Monk-y Business
FrdNwsm
Member Posts: 1,069
[Yannir, if you haven't done the Rasaad quest yet, you are FORBIDDEN to read this. Nuff said; you have been warned.]
[This means you Yannir! I'm not kidding!]
[Fine; don't come crying to me about spoilers then, its all on you.]
On a fine Spring morning, MC and his buds were walking past the City Gates, when a hardly-at-all-suspicious-looking character passed Rasaad a note. The heretical splinter sect was having a meet at an abandoned Amphitheater out in the hills, and yes, there would be punch-n-pie!
Scenting adventure, MC persuaded Anomen, Jaheira, Keldorn and Neera to join him and Rasaad, and the group wandered off into the boonies. Arriving an hour early at the meet, they decided to explore the area. They met a guy who called himself Mr. Money, who offered, for a ridiculous fee, to see them safely to the place. He also suggested they might have an "accident" if they refused. MC told him to get stuffed. A short while later the group came to a fork in the road, followed by a spoon. The trail split in two here as well; one main road and a barely visible side path. Not being a total idiot, MC had a skeleton summoned, which he had wander down the trail ahead; he would follow it as a scout while the rest of the party remained behind.
Pow! Trap after trap went off; apparently set for living flesh, since Mr. Bones in the lead didn't trigger any. The trail looped around in a big circle, joining with the side trail again! Signalling the others to join him, MC healed up, but was in a serious snit. Going onward, there was Mr. Money in the middle of the road! He cackled about his cleverness, and summoned a huge pack of dire wolves to attack. Seriously bad move.
Dire wolves? Please, give me a break! Dire wolves were a threat to MC long ago, but this was just adding insult to injury. Mr. Money went down fast, followed by his mangy doggies. The woods were also full of bears; and yes, bears do stuff in the woods. MC also hated bears, having been mauled by one in the woods around Baldur's Gate. These seemed more interested in eating groundhogs than fighting, but MC poked and prodded and chatted them up until they attacked. (This actually has a bearing later on, so bear with me).
The group also bumped into a small group of adventurers arguing about a loot split. MC offered to mediate; the clueless fools agreed to abide by his decision. Needless to say, MC was no Solomon, and the end result was violence. Shaking their heads at such folly, MC and pals went on.
They arrived finally at the Amphitheater, where an old style revival meet was going on. It was led by a shark-like dude named Hammerhead, who revealed that there was no punch-n-pie here, but it would definitely be served at some Temple a few miles down the road. MC was a bit disappointed, but joined in the spirit of the meet anyway. His shouts of "Preach it!" and "Hallelujah!" may have been a bit over the top; both Hammerhead and Rasaad ended up giving him odd glances, so he toned it down a bit. Half-orcs have NO sense of subtlety. A few minutes later, the meet adjourned, and everyone headed down the road toward the Temple of Doom.
[This means you Yannir! I'm not kidding!]
[Fine; don't come crying to me about spoilers then, its all on you.]
On a fine Spring morning, MC and his buds were walking past the City Gates, when a hardly-at-all-suspicious-looking character passed Rasaad a note. The heretical splinter sect was having a meet at an abandoned Amphitheater out in the hills, and yes, there would be punch-n-pie!
Scenting adventure, MC persuaded Anomen, Jaheira, Keldorn and Neera to join him and Rasaad, and the group wandered off into the boonies. Arriving an hour early at the meet, they decided to explore the area. They met a guy who called himself Mr. Money, who offered, for a ridiculous fee, to see them safely to the place. He also suggested they might have an "accident" if they refused. MC told him to get stuffed. A short while later the group came to a fork in the road, followed by a spoon. The trail split in two here as well; one main road and a barely visible side path. Not being a total idiot, MC had a skeleton summoned, which he had wander down the trail ahead; he would follow it as a scout while the rest of the party remained behind.
Pow! Trap after trap went off; apparently set for living flesh, since Mr. Bones in the lead didn't trigger any. The trail looped around in a big circle, joining with the side trail again! Signalling the others to join him, MC healed up, but was in a serious snit. Going onward, there was Mr. Money in the middle of the road! He cackled about his cleverness, and summoned a huge pack of dire wolves to attack. Seriously bad move.
