*Hands trembling* I just had an 'interesting' run through of Ice Island where Andris decided not to mess about and throw around at least 3 disintegrates (including one at Charname around a corner!) and one power word kill for poor Xan... I was somewhat surprised so I looked up his stats on EE Keeper but he wasn't level 18 (he was 15...) in possession of the relevant scrolls, or even memorising those spells... Where might they have come from- some sort of script? Fortunately no-one else was that spell crazy and we left in short order...
A couple of days ago, @semiticgod asked in the no-reload thread:
@Enuhal: Do you know if there were any solo trilogy runs featuring the original games? If somebody did 1998 BG1 followed by 2000 BG2 and 2001 ToB, I wouldn't bother. But I thought playing with the original SoA UI and mechanics would be nice, and it would be worth it if I could do something new in the process.
I can't really answer that question - my memory isn't good enough to remember the version details of each individual solo run - I would guess that most have been using Tutu or BGT, but there might've very well been some played in the original BG1 (in fact, I think it's very unlikely that there weren't any). However, I can't 100% confirm this (and I have also been inactive from time to time, sometimes for more than a year, so I did miss quite a few runs), so I'd like to ask very active and history-aware no-reloaders like @Corey_Russell or @Grond0 if they can answer @semiticgod 's question.
Enuhal
Edit: I have now checked the hall of heroes, looked at various screenshots, considered the impossibility of kits and several races/classes in the original BG1 and I've come to the conclusion that there might indeed never have been a full triology run using only the original games - all solo successes seem to have been played with Tutu or BGT as far as I can tell.
While I do have party no-reloads using the original 3 games, I think you are right @Enuhal that there aren't any solo trilogy runs using the orginal games. Not while I was at BioWare anyways.
I think the soloers wanted either the advantage of kits or the advantage of run speed, which you lose if using the original BG 1. What's interesting is the original is both harder and easier than Tutu. Some key differences below:
1) Animate Undead (cleric) = X skeletons where X is your level. This is awesome in all cleric group for example. 2) Entangle is party friendly (only enemies affected). 3) Protection from Magic scroll disallows any magical potion use, not even healing potions work. 4) Sarevok has super high MR in the original game 5) Run speed about 1/2 Tutu 6) Wand of frost is on a single target, rather than an area effect like Tutu. 7) No kits (well, other than the mages with the different schools) 8) Shield amulet does not protect against magic missiles 9) More generic weapon skills, which means a character can use a greater variety of weapons. the "Large Sword" proficiency, for example, would allow skill with bastard swords, long swords and scimitars for example. 10) For warriors, all points can be put for a single weapon proficiency at level 1. 11) Protection from magic scroll could only be cast by one self on one-self - you could not target it on any one else, unlike Tutu. 12) Acid arrow far more deadly than with the BG 2 engine - about 2x more powerful I think. 13) Magic resistance stops your buffs/potions as well as enemies, which is why you always take off any item that has MR before buffing, or use a potion like potion of magic protection last. 14) No summons limits.
These are just some of the things off the top of my head.
I was thinking I would cure the movement rate problem by using the potion duplication trick on an Oil of Speed. I'd also be interested in seeing if the basilisk XP loop worked in the original game. Then I'd probably steamroll the rest of the game with Wands of Fire and Wands of Monster Summoning.
For Shadows of Amn, I think I'd use some SoA-exclusive, pre-EE, pre-SCS tricks like the Rejiek Hidesman XP loop, the potion swap glitch and gem duplication trick, clone items, and the spider gnome trick. And maybe song stacking if I play a bard instead of a Fighter/Illusionist.
Do you happen to know if you get an Oil of Speed from Imoen in the original BG1, or if there's another early source of the potion? Can wands be recharged in the vanilla game?
I was thinking I would cure the movement rate problem by using the potion duplication trick on an Oil of Speed. I'd also be interested in seeing if the basilisk XP loop worked in the original game. Then I'd probably steamroll the rest of the game with Wands of Fire and Wands of Monster Summoning.
