@Grond0 - In my runs, I often turn on scripts in ToB. It can be helpful to be less click intensive in areas with large number of enemies (pocket plane challenge #1, Oasis, Sendai dwarven slave ambush, etc.). You do have to be mindful of them though, and turn them off when it would be bad to use them (I find it mandatory to use no scripts against Melissan, regardless of party composition). You are solo though, and a caster at that, so naturally scripts would be pretty useless for you, though as explained not for me.
@Grond0 - In my runs, I often turn on scripts in ToB. It can be helpful to be less click intensive in areas with large number of enemies (pocket plane challenge #1, Oasis, Sendai dwarven slave ambush, etc.)..
Same here. I generally always have AI script on, but not "default one" for one reason alone - characters who are invisible will break invisibility to autoattack. SCS has custom scripts which don't do that, yet attack anyone on sight and don't change orders, so I use those.
@Wise_Grimwald Korgan/Aerie do have interesting interaction, though probably Aerie wouldn't agree with that...and to be fair, in order to get Aerie to the point where she just jumps into bed with you, BEFORE that you had to (via dialogue) give definite signs you found her beautiful, you're attracted to her, etc. I would say you were leading her on if you gave her all these cues but then refused to bed her.
Lots of good action here! Grond0, I can't believe how fast your progress is.... good luck to all on their way to the throne!
Cavan is taking a break for the week at the siege camp (while I deal with some RL). When he's rested up, he will be looking for the entrance to a cavern rumored to pass beneath Dragonspear Castle.
@Wise_Grimwald Korgan/Aerie do have interesting interaction, though probably Aerie wouldn't agree with that...and to be fair, in order to get Aerie to the point where she just jumps into bed with you, BEFORE that you had to (via dialogue) give definite signs you found her beautiful, you're attracted to her, etc. I would say you were leading her on if you gave her all these cues but then refused to bed her.
I was role-playing a very righteous paladin who wouldn't have bedded her until he'd married her. That used to be the norm and was how I was brought up.
@Wise_Grimwald Korgan/Aerie do have interesting interaction, though probably Aerie wouldn't agree with that...and to be fair, in order to get Aerie to the point where she just jumps into bed with you, BEFORE that you had to (via dialogue) give definite signs you found her beautiful, you're attracted to her, etc. I would say you were leading her on if you gave her all these cues but then refused to bed her.
I was role-playing a very righteous paladin who wouldn't have bedded her until he'd married her. That used to be the norm and was how I was brought up.
That is how I was brought up as well. In that case, though, you should not have encouraged Aerie to think that way about you (e.g. wanting to bed you) until you were actually ready to court her and marry her. Granted, that option is not given in the game, in which case you should have been neutral about her (in which case the incident you talked about would never had happened.)
Short update on Ergus. Bandit camp was the site of our first death, Edwin bit the dust. All was going fairly well (Fireball treatment) but I missed their mage - he was hiding behind trees and I couldn't see him before it was too late.
His Slow proved devastating and Edwin got locked in by archers, which killed him.
Few moments later, enemy wizard dies as well.
Cloakwood was mostly uneventful, w/o any real danger. Cloakwood mine battle is always challenging. We buffed, while Edwin summons some meatshields to keep enemies occupied for a while. There wasn't a single battle yet where I missed having a 2nd mage along - Edwin was costntly busy doing something. Like using wand of paralyzation.
One down, three to go. Kysus and Rezdan summon their own crap and throw in a Telly Field, resulting in a total clustrf**k.
I have Dorn smack the paralyzed fighter, while Edwin Spell Thrusts at their mages.
My summons die. Edwin now throws a Web (x2) at the mages, while Drasus decides to follow Dorn back to us.
Drasus dies. 2 left.
One left.
Done!
Mines went fairly smooth (got to level 7 just prior to Davaeorn on Sum & Dorn, others got it after the battle) First we took 2 horrors down with some melee+magic attacks.
