I think you misunderstood, energy blades power level is just fine. Melf's meteors are horribly overpowered and unbalanced IMHO in the game. 5 attacks/round, +5 to hit, hits as +5, 1d4+3 piercing and +3 fire damage that ignores mr. Only for a lvl 3 spell. In pnp they give only +2 to hit and do 1-4 fire damage only, and can be resisted with mr.
Yes, overpowered. Even a single MMM can damage things that nothing else you're likely to have until a while into BG2 can, all while keeping your distance; that's serious power. They're fast enough to take out stoneskins and mirror images fairly well (though of course there are often better ways), their elemental damage lets them interrupt casting even through stoneskin, and at +5 they can hit a mantled mage. And they can be pre-cast far enough in advance that they don't interrupt any other buffing that deeds to be done. They're not sufficient for soloing a tough enemy party but of course a caster has better ways to do that; as support for warriors, they're stunningly good, more so than a third level spell really should be.
BG2 is not PnP, otherwise you wouldn't be able to stack Timestops. Believe me, if you want to open that can of worms then you will have something like 90% of the playerbase rallying against you.
Anyway, the way BG2 works is that each spell level has its "ol' reliable" spells. MMM is one of the level 3 ones, along with spells like Haste and Skull Trap. The rest are situational. You can argue that some situational spells should be more useful given the specific situation they were made for, but not the other way round. In BG2 spell levels are also more like breakpoints, like level 3 has powerful offensive spells (Haste, MMM, Skull Trap) while level 5 has powerful utility/defensive spells (Stoneskin, Spell Immunity, Animate Dead).
It's not about balance between spell levels (this is not an MMO) and in any case enemies can use MMM too.
Not really. You are thinking of how MMOs balance things, which makes sense because the balancing is one-sided (only players use these skills).
In games like BG2 enemies are capable of using the exact same skills that you are capable of using. Which means that the player ALREADY has a ton of tactical/strategic dos and donts to sort through. Crappy game design is overloading your players with needlessly "balanced" options when they already have more than enough things to worry about anyway.
SCS mod makes heavy use of MMMs, the mages lob the meteors in between casts at every damn opportunity. And it feels cheap to me, on a critical hit the thing can do 14 piercing plus 3 fire damage. So I edited the item file to make it only +2 enchanted, +2 to hit and 1-4 fire damage that can be resisted via mr. No pyschial damage, however they still remove stoneskins although they do zero piercing damage, it counts as an impact.
Ofcourse there are a lot of deviations from pnp in bg2, like horrid wilting being party friendly, but I can't fix that, because I don't know how to edit the projectile and it will break all of the enemy mage ai horribly, they will kill themselves with the spell. I editted it still, in pnp max damage is clearly 16d8 and I edited the spell to do just 16d8 damage. No touch to the projectile. If I can edit the projectile to hurt party members as well, I may also add an immunity to wilting spell for 2 seconds, caster only, effect as a workaround so enemy mages won't murder themselves. They will get it by their own spell but it will read -spell ineffective and won't disrupt them. Giving %100 magic damage resistance will also work but it will hit and may disrupt another spell. Ofcourse, another enemy wilting may hit at that 2 second window but the chance of that is pretty slim, I think. Anyway. It does not feel elegant and requires much work though so I never do that. But just editing/toning down MMMs work fine for my purposes, and I find the game more enjoyable that way.
They have +5 to hit which is good, but they are supposed to be used by spellcasters with horrible THAC0 anyway. Plus it is a spell, it should hit, Magic Missile in comparison hit every time, is a level 1 spell and is not overpowered. If you have a good enough THAC0, like a Fighter/Mage etc you should not use MMM in the first place but your own weapons.
They are considered +5 to determine what they can hit. Great, but Magic Missile can also hit a mantled Mage or a Demon Lord and it is a level 1 spell. It is not OP in my opinion, because spells should deliver their effects reliably. MMM creates a magical weapon instead of doing some direct damage, so it needs the +5 enchantment to act "as a spell".
They do okay damage but nothing extraordinary, every fighters in a party should deal more damage, more reliably.
Finally as a side note, they are blocked by Minor Spell Deflection / Spell Deflection / Spell Trap and reflected by Minor Spell Turning / Spell Turning while it's supposed to be a physical attack. Definitely not overpowered in my opinion, I think Slow is a lot stronger.