For Shadows of Amn, I think I'd use some SoA-exclusive, pre-EE, pre-SCS tricks like the Rejiek Hidesman XP loop, the potion swap glitch and gem duplication trick, clone items, and the spider gnome trick. And maybe song stacking if I play a bard instead of a Fighter/Illusionist.
Do you happen to know if you get an Oil of Speed from Imoen in the original BG1, or if there's another early source of the potion? Can wands be recharged in the vanilla game?
There are not a lot of haste potions in BG 1 pre-chapter 5 - Imoen usually has one, and I think Montaron might have one too. In Chapter 5 there are 20 in the Temple in the area with the Priest who wants you to rescue his son's body from the Timberlee Temple. Not the Temple of Tymora but the other one, close to the Eastern part of that area.
Yes wands can be recharged in the original game, and there are no summons limits either.
Keep in mind that, while wands and other items can be recharged in the original BG1, the game will not actually tell you how many charges a wand has left - so you might want to look up the exact number or rebuy it sooner rather then later, otherwise you can easily run out of charges by accident.
While I do have party no-reloads using the original 3 games, I think you are right @Enuhal that there aren't any solo trilogy runs using the orginal games. Not while I was at BioWare anyways.
I might consider trying that after my urrent run finishes. I do have the original games. In those days I didn't play SoA as I didn't like the different engine, so stuck with just BG1.
After switching to Tutu, I found that changing to the new engine after defeating Savarok wasn't so immersion breaking and so started playing SoA as well.
Keep in mind that, while wands and other items can be recharged in the original BG1, the game will not actually tell you how many charges a wand has left - so you might want to look up the exact number or rebuy it sooner rather then later, otherwise you can easily run out of charges by accident.
Actually, there is a way to figure out how many charges are left. First, go to a merchant, and look what he will give you for the wand. DO NOT SELL - but note the price. Use the wand once. Now come back to the same merchant (same person as leader too in party) and note the price - whatever amount that got deducted means each charge is that amount - now divide the price by that difference, and you have how many charges are left.
Once you know what the difference is (one charge is worth in other words), then anytime you you are a merchant you can check the price and thus see how many charges are left. Can't check during combat obviously, you would have to keep track in your head if in a dungeon or something.
Keep in mind that, while wands and other items can be recharged in the original BG1, the game will not actually tell you how many charges a wand has left - so you might want to look up the exact number or rebuy it sooner rather then later, otherwise you can easily run out of charges by accident.
Actually, there is a way to figure out how many charges are left. First, go to a merchant, and look what he will give you for the wand. DO NOT SELL - but note the price. Use the wand once. Now come back to the same merchant (same person as leader too in party) and note the price - whatever amount that got deducted means each charge is that amount - now divide the price by that difference, and you have how many charges are left.
Once you know what the difference is (one charge is worth in other words), then anytime you you are a merchant you can check the price and thus see how many charges are left. Can't check during combat obviously, you would have to keep track in your head if in a dungeon or something.
That is how I would always do it. I would always do the recharging when at maximum rep, so the number of charges was always easy to work out. @Corey_Russell Great minds work alike! or it it that fools seldom differ?
Keep in mind that, while wands and other items can be recharged in the original BG1, the game will not actually tell you how many charges a wand has left - so you might want to look up the exact number or rebuy it sooner rather then later, otherwise you can easily run out of charges by accident.
Actually, there is a way to figure out how many charges are left. First, go to a merchant, and look what he will give you for the wand. DO NOT SELL - but note the price. Use the wand once. Now come back to the same merchant (same person as leader too in party) and note the price - whatever amount that got deducted means each charge is that amount - now divide the price by that difference, and you have how many charges are left.
Once you know what the difference is (one charge is worth in other words), then anytime you you are a merchant you can check the price and thus see how many charges are left. Can't check during combat obviously, you would have to keep track in your head if in a dungeon or something.