Dire wolves? Please, give me a break! Dire wolves were a threat to MC long ago, but this was just adding insult to injury. Mr. Money went down fast, followed by his mangy doggies. The woods were also full of bears; and yes, bears do stuff in the woods. MC also hated bears, having been mauled by one in the woods around Baldur's Gate. These seemed more interested in eating groundhogs than fighting, but MC poked and prodded and chatted them up until they attacked. (This actually has a bearing later on, so bear with me).
The group also bumped into a small group of adventurers arguing about a loot split. MC offered to mediate; the clueless fools agreed to abide by his decision. Needless to say, MC was no Solomon, and the end result was violence. Shaking their heads at such folly, MC and pals went on.
They arrived finally at the Amphitheater, where an old style revival meet was going on. It was led by a shark-like dude named Hammerhead, who revealed that there was no punch-n-pie here, but it would definitely be served at some Temple a few miles down the road. MC was a bit disappointed, but joined in the spirit of the meet anyway. His shouts of "Preach it!" and "Hallelujah!" may have been a bit over the top; both Hammerhead and Rasaad ended up giving him odd glances, so he toned it down a bit. Half-orcs have NO sense of subtlety. A few minutes later, the meet adjourned, and everyone headed down the road toward the Temple of Doom.
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Rasaad went into a bit of a funk after the fight, until MC slapped him upside the head and told him to man up. Forming ranks once again, the party marched on.
Arriving at the Temple, they wandered across a bridge and, giving the secret handshake, were allowed to pass on. As was MC's habit, he decided to explore the area first before entering the building; he liked to have all routes of retreat scouted out. The group encountered several instances of animal abuse; the creatures were being used to train monks in the art of hand-to-hand combat. Jaheira was upset, and MC made a note to report this to the local ASPCA. He also found a bear in a cage, and as his wont, proceeded to poke it with a stick and chat it up. Amazingly enough, the bear talked ...errr, growled ... back! WTH? The bear revealed that his name was ... sit down now and take a deep breath ... something that sounded vaguely like Wilson.
MC was flabbergasted; he had spent a full day (well, 30 minutes real time) combing the woods around the Wild Mage hideout looking for this same damned bear a few months back, and he was here all the time? How? This place is about as far from the Wild Mage refuge as you can get! Arg! MC paid off the animal trainer, the bear cage was opened, and Wilson promptly ran off, hopefully never to be seen again, without even a word ... err, growl ... of thanks. And people wonder why MC hates bears.
Having had quite enough of exploring the area, MC led the way into the Temple proper.
First challenge; reveal a secret? The wimp ahead of MC revealed that he had stolen some kid's lunch money years ago, and was met with the appropriate derision from the questioner. MC, on the other hand, proudly revealed that he was the son of Bhaal, and would probably come back some day, rip the guy's living heart out of his chest, and eat it in front of him. Suitably impressed, the proctor waved MC on.
Two more challenges tested MCs combat ability; cleverly enough, the rooms were bathed in bright light and then in shadow. About the only thing half-orc berserkers do well is kill things; there was no contest.
Last trial: MC had to take off all his protective stuff and get whacked around. This guy reminded MC of the sadistic trainee tester in the Shadow Thieve's Guild. He began to beat MC while shouting stuff about recanting his devotion to the two fold goddess. It took all of MC's patience; he managed to endure by entertaining fantasies about ripping the guy's arm off and beating him to death with it.
Half dead, MC finally passed the ordeal, and was allowed to get his gear back. Whew! Tests over, hopefully, MC rejoined his group. OK, MC had certainly been served the punch, but apparently there was no pie left. Damn!
How had it come to this? One final test, that of penance, had been passed by the simple expedience of making up some nonsense about a monk he had never heard of, and ratting her out. Leaving the room, he bumped into the Master of Combat. Together, he and Rasaad planted the seeds of doubt in his mind, by averring that the two men known as Callous and Algernon were in fact one and the same.
While he pondered this, a call to arms was suddenly issued; the Dark Side forces were attacking! To arms! We all rushed outside; the initial defense line of a few monks had already gone down. The leader of the Dark Side, Callous Algernon himself, was there cackling over his own cleverness. There then followed the mandatory exposition, wherein the villain proclaims how smart he is and how his plan was foolproof. MC tossed in a remark saying that he appreciated such cleverness, but that was just so that he appeared to be clever himself. In point of fact, the entire deception had him confused. No matter, a fray looked to be in the offing!
