We have defeated Korlasz. Sarevok's last remaining followers are in Flaming Fist custody.
Korlasz folded like a house of cards after being hit by two Arrows of Dispelling simultaneously, one by Minsc and one by Ajantis. The battle music was epic and glorious - too bad we didn't get to hear more of it. I had the feeling this was supposed to be an epic struggle between good and evil. Instead, it was "Thwip. Thwip. Shriek! I give up! I give up! Everybody cease fire immediately!" At least we avoided killing a dozen worthy opponents. I always prefer to spare lives, even those who have given over to evil, whenever possible.
I've figured out finally how the transition to SoD works. I'll be less anxious and irritated about it in the future. You will get to play the starting dungeon with whatever party you end BG1 with, and it's a very cool dungeon.
They all give you hints in their interjections that most of them are about to leave. I don't remember hints from Jaheira and Khalid during my last run, but I'm sure they were there. Minsc gives you a hint that he plans to stick around.
I just discovered that there are TWO personal chests in your personal quarters after you get out of the starting dungeon. The first one will contain all the equipment that was in your party inventory at the end of the starting dungeon, but be careful, because anything equipped on party members' bodies or in their hands (except for Minsc, Dynaheir, and Safana) at the time you talk to Imoen to say you're done with the starting dungeon, will be lost. (I'm not actually sure yet about Dynaheir and Safana.)
The second chest, which is easy to miss if you don't explore your suite in the Baldur's Gate ducal palace thoroughly, contains everything Imoen had, both in her inventory, and on her person, when you killed Sarevok. Discovering all this made my personal "review score" of SoD go up by about 10 points.
I have another couple of hours or so to play some more today, so I may make one more post later.
Rats, I took a reload. Sethyl dire charmed me on the top floor of Sorcerous Sundries.
Second try, I immediately ran back downstairs, hoping to get Corwin and the shop golems to help. What happened instead was that the proprietor gave me full credit for finishing the whole quest, with the hostile robbers still upstairs. There was no option to ask for help or to tell him I just ran, and the robbers don't follow downstairs.
Yeah. That's a design mistake. Now that I know there's a Dire Charm reload waiting there, I'll always run back downstairs as soon as Sethyl and Company teleport in, unless I use metaknowledge and have a defense against Charm available.
Oh well, SoD is nice, and I still intend to make it a permanent part of my runs, but it still needs a lot of work.
Reloads 3: greater wolfwere, ducal palace, Sethyl's dire charm
@EnialusMeliamne Sorry friend(s), but other things occupied my life, especially university stuff. I also won't have time for playing the upcoming weeks. When I have time to continue this run, I will write here about it as well.
Hello everyone! A lucky hit from an Ogre Berserker ended my no reload status that I've been reporting on in the other thread. I've decided to continue as a minimal reload and keep reporting updates here!
A quick summary for those new to my character. Sir Castus is a Cavalier, and so far in the party I've had Imoen, Xzar (deceased), Monty (deceased), Jaheira, Khalid, Xan (eventually booted with a business card to a therapist I know in Baldur's Gate), Minsc, and Dynaheir. Xzar and Monty were slain by Flaming Fist goons on the road to Nashkel, and given a proper burial in town. After clearing the mines we decided to help Minsc on his quest to rescue the damsel in distress (much to the disdain of our new buddy Xan. I tried my best to cheer him up, but by the time we rescued Dynaheir Castus couldn't take it anymore and sent him packing.
As reported in the no reload thread, one of the mods I'm using is Item Revisions. Among many other changes, it removes the protection from critical hits from every helmet in the game, and instead provides an AC bonus. Only certain items (not limited to helmets it seems) provide protection from criticals. This means that random low level bandits can now be chunked by a lucky dice roll, but so too is it much easier to get your skull caved in by an ogre.
Now to pick up where I left off! We continued our adventure up and down the Sword Coast, clearing out quests along the way. Mirianne was updated on the status of her late husband. Zhurlong had his boots recovered. Mr. Colquette (I think I spelled that right...) had his amulet returned.
While traveling between areas we got jumped by a guy named Molkar and his crew. I didn't remember this group from before, maybe they were added by a mod? Unfinished Business maybe? Either way they put up a good fight:
Somewhere in the woods on the eastern edge of the map we ran into a very hostile group of Red Wizards. I don't think having Dynaheir in the group helped the situation....She got targeted by all three at the same time, and their Flame Arrow spells instantly killed her. Once she was out of the picture, they started summoning their horde. Spell Revisions readjusts quite a few spells, Monster Summoning among them. It now starts at level one, and there's a Monster Summoning for just about every level all the way up. The three wizards each summoned a group of Hobgoblin Archers. One of my mods messed with a string somewhere so their names are all wonky, but their combat scripts were still intact.
It's a good thing that Cas has such good AC, or he'd have been a pincushion in no time flat. The mage's Stoneskins were being a little problematic, so I had Imoen switch to her Arrows of Biting and Khalid pulled out the Ice Arrows.
Once we cleared out a majority of the southern maps, it was time to search out the bandits in Larswood and Peldvale. The group in Larswood wasn't feeling very talkative after I mentioned their leader by name...the rightly suspected that I was attempting to spy on them. They attacked, and I had to kill them all before someone escaped and warned the others.
Dynaheir has really used Spell Revisions to her advantage. Deafness was reworked into the level two spell Sound Burst. It now deals crushing damage in a 10' radius, causing deafness and miscast magic if saving throws are failed. I wish the radius were a little larger, but it's effective in close knit groups, and it's party friendly.
The bandits in Peldvale were feeling a little more amenable, and we successfully smooth talked our way into their good graces. We've now infiltrated the Bandit Camp!
Here, we defeat Teleria the Flesh-to-Stone mage. Dynaheir cast her emergency Protection from Petrification on me, just in case. She also cast some summoned monsters and a Haste. Teleria went down quickly to poisoned arrows and Minsc's sword.
Here, the Coldhearth Lich goes down quickly for his first "killing". Dynaheir, who does not have access to fifth level spells, nevertheless used the one Breach scroll we had, plus I cast the green tear thing from the dwarfs. After that, Minsc got a lucky critical and one-shot him. Minsc ran up to get the phylactery, and then - I had to leave the game and consult the internet to find out how to destroy it. I eventually found a YouTube video showing where to find the fire room. I would never have found it on my own. It was hidden by a bit of fog that had a straight edge, and looked like a wall, leaving no hint on the map about an unexplored room, and no clue how to destroy that phylactery. Thank you, internet!
Here, Dynaheir casts Invisible on Safana to scout ahead looking for traps. She manages to discover a big mob of trolls, and place a mark for us just out of their sight. Every time the scout-and-mark strategy works without alerting the enemy, we can trivialize an encounter, because Dynaheir and I can then obliterate a mob with Web and Fireballs before they ever know what hit them.
Here, I come within a hair's breadth of taking a reload. We go into a troll cave, and get backed up against the entrance. Corwin gets Dire Charmed, preventing us from fleeing. ("You must gather your party..."). I am down to *three* hit points. I thought it was all over. I make a desperate attempt to flee past the troll mob into the cave and drink a Potion of Invisibility. The others manage to turn the tide. We used a Haste spell and several misplaced Fireballs. Both Dynaheir's and my Magic Missiles took care of the troll shamaness once I realized the danger, almost too late. This was close. Nail-bitingly close.
Here, Minsc falls to a mob of bombadier beetles. I knew from IWD how dangerous these things are, yet I still proceeded with way too much overconfidence. We should have scattered and dealt with this at range. Both Minsc and Glint got stunned. Notice that Minsc is at -7 hit points, meaning he almost got chunked. In desperation, I had had Dynaheir and myself throw Fireballs at our own party. The Fireballs got all the beetles as desired, but also almost chunked Minsc. Another very, very close call. I like that the hit points on "dead" party portraits are now showing how close the negative hit points are to the fatal -10. Also, I discovered that Raise Dead scrolls appear to be bugged, after wasting a lot of gold on ten of them. When Glint reads the scroll and targets Minsc, nothing happens. We have to pay Mizhena.
Our quest log with my trademark rainbow pose:
I almost missed the special bard hat that gives the lingering song feat. Only obsessively RE exploring the map, including the dwarf mine, allowed me to find it by sheer luck after completing the menhir quest. I also almost missed getting the returning throwing dart from the halfling. I would have missed the entire map with the vampire quest completely if I hadn't looked it up on the internet.
I love the magic items in SoD. I wish there were a way to get my good stuff into BG2, especially that bard hat and my returning throwing dart.
Every encounter in SoD is a worthy no-reload challenge. I hope to see more and more no-reloaders attempting to add it to their trilogy runs.
Judging from what I read in the no-reload thread, the consensus among the community is going to be to spoiler tag entire updates from SoD as a courtesy. So, I will do so from now on.
I don't want to discourage anyone from posting minimal reload runs in here from BG1 and BG2 who is still trying to avoid spoilers from SoD.
We continue to progress into SoD. I'm having a lot of fun.
The phase of the game I'm in seems a bit easier than intended on Core Rules, mostly because of the Spider's Bane two-handed sword. It's a spider-heavy D&D game, and Minsc being immune to their webs kind of almost breaks it. I also am wearing a Ring of Freedom, so my skald will never cost us a reload to a spider web.
Dynaheir's Web spells with Minsc running right into the middle of them trivializes a lot of melee encounters.
But, I'd hate to think of playing these scenarios without Spider's Bane. If an NPC had walked away with it, or it had failed to import, I'd be having a really hard time with these spiders. There aren't enough Potions of Freedom in Faerun.
Here, Safana gets her first successful backstab of the game, now that her stealth is up to 80/108. It seems like stealth has to be very near 100/100 to have much chance of working.
Bad move. Safana promptly gets Webbed, and may be doomed.
Dynaheir saves Safana's life with an Improved Invisibility spell.
Glint also gets Webbed! I quickly save him by blasting the attacking spider with Magic Missiles. The others are coming. They appear to be scripted to target any Webbed creature first. We had just returned to this dungeon after having had to return to camp to raise Glint when this same thing happened before.
Safana succeeds in a second quadruple backstab to save Glint from another spider. She can one-shot a spider with 40 damage.
Dynaheir and Minsc defeat two difficult bugbear fights using the old Web+Spider's Bane strategy. These bugbears have "stalkers" who create risk of backstab chunking. We have learned to prioritize backstab-capable monsters even over mages. Luckily, most of them are getting stuck in Dynaheir's Web before they can go into stealth mode. We did have a couple of close calls when we first entered this dungeon. Before I realized the extreme danger, Minsc and Glint had taken backstabs for 40 damage each. Dynaheir and I are keeping Stoneskins active at all times, and are keeping Mirror Image spells ready to cast as soon as we see any monster "disappear".
Safana falls to two invisible stalkers before I can even start to react. To camp and back, then.
We defeat the dragonborn dude, using potions on Minsc for our main strategy. I avoided killing the guards on the way in, even though I had a feeling. Sure enough, they all tried to swarm us. I backtracked a bit and used a Web to impede movement. Metagaming will tell future no-reloaders to kill all the guards on the way in.
We defeat the Dune monster. Lots of Magic Missiles and Flame Strikes take care of its Mordy Sword. Judging from the 20,000 xp, I get the feeling this monster was supposed to be harder. Maybe it had some tricks up its sleeve that we didn't see due to being lucky.
Akanna falls to Flame Strikes and Magic Missiles. Minsc has to use a preciously rare Potion of Extra Healing during the fight with her Aerial Servant, which was even more dangerous than the priestess. We have the runestone now, so I don't really see any role-playing reason to finish the dungeon, but we do anyway out of curiosity.
OMG, it's a mind flayer, flanked by a full adventuring party. We have no Chaotic Commands. Both Dynaheir and I get Stunned, and things look very, very bleak. By some miracle, we survive, thanks to Dynaheir's pre-cast Haste (that big ornate door was a giveaway that something bad was about to be encountered) and several Potions of Extra Healing for Minsc and Corwin. The party members with mobility concentrated all fire on the mind flayer, who went down before he could Dominate or Stun the whole party to death, or eat anyone's brain, but his party of (dominated?) helpers were almost enough on their own. Minsc and Dynaheir become confused, and Minsc almost kills her. (Good thing she had Stoneskins.) The fallen enemies' Teleport Field actually helped us survive Minsc's Confusion.
There are six scrolls of Chaotic Commands available from the trader at the camp. Future no-reloaders are highly likely to use metaknowledge and cast all six of those scrolls on the party before opening the door to the mind flayer. Playing SoD is reminding me how dependent on metaknowledge no-reloading is. I was very, very lucky not to need one or more reloads during the mind flayer battle.
We avoided the sleeping green dragon. It makes no sense to me to deliberately fight a dragon with a level 8-10 party when you don't have to.
I am finally posting my first BG1 minimal reload run, which originated as three or four consecutively failed no-reload runs. This might have something to do with the fact that I barely know anything about BG1 or how to play it.
Anyhoo, our Charname this time is an old face with an old name: Poppy, the monk.
Like all my runs, this one has a gimmick. Poppy has the advantages and disadvantages of all the kits in the game, with the monk class as a base.
Notice her unusual stats. This is because she is in werewolf form (Shapeshifter kit) with its 19 STR. She also has a bonus +1 to hit (Skald kit), with some bonuses to AC (Kensai and Swashbuckler kits), to damage (Assassin kit), saving throws (Shadowdancer kit), HP (Find Familiar from the Beastmaster kit), and stealth (Beastmaster, Stalker, and Shadowdancer kit). She also has an innate immunity to hold, charm, poison, fear, and level drain. On top of that, she can use the innate abilities of all the kits, from Hold Undead to Summon Spirit Animal. Plus a few other things, like Wizard Slayer spell failure.
The downsides? The only items she can ever use are clubs and healing potions. No helms, no armor, no robes, no shields, no rings or amulets or belts or cloaks or ioun stones or swords or spears or maces or bows or daggers or scrolls or Potions of Invisibility/Magic Shielding/Clarity/Invulnerability. Let's see what kind of character this creates.
Also, some kit abilities are mutually exclusive, and others won't combine due to engine limitations. Poppy will not be able to Hide in Plain Sight, for one thing (that's unique to the Shadowdancer kit), nor will she be able to set any traps (since Shadowdancers are forbidden from them). She cannot shapeshift into normal druid forms due to the Totemic Druid kit, but can shapeshift into a werewolf due to the Shapeshifter kit. Also, she doesn't get a +2 to her saves vs. enemy spells, which she would have gotten if she had the benefits of all 8 mage kits.
@Blackraven was kind enough to loan me his BG1 SCS install, since mine was non-functional and unfixable. One side effect is some screwed-up strings, which make NPCs banter somewhat uneventful.
But the most important thing for me is the gameplay, and that's working fine.
One of the upsides about having all kits rolled into one is that Poppy is a spectacular damage dealer right off the bat.
Her special abilities are another key factor, allowing her to neutralize problem enemies...
...and take them out safely.
Notice her 31 HP. The Berserker rage ability is a good buffer against critical hits, which is important given that she cannot wear helmets.
I nab Xzar and Montaron from the side of the road, but I don't want them in the party. They're just here to absorb Tarnesh's spells. After all, what are friends for?
Poppy's Inquisitor kit helps get rid of Tarnesh's pesky Mirror Image spells, but since Poppy doesn't have Enrage active, she has to flee from a potentially nasty Sleep spell.
After activating Enrage, she charges forward, but makes sure that Xzar is still Tarnesh's closest target.
How did Xzar survive that? By casting two Larloch's Minor Drain spells, Xzar tripled his HP. Poppy activates Poison Weapon and poisons the enemy mage with her bare hands, since I forgot to put her in werewolf form before the fight started.
We replace Xzar and Montaron with sturdier pals: Khalid and Jaheira. Poppy tanks for them, only to receive a reminder that she is not invincible when not properly buffed.
A hobgoblin with a bastard sword could kill her in one hit if it rolled maximum damage and a critical hit, and it seems that they don't need a natural 20 to do that. Their chance of a critical hit is 1 in 10, not 1 in 20. I make a habit of buffing Poppy with Enrage before I send her off to do anything dangerous, because bad luck alone could kill her in a single round at this stage of the game.
Since I don't know many ways to get cheap XP, I go fight some spiders in Beregost. This isn't suicidal because Poppy's Cavalier kit gives her immunity to poison (!), a major bonus in BG1. Unfortunately, my other party members have no such immunity, and when the spiders target Imoen instead of Poppy, I notice that we don't have an Antidote on hand. One failed save would spell her doom.
I try to slip everyone outside. We don't even get to take a single step away before a spider appears behind us.
How are we supposed to keep the party safe from those spiders? Poppy has TONS of special abilities, but she still only gets to use one per round, and none of them can knock out more than one spider at once. The solution?
We cram the rest of the party in the adjacent room, and when the spiders start to follow after, Poppy uses Shadowstep to leap in front of them and block the way.
As always, positioning is critical in high-pressure environments.
I already failed this run once or twice (I forget how many times) and unfortunately do not remember the path I took before. That's kind of a big loss because I found valuable resources in important places one after another purely by accident, and I faced them in an order that cushioned the difficulty for the party. I try to re-trace my steps and find one of the resources I remember being happy to see: Cattack and some hobgoblins in one of BG1's 1200 mile-wide boxes of unlabeled, unidentifiable wilderness.
I crank Poppy's physical damage resistances to 50 and then zap Cattack with a friendly bolt from Talos.
I also come across another major encounter by chance: three named characters whose names I can't remember. I quick-save by habit and prepare for the battle.
Poppy starts out strong, with Enrage to bolster her durability and True Seeing to dispel the mage's Mirror Image. Jaheira is preparing Entangle, which might give us a needed escape option if things go wrong.
Things do go wrong, with half the party disabled within the round, but Poppy chunks everyone in sight. The mage didn't have the defenses to survive long, and the fighters didn't have the power to threaten Poppy's ludicrous 41 HP.
