Destructive spells!

Sunshroud

Hello, me again ;p

My mage is coming along nicely now, level 3 with a whopping 18 HP! I was just wondering though, I haven't come across that many spell scrolls for destructive spells, say like fireball, flaming arrow etc. I was wondering if you guys knew where I might get these from? If I will come across them in the story anyway then I guess you don't need to tell me, but all i got so far is magic missile which doesn't seem so OP against a group of 15 wargs lol (i'm looking at you Temple region!) I got things like glitterdust and horror which seem pretty good but not nearly as satisfying as blowing them up!

JumboWheat01

Well there is High Hedge, which has a wizard who sells many, many scrolls, and tends to be the place I pick up Identify if I didn't grab it as a level one spell, since RNG doesn't like me. Also pick up a Potion Case here, very handy.

randomhero890

Fireball I believe you get after the act 3 main fight. At the bottom of the nashkel mines it was web and stinking cloud. Fireball and lightning bolt comes a little further in the story. It's after whatever the big boss fight is at the end of chapter 3. The bandit camp! Probably that one

Generally after a big storyline fight, there will be locked chests. In those, are often very powerful spells

If you make it all the way to baldur's gate without them, there's a shop in baldur's gate which sells a lot of good offensive spells too

Raduziel

You can get Cloudkill in the same area you meet Albert and Rufie.

After pretty much every major (or tough) battle against a wizard you'll have several scrolls.

A very interesting character would be a Human Wizard Slayer / Wizard.

Damn it. Restartitis strikes once again.

randomhero890

I also would recommend the spell skull trap. It has a fairly quick cast and about half the radius of fireball, so it can be a little more maneuverable, albeit with a bit less damage. Just aim it at the clump of enemies and it will immediately detonate, but watch out because it can hit your chars as well obviously

Agnazzar's scorcher can do in a pinch too if you aim it right. It says it hits twice but I could have swore that sometimes it appears to hit 3 times even.I've taken out an entire group of hobgoblins with a well-aimed scorcher. The good thing is that I don't believe it has a saving throw so it always does full damage

You are going to discover that saving throws are the bane of your damage spells. Against opponents you need them to hurt bad, they often end up saving and just taking half damage. That's why for me personally, using two Mage's is best and have one use greater malison to lower the saving throws, and then the other nuke. If you wait and try to do it all with one Mage, you are going to be sitting there a while waiting in between rounds

ThacoBell

A not on Skull Trap, it doesn't have cap on its damage scaling like fireball does, so it will eventually outdamage fireball.

joluv

You won't be able to cast Fireball, Flame Arrow, or Skull Trap until level 5 anyway (except from scrolls). In the meantime, you can buy a necklace that makes fireballs at the Nashkel carnival.

Francois

Also, wands of fire allow you to cast both fireball and Aganazar's scorcher. They have limited charges and do not get more powerful depending on your levels, but have the advantage of having no casting time and cannot be interrupted by enemies hitting you. You can use wands even if you're too low level to cast the spell.

You can find a wand of fire and flaming oil potion relatively early in...

Ulcaster school dungeon, south of Beregost temple. Make sure your party has some magic weapons when you go there.

About Aganazar scorcher, once you hit the target with the ray of fire, you can move around and it will hurt anyone you sweep between you and the target for a couple of rounds. You can really do a lot of damage with this.

alceryes

I second (or third) Aganazar's scorcher. It's a very powerful spell early on, when used properly.
The downsides are the potential for friendly fire (No! Don't go there! *scorch* [sigh]), the micromanagement of the caster and other party members, and the possibility of bringing an unprotected caster near the front lines. The friendly fire and micromanagement aspect can be handled by turning off AI during that portion of the battle or using the 'auto-pause at end of round' (although to me, auto-pause at end of round is pretty annoying).

As others have said, scrolls like fireball and flame arrow won't come along until later in the game. Some creatures (greater basilisks, dopplegangers, ogre mages, maybe some others) also have a slight chance of dropping 3rd level spells, including fireball.

JumboWheat01

Yeesh, all this praise for Scorcher is almost (ALMOST!) making me regret favoring the Enchanter kit. But those Enchantment spells are just so much fun...

Corvino

When I played the Baldur's Gate games as a teenager I thought fireball and direct damage spells were great. But I found the games pretty hard.

When I came back to them later I had played pen and paper, TOEE and a bunch of other games. My approach to spellcasting changed dramatically - using almost entirely debuffing, disabling, or buffing spells. The game got so much easier this way.

Sleep, Glitterdust, Slow, Hold Person, Chaos and others are party friendly and incredibly useful, especially after a Greater Malison. Fireballs etc knock HP off enemies, but rarely kill strong ones. They fight just hard at 1 HP as at full, so debuffing and disabling tends to be very valuable.

God

alceryes said:

I second (or third) Aganazar's scorcher. It's a very powerful spell early on, when used properly.

The Great Gazib holds a scroll of this spell, IIRC. Not sure if it can be pickpocketed, as I always chunk him anyway.

Grond0

One problem with Agannazar's Scorcher is that there is a small delay after casting it before the caster is able to move again. That's probably not an issue in a party, but in a solo game is a problem (particularly in BG1 where buffs are less useful). For that reason I normally only do scorchers from a wand, which does not apply the movement delay.