That is how I would always do it. I would always do the recharging when at maximum rep, so the number of charges was always easy to work out. @Corey_Russell Great minds work alike! or it it that fools seldom differ?
Well I am a chessmaster, and it's rare that such a person is a fool...(because a fool would be incapable of the patience, passion, and hard work that such a achievement requires).
@Corey_Russell When working abroad I was doing very well in the Daily Telegraph chess competition which was done by post. Sadly towards the end there was a postal strike where I was so my newspaper didn't arrive on time. Still, if I had made it to the finals, I wouldn't have been able to attend, so perhaps it was for the best.
I've been spamming mage HLAs and Wish in my poverty run in ToB, and I'm concerned that I'm not doing much to develop the metagame for a ToB poverty run. What do you guys think would work besides that? My party isn't at epic levels yet aside from Charname, but for the sake of argument, let's assume we're talking about a poverty run where everyone enters ToB with at least 3 million XP.
@semiticgod Well, so far, outside of your liberal use of the WoL trick to spam Skellies and Planetars, you pretty much did a solid job. With well placed Spell Immunities and cleric prebuffs (CC, FA, DW, ...) like you did, I don't think a ToB poverty run would be all that different than a regular one. You're just at a point where your ressources (arcane and divine spells, BH traps, ...) are plentyful even without items.
After all, ToB is all about spamming HLAs anyway. The metagame knowledge to be gained was more about the previous parts. Maybe a SoA run without HLAs would gather more metagame knowledge, but other than that, I think you did a better job than what you seem to think.
Edit : Maybe one thing : a bit more flexibility with divine magic would probably have helped ? With only one cleric, if he goes down, you can't revive anybody for a while. It's the reason why you had to grind to get to HLA in SoA, which coincides with the moment where you seemed to lose interest in the run a bit. Am I wrong ?
@Serg_BlackStrider: The original poverty challenge permitted items provided that you created them yourself. So Flame Blade, Seeking Sword, Melf's Minute Meteors, Fire Seeds, Goodberries, Alchemy, and Wish are all valid ways of gaining items. Wish lets you create both potions and wands, though not all types.
I got a Wand of Lightning by accident in the Unseeing Eye lair, but refrained from using it until ToB.
@Serg_BlackStrider: The original poverty challenge permitted items provided that you created them yourself. So Flame Blade, Seeking Sword, Melf's Minute Meteors, Fire Seeds, Goodberries, Alchemy, and Wish are all valid ways of gaining items. Wish lets you create both potions and wands, though not all types.
I got a Wand of Lightning by accident in the Unseeing Eye lair, but refrained from using it until ToB.
Say... are any of you guys familiar with NWN? Because, depending on NWN's mechanics, it might be an excellent candidate for a no-reload run.
Exceedingly. More than exceedingly, really. I've played the OC and HotU so many times I can't even count how many. It's not terribly difficult to do, either, because casters aren't absolute gods of hyperdeath like they are in BG.
A lot of the later bioware/obsidian titles are, in my opinion, relatively easy to no-reload, compared to BG (and the "multiclass system" of 3rd edition is very, very abusable). Once you have some idea what you're doing, no-reloading NWN can happen even by accident. A lot of that has to do with 3rd edition and other later systems being a bit more balanced (less instant-death effects and the like) and the possibility to get pretty awesome defenses by getting a couple of levels in the right classes and by buying the right items.