I continue trying to re-trace my steps, but keep running into less challenging critters...
...only to suddenly get thrashed by an old archenemy of mine, despite Poppy being already buffed with Defensive Stance, one of the best defensive abilities in the entire trilogy.
The party rushes in to defend Poppy, who up until then was holding up on her own, and suffers for their heroism.
Notice that Poppy has both Defensive Stance and Offensive Spin active. Funny thing is, Defensive Stance and Offensive Spin pin you to the spot and double your movement rate, respectively, by using the same opcode, the movement modifier. This means using one overrides the movement rate of the other, and you can use Offensive Spin to jump out of slow-motion Defensive Stance. It's a convenient escape option if Defensive Stance proves insufficient to survive enemy pressure.
Roving around the countryside wantonly murdering random passersby finally earns Poppy her third level, and with it the ability to spout fire from her fuzzy werewolf snout. We use it to torch Bassilus' friends and family, because bones are apparently flammable in D&D.
Apparently Bassilus is over level 10, because he can cast a 6th-level spell.
Poppy runs right back and cleaves through his chainmail. Bassilus is no threat to her; not when Enrage blocks any disablers he might throw out.
Did anybody else think that those skeletons were carrying pickaxes when they first saw Bassilus?
We briefly cease our killing spree to save a wandersome chicken from a bullysome wolf, because Poppy, like all good werewolves, is a vegetarian. To our dismay, the chicken turns out to be a human.
We felt quite betrayed by the chicken man's cunning deception, but the XP reward was a nice gift, so instead of shoving Melicamp into the path of that raging lightning bolt, we toddled out the door in search of more stuff to kill.
Although I barely know anything about BG1, I know from the meme thread that Shoal the Nereid is bad news. I choose a sacrificial lamb in case the dialog makes death unavoidable. Apparently it is.
We thrash Shoal herself...
...but it turns out the real enemy here is an Ogre Mage, which I didn't think I'd be fighting this early in the game.
I should have expected more SCS mages to use Sleep. But all I remember about mages from the last time I played SCS in BG1 (BGTutu, not EE) was getting destroyed by MGOI-buffed mages chain-casting Sunfire.
Poppy, however, has some excellent anti-mage options. The Inquisitor kit comes to the rescue once more, though Poppy struggles to land a hit due to poor luck.
When she does land a hit, though, it's devastating.
Shoal was probably very happy when the Ogre Mage went down. I'm not entirely sure, though, since I keep skipping through all the dialogue. Who knows? Maybe they were actually lovers or something. All I knew was that the Ogre Mage had a red circle under it, which is the basis of most of my decisions in this game.
We later get ambushed by even more Ogres in an even more nondescript, nameless patch of wilderness. Large enemy groups are great for the Dragon Disciple's breath weapon.
You know, getting attacked by that many ogres and half-ogres is really excessive. I don't know if a normal party could have survived that. I've been keeping the party smaller than normal because I haven't really needed anybody besides Poppy for anything. And even Poppy isn't invincible, because some innate abilities can be disrupted despite not being actual spells.
When the rest of the party hurries in to intervene, they don't do too well.
Seeing that Ogre lose his morningstar would be more endearing if he didn't still have +6 damage from his high STR.
I've been looking all over the place for Viconia, who SCS moves away from Peldvale or wherever she normally was, and end up visiting some very distant places as I try to track her down. I even run into one of BG1's most notoriously overpowered enemies. Fortunately, it's not basilisks.
How am I going to deal with these things when we have no Antidotes or Slow Poison spells and Poppy's Wizard Slayer kit prevents her from drinking a Potion of Clarity?
Well, her Inquisitor kit makes her immune to charm, and her Cavalier kit makes her immune to poison, so the Sirines are actually more or less helpless. I still have Poppy activate Enrage, though, since I understand that certain nymph critters can cause Feeblemind on melee hits. The Sirines in SCS also have illusion spells, but the Inquisitor kit comes to the rescue once more.
The Inquisitor kit is the only reason I didn't pick a spellcaster class, as it blocks spellcasting. Well, a single-classed spellcaster with the Inquisitor kit actually only gets their main spellcasting button disabled, and can still access their spells via the quickspell slots right next to it, but I figured I'd go ahead and play a melee class anyway. Besides, I'm already unable to use mage spells due to having 8 opposition schools.
I come across a duplicate of Volo in an inn somewhere, whose name is an invalid string. Evidently it's some other SCS content that got some garbled text. I figure the real content is in the duplicate Volo, not the original one with the right name, so I talk to the duplicate first. There are multiple dialog options and I can't read any of them, so I pick them at random.
Turns out that was kind of a stupid idea.
Apparently this is the SCS component that lets you pay money to decrease your reputation to make evil party members happy. Rasaad, Jaheira, Khalid, and Imoen all get really upset with me for accidentally spreading malicious rumors about the party.
We pay a visit to the Nashkel Carnival. I can't remember what to tell Zordral to make him not commit murder in front of our very eyes, so we end up coming to blows. With True Seeing to dispel his Mirror Image spells, Zordral doesn't last very long.
We do a little exploring and find some new mod-introduced items. They look interesting. Too bad I can't read their names or item descriptions.
Time to finally start the main quest. On the way, I pay a visit to Prism and agree to fight Greywolf, whom I remember from our old multiplayer run. Unfortunately, Greywolf gets some lucky rolls at the beginning, enough to overwhelm our normally substantial defenses. He spends several rounds beating us up before Poppy recovers and furiously paws him to death.
We finally track down Viconia. I'm not a big fan of her in BG2, but I love her BG1 battle cry.
LILLALOOOORL! FOR SHAAAA!
Plus, as I learned in the multiplayer no-reload run I briefly joined, Command offers no save against enemies below level 5. It's a great way of locking down early game toughs.
After raising Jaheira, I ditch both her and Khalid, since they haven't been contributing much to the party's success. Neither have Imoen or Rasaad, honestly but I really like those guys and want to keep them along. I take them on a fun outing to Beregost, where we fight a level 10 bard. Rasaad proves his worth on the first round when he disrupts her first spell.
The damage is pitiful and the new EE concentration checks make it easier for enemies to avoid disruption from low-damage strikes, but it does come out instantly, unlike Viconia's Command spell.
That first round was all we needed. After Poppy activated Enrage for the immunities and HP buffer, the only thing we needed to win was Poison Weapon.
Finally we go back to the Nashkel Mines to kill the local kobolds and gobble up their measly 7 XP. Poppy takes them on all by herself.
Then, right before I decide to rest, Poppy tackles another three kobolds. Two critical hits, two failed saves, and two seconds later, Poppy suddenly dies.
I considered restarting once again, but decided it would be more fun to just keep going and accept this as a minimal reload thread. The odds of me completing the rest of the game without reloading, I felt, were already far too small.
@semiticgod , Glad you found Viconia. I think she's actually shouting "For Shar!" You know, her goddess.
Condolences on taking another reload. I'm glad you're pressing forward. I usually just make the decision to continue or stop a minimal reload based on how much fun I'm having with the character. As long as I'm having fun, I keep going, even if my reload counter starts to get too high (which it did the one and only time I played ToB - near the end of ToB, I think I got up to over 20 reloads, when I'd only had 3 or 4 going in. I lost count at some point).
If I start thinking about another character idea, I usually stop and play whatever character I want. There's no sense in "disciplining myself" to keep going to the end of a run just because of some sense of "should" or "ought". It's my leisure time, and the whole point is to have fun and do whatever I feel like.
@BelgarathMTH: My reload count is actually only one. My restart count, however, is like three or four or something. The other times, I started all the way over from the beginning. I consider them distinct because restarting forces you to try everything again, while reloading only requires you to redo one fight.
The Paladin Run, Or: How I learned Not to Be a Douchebag and Love the Paladin
Never liked Paladins much, at least none of the examples in the game. I can't really get over the whole 'extra-judicial killing' thing, despite knowing that paladins operate under a medieval Faerunian kind of justice.
So I developed my own Paladin ethos, drawing from some examples elsewhere on this forum. Then added a bit of what Paladins mean to me.
The Theme: A society is judged by how it treats its prisoners. I always liked this expression, since I think it encapsulates exactly what real 'goodness' is. Being nice to good, deserving people is just expected in my book. There bare minimum. There are no medals or awards for it. Goodness shown to those who do not deserve it or respect it, or to whom you are not obliged to be good but still choose to be, is a real measure in my book.
The Team: One of each paladin class, comprised of traditionally good or lawful icons or just those who have heroic haircuts.
The Blackguard (Charname) I needed little excuse to use this fine portrait.
Before taking this shot I used EEKeeper to flag her as a fallen blackguard and change her alignment from Lawful Evil (a punishment, rather than conscience-based understanding of law and social living) to Choatic Neutral (in flux) but when I reloaded the save she was suddenly a Paladin. I will not pretend to understand, but she is in fact a Blackguard ---->Fallen Blackguard in all but name.
Here's how our story begins.
Reload 1: Death by wolf outside Candlekeep.
Okay, not a good start, but that's why this is the minimal reload thread.
Our charname is a young woman with an intense desire to live out the life of the paladin, on whose stories she has grown up. Yet this is based more on a need for approval and fame, it seems, more than any true desire to do good and better the world. Perhaps, rather than vanity, this stems from a yearning for proof that others cannot see the darkness she feels inside of her, hoping they do not see the disturbing turbulence inside. Still, the spark of goodness is there, even if it is competing against a dark, roiling taint just under the surface of that youthful face. She needs practice, she needs guidance, she needs to learn what it means to be a paladin, not simply try to attain the image of one. Perhaps, it is hoped, by adopting the strictures of the Paladin way she can find the power to make a choice at all, develop an ethos and find some measure of agency, an agency that will keep her from falling to what lies deep in her blood. It is a selfish motive, rather than an altruistic one, but it is a start...
So dear old pop Gorion calls in four Paladin friends to help guide charname away from the darkside and control those latent dark powers. No point in trying to be a force for lawful good heroics if you can't control your temper or stop the dark taint in your soul from making your blade weep poison. Yet soon after they arrive to begin her training he receives word that she is in great danger, and lays out a plan to get her to safety.
Then he goes and gets killed. Thanks, dad.
With the guidance of her paladin friends Charname arrives in Beregost and starts her assessment with a few odd jobs clearing out the surrounding country of nasty monsters and psycho killers, and doing good deeds.
The Inquisitor and Undead Hunter proved effective against Bassilus' uninteruptible hold spells, though the Undead Hunter is not immune to charm. Damn you, Stamos.
Also saving chickenated apprentices. In all my time playing this game this is only the 2nd time I've seen Melicamp survive.
Despite being Paladins and owing allegiance to the law of the land, the party decides to defend Viconia, as the Flaming Fist officer gave no evidence to the accusations of murder, but clearly seemed to just want to kill her because she was drow. We save Viconia but send her away, the paladin ethos preventing us from associating with evil characters.
We gave away 5000 gold to Beregost, and they gave us an overpriced smithy in return. Luckily, under the rules of Maritime Salvage, the Ring of Wizardry provided us enough dough to buy +1 weapons for everyone. Charname was pleased to find a bastard sword at Feldpost's.
Oddly enough, Marl never approached the party and told us to get out. When spoken to he told us to go away, so as polite Paladins we left him be. QUEST DENIED.
We had no invitation to enter Firebead's house, nor did the game give me any indication that Charname would know he lives there. QUEST DENIED.
Marianne's Ring, Mr. Coquetle's Amulet, Joseph's Ring and other quests requiring entry to private dwellings could only be completed if the objects were found in the course of the plot, and only if the town mayor was visited (make believe) to enquire as to the name and where-abouts of those individuals. Only with that information could our Charname Paladin enter their homes uninvited and give them their belongings.
Garrick tried to hire us as mercs. A paladin does not adventure in the hope of attaining material wealth. QUEST DENIED.
John Stamos, our Undead Hunter paladin, trounced the vampiric wolves outside of the Lathander Temple near Beregost. At lvl2. I think it's the hair.
Power Girl is revived at the Lathander temple and we go south to Nashkell.
Brage may have deserved death, but we we're merciful. The best outcome for all involved would be for him to get the chance to atone.
The Nashkell Mines were chock full of kobolds, but it was nice to have the firepower and armour to take them en masses, without the worry of critical hits.
No screenshot of Mulahey, but our attempt to show him mercy results in an infinite loop of dialogue through which he continually tells us he's going to kills us, summons a hoard, begs for mercy, tells us he's going to kill us, summons a hoard, begs for mercy... so we smack him the face with a sword.
Nimbul tries to kill charname outside of the Nashkell inn. Our Inquisitor, Dredd, goes 'shazzzam' and he's left standing there almost naked, bereft of defences. He does not last long.
The party moves up the coast towards Beregost, encountering Sirines along the way, who warn the party away.
Since it is their home, and there is no good reason to go about slaughtering indigenous inhabitants, our paladin team elects to live and let live. The sirines are not inherently evil and only defending their home, so charname and her paladin friends withdraw without incident. 18000xp and Manual of Bodily Health denied.
Because of the infinite loop with Mulahey (that almost buried the party in kobolds), charname's faith in the honesty of villains was at an all time low by the time she arrived back in Beregost. When Tranzig begs for mercy she makes him eat her sword.
Dredd watched from the door and called it a fail, for although it was a tactically advantageous decision, morally it was not the best choice. The decision to spare Tranzig's life would also have shown that charname was beginning to get a grip on her dark impulses and show that she was becoming a person--and a paladin--unto her own, unenslaved by taint or fear. It could have been the perfect expression of personal agency, and an explicit demonstration of the valued Paladin trait of benevolence.
Charname is a sad panda. That is not how paladins behave. *cue sad sack Charlie Brown music*
Due to failing this wisdom check, charname fails to take control over her darker impulses and realizes she has much to learn. She remains saddled with Blackguard status... for now. Doomed to glow red every time someone casts detect evil, at a time when she wants nothing more than to hide what she is.
On the way north the party is ambushed.
Reload 2. Death by Molkar.
Charname also sits out the Lamahl ambush.
Assassins really like targeting charname. Things are getting personal. After escaping death at the second ambush our Rookie Paladin keeps pushing north, retrieving the body of a farmer's son along the way, as well as 2 tonnes of ankheg shells.
Our Inquisitor shines at the bandit camp, slaying many of their ranking officers with arrows of biting, while the rest of the party uses armour and shield to form a wall against the encroaching tide of bandits. No necklace of missiles, here, but bandits prove susceptible to the wand of sleep. The party mops up the elites and then realizes they've turned the bandit camp into what looks like a seal colony. Is it wrong to kick bandits when they're down?
From this point on Dredd the Inquisitor would become the dedicated archer, using blasts of dispell magic followed by volleys of poisonous arrows to strike down magical or powerful foes.
We rescue Ender Sai and follow directions to the cloakwood.
**I think I will stop here, to avoid making this post too long. I have already finished this run so just need to post it. I know what I intend while I play and take a huge number of screenshots, then select a few and build the story around them, but it takes time. Since my last attempt at documenting a run on the forum was left unfinished i wanted to get to the end so I could be sure that no bout of restartitus would intervene. I will post the rest later.
@sluckers , Great post. I look forward to reading more.
That's an interesting idea to play a blackguard who doesn't want to be. I guess the "dark power" that gives her her blackguard abilities is Bhaal? A blackguard who was "tainted" with abilities and temptations to use them against her will or through no choice of her own makes for a good story.
It reminds me of the "involuntary, angsty vampire" trope we've seen so much of in recent years, such as Barnabas Collins from "Dark Shadows" (the granddaddy of them all), Louis from "Interview With the Vampire", Angel from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", Stefan Salvatore from "The Vampire Diaries", and Edward Cullen from "Twilight".
These kinds of "tormented dark supernatural" characters have always been male so far, so a female version of the trope makes yours special.
When we left off before, there were two reloads in Cloakwood 2, a map that even trap-detecting thieves have trouble on due to what seems like the high skill requirements for those web traps. Potions of invulnerability allow at least 1 of our paladins to stay out of the webs and keep the spiders and ettercaps off our backs while the others make it through.
As Paladins we have no business trespassing so we traverse the Cloakwood with all haste, bypassing the druids and stopping only prevent the unlawful killing of Aldeth Sashenstar and to retrieve the body of Tiber's brother, Chelak, a quest I've not done in some time. I haven't been using 2 handed swords much in the past.
Tiber was directly in our path and we have an obligation to help those in need, regardless of whether they brought the consequences of their actions on themselves. We are given the sword Spider's Bane as a reward.
Drasus and his party are easily swept aside, his mages poisoned by Dredd and their stoneskins dispelled. We take them out at range, then move on to the fighters. We pick our targets and focus all fire on each in turn.
I have read somewhere on the forums that the Inquisitor's dispel magic is quite overpowered in BG1 due to the fact that it was not an original kit. As an addition in BG2, where the minimum level one could enter was level 6, the spell apparently doesn't go off at anything less than level 12, even if the Inquisitor is below level 6. There is an option in SCS to reduce it's power, but SCS also adds levels to named enemies and the cloakwood guards. In my install I never reduced the Inquisitor's dispelling power, due in large part to the fact that I'd never used the Inquisitor before (I did not install anything from SCS that changed something that, at the time of install, I hadn't encountered or experienced before in Vanilla form). Un-nerfed, the Inquisitor's dispell magic works against these improved SCS enemies just over half the time, but it's not a click-to-win ability, which is good.
We penetrate the mines. In a lot of battles our Paladin party had been neglecting to use their abilities, but as I grow more accustomed to having them I discover that the different paladin classes overlap and work together really really well, protecting us from nasty spells like horror and obstacles like mirror image.
