is fair fight possible at all if magic used
Tarlugn
Member Posts: 209
This thing has been bugging me for a long time, longer than I care to remember - some kind of concept of honorable combat, origins probably in Dragonlance´s Sturm´s moustache.
More often than I care to count my party is under crowd control, which while soloing usually means game over. Since such a thing is a nuisance, veritable party killer,
I tend to end up picking spells like Hold Person etc, because the seem so powerful and make the game in general a race of who casts first and moreso who fails save first.
I´m intrigued by wizard slayers and inquisitors, and a playthrough without magic, but I´m left oftentimes to ponder how on earth such a set up will deal with damage if clerics and mages are left out of the party?
Is it truly vainglory that I´m after, or some unbearable headache?
More often than I care to count my party is under crowd control, which while soloing usually means game over. Since such a thing is a nuisance, veritable party killer,
I tend to end up picking spells like Hold Person etc, because the seem so powerful and make the game in general a race of who casts first and moreso who fails save first.
I´m intrigued by wizard slayers and inquisitors, and a playthrough without magic, but I´m left oftentimes to ponder how on earth such a set up will deal with damage if clerics and mages are left out of the party?
Is it truly vainglory that I´m after, or some unbearable headache?
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Comments
In that sense, it's hard to say whether it'll be an "unbearable headache" or a pleasurable buzz for you to forego the more - ahem - potent combat options, let's call them. I believe the game can be solo'd by just about any class, so there's no barrier of impossibility at least. It will undoubtedly be more difficult.
My party must roll hard melee, no mistakes here, we go in we go out. Simple mind, straight kill.
And Wizard Slayer is just a nerfed Fighter tbh
Role-playing wise, Ajantis, Minsc, Keldorn, Anomen, Mazzy, and Valygar fit really well with the theme.
I'm pretty sure it can be done solo, but it's a lot harder. You'd have to use a lot of potions and equip just the right magic items at just the right times.
But why solo if you want to roleplay the value system of honor, fairness, right and justice? Camaraderie, friendship, and teamwork are a part of that.
"Do unto the AI as you would have the AI do unto you."
Basically, avoid doing things that AI is incapable of.
Example: As per the discussion in the following link, I do not permit myself to use Sequencers mid combat. They are no longer an obvious first choice for a Sorcerer. (Casting 3 spells a round really breaks the balance.)
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/44257/7-3x4-8-3x6-9-3x8
Furthermore, I use SCS for enemy mage AI. That way if you lose, you lose fair and square.
but "Fear" not... some classes are better than other dealing with those pesky Spell users.
For once we have Elves with their Natural 90% immunity to Sleep and Charm.
Dwarf/Gnomes and Halflings come to boot with extra rolls for most status effects.
The Paladin Cavalier is Immune to Fear and Charm (also poison and morale failure) and would align best with Sturm's Values. not to mention Paladins get a solid anti mage weapon around BG2.
and if you don't mind some Holy assistance the Cleric (preferable fighter to cleric dual) will make your day for they are the King of Protecting spells.
there are also a lot of Items granting a variety of Immunity's. to an extend that in reaching BG2 you can make a single character unstoppable and dispel magic with every Hit.
I finished an IWD walkthrough recently where I had melee characters only, (berserker/druid, kensai/mage, swashbuckler, fighter/cleric, melee dragon desciple IIRC) It was a blast.
Another thing you might consider is to avoid items that set an attribute to a high value (eg. Ring of Human Influence, Crom Faeyr) and instead use ones that provide a specific bonus to an attribute instead (eg. Blade of Roses, Malakar)
And this is assuming full-time warriors attack full-time warriors. Many fighting units are conscripts and militia or other weekend warriors, who simply put probably are not as fit and trained as professional soldiers - they agree to the duel out of honor, miscalculation or external pressure (for instance, POW:s forced to fight the reigning gladiator champion).