However, if you're new to the game, a relatively blind no-reload run might be a fun challenge (though I, personally, don't like the gameplay and storyline of the original campaign too much - though the expansions get better, and I really enjoy NWN2 (and I'd propably play it sometimes if it wouldn't have so many technical difficulties))
When PoE was released, I initially thought this would be the perfect modern game to do no-reload challenges in - because it seemed rather difficult the first time I played it, and I loved everything about the game in general. However, when I actually tried the "triple crown" challenge (path of damned, expert mode, trial of iron (which is no-reload)) for the first time in my third run through the game, I succeeded right away, and I learned that many, many people did so as well. Once you figure out the system, there's not much that can spoil your success. I think it's a rather unique quality of the BG series (and its difficulty improving mods) to include encounters that need many varied approaches (depending on party composition) and not just "one tactic to rule them all" (which is also a fault of SoD, in my opinion - its so easy to abuse wands of fire and other sources of fireballs to trivialize a lot of the difficulty in almost every encounter. A similiar thing is true for ToB thanks to HLA access).
Edit : Maybe one thing : a bit more flexibility with divine magic would probably have helped ? With only one cleric, if he goes down, you can't revive anybody for a while. It's the reason why you had to grind to get to HLA in SoA, which coincides with the moment where you seemed to lose interest in the run a bit. Am I wrong ?
I do think the grinding took a lot of the fun out of the run, but I don't regret the decision. Losing the run due to a mod-related death would have been far worse than the unbalancing effects of HLAs, or even my subsequent choice to avoid gathering optional XP from side quests, which left the rest of the party severely underleveled. I really want this run to be a success, so I've been using some tactics that I hoped to avoid.
@Grond0's run notably includes a Shaman, who could use Recall Spirit in case the Cleric of Helm dies. I chose three sorcerers instead because I was concerned about having enough Magic Missiles, Melf's Acid Arrows, and Lower Resistance spells to take down Belhifet, but I do believe that Grond0's party makeup is much more optimal than mine because of that Shaman. I disregarded the Shaman due to its poor AC and unreliable dance, but overlooked the massive utility of its summons and the Recall Spirit spell. My extra sorcerer has proved largely extraneous. Even in ToB when Wish is so important, Project Image on two sorcerers would be sufficient to get Wish-rests when necessary.
I think @Grond0 has identified the truly optimal party for a poverty run, and I would endorse his party over mine:
Totemic Druid Bounty Hunter Cleric of Helm Shaman Sorcerer Sorcerer
It covers all the bases at every stage of the saga without leaving any party members unused. Spirit critters, traps, Sleep, Command, and the Seeking Sword are extremely powerful and all but necessary for ankhegs, basilisks, and early BG1 groups; you need 6 castings of Invisibility early on to travel safely, plus Invisibility on Liia Jannath to win the Ducal Palace fight; summons are critical for BG1's higher-end fights, including Angelo; Fireballs, Skull Traps, and/or Spirit Fire are necessary for killing Tazok, Diarmid, and Semaj; you need various area-effect options to deal with large groups in SoD (and this party has four party members with area-effect damage spells); you need at least two characters to cast Raise Dead/Recall Spirit to deal with SoA unless your gameplay is perfectly safe (and you should never bet on your own competence in a no-reload run); Maze traps will do amazing things for crowd control from late SoA through ToB; Spike Traps are extremely important for Melissan; you need Wish-resting to deal with long fights in ToB; and you need both (Greater) Elemental Summoning and Summon (Fallen Planetar) to maintain competitive damage output into ToB, since the Cleric of Helm simply can't reliably tank in the presence of Remove Magic.
The only character in that group that might be worthy of replacement is the Cleric of Helm, but since you'd still want another character for Raise Dead/Recall Spirit and the other cleric kits and multi-classes are so much weaker in a poverty run, I think the only competitive replacement would be a second Shaman, since it would improve the mobility and reliability of the other Shaman's summons.
As for NPCs, Faldorn would be a lousy replacement for a Totemic Druid, but Tiax could fill some of the roles of the Cleric of Helm and the Bounty Hunter, and his Summon Ghast might be worth his inferior stats compared to a player-created character.
