Spirit armour doesn't reduce your AC though. If your AC is better then it has no effect, except the potential damage taken when it wears off.
Well yeah, casting it as an offensive spell is not a good idea. It will give bonus to enemy saves and will only do minor damage after a long time has passed, IF the enemy fails a save. A magic missile is far superiour.
It is an excellent buff for kensais and lightly armored thieves, though.
A Flamestrike spell can't be targeted at a sanctuaried target, but a Wand of the Heavens can. I realized this playing through SOD when I was sick of that half-dragon priest pausing the fight (with a Sanctuary that arbitrarily can't be disrupted, a major pet peeve of mine) and healing herself. So before she could use Cure Critical, I broke that wand out and roasted her.
I like to have 2-3 characters use Energy Blades to attack a tough opponent. The NPCs stand on 2-3 different sides of the target and all attack at once. Each time a blade hits, the opponent pauses briefly and then starts to turn toward the most recent assailant, only to be struck again by a blade from one of the other directions. Eventually the blades run out, but sometimes it is too late for the enemy by that point. In unmodded BG2 I could kill dragons that way without them even being able to damage me at all.
Another thing is the imprisonment/freedom combination. Every time you cast imprisonment on a character you get XP for killing them, but you can do this multiple times with the same character, if you want, by casting freedom and then repeating the process. I don't do this very often since it seems kind of pointless after a while, but it can be entertaining at times. I also use this combination if I don't want to kill someone in a quest but need the game to think that they're dead for a little while and then rescue them with the freedom spell later.
Flash to stone and stone to flash do the same of imprisonment and freedom, but better as they are lower level (more castings/day ) and because some late game enemies, like the ToB dragons, or at least some of them like Draconis, are immune to imprisonment, but can be turned to stone. You have only to be sure to not damage the petrified enemy if you want the loot. I find also their use more tactically challenging, they are not touch spells, but a mage that can cast lev9 spells has no problem in going mlee range, but there is a save and MR must be lowered. So MR must be lowered and GM and doom used, and even so, if you don't factor in reloads (that are fine, but are not a way to make save or else spells stick at 100%) your mages must have at least 3 flash to stone to have a really good chance. All the party must cooperate in an intelligent way to turn to stone a dragon at mid levels, somehow is not easier than to kill him in other ways.
Well, being able to hurl hails of Magic Missiles in a Gorion-like fashion is very cool and all, but Chromatic Orb is really powerful, especially against living things.
Am I the only one that caught that Resident Evil 1 Barry quote there?
But yes, I love Chromatic Orb. Much more than Magic Missile unless I need something that does consistent damage even with lots of Magic Resistance.
I remember it was Aerie with many Magic Missiles that took Firkraag out back then. But Chromatic Orb was insane in all the Infinity Engine games. And it scales very very well.
Horror. It's low level and when cast by 2 or 3 mages (and/or CHARNAME as innate Bhaal spawn power) at the same time, usually get everyone. Sure, it's annoying to chase foes, but you clear out rooms in seconds.
There are better spells and tactics, but most of my arcane users have 1 slot of horror for certain situations where you are few vs many.
Oh wow when you over lap heat and cold shield it give a beautiful purple aura.
BTW when you use shape change it seems to ignore all items including necklaces and rings/cloaks. I thought shape change only ignored weapons and armor equipped, I shifted into greater werewolf and gave the amulet of power I was getting level drained....
Horror. It's low level and when cast by 2 or 3 mages (and/or CHARNAME as innate Bhaal spawn power) at the same time, usually get everyone. Sure, it's annoying to chase foes, but you clear out rooms in seconds.
There are better spells and tactics, but most of my arcane users have 1 slot of horror for certain situations where you are few vs many.
When I played an all thief/bard party in Baldur's Gate one time, my major problem was a lack of tank/combat ability. I could make it up by spamming Web and similar tactics, but I was concerned going into the Ducal Palace fight because I knew that the Doppelgangers would have an easier time saving than the Flaming Fist would, so those would probably do more harm than good. So, I thought, Four horrors all at once! Those pests may have good saves, but having to make four of them means most would fail at least once. Then, I could use Arrows of Dispelling on one of them, removing their Blur/Haste as well as the Horror, meaning they'd stand and fight and get killed, and then onto the next guy. Redundancy is underrated.