Positioning was key here. Protagonist + Jaheira hold the door; Edwin stays away, Vici is in the middle area, while Dorn chases Davaeorn around. This didn't really work - a single Cone of Cold nearly kills Dorn on a failed save..
I send Dorn top, and Vicy + Edwin go after Daveorn. Silence sticks, while Edwin blasts away with Wand of frost.
It took 3 Wand hits to kill him. Unfortunately, it seems in EEs cold damage destroys loot. I didn't know that - Stoneskin scroll lost forever. Bleh...
Aasim said... It took 3 Wand hits to kill him. Unfortunately, it seems in EEs cold damage destroys loot. I didn't know that - Stoneskin scroll lost forever. Bleh...
@Aasim - you should be aware that in 2nd ed. rules, if a creature is killed by cold damage then they become a statue. And just like a stone statue, if it takes any damage it disintegrates. This is vanilla behavior and can be verified 2nd ed. rule in this rule document: media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/PlayerBasicRulesV03.pdf (page 86, 1st column where talks about cone of cold effects)
Thus you should not use cold damage to kill unless you don't care about loot, because you don't get loot you just get a statue...
@Corey_Russell Aasim is right. However, if you don't want cold damage to destroy loot, I am pretty sure that there is a mod that stops it doing that. I'll see if I can find it.
@Aasim - you always lose the loot if a stone statue is destroyed, but cold damage won't necessarily destroy it in the EE (or BGT) - I think it depends whether the cold is simply killing the enemy or chunking them. I just quickly opened up my game to demonstrate that - a group of soldiers all died to cold damage and equipment was only destroyed on one of them.
@Grond0 - you often play with ToBex. According this web site, ToBex PREVENTS loss of loot by cold damage (what I described is vanilla, you aren't playing vanilla).
-Drop Inventory on Disintegrate/Frozen Death/Stone Death In three separate components, whenever a creature dies by disintegration, shattering cold, or shattering petrification, all inventory is dropped just like dying normally.
Revised assessment: I can see Grond0's screen is EE, so probably not ToBeX. So I think his conclusion about EE is right (cold only destroys if greater than -10 damage, just like any other chunking damage) - but I think he is wrong about BGT if that BGT has ToBeX. And vanilla (which is what I play) is always statue.
@Corey_Russell Aasim is right. However, if you don't want cold damage to destroy loot, I am pretty sure that there is a mod that stops it doing that. I'll see if I can find it.
EDIT
Couldn't find it.
I think it is called "Options -> Gameplay -> Gore: Disable"
I like Gore, I never turn this off. As Corey said, ToBex had this feature and one could enable it (ditto for petrification), so cold damage was viable. I tought EE enabled it as well....I might do something about it perhaps....I don't like loot crashing to oblivion. Or, never use cold damage greater than 11 per tick.
I like Gore as well - the fact party members can suddenly be killed without any way to bring them back adds a layer of forced adaptation you don't otherwise get. In Hax's run so far, one of my love interests Jaheira was chunked and it forced me to adapt - I like that.
To be sure, I'd like to keep Gore as an option as well, but I'm not aware of a stable solution for my EE/SCS install. Would be very interested if someone knows one. (If chunking was not so arbitrary currently for Ice/Stone, I'd keep it.)
Not many close calls so far, in Baldur's Gate. I'm taking my time with finishing up quests in and out of the city.
Before heading into the City, we did some hunting in the Wood of Sharp Teeth. I have UB, and someone was dumping waste in the forest. Little did I realize I had to go to the Elfsong to actually start the quest, but it was fun to kill a few more talons.
From there, Cedvar and Co. enter the city. We're friendly with Scar, despite our intentions to ally up with the Thieves Guild. Before we can enter however, Kivan's BG2 NPC Project mod kicked in, with a dangerous bounty hunter and her wolves. Kivan snagges the elven chain mail, and we moved inside the city proper.
We breezed through the Thieves Guild, the Marek/Lothander Quest, the Tymora Boy quest, and various others as we went through every area and every house. The finish of the Marek quest was especially fun, but with our wands and arrows and backstabs, little is touching us. I think next session we'll drop a party member or two and get other NPC quests out of the way, just for full completion's sake.
