Hexxat (SPOILERS)
FrdNwsm
Member Posts: 1,069
Well, having already freed Hexxat from her captivity, I figured I might as well recruit her for a while and see what she brought to the table. I figured I could replace Anomen with Viconia as the party cleric, and if I recruited Neera as a mage, she was such an airhead she wouldn't object either.
I was startled to find out that Hexxat was basically just a thief. Ok, I presume that at night she can function without her cloak, and at that point she gets some superhuman stats, but ... shouldn't she get some sort of vampire abilities? I was expecting stuff like dire charm, summon wolves/rats, regeneration, maybe a special blood draining attack ... I grabbed her cloak, but no such things showed up, just some stat increases. OK, a strength of 20 is nice, but anyone who can use potions of giant strength can do as well or better, and during the daylight no less.
Or am I overlooking something?
I was startled to find out that Hexxat was basically just a thief. Ok, I presume that at night she can function without her cloak, and at that point she gets some superhuman stats, but ... shouldn't she get some sort of vampire abilities? I was expecting stuff like dire charm, summon wolves/rats, regeneration, maybe a special blood draining attack ... I grabbed her cloak, but no such things showed up, just some stat increases. OK, a strength of 20 is nice, but anyone who can use potions of giant strength can do as well or better, and during the daylight no less.
Or am I overlooking something?
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Btw, you can also remove the cloak while you are inside a building. Only direct sunlight will harm her.
Hexxat racially counts as undead. Also, she regenerates at a fast rate, even without a cloak.
Equipped with "Hexxat's Amulet" which provides 1 HP/round regeneration, immunity to Charm, Panic, Sleep, Level and Ability Drain (though not by illithids), Hold, Poison, Poison Damage, and Disease.
I keepered her class to shadowdancer so that she has more consistency lategame, plus I feel it is much better roleplay-wise.
The first 4 I mentioned should make a rather balanced team with Hexxat with about every class for your Charname. You may choose to replace Neera for Edwin but I prefer Neera, she is more interesting.
I had Charname (berserker), Edwin, Viconia, Hexxat, Dorn and Sarevok ... dualed to mage ... no snickering, he was the meanest mage ever. 324 HP after casting Tenser's. We breezed through ToB. Hexxat's traps vaporized fire giants by the score, and HLA Use Any Item let her use wizard wands, any scroll, weapon, armor etc. etc.
Oh, and she is immune to stuff like level drain and poison and a whole bunch of other stuff, and can't be killed. Other NPCs can be "chunked", she just goes gaseous and pops back in 24 hours. (I have yet to see any villains running around armed with wooden stakes). Needless to say, this is particularly useful if you are going on an evil party no reload run.
Admittedly, in early SoA when she doesn't have HLAs or spike traps yet, you might get more mileage out of someone like Jan, but she's still good due to her vampire abilities/stats/immunities.
The undead immunities and regen are nice, and she can do decent with that +2 throwing dagger you can get early. The cloak micromanaging is a pain.
The special abilities are pretty average...
Sorry, but if you think pure thief kits are awful you haven't been using them correctly. They aren't front line melee folks. They are admittedly less useful than a thief/mage dual/multi, but there are precious few of those available as NPCs. Imoen, who vanishes at the start of Ch2 of SoA and doesn't return for quite some time, Nalia, whose thief abilities are feeble and need supplementing with the rings of danger sense and lockpicking, and Jan are your choices there. And of those three, neither Imoen nor Nalia can set traps worth a damn. Yoshimo can be trained to be a decent thief, but we all know what happens to him, so why bother?
What cloak micromanaging? You put it on if it's daylight and you're outdoors, otherwise you don't need it.
There is an element of RP here also; if you look, this party is BAD. Bad to the bone. An unredeemed Sarevok and Dorn vying for the title of Bad Boy of the Year, with the others cheering them on. I wouldn't dare put Imoen or Jaheira or Jan in with this crew. But still, Hexxat's looking mean.