In my opinion MMM is just right. You still have to be a f/m or c/m to take full advantage of it. Pure mage has to have a tenser transformation to fully utilise them. And who cares about PnP when you can have fun?
Finally as a side note, they are blocked by Minor Spell Deflection / Spell Deflection / Spell Trap and reflected by Minor Spell Turning / Spell Turning while it's supposed to be a physical attack.
This is an advantage more than anything for its user. Consuming 3 levels of these spells 5 times a round (10 with IH) is a pretty effective, reliable and efficient (considering 1 MMM spell can take down two spell traps) way to get them down for a level 3 spell.
He's just pointing out the fact that you have both mundane AND magical options to counter MMMs. He's actually being generous by mentioning Spell Deflection/Spell Trap, because the implication there is that he is assuming that you are somehow deciding to tank MMM hits on your mage on purpose. Which is ridiculous, but let's just assume that the player absolutely loves risky gameplay.
He's just pointing out the fact that you have both mundane AND magical options to counter MMMs. He's actually being generous by mentioning Spell Deflection/Spell Trap, because the implication there is that he is assuming that you are somehow deciding to tank MMM hits on your mage on purpose. Which is ridiculous, but let's just assume that the player absolutely loves risky gameplay.
MMM are ranged weapons with on-hit fire effect. You cannot get out of range that easily and be somewhere useful at the same time with your mage. And SCS enemies will target easy targets. They won't use everything on your tank, they will focus your mage. You either need PfMW or a Deflecting/reflecting spell(which will be dealr with within one round). That leaves only PfMW to be really reliable. So no, I can't say enemy MMMs are so easy to deal with as a mage.
@Arunsun I agree %100. I lost count how many spells I have lost-got disrupted because of the enemy mage lobbing a mmm at my face just always at the right opportunity when pfmw runs out.
There's this thing called Invisibility. It's a level 2 spell that last 24 hours. You might want to look it up. Hell, if you have the Staff of the Magi or even a basic potion of Invisibility you can simply click the item and poof, your mage is no longer a target.
Enemy casters aren't so lucky.
I'm not sure why I have to explain why arcane casters are considered OP defensively in BG2 to experienced players. It's ridiculous. It doesn't help that everyone else can just stack missile AC or equip the Reflection Shield or cast Physical Mirror etc etc and they can ignore MMMs completely.
MMM are ranged weapons with on-hit fire effect. You cannot get out of range that easily and be somewhere useful at the same time with your mage. And SCS enemies will target easy targets. They won't use everything on your tank, they will focus your mage. You either need PfMW or a Deflecting/reflecting spell(which will be dealr with within one round). That leaves only PfMW to be really reliable. So no, I can't say enemy MMMs are so easy to deal with as a mage.
Ofc they are, cast dispell magic (or the offensiv one, dunno its english name), it take cares of it reliably, aswell as most of their protection
MMM are ranged weapons with on-hit fire effect. You cannot get out of range that easily and be somewhere useful at the same time with your mage. And SCS enemies will target easy targets. They won't use everything on your tank, they will focus your mage. You either need PfMW or a Deflecting/reflecting spell(which will be dealr with within one round). That leaves only PfMW to be really reliable. So no, I can't say enemy MMMs are so easy to deal with as a mage.
Does MGOI not stop MMM?
It stops the fire damage effect, but you still suffer the impact damage, which is considered as a weapon IIRC. So if you are stoneskinned+mgoi you don't take damage as long as stoneskin lasts, but mmm depletes stoneskin and once it is gone you start taking the 1d4+3 piercing damage. When you are just under mgoi, you will take the missile piercing damage and the text will also say -spell ineffective:this is mgoi blocking the additional +3 fire damage effect, which is considered a lvl 3 spell effect. Protection from magical weapons stop mmm entirely, as the meteor won't touch you at all.
There's this thing called Invisibility. It's a level 2 spell that last 24 hours. You might want to look it up. Hell, if you have the Staff of the Magi or even a basic potion of Invisibility you can simply click the item and poof, your mage is no longer a target.
Enemy casters aren't so lucky.