Totally agreed. I don't like to gamble with save or else spells, even if I don't play no reload, but thanks to redundancy sometimes I feel like cheating at poker as almost every time an else happens. Even very high level enemies can fall often. Redundancy makes to web a whole group of high level fighters, up to Fallen Devas, to feeblemind a dragon or turn to stone Draconis reliable tactics, if you have an high level sorcerer or enough mages.
I use Chromatic Orb far more than I use Magic Missile in BG:EE. The ability to completely stun someone for 13 rounds is insane at lower level play. I also tend to stack Fire Resistance on my tank (in BG:EE, it was Frostbrand + 2 rings of Fire Resistance + Gift of Peace = 150 fire resistance) and send him into a group of bad guys and then let rip with every AoE fire spell I can lay my hands on. Wasteful? Probably. Hilarious? Hell yeah! I also recall a fun "I wonder if I can pull it off" act one run when I first walked into Nashkel (everyone was around level 2, I think, Charname was 2/2 Ftr/Mage). Did a speed run to get the Ring of Fire Resistance, pickpocket Dr'zzt, and got the Gift of Peace. Wore all of them + Ankheg armour + Twinkle, parked all my other people in the temple, clicked on THAT gravestone. Lots of little piles of loot appeared all over Nashkel, for some reason... *snicker*
I'm not sure how often other people use them, but I use them literally every playthrough and rarely read about them from other people, so...
Silence 15' Radius is the first one, and it's pretty broken for being a 2nd level cleric spell. Fail a save with a -5 penalty and you're silenced for 2 rounds/level of the caster, which is a very long time for powerful mages to be about as dangerous as a squirrel. Completely breaks SCS since it stops all the "pre-fight cast spells" as well, which is otherwise uninterriptible... And it's an AoE that doesn't aggro upon cast...
And my all time favourite spell, Skull Trap. People hail ADHW as one of the best AoE spells in the game due to how it's pure magical damage and few enemies are resistant or immune to it, but Skull Trap is an equally good spell despite being just level 3. It's also pure magical damage without cap, the only differences is that ADHW is party-friendly and 1d8 instead of 1d6 damage, but it is also 8 cast time instead of 3 and it can't be used to make traps or stack through sleeping.
I mean, honestly. Sure, ADHW might have a slight edge, but we're comparing a frikkin 8th and 3rd level spell. And look at how Skull Trap stacks up against a similar 3rd level spell, Fireball? They're equal in most aspects such as area, saving throws and casting time, but Fireball is fire damage, which is god-awful in comparison to pure magical, and it has a cap at level 10 which Skull Trap doesn't. It's literally just better, and not by a small margin.
Skull Trap is also one of my favorite ones, I use it much more than ADHW. And is ages that I don't memorize Fireball, unless there is a special reason to do it, Skull Trap and Fire Arrow are my lev3 damaging spells.
I always have at least one cast of MMMs memorized usually two. Other than that Flame Arrow, Skull Trap Slow and/or Dispel Magic.
Two reasons I never use MMMs: first, there's that bug where you're stuck with five attacks per round a while after, though I don't know if it's been fixed yet or not. And also, well, the rocks just don't hit very hard. I'd rather leave battering things to death for fighters who can deal real damage.
The bug can be a very good reason to not use them, but they hit hard, if you have the thac0 or use them against an enemy that can not defend himself, like a webbed enemy. The damage of each one is not impressive, but with a single spell you have a lot of minute meteors. Assuming that you hit often they are the most damaging spell of the level and one of the best damaging of the whole spellbook. Comparing them with the damage fighters can do has no sense at all, because their use don't prevents party's fighters from fighting, the alternative is between fighters + 1 sling shot or fighters + 5MMM. They have also a good level of enchantment, only the magical sling that needs no ammunition can compete with them when you have to hit enemies that require it, like some demilich, in SoA there are no bullets more than +2. Having also fire damage they can be an useful disruption tool, much better than other spells, as with them you can disrupt many times. In the window between lev8 and lev9 casting a mage can cast TS but not IA, he will cast no more than 3 spells in a time stop, but if he hes MMM equipped he can cast his 3 spells and do quite some damage with them.
