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Is Neera viable?

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  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    edited May 2015
    I like Neera because she is a cheerful bubble-brained airhead. And being neutral, can handle folks like Hexxat and Korgan being in the group.

    Give her Goodman what's-his-name's robes and she has a permanent chaos shield up, at a cost of 1 point of AC.

    Why on earth would you want to cast Reckless dweomer? I have never used it once. It goes under the category of "spells not to be used". Like that chaos field spell; why would you use a combat spell that has a chance of HELPING your target?

    I can't even remember the last time she got a wild surge result in combat. The main random result that happens now is a swing in her effective level when casting a spell.
    JuliusBorisov
  • JAuggieJAuggie Member Posts: 28
    @FrdNwsn Goodman Hayes' Robe. And why not cast NRD? It essentially makes your Wild Mage into a sorcerer by casting whatever spell you know. If you mitigate it with Lv 7 Imp Chaos Shield then you can potentially get an extra Time Stop, Comet, Spell Strike, Horrid Wilting, etc. Even in BG1 you can potentially get Cloudkill or Chaos and at what...the cost of a lv1 spell and some wild surges (fighting Nibrassu in BG1 is fun!)
    JuliusBorisovprocco
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    Well, among other things, in SoA I have only just recently gotten her to the point where she can now cast level 7 spells, so improved CS wasn't an option before, and she wasn't my primary mage in BG1. Also, haven't been using the robe much since I like having better AC. (First SoA playthrough, so I haven't had any chance to experiment with such tactics yet). And it's going to be quite a while before we get any mage able to cast any killer stuff like Time Stop. That's an interesting suggestion, though. Will check it out in a bit; we're getting to the point where enemy THACO is good enough that one point of AC either way isn't a killer deficit.
  • elminsterelminster Member, Developer Posts: 16,315
    JAuggie said:

    @FrdNwsn Goodman Hayes' Robe. And why not cast NRD? It essentially makes your Wild Mage into a sorcerer by casting whatever spell you know. If you mitigate it with Lv 7 Imp Chaos Shield then you can potentially get an extra Time Stop, Comet, Spell Strike, Horrid Wilting, etc. Even in BG1 you can potentially get Cloudkill or Chaos and at what...the cost of a lv1 spell and some wild surges (fighting Nibrassu in BG1 is fun!)

    Plus no one spell round casting limit when you use it.
    JuliusBorisov
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    "Plus no one spell round casting limit when you use it."

    I'm not sure precisely what you mean by that. Elucidate please?
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,714
    FrdNwsm said:

    "Plus no one spell round casting limit when you use it."

    I'm not sure precisely what you mean by that. Elucidate please?

    Nahal's Reckless Dweomer casts as if you have Improved alacrity on. There's no limit per round to how many you can cast.
    JarrakulBrer_Rabbit
  • dunbardunbar Member Posts: 1,603
    On a side note, I really wish this thread title had been worded differently, as every time I see it the microbiologist in me associates the term 'viable' with cellular health - specifically spermatozoa.
  • Brer_RabbitBrer_Rabbit Member Posts: 159
    dunbar said:

    On a side note, I really wish this thread title had been worded differently, as every time I see it the microbiologist in me associates the term 'viable' with cellular health - specifically spermatozoa.

    Think of Neera as a cell.

    A hot-pink, wildly-unstable cell.
  • proccoprocco Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 915
    I forget the name of it, but isn't there a higher level version of Chaos Shield tha
    bengoshi said:

    FrdNwsm said:

    "Plus no one spell round casting limit when you use it."

    I'm not sure precisely what you mean by that. Elucidate please?

    Nahal's Reckless Dweomer casts as if you have Improved alacrity on. There's no limit per round to how many you can cast.
    Huh. I did not know that. Good to know.
    Brer_Rabbit
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    "Nahal's Reckless Dweomer casts as if you have Improved alacrity on. There's no limit per round to how many you can cast."

    OK, I don't even know what improved alacrity is, so I also clearly had no idea. How does this work? You click on a whole bunch of spells at once?
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    "I forget the name of it, but isn't there a higher level version of Chaos Shield"

    Yeah, it's a level 7 spell though, so it takes a while before she is able to cast it.
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    Also, NRD allows her to cast any spell she knows, even if not memorized? Again, how does this work? Click on her spellbook icon?
  • JarrakulJarrakul Member Posts: 2,029
    Normally, you can only cast one spell per round regardless of casting time. So, for example, if you cast a spell with casting time 2, it'll take about a second to cast, but you won't be able to cast a new spell for another ~five seconds. This is because many actions in BG (notably casting spells, using special abilities, and activating items) are on a shared 6-second cooldown, which starts at the beginning of the spellcast/item use. This is why you can cast another spell right after casting a CT 10 spell, but you have to wait after casting a CT 1 spell. They have the same cooldown, but it starts at the beginning of the casting, not at the end.