I should also mention that at this point, she can set 7 regular snares, 3 spike snares, 1 exploding trap and one time trap. We'd set a minefield, have one character with boots of speed run ahead and attract the foe's attention, then lead them back into the killing ground. We must have killed 100+ fire giants that way.
IMO, the main use for a pure thief type in ToB is not for locks/trap detection; Imoen, Jan or even Nalia (with a bit of help from items) can suffice for that. Nor is backstabbing a prime tactic for me; too iffy. Traps are where I feel that a thief kit shines, but Imoen and Nalia have basically zero trap ability, Yoshimo dies long before getting any HLAs, and as a multi class character, Jan rises more slowly and will never hit that high a level.
I'll be the first to admit that getting a pure thief type through SoA and into ToB is a long term project. At early stages, they will indeed be pretty much relegated to dealing with traps and locks. If you want to omit that type of character from your core group and go for all arcane/spiritual casters and heavy melee hitters, that is certainly an excellent alternative.
In my experience, there just isn't any real need for a single-class unkitted Thief, it's much more useful to have a half-Thief half-something-else.
On the other hand, a single-class kitted Thief seems to me a little more justifiable, since s/he brings things to the table which Jan can't do. Okay, yes, Hexxat has some unique special abilities which Jan doesn't have (nor anyone else), but I haven't found her special abilities to be game-changingly strong, they're fairly minor benefits - not nearly as useful as an Assassin's poisoned weapons, or a Bounty Hunter's extra traps, and so on. If Hexxat were a kitted Thief, she'd offer a more credible alternative to Jan ... but she's not.
All that said, that's just looking at it in a power-gaming way. Of course you can take along Hexxat for role-playing reasons (and yes, I have done so, in spite of finding her underwhelming and implausible), and still win the game in a satisfying manner ... and of course it's perfectly reasonable to argue that that's sufficient.
"Hexxat's amulet grants her immunity to Charm, Panic, Sleep, Level drain, Hold, Poison, Poison damage (for instance Cloudkill), fatigue, break morale, and Disease. It also gives her 1hp/round of regeneration"
Also, her uncloaked dex and str make her a natural candidate for using slings in combat, while Use Any Item lets her use arcane wands and scrolls, including the ever popular wand of spell strike, making her a mini-mage.
Lastly, Jan is neutral; he doesn't get to play with my Bad Boyz, he goes into my neutral group. (CharName, Jaheira, Cernd, Haer'Daelis, Neera and ... don't laugh ... Wilson).
You are correct though in stating that she gets access to more non-HLA traps (and she would gain access to the higher level non-hla traps much quicker).
might use her to throw darts of stunning and other specialist throwing weapons.
am too lazy to set snares and things, prefer other types of cheesetainment....
Sometimes she gets stuck as a mist and enemies keep attacking her to no effect, she serves as a good if cheesy distraction.
Her quests are OK, loot is nice, final tob quest lich was a bit bugged in 1.3, but hopefully fixed in 2.0
With her special abilities, she is a nice enough character, I suppose.
Jan is better at everything, though.
"am too lazy to set snares and things,"
Too lazy to set snares?? But ... But ... you have no idea how many entire squads of Fire Giants fell over dead after falling into one of Hexxat's spike traps. Or any thief character's ... other than retarded Imoen who can't set a trap for anything. Your thieves can kill a lot more things with spike traps than with backstabs.
I note that silver swrd (vorpal blade) can be used to .....nm, been misinformed!
Scarlet Ninja-To +3: 'of the Scarlet Brotherhood'
Equipped Ability: one extra attack per round
Combat Ability: Poison damage of 6 hit-points per round, for two rounds, if target fails a saving throw versus poison
THAC0: +3 bonus
Damage: 1D8 +3
Damage type: slashing
Weight: 2
Speed Factor: 1
atmo thinking of dual weilding with Belm.(primary) for 3 APR. However by time she can weild this, putting her in melee, will be of marginal use!
any ideas on better offhand? partly interested in making her look good....
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/56567/bgii-ee-unofficial-item-pack
tempting to go for that tbh, so i could then use it in primary (and backstab) ,aybe belm in offhand; cant think of better atmo.....am sure theres something out there!