From a strictly lawful perspective it might seem that none of the cloakwood enemies should go unpunished--facilitating slavery is no light offense--but Charname lets those who surrender go. It's pretty clear that a lot of the Iron Throne's goons have thrown themselves into the action simply for their livelihoods, and as bad as their actions in the service of the Iron Throne are, the responsiblity for the breakdown of law and order rests firmly on the shoulders of the Iron Throne and its leaders.
Not being a merciless bastard is also just part of being an 'evolved being', so there's that, too.
Reload 5: Damn you, Davaeorn (Learned something new here. Potions of Magic blocking protect you from spells 1-5, but also wipe out all of your own potions and buffs, which can leave you weaker than you thought, especially if you don't notice you're not as fast as you think you are when you're trying to get away from an angry battle horror).
Charname and company finally penetrate the lower levels of the mine and take the fight to Daveorn's doorstep. This villain is allegedly a powerful and intelligent mage. He demonstrates that by teleporting..into the same room as a poison-arrow equipped Inquisitor and Blackguard.
Smooth move. The man hands this victory to our party of Paladins on a silver platter.
However, we face not 1, not 2, but no less than 4 battle horrors. There is nothing left to do but get stuck into a full-plate-and-packing-steel slugathon, heavy hitter-to-heavy hitter. No finesse, just knife work.
Charname spares the life of Davaeorn's assistant. He was a snivelling weasel, more concerned with his own hide than recognizing the gravity of his contribution to the countless innocent deaths at the hands of Iron Throne bandits--and there was absolutely no guarantee that his release would not come back to haunt our team of Paladins later--but she let him go anyhow.
It was a choice made against all suspicions, doubts and possible objections. The darkness inside demanded blood. Even her lawful side demanded it, yet she elevated herself above these things. In so doing she discovered a sense of self-worth. She had the power to shape this world, for good or ill, and this knowledge underscored the importance of what being a Paladin was all about. She mattered.
After putting an end to the Iron Throne operations in the Cloakwood, the party follows the breadcrumbs of evidence to Baldur's Gate, were they are approached by scar to investigate the Seven Suns. Charname also finds Aldeth Sashenstar in need of help. While certainly not the nicest of men, a poor bedside manner does not proclude him from enjoying the same rights of other good-folk. Our Paladins can find no evil on him, and his Merchant League is a legitimate enterprise despite the rumours that often surround such profit-driven organizations.
What he describes sounds similar to what Scar described going on at the Seven Suns, so our paladins investigate both leagues. Charname finds them infested with dopplegangers.
After clearing the Seven Suns and Merchant League, Scar attempts to get charname to perform another task, selling it as a purely mercenary endeavour with rich gold rewards.
Paladins do not perform deeds for hope of material reward, especially not when the Iron Throne needs investigating. Ogre-Mage Sewer Quest DENIED.
Had he told Charname that it was for the benefit of the inhabitants of East Baldur's Gate, it would have been acceptable. Had there been the option to ask about the nature of the mission, rather than how much it pays, we wouldn't have needed to be so strict with the Paladin ethos.
The party rests up in Southwest Baldur's Gate. There, charname is accosted by another Paladin who detects the taint inside of her.
An interesting encounter with Paladins on both sides. What results is a watershed moment for charname.
Let's see her score card:
1. Kills Tranzig. (Fail) 2. Spares Cloakwood guards. (Pass) 3. Spares Stephan. (Pass) 4. Understands the significance of her Paladin friends protecting her from one of their own.
Charname realizes she that does not merely want to do better and conquer her demons, but IS doing so. She has the power, and is succeeding. If her paladin companions can recognize this, there must be some truth to it. The demonstration of solidarity against another Paladin foe underscores the true importance of the Paladin's ethos; To defend those who might otherwise not have a defence (she, being tainted, would have made a tempting pinata for every evil-detecting do-gooder had her friends not come to her aid, making this a very personal lesson indeed). She matters.
The boost to her self-esteem is enough to muster what fortitude she has and justify an alignment/class-shift.
I EEkeeper her alignment from Lawful Evil (follow the law or be punished; It is okay to punish those who break the law even if the law is wrong; It is okay to commit acts regardless of moral concerns if the law has nothing to say about it) to Chaotic Neutral (in-flux/transition).
She shifts from Blackguard to Fallen Blackguard.
She sheds all doubt about who she is and who she wants to be, stemming the tide of taint. She no longer pings red from detect evil. The darkness is still within her, but it no longer holds as much sway. I remove all of her blackguard powers. Using them may have been beneficial, but the emotional and psychological reward from actively choosing to suppress them is edifying. An explicit proof of free-will and self-determination is there ever was one. She retains Negative Plane Protection and resistance to panic, but otherwise is now a straight bastard-sword wielding fighter.
The party's next mission involves investigating the Iron Throne directly. Our Paladins must never lie when possible, but the mission is clearly written for a rogue-type character. Charname is truthful as much as she can be, or avoids telling any stories whatsoever in favour of asking questions. It is not a lie to ask someone if they are open to a bribe, I suppose.
This results in a fight or two while ascending the floors of the Iron Throne tower.
I've seen the term 'Lawful stupid' here before, and I think this is one of those cases where it might be used. Telling the truth causes a few problems while trying to 'infiltrate' the tower... however, from a moral and legal perspective there is a very good roleplaying case to make for acting in this way. By eschewing deception charname separates the die-hards from those who are willing to stand down, thus sparing lives. Legally, openly declaring intent allows suspected enemies to consider their actions and deprives them of the opportunity to accuse our Paladins of any entrapment or malpractice. This has no actual impact on the game, of course, but from a roleplaying perspective makes sense. It's why the police forces of today often do the same when confronting potential suspects on the street. Using deception undermines the whole process of accurately determining guilt and leads to mistakes. Again, no actual in-game impact but makes sense. Lawful 'Stupid' isn't really as stupid as some make it out to be.
It's only 'stupid' from a goal-oriented, ends-justify-the-means perspective, which from what I can gather is exactly what the Paladin Ethos is NOT about.
We reach to top of the tower and encounter Zhalimar. What follows is, to me, the best enounter in the whole series. I love this battle.
Charname makes no pretense of being anything other than what she truly is.
As charname has developed a greater sense of agency over the course of the game, so too has the size of her ovaries increased. We open the battle with a dis-orienting strike of holy hand grenades. One of the things I really like about this battle is that, unlike so many other encounters in this game, it pits you against a large number of equally powerful enemies, rather than a bunch of cannon fodder and one or two head-honchos. This makes it one of the more tactically refreshing battles. This is one of the few encounters that really favours a strategy other than 'focus everything on one big baddie and ignore the cannon fodder). We strike hard at the lightly armoured foes to remove them from the battle quickly, thus depriving the enemy team of as many attacks and abilities as quickly as possible. Done this way, the battle can be brought under control in a few rounds as enemy numbers dwindle. The party ignores Gardush and Zhalimir; while they are very dangerous, their good AC means that they take longer to subdue. Attacking them first would give the clerics and mages more rounds to do damage than the reverse. By killing the leather-clad foes first, Gardush and Zhalimir only get 2 or 3 rounds of impunity. Once we've made a nice tidy pile of leather armours, we start working on the plate-clad fighters. And stand victorious at the top of the high tower in Baldur's Gate. A high point of the series for me.
In Part 3: - A few more reloads. - Candlekeep, the duchal palace, undercity and Sarevok.
@sluckers thanks for your posts! Very entertaining reading on my lunch break. Also I think that's a genius idea to complete the run and THEN post the story. I might just have to give that a try because restartitis is a serious problem.
After investigating the Iron Throne Duke Eltan sends our Paladins on a mission to Candlekeep. They're ambushed by orgre mages. We fight them while the Keeper of the Portal just sort of.... stands there and observes.
At Candlekeep, charname is framed for the murder of Rieltar and Co. Tethoril helps her escape through the catacombs. Potions of magic protection help us get through the traps, and hitpoints are enough to soak up the rest.
Once back in Baldur's Gate we are confronted by the flaming fist. Secure in her innocence, charname agrees to go in, and also learns from passersby that Duke Eltan has been struck ill, but that his illness may in fact be caused by the one who has been tasked with healing him. Everything has changed and nothing is as it seems, and when she goes in to make her case at the Flaming Fist HQ she learns that Angelo has taken over the guard as Sarevok's puppet. The hearing she is given is hardly impartial or lawful.
When confronted with a means to escape and clear her name, she takes it. Without balanced leadership, Baldur's Gate will only descend into chaos, and a war with Amn would take countless lives. And for what? This is hardly a foundation on which to build the kind of world that she, or anyone, really, would want to live in. She, as an almost paladin, has it in her power balance the scales.
Only an evil little child-killing gnome stands between her and freedom. She's come too far to stop now, yet the gnome's aura is incredibly repellent. Paladins do not consort with evil creatures.
Problem solved.
She needs to find a way to Duke Eltan. He's one of the few allies left to her in the city, the others having fled or been murdered. She escapes the Flaming Fist only to go right back in through the front door. Going around the back of the HQ and approaching from the west yields a route clear of guards.
Baldur's Gate's finest, ladies and gentlemen.
She throws caution and subtlety to the wind. Everything has now become so much larger than her, yet at the same time the scale of it provides a calming simplicity. The course is clear, the path open; Our team of Paladins boldly stage a frontal assault on Flaming Fist HQ. In fact, charname walks right through the front door.
And dies.
[Reload 6: Killed while assaulting Flaming Fist HQ]
SCS adds a number of enemies to the HQ, namely a quartet of clerics. Charname soaked up 5-6 hold spells in two rounds with only 50% magic resistance. A hard challenge against which to save, despite her paladin bonuses.
High but measured aggression is needed to take on the corrupt Fists and penetrate the central chamber, where the pesky clerics can be knocked out. Charname and Paladins spread out their attacks, while a poison arrow equipped Dredd blocks enemy spellcasting and dispells any pesky status effects on the party.
Then charname rescues Eltan from his 'healer'.
"Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away Now it looks as though they're here to stay oh, I believe in yesterday...
Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be There's a shadow hanging over meeeeeeee..."
The party gets poisoned. Avoiding the flaming fist on the streets led our fearless team of Paladins to move through many parts of the city, often taking roundabout routes, looking for as much information from the city's citizens as they could. As more secrets came unraveled, the Iron Throne stepped up its assassination attempts.
But the situation is handled adroitly.
Heh... justice.
We also meet some good people in the Cloak and Helm, along with some not so good people. Though the Paladin ethos requires politeness and a kind of ambassador-like 'Awareness' of manners and public opinion, this doesn't apply to belligerent prats, though I could be wrong. The Mauler's didn't give much a chance to avoid a fight anyhow.
There is no turning of the other cheek to douchebaggery.
Eventually charname grasps a relatively complete snapshot of where things stand in the city. Sarevok is to become grand duke, his agents are everywhere, and most of the major allied powers in the city have fallen or been neutralized. Yet there is an affirming certainty that comes with being beset on all sides; it is conflict in its purest form, where the only consideration is where next to swing the sword (as long as they're bad people). In the midst of evil is where Paladins truly find themselves and shine.
She cannot stop now.
Here's where things get a bit undocumented. It seems I had a bout of forgetfulness, because the next screenshot I have is this:
John Stamos, Undead Hunter extraordinaire, who was almost cast as Bruce Campbell.
To get there, charname goes through Chysandera, Slythe and Krysten, and the Duchal Palace. The tactics are fast and aggressive, which might explain the lack of screenshots--that, and because when I get on a roll I start to forget to window the game each time I want to take a picture, then return to fullscreen so that the camera will scroll/pan again.
Chysandera's summoned golems are slain by the combined melee power of the team, while the mage's defences are taken down by arrows of dispelling and true sight from our Inquisitor.
Slythe and Krysten fall to the same tactic, combined melee power overcoming Slythe while magic-warding potions prevent Krysten from being effective. It takes little time to lift her veil of invisibility and and strike her down. She has protection from magical weapons, but by the time Slythe is pulled away from her and killed that protection has worn off.
The duchal palace is next, where a dispelling blast from our Inquisitor removes at least 2 thirds of the doppleganger's buffs. Some retain their mirror images or blur, but almost all of them lose haste, making them far less effective.
Yet when it seems that charname's efforts to bring the war to Sarevok on her own terms have succeeded, he is teleported out. Belt determines where he has gone using 'his god', which apparently is a voice that only he can hear. We've all met people like that. A Paladin tries not to needlessly judge.
At last our Paladin's get their first peek at the thieve's guild. Black Lily has little in the way for us, given that charname cannot support an illicit black market.
Stamos our Undead Hunter clears a way through the warrens and into the undercity, where we encounter a mercenary team sent from the Iron Throne HQ.
Reload 8: Death by necklace of missiles. Note to self: always try to live beyond the minimum safe distance. Charname and party soak up a few arrows of detonation, and in that weakened state charname does not survive when we misjudge the line of sight around a corner while attempting to fry the mercenaries as they approach. She walks up to the corner for a clear shot and blasts the enemy at point blank range. It turns out one of the other paladins, rather than her, could see the terrain that was targeted.
Trying again, we remove the obstacle of the mercenaries. Curiously, their tactics involve splitting up and wandering around the undercity as though they are blind, and putting up a rather ineffectual defence. Chaname does not pursue those that flee, instead choosing to focus on her task. There would be nothing to gain from killing the retreating mercenaries, and doing so would expend resources that are in short supply (mostly healing potions).
A Paladin's honour and honesty talk us out of a fight with Tamoko, and we enter the temple of Bhaal.
The beginning of the end. This is what it comes down to.
More than anything, our plucky almost-Paladin charname wants to be free from under the heel of the machinations of others. Hers is not merely a fight against a sinister taint or evil mastermind, but a fight for self-determination itself. For the majority of this affair her efforts have been reactive and dictated by the actions of others. Finally, now, she is making her own stand, her newly discovered 'brother' the example of all that she is trying to rise above; every nameless doubt, every dark unbidden urge that she has felt her whole life, ready to be conquered.
By striking him down, she can defeat the dark taint lingering in her own heart. The act of it will edify the true nature of her soul, and give her what is necessary to prove that she is not what others tell her to be.
When the battle is joined, she divides her forces to separate her enemies. Our Cavalier engages Sarevok while the rest of the team defeats Sarevok's goons in turn.
Sarevok is a powerful adversary, but he is merely a big bear, our Paladins the wolves. The bear can dish it out... for a while, but the wolves continue to attack, wearing him down.
Some of the wolves may be lost, but persistence yields results.
Or at least... it's supposed to.
Things start to go south. Notice the robe and armour lying on the steps. Those belonged to Semaj and Tazok. Normally they charge the party to face them in the open of the temple. This time they remained there and waited for us. I thought it odd, but did not recognize the significance.
Also notice the quick-loot bar. Such is the inventory of a paladin who spurns earthly reward. I can tell you that I was pining for old Firebead's scroll case about halfway into the game. Letters and documents took up the inventories of almost two paladins by the end.
Eeeesh, look at the reach on that sword!
Okay, something is wrong here. Sarevok was near death, now he is only injured.
Ya, something is very wrong.
Then it hits me. ANGELO. Where is that knob? Wasn't he supposed to be around here? There was a message way back at the start of the battle; he had protected himself with a globe of invulnerability, or something. Now he was nowhere to be found.
Charname runs around the temple blasting empty space with the necklace of missiles, but scores no hits on an invisible Angelo. He's not there. Sarevok cannot be killed unless Angelo dies first.
Well now that's just #&%$ing great. Charname can fight a demi-god and single-handedly save two nations, but not even she can stand up to the almighty BUG, against which there is no victory, and no defence aside from the divine power 'Reload'.
Reload 9: Resetting the board of the Temple of Bhaal.
Much better.
Angelo telelports into the field of battle this time, along with Diarmid (I'd forgotten about him). Tazok and Semaj attack. We fry Semaj with Arrows of dispelling, biting and necklace of missiles before he can have much influence. The mage is soft and too easy to target. Maybe the Inquisitor IS a bit too much for BG1. I don't think any other character can actually have access to true sight in BG1, aside from the Priest of Helm.
Anyhow, the battle is rejoined in earnest. Not even a computer bug can stop charname now.
We employ the same tactics. You can't really fight Sarevok at range. If you get too far from him he will switch targets. But Dredd keeps him at bay while unleashing a hail of arrows at his acolytes.
Sarevok cannot be killed so long as they stand anyway, so we concentrate on them, dividing our attention between a melee with Diarmid/Tazok and peppering Angelo with arrows and fireballs.
I really do not know why so few enemies make use of the Protection from Arrows spell, at least in Baldur's Gate 1.
When Sarevok's minions are nothing more than bones, we take on the big man himself.
For Great Justice!
A victory as personal as striking down the evil in her own heart.
The master plan of Sarevok lies in ruins, his power base shattered, yet a cloud hangs over her. The essence of Bhaal still sleeps in her bones, and our heroic paladin, despite her victory, cannot help but wonder if her troubles are yet over. There may be other Bhaal children, and others still hoping to use or destroy them. But for now, at least, Paladin Anderson is in control of her life, and has done her part to prevent a war and preserve a world where others can do the same, a world in which everyone lives and let lives, or works together and fights for each other. She has learned that such sentiments are not merely the 'lawful' or 'good' principles of a paladin, but atually necessary. Without such principles even she would be dead by now, if not by others then by her own hand as she gives in to the taint and becomes as Sarevok.
The victory brings hope, of course, but charname is sure that Sarevok is not unique, and that this world is full of 'visionaries'. Vigilance must be eternal, for you know what they say: A bird in the hand gathers no moss... or some such.
@sluckers Let me add to the praise by @BelgarathMTH and @Pteran, your updates are very well written, they are a joy to read and look like a small novel. Thanks a lot for sharing them!
A minimal reload run of Baldur's Gate - Siege of Dragonspear - Baldur's Gate II - TOB
Long overdue update
I'm still playing this run. I haven't updated mostly because I don't have time and mainly I'm just exploring the wilderness anyway, so it's been a fairly standard run so far.