I'm not sure why I have to explain why arcane casters are considered OP defensively in BG2 to experienced players. It's ridiculous. It doesn't help that everyone else can just stack missile AC or equip the Reflection Shield or cast Physical Mirror etc etc and they can ignore MMMs completely.
Invisibility breaks when you cast a spell. It is true that if you use and abuse Robe of Vecna, Amulet of Power and unnerfed Staff of the Magi against vanilla mages, you won't have much trouble dealing with them. You may even replace "mages" with "enemies", it'll remain true. Try that again with a rebalanced Staff of the Magi (i.e. without the ridiculously OP invisibility thing that can be used at will without consuming your special action for this round) against SCS mages, I assure you their MMMs will make you cry
You're supposed to start with Invisibility because it costs a mere level 2 mage slot, lasts 24 hours, allows you to prebuff/position your casters away from enemy LoS and forces enemy mages to waste a turn trying to detect you/focus on something else besides your casters. And when they do, you strike and you strike hard. Obviously this is the poor man's version of the tactic. Higher level mages have considerably more options to play around with.
I ask again, why must I explain the reason why mages are considered OP defensively to "experienced" players?
You being patronizing won't make your position any closer to being right. I do not deny Mages have a large choice of defensive spells. But I do deny that dealing with enemy SCS casters and their MMMs is that easy.
And your invisibility point is out of topic, since it's not a reliable way to "fight" enemy mages. They waste a round trying to detect you, indeed, but everytime you recast invisibility, you waste a round hiding (except of course if you play with unnerfed Staff of the Magi, but who does and still consider him/herself experimented?).
This means invisibility is only available for one surprise attack and then you have to have other ways of defending yourself. And as we have said previously, only PfMW completely and reliably protects you from MMMs on a mage, because you can't equip reflection shield or cast physical mirror.
This is not experience-related, this is a fact. Yes, you may combine other spells (MGOI+stoneskin for example) but the more spells you need, the more annoying it is to sustain your defenses.
You could use invisibility potions/rings/etc. The game gives you more than enough of those.
I'm being patronizing because people seem to be conveniently leaving out extremely obvious and simple options (like the one I pointed out above) just to strengthen their argument. Force enemies to fight you in a more favorable location, preferably where your enemies can easily lose Line of Sight vs your casters? Nope. Abuse Haste movement speed to draw the enemy mage out while your caster gleefully casts AoE spells just out of MMM attack range? Nope. Have all your arcane casters break invisibility by expending wand charges/using a powerful nuke (possibly sequencers) at the same time, effectively starting the fight by killing the enemy mage? Nope. Let's forget all that, start combat by walking up to our enemies and saying "Hi, I'm going to kill you now" and then try to tank MMMs for the sheer hell of it.
I'm being patronizing because people seem to be conveniently leaving out extremely obvious and simple options (like the one I pointed out above) just to strengthen their argument. Force enemies to fight you in a more favorable location, preferably where your enemies can easily lose Line of Sight vs your casters? Nope. Abuse Haste movement speed to draw the enemy mage out while your caster gleefully casts AoE spells just out of MMM attack range? Nope. Have all your arcane casters break invisibility by expending wand charges/using a powerful nuke (possibly sequencers) at the same time, effectively starting the fight by killing the enemy mage? Nope. Let's forget all that, start combat by walking up to our enemies and saying "Hi, I'm going to kill you now" and then try to tank MMMs for the sheer hell of it.
This entire text is based on cheesy techniques that work in vanilla but not with SCS, because enemies are not half-witted once SCS is installed. And I believe I'll have more than one backer on these boards if I say that, for an "experienced player" (which obviously is a phrase you like), Baldur's Gate ain't much fun in terms of strategy without SCS. And without SCS there is little need for all these discussions anyway since the AI is far too dumb to put up a decent fight with coherent actions, let alone relevant reactions to the way you play.
Excellent example of all the points I brought up (use of Invisibility/haste movement speed/repositioning/evading enemy Line of Sight/using powerful AoE nukes). Granted, they couldn't do enough damage to kill the mage outright but they did enough to keep him busy. Observe the lack of "I'm just going to stand here, cast spells and tank MMMs like an idiot."