@Grond0 - you often play with ToBex. According this web site, ToBex PREVENTS loss of loot by cold damage (what I described is vanilla, you aren't playing vanilla).
Revised assessment: I can see Grond0's screen is EE, so probably not ToBeX. So I think his conclusion about EE is right (cold only destroys if greater than -10 damage, just like any other chunking damage) - but I think he is wrong about BGT if that BGT has ToBeX. And vanilla (which is what I play) is always statue.
I'm pretty sure that death by cold is treated in the same way across all versions of BG2 I've played - I don't know about vanilla BG1 though as it's a long time since I've played that. Just to test I started a game of vanilla BG2 and told Imoen to go and use a wand of frost on a group of goblins. Not surprisingly most of those were chunked by the effect, but you can see in the screenshot that one of them got 'lucky'.
^The cone of cold hits two times, the second 'hit' is blocked by a succesful save. As seen in the screenshot with Davaeorn blasting Dorn, Dorn fails the save and takes the full damage from the cone in two seperate lines.
Thus, if a goblin with 8 hp takes 18 cold damage or more in the first 'hit' of the cone, there is a good chance that it turns into a statue (since -10 is chunked, and chunked is turning statue for cold damage. But I noticed cold damage has even a lower safe treshold hp wise.) and the cone of cold's second hit will shatter the statue. If the goblin takes massive damage but rolls a save, he turns into a statue, but the statue is intact as the second hit is blocked by the save, and it breaks off in its own after a few seconds. If the first hit is enough to kill the goblin but not enough to chunk, ie:8 hp gobin takes 10 damage, it just dies. Cold damage is a bit abrupt and random in this, sometimes you can statue/and chunk with just a few points of cold damage. I have seen, rarely, chill touch damage turning enemies into statue. Incidentaly, this may happen if the punch damage knocks the enemy out (reducing it to 1hp) and the cold damage roll is high. (you roll 8 for damage and reduce the victim to -7) So even -7 may be enough for the cold to chunk, but it is not a sure thing. Or if the punch damage is high thanks to strength, the victim stays at 1 hp and uncouncious but the game may be keeping track of how negative the hit points were dropped behind the scenes, and this may add in with the cold damage. Hard to say for sure.
Or another example, if a 35 hp enemy is hit by a cone, fails a save and takes 23 and 25 damage, he will turn statue because the last damage kills it. If the 15 hp enemy takes the same spell, the first hit is enough to kill, so if it fails the save he is statued and shattered, if makes the save the statue remains and shatters on its own.
As mentioned earlier the myconids were quite a problem. Without mods that add interest, they are not worth bothering with. Selûna had no problem with the first slavers under the Copper Coronet. Nalia's web/cloud kill combination was very effective and whilst that put most of the enemy out of action, the party killed the other slavers before switching to ranged weapons to kill those in the cloud of cloudkill.
A change in positioning of the slavers meant that the wizards knew we were there before expected. Selûna and party fled to the sewers followed by some slavers and a wizard. The wizard held Starlight, but chaos from Nalia effectively won the battle as the wizard and another slaver were affected.
They returned and found the enemy scattered which made the rest of the battles easy.
They then went looking for containers. Theey found a quiver but not a potion case. Selûna therefore if I knew where to find one. I didn't know, so I consulted with a scrier in Beamdog whereupon I discovered that we will have to go outside the city.
An ambush supplied some decent armour, but it wasn't really needed. What was needed was some good quality splintmail as Selûna is a barbarian. Selûna couldn't find any. It is possibly time to leave the city before Nalia starts complaining.
In Saradush I just opened up access to the spell shop - getting a number of potentially useful spells there (remove magic, Mordenkainen's sword, spell trigger, pierce shield, power word blind and wish). I then backed out invisibly from an assignation with vampires in the prison and avoided all conflicts on the way up to find Gromnir. On arrival there I immediately retreated out of sight range before true sight activated before summoning a planetar and throwing in a firestorm and incendiary cloud before it attacked.