The party has been working their way North, exploring as they go. They cleared the three tombs, and fought Narcillicus and the Amazons. Dynaheir made that last fight easy with a web. Chain +2 for Jaheira.
Next came the Xvart village, Bracers AC 8 for Dynaheir.
At the bear river, Dynaheir's web once again made the fights against Neville and the Ogre/Hobgoblin group trivial. I'm really trying to play her as in Invoker on this run, and so far web has been devastating. That save penalty really makes it rock. Chromatic orb hasn't been doing as well, but maybe I just need to use it more.
They hooked up with Drizzt for a while and killed the half-ogres and Teyngan's party. Web for the win again on that last one.
In the evil tomb area, Dynaheir died when Bar'uk's Kobolds appeared to the side of the party and all targeted her at once. After raising her, the party went to the tomb and killed the Doomsayer, with Dynaheir again the MVP with her wand of frost. Captain Brage was saved.
East of the road, Dynaheir's webs helped make short work of Arghain's and Ioin's crews. 2H sword +1 for Minsc. The party also killed the ogres and saved Arabelle.
At this point, the group moved their base of operations North to Beregost and spent the next day fully exploring the town and the Temple, fighting hobgoblins and vampiric wolves in the hills around the Temple.
That's where we're at now. Next comes a thorough exploration of High Hedge and the area around the road South of Beregost. I'm saving the basilisks, sirines, Ulcaster and Firewine until after Michael duals to mage at his next level-up.
That's the first time I've ever heard killing a woman in the street described as "bustle".
Party Status:
Michael: Level 5 fighter - 44 hp Shortbow, Varscona, Ankheg plate, Medium shield +1, RoP +1, Ring of fire resistance, Brawling hands, Boots of Avoidance Reloads: 1 - Cave bear
Imoen: Level 5 thief - 37 hp, charisma raised to 17 Shortbow, Short sword +1, Studded leather +2
Dynaheir: Level 4 invoker - 24 hp Magic missile, Chromatic orb, Web Sling, Quarterstaff +1, Bracers AC 8, Robe of Fire Resistance, Evermemory, One gift lost Deaths" 1 - Bar'uk's Kobolds
Jaheira: Level 4 fighter / Level 4 druid - 45 hp Cure light wounds, Bless, Charm person or mammal Sling +1, Club +1, Chain +1, Small shield +1, Honorary ring of Sune
A minimal reload run of Baldur's Gate - Siege of Dragonspear - Baldur's Gate II - TOB
Long overdue update
The party continued exploring the Sword Coast from South to North, skipping only the basilisks, sirens, Ulcaster, Firewine and Gullykin.
Bassilius was put down, Droth was killed. They slaughtered the ankhegs and got another suit of armor made. They helped Tenya, but didn't kill the fishermen. They cleared Larswood, then, halfway through the spider forest, Michael gained his sixth fighter level and immediately dualed to mage.
After a trip back to Beregost to scribe scrolls, the party took on the basilisks. Korax bravely gave his unlife tanking Kirin's crew, while webs and lightning from Dynaheir and Jaheira finished them off. Protection from petrification on Minsc allowed the group to kill Mutamin and the rest of the basilisks. Michael gained two levels on this map and one on the sirens map. Minsc got the Constitution bump.
Next came Gullykin, where Dynaheir's web doomed Molkar's crew. Lastly, the party cleared the Firewine dungeon. They entered through Jenkal's house and neither the ogre mage nor Lentan was able to cast a spell before being cut down. After that, the dungeon was a long, slow trip. Minsc and Khalid switched off point duty with Imoen following right behind checking for traps. She only missed one and took a pair of magic missiles as a reminder to be more careful. (I missed a good screen shot. Imoen gave her line: There's something most unnatural here, and I want no part of it. while surrounded by the ghost knights.)
Party Status:
Michael: Level 4 mage (level 6 fighter, inactive) - 60 hp Magic missile Sling +1, Robe of the Good Archmagi, RoP +1, Ring of fire resistance, Brawling hands, Boots of Avoidance Reloads: 1 - Cave bear
Dynaheir: Level 6 invoker - 35 hp Magic missile, Web, Lightning Bolt Sling, Quarterstaff +1, Bracers AC 7, Robe of Fire Resistance, Evermemory, One gift lost Deaths" 1 - Bar'uk's Kobolds
Jaheira: Level 5 fighter / Level 6 druid - 60 hp Cure light wounds, Call Lightning Sling +1, Club +1, Plate, Small shield +1, Honorary ring of Sune
This isn't the run I've been reporting on here, but I just had to post about this fight.
This is a heavily modified game with SCS, BGNPC, and various other mods. It's my first time playing SCS.
The main character is an inquisitor. The concept of this run is a totally lawful good party, though Imoen gets to tag along. Current the party is Imoen, Ajantis, Rasaad, and Dynaheir. I plan to pick up Yeslick in the mines. I've completed the Nashkel mines and killed Tranzig. Now the party is exploring the wilderness to build experience before taking on the bandit camp.
Current status.
That's a 9 Dex under those gauntlets.
The party had just cleared the gnoll fortress and was returning to Nashkel. Guilliem had broken his sword and only had the +2 dagger from the tombs. He doesn't have a pip in daggers, he's just carrying it in case he meets something that needs a magic weapon to hit. Dynaheir has used a few spells and Gill and Ajantis have used up their healing ability.
We get waylaid by the Amazons.
Dynaheir opens with a web. Ajantis and Gill protect from evil. This was a mistake, Gill should have cast true sight right off the bat. As soon as Lamalha gives her speech, the thief disappears. The web hit right after, so I figure the thief got caught in it. Gill hits true sight as soon as his protect spell goes off, just before he finishes casting it, the thief reappears and one-shots Dynaheir with a backstab. Lamalha and Ajantis square off in melee, Rasaad starts fighting the thief. She tries to use darts, so he forces melee. Gill and Imoen help Ajantis with archery. Lamalha dies and the mage manages to free herself from the web. Ajantis, Gill and Imoen engage and kill her, just as the thief kills Rasaad.
I send Ajantis to attack the thief as the web wears off. Gill moves to attack the cleric, who's been in the web all this time, but she holds Imoen. As Gill tries to hit the cleric, the thief breaks away from Ajantis to try to kill Imoen. Ajantis follows to try to get her attention and the cleric casts rigid thinking on Gill. Next, she casts another hold and now Ajantis is out of it. I'm now a spectator as first Imoen, then Ajantis are killed.
The two assassins now turn their attention to Gill. But his erratic wandering is making hard for Zeela to land a melee hit and his high AC vs. missiles is making it hard for the thief. Finally, the rigid thinking ends. I break off melee with Zeela and charge the thief. She's almost dead and I figure I can put her down quick. Sure enough, one hit and it's just me and the cleric. There's no strategy left, we just wiff at each other, with her trying to get past my low AC and me trying to overcome Gill's non-proficiency penalties.
Before I started hanging around this forum, I almost certainly would have reloaded. Now I stand, with my ankles awash in the blood of my friends and enemies and shout to the uncaring mountains (in David Warner's voice): "I have WON!"
@BillyYank, That's pretty cool, man. But so much equipment loss! Did you keep going and sacrifice all the gear you couldn't carry?
Also, the game requires some interesting suspension of disbelief in a case like this - I don't think even someone as strong as Minsc could really carry four adult bodies all the way back to town.
@BillyYank, That's pretty cool, man. But so much equipment loss! Did you keep going and sacrifice all the gear you couldn't carry?
Also, the game requires some interesting suspension of disbelief in a case like this - I don't think even someone as strong as Minsc could really carry four adult bodies all the way back to town.
The mods I'm using put containers in the various stores, so I have a bag of holding, ammo belt, gem bag, wand case, scroll case and potion bag. That was one crowded BoH, I may never get the smell out.
I finally got a new computer, and with it Siege of Dragonspear. I am now updated to V2.2 (or something).
I will be honest. I struggled to get into Dragonspear. I made it to the beginning of Chapter 8 several times, but repeatedly restarted. I couldn't figure out what to play, and tried a variety of classes and concepts, but finally... eventually... I went back to basics. The most reliable class of all: Unkitted Fighter.
I am now thoroughly enjoying the game.
Babs starts with the canon party. She has no intention of continuing with them, however. As this is my first playthrough of Dragonspear she will be going with the new NPCs, and an undecided sixth partymate. Could be a mage, but I'm not clear yet on who is going to be with us through SoD. Obviously Dyanheir tags along, but as she has to be paired with Minsc she's out of the running. A Fighter plus the SoD NPCs leaves the party short of a true mage, so at this point it's looking like Baeloth will be tagging along. I know, at least, that he makes an appearance in this game. Not sure about any of the other mages, though. We'll see.
Clearing out Korlasz's family crypt is an easy task. I've done it about half a dozen times while failing to get started at SoD. Thankfully, a crossbow wielding elven fighter does the trick for what I'm looking for. My interest does not wane. Babs takes Korlasz into custody and proceed through revisiting the grand old dame Baldur's Gate, recruiting who she can for the journey north, which consists of Minsc, Dynaheir and Safana. None of whom she plans to take through SoD.
I really liked the more crowded, revamped Baldur's Gate. I especially liked this:
Using the tab key no longer highlights every figure on the map. It's a very effective way to instantly determine who might be important when you enter an area for the first time.
I also really liked this moment:
QUOTE: That ship of theirs shouldn't be hauling garbage, it should be hauled away AS garbage!
Babs also encounters the mysterious hooded man.
But she's not fooled. She knows that voice as well as I. It's none other than Chancellor Gorkon himself. PLOT SPOILED. Shazaam!
Nice try Beamdog, but you can't fool my Babs.
After completing every side quest she could find in Baldur's Gate, Babs heads north and meets the first of the new NPCs.
Personally, I like that Glint is available so early. Of all of the new NPCs I'd heard about, I was most enthusiastic about him. The cleric thief is my favourite multiclass. One of my favourite classes in the game, actually.
And so, we arrive at the furthest point I've travelled in SoD so far. Everything from now on is virgin territory.
While fiddling with singing stones in the woods, Babs has the chance to finally utter the one thought that everyone has whenever they 'awaken' 'something' in an infinity engine game.
That response is perfect. Every damn time I awaken something I get a pit in my stomach. It's like: 'Oh crap, what did I get myself into now?'. Thankfully, the ghost bard turns out to be very nice and gives us a tip on the location of his grave, which holds lots of nice bard items. Looks like SoD finally gives the Bard class some much needed love.
We also find Baeloth and M'Khiin in short order. Babs eagerly welcomes them into the party. I also appreciate Beamdog's humour regarding Baeloth's declining fortunes.
To the North we come face to face with Caelar Argent herself. Sure, she's self righteous, almost sickeningly so, but obviously there is something more to this Crusade of hers than the leaders of Baldur's Gate know, or are at least letting on about.
Her motivations, if honest, are almost sympathetic. Hopefully this plays out well throughout the plot. The last thing I or Babs want is a repeat of Baldur's Gate, where a menacing and mysterious villian like Irenicus turns out to be just some butthurt neckbeard who got spurned by his lady-love.
Oh please please please don't let SoD take the same facepalm-inducing maudlin turn that BG2 did. BG2 remains my least favourite of all the Baldur's Gate games, in large part due to the big let down that Irenicus was by the end. He was doing so well as the villain until Sulldanessallar. Then it was almost pathetic. In like a Lion, out like a lamb. Irenicus was no Sarevok, that's for sure.
Anyway, after exploring the forest Babs decides to investigate and Dwarven dig site. Inside she finds Icewind Dale.
Please please please don't let SoD be like Icewind Dale. Icewind Dale was boring as ****. To this day I've not completed it, and have no interest in doing so. Babs isn't much interested in a zombie slog either, otherwise she would have been a paladin Undead Hunter.... and a male... named Ash.... Ash Housewares.
I played a paladin by that name once. Was good fun. Wish there was a dwarven shotgun in Baldur's Gate, though.
Speaking of awakening things... of course it had to be a lich. Why would it be anything else?
When it comes down to finally putting the Coldhearth Lich to rest, Babs and party enter the fray with as strong an opening as they can muster. The anti-Lich gem and a summoned golem do the trick. The lich wastes his magic on a creature with 100 percent resistance.
During the course of this encounter it is discovered that coldhearth doesn't have a regular Lich's immunity to normal weapons. Very handy. Babs and Corwin cut him down with normal arrows and a normal longsword.
Of course, with all the clues about phylacteries throughout the dungeon, it was only to be expected that Coldhearth would make a return.
But I did not expect this:
Spell triggers? What level is this lich? What has Babs gotten herself into?
Crap crap crap. Babs and co. initiate what I call the 'Steve Guttenberg' maneuver. This essentially involves running away really fast under heavy fire while repeatedly exclaiming 'Oh Shit, oh Shit, Oh shit!!!'.
If you don't know the reference, watch Police Academy you uncultured swine.
Coldhearth even has Timestop. That's either a level 9 spell or an HLA. I'm not sure. Mages are pansies so I rarely play them. They are micro-managey fusspots that test my patience. My knowledge of them is sketchy, especially after a half year absence from the game.
Then things get really bad.
M'Khiin's AI script has her summon Goblin Defenders, which Coldhearth annihlated with Death Spell.
Everyone in the party is level 7.
Ya, that's not good. Basically Coldhearth can kill us outright with no save, in an instant.
Babs starts to wonder what the crikey **** she's gotten herself into. There had better be a damn substantial reward for this quest.
Then things go from bad to worse.
First of all, a message for Beamdog. Cool it with the fog machine.
Secondly, this happens:
Coldhearth casts Abi Dalzim's Horrid Wilting... on a level 7 fighter. This was Bab's reaction...
In one final moment of desparation, Babs rifles through her potion box, searching for something, anything, that can save her. She has no potions of magic protection, no potions of resistance.... basically, all she can come up with is a potion of heroism, promising 10% more hitpoints. While Coldhearth's Abi Dalzim's spell is in the air flying towards her, she chugs it.
It saves her. Barely, with just 4HP to spare.
And seriously... Less fog! Less fog!!! Who is the set director on this operation anyway?
But things get better. Turns out the anti-lich gem is like the Rod from the Unseeing Eye. So far I hadn't been using it because I was seeing stuff like 'Protection from Energy' (the gem deals magic damage) and 'Spell Sheild' or 'Spell turning' on the Lich's sequencers. I figured it would just be absorbed.
But apparently not. It bypasses those, I guess.
Once Coldhearth is weakened, Babs is able to fight her way to the Fire Plane circle and destroy the Phylactery, ending the lich once and for all.
So it seems the game progresses as the Flaming Fist marches closer to Dragonspear Castle. Each chapter looks like it will be a main area, with 1 or 2 side areas opening up along the way each time the army moves forward. For now, Babs and the flaming fist are camped in the Troll Claw Woods.
Nothing major happens. We explore and kill some baddies. We also have a dream or two.
I was never a fan of these.
For the most part, the Sword Coast seems to consist of a large road, a few bridges, and a honeycomb of caves. Pretty much everything of note takes place underground, and nothing at this point in the plot is really of very much note so it doesn't mean much.
Thre are just some minor baddies and the odd good bit of loot.
Finally, having innate infravision pays off.
Glint regales us with song at one point. It actually startled me at first. I didn't know what was going on. But as we now all know, the dialogues in Dragonspear don't interrupt or pause the game.
We find Cards Against Humanity's hole.
The cave environments are definitely beautiful, even if I'm not a fan of RPG fantasy game's raging hard-ons for subjecting players to lengthy dungeon crawls. Emphasis on CRAWL. I much preferred the wilderness of BG1, so I'm happy that these caves are small. So far there's nothing like Dragon Eye in Icewind Dale. Too many levels. Found myself thinking 'Are we there yet? for the first time in decades.
Two or three dungeon levels is enough for me.
Though, for all I know, the next chapters in IWD might very well be worse. But I've never played them.
Babs finds herself a spiffy new longsword. They are usually a good choice if you don't know what you'll be finding.
Babs explores a side forest and fights 8-bit wyverns. Not sure what's going on there.
We battle hordes of spiders in another cave.
Babs almost succumbs to a good webbing and beat down from a group of spiders, but she recovers at the last moment. Vogilhn confuses us with some off topic dialogue. I have no idea what he's talking about. However, from the Elf-Half elf comment, maybe it's something to do with Neera. I've not even seen Neera yet.
We battle some large beetles. Nothing major has really happened plot-wise in this part of the game. The side areas appear to be purely incidental. Most likely nothing with advance until we reach Boreskyr Bridge.
There's another cave above the spider lair. We pay that one a visit.
We get a notification that a green dragon has stirred. Curious, Babs and Co. wait at the entrance to hear what it has to say.
Turn out it's not the talkative type.
The entire party is immediately stricken by dragon fear, then mowed down by dragon breath. Babs and Co. are slaughtered without ever firing a shot.
I think I'll just skip that cave and head on over to Boreskyr.
Anyway, not much happened during this session. Just side areas and minor odd-jobs/quests.
I'm excited about my new custom party minimal reload for the original BG, so I think I'll post it. I'm using a variation of my standard Might and Magic party. I'm the mage, Jason is my "big guy" dps fighter who prefers to be shirtless most of the time (He will wear only leather armor in this run, and he is also the Bhaalspawn), Thorik is my tank dwarven fighter-cleric, and Kat (short for "Khajiit") is my thief.
I just played it up to the gates of the FAI tonight to get it started, and will play it a lot more tomorrow. So far, we've killed all the wolves outside of Candlekeep, and the ogre south of the FAI. I collected the diamond, the Ring of Protection +1, and the Ring of Wizardry, which are all very easy to find without tab highlight when you know exactly where they are. I think I'll metagame keep the Belt of Piercing for Jason, my Bhaalspawn, since I intend to deny him plate mail to keep a bit more challenge. I may or may not let him wear chain later.