Remembering his old mentor's battle cry, "Now Groo does what Groo does best!", MC prepared for combat most dire. Heck, these were just monks, right? A bunch of pushovers, right?
Umm ... not quite.
Anomen pulled three skeletal warriors out of his hat, Jaheira called up a fire elemental, MC summoned up an efreet and an air elemental and Neera contributed a skeletal warrior and an invisible stalker ... and these were fairly rapidly chewed up by enemy monks. Fists of Fury indeed! In fact, his efreet joined the enemy, having been hit by something or other that our side had tossed. Hard to find loyal summonings these days.
The enemy had spell casters! Priests and sorcerers started doing their thing; Jaheira countered with her patented Insect Plague. but there were a bunch of them, and some spells went off.
Suddenly, assassins, invisible until now, made their appearance and ... backstabbed our reserve line of spell casters for ... 5x damage? Ouch! Neera took a pounding despite her stoneskin, as did Anomen. Jaheira, summoning exhausted, started spreading call lightinings liberally around the battlefield with her staff of thunder, starting with the assassins nearest to her.
Meanwhile, Rasaad was duking it out with old Algernon, and, despite liberal use of flaming sun stuff, was getting the worst of it. The enemy was well supplied with healing potions, and made good use of them. MC recalled, much too late, that he had forgotten to give Rasaad any of his! Rasaad went down before we could toss him some. Sorry guy, my bad!
MC ran back to engage the assassins, but before he could bring them down, both Neera and Anomen were taking dirt naps. MC's revenge was swift but somehow less than thrilling.
Even MC, who had almost forgotten what a real fight was like, was getting pounded by monks and had to take some time out for healing. Keldorn really needs better armor; he was chugging potions like an alcoholic on a Night Train binge. Meanwhile one sorcerer was peppering our one remaining spell threat, Jaheira, with what looked to be magic missiles.
Our monks were all down except for the Master of Combat, who managed to put down old Algie, and then went looking for more foes to whack. Meanwhile, Jaheira had ... fallen asleep? No idea how that happened, but a spell from Mr. Sorcerer put her down as well. Well, not much was left moving; at least MC could finally see what was going on. The Master and the two remaining Dark Side monks had neutralized each other. All that was left were MC, Keldorn, and one enemy sorcerer who somehow had avoided the Insect Plague bugs.
Keldonr and MC both reached the enemy spellcaster at the same time, wound up with their fearsome weapons, and struck! Again! And again! And their mighty blows ... bounced off??
Ahem. This was embarrassing. Apparently, this guy had taken the precaution of casting a protection from magic weapons on himself. Even Lilarcor had no snarky comments to make. Carsomyr can dispel magic, but apparently needs to actually hit something to do so, and since it's a magic weapon ... well you can see the problem here. So, like any good berserker, MC dropped his weapons, summoned up his last reserves of strength, and BEAT THE SMUG BEGGAR TO DEATH WITH HIS FISTS!
Hah! Take that! Victory, such as it was, was ours! Phyrrus would have been proud.
More work for the rod of resurrection; down to 3 charges left. Damn, we'll need a new one soon!
Oooh! And I suspect that works for other rods/wands as well? Or any charged item, really. Same laws should apply to all such things. Cute.
I wouldn't usually bother but in this case I decided to see what Wilson brought to the table. Yes, you actually have to dismiss one of your members to recruit Wilson. Having done so, you now have a level 9 warrior with IQ and Wisdom of 4, a slew of HP, massive strength and 3 attacks per turn, who can't use weapons or armor of any sort, can only communicate by growls, and has a lousy AC of 4. On the other hand, he actually has an experience point value given, and presumably can rise levels. Oh, and he has animal rage ability, which apparently is similar to berserker rage.
So, if that's your idea of an ideal follower (maybe your folks never bought you that Teddy Bear you wanted when you were a kid?), by all means, go ahead and recruit him. I'll pass.
He can just go berserk, for that matter. But, do his claws count as magic weapons? If not, he won't be able to hit half the stuff that's out there.
But much like monk, he gets them quite late which can be annoying at first.