Leaving Saradush I made my way to the Forest of Mir where a planetar helped dispose of the Master Wraith's gang - getting me my 31st and final level.
On to the Marching Mountains where a first use of mordy swords helped occupy the defenders of the fire temple while planetars did the damage. I didn't bother killing everything though, but just picked up the hearts and an upgrade for the golem book. I then went straight on to the Siege Camp and wondered why Yaga-Shura seemed to be immune to all my attacks - before sheepishly leaving and going to sort out Nyalee.
Back at the Siege Camp Yaga-Shura ran away as expected this time before coming back to fight - and die.
Preparing for the second pocket plane challenge I used a project image for the first time to produce some summons. Those along with a serving of energy blades killed my clone as it was about to launch a GWW assault
- the remaining enemies then died quickly.
At the Oasis I summoned a planetar, but once that had killed Jamis just ran on through (in retrospect I didn't need to do even that as his sword is useless to me).
In Amkethran I talked to Balthazar, then opened up access to the thieves shop with the help of a planetar and bought some gargoyle boots. There were also a final few purchases of scrolls before moving on to Sendai's Enclave. The Woodcutter there was mercilessly attacked to open up the enclave proper.
The initial enemies there were bypassed on the way to getting a key from Thelynn'ss.
After bypassing the Slavemaster the next victim was Odamaron.
I sometimes have trouble with Ogremoch, but thought that a planetar would probably be able to do the job if stoneskins were being removed with NRD breaches (able to be cast without the normal pause for a clouded aura).
Despite 3 of those and supporting energy blades Ogremoch still managed to dispose of the planetar though and a second one had to be brought out to get the killing blow.
Moving on to the threshold of Sendai's room the planetar was stunned by Mithykyl, but was still durable enough to allow me to take down the opposition with MMMs.
After taking a pocketplane rest I went into that conflict - once again stretching out summons by using a projected image. The final Sendai put up a pretty good fight - surprisingly twice managing to complete heal spells on the verge of death. That prompted me to take some potions to enhance my shooting ability and finally she had to give in.
For the third challenge the Slayer is coded to chase the PC - and hence was helpless after being englobed by summons.
Arriving at Abazigal's lair Draconis' initial form was overcome by a planetar. However, I was taken by surprise at how quickly the dragon arrived from the other side of the area and got breathed on as a new planetar was born.
Deciding discretion was the better part of valour I ran away and rested. Coming back though the dragon was still waiting in ambush and got another breath in as I was creating a planetar prior to running deeper into the room. While the planetar was fighting I used acid protection - along with spell immunity, spell trap and stoneskin. The planetar was still gamely battling when I came back with a 3 x lower resistance spell trigger followed by PW:blind (getting all my spells back with a nice surge from the latter).
A serving of energy blades then did the trick.
The tunnels were soon negotiated, picking up another golem page and the bronze pantalettes on the way. I rested again before going to find Big Daddy. A planetar on its own didn't make much impression, but one protected by a mordy sword soon saw the dragon emerge. I quickly added spell immunity (abjuration) to lock in my lightning protection and put on spell immunity (conjuration) as well to protect against the ranged maze attacks Abazigal specialises in. The dragon managed to kill 3 mordy swords with spell attacks, but finally got stuck on a fourth and a planetar then joined in the attack. I was thinking it would be nice to kill him with energy blades, but he narrowly survived a helping of those and I'd just moved on to MMMs when he gave in.
The 4th challenge was over before I realised what was happening - 2 quick vorpals from the planetar finishing things off before I was ready with a screenshot.
Back at Amkethran Saemon provided entry to the compound and I ran into the palace before the enemies could attack. Balthazar picked up a triple-wilting chain contingency before a spell trigger lower resistance and PW:blind.