Of course, the custom party is going to make the early game a cakewalk. I am expecting more challenge later on, though. Believe it or not, I have never played the lower levels of Durlag's Tower, so I may make it a point to do that this run.
I didn't get as much time to work on this run yesterday as I had planned, because I got distracted wanting to play this same party in Might and Magic 7. But I did get a few things done.
-Defeated Tarnesh. -Cleared the FAI of hobgoblins and returned Joia's ring. -Used Kat's 18 Charisma to get antidotes from Liandrin to deal with her spider problem. -Talked down Marl at Feldpost's. -Defeated Karlat in the Red Sheaf. -Defeated Silke with arrows and wand. -Defeated ogrillons south of Beregost and returned letter to Mirianne. -Defeated spiders in Liandrin's house with Sleep spell, allowing us to save the antidotes for later.
The spiders all fall to Sleep. I don't know if that was luck, or if the original version of Sleep is stronger than in EE. I usually only get two of them on average with Sleep when I play the EE.
With deepest apologies, I'm bumping/necro'ing this thread so I can find it again easily to re-read and review it. I just spent 10 minutes trying to find it again. Googling didn't bring it up, and searching the threads where I thought I would find the link didn't bring it up. I wish I had @JuliusBorisov 's "Find Old, Archived Threads" magic.
Comments
We have defeated Korlasz. Sarevok's last remaining followers are in Flaming Fist custody.
Korlasz folded like a house of cards after being hit by two Arrows of Dispelling simultaneously, one by Minsc and one by Ajantis. The battle music was epic and glorious - too bad we didn't get to hear more of it. I had the feeling this was supposed to be an epic struggle between good and evil. Instead, it was "Thwip. Thwip. Shriek! I give up! I give up! Everybody cease fire immediately!" At least we avoided killing a dozen worthy opponents. I always prefer to spare lives, even those who have given over to evil, whenever possible.
I've figured out finally how the transition to SoD works. I'll be less anxious and irritated about it in the future. You will get to play the starting dungeon with whatever party you end BG1 with, and it's a very cool dungeon.
They all give you hints in their interjections that most of them are about to leave. I don't remember hints from Jaheira and Khalid during my last run, but I'm sure they were there. Minsc gives you a hint that he plans to stick around.
I just discovered that there are TWO personal chests in your personal quarters after you get out of the starting dungeon. The first one will contain all the equipment that was in your party inventory at the end of the starting dungeon, but be careful, because anything equipped on party members' bodies or in their hands (except for Minsc, Dynaheir, and Safana) at the time you talk to Imoen to say you're done with the starting dungeon, will be lost. (I'm not actually sure yet about Dynaheir and Safana.)
The second chest, which is easy to miss if you don't explore your suite in the Baldur's Gate ducal palace thoroughly, contains everything Imoen had, both in her inventory, and on her person, when you killed Sarevok. Discovering all this made my personal "review score" of SoD go up by about 10 points.
I have another couple of hours or so to play some more today, so I may make one more post later.
Second try, I immediately ran back downstairs, hoping to get Corwin and the shop golems to help. What happened instead was that the proprietor gave me full credit for finishing the whole quest, with the hostile robbers still upstairs. There was no option to ask for help or to tell him I just ran, and the robbers don't follow downstairs.
Yeah. That's a design mistake. Now that I know there's a Dire Charm reload waiting there, I'll always run back downstairs as soon as Sethyl and Company teleport in, unless I use metaknowledge and have a defense against Charm available.
Oh well, SoD is nice, and I still intend to make it a permanent part of my runs, but it still needs a lot of work.
Reloads 3: greater wolfwere, ducal palace, Sethyl's dire charm
A quick summary for those new to my character. Sir Castus is a Cavalier, and so far in the party I've had Imoen, Xzar (deceased), Monty (deceased), Jaheira, Khalid, Xan (eventually booted with a business card to a therapist I know in Baldur's Gate), Minsc, and Dynaheir. Xzar and Monty were slain by Flaming Fist goons on the road to Nashkel, and given a proper burial in town. After clearing the mines we decided to help Minsc on his quest to rescue the damsel in distress (much to the disdain of our new buddy Xan. I tried my best to cheer him up, but by the time we rescued Dynaheir Castus couldn't take it anymore and sent him packing.
As reported in the no reload thread, one of the mods I'm using is Item Revisions. Among many other changes, it removes the protection from critical hits from every helmet in the game, and instead provides an AC bonus. Only certain items (not limited to helmets it seems) provide protection from criticals. This means that random low level bandits can now be chunked by a lucky dice roll, but so too is it much easier to get your skull caved in by an ogre.
Now to pick up where I left off! We continued our adventure up and down the Sword Coast, clearing out quests along the way. Mirianne was updated on the status of her late husband. Zhurlong had his boots recovered. Mr. Colquette (I think I spelled that right...) had his amulet returned.
While traveling between areas we got jumped by a guy named Molkar and his crew. I didn't remember this group from before, maybe they were added by a mod? Unfinished Business maybe? Either way they put up a good fight:
Somewhere in the woods on the eastern edge of the map we ran into a very hostile group of Red Wizards. I don't think having Dynaheir in the group helped the situation....She got targeted by all three at the same time, and their Flame Arrow spells instantly killed her. Once she was out of the picture, they started summoning their horde. Spell Revisions readjusts quite a few spells, Monster Summoning among them. It now starts at level one, and there's a Monster Summoning for just about every level all the way up. The three wizards each summoned a group of Hobgoblin Archers. One of my mods messed with a string somewhere so their names are all wonky, but their combat scripts were still intact.
It's a good thing that Cas has such good AC, or he'd have been a pincushion in no time flat. The mage's Stoneskins were being a little problematic, so I had Imoen switch to her Arrows of Biting and Khalid pulled out the Ice Arrows.
Once we cleared out a majority of the southern maps, it was time to search out the bandits in Larswood and Peldvale. The group in Larswood wasn't feeling very talkative after I mentioned their leader by name...the rightly suspected that I was attempting to spy on them. They attacked, and I had to kill them all before someone escaped and warned the others.
Dynaheir has really used Spell Revisions to her advantage. Deafness was reworked into the level two spell Sound Burst. It now deals crushing damage in a 10' radius, causing deafness and miscast magic if saving throws are failed. I wish the radius were a little larger, but it's effective in close knit groups, and it's party friendly.
The bandits in Peldvale were feeling a little more amenable, and we successfully smooth talked our way into their good graces. We've now infiltrated the Bandit Camp!
Here's everything we've explored thus far!
Today we made significant progress into SoD.
Here, we defeat Teleria the Flesh-to-Stone mage. Dynaheir cast her emergency Protection from Petrification on me, just in case. She also cast some summoned monsters and a Haste. Teleria went down quickly to poisoned arrows and Minsc's sword.
Here, the Coldhearth Lich goes down quickly for his first "killing". Dynaheir, who does not have access to fifth level spells, nevertheless used the one Breach scroll we had, plus I cast the green tear thing from the dwarfs. After that, Minsc got a lucky critical and one-shot him. Minsc ran up to get the phylactery, and then - I had to leave the game and consult the internet to find out how to destroy it. I eventually found a YouTube video showing where to find the fire room. I would never have found it on my own. It was hidden by a bit of fog that had a straight edge, and looked like a wall, leaving no hint on the map about an unexplored room, and no clue how to destroy that phylactery. Thank you, internet!
Here, Dynaheir casts Invisible on Safana to scout ahead looking for traps. She manages to discover a big mob of trolls, and place a mark for us just out of their sight. Every time the scout-and-mark strategy works without alerting the enemy, we can trivialize an encounter, because Dynaheir and I can then obliterate a mob with Web and Fireballs before they ever know what hit them.
Here, I come within a hair's breadth of taking a reload. We go into a troll cave, and get backed up against the entrance. Corwin gets Dire Charmed, preventing us from fleeing. ("You must gather your party..."). I am down to *three* hit points. I thought it was all over. I make a desperate attempt to flee past the troll mob into the cave and drink a Potion of Invisibility. The others manage to turn the tide. We used a Haste spell and several misplaced Fireballs. Both Dynaheir's and my Magic Missiles took care of the troll shamaness once I realized the danger, almost too late. This was close. Nail-bitingly close.
Here, Minsc falls to a mob of bombadier beetles. I knew from IWD how dangerous these things are, yet I still proceeded with way too much overconfidence. We should have scattered and dealt with this at range. Both Minsc and Glint got stunned. Notice that Minsc is at -7 hit points, meaning he almost got chunked. In desperation, I had had Dynaheir and myself throw Fireballs at our own party. The Fireballs got all the beetles as desired, but also almost chunked Minsc. Another very, very close call. I like that the hit points on "dead" party portraits are now showing how close the negative hit points are to the fatal -10. Also, I discovered that Raise Dead scrolls appear to be bugged, after wasting a lot of gold on ten of them. When Glint reads the scroll and targets Minsc, nothing happens. We have to pay Mizhena.
Our quest log with my trademark rainbow pose:
I almost missed the special bard hat that gives the lingering song feat. Only obsessively RE exploring the map, including the dwarf mine, allowed me to find it by sheer luck after completing the menhir quest. I also almost missed getting the returning throwing dart from the halfling. I would have missed the entire map with the vampire quest completely if I hadn't looked it up on the internet.
I love the magic items in SoD. I wish there were a way to get my good stuff into BG2, especially that bard hat and my returning throwing dart.
Every encounter in SoD is a worthy no-reload challenge. I hope to see more and more no-reloaders attempting to add it to their trilogy runs.
Reloads 3: Greater Wolfwere, Ducal Palace, SoD Sorcerous Sundries
I don't want to discourage anyone from posting minimal reload runs in here from BG1 and BG2 who is still trying to avoid spoilers from SoD.
We continue to progress into SoD. I'm having a lot of fun.
The phase of the game I'm in seems a bit easier than intended on Core Rules, mostly because of the Spider's Bane two-handed sword. It's a spider-heavy D&D game, and Minsc being immune to their webs kind of almost breaks it. I also am wearing a Ring of Freedom, so my skald will never cost us a reload to a spider web.
Dynaheir's Web spells with Minsc running right into the middle of them trivializes a lot of melee encounters.
But, I'd hate to think of playing these scenarios without Spider's Bane. If an NPC had walked away with it, or it had failed to import, I'd be having a really hard time with these spiders. There aren't enough Potions of Freedom in Faerun.
Here, Safana gets her first successful backstab of the game, now that her stealth is up to 80/108. It seems like stealth has to be very near 100/100 to have much chance of working.
Bad move. Safana promptly gets Webbed, and may be doomed.
Dynaheir saves Safana's life with an Improved Invisibility spell.
Glint also gets Webbed! I quickly save him by blasting the attacking spider with Magic Missiles. The others are coming. They appear to be scripted to target any Webbed creature first. We had just returned to this dungeon after having had to return to camp to raise Glint when this same thing happened before.
Safana succeeds in a second quadruple backstab to save Glint from another spider. She can one-shot a spider with 40 damage.
Dynaheir and Minsc defeat two difficult bugbear fights using the old Web+Spider's Bane strategy. These bugbears have "stalkers" who create risk of backstab chunking. We have learned to prioritize backstab-capable monsters even over mages. Luckily, most of them are getting stuck in Dynaheir's Web before they can go into stealth mode. We did have a couple of close calls when we first entered this dungeon. Before I realized the extreme danger, Minsc and Glint had taken backstabs for 40 damage each. Dynaheir and I are keeping Stoneskins active at all times, and are keeping Mirror Image spells ready to cast as soon as we see any monster "disappear".
Reloads 3: greater wolfwere, Ducal Palace, SoD Sorcerous Sundries
Some more progress into SoD.
Safana falls to two invisible stalkers before I can even start to react. To camp and back, then.
We defeat the dragonborn dude, using potions on Minsc for our main strategy. I avoided killing the guards on the way in, even though I had a feeling. Sure enough, they all tried to swarm us. I backtracked a bit and used a Web to impede movement. Metagaming will tell future no-reloaders to kill all the guards on the way in.
We defeat the Dune monster. Lots of Magic Missiles and Flame Strikes take care of its Mordy Sword. Judging from the 20,000 xp, I get the feeling this monster was supposed to be harder. Maybe it had some tricks up its sleeve that we didn't see due to being lucky.
Akanna falls to Flame Strikes and Magic Missiles. Minsc has to use a preciously rare Potion of Extra Healing during the fight with her Aerial Servant, which was even more dangerous than the priestess. We have the runestone now, so I don't really see any role-playing reason to finish the dungeon, but we do anyway out of curiosity.
OMG, it's a mind flayer, flanked by a full adventuring party. We have no Chaotic Commands. Both Dynaheir and I get Stunned, and things look very, very bleak. By some miracle, we survive, thanks to Dynaheir's pre-cast Haste (that big ornate door was a giveaway that something bad was about to be encountered) and several Potions of Extra Healing for Minsc and Corwin. The party members with mobility concentrated all fire on the mind flayer, who went down before he could Dominate or Stun the whole party to death, or eat anyone's brain, but his party of (dominated?) helpers were almost enough on their own. Minsc and Dynaheir become confused, and Minsc almost kills her. (Good thing she had Stoneskins.) The fallen enemies' Teleport Field actually helped us survive Minsc's Confusion.
There are six scrolls of Chaotic Commands available from the trader at the camp. Future no-reloaders are highly likely to use metaknowledge and cast all six of those scrolls on the party before opening the door to the mind flayer. Playing SoD is reminding me how dependent on metaknowledge no-reloading is. I was very, very lucky not to need one or more reloads during the mind flayer battle.
We avoided the sleeping green dragon. It makes no sense to me to deliberately fight a dragon with a level 8-10 party when you don't have to.
Reloads 3: greater wolfwere, Ducal Palace, SoD Sorcerous Sundries
Anyhoo, our Charname this time is an old face with an old name: Poppy, the monk.
Like all my runs, this one has a gimmick. Poppy has the advantages and disadvantages of all the kits in the game, with the monk class as a base.
Notice her unusual stats. This is because she is in werewolf form (Shapeshifter kit) with its 19 STR. She also has a bonus +1 to hit (Skald kit), with some bonuses to AC (Kensai and Swashbuckler kits), to damage (Assassin kit), saving throws (Shadowdancer kit), HP (Find Familiar from the Beastmaster kit), and stealth (Beastmaster, Stalker, and Shadowdancer kit). She also has an innate immunity to hold, charm, poison, fear, and level drain. On top of that, she can use the innate abilities of all the kits, from Hold Undead to Summon Spirit Animal. Plus a few other things, like Wizard Slayer spell failure.
The downsides? The only items she can ever use are clubs and healing potions. No helms, no armor, no robes, no shields, no rings or amulets or belts or cloaks or ioun stones or swords or spears or maces or bows or daggers or scrolls or Potions of Invisibility/Magic Shielding/Clarity/Invulnerability. Let's see what kind of character this creates.
Also, some kit abilities are mutually exclusive, and others won't combine due to engine limitations. Poppy will not be able to Hide in Plain Sight, for one thing (that's unique to the Shadowdancer kit), nor will she be able to set any traps (since Shadowdancers are forbidden from them). She cannot shapeshift into normal druid forms due to the Totemic Druid kit, but can shapeshift into a werewolf due to the Shapeshifter kit. Also, she doesn't get a +2 to her saves vs. enemy spells, which she would have gotten if she had the benefits of all 8 mage kits.
@Blackraven was kind enough to loan me his BG1 SCS install, since mine was non-functional and unfixable. One side effect is some screwed-up strings, which make NPCs banter somewhat uneventful.
But the most important thing for me is the gameplay, and that's working fine.
One of the upsides about having all kits rolled into one is that Poppy is a spectacular damage dealer right off the bat.
Her special abilities are another key factor, allowing her to neutralize problem enemies...
...and take them out safely.
Notice her 31 HP. The Berserker rage ability is a good buffer against critical hits, which is important given that she cannot wear helmets.
I nab Xzar and Montaron from the side of the road, but I don't want them in the party. They're just here to absorb Tarnesh's spells. After all, what are friends for?
Poppy's Inquisitor kit helps get rid of Tarnesh's pesky Mirror Image spells, but since Poppy doesn't have Enrage active, she has to flee from a potentially nasty Sleep spell.
After activating Enrage, she charges forward, but makes sure that Xzar is still Tarnesh's closest target.
How did Xzar survive that? By casting two Larloch's Minor Drain spells, Xzar tripled his HP. Poppy activates Poison Weapon and poisons the enemy mage with her bare hands, since I forgot to put her in werewolf form before the fight started.
We replace Xzar and Montaron with sturdier pals: Khalid and Jaheira. Poppy tanks for them, only to receive a reminder that she is not invincible when not properly buffed.
A hobgoblin with a bastard sword could kill her in one hit if it rolled maximum damage and a critical hit, and it seems that they don't need a natural 20 to do that. Their chance of a critical hit is 1 in 10, not 1 in 20. I make a habit of buffing Poppy with Enrage before I send her off to do anything dangerous, because bad luck alone could kill her in a single round at this stage of the game.
Since I don't know many ways to get cheap XP, I go fight some spiders in Beregost. This isn't suicidal because Poppy's Cavalier kit gives her immunity to poison (!), a major bonus in BG1. Unfortunately, my other party members have no such immunity, and when the spiders target Imoen instead of Poppy, I notice that we don't have an Antidote on hand. One failed save would spell her doom.
I try to slip everyone outside. We don't even get to take a single step away before a spider appears behind us.
How are we supposed to keep the party safe from those spiders? Poppy has TONS of special abilities, but she still only gets to use one per round, and none of them can knock out more than one spider at once. The solution?
We cram the rest of the party in the adjacent room, and when the spiders start to follow after, Poppy uses Shadowstep to leap in front of them and block the way.
As always, positioning is critical in high-pressure environments.
