Bad to worse. [minor, old, spoilers]
Pantalion
Member Posts: 2,137
Ever have one of those days where it all goes wrong?
In my limited reload run through BG2, CHARNAME M/T and his noble allies, Jaheira, Anomen, Mazzy, Jan and Valygar were all bravely adventuring through the Druid Grove.
It was all going swimmingly, everyone's on decent health, starting to clear out the troll mound when.... critical cascade failure. Two giant trolls appear, get joined by two more from the fog of war, and all decide to focus fire Mazzy to death in two rounds flat, not even one of them failing their save against CHARNAME's Chaos.
As soon as she fell, they turned and took down Valygar in another few rounds, then Anomen, despite him managing to blind half of them with his last holy smite. A heavily injured Jan managed to take one down with his wand of fire just before dying himself, before Jaheira managed to survive long enough tanking three at once for CHARNAME to finish putting up fresh stoneskins, mirror images and fire shield before taking down all three trolls at once like a sexy elven god of war.
Annoying, but not the end of the world. Naturally Jaheira doesn't have harper's call memorised, but it's pretty late, so after picking off the last troll in the troll den, the pair head outside to take a nap, dropping some snares just in case of an ambush before resting...
Romance event. Jaheira caught by five bandits, and CHARNAME didn't have any stone skins left active after all that troll slaying, so instant 50% damage and everyone is clustered in the cramped quarters of the opening of the troll den.
Three perfectly aimed skull traps and some melee later, and a heavily wounded CHARNAME and Jaheira emerge victorious! Phew! That was tough, but now we can finally raise-
And then Meronia shows up.
"Hey, Jaheira! Come to a Harper meeting!"
"Okay! It's not like I had anything else to do today! Teehee!"
So now CHARNAME has been left completely alone in the middle of a hostile area, has used a bunch of his best damage spells for the day, and is surrounded by mounds of loot for his party that he can't possibly carry.
CHARNAME is... going to be romancing Aerie this run.
So what are some nightmare situations you've had in the past?
In my limited reload run through BG2, CHARNAME M/T and his noble allies, Jaheira, Anomen, Mazzy, Jan and Valygar were all bravely adventuring through the Druid Grove.
It was all going swimmingly, everyone's on decent health, starting to clear out the troll mound when.... critical cascade failure. Two giant trolls appear, get joined by two more from the fog of war, and all decide to focus fire Mazzy to death in two rounds flat, not even one of them failing their save against CHARNAME's Chaos.
As soon as she fell, they turned and took down Valygar in another few rounds, then Anomen, despite him managing to blind half of them with his last holy smite. A heavily injured Jan managed to take one down with his wand of fire just before dying himself, before Jaheira managed to survive long enough tanking three at once for CHARNAME to finish putting up fresh stoneskins, mirror images and fire shield before taking down all three trolls at once like a sexy elven god of war.
Annoying, but not the end of the world. Naturally Jaheira doesn't have harper's call memorised, but it's pretty late, so after picking off the last troll in the troll den, the pair head outside to take a nap, dropping some snares just in case of an ambush before resting...
Romance event. Jaheira caught by five bandits, and CHARNAME didn't have any stone skins left active after all that troll slaying, so instant 50% damage and everyone is clustered in the cramped quarters of the opening of the troll den.
Three perfectly aimed skull traps and some melee later, and a heavily wounded CHARNAME and Jaheira emerge victorious! Phew! That was tough, but now we can finally raise-
And then Meronia shows up.
"Hey, Jaheira! Come to a Harper meeting!"
"Okay! It's not like I had anything else to do today! Teehee!"
So now CHARNAME has been left completely alone in the middle of a hostile area, has used a bunch of his best damage spells for the day, and is surrounded by mounds of loot for his party that he can't possibly carry.
CHARNAME is... going to be romancing Aerie this run.
So what are some nightmare situations you've had in the past?