    Improved Alacrity is a mage HLA that temporarily removes this shared cooldown, allowing the mage to cast spells as quickly as casting time allows. It's pretty nuts powerful with certain spells, or in combination with certain items. Apparently Nahal's just doesn't trigger the cooldown.
    JuliusBorisov
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    I guess I'll have to try it and see how it works. Also, what about casting spells known but not memorized?
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    edited May 2015
    Elminster said:
    "And why not cast NRD? It essentially makes your Wild Mage into a sorcerer by casting whatever spell you know"

    I'm not seeing this at all. When a sorcerer casts a spell, a list of every spell he knows pops up and he gets to choose one from that list. This doesn't happen with NRD; Neera is still limited to casting spells she has memorized. Nor does clicking on her actual spell book do anything.

    Unless you mean to say that she can cast a spell and still have it memorized; but that's not quite the same thing a sorcerer does.
    Post edited by FrdNwsm on
  • JarrakulJarrakul Member Posts: 2,029
    FrdNwsm said:

    I'm not seeing this at all. When a sorcerer casts a spell, a list of every spell he knows pops up and he gets to choose one from that list. This doesn't happen with NRD; Neera is still limited to casting spells she has memorized. Nor does clicking on her actual spell book do anything.

    Check again. Unless your game is acting very differently from mine, this is not true. The list that Nahal's brings up should include every spell known to the caster, including spells too high level to cast normally. This means you an do things like scribe the Cloudkill scroll from the area south of Nashkel in BG1, and then use Nahal's to cast it as a first level mage.
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    Then my game is indeed acting differently from yours. I had her cast her only memorized animate dead, then NRD. Her next cast did NOT include another animate dead as a choice. Nor did it include any other spell she didn't have memorized. Perhaps your own game has a bug that got fixed later on.
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    Hang on; I think I have solved the problem. When I did the above test I was just experimenting, not using it in a real situation. I tried it again the way I would be using it in an actual combat scenario; it looks like she has to have chaos shield in effect first. Then the "all spells known" casting option appears. I was just using NRD alone the first time (unfortunately she left Hayes' robe back in Athkatla! Gah!).

    OK, if that's the case she's going to be pretty OP when we get back to town and she gets her robe out of hock.
    JuliusBorisov
  • JarrakulJarrakul Member Posts: 2,029
    That's very strange behavior. I'm quite certain I've used Nahal's to cast unmemorized spells without first using Chaos Shield.
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    Did she have GH's robe on? That should obviate the need for actually casting the spell.
  • JarrakulJarrakul Member Posts: 2,029
    edited May 2015
    Nope. I've literally done it at first level in BG1 to cast Cloudkill. Just tested BG2, also, and I was able to cast Mislead even though I didn't have it memorized. I did have to unequip the Robe of Goodman Hayes to test it, though, so it's vaguely possible that Chaos Shield has a more permanent effect on Nahal's.
  • FrdNwsmFrdNwsm Member Posts: 1,069
    edited May 2015
    I have been trying out various combinations, and I think my game is buggy. I had Neera unmemorize everything except NRD and Chaos Shield. In that situation, NRD alone, without the robes or Chaos Shield, did indeed call up the option of casting any spell she knew. I have to look into this a bit further when I have more free time.

    However, I'd like to point out that casting NRD without having Chaos Shield in effect has an unacceptably high level of wild surges. Casting improved invisibility on Jaheira and hitting her with miscast magic instead is not a good result during combat. In fact, even with chaos shield in effect, the incidence is still significant. Her level is a mitigating factor as well; in ToB when you get her to level 30 or so the wild surges may well drop to an insignificant level; I haven't gotten that far yet to find out.

    For me, Neera's main advantage so far at level 16 is having the extra spell slots of a specialty mage, while still being able to memorize spells from any school of magic. I would suggest using her with GH's robes to minimize the wild surge factor and just cast spells normally, and forget about NRD except in an emergency.

  • JarrakulJarrakul Member Posts: 2,029
    Yeah, Nahal's is quite the gamble. I find it's mostly only worth it at very high levels (where her level adds enough of a bonus to be significant) and very low levels (where high level spells are often so powerful that they're worth the risk). I still usually take one or two at mid levels, just to use as a desperation move if I really need a specific spell right now, but I'd be wary of relying on it too heavily.
  • brunardobrunardo Member Posts: 526
    Neera is great, yeah she's not as reliable as Edwin but great roleplaying and lots of dialogue - better NPC for a full playthrough for sure
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