I already failed this run once or twice (I forget how many times) and unfortunately do not remember the path I took before. That's kind of a big loss because I found valuable resources in important places one after another purely by accident, and I faced them in an order that cushioned the difficulty for the party. I try to re-trace my steps and find one of the resources I remember being happy to see: Cattack and some hobgoblins in one of BG1's 1200 mile-wide boxes of unlabeled, unidentifiable wilderness.
I crank Poppy's physical damage resistances to 50 and then zap Cattack with a friendly bolt from Talos.
I also come across another major encounter by chance: three named characters whose names I can't remember. I quick-save by habit and prepare for the battle.
Poppy starts out strong, with Enrage to bolster her durability and True Seeing to dispel the mage's Mirror Image. Jaheira is preparing Entangle, which might give us a needed escape option if things go wrong.
Things do go wrong, with half the party disabled within the round, but Poppy chunks everyone in sight. The mage didn't have the defenses to survive long, and the fighters didn't have the power to threaten Poppy's ludicrous 41 HP.
I continue trying to re-trace my steps, but keep running into less challenging critters...
...only to suddenly get thrashed by an old archenemy of mine, despite Poppy being already buffed with Defensive Stance, one of the best defensive abilities in the entire trilogy.
The party rushes in to defend Poppy, who up until then was holding up on her own, and suffers for their heroism.
Notice that Poppy has both Defensive Stance and Offensive Spin active. Funny thing is, Defensive Stance and Offensive Spin pin you to the spot and double your movement rate, respectively, by using the same opcode, the movement modifier. This means using one overrides the movement rate of the other, and you can use Offensive Spin to jump out of slow-motion Defensive Stance. It's a convenient escape option if Defensive Stance proves insufficient to survive enemy pressure.
Roving around the countryside wantonly murdering random passersby finally earns Poppy her third level, and with it the ability to spout fire from her fuzzy werewolf snout. We use it to torch Bassilus' friends and family, because bones are apparently flammable in D&D.
Apparently Bassilus is over level 10, because he can cast a 6th-level spell.
Poppy runs right back and cleaves through his chainmail. Bassilus is no threat to her; not when Enrage blocks any disablers he might throw out.
Did anybody else think that those skeletons were carrying pickaxes when they first saw Bassilus?
We briefly cease our killing spree to save a wandersome chicken from a bullysome wolf, because Poppy, like all good werewolves, is a vegetarian. To our dismay, the chicken turns out to be a human.
We felt quite betrayed by the chicken man's cunning deception, but the XP reward was a nice gift, so instead of shoving Melicamp into the path of that raging lightning bolt, we toddled out the door in search of more stuff to kill.
We thrash Shoal herself...
...but it turns out the real enemy here is an Ogre Mage, which I didn't think I'd be fighting this early in the game.
I should have expected more SCS mages to use Sleep. But all I remember about mages from the last time I played SCS in BG1 (BGTutu, not EE) was getting destroyed by MGOI-buffed mages chain-casting Sunfire.
Poppy, however, has some excellent anti-mage options. The Inquisitor kit comes to the rescue once more, though Poppy struggles to land a hit due to poor luck.
When she does land a hit, though, it's devastating.
Shoal was probably very happy when the Ogre Mage went down. I'm not entirely sure, though, since I keep skipping through all the dialogue. Who knows? Maybe they were actually lovers or something. All I knew was that the Ogre Mage had a red circle under it, which is the basis of most of my decisions in this game.
We later get ambushed by even more Ogres in an even more nondescript, nameless patch of wilderness. Large enemy groups are great for the Dragon Disciple's breath weapon.
You know, getting attacked by that many ogres and half-ogres is really excessive. I don't know if a normal party could have survived that. I've been keeping the party smaller than normal because I haven't really needed anybody besides Poppy for anything. And even Poppy isn't invincible, because some innate abilities can be disrupted despite not being actual spells.
When the rest of the party hurries in to intervene, they don't do too well.
Seeing that Ogre lose his morningstar would be more endearing if he didn't still have +6 damage from his high STR.
I've been looking all over the place for Viconia, who SCS moves away from Peldvale or wherever she normally was, and end up visiting some very distant places as I try to track her down. I even run into one of BG1's most notoriously overpowered enemies. Fortunately, it's not basilisks.
How am I going to deal with these things when we have no Antidotes or Slow Poison spells and Poppy's Wizard Slayer kit prevents her from drinking a Potion of Clarity?
Well, her Inquisitor kit makes her immune to charm, and her Cavalier kit makes her immune to poison, so the Sirines are actually more or less helpless. I still have Poppy activate Enrage, though, since I understand that certain nymph critters can cause Feeblemind on melee hits. The Sirines in SCS also have illusion spells, but the Inquisitor kit comes to the rescue once more.
The Inquisitor kit is the only reason I didn't pick a spellcaster class, as it blocks spellcasting. Well, a single-classed spellcaster with the Inquisitor kit actually only gets their main spellcasting button disabled, and can still access their spells via the quickspell slots right next to it, but I figured I'd go ahead and play a melee class anyway. Besides, I'm already unable to use mage spells due to having 8 opposition schools.
I come across a duplicate of Volo in an inn somewhere, whose name is an invalid string. Evidently it's some other SCS content that got some garbled text. I figure the real content is in the duplicate Volo, not the original one with the right name, so I talk to the duplicate first. There are multiple dialog options and I can't read any of them, so I pick them at random.
Turns out that was kind of a stupid idea.
Apparently this is the SCS component that lets you pay money to decrease your reputation to make evil party members happy. Rasaad, Jaheira, Khalid, and Imoen all get really upset with me for accidentally spreading malicious rumors about the party.
We pay a visit to the Nashkel Carnival. I can't remember what to tell Zordral to make him not commit murder in front of our very eyes, so we end up coming to blows. With True Seeing to dispel his Mirror Image spells, Zordral doesn't last very long.
We do a little exploring and find some new mod-introduced items. They look interesting. Too bad I can't read their names or item descriptions.
Time to finally start the main quest. On the way, I pay a visit to Prism and agree to fight Greywolf, whom I remember from our old multiplayer run. Unfortunately, Greywolf gets some lucky rolls at the beginning, enough to overwhelm our normally substantial defenses. He spends several rounds beating us up before Poppy recovers and furiously paws him to death.
We finally track down Viconia. I'm not a big fan of her in BG2, but I love her BG1 battle cry.
LILLALOOOORL! FOR SHAAAA!
Plus, as I learned in the multiplayer no-reload run I briefly joined, Command offers no save against enemies below level 5. It's a great way of locking down early game toughs.
After raising Jaheira, I ditch both her and Khalid, since they haven't been contributing much to the party's success. Neither have Imoen or Rasaad, honestly but I really like those guys and want to keep them along. I take them on a fun outing to Beregost, where we fight a level 10 bard. Rasaad proves his worth on the first round when he disrupts her first spell.
The damage is pitiful and the new EE concentration checks make it easier for enemies to avoid disruption from low-damage strikes, but it does come out instantly, unlike Viconia's Command spell.
That first round was all we needed. After Poppy activated Enrage for the immunities and HP buffer, the only thing we needed to win was Poison Weapon.
Finally we go back to the Nashkel Mines to kill the local kobolds and gobble up their measly 7 XP. Poppy takes them on all by herself.
Then, right before I decide to rest, Poppy tackles another three kobolds. Two critical hits, two failed saves, and two seconds later, Poppy suddenly dies.
I considered restarting once again, but decided it would be more fun to just keep going and accept this as a minimal reload thread. The odds of me completing the rest of the game without reloading, I felt, were already far too small.
Condolences on taking another reload. I'm glad you're pressing forward. I usually just make the decision to continue or stop a minimal reload based on how much fun I'm having with the character. As long as I'm having fun, I keep going, even if my reload counter starts to get too high (which it did the one and only time I played ToB - near the end of ToB, I think I got up to over 20 reloads, when I'd only had 3 or 4 going in. I lost count at some point).
If I start thinking about another character idea, I usually stop and play whatever character I want. There's no sense in "disciplining myself" to keep going to the end of a run just because of some sense of "should" or "ought". It's my leisure time, and the whole point is to have fun and do whatever I feel like.
Never liked Paladins much, at least none of the examples in the game. I can't really get over the whole 'extra-judicial killing' thing, despite knowing that paladins operate under a medieval Faerunian kind of justice.
So I developed my own Paladin ethos, drawing from some examples elsewhere on this forum. Then added a bit of what Paladins mean to me.
The Theme: A society is judged by how it treats its prisoners. I always liked this expression, since I think it encapsulates exactly what real 'goodness' is. Being nice to good, deserving people is just expected in my book. There bare minimum. There are no medals or awards for it. Goodness shown to those who do not deserve it or respect it, or to whom you are not obliged to be good but still choose to be, is a real measure in my book.
The Team: One of each paladin class, comprised of traditionally good or lawful icons or just those who have heroic haircuts.
The Blackguard (Charname)
I needed little excuse to use this fine portrait.
Before taking this shot I used EEKeeper to flag her as a fallen blackguard and change her alignment from Lawful Evil (a punishment, rather than conscience-based understanding of law and social living) to Choatic Neutral (in flux) but when I reloaded the save she was suddenly a Paladin. I will not pretend to understand, but she is in fact a Blackguard ---->Fallen Blackguard in all but name.
Here's how our story begins.
Reload 1: Death by wolf outside Candlekeep.
Okay, not a good start, but that's why this is the minimal reload thread.
Our charname is a young woman with an intense desire to live out the life of the paladin, on whose stories she has grown up. Yet this is based more on a need for approval and fame, it seems, more than any true desire to do good and better the world. Perhaps, rather than vanity, this stems from a yearning for proof that others cannot see the darkness she feels inside of her, hoping they do not see the disturbing turbulence inside. Still, the spark of goodness is there, even if it is competing against a dark, roiling taint just under the surface of that youthful face. She needs practice, she needs guidance, she needs to learn what it means to be a paladin, not simply try to attain the image of one. Perhaps, it is hoped, by adopting the strictures of the Paladin way she can find the power to make a choice at all, develop an ethos and find some measure of agency, an agency that will keep her from falling to what lies deep in her blood. It is a selfish motive, rather than an altruistic one, but it is a start...
So dear old pop Gorion calls in four Paladin friends to help guide charname away from the darkside and control those latent dark powers. No point in trying to be a force for lawful good heroics if you can't control your temper or stop the dark taint in your soul from making your blade weep poison. Yet soon after they arrive to begin her training he receives word that she is in great danger, and lays out a plan to get her to safety.
Then he goes and gets killed. Thanks, dad.
With the guidance of her paladin friends Charname arrives in Beregost and starts her assessment with a few odd jobs clearing out the surrounding country of nasty monsters and psycho killers, and doing good deeds.
The Inquisitor and Undead Hunter proved effective against Bassilus' uninteruptible hold spells, though the Undead Hunter is not immune to charm. Damn you, Stamos.
Also saving chickenated apprentices. In all my time playing this game this is only the 2nd time I've seen Melicamp survive.
Despite being Paladins and owing allegiance to the law of the land, the party decides to defend Viconia, as the Flaming Fist officer gave no evidence to the accusations of murder, but clearly seemed to just want to kill her because she was drow. We save Viconia but send her away, the paladin ethos preventing us from associating with evil characters.
We gave away 5000 gold to Beregost, and they gave us an overpriced smithy in return. Luckily, under the rules of Maritime Salvage, the Ring of Wizardry provided us enough dough to buy +1 weapons for everyone. Charname was pleased to find a bastard sword at Feldpost's.
Oddly enough, Marl never approached the party and told us to get out. When spoken to he told us to go away, so as polite Paladins we left him be. QUEST DENIED.
We had no invitation to enter Firebead's house, nor did the game give me any indication that Charname would know he lives there. QUEST DENIED.
Marianne's Ring, Mr. Coquetle's Amulet, Joseph's Ring and other quests requiring entry to private dwellings could only be completed if the objects were found in the course of the plot, and only if the town mayor was visited (make believe) to enquire as to the name and where-abouts of those individuals. Only with that information could our Charname Paladin enter their homes uninvited and give them their belongings.
Garrick tried to hire us as mercs. A paladin does not adventure in the hope of attaining material wealth. QUEST DENIED.
John Stamos, our Undead Hunter paladin, trounced the vampiric wolves outside of the Lathander Temple near Beregost. At lvl2. I think it's the hair.
Power Girl is revived at the Lathander temple and we go south to Nashkell.
No screenshot of Mulahey, but our attempt to show him mercy results in an infinite loop of dialogue through which he continually tells us he's going to kills us, summons a hoard, begs for mercy, tells us he's going to kill us, summons a hoard, begs for mercy... so we smack him the face with a sword.
Nimbul tries to kill charname outside of the Nashkell inn. Our Inquisitor, Dredd, goes 'shazzzam' and he's left standing there almost naked, bereft of defences. He does not last long.
The party moves up the coast towards Beregost, encountering Sirines along the way, who warn the party away.
Since it is their home, and there is no good reason to go about slaughtering indigenous inhabitants, our paladin team elects to live and let live. The sirines are not inherently evil and only defending their home, so charname and her paladin friends withdraw without incident. 18000xp and Manual of Bodily Health denied.
Because of the infinite loop with Mulahey (that almost buried the party in kobolds), charname's faith in the honesty of villains was at an all time low by the time she arrived back in Beregost. When Tranzig begs for mercy she makes him eat her sword.
Dredd watched from the door and called it a fail, for although it was a tactically advantageous decision, morally it was not the best choice. The decision to spare Tranzig's life would also have shown that charname was beginning to get a grip on her dark impulses and show that she was becoming a person--and a paladin--unto her own, unenslaved by taint or fear. It could have been the perfect expression of personal agency, and an explicit demonstration of the valued Paladin trait of benevolence.
Charname is a sad panda. That is not how paladins behave. *cue sad sack Charlie Brown music*
Due to failing this wisdom check, charname fails to take control over her darker impulses and realizes she has much to learn. She remains saddled with Blackguard status... for now. Doomed to glow red every time someone casts detect evil, at a time when she wants nothing more than to hide what she is.
On the way north the party is ambushed.
Reload 2. Death by Molkar.
Charname also sits out the Lamahl ambush.
Assassins really like targeting charname. Things are getting personal. After escaping death at the second ambush our Rookie Paladin keeps pushing north, retrieving the body of a farmer's son along the way, as well as 2 tonnes of ankheg shells.
Our Inquisitor shines at the bandit camp, slaying many of their ranking officers with arrows of biting, while the rest of the party uses armour and shield to form a wall against the encroaching tide of bandits. No necklace of missiles, here, but bandits prove susceptible to the wand of sleep. The party mops up the elites and then realizes they've turned the bandit camp into what looks like a seal colony. Is it wrong to kick bandits when they're down?
From this point on Dredd the Inquisitor would become the dedicated archer, using blasts of dispell magic followed by volleys of poisonous arrows to strike down magical or powerful foes.
We rescue Ender Sai and follow directions to the cloakwood.
**I think I will stop here, to avoid making this post too long. I have already finished this run so just need to post it. I know what I intend while I play and take a huge number of screenshots, then select a few and build the story around them, but it takes time. Since my last attempt at documenting a run on the forum was left unfinished i wanted to get to the end so I could be sure that no bout of restartitus would intervene. I will post the rest later.
That's an interesting idea to play a blackguard who doesn't want to be. I guess the "dark power" that gives her her blackguard abilities is Bhaal? A blackguard who was "tainted" with abilities and temptations to use them against her will or through no choice of her own makes for a good story.
It reminds me of the "involuntary, angsty vampire" trope we've seen so much of in recent years, such as Barnabas Collins from "Dark Shadows" (the granddaddy of them all), Louis from "Interview With the Vampire", Angel from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", Stefan Salvatore from "The Vampire Diaries", and Edward Cullen from "Twilight".
These kinds of "tormented dark supernatural" characters have always been male so far, so a female version of the trope makes yours special.
When we left off before, there were two reloads in Cloakwood 2, a map that even trap-detecting thieves have trouble on due to what seems like the high skill requirements for those web traps. Potions of invulnerability allow at least 1 of our paladins to stay out of the webs and keep the spiders and ettercaps off our backs while the others make it through.
As Paladins we have no business trespassing so we traverse the Cloakwood with all haste, bypassing the druids and stopping only prevent the unlawful killing of Aldeth Sashenstar and to retrieve the body of Tiber's brother, Chelak, a quest I've not done in some time. I haven't been using 2 handed swords much in the past.
Tiber was directly in our path and we have an obligation to help those in need, regardless of whether they brought the consequences of their actions on themselves. We are given the sword Spider's Bane as a reward.
Drasus and his party are easily swept aside, his mages poisoned by Dredd and their stoneskins dispelled. We take them out at range, then move on to the fighters. We pick our targets and focus all fire on each in turn.
I have read somewhere on the forums that the Inquisitor's dispel magic is quite overpowered in BG1 due to the fact that it was not an original kit. As an addition in BG2, where the minimum level one could enter was level 6, the spell apparently doesn't go off at anything less than level 12, even if the Inquisitor is below level 6. There is an option in SCS to reduce it's power, but SCS also adds levels to named enemies and the cloakwood guards. In my install I never reduced the Inquisitor's dispelling power, due in large part to the fact that I'd never used the Inquisitor before (I did not install anything from SCS that changed something that, at the time of install, I hadn't encountered or experienced before in Vanilla form). Un-nerfed, the Inquisitor's dispell magic works against these improved SCS enemies just over half the time, but it's not a click-to-win ability, which is good.
We penetrate the mines. In a lot of battles our Paladin party had been neglecting to use their abilities, but as I grow more accustomed to having them I discover that the different paladin classes overlap and work together really really well, protecting us from nasty spells like horror and obstacles like mirror image.