With Spell Revisions installed, things would be radically different. Aside from SR nerfing some spells that spellcasters, especially sorcerers, would lean heavily on, SR would change Enchanted Weapon so that it could create a +3 weapon of any kind except for +3 darts (though a future release might change that) for 24 hours. That would make fighter levels much, much more practical than they currently are, and therefore reduce the need for both summons and especially spell damage. Clerics of Lathander would also be a viable replacement for Clerics of Helm if they had access to a +3 mace or staff, and Totemic Druids might not be necessary because there are so many viable summons in SR, even at level 1. It might also be worth temporarily recruiting Jan so he could generate a bunch of flashers for a sorcerer-generated +3 crossbow.
With Spell Revisions installed, things would be radically different. Aside from SR nerfing some spells that spellcasters, especially sorcerers, would lean heavily on, SR would change Enchanted Weapon so that it could create a +3 weapon of any kind except for +3 darts (though a future release might change that) for 24 hours. That would make fighter levels much, much more practical than they currently are, and therefore reduce the need for both summons and especially spell damage. Clerics of Lathander would also be a viable replacement for Clerics of Helm if they had access to a +3 mace or staff, and Totemic Druids might not be necessary because there are so many viable summons in SR, even at level 1. It might also be worth temporarily recruiting Jan so he could generate a bunch of flashers for a sorcerer-generated +3 crossbow.
Not only that, but in SR druid spells like Shillelagh and Flame Blade gets up to +3 enchantment at level 9. Seems like a fighter/druid with Stoneskin, Spirit Armor and Barskin (which adds to AC instead of setting it in SR) could actually be an awesome tank and damage dealer. Perhaps even better : cleric's Spiritual Hammer gets +1 to its enchantment every 5 level until it gets all the way up to +5 enchantment at level 20. And in SR it can attack at range. A cleric of Lathander in SR would be a LOT better than a priest of Helm : he could attack Big B at 3.5 APR (Boon of Lathander, Divine Power, and Haste) at 25 Strength (Divine Power, DUHM, Champion's Strength and Strength of One) - and all of that at range. I think a team with a Totemic druid, a fighter/druid and a priest of Lathander could litteraly thrash Big B in a poverty run with SR. Add in Sorcerers who can lower his resistance to deal magical and acid damage and I think he'd go down fast enough...
Hey gang, I hope you're all doing well. I have a quick question for the no-reload veterans. Would you advise playing SCS for bit with reloads before trying no-reloads, or should I continue to engage in trial by fire? I'm an SCS noob, and I've tried a couple more no-reloads since I last posted on the main thread, but I keep running afoul of things I don't expect (usually mages). I'm thinking I might learn more by finishing a campaign or two on SCS with reloads. But on the other hand, now that I've tried a few no-reload runs, I feel like I'm cheating when I do reload. And I'm much more critical of my own play now. What to do... Thanks in advance for your sagely advice.
Entirely depends on what you want. You can get better by only doing no-reloads : if you bump on an hurdle, learn and beat it the next time around. On the other hand, doing a regular playthrough will get you more familiar with the mechanic of the game.
You could also try minimal reload on a learning run. Or, continue to no-reload and, when you're on a run that is going great, keep going a bit with it even if you die somewhere along the way. But, be aware : no-reloading is addictive. You'll get to a point where reloading not only feels wrong, but also just take away your interest in the run.
It's possible to do a thematic minimal no-reload for awhile. For example an evil Blackguard/ Necromancer who can only use power word reload at the cost of a companions' life. (Usually whoever has been in the group the longest.)
Comments
@Enuhal: Do you know if there were any solo trilogy runs featuring the original games? If somebody did 1998 BG1 followed by 2000 BG2 and 2001 ToB, I wouldn't bother. But I thought playing with the original SoA UI and mechanics would be nice, and it would be worth it if I could do something new in the process.
I can't really answer that question - my memory isn't good enough to remember the version details of each individual solo run - I would guess that most have been using Tutu or BGT, but there might've very well been some played in the original BG1 (in fact, I think it's very unlikely that there weren't any). However, I can't 100% confirm this (and I have also been inactive from time to time, sometimes for more than a year, so I did miss quite a few runs), so I'd like to ask very active and history-aware no-reloaders like @Corey_Russell or @Grond0 if they can answer @semiticgod 's question.