I didn't though manage to kill him quite quickly enough and he got a second wind to heal himself. A second chain contingency, some energy blades and summons badly wounded him, but he was drinking fast to heal himself and I decided to resort to a first use of improved alacrity - only for that to be wasted when he went invisible. At a second improved alacrity he went invisible again, but this time I countered quickly with true sight and threw in a few direct damage spells before a stream of skull traps finally completed the job.
The 5th challenge started well with a chain contingency triple pierce shield on the Ravager
followed by triple skull traps from both sequencer and spell trigger. However, 4 unsuccessful spell attempts in a row upset the momentum and I carelessly got hit by a bone blade as well as the ravager's missiles before eventually getting a stoneskin up just in time.
The Ravager then managed to ignore a PW:blind, but when it got stuck on a mordy sword the arrival of a planetar provided some healing for me. I tried killing it with MMMs, but despite it taking dozens of hits while at near death I couldn't finish it off (I'm not sure whether it has a bit of regeneration). During that period I had what I think was the first time in the run that a cow dropped on my head.
More annoyingly, I had to make use of PfMW (definitely for the first time in the run) to defend against its missile attacks after all my mordy swords were used up. Searching in my bags for options I decided to go with a Tenser's Transformation followed up by a Black Blade of Disaster - and at the first strike from the latter the Ravager finally decided enough was enough.
The intention for Mel's first incarnation was to again use chain contingency to make her vulnerable to magic. However, I was disappointed on arrival when that didn't fire properly. Another immediate disappointment was when I produced a golem for the first time - only to see that die to the first attack Mel made (my memory of the juggernaut golem from BGT was that it was a decent summons). Mel's missile attacks were doing cold damage so I tried to cast a protection spell against that - only to produce another cow!
A few spells and summons were used, with virtually no effect on Mel and I decided it was time to try Tenser's again - but got a dizzy wild surge ruling out further casting for a while instead. With the area getting increasingly crowded from continually arriving fresh summons by Mel I had another go at Tenser's once I was free to cast again - but failed once more.
A mordy sword provided a brief respite from running round - before Mel used a death spell on it.
Getting desperate, I used my one and only Tenser's scroll to try and get a successful cast. That attempt also produced a surge - but this time the spell was successful anyway.
I then ran round for a few rounds throwing the odd dagger at Mel to try and get as close to the end of her stoneskins as possible before using another BBoD scroll. After a bit more running I then closed in and used my only PfMW scroll. However, with only 2 APR 3 more attacks on Mel took over a round and still failed to get through her remaining stoneskins. I then tried a final roll of the dice by using a shapechange scroll and changing into mindflayer form - but that didn't appear to be allowed while other spells were running as APR remained at 1 (Mel having just used remove magic to dispel an oil of speed). I also tried changing to werewolf form to get the regeneration, but that didn't work either and there wasn't then time to use a teleport field scroll before the end came (with a last second stun just adding insult to injury death).
I did reload the autosave a couple of times and concluded that Tenser's was a possible option, but required luck with Mel summoning the wrong things. Lowering MR as originally intended worked well when I tried that again. The alternative would be to lock in PfMW against dispel and just close with her immediately. I don't like that as a tactic, but perhaps if/when I get back there again I might prepare that as a back-up strategy in case lower resistance fails to work again ...
Selûna set off from Amn thinking to go to the D'Arnise Stronghold via Watcher's Keep. However, before she had even left Amn, she came across a poisoned man who needed to be taken to the Docks District. After dropping him off, they went to Watcher's Keep where Nalia immediately started complaining that we still hadn't reached her father's keep. Selûna therefore did her shopping and without doing some other minor tasks that she was intending to do, she placated Nalia by going to her family stronghold. This went easily at first on the ground floor level,
She even managed to save two servanats by webbing them:
but having gone up some stairs Selûna forgot to switch from ranged weapons to melee and having let her mind wander almost got killed.
However she awoke just in time and realised that she had a battle on her hands. Nalia used two lightning bolts whilst Selûna trank potions and Starlight took over the role of tank. She wasn't ideally suited for the task and got badly hurt herself, but Selûna had by that time recovered somewhat and waded in with her sword giving Starlight a chance to recover. At last the troll fell and the party after healing themselves had a good night's kip.