From a strictly lawful perspective it might seem that none of the cloakwood enemies should go unpunished--facilitating slavery is no light offense--but Charname lets those who surrender go. It's pretty clear that a lot of the Iron Throne's goons have thrown themselves into the action simply for their livelihoods, and as bad as their actions in the service of the Iron Throne are, the responsiblity for the breakdown of law and order rests firmly on the shoulders of the Iron Throne and its leaders.
Not being a merciless bastard is also just part of being an 'evolved being', so there's that, too.
Reload 5: Damn you, Davaeorn (Learned something new here. Potions of Magic blocking protect you from spells 1-5, but also wipe out all of your own potions and buffs, which can leave you weaker than you thought, especially if you don't notice you're not as fast as you think you are when you're trying to get away from an angry battle horror).
Charname and company finally penetrate the lower levels of the mine and take the fight to Daveorn's doorstep. This villain is allegedly a powerful and intelligent mage. He demonstrates that by teleporting..into the same room as a poison-arrow equipped Inquisitor and Blackguard.
Smooth move. The man hands this victory to our party of Paladins on a silver platter.
However, we face not 1, not 2, but no less than 4 battle horrors. There is nothing left to do but get stuck into a full-plate-and-packing-steel slugathon, heavy hitter-to-heavy hitter. No finesse, just knife work.
Charname spares the life of Davaeorn's assistant. He was a snivelling weasel, more concerned with his own hide than recognizing the gravity of his contribution to the countless innocent deaths at the hands of Iron Throne bandits--and there was absolutely no guarantee that his release would not come back to haunt our team of Paladins later--but she let him go anyhow.
It was a choice made against all suspicions, doubts and possible objections. The darkness inside demanded blood. Even her lawful side demanded it, yet she elevated herself above these things. In so doing she discovered a sense of self-worth. She had the power to shape this world, for good or ill, and this knowledge underscored the importance of what being a Paladin was all about. She mattered.
After putting an end to the Iron Throne operations in the Cloakwood, the party follows the breadcrumbs of evidence to Baldur's Gate, were they are approached by scar to investigate the Seven Suns. Charname also finds Aldeth Sashenstar in need of help. While certainly not the nicest of men, a poor bedside manner does not proclude him from enjoying the same rights of other good-folk. Our Paladins can find no evil on him, and his Merchant League is a legitimate enterprise despite the rumours that often surround such profit-driven organizations.
What he describes sounds similar to what Scar described going on at the Seven Suns, so our paladins investigate both leagues. Charname finds them infested with dopplegangers.
After clearing the Seven Suns and Merchant League, Scar attempts to get charname to perform another task, selling it as a purely mercenary endeavour with rich gold rewards.
Paladins do not perform deeds for hope of material reward, especially not when the Iron Throne needs investigating. Ogre-Mage Sewer Quest DENIED.
Had he told Charname that it was for the benefit of the inhabitants of East Baldur's Gate, it would have been acceptable. Had there been the option to ask about the nature of the mission, rather than how much it pays, we wouldn't have needed to be so strict with the Paladin ethos.
The party rests up in Southwest Baldur's Gate. There, charname is accosted by another Paladin who detects the taint inside of her.
An interesting encounter with Paladins on both sides. What results is a watershed moment for charname.
Let's see her score card:
1. Kills Tranzig. (Fail)
2. Spares Cloakwood guards. (Pass)
3. Spares Stephan. (Pass)
4. Understands the significance of her Paladin friends protecting her from one of their own.
Charname realizes she that does not merely want to do better and conquer her demons, but IS doing so. She has the power, and is succeeding. If her paladin companions can recognize this, there must be some truth to it. The demonstration of solidarity against another Paladin foe underscores the true importance of the Paladin's ethos; To defend those who might otherwise not have a defence (she, being tainted, would have made a tempting pinata for every evil-detecting do-gooder had her friends not come to her aid, making this a very personal lesson indeed). She matters.
The boost to her self-esteem is enough to muster what fortitude she has and justify an alignment/class-shift.
I EEkeeper her alignment from Lawful Evil (follow the law or be punished; It is okay to punish those who break the law even if the law is wrong; It is okay to commit acts regardless of moral concerns if the law has nothing to say about it) to Chaotic Neutral (in-flux/transition).
She shifts from Blackguard to Fallen Blackguard.
She sheds all doubt about who she is and who she wants to be, stemming the tide of taint. She no longer pings red from detect evil. The darkness is still within her, but it no longer holds as much sway. I remove all of her blackguard powers. Using them may have been beneficial, but the emotional and psychological reward from actively choosing to suppress them is edifying. An explicit proof of free-will and self-determination is there ever was one. She retains Negative Plane Protection and resistance to panic, but otherwise is now a straight bastard-sword wielding fighter.
The party's next mission involves investigating the Iron Throne directly. Our Paladins must never lie when possible, but the mission is clearly written for a rogue-type character. Charname is truthful as much as she can be, or avoids telling any stories whatsoever in favour of asking questions. It is not a lie to ask someone if they are open to a bribe, I suppose.
This results in a fight or two while ascending the floors of the Iron Throne tower.
I've seen the term 'Lawful stupid' here before, and I think this is one of those cases where it might be used. Telling the truth causes a few problems while trying to 'infiltrate' the tower... however, from a moral and legal perspective there is a very good roleplaying case to make for acting in this way. By eschewing deception charname separates the die-hards from those who are willing to stand down, thus sparing lives. Legally, openly declaring intent allows suspected enemies to consider their actions and deprives them of the opportunity to accuse our Paladins of any entrapment or malpractice. This has no actual impact on the game, of course, but from a roleplaying perspective makes sense. It's why the police forces of today often do the same when confronting potential suspects on the street. Using deception undermines the whole process of accurately determining guilt and leads to mistakes. Again, no actual in-game impact but makes sense. Lawful 'Stupid' isn't really as stupid as some make it out to be.
It's only 'stupid' from a goal-oriented, ends-justify-the-means perspective, which from what I can gather is exactly what the Paladin Ethos is NOT about.
We reach to top of the tower and encounter Zhalimar. What follows is, to me, the best enounter in the whole series. I love this battle.
Charname makes no pretense of being anything other than what she truly is.
As charname has developed a greater sense of agency over the course of the game, so too has the size of her ovaries increased.
We open the battle with a dis-orienting strike of holy hand grenades.
One of the things I really like about this battle is that, unlike so many other encounters in this game, it pits you against a large number of equally powerful enemies, rather than a bunch of cannon fodder and one or two head-honchos. This makes it one of the more tactically refreshing battles. This is one of the few encounters that really favours a strategy other than 'focus everything on one big baddie and ignore the cannon fodder). We strike hard at the lightly armoured foes to remove them from the battle quickly, thus depriving the enemy team of as many attacks and abilities as quickly as possible. Done this way, the battle can be brought under control in a few rounds as enemy numbers dwindle. The party ignores Gardush and Zhalimir; while they are very dangerous, their good AC means that they take longer to subdue. Attacking them first would give the clerics and mages more rounds to do damage than the reverse. By killing the leather-clad foes first, Gardush and Zhalimir only get 2 or 3 rounds of impunity.
Once we've made a nice tidy pile of leather armours, we start working on the plate-clad fighters.
And stand victorious at the top of the high tower in Baldur's Gate. A high point of the series for me.
In Part 3:
- A few more reloads.
- Candlekeep, the duchal palace, undercity and Sarevok.
After investigating the Iron Throne Duke Eltan sends our Paladins on a mission to Candlekeep. They're ambushed by orgre mages. We fight them while the Keeper of the Portal just sort of.... stands there and observes.
At Candlekeep, charname is framed for the murder of Rieltar and Co. Tethoril helps her escape through the catacombs. Potions of magic protection help us get through the traps, and hitpoints are enough to soak up the rest.
Once back in Baldur's Gate we are confronted by the flaming fist. Secure in her innocence, charname agrees to go in, and also learns from passersby that Duke Eltan has been struck ill, but that his illness may in fact be caused by the one who has been tasked with healing him. Everything has changed and nothing is as it seems, and when she goes in to make her case at the Flaming Fist HQ she learns that Angelo has taken over the guard as Sarevok's puppet. The hearing she is given is hardly impartial or lawful.
When confronted with a means to escape and clear her name, she takes it. Without balanced leadership, Baldur's Gate will only descend into chaos, and a war with Amn would take countless lives. And for what? This is hardly a foundation on which to build the kind of world that she, or anyone, really, would want to live in. She, as an almost paladin, has it in her power balance the scales.
Only an evil little child-killing gnome stands between her and freedom. She's come too far to stop now, yet the gnome's aura is incredibly repellent. Paladins do not consort with evil creatures.
She needs to find a way to Duke Eltan. He's one of the few allies left to her in the city, the others having fled or been murdered. She escapes the Flaming Fist only to go right back in through the front door. Going around the back of the HQ and approaching from the west yields a route clear of guards.
Baldur's Gate's finest, ladies and gentlemen.
She throws caution and subtlety to the wind. Everything has now become so much larger than her, yet at the same time the scale of it provides a calming simplicity. The course is clear, the path open; Our team of Paladins boldly stage a frontal assault on Flaming Fist HQ. In fact, charname walks right through the front door.
And dies.
[Reload 6: Killed while assaulting Flaming Fist HQ]
SCS adds a number of enemies to the HQ, namely a quartet of clerics. Charname soaked up 5-6 hold spells in two rounds with only 50% magic resistance. A hard challenge against which to save, despite her paladin bonuses.
High but measured aggression is needed to take on the corrupt Fists and penetrate the central chamber, where the pesky clerics can be knocked out. Charname and Paladins spread out their attacks, while a poison arrow equipped Dredd blocks enemy spellcasting and dispells any pesky status effects on the party.
Then charname rescues Eltan from his 'healer'.
"Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
oh, I believe in yesterday...
Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be
There's a shadow hanging over meeeeeeee..."
The party gets poisoned. Avoiding the flaming fist on the streets led our fearless team of Paladins to move through many parts of the city, often taking roundabout routes, looking for as much information from the city's citizens as they could. As more secrets came unraveled, the Iron Throne stepped up its assassination attempts.
But the situation is handled adroitly.
Heh... justice.
We also meet some good people in the Cloak and Helm, along with some not so good people. Though the Paladin ethos requires politeness and a kind of ambassador-like 'Awareness' of manners and public opinion, this doesn't apply to belligerent prats, though I could be wrong. The Mauler's didn't give much a chance to avoid a fight anyhow.
There is no turning of the other cheek to douchebaggery.
Eventually charname grasps a relatively complete snapshot of where things stand in the city. Sarevok is to become grand duke, his agents are everywhere, and most of the major allied powers in the city have fallen or been neutralized. Yet there is an affirming certainty that comes with being beset on all sides; it is conflict in its purest form, where the only consideration is where next to swing the sword (as long as they're bad people). In the midst of evil is where Paladins truly find themselves and shine.
She cannot stop now.
Here's where things get a bit undocumented. It seems I had a bout of forgetfulness, because the next screenshot I have is this:
John Stamos, Undead Hunter extraordinaire, who was almost cast as Bruce Campbell.
To get there, charname goes through Chysandera, Slythe and Krysten, and the Duchal Palace. The tactics are fast and aggressive, which might explain the lack of screenshots--that, and because when I get on a roll I start to forget to window the game each time I want to take a picture, then return to fullscreen so that the camera will scroll/pan again.
Chysandera's summoned golems are slain by the combined melee power of the team, while the mage's defences are taken down by arrows of dispelling and true sight from our Inquisitor.
Slythe and Krysten fall to the same tactic, combined melee power overcoming Slythe while magic-warding potions prevent Krysten from being effective. It takes little time to lift her veil of invisibility and and strike her down. She has protection from magical weapons, but by the time Slythe is pulled away from her and killed that protection has worn off.
The duchal palace is next, where a dispelling blast from our Inquisitor removes at least 2 thirds of the doppleganger's buffs. Some retain their mirror images or blur, but almost all of them lose haste, making them far less effective.
Yet when it seems that charname's efforts to bring the war to Sarevok on her own terms have succeeded, he is teleported out. Belt determines where he has gone using 'his god', which apparently is a voice that only he can hear. We've all met people like that. A Paladin tries not to needlessly judge.
At last our Paladin's get their first peek at the thieve's guild. Black Lily has little in the way for us, given that charname cannot support an illicit black market.
Stamos our Undead Hunter clears a way through the warrens and into the undercity, where we encounter a mercenary team sent from the Iron Throne HQ.
Reload 8: Death by necklace of missiles. Note to self: always try to live beyond the minimum safe distance. Charname and party soak up a few arrows of detonation, and in that weakened state charname does not survive when we misjudge the line of sight around a corner while attempting to fry the mercenaries as they approach. She walks up to the corner for a clear shot and blasts the enemy at point blank range. It turns out one of the other paladins, rather than her, could see the terrain that was targeted.
Trying again, we remove the obstacle of the mercenaries. Curiously, their tactics involve splitting up and wandering around the undercity as though they are blind, and putting up a rather ineffectual defence. Chaname does not pursue those that flee, instead choosing to focus on her task. There would be nothing to gain from killing the retreating mercenaries, and doing so would expend resources that are in short supply (mostly healing potions).
A Paladin's honour and honesty talk us out of a fight with Tamoko, and we enter the temple of Bhaal.
The beginning of the end. This is what it comes down to.
More than anything, our plucky almost-Paladin charname wants to be free from under the heel of the machinations of others. Hers is not merely a fight against a sinister taint or evil mastermind, but a fight for self-determination itself. For the majority of this affair her efforts have been reactive and dictated by the actions of others. Finally, now, she is making her own stand, her newly discovered 'brother' the example of all that she is trying to rise above; every nameless doubt, every dark unbidden urge that she has felt her whole life, ready to be conquered.
By striking him down, she can defeat the dark taint lingering in her own heart. The act of it will edify the true nature of her soul, and give her what is necessary to prove that she is not what others tell her to be.
When the battle is joined, she divides her forces to separate her enemies. Our Cavalier engages Sarevok while the rest of the team defeats Sarevok's goons in turn.
Sarevok is a powerful adversary, but he is merely a big bear, our Paladins the wolves. The bear can dish it out... for a while, but the wolves continue to attack, wearing him down.
Some of the wolves may be lost, but persistence yields results.
Or at least... it's supposed to.
Things start to go south. Notice the robe and armour lying on the steps. Those belonged to Semaj and Tazok. Normally they charge the party to face them in the open of the temple. This time they remained there and waited for us. I thought it odd, but did not recognize the significance.
Also notice the quick-loot bar. Such is the inventory of a paladin who spurns earthly reward. I can tell you that I was pining for old Firebead's scroll case about halfway into the game. Letters and documents took up the inventories of almost two paladins by the end.
Eeeesh, look at the reach on that sword!
Okay, something is wrong here. Sarevok was near death, now he is only injured.
Ya, something is very wrong.
Then it hits me. ANGELO. Where is that knob? Wasn't he supposed to be around here? There was a message way back at the start of the battle; he had protected himself with a globe of invulnerability, or something. Now he was nowhere to be found.
Charname runs around the temple blasting empty space with the necklace of missiles, but scores no hits on an invisible Angelo. He's not there. Sarevok cannot be killed unless Angelo dies first.
Well now that's just #&%$ing great. Charname can fight a demi-god and single-handedly save two nations, but not even she can stand up to the almighty BUG, against which there is no victory, and no defence aside from the divine power 'Reload'.
Reload 9: Resetting the board of the Temple of Bhaal.
Much better.
Angelo telelports into the field of battle this time, along with Diarmid (I'd forgotten about him). Tazok and Semaj attack. We fry Semaj with Arrows of dispelling, biting and necklace of missiles before he can have much influence. The mage is soft and too easy to target. Maybe the Inquisitor IS a bit too much for BG1. I don't think any other character can actually have access to true sight in BG1, aside from the Priest of Helm.
Anyhow, the battle is rejoined in earnest. Not even a computer bug can stop charname now.
We employ the same tactics. You can't really fight Sarevok at range. If you get too far from him he will switch targets. But Dredd keeps him at bay while unleashing a hail of arrows at his acolytes.
Sarevok cannot be killed so long as they stand anyway, so we concentrate on them, dividing our attention between a melee with Diarmid/Tazok and peppering Angelo with arrows and fireballs.
I really do not know why so few enemies make use of the Protection from Arrows spell, at least in Baldur's Gate 1.
When Sarevok's minions are nothing more than bones, we take on the big man himself.
A victory as personal as striking down the evil in her own heart.
The master plan of Sarevok lies in ruins, his power base shattered, yet a cloud hangs over her. The essence of Bhaal still sleeps in her bones, and our heroic paladin, despite her victory, cannot help but wonder if her troubles are yet over. There may be other Bhaal children, and others still hoping to use or destroy them.
But for now, at least, Paladin Anderson is in control of her life, and has done her part to prevent a war and preserve a world where others can do the same, a world in which everyone lives and let lives, or works together and fights for each other. She has learned that such sentiments are not merely the 'lawful' or 'good' principles of a paladin, but atually necessary. Without such principles even she would be dead by now, if not by others then by her own hand as she gives in to the taint and becomes as Sarevok.
The victory brings hope, of course, but charname is sure that Sarevok is not unique, and that this world is full of 'visionaries'. Vigilance must be eternal, for you know what they say: A bird in the hand gathers no moss... or some such.
Bhaalspawn Battlemage
A minimal reload run of Baldur's Gate - Siege of Dragonspear - Baldur's Gate II - TOB
Long overdue update
I'm still playing this run. I haven't updated mostly because I don't have time and mainly I'm just exploring the wilderness anyway, so it's been a fairly standard run so far.The party has been working their way North, exploring as they go. They cleared the three tombs, and fought Narcillicus and the Amazons. Dynaheir made that last fight easy with a web. Chain +2 for Jaheira.
Next came the Xvart village, Bracers AC 8 for Dynaheir.
