch up with your FIghter/Sorcerer after that
Scintilla, Gnome Cleric/Illusionist (first update)
After Gorion's shocking death on the Lion's Way at the hands of a warrior-led group of brigands that were after her, Scintilla ran into Imoen and brought the well-meaining but impetuous girl back to Candlekeep, and made arrangements for Gorion's burial. The Gnome herself was not welcomed back into the citadel, so she traveled to Beregost to meet with her old acquaintance Firebead Elvenhair. She would have preferred living in the woods, but her knowledge of herbalism, foods and potions was insufficient for that due to having lived a cloistered life for as long she could remember. Instead, she followed Firebead's advice to deal with four Huge Spiders for his neighbor Landrin, a Gnome like herself who had taken refuge at the FAI. She put the Spiders to Sleep easily enough, but found herslef exceedingly slow at killing them, so she asked her rabbit familiar Gale to help out. He did so reluctantly.
On her way she put a rogue Ogre to Sleep, and at the inn she encountered an evil-looking wizard in front of the entrance. Scintilla walked past him, Sanctuaried. Inside she was dismayed with the fact that the otherwise friendly inkeeper Bentley dispelled her Sanctuary with an Oracle. (I understand that enemies can do this sometimes as well. A frightening thought, and a phenomenon I don't agree with.) She met with two old friends of Gorion's but politely declined their offer to travel with her. She then handed Landrin's belongings to her fellow Gnome, had a brief chat, and left again. She was astounded to see that the man was still there waiting at the entrance because hours had passed. It turned out he had been waiting for her. Like the bandits on the Lion's Way, this man wanted her head.
The same strategy worked better in Beregost's Red Sheaf inn against yet another bounty hunter, Karlat, thanks to the confinement of the inn.
With a good reputation plus Friends she acquired a Helm of Charm Protection, a Sling +1, a Shield Amulet, a Necklace of Missiles and three containers (potion bag, scroll case, gem bag) at very reasonable prices. At Thalantyr's Scintilla purchased a number of scrolls, but she scribed only spells of the Illusion/Phantasm school (which thanks to her being an Illusionist required no INT buffs for 100% certainty of successful copying into spellbook). Her most important new spells are Invisibility and Mirror Image.
South of Thalantyr's abode, Scintilla ran into Bassilus the murdere of whom she had heard mention in Beregost. She Silenced, Held, and Blinded him, interrupted his Sanctuary with the last charge of her Wand of MMs, and pelted him with sling bullets until he went down.
Character record and inventory screen:
In my playthrough with Kathlen I had her specialize in dualwielding (possible with BG2 Tweaks) and use various items upgraded by Thalantyr (Thalantyr item upgrades mod). This time I want to take a more vanilla approach, at least in BG1. So no Thalantyr items, and no more than one pip in TWS. For this reason, Scintilla's third pip (after her starting profs of Clubs and Slings) went to Warhammers, for the Ashideena. Her robe of choice will be the Robe of the Neutral Archmagi. In BG2 I do want to get Cromwell to craft ItemUpgrades' Fulcrum Club +4, because it such a cool weapon (sets proficiency in clubs to grandmastery, and deals extra damage depending on alignment in the same way the Equalizer does).
Edit: changed last screenshot for one with Scintilla sporting Robe of Neutral Archmagi. Love the way she looks, straight out of a fairy tale
When I first started using randomization, all I did was randomize ability scores and classes, and only permitted legal combinations (Fighter/Mage rather than Ranger/Bard). Basically, it was just a method to start using new classes, with some unusual abilities on top. It didn't make the game much harder.
Then I started randomizing resistances, HP, casting time, saves, to hit and damage bonuses, movement rate, AC, and spell slots. And they varied a lot. You could have -120% weakness to electricity and 120% resistance to fire, or -9 to hit and +7 to damage. Those characters were almost unworkable, because randomization was catastrophic to their functioning. What good is a sorceror with a +7 penalty to casting time? What good is any character with -80% HP? I've rolled dozens or hundreds of characters that I never used, just because they weren't viable.
Then I started tacking on independent effects, which had a marginal effect on the system. The characters were still mostly crippled, with a few absolute gods among the masses.
Finally I reduced the effects, so you get at most -50% or +50% resistances, and -5 to +5 to your saves, to hit, damage, etc. I also allowed illegal combinations. It greatly strengthened the resulting characters, but they're still weaker than normal characters. Even a plain Fighter with 10/10/10/10/10/10 stats would be more useful overall.
The basic problem is that weaknesses matter more than strengths.