@Grond0 - you often play with ToBex. According this web site, ToBex PREVENTS loss of loot by cold damage (what I described is vanilla, you aren't playing vanilla).
Revised assessment: I can see Grond0's screen is EE, so probably not ToBeX. So I think his conclusion about EE is right (cold only destroys if greater than -10 damage, just like any other chunking damage) - but I think he is wrong about BGT if that BGT has ToBeX. And vanilla (which is what I play) is always statue.
I'm pretty sure that death by cold is treated in the same way across all versions of BG2 I've played - I don't know about vanilla BG1 though as it's a long time since I've played that. Just to test I started a game of vanilla BG2 and told Imoen to go and use a wand of frost on a group of goblins. Not surprisingly most of those were chunked by the effect, but you can see in the screenshot that one of them got 'lucky'.
Thanks for your test Grond0 - I've done test of my own - I have confirmed that the BG 2 engine DOES allow loot - which means the behavior I am thinking of is vanilla BG 1 only, which not many people play (though I will on occasion). Perhaps BG 1 EE mimics vanilla BG 1 behavior. Although Aasim may have just done the normal chunking (since wand of frost is pretty high damage).
Comments
Cavan is taking a break for the week at the siege camp (while I deal with some RL). When he's rested up, he will be looking for the entrance to a cavern rumored to pass beneath Dragonspear Castle.
His Slow proved devastating and Edwin got locked in by archers, which killed him.
Few moments later, enemy wizard dies as well.
Cloakwood was mostly uneventful, w/o any real danger. Cloakwood mine battle is always challenging. We buffed, while Edwin summons some meatshields to keep enemies occupied for a while. There wasn't a single battle yet where I missed having a 2nd mage along - Edwin was costntly busy doing something. Like using wand of paralyzation.
One down, three to go. Kysus and Rezdan summon their own crap and throw in a Telly Field, resulting in a total clustrf**k.
I have Dorn smack the paralyzed fighter, while Edwin Spell Thrusts at their mages.
My summons die. Edwin now throws a Web (x2) at the mages, while Drasus decides to follow Dorn back to us.
Drasus dies. 2 left.
One left.
Done!
Mines went fairly smooth (got to level 7 just prior to Davaeorn on Sum & Dorn, others got it after the battle)
First we took 2 horrors down with some melee+magic attacks.
Positioning was key here. Protagonist + Jaheira hold the door; Edwin stays away, Vici is in the middle area, while Dorn chases Davaeorn around. This didn't really work - a single Cone of Cold nearly kills Dorn on a failed save..
I send Dorn top, and Vicy + Edwin go after Daveorn. Silence sticks, while Edwin blasts away with Wand of frost.
It took 3 Wand hits to kill him. Unfortunately, it seems in EEs cold damage destroys loot. I didn't know that - Stoneskin scroll lost forever. Bleh...
Anyways, to BG we go.
It took 3 Wand hits to kill him. Unfortunately, it seems in EEs cold damage destroys loot. I didn't know that - Stoneskin scroll lost forever. Bleh...
@Aasim - you should be aware that in 2nd ed. rules, if a creature is killed by cold damage then they become a statue. And just like a stone statue, if it takes any damage it disintegrates. This is vanilla behavior and can be verified 2nd ed. rule in this rule document: media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/PlayerBasicRulesV03.pdf
(page 86, 1st column where talks about cone of cold effects)
Thus you should not use cold damage to kill unless you don't care about loot, because you don't get loot you just get a statue...
EDIT
Couldn't find it.shsforums.net/topic/43639-bg2tob-tobex-release-thread/
Per thread above, ToBex has these features:
-Drop Inventory on Disintegrate/Frozen Death/Stone Death
In three separate components, whenever a creature dies by disintegration, shattering cold, or shattering petrification, all inventory is dropped just like dying normally.