Enuhal
Edit: I have now checked the hall of heroes, looked at various screenshots, considered the impossibility of kits and several races/classes in the original BG1 and I've come to the conclusion that there might indeed never have been a full triology run using only the original games - all solo successes seem to have been played with Tutu or BGT as far as I can tell.
1) Animate Undead (cleric) = X skeletons where X is your level. This is awesome in all cleric group for example.
2) Entangle is party friendly (only enemies affected).
3) Protection from Magic scroll disallows any magical potion use, not even healing potions work.
4) Sarevok has super high MR in the original game
5) Run speed about 1/2 Tutu
6) Wand of frost is on a single target, rather than an area effect like Tutu.
7) No kits (well, other than the mages with the different schools)
8) Shield amulet does not protect against magic missiles
9) More generic weapon skills, which means a character can use a greater variety of weapons. the "Large Sword" proficiency, for example, would allow skill with bastard swords, long swords and scimitars for example.
10) For warriors, all points can be put for a single weapon proficiency at level 1.
11) Protection from magic scroll could only be cast by one self on one-self - you could not target it on any one else, unlike Tutu.
12) Acid arrow far more deadly than with the BG 2 engine - about 2x more powerful I think.
13) Magic resistance stops your buffs/potions as well as enemies, which is why you always take off any item that has MR before buffing, or use a potion like potion of magic protection last.
14) No summons limits.
These are just some of the things off the top of my head.
I was thinking I would cure the movement rate problem by using the potion duplication trick on an Oil of Speed. I'd also be interested in seeing if the basilisk XP loop worked in the original game. Then I'd probably steamroll the rest of the game with Wands of Fire and Wands of Monster Summoning.
For Shadows of Amn, I think I'd use some SoA-exclusive, pre-EE, pre-SCS tricks like the Rejiek Hidesman XP loop, the potion swap glitch and gem duplication trick, clone items, and the spider gnome trick. And maybe song stacking if I play a bard instead of a Fighter/Illusionist.
Do you happen to know if you get an Oil of Speed from Imoen in the original BG1, or if there's another early source of the potion? Can wands be recharged in the vanilla game?
Yes wands can be recharged in the original game, and there are no summons limits either.
After switching to Tutu, I found that changing to the new engine after defeating Savarok wasn't so immersion breaking and so started playing SoA as well.
Once you know what the difference is (one charge is worth in other words), then anytime you you are a merchant you can check the price and thus see how many charges are left. Can't check during combat obviously, you would have to keep track in your head if in a dungeon or something.
After all, ToB is all about spamming HLAs anyway. The metagame knowledge to be gained was more about the previous parts. Maybe a SoA run without HLAs would gather more metagame knowledge, but other than that, I think you did a better job than what you seem to think.
Edit : Maybe one thing : a bit more flexibility with divine magic would probably have helped ? With only one cleric, if he goes down, you can't revive anybody for a while. It's the reason why you had to grind to get to HLA in SoA, which coincides with the moment where you seemed to lose interest in the run a bit. Am I wrong ?
I got a Wand of Lightning by accident in the Unseeing Eye lair, but refrained from using it until ToB.
However, if you're new to the game, a relatively blind no-reload run might be a fun challenge (though I, personally, don't like the gameplay and storyline of the original campaign too much - though the expansions get better, and I really enjoy NWN2 (and I'd propably play it sometimes if it wouldn't have so many technical difficulties))
When PoE was released, I initially thought this would be the perfect modern game to do no-reload challenges in - because it seemed rather difficult the first time I played it, and I loved everything about the game in general. However, when I actually tried the "triple crown" challenge (path of damned, expert mode, trial of iron (which is no-reload)) for the first time in my third run through the game, I succeeded right away, and I learned that many, many people did so as well. Once you figure out the system, there's not much that can spoil your success. I think it's a rather unique quality of the BG series (and its difficulty improving mods) to include encounters that need many varied approaches (depending on party composition) and not just "one tactic to rule them all" (which is also a fault of SoD, in my opinion - its so easy to abuse wands of fire and other sources of fireballs to trivialize a lot of the difficulty in almost every encounter. A similiar thing is true for ToB thanks to HLA access).