I'm being patronizing because people seem to be conveniently leaving out extremely obvious and simple options (like the one I pointed out above) just to strengthen their argument. Force enemies to fight you in a more favorable location, preferably where your enemies can easily lose Line of Sight vs your casters? Nope. Abuse Haste movement speed to draw the enemy mage out while your caster gleefully casts AoE spells just out of MMM attack range? Nope. Have all your arcane casters break invisibility by expending wand charges/using a powerful nuke (possibly sequencers) at the same time, effectively starting the fight by killing the enemy mage? Nope.
I just watched the video you posted. It's an excellent example of strong gameplay, and I recognize the player, but the player did not use any of the tactics you just described. I have no opinion on the previous discussion regarding Minute Meteors, but this video does not show that such tactics work in SCS (though they will, to some extent).
He did move two enemies downstairs, but it did not keep Sion from being able to target any of the player's party members, as that successful Remove Magic showed. Nor did the party use haste to escape enemy attacks; the player said in the on-screen comments to the video that he re-cast Haste to maintain pressure on Sion (it was Sion that was running away, not the player). The AoE spell, Cloudkill, that the player used was not done to deal damage, but to interrupt a spell, and to scare Sion away.
The reason why the player did not do these things was because they wouldn't have worked very well given that he was playing SCS. Enemy mages in SCS will seek you out if you're out of their line of sight, whether by walking around or using divination spells. SCS enemies are very attentive to line of sight. In fact, in that very video, Sion showed remarkable awareness for a computer by slipping into another room during Time Stop and casting Shadow Door, trying to escape the player's line of sight. It didn't work, but it was a decent move considering Sion was artificially removed from his environment (normally, had he not been forced from the second floor, that move would have allowed his enemies to work on you while he renewed his defenses from safety). Likewise, if your caster uses AoE spells (most of which will not penetrate SCS pre-buffs) from afar, the enemy will stop chasing you if they cannot reach you. The enemy will instead drink potions, summon monsters, and re-cast buffs. Hit-and-run tactics work very well, but not as well against SCS spellcasters.
Plus, many mages throughout the game appear in tight spaces, and you cannot always escape their line of sight.
Also, SCS mages will often summon Planetars and demons for the specific reason that they will see through your invisibility.
Striking enemy mages with multiple wand charges and sequencers at the same time, "effectively starting the fight by killing the enemy mage," is indeed highly effective even in SCS. But this means you attack them before their pre-buffs activate, in which case you're not fighting them at full strength. That's fine, but most people on these forums prefer to let those pre-buffs activate unless they're backstabbing a mage with a solo thief, as we find it more fun to let the enemy fight back.
Also, the Shield of Reflection and Physical Mirror have not bounced Minute Meteors in my experience.
Also, even if you are frustrated by other people disagreeing with you, being patronizing does not help anyone understand your point. Condescension does not aid comprehension.
Actually, he does a very good job of keeping his mages out of range of enemy attacks/spells. Haste definitely helps with that - you'll see him re-positioning his mages every once in a while. One of the messages even says that he does it on purpose (spreads them out so both don't get hit by the same Dispel Magic). If you pay close attention to the battle on the second floor, he seems to be positioning his mages near doorways on purpose. He doesn't explain why he does it but it's a tactic I personally also use to break LoS on my casters when I need to. I'd like to think that's the reason he's doing it too. And at one point he does move one of his party mates away from enemy LoS + use an invisibility potion. Judging from their quickbar slots, both of his mages also have invisibility potions ready for use.
Also, even if you are frustrated by other people disagreeing with you, being patronizing does not help anyone understand your point. Condescension does not aid comprehension.
Except I'm not being patronizing to everyone, only to specific people who are selectively ignoring the obvious in order to strengthen their argument. You do not reason with such people - you respond to them with either indifference or some degree of spite.
I distinctly remember the Reflection Shield bouncing MMMs. I've not tested Physical Mirror, but it's basically the same effect.
Except I'm not being patronizing to everyone, only to specific people who are selectively ignoring the obvious in order to strengthen their argument. You do not reason with such people - you respond to them with either indifference or some degree of spite.
That's the thing, though--everybody on the thread hears that as well, not just the people you're addressing, and when they read it, they don't think "gee, that guy must have been responding to a real jerk."
Which then makes them feel more comfortable acting like jerks to others, and the forum as a whole suffers from a decreased standard of politeness. I have yet to see anyone improve their behavior when being treated rudely, even if they're the ones who started it.