And outside of duels most fights are unfair as hell. To begin with, unless you are attacking a highly secured fortress, the attacker(s) is/are always advantaged from the get go, since he/she/they know there will be a fight and know when it will happen and can often chose grounds and equipment and so on. You can of course be more or less courageous and/or honorable when you plot your attack; refusing to use certain tactics etc. For instance, most commanders, even these days, would frown upon Kefka poisoning the water supply, or indeed Saddam using nerve gas against the kurds.
Personally, however, I dont quite get wtf is the difference between using nerve gas and using unmanned drones locating their prey with cell phones followed by using laser guided missiles with 0.5 m aim precision to rain death upon a target who probably does not even know he has been designed an enemy in the first place, followed by double-tapping, just in case this probably innocent individuals comrades who rush to his aid are collaborators. Military honor have always confused me.
However, with or without magic does not make any difference to me. If two duelists agree to fight, and one uses magic and the other doesnt, that still means neither consider the other superior.
Also, I'm currently playing with a paladin and a party mostly composed by fighters and clerics, so it became kind of impossible for me to use good old magic tactics that I used to do before. On the other hand, I buff my fighters a lot and charge difficult enemies on a regular basis, which sounds more appropriate and honorable for a cavalier.
-Is a 10-on-1 fight a fair fight?
-What if the ten men are all level 20 barbarians who ambushed the one man, who is a level 2 archer with no arrows?
-What if the ten men are all level 1 shopkeepers who have been ambushed by the one man who is a level 20 mage with no equipment, but knows timestop?
What makes both of these battles unfair? It isn't just the numbers, because we can give examples where it is "unfairly" weighted toward each side. It isn't just the lack of equipment, obviously. It isn't the class that's been chosen. So what is it?
-What if it is a 1-on-1 battle of a level 20 paladin vs a level 3 paladin? Is that fair?
-What if those two paladins had the same amount of time to perfect their training and one of them worked his ass off while the other watched tv all day while eating pork rinds? Then is it a fair fight?
If you say no, then you're arguing that if somebody puts in the hard work to get where they are, it isn't "fair" in some sense. If you answer yes, then you're making an assumption based on incomplete information. I never told you which paladin spent his time eating pork rinds? What if it's the level 20 and he was gifted his skill set by a god moments before the battle?
Arguably, the thing that defines whether or not it's a fair fight is a perceived skill edge. I feel like you're arguing that it is never really a fair fight with a mage because mages are so OP or because not everyone has access to magic. But just because someone chose a different trade to master doesn't mean it is inherently unfair. After all, some people are stronger physically than others due to genetics. So again I ask you, what is a fair fight?
From a mathematical perspective, for a fight to truly be "fair" there needs to be exactly a 50% chance of each side in the fight winning (or 33% if three people are involved, 25% with four, etc). If at any point this number is skewed in one direction or the other, the fight becomes "unfair".
My point is simply this: no matter what example you give of what could potentially be considered a fair fight, there almost always exists some piece of information that would persuade you into thinking that it's not as fair as you once thought it was. Why is fighting a mage any more unfair than fighting a barbarian who uses his muscles and unusually high strength? Or fighting an archer who uses his unnaturally high dexterity?
Or fighting a child of Bhaal?
(Except that BG AI is vastly inferior to the human brain, so maybe avoiding the pause button is a fair handicap, but that is another discussion.)
So fight won't be fair even if magic won't be used. It doesn't bother me personally. History is written by victors, is it not?
So really, the only way for the pause feature to be fair would be if we knew exactly how many calculations per minute the computer can do, how many the player can do, and only allow a certain amount of pause time between each action that equally gives the computer and the human the same number of calculations to come up with a decision. Of course this would differ from player to player as well.
The point is that there's no such thing as a fair fight no matter what class you choose to use. Period.
Hardiness is a good way to replace health as when you stack it 3 times physical damage heals you.
I always found the rod of resurrection pretty nice too as it effectively casts heal when used on a live character.