Do the Twist
FrdNwsm
Member Posts: 1,069
Uh-oh! Looks like the beholder excrement has hit the rotating air circulation device ....
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Entering an door which had formerly been guarded by an impenetrable force field, he and his cronies were teleported into a small room; no foes were present but that meant little. Taking a fast scan of the area, "Al" found a door to the west leading to a dead end tiny room ... no help there. Ahead was a large open area, seemingly empty. While the spell casters proceeded to buff up, "Al" instructed Yoshimo to utilize a preventive tactic that had served them well many times in the past, starting with the Windspear expedition. The bounty hunter laid out a series of traps, preparing a minefield that would cover their retreat route if they needed to make a hasty "advance to the rear".
Meanwhile the old reliable standbys of fire elemental and skeletal warrior were summoned, and the usual buffs went into effect. Onward! When the party charged into the next room, a single figure appeared. He proclaimed that his name was Shangri-La, and engaged in a bit of the usual pointless villain pre-fight banter. Apparently the by-laws of Local 37 of the Athkatlan Villains and Scoundrels union require this to be performed prior to any public display of Evil. Suddenly, a bunch of his cronies appeared, he teleported out of sight, and ... it was on!
The obvious first target was a big fat bloated beholder; Al and Korgan berserked and ran straight at Balloon Boy, and within 2 rounds had deflated him. Meanwhile screams echoed from the small room to their rear; Shangri had dimension-doored right into Yoshimo's minefield. Hah, served the pompous buffoon right! Yoshimo, wielding Celestial Fury, was dispatched to finish him off.
Al then noticed an odd battle phenomenon. His perceptions changed, everything became crystal clear, and his actions seemed to slow down. A side effect of berserking, perhaps? Wait a minute! Not only did he feel slower, he stopped moving altogether! Yes, someone, probably the fellow named Basinette, had cast the dreaded Time Stop spell! Al watched in frustration as the guy reeled off a protection from evil, a horrid wilting thingy, and a gate spell. Bad news.
Meanwhile Al and Korgan, having burst the beholder's bubble, were now beating on a pit fiend, stopping now and then to scarf down a healing potion. After a couple of hits the Fiend started going nuts and then vanished. The smoke had almost cleared when Yoshimo also went down; vamp boy was still up and active.Three down, but the opposition was almost gone. Al went after the vamp, while Korgan took down the now semi-defenseless Layette. Al put the vamp away, but was hit and ... also drained of 4 levels! Apparently his berserk state had worn off unbeknownst to him, leaving him vulnerable. till, he was able to join with Korgan lay Layette out. Whew! Victory!
Well, almost. The pit fiend suddenly returned? WTH? An unwelcome occurrence indeed. Viconia tossed AL her last protection from evil, and once again combat was joined. The fiend took out the doughty Korgan (four down!) but Al was able to finally send him back to the Abyss. Rod of Resurrection, we love you!
Interestingly enough, whenever we use the air elemental staff to summon one, it never tries to resist our control. Must be the druid version.
Also, you would think an Undead would stand out in a crowd; we had no clue that one of the opponents was a vampire until Jaheira suddenly started to shrink.
Yoshimo's traps worked differently than expected; I had been planning to use that tiny room at the far end as a rest spot if we needed, since it had a door we could close. The traps were there to cover our retreat; we'd been luring foes into his traps as a standard tactic ever since the rescue expedition in Windspear. Seeing Shangalar teleport right into them gave me a chuckle, despite the hairiness of the situation.
I was wondering why Layette would waste a time stop spell cast for a protection from evil, then I realized later he was probably thinking ... hey ... pit fiend ... might turn on me ... get protection. I suspect the thing turned on him when his protection spell expired, and he mazed it away to gain time.
And yes, in retrospect we could probably have had fewer casualties if we had followed Al's original strategy and retreated back to the tiny room, slammed the door, and healed up and rebuffed. But the combat was so fast and furious, he got caught up in the moment and TOTALLY FORGOT the master plan. Doh!
And SoM is not lousy. Edwin can cheese and solo many enemies, including beholders, with that staff's invisibility upon equipping schtick. Also, spelltrap that lasts a good time? Dispel on hit? When Edwin casts time stop himself, he can approach a heavily buffed-protected target like a dragon, and, provided the target does not have pro from magic weapons active/or it runs out during time stop, one whack (auto hit in timestop) and the target will be stripped of every combat protection and buff.
EDİT:BTW I had no idea your main was a female. ^^
Umm. Unless he is supposed to be like that, well, as if he was just stark naked in the middle of a romantic moment with a twisted rune member and could not find the time to don his armor and weapon. (Let us just assume it was not the lich who he was with...perish the thought!) (yeah even the beholder is a better mental picture, really.) (I ship Ravanek&Layene
Arg; annoying story. When starting BG1 I generated several characters to see what various professions/races were like. Well, rogues and mages are pathetic at level 1; I got tired of being killed by wild dogs and such. Cleric was a possibility, but the best one was evil and I wanted a neutral character. I eventually settled on a male human berserker. Took forever to get decent stats. The plan was to get to a significant level (7) and then dual over to mage.
Unfortunately, after many hours of play, I accidentally erased the poor guy; I even asked on the forums here if there were any way to recover deleted files; no dice. Rather than going through all that nonsense again, I subbed the current Char, a female half-orc berserker who had gotten to level 5 before I realized that only humans could dual class. Of course, this precluded any possibility of dualing over to mage, but I was in no mood to go through it all yet another time. I did so like the idea of having a schizoid personality switching back and forth between good and evil natures. "Big Al" of course is a tip of the hat to Al Capone; but calling MyChar "Big Alice" instead somehow just didn't cut it. So, since game RP is 90% mental, I kept the classification of MC in my mind as male.
Of course, I don't necessarily do this in other games, so I'm not quite sure why I still do it in Baldur's Gate. Maybe because it makes you name each save.
One of the things I like about Baldur's Gate is save-game names can be long enough to allow complete sentences instead of just a few words like in Dragon Age. And with Dragon Age I need to start cleaning saves by the time I get to the end, as I'm usually at 500 saves well before the Landsmeet and 500 is the maximum number of saves in Dragon Age (Origins, the only one that really counts for me).