In fact, I've actually made a point of being polite to some people I had a previous disagreement with, and they responded very positively to that, and we stopped arguing. People react surprisingly well when they're treated well.
lololo555
Member Posts: 66
Comments
I fix this locally, nerf meteors to the ground (it is a 3rd lvl spell horribly overpowered!)
BG2 is not PnP, otherwise you wouldn't be able to stack Timestops. Believe me, if you want to open that can of worms then you will have something like 90% of the playerbase rallying against you.
Anyway, the way BG2 works is that each spell level has its "ol' reliable" spells. MMM is one of the level 3 ones, along with spells like Haste and Skull Trap. The rest are situational. You can argue that some situational spells should be more useful given the specific situation they were made for, but not the other way round.
In BG2 spell levels are also more like breakpoints, like level 3 has powerful offensive spells (Haste, MMM, Skull Trap) while level 5 has powerful utility/defensive spells (Stoneskin, Spell Immunity, Animate Dead).
It's not about balance between spell levels (this is not an MMO) and in any case enemies can use MMM too.
In games like BG2 enemies are capable of using the exact same skills that you are capable of using. Which means that the player ALREADY has a ton of tactical/strategic dos and donts to sort through.
Crappy game design is overloading your players with needlessly "balanced" options when they already have more than enough things to worry about anyway.
Ofcourse there are a lot of deviations from pnp in bg2, like horrid wilting being party friendly, but I can't fix that, because I don't know how to edit the projectile and it will break all of the enemy mage ai horribly, they will kill themselves with the spell. I editted it still, in pnp max damage is clearly 16d8 and I edited the spell to do just 16d8 damage. No touch to the projectile. If I can edit the projectile to hurt party members as well, I may also add an immunity to wilting spell for 2 seconds, caster only, effect as a workaround so enemy mages won't murder themselves. They will get it by their own spell but it will read -spell ineffective and won't disrupt them. Giving %100 magic damage resistance will also work but it will hit and may disrupt another spell. Ofcourse, another enemy wilting may hit at that 2 second window but the chance of that is pretty slim, I think. Anyway. It does not feel elegant and requires much work though so I never do that. But just editing/toning down MMMs work fine for my purposes, and I find the game more enjoyable that way.
They have +5 to hit which is good, but they are supposed to be used by spellcasters with horrible THAC0 anyway. Plus it is a spell, it should hit, Magic Missile in comparison hit every time, is a level 1 spell and is not overpowered.
If you have a good enough THAC0, like a Fighter/Mage etc you should not use MMM in the first place but your own weapons.
They are considered +5 to determine what they can hit. Great, but Magic Missile can also hit a mantled Mage or a Demon Lord and it is a level 1 spell. It is not OP in my opinion, because spells should deliver their effects reliably. MMM creates a magical weapon instead of doing some direct damage, so it needs the +5 enchantment to act "as a spell".
They do okay damage but nothing extraordinary, every fighters in a party should deal more damage, more reliably.
Finally as a side note, they are blocked by Minor Spell Deflection / Spell Deflection / Spell Trap and reflected by Minor Spell Turning / Spell Turning while it's supposed to be a physical attack. Definitely not overpowered in my opinion, I think Slow is a lot stronger.
Enemy casters aren't so lucky.
I'm not sure why I have to explain why arcane casters are considered OP defensively in BG2 to experienced players. It's ridiculous.
It doesn't help that everyone else can just stack missile AC or equip the Reflection Shield or cast Physical Mirror etc etc and they can ignore MMMs completely.
Ofc they are, cast dispell magic (or the offensiv one, dunno its english name), it take cares of it reliably, aswell as most of their protection
Obviously this is the poor man's version of the tactic. Higher level mages have considerably more options to play around with.
I ask again, why must I explain the reason why mages are considered OP defensively to "experienced" players?
And your invisibility point is out of topic, since it's not a reliable way to "fight" enemy mages. They waste a round trying to detect you, indeed, but everytime you recast invisibility, you waste a round hiding (except of course if you play with unnerfed Staff of the Magi, but who does and still consider him/herself experimented?).