Imo their only downside is that until they are equipped no other weapon can be used, so the use of SoTM is prevented, both for invisibility and dispelling on hit.
EDIT: as a side note is interesting to see how the EE, or one of its upgrades, prevented the trick to shapeshift into a spider and dispel the spider weapon using shocking grasp to equip your regular weapon with good APR, but introduced a bug that let you gain a permanent good APR using MMM. The bug will be fixed, if it has not has already done, but is not avoidable, is not a player's choice, the trick with spider form and SG was completely optional, the player had to decide to use it, and it could be useful in some solo runs with mage or sorcerer or to research into not conventional tactics, I really don't see a reason to nerf it as who sees it as cheating can simply not use it and is really unlikely that a player will have the sequencer loaded with the needed spell and use it on self while shapeshifted.
I fail to see a logic in the way EE puts attention to nerf some completely optional triks, an other one is loading 3 PI in a CC, that a player will use only if he wants (just as he will use the anti beholder shield or those green scrolls offensively only if he wants), but at the same time has introduced other ways to OP the party. Like starting with a lot more XP if importing from SoD, new powerful weapons, weapons largely increased in power (ie throwing daggers) or the importing of weapons from BG1, and a good additional boost of XP doing the new NPCs quests. The robe that grants you a free Chaos shield alone can make the using of wild mages a lot easier and it stacks with the spell (I am not 100% sure of that, can anyone confirm?), in my present run, that now is on standby for personal reasons, I had Neera spam ADHW in some battles using PI and dwehomers as soon as she could cast lev 7 spells, in chap 2, both the scroll to learn the spell and the needed XP was acquired in a legit way, and it was a quite reliable tactic thanks to the robe.
MMM hits incredibly hard. For starters the damage outstrips any other spell of that level even if you don't cast any other spells but you can throw them alongside your spell slinging so its continuous bonus damage not a once per round gig. Not to mention they're +4 so they will take down virtually any enemy. Easily the most powerful spell of the level if not all levels.
The only thing I would like is the ability to dismiss them when you no longer need them instead of having to cast dispel on yourself which is a pain. Despite that minor inconvenience though, MMM is probably the best mage spell there is simply because it takes the mage's biggest weakness which is basic attacks and makes it brutally efficient. It fills the weak gaps inbetween casting with a powerful attack.
According to Baldur's Gate Wiki "Meteors are treated as missiles hurled by wizard with +5 bonus to attack rolls" http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Melf's_Minute_Meteors but the attack roll and the enchantment level are 2 different things, SoTM if I am not wrong has an attack roll bonus of 1 and an enchantment level of 5, hits all the enemies that are immune to +4 or lesser weapons but only +1 thac0 bonus is used in the roll.
Two spells that I find really useful and maybe are underrated are invisibility and invisibility 10ft radius. When you are ambushed or a battle is going bad they can be life savers, if the enemy can not naturally see trough invisibility, they can save the whole party or a party member that is going to die.
ROV + invisibility 3 ft radius make the ambush by vampires in the graveyard very easy. Bodhi appears, talk, summon the vampires and... your party just disappears instead to be level drained.
Other uses are when you sleep in dungeons or areas where enemies spawn and attack you while you are resting, to explore dungeons with a mage invisible and a thief detecting traps (not really needed if metagame is used, but useful for a first run of the game or a new mod quest), to approach undetected enemies and set yourself the conditions of the battle. An example is
in the underdark when you enter the beholder area and you find 2 beholders, getting there invisible let you decide when and how to deal with them, you can kill the drows, set traps in the passage and then lure them into the traps, summon helpers or do what you want.
Erm ... are you sure MMM is only +4 enchantment, @Mush_Mush - I thought it was +5 enchantment! I'm sure I remember killing the Lesser Demon Lord in the Ust Natha with a storm of MMM, and (IIRC) he needs +5 to hit.
However, that sort of detail does sometimes get changed by patches and upgrades, so maybe it's no longer the same ... and anyway, +4 or +5 make a difference in very few cases, it'll still disrupt a Mage through Improved Mantle.
It actually appears to be +6 enchantment as Grond0 suspected, it penetrates absolute immunity.