18
Comments
What you can do is stow your party's gear in the containers in the Troll Mound (so it doesn't disintegrate). Make sure you have enough cash / sellable loot to buy the Rod. Then cast Invisibility (or drink a potion), go to Athkatla and buy the Rod from Ribald. Cast Invisibility again, return to the Troll Mound, and resurrect your companions. Have them pick up their gear, rest up, and then carry on, either with the grove or after Jaheira.
Only comparable situation I can think of is heading back to Athkatla in Chapter 6 after the Underdark with a heavily fatigued party (hadn't rested since the boat to Spellhold), get back at night and run immediately into one of those adventuring groups from the Tactics mod. Since the party was quite high level, it was the toughest group (the 3rd lot with conjurer, shadow druid, berserker etc). After a brutal fight in which Nalia was chunked and Viconia died, I decided I needed to get to a temple sharpish.
Of course, no sooner had I thought that than who comes along? Oh, it's the Githyanki war party after their Silver Sword
After healing Imoen and resurrecting Viconia, what do you think happened next? That's right, I was ambushed by the same Tactics party again
I believe Viccy and Immy perished in that one but PC and Korgan were still going strong and dealt with the whole lot (barely).
Thank goodness for SCS these days...
Well, CHARNAME stashed their gear and solo'd the whole damn map, taking down trolls, druids and rakshasa with the last of his spell slots and several wand charges before grabbing Cernd and killing Faldorn...
And then Jaheira shows up.
No, we're not going directly to the Harpers right now.
"Okay, I'll see you there, then." And she freaking leaves again!
Ugghhh.
Finally wandered back to Trademeet, spent twelve hundred gold raising Anomen, and what happens stepping out of the temple?
"Anomen! Your sister just got shanked!"
"I must leave immediately and won't take no for an answer!"
Thankfully Anomen did stick around long enough to raise Mazzy and Jan (making him infinitely less of a jerk than Jaheira), but I still had to drop my kitty and use it to pickpocket an inventory's full of gear before I could fit everything, and every single party member was over-encumbered on their way back to Athkatla.
The gang (CHARNAME Shadowdancer, Dorn, Hexxat, Neera, Viconia and Minsc) was just returning from killing the shade lord in the Umar Hills and everyone was pretty damaged and low on special abilities and spells (I forgot to rest after the fight). Just wanted to quickly drop of some loot at the Adventurer Mart and find a nice cozy tavern nearby. Thanks to some pathfinding issues Minsc took a little detour and came across Ama and her thugs which I totally must have ignored during the Thief Guild Questline. Ahh Just a petty ambush by some lowlvl gutterthrash I thought to myself, positioned the group and started taking them apart. Being annoyed by that disturbance (It was late and I really really wanted to go to bed) I choose the quick and dirty solution and ordered Neera to blast the thieves to pieces with a well placed fireball.
But...
I had forgotten about my previous quarrel with the cowled wizards...damn!
Most of the thieves were dead or dying but now I had to face quite a heavier challenge when a group of (prebuffed) magical bureaucrats showed up to inform CHARNAME about her violating the law in Athkatla for the last time. That was the first time I was tempted to hit the reload button but anger got the better of me. Ordering the group to fall back, taking on one wizard at a time seemed like a good strategy at that time... till Neera wildmagically screwed up her last magic missile and... ... ...
... ... ... of course gated in a daemon...
Final result: Thieves dead, cowled wizards dead, Dorn dead, Hexxat dead, Viconia dead, Minsk dead, 3 city guards dead, several animals (the ones in the cages) dead due to fireball to the face, CHARNAME barely survived to tell the tale, 1 hour of gameplay, longest and deadliest loot drop off ever.
In this situation I really learned to love the shadowdancer's hide in plain sight ability since it was incredibly helpful to kill the last two cowled wizards by constantly interrupting their spellcasting.
Whatever, I thought. It would be worse if you stay here and witness a wild surge. I thought this but still did not think it would happen.