Revised assessment:
I can see Grond0's screen is EE, so probably not ToBeX. So I think his conclusion about EE is right (cold only destroys if greater than -10 damage, just like any other chunking damage) - but I think he is wrong about BGT if that BGT has ToBeX. And vanilla (which is what I play) is always statue.
Or, never use cold damage greater than 11 per tick.
Before heading into the City, we did some hunting in the Wood of Sharp Teeth. I have UB, and someone was dumping waste in the forest. Little did I realize I had to go to the Elfsong to actually start the quest, but it was fun to kill a few more talons.
From there, Cedvar and Co. enter the city. We're friendly with Scar, despite our intentions to ally up with the Thieves Guild. Before we can enter however, Kivan's BG2 NPC Project mod kicked in, with a dangerous bounty hunter and her wolves. Kivan snagges the elven chain mail, and we moved inside the city proper.
We breezed through the Thieves Guild, the Marek/Lothander Quest, the Tymora Boy quest, and various others as we went through every area and every house. The finish of the Marek quest was especially fun, but with our wands and arrows and backstabs, little is touching us. I think next session we'll drop a party member or two and get other NPC quests out of the way, just for full completion's sake.
Cedvar: Level 8 Thief
Imoen: Level 7 Thief/ Level 5 Mage
Khalid: Level 7 Fighter
Jahiera: Level 6 Fighter/Level 7 Druid
Kivan: Level 7 Ranger
Coran: Level 6 Fighter/ Level 6 Thief
Thus, if a goblin with 8 hp takes 18 cold damage or more in the first 'hit' of the cone, there is a good chance that it turns into a statue (since -10 is chunked, and chunked is turning statue for cold damage. But I noticed cold damage has even a lower safe treshold hp wise.) and the cone of cold's second hit will shatter the statue. If the goblin takes massive damage but rolls a save, he turns into a statue, but the statue is intact as the second hit is blocked by the save, and it breaks off in its own after a few seconds. If the first hit is enough to kill the goblin but not enough to chunk, ie:8 hp gobin takes 10 damage, it just dies. Cold damage is a bit abrupt and random in this, sometimes you can statue/and chunk with just a few points of cold damage. I have seen, rarely, chill touch damage turning enemies into statue. Incidentaly, this may happen if the punch damage knocks the enemy out (reducing it to 1hp) and the cold damage roll is high. (you roll 8 for damage and reduce the victim to -7) So even -7 may be enough for the cold to chunk, but it is not a sure thing. Or if the punch damage is high thanks to strength, the victim stays at 1 hp and uncouncious but the game may be keeping track of how negative the hit points were dropped behind the scenes, and this may add in with the cold damage. Hard to say for sure.
Or another example, if a 35 hp enemy is hit by a cone, fails a save and takes 23 and 25 damage, he will turn statue because the last damage kills it. If the 15 hp enemy takes the same spell, the first hit is enough to kill, so if it fails the save he is statued and shattered, if makes the save the statue remains and shatters on its own.
Cone of cold is a little fetish of mine.
That's homework if I've ever seen one!
Without mods that add interest, they are not worth bothering with.
Selûna had no problem with the first slavers under the Copper Coronet. Nalia's web/cloud kill combination was very effective and whilst that put most of the enemy out of action, the party killed the other slavers before switching to ranged weapons to kill those in the cloud of cloudkill.
A change in positioning of the slavers meant that the wizards knew we were there before expected. Selûna and party fled to the sewers followed by some slavers and a wizard. The wizard held Starlight, but chaos from Nalia effectively won the battle as the wizard and another slaver were affected.
They returned and found the enemy scattered which made the rest of the battles easy.
They then went looking for containers. Theey found a quiver but not a potion case. Selûna therefore if I knew where to find one. I didn't know, so I consulted with a scrier in Beamdog whereupon I discovered that we will have to go outside the city.
An ambush supplied some decent armour, but it wasn't really needed. What was needed was some good quality splintmail as Selûna is a barbarian. Selûna couldn't find any.