Oh! Now that sounds as if it might be a bug - I'm sure it didn't used to be able to do that, and I'm not convinced that would be a deliberate change.
Fire Seeds hit as +6 and are meant to do so, but that's a much higher-level spell. MMM was already very strong for a level 3 spell, and increasing it to +6 enchantment would be OP.
But anyway, why are we discussing MMM in a thread about "(often) unused spells"? Surely everyone uses MMM all the time, and especially when running a Sorcerer - it's this single spell more than any other which makes Sorcerers powerful in general combat!
I think it could be classified as under appreciated if not often unused but point well made it is a little off the rails. Sometimes though what you think is a universally used spell may not actually be so especially if people arn't fully aware of it's potential.
Comments
It is an excellent buff for kensais and lightly armored thieves, though.
Another thing is the imprisonment/freedom combination. Every time you cast imprisonment on a character you get XP for killing them, but you can do this multiple times with the same character, if you want, by casting freedom and then repeating the process. I don't do this very often since it seems kind of pointless after a while, but it can be entertaining at times. I also use this combination if I don't want to kill someone in a quest but need the game to think that they're dead for a little while and then rescue them with the freedom spell later.
I find also their use more tactically challenging, they are not touch spells, but a mage that can cast lev9 spells has no problem in going mlee range, but there is a save and MR must be lowered. So MR must be lowered and GM and doom used, and even so, if you don't factor in reloads (that are fine, but are not a way to make save or else spells stick at 100%) your mages must have at least 3 flash to stone to have a really good chance.
All the party must cooperate in an intelligent way to turn to stone a dragon at mid levels, somehow is not easier than to kill him in other ways.
1:40
But yes, I love Chromatic Orb. Much more than Magic Missile unless I need something that does consistent damage even with lots of Magic Resistance.
I remember it was Aerie with many Magic Missiles that took Firkraag out back then.
But Chromatic Orb was insane in all the Infinity Engine games. And it scales very very well.
There are better spells and tactics, but most of my arcane users have 1 slot of horror for certain situations where you are few vs many.
BTW when you use shape change it seems to ignore all items including necklaces and rings/cloaks.
I thought shape change only ignored weapons and armor equipped, I shifted into greater werewolf and gave the amulet of power I was getting level drained....
Redundancy makes to web a whole group of high level fighters, up to Fallen Devas, to feeblemind a dragon or turn to stone Draconis reliable tactics, if you have an high level sorcerer or enough mages.
I totally need to hire Barry
BurtonGjerde to star in one of my future games.I mean, he is, like, the Nicholas Cage of videogames
Wasteful? Probably. Hilarious? Hell yeah!
I also recall a fun "I wonder if I can pull it off" act one run when I first walked into Nashkel (everyone was around level 2, I think, Charname was 2/2 Ftr/Mage). Did a speed run to get the Ring of Fire Resistance, pickpocket Dr'zzt, and got the Gift of Peace. Wore all of them + Ankheg armour + Twinkle, parked all my other people in the temple, clicked on THAT gravestone. Lots of little piles of loot appeared all over Nashkel, for some reason... *snicker*
Silence 15' Radius is the first one, and it's pretty broken for being a 2nd level cleric spell. Fail a save with a -5 penalty and you're silenced for 2 rounds/level of the caster, which is a very long time for powerful mages to be about as dangerous as a squirrel. Completely breaks SCS since it stops all the "pre-fight cast spells" as well, which is otherwise uninterriptible... And it's an AoE that doesn't aggro upon cast...
And my all time favourite spell, Skull Trap. People hail ADHW as one of the best AoE spells in the game due to how it's pure magical damage and few enemies are resistant or immune to it, but Skull Trap is an equally good spell despite being just level 3. It's also pure magical damage without cap, the only differences is that ADHW is party-friendly and 1d8 instead of 1d6 damage, but it is also 8 cast time instead of 3 and it can't be used to make traps or stack through sleeping.
I mean, honestly. Sure, ADHW might have a slight edge, but we're comparing a frikkin 8th and 3rd level spell. And look at how Skull Trap stacks up against a similar 3rd level spell, Fireball? They're equal in most aspects such as area, saving throws and casting time, but Fireball is fire damage, which is god-awful in comparison to pure magical, and it has a cap at level 10 which Skull Trap doesn't. It's literally just better, and not by a small margin.