@Grond0's run notably includes a Shaman, who could use Recall Spirit in case the Cleric of Helm dies. I chose three sorcerers instead because I was concerned about having enough Magic Missiles, Melf's Acid Arrows, and Lower Resistance spells to take down Belhifet, but I do believe that Grond0's party makeup is much more optimal than mine because of that Shaman. I disregarded the Shaman due to its poor AC and unreliable dance, but overlooked the massive utility of its summons and the Recall Spirit spell. My extra sorcerer has proved largely extraneous. Even in ToB when Wish is so important, Project Image on two sorcerers would be sufficient to get Wish-rests when necessary.
I think @Grond0 has identified the truly optimal party for a poverty run, and I would endorse his party over mine:
Totemic Druid
Bounty Hunter
Cleric of Helm
Shaman
Sorcerer
Sorcerer
It covers all the bases at every stage of the saga without leaving any party members unused. Spirit critters, traps, Sleep, Command, and the Seeking Sword are extremely powerful and all but necessary for ankhegs, basilisks, and early BG1 groups; you need 6 castings of Invisibility early on to travel safely, plus Invisibility on Liia Jannath to win the Ducal Palace fight; summons are critical for BG1's higher-end fights, including Angelo; Fireballs, Skull Traps, and/or Spirit Fire are necessary for killing Tazok, Diarmid, and Semaj; you need various area-effect options to deal with large groups in SoD (and this party has four party members with area-effect damage spells); you need at least two characters to cast Raise Dead/Recall Spirit to deal with SoA unless your gameplay is perfectly safe (and you should never bet on your own competence in a no-reload run); Maze traps will do amazing things for crowd control from late SoA through ToB; Spike Traps are extremely important for Melissan; you need Wish-resting to deal with long fights in ToB; and you need both (Greater) Elemental Summoning and Summon (Fallen Planetar) to maintain competitive damage output into ToB, since the Cleric of Helm simply can't reliably tank in the presence of Remove Magic.
The only character in that group that might be worthy of replacement is the Cleric of Helm, but since you'd still want another character for Raise Dead/Recall Spirit and the other cleric kits and multi-classes are so much weaker in a poverty run, I think the only competitive replacement would be a second Shaman, since it would improve the mobility and reliability of the other Shaman's summons.
As for NPCs, Faldorn would be a lousy replacement for a Totemic Druid, but Tiax could fill some of the roles of the Cleric of Helm and the Bounty Hunter, and his Summon Ghast might be worth his inferior stats compared to a player-created character.
With Spell Revisions installed, things would be radically different. Aside from SR nerfing some spells that spellcasters, especially sorcerers, would lean heavily on, SR would change Enchanted Weapon so that it could create a +3 weapon of any kind except for +3 darts (though a future release might change that) for 24 hours. That would make fighter levels much, much more practical than they currently are, and therefore reduce the need for both summons and especially spell damage. Clerics of Lathander would also be a viable replacement for Clerics of Helm if they had access to a +3 mace or staff, and Totemic Druids might not be necessary because there are so many viable summons in SR, even at level 1. It might also be worth temporarily recruiting Jan so he could generate a bunch of flashers for a sorcerer-generated +3 crossbow.
You could also try minimal reload on a learning run. Or, continue to no-reload and, when you're on a run that is going great, keep going a bit with it even if you die somewhere along the way. But, be aware : no-reloading is addictive. You'll get to a point where reloading not only feels wrong, but also just take away your interest in the run.
Yes. And its possible you might even do it on the first try.