At the bear river, Dynaheir's web once again made the fights against Neville and the Ogre/Hobgoblin group trivial. I'm really trying to play her as in Invoker on this run, and so far web has been devastating. That save penalty really makes it rock. Chromatic orb hasn't been doing as well, but maybe I just need to use it more.
They hooked up with Drizzt for a while and killed the half-ogres and Teyngan's party. Web for the win again on that last one.
In the evil tomb area, Dynaheir died when Bar'uk's Kobolds appeared to the side of the party and all targeted her at once. After raising her, the party went to the tomb and killed the Doomsayer, with Dynaheir again the MVP with her wand of frost. Captain Brage was saved.
East of the road, Dynaheir's webs helped make short work of Arghain's and Ioin's crews. 2H sword +1 for Minsc. The party also killed the ogres and saved Arabelle.
At this point, the group moved their base of operations North to Beregost and spent the next day fully exploring the town and the Temple, fighting hobgoblins and vampiric wolves in the hills around the Temple.
That's where we're at now. Next comes a thorough exploration of High Hedge and the area around the road South of Beregost. I'm saving the basilisks, sirines, Ulcaster and Firewine until after Michael duals to mage at his next level-up.
That's the first time I've ever heard killing a woman in the street described as "bustle".
Party Status:
Shortbow, Varscona, Ankheg plate, Medium shield +1, RoP +1, Ring of fire resistance, Brawling hands, Boots of Avoidance
Reloads: 1 - Cave bear
Minsc: Level 5 ranger - 47 hp
2h sword +1, Composite longbow, Dual maces (Stupifier), Plate mail, RoP +1, Dale's protector
Deaths: 1 - Mulahey
Imoen: Level 5 thief - 37 hp, charisma raised to 17
Shortbow, Short sword +1, Studded leather +2
Dynaheir: Level 4 invoker - 24 hp
Magic missile, Chromatic orb, Web
Sling, Quarterstaff +1, Bracers AC 8, Robe of Fire Resistance, Evermemory, One gift lost
Deaths" 1 - Bar'uk's Kobolds
Jaheira: Level 4 fighter / Level 4 druid - 45 hp
Cure light wounds, Bless, Charm person or mammal
Sling +1, Club +1, Chain +1, Small shield +1, Honorary ring of Sune
Khalid: Level 5 fighter - 54 hp
Longbow, Harrower, Battle axe, Throwing axes, Plate mail, Medium shield, RoP +1
Deaths: 2 - Neira, Mulahey
Bhaalspawn Battlemage
A minimal reload run of Baldur's Gate - Siege of Dragonspear - Baldur's Gate II - TOB
Long overdue update
The party continued exploring the Sword Coast from South to North, skipping only the basilisks, sirens, Ulcaster, Firewine and Gullykin.Bassilius was put down, Droth was killed. They slaughtered the ankhegs and got another suit of armor made. They helped Tenya, but didn't kill the fishermen. They cleared Larswood, then, halfway through the spider forest, Michael gained his sixth fighter level and immediately dualed to mage.
After a trip back to Beregost to scribe scrolls, the party took on the basilisks. Korax bravely gave his unlife tanking Kirin's crew, while webs and lightning from Dynaheir and Jaheira finished them off. Protection from petrification on Minsc allowed the group to kill Mutamin and the rest of the basilisks. Michael gained two levels on this map and one on the sirens map. Minsc got the Constitution bump.
Next came Gullykin, where Dynaheir's web doomed Molkar's crew. Lastly, the party cleared the Firewine dungeon. They entered through Jenkal's house and neither the ogre mage nor Lentan was able to cast a spell before being cut down. After that, the dungeon was a long, slow trip. Minsc and Khalid switched off point duty with Imoen following right behind checking for traps. She only missed one and took a pair of magic missiles as a reminder to be more careful. (I missed a good screen shot. Imoen gave her line: There's something most unnatural here, and I want no part of it. while surrounded by the ghost knights.)
Party Status:
Magic missile
Sling +1, Robe of the Good Archmagi, RoP +1, Ring of fire resistance, Brawling hands, Boots of Avoidance
Reloads: 1 - Cave bear
Minsc: Level 6 ranger - 64 hp, constitution raised to 16
2h sword +1, Composite longbow, Dual maces (Stupifier), Ankheg Plate, RoP +1, Dale's protector
Deaths: 1 - Mulahey
Imoen: Level 5 thief - 51 hp, charisma raised to 17
Shortbow, Whistling Sword +2, Studded leather +2
Dynaheir: Level 6 invoker - 35 hp
Magic missile, Web, Lightning Bolt
Sling, Quarterstaff +1, Bracers AC 7, Robe of Fire Resistance, Evermemory, One gift lost
Deaths" 1 - Bar'uk's Kobolds
Jaheira: Level 5 fighter / Level 6 druid - 60 hp
Cure light wounds, Call Lightning
Sling +1, Club +1, Plate, Small shield +1, Honorary ring of Sune
Khalid: Level 6 fighter - 61 hp
Longbow, Varscona, Battle axe, Throwing axes, Ankheg Plate, Medium shield +1, RoP +1
Deaths: 2 - Neira, Mulahey
Death in the mountains
This isn't the run I've been reporting on here, but I just had to post about this fight.This is a heavily modified game with SCS, BGNPC, and various other mods. It's my first time playing SCS.
The main character is an inquisitor. The concept of this run is a totally lawful good party, though Imoen gets to tag along. Current the party is Imoen, Ajantis, Rasaad, and Dynaheir. I plan to pick up Yeslick in the mines. I've completed the Nashkel mines and killed Tranzig. Now the party is exploring the wilderness to build experience before taking on the bandit camp.
Current status.
That's a 9 Dex under those gauntlets.
The party had just cleared the gnoll fortress and was returning to Nashkel. Guilliem had broken his sword and only had the +2 dagger from the tombs. He doesn't have a pip in daggers, he's just carrying it in case he meets something that needs a magic weapon to hit. Dynaheir has used a few spells and Gill and Ajantis have used up their healing ability.
We get waylaid by the Amazons.
Dynaheir opens with a web. Ajantis and Gill protect from evil. This was a mistake, Gill should have cast true sight right off the bat. As soon as Lamalha gives her speech, the thief disappears. The web hit right after, so I figure the thief got caught in it. Gill hits true sight as soon as his protect spell goes off, just before he finishes casting it, the thief reappears and one-shots Dynaheir with a backstab. Lamalha and Ajantis square off in melee, Rasaad starts fighting the thief. She tries to use darts, so he forces melee. Gill and Imoen help Ajantis with archery. Lamalha dies and the mage manages to free herself from the web. Ajantis, Gill and Imoen engage and kill her, just as the thief kills Rasaad.
I send Ajantis to attack the thief as the web wears off. Gill moves to attack the cleric, who's been in the web all this time, but she holds Imoen. As Gill tries to hit the cleric, the thief breaks away from Ajantis to try to kill Imoen. Ajantis follows to try to get her attention and the cleric casts rigid thinking on Gill. Next, she casts another hold and now Ajantis is out of it. I'm now a spectator as first Imoen, then Ajantis are killed.
The two assassins now turn their attention to Gill. But his erratic wandering is making hard for Zeela to land a melee hit and his high AC vs. missiles is making it hard for the thief. Finally, the rigid thinking ends. I break off melee with Zeela and charge the thief. She's almost dead and I figure I can put her down quick. Sure enough, one hit and it's just me and the cleric. There's no strategy left, we just wiff at each other, with her trying to get past my low AC and me trying to overcome Gill's non-proficiency penalties.
Before I started hanging around this forum, I almost certainly would have reloaded. Now I stand, with my ankles awash in the blood of my friends and enemies and shout to the uncaring mountains (in David Warner's voice): "I have WON!"
Also, the game requires some interesting suspension of disbelief in a case like this - I don't think even someone as strong as Minsc could really carry four adult bodies all the way back to town.
Tackling Dragonspear
FIRST PLAYTHROUGHI finally got a new computer, and with it Siege of Dragonspear. I am now updated to V2.2 (or something).
I will be honest. I struggled to get into Dragonspear. I made it to the beginning of Chapter 8 several times, but repeatedly restarted. I couldn't figure out what to play, and tried a variety of classes and concepts, but finally... eventually... I went back to basics. The most reliable class of all: Unkitted Fighter.
I am now thoroughly enjoying the game.
Babs starts with the canon party. She has no intention of continuing with them, however. As this is my first playthrough of Dragonspear she will be going with the new NPCs, and an undecided sixth partymate. Could be a mage, but I'm not clear yet on who is going to be with us through SoD. Obviously Dyanheir tags along, but as she has to be paired with Minsc she's out of the running. A Fighter plus the SoD NPCs leaves the party short of a true mage, so at this point it's looking like Baeloth will be tagging along. I know, at least, that he makes an appearance in this game. Not sure about any of the other mages, though. We'll see.
Clearing out Korlasz's family crypt is an easy task. I've done it about half a dozen times while failing to get started at SoD. Thankfully, a crossbow wielding elven fighter does the trick for what I'm looking for. My interest does not wane. Babs takes Korlasz into custody and proceed through revisiting the grand old dame Baldur's Gate, recruiting who she can for the journey north, which consists of Minsc, Dynaheir and Safana. None of whom she plans to take through SoD.
I really liked the more crowded, revamped Baldur's Gate. I especially liked this:
Using the tab key no longer highlights every figure on the map. It's a very effective way to instantly determine who might be important when you enter an area for the first time.
I also really liked this moment:
Babs also encounters the mysterious hooded man.
But she's not fooled. She knows that voice as well as I. It's none other than Chancellor Gorkon himself. PLOT SPOILED. Shazaam!
Nice try Beamdog, but you can't fool my Babs.
After completing every side quest she could find in Baldur's Gate, Babs heads north and meets the first of the new NPCs.
Personally, I like that Glint is available so early. Of all of the new NPCs I'd heard about, I was most enthusiastic about him. The cleric thief is my favourite multiclass. One of my favourite classes in the game, actually.
And so, we arrive at the furthest point I've travelled in SoD so far. Everything from now on is virgin territory.
While fiddling with singing stones in the woods, Babs has the chance to finally utter the one thought that everyone has whenever they 'awaken' 'something' in an infinity engine game.
That response is perfect. Every damn time I awaken something I get a pit in my stomach. It's like: 'Oh crap, what did I get myself into now?'. Thankfully, the ghost bard turns out to be very nice and gives us a tip on the location of his grave, which holds lots of nice bard items. Looks like SoD finally gives the Bard class some much needed love.
We also find Baeloth and M'Khiin in short order. Babs eagerly welcomes them into the party. I also appreciate Beamdog's humour regarding Baeloth's declining fortunes.
To the North we come face to face with Caelar Argent herself. Sure, she's self righteous, almost sickeningly so, but obviously there is something more to this Crusade of hers than the leaders of Baldur's Gate know, or are at least letting on about.
Her motivations, if honest, are almost sympathetic. Hopefully this plays out well throughout the plot. The last thing I or Babs want is a repeat of Baldur's Gate, where a menacing and mysterious villian like Irenicus turns out to be just some butthurt neckbeard who got spurned by his lady-love.
Oh please please please don't let SoD take the same facepalm-inducing maudlin turn that BG2 did. BG2 remains my least favourite of all the Baldur's Gate games, in large part due to the big let down that Irenicus was by the end. He was doing so well as the villain until Sulldanessallar. Then it was almost pathetic. In like a Lion, out like a lamb. Irenicus was no Sarevok, that's for sure.
Anyway, after exploring the forest Babs decides to investigate and Dwarven dig site. Inside she finds Icewind Dale.
Please please please don't let SoD be like Icewind Dale. Icewind Dale was boring as ****. To this day I've not completed it, and have no interest in doing so. Babs isn't much interested in a zombie slog either, otherwise she would have been a paladin Undead Hunter.... and a male... named Ash.... Ash Housewares.
I played a paladin by that name once. Was good fun. Wish there was a dwarven shotgun in Baldur's Gate, though.
Speaking of awakening things... of course it had to be a lich. Why would it be anything else?
When it comes down to finally putting the Coldhearth Lich to rest, Babs and party enter the fray with as strong an opening as they can muster. The anti-Lich gem and a summoned golem do the trick. The lich wastes his magic on a creature with 100 percent resistance.
During the course of this encounter it is discovered that coldhearth doesn't have a regular Lich's immunity to normal weapons. Very handy. Babs and Corwin cut him down with normal arrows and a normal longsword.
Of course, with all the clues about phylacteries throughout the dungeon, it was only to be expected that Coldhearth would make a return.
But I did not expect this:
Spell triggers? What level is this lich? What has Babs gotten herself into?
Crap crap crap. Babs and co. initiate what I call the 'Steve Guttenberg' maneuver. This essentially involves running away really fast under heavy fire while repeatedly exclaiming 'Oh Shit, oh Shit, Oh shit!!!'.
If you don't know the reference, watch Police Academy you uncultured swine.
Coldhearth even has Timestop. That's either a level 9 spell or an HLA. I'm not sure. Mages are pansies so I rarely play them. They are micro-managey fusspots that test my patience. My knowledge of them is sketchy, especially after a half year absence from the game.
Then things get really bad.
M'Khiin's AI script has her summon Goblin Defenders, which Coldhearth annihlated with Death Spell.
Everyone in the party is level 7.
Ya, that's not good. Basically Coldhearth can kill us outright with no save, in an instant.
Babs starts to wonder what the crikey **** she's gotten herself into. There had better be a damn substantial reward for this quest.
Then things go from bad to worse.
First of all, a message for Beamdog. Cool it with the fog machine.
Secondly, this happens:
Coldhearth casts Abi Dalzim's Horrid Wilting... on a level 7 fighter. This was Bab's reaction...
In one final moment of desparation, Babs rifles through her potion box, searching for something, anything, that can save her. She has no potions of magic protection, no potions of resistance.... basically, all she can come up with is a potion of heroism, promising 10% more hitpoints. While Coldhearth's Abi Dalzim's spell is in the air flying towards her, she chugs it.
It saves her. Barely, with just 4HP to spare.
And seriously... Less fog! Less fog!!! Who is the set director on this operation anyway?
But things get better. Turns out the anti-lich gem is like the Rod from the Unseeing Eye. So far I hadn't been using it because I was seeing stuff like 'Protection from Energy' (the gem deals magic damage) and 'Spell Sheild' or 'Spell turning' on the Lich's sequencers. I figured it would just be absorbed.
But apparently not. It bypasses those, I guess.
Once Coldhearth is weakened, Babs is able to fight her way to the Fire Plane circle and destroy the Phylactery, ending the lich once and for all.
We'll end things here, for now.
But I'm enjoying Siege of Dragonspear so far.
Bab's death count: 0
Tackling Dragon Spear
FIRST PLAYTHROUGHSo it seems the game progresses as the Flaming Fist marches closer to Dragonspear Castle. Each chapter looks like it will be a main area, with 1 or 2 side areas opening up along the way each time the army moves forward. For now, Babs and the flaming fist are camped in the Troll Claw Woods.
Nothing major happens. We explore and kill some baddies. We also have a dream or two.
Thre are just some minor baddies and the odd good bit of loot.
The cave environments are definitely beautiful, even if I'm not a fan of RPG fantasy game's raging hard-ons for subjecting players to lengthy dungeon crawls. Emphasis on CRAWL. I much preferred the wilderness of BG1, so I'm happy that these caves are small. So far there's nothing like Dragon Eye in Icewind Dale. Too many levels. Found myself thinking 'Are we there yet? for the first time in decades.
Two or three dungeon levels is enough for me.
Though, for all I know, the next chapters in IWD might very well be worse. But I've never played them.
We battle hordes of spiders in another cave.
Vogilhn confuses us with some off topic dialogue. I have no idea what he's talking about. However, from the Elf-Half elf comment, maybe it's something to do with Neera.
I've not even seen Neera yet.
We battle some large beetles. Nothing major has really happened plot-wise in this part of the game. The side areas appear to be purely incidental. Most likely nothing with advance until we reach Boreskyr Bridge.
There's another cave above the spider lair. We pay that one a visit.
We get a notification that a green dragon has stirred. Curious, Babs and Co. wait at the entrance to hear what it has to say.
The entire party is immediately stricken by dragon fear, then mowed down by dragon breath. Babs and Co. are slaughtered without ever firing a shot.
I think I'll just skip that cave and head on over to Boreskyr.
Anyway, not much happened during this session. Just side areas and minor odd-jobs/quests.
Bab's death count: 1
I just played it up to the gates of the FAI tonight to get it started, and will play it a lot more tomorrow. So far, we've killed all the wolves outside of Candlekeep, and the ogre south of the FAI. I collected the diamond, the Ring of Protection +1, and the Ring of Wizardry, which are all very easy to find without tab highlight when you know exactly where they are. I think I'll metagame keep the Belt of Piercing for Jason, my Bhaalspawn, since I intend to deny him plate mail to keep a bit more challenge. I may or may not let him wear chain later.
Of course, the custom party is going to make the early game a cakewalk. I am expecting more challenge later on, though. Believe it or not, I have never played the lower levels of Durlag's Tower, so I may make it a point to do that this run.
Here is my custom party:
And here we are arriving at the gates of the FAI:
Reloads: 0
-Defeated Tarnesh.
-Cleared the FAI of hobgoblins and returned Joia's ring.
-Used Kat's 18 Charisma to get antidotes from Liandrin to deal with her spider problem.
-Talked down Marl at Feldpost's.
-Defeated Karlat in the Red Sheaf.
-Defeated Silke with arrows and wand.
-Defeated ogrillons south of Beregost and returned letter to Mirianne.
-Defeated spiders in Liandrin's house with Sleep spell, allowing us to save the antidotes for later.
The spiders all fall to Sleep. I don't know if that was luck, or if the original version of Sleep is stronger than in EE. I usually only get two of them on average with Sleep when I play the EE.
Kat made 2nd level thief.
Reloads: 0