In Saradush I just opened up access to the spell shop - getting a number of potentially useful spells there (remove magic, Mordenkainen's sword, spell trigger, pierce shield, power word blind and wish). I then backed out invisibly from an assignation with vampires in the prison and avoided all conflicts on the way up to find Gromnir. On arrival there I immediately retreated out of sight range before true sight activated before summoning a planetar and throwing in a firestorm and incendiary cloud before it attacked.
Leaving Saradush I made my way to the Forest of Mir where a planetar helped dispose of the Master Wraith's gang - getting me my 31st and final level.
Preparing for the second pocket plane challenge I used a project image for the first time to produce some summons. Those along with a serving of energy blades killed my clone as it was about to launch a GWW assault
At the Oasis I summoned a planetar, but once that had killed Jamis just ran on through (in retrospect I didn't need to do even that as his sword is useless to me).
In Amkethran I talked to Balthazar, then opened up access to the thieves shop with the help of a planetar and bought some gargoyle boots. There were also a final few purchases of scrolls before moving on to Sendai's Enclave. The Woodcutter there was mercilessly attacked to open up the enclave proper.
Moving on to the threshold of Sendai's room the planetar was stunned by Mithykyl, but was still durable enough to allow me to take down the opposition with MMMs.
For the third challenge the Slayer is coded to chase the PC - and hence was helpless after being englobed by summons.
Arriving at Abazigal's lair Draconis' initial form was overcome by a planetar. However, I was taken by surprise at how quickly the dragon arrived from the other side of the area and got breathed on as a new planetar was born.
The tunnels were soon negotiated, picking up another golem page and the bronze pantalettes on the way. I rested again before going to find Big Daddy. A planetar on its own didn't make much impression, but one protected by a mordy sword soon saw the dragon emerge. I quickly added spell immunity (abjuration) to lock in my lightning protection and put on spell immunity (conjuration) as well to protect against the ranged maze attacks Abazigal specialises in. The dragon managed to kill 3 mordy swords with spell attacks, but finally got stuck on a fourth and a planetar then joined in the attack. I was thinking it would be nice to kill him with energy blades, but he narrowly survived a helping of those and I'd just moved on to MMMs when he gave in.
The 4th challenge was over before I realised what was happening - 2 quick vorpals from the planetar finishing things off before I was ready with a screenshot.
Back at Amkethran Saemon provided entry to the compound and I ran into the palace before the enemies could attack. Balthazar picked up a triple-wilting chain contingency before a spell trigger lower resistance and PW:blind.
The 5th challenge started well with a chain contingency triple pierce shield on the Ravager
Melissan awaits ...
Wild mage {6} (8th and final update)
The intention for Mel's first incarnation was to again use chain contingency to make her vulnerable to magic. However, I was disappointed on arrival when that didn't fire properly. Another immediate disappointment was when I produced a golem for the first time - only to see that die to the first attack Mel made (my memory of the juggernaut golem from BGT was that it was a decent summons). Mel's missile attacks were doing cold damage so I tried to cast a protection spell against that - only to produce another cow!
Getting desperate, I used my one and only Tenser's scroll to try and get a successful cast. That attempt also produced a surge - but this time the spell was successful anyway.
injurydeath).I did reload the autosave a couple of times and concluded that Tenser's was a possible option, but required luck with Mel summoning the wrong things. Lowering MR as originally intended worked well when I tried that again. The alternative would be to lock in PfMW against dispel and just close with her immediately. I don't like that as a tactic, but perhaps if/when I get back there again I might prepare that as a back-up strategy in case lower resistance fails to work again ...
This went easily at first on the ground floor level,
She even managed to save two servanats by webbing them:
but having gone up some stairs Selûna forgot to switch from ranged weapons to melee and having let her mind wander almost got killed.
However she awoke just in time and realised that she had a battle on her hands. Nalia used two lightning bolts whilst Selûna trank potions and Starlight took over the role of tank. She wasn't ideally suited for the task and got badly hurt herself, but Selûna had by that time recovered somewhat and waded in with her sword giving Starlight a chance to recover. At last the troll fell and the party after healing themselves had a good night's kip.