Basically he becames interesting at level 13, and strong at level 19. In the end he certainly has amongst the biggest damage in game because of his 24 str (he gets some with level) and 5attack per round (10with improved haste)
[Note: This screen shot was taken after using the rod of resurrection and a couple of raises to get the dead back up; I should have taken one just prior]
Seriously, please please go challenge them if you haven't already. I don't want to give spoilers but I will if you want, I really want to see your experience with that fight as a first timer.
Fantastic read as always! You could have skipped the tests if you just attacked the monks in the temple, Dark side will still attack and you will have to cease fight with the two fold people to face the coming threat. The tests give some nice items as bonus, IIRC. (You got those gloves that add ice damage to monk fists, right? Very useful. Even more useufl than the fabled Gauntlets of crushing in some situations)
Also, in my last run Rasaad decided to stay with the twofold temple to help them, and promptly left my party. In my current game he did not do so. (We lost Yoshimo to chunking by Dark moon assasins, though.) so there are multiple endings for the quest.
Alorgoth can't be killed in that battle, afaik, he just dims doors away. He is quite an in-famous villain in Forgotten Realms lore, if I am not mistaken. I look forward to do Rasaad's quests in ToB to give him a butt kicking he deserves!
I rescued Wilson too, but he did not come when I was back to the map entrance. I did not speak with him when he was in the cage, though, so that may be the cause?
Algie dimension doors away? I didn't see that happen but I could easily have missed it; the first part of the battle was a total hodgepodge.
I found the battle a challenge for several reasons.
1) The number of combatants involved. We had MC's party plus the master of Combat plus a few monks of our own; the Dark Side had 2 sorcerers, 2 priests, 2 or possibly 3 assassins, Algie and a bunch of monks. (8? 10? Hard to tell the actual number).
2) Confusion; a real "fog of war" developed. With good and bad guys intermingled, even expanding the view left me with a hard time distinguishing which monks to target.
3) The enemy AI was significantly improved. My usual battle plan involves creating what the Romans called the "acies triplex". Summoned critters in front to take the brunt of the onslaught, second line is tanked melee fighters, third line my more vulnerable spell casters. These guys refused to let that happen, and half their monks flowed past my summoned critters, while the rest engaged (and took them out pretty fast, too). The assassins hitting my rear line from ambush was a heck of a surprise, as well. They also had a rear rank of spell casters providing long range fire support.
4) Fighting one critter, like Firkraag, lets you swarm the enemy with sheer numbers, at least initially until he starts whittling your troops down. You only have one target to worry about in a case like that. Here, a computer is quite capable of commanding 20 some odd troops all at once. Even pausing every 5-10 seconds and scrolling back, it was hard for poor, slow human me to keep track of what the heck was happening. I ended up firing stuff like call lightning at random targets while MC and Keldorn just went for one nearby monk after another, chugging cure potions in between kills.
The AI used for all the EE content is very similar to the SCS mod AI, which most experimented players use in order to increase the difficulty level.
":cough: twisted...:cough: rune...
Seriously, please please go challenge them if you haven't already. I don't want to give spoilers but I will if you want, I really want to see your experience with that fight as a first timer.
If you want any such thing, I need to know who what or where is/are the Twisted Rune. I have never even heard or read about the term/name/group.
And why are there monks still in the Temple? Where were these slackers when the battle was raging outside? We could have used their help!
You need to have a rogue stone in your posession. There is no hint, no quest, nothing about this in the game (maybe cut content?) other than the brief and vague info text in rogue stone that they are used for 'gemjump' spells.
You will teleport to an infamous organisation named Twisted Rune's secret meeting place, and you can not return untill you kill them all. They are eeeeeevil. And that's about it. So I am not spoiling anything, really. I just want you to not miss this.
Looking forward to your thread about this.
But you are right, what makes the battle in two fold temple difficult is that the enemies use scs-like intelligence and scripts. Twisted rune is easily more powerful, but they can not play as smart as the Enhanced Edition content.
Neera's quest in SoA was refreshingly difficult too! I found Hexxat's ones a bit dull compared to Neera's and especialy Rasaad's final battles. That monk fight was one to remember. (And I repeat I lost Yoshi there permanently on my current run. Sniff...never forget.)