I tempted the fate, I think. It happened. My stoneskin turned into a ball of flame that burst, slightly wounding me, but I was adorned from head to toe with magical items, Talia...was not so lucky. She was incinerated on the spot. Samuel heard her wife's death wail, or maybe the stench of burning halfling hair tipped him off, everyone in the inngot hostile and attacked!
Minsc, Nalia and Sir Anomen gulped a potion of invisibility, they were unhappy that our reputation took a hit to 9. Neera, being cheeky, casted a chaos spell to cause mayhem in the inn, to make our escape easier.
Chaos hit. Belle, the sword wielding woman, Samuel, Jeremiah the halfling and his dwarf friend all were confused, in the chaos Samuel bashed Neera's heads-in, killing her before she could get away. He then turned to Belle and smashed her too. That halfling was strong! I realised he gulped a potion of giant str or something, thanks to scs mod. The worst was the dwarf, in his confusion he butchered all of the nobleman and innocent customers there one by one.
I retreated to the kitchen, my plan was to raise Neera and have her pick up her belongings and run out of the inn asap. I raised her via rod (scs makes it raise and heal seperately) but as she opened her eyes, I have ignored the halfling Jeremiah standing in the corner of the kitchen, confused, just in that second he snapped out of the confusion and slung Neera to death. Poor Neera, just got raised and killed immediately again. I was enraged. Instinctively, almost without thinking, I casted the most destructive spell I had on the cursed halfling. Disintegrate. The halfling could not dodge the deadly green beam and was vaporised, screaming through the entire thing. I realised what I had done, then. Luckily I did not suffer a rep penalty. I raised Neera again, we took her belongings, and left the inn.
I feel sorry for the Samuel who was still alive. His wife incinerated alive, his customers butchered by his crazed dwarven friend and his halfling friend vaporised. I think this was the worst for him. Incidentally, HaerDalis and his troupe was waiting for his quest downstairs, and I had the planar gem, but I will never return to Five Flagons, that place will be cursed for many years to come.
High level Sorcerer soloing, invisible with PI active, PI incapacitated by a low level enemy and an other that see through invisibility ignored the PI and started to erode sorc's stoneskin. Game over...
Really fast but unexpected, at that level the sorcerer was saving almost always against the spell that stunned the PI and even if I did know that there were enemies who could see my invisible charname I was sure to win the battle in no time with IA from the clone, that could also dispell himself in no time if the original was in peril.
@Pantalion, what a bad day!
Adventuring groups from the Tactics mod, they can spawn up to 3 times in a night if you time the things well, my nights in Athkatla are almost spent in hunting them, taking them with different tactics, lot of fun, potions, dispelling arrows, money and xp. They can't see invisibility so a thief can scout for them and you have always the first move advantage, only entering a certain area they spawn as you enter, and there an invisibility 10 radius or the potions you loot from them works wanders. But the high level group can be very hard the first times you met them, Weimer love to code cheating enemies but is also very good in scripting fair tactics like the one they use. They are a lesson in how to use effectively their classes. Imo is one of Tactics components worth to be installed also if less cheesy mods are used to improve difficulty.
I think that some of the nasty things reported in this discussion could have been avoided if a scouting thief would be used. Some people think that this is boring and relying on metagame knowledge is quicker and enough, I love to play thieves at their full potential and many times it was well worth, as some spawns are triggered by the presence of one of the NPCs, even if invisible or not charname. Also the vampires in the streets are a lot easier if you scout. Spot the enemy unseen, set the traps, buff the party and half battle is won before you even begin it, on top you have the first move....
Also carry some invisibility potions pay, what happened in the Troll Mound could be completely avoided, as the battle become almost lost gulping them and retreating invisible would have avoided all the problems, all the following happenings would not been such a problem, only a minor inconvenience like have to return to town half way trough a quest or completing it without Jaheira.
In all the bad luck happenings in this discussion I see player's errors, including mine obviously.
Bad luck can happen, but imo if you help her get worst, if you are prepared often is not a big problem.