Comparing them with the damage fighters can do has no sense at all, because their use don't prevents party's fighters from fighting, the alternative is between fighters + 1 sling shot or fighters + 5MMM. They have also a good level of enchantment, only the magical sling that needs no ammunition can compete with them when you have to hit enemies that require it, like some demilich, in SoA there are no bullets more than +2. Having also fire damage they can be an useful disruption tool, much better than other spells, as with them you can disrupt many times. In the window between lev8 and lev9 casting a mage can cast TS but not IA, he will cast no more than 3 spells in a time stop, but if he hes MMM equipped he can cast his 3 spells and do quite some damage with them.
Imo their only downside is that until they are equipped no other weapon can be used, so the use of SoTM is prevented, both for invisibility and dispelling on hit.
EDIT: as a side note is interesting to see how the EE, or one of its upgrades, prevented the trick to shapeshift into a spider and dispel the spider weapon using shocking grasp to equip your regular weapon with good APR, but introduced a bug that let you gain a permanent good APR using MMM.
The bug will be fixed, if it has not has already done, but is not avoidable, is not a player's choice, the trick with spider form and SG was completely optional, the player had to decide to use it, and it could be useful in some solo runs with mage or sorcerer or to research into not conventional tactics, I really don't see a reason to nerf it as who sees it as cheating can simply not use it and is really unlikely that a player will have the sequencer loaded with the needed spell and use it on self while shapeshifted.
I fail to see a logic in the way EE puts attention to nerf some completely optional triks, an other one is loading 3 PI in a CC, that a player will use only if he wants (just as he will use the anti beholder shield or those green scrolls offensively only if he wants), but at the same time has introduced other ways to OP the party.
Like starting with a lot more XP if importing from SoD, new powerful weapons, weapons largely increased in power (ie throwing daggers) or the importing of weapons from BG1, and a good additional boost of XP doing the new NPCs quests. The robe that grants you a free Chaos shield alone can make the using of wild mages a lot easier and it stacks with the spell (I am not 100% sure of that, can anyone confirm?), in my present run, that now is on standby for personal reasons, I had Neera spam ADHW in some battles using PI and dwehomers as soon as she could cast lev 7 spells, in chap 2, both the scroll to learn the spell and the needed XP was acquired in a legit way, and it was a quite reliable tactic thanks to the robe.
The only thing I would like is the ability to dismiss them when you no longer need them instead of having to cast dispel on yourself which is a pain. Despite that minor inconvenience though, MMM is probably the best mage spell there is simply because it takes the mage's biggest weakness which is basic attacks and makes it brutally efficient. It fills the weak gaps inbetween casting with a powerful attack.
"Meteors are treated as missiles hurled by wizard with +5 bonus to attack rolls"
http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Melf's_Minute_Meteors
but the attack roll and the enchantment level are 2 different things, SoTM if I am not wrong has an attack roll bonus of 1 and an enchantment level of 5, hits all the enemies that are immune to +4 or lesser weapons but only +1 thac0 bonus is used in the roll.
When you are ambushed or a battle is going bad they can be life savers, if the enemy can not naturally see trough invisibility, they can save the whole party or a party member that is going to die.
Other uses are when you sleep in dungeons or areas where enemies spawn and attack you while you are resting, to explore dungeons with a mage invisible and a thief detecting traps (not really needed if metagame is used, but useful for a first run of the game or a new mod quest), to approach undetected enemies and set yourself the conditions of the battle.
An example is
However, that sort of detail does sometimes get changed by patches and upgrades, so maybe it's no longer the same ... and anyway, +4 or +5 make a difference in very few cases, it'll still disrupt a Mage through Improved Mantle.
Fire Seeds hit as +6 and are meant to do so, but that's a much higher-level spell. MMM was already very strong for a level 3 spell, and increasing it to +6 enchantment would be OP.
But anyway, why are we discussing MMM in a thread about "(often) unused spells"? Surely everyone uses MMM all the time, and especially when running a Sorcerer - it's this single spell more than any other which makes Sorcerers powerful in general combat!