This means invisibility is only available for one surprise attack and then you have to have other ways of defending yourself. And as we have said previously, only PfMW completely and reliably protects you from MMMs on a mage, because you can't equip reflection shield or cast physical mirror.
This is not experience-related, this is a fact. Yes, you may combine other spells (MGOI+stoneskin for example) but the more spells you need, the more annoying it is to sustain your defenses.
I'm being patronizing because people seem to be conveniently leaving out extremely obvious and simple options (like the one I pointed out above) just to strengthen their argument. Force enemies to fight you in a more favorable location, preferably where your enemies can easily lose Line of Sight vs your casters? Nope. Abuse Haste movement speed to draw the enemy mage out while your caster gleefully casts AoE spells just out of MMM attack range? Nope. Have all your arcane casters break invisibility by expending wand charges/using a powerful nuke (possibly sequencers) at the same time, effectively starting the fight by killing the enemy mage? Nope.
Let's forget all that, start combat by walking up to our enemies and saying "Hi, I'm going to kill you now" and then try to tank MMMs for the sheer hell of it.
Excellent example of all the points I brought up (use of Invisibility/haste movement speed/repositioning/evading enemy Line of Sight/using powerful AoE nukes). Granted, they couldn't do enough damage to kill the mage outright but they did enough to keep him busy. Observe the lack of "I'm just going to stand here, cast spells and tank MMMs like an idiot."
He did move two enemies downstairs, but it did not keep Sion from being able to target any of the player's party members, as that successful Remove Magic showed. Nor did the party use haste to escape enemy attacks; the player said in the on-screen comments to the video that he re-cast Haste to maintain pressure on Sion (it was Sion that was running away, not the player). The AoE spell, Cloudkill, that the player used was not done to deal damage, but to interrupt a spell, and to scare Sion away.
The reason why the player did not do these things was because they wouldn't have worked very well given that he was playing SCS. Enemy mages in SCS will seek you out if you're out of their line of sight, whether by walking around or using divination spells. SCS enemies are very attentive to line of sight. In fact, in that very video, Sion showed remarkable awareness for a computer by slipping into another room during Time Stop and casting Shadow Door, trying to escape the player's line of sight. It didn't work, but it was a decent move considering Sion was artificially removed from his environment (normally, had he not been forced from the second floor, that move would have allowed his enemies to work on you while he renewed his defenses from safety). Likewise, if your caster uses AoE spells (most of which will not penetrate SCS pre-buffs) from afar, the enemy will stop chasing you if they cannot reach you. The enemy will instead drink potions, summon monsters, and re-cast buffs. Hit-and-run tactics work very well, but not as well against SCS spellcasters.
Plus, many mages throughout the game appear in tight spaces, and you cannot always escape their line of sight.
Also, SCS mages will often summon Planetars and demons for the specific reason that they will see through your invisibility.
Striking enemy mages with multiple wand charges and sequencers at the same time, "effectively starting the fight by killing the enemy mage," is indeed highly effective even in SCS. But this means you attack them before their pre-buffs activate, in which case you're not fighting them at full strength. That's fine, but most people on these forums prefer to let those pre-buffs activate unless they're backstabbing a mage with a solo thief, as we find it more fun to let the enemy fight back.
Also, the Shield of Reflection and Physical Mirror have not bounced Minute Meteors in my experience.
Also, even if you are frustrated by other people disagreeing with you, being patronizing does not help anyone understand your point. Condescension does not aid comprehension.
And at one point he does move one of his party mates away from enemy LoS + use an invisibility potion. Judging from their quickbar slots, both of his mages also have invisibility potions ready for use. Except I'm not being patronizing to everyone, only to specific people who are selectively ignoring the obvious in order to strengthen their argument. You do not reason with such people - you respond to them with either indifference or some degree of spite.
I distinctly remember the Reflection Shield bouncing MMMs. I've not tested Physical Mirror, but it's basically the same effect.
Which then makes them feel more comfortable acting like jerks to others, and the forum as a whole suffers from a decreased standard of politeness. I have yet to see anyone improve their behavior when being treated rudely, even if they're the ones who started it.
In fact, I've actually made a point of being polite to some people I had a previous disagreement with, and they responded very positively to that, and we stopped arguing. People react surprisingly well when they're treated well.
Isn't that right, @T2av?