Let's say your at a higher difficulty setting. No resistances? You'll scrape by the Trolls' piercing damage, and also scrape by the Golems' crushing damage.
What if you have a 50% weakness to crushing damage, but a 50% resistance to piercing damage? Well, the Trolls are going to be an absolute breeze. But the Golems are going to wreck you. And for a no-reload run... well, the normal character will scrape by. But the randomized character will die the moment it runs into its weaknesses.
I just tweaked the system once more, removing the irrelevant and instant kill effects from the list of effects I can use. The result? Some pretty decent characters. One of them is a dwarven sorceror with some extra spell slots.
And a +12 bonus to casting time.
And immunity to non-silver weapons.
But has -50 to MR. And is a Wizard Slayer. And with horrible elemental resistances.
What does this mean? It means this character is immune to basically all weapons in the game, and once it gets Improved Alacrity, it will be able to empty its entire spell book, even the level 9 spells, within a couple rounds. But if an enemy Lich casts Horrid Wilting... this character will almost assuredly die. If I played this character, I could expect to complete most of the game with no difficulty at all. Then I would die against an enemy spell damage, just like Poppy did. Lots of boring stuff, then sudden death and an end to the run.
People don't seem to have much interest in the randomized runs, I don't think, probably because the strategies don't really apply to non-randomized runs, which most people do. I think I will try a non-randomized run next time. But I'm not sure what to pick.
I'd like to try an insane solo poverty run, but that was hard enough in vanilla, with reloads. It wouldn't be a sorceror, since they're already kind of the default character for ISP runs and it seems unoriginal. I've considered a Cleric/Thief, Bounty Hunter/Cleric, Conjurer/Cleric, Fighter/Druid, and Ranger/Cleric, but none of them seem viable for the entire game.
For a non-ISP run, I thought I might try a solo Cleric of Lathander/Mage, but it might be too similar to Sil's run, even with SR and IR. I've gone through the possibilities, and it seems that resistances are just plain hard to get in SR and IR, which makes me leery of a solo character.
A Fighter/Cleric with full plate, the Fortress Shield, and Armor of Faith gets 40% resistance to physical damage.
A Barbarian in leather armor gets 30%, or 40% if we use the Orc Leather, which seems to have an extra 15% resistance tacked on for some reason.
A Fighter/Druid with full plate, the Fortress Shield, Armor of Faith, and Earth Elemental form gets 90% resistance.
A Cleric dualed to Mage using Ghost Form, Armor of Faith, and the Fortress Shield gets 70%. Same goes for a Cleric/Mage using Iron Golem form, but with only 45% for crushing damage.
Magic resistance is easier to get in SR for mages, thanks to Dispelling Screen, but it's harder to melee characters, thanks to Carsomyr's new 20% MR. I'd really want to get to 100 for a no-reload run, but maybe subzero saves would be easier, since there are more ways to get save bonuses in IR and SR.
Long story short, I'm not sure what to pick. But I'm tired of randomized characters and their crippling weaknesses. They're great characters and they're really interesting, but they're just really not well-suited to a no-reload run, at least with the mods I've got.
I'll be creating my own characters instead. But which classes? I'm weary of sorcerors, I've played too many Archers, I'm tired of multiclasses' slow spell progression, I don't like thieves or bards, druids will get stuck at that irritating level 13/14/15 XP gap, single-classed clerics seem kind of boring, fighters won't get to use the new SR spells, mages won't get to use the new IR weapons, Fighter/Mages seem too easy, Kensais can't use the new IR armors... I've thought of using some illegal combinations, like a Monk/Sorceror, but the coolest combinations tend to be multiclasses, and I've been at low levels for far too long.
I've even considered a solo Fighter/Ranger/Paladin/Thief/Bard/Monk/Mage/Sorceror/Cleric/Druid, or a character with all of the kits, but the former will be stuck with low-level spells, and the latter won't get to use any armor, any magic items, and the only weapon it could use would be a club, since Beastmasters can't use metal stuff, Monks can't use two-handed weapons, and Cavaliers can't use slings.
I've also considered just creating whichever party seems most powerful in IR and SR, and blasting through the game. But I'm not a big fan of Inquisitors or Berserker/Clerics or Kensai/Mages or Sorcerors or Assassin/Mages... they seem overdone, even reductive. But I've already gone to the opposite extreme--using pathetically weak randomized characters--and all they do is struggle through the little battles and die in the big ones.
And if I try a roleplaying run, I'd have to write at least four sex scenes before we even escaped the first dungeon.