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...
Well, it seems I forgot quite a big nugget of info in that post... Spiritual Hammer doesn't add strength to its thac0 and damage, making it much worse than Seeking Sword. Seems like a Priest of Lathander would need SR version of Enchanted Weapon to be relevant in a poverty run. Oh well...
And, by the way @semiticgod, what is your plan to deal with the Ravager or Amelyssan, both requiring +4 weapons to be hurt ? Are you going to rely on your Priest of Helm for these fights ?
@Arctodus: I hadn't thought about it, but in both cases, our other options include Holy Power+Harm, Energy Blades, the Earth Elemental Token, and Pierce Shield to lower the enemy's MR.
@Neverused Well, @Ygramul is managing the no-reload thread, so he's the one who can enter people in the Hall. And, as far as I know, he's beem missing in action for quite a while (he hasn't change the title in long time).
@Neverused: As a moderator I can put it in the first post if @Ygramul isn't available. I should have clearance from @Ygramul, though, if I'm going to edit the thread when he's not online.
After beating Melissan, I'm convinced that the Shaman is indeed an excellent choice for a poverty run even in ToB. Implosion allowed me to lock down Melissan once I removed her defenses using Spell Thrust and Spellstrike, and a Shaman could spam Implosion if an SCS install did not make it an innate spell. A lot of our damage came from Energy Blades, and Shamans can cast that as well. In fact, you might just be able to score an instant kill on Melissan once she appears:
1. Activate a triple Pierce Shield Chain Contingency on Melissan to remove her Spell Trap and drop her MR to zero. 2. Hit her with Breach, via spell or the Wand of Spell Striking from Wish. 3. Hit her with Implosion. 4. While she's helpless, attack her with Harm.
I think a Shaman should pick Physical Mirror as a level 6 spell pick, at least once it hits level 21 (otherwise it would have to wait until level 30), because otherwise it has no defense against a Fallen Solar's dispelling vorpal arrows or Illasera's dispelling arrows. Unless you're on a lower difficulty where the Fallen Solars don't spawn at the Throne of Bhaal, all priests should buff with Physical Mirror.
Now that I muffed my attempt at the eggs in Ust Natha :
1. Is the way out cleared anyway ? If not, what do I have to do ? 2. Can I go talk to Adalon without fighting her ? (I doubt it, but I'd like the confirmation.) 3. If I fight her, will any teammates leave me out of anger, even if she's the one attacking us ? (In the event that she actually attacks us.)
Edit : I wanna know, because, in the past, I always either got the eggs or killed Adalon outright. Now, I need to know if there's a third way out of that situation. And :
4. Silver dragons breathe ice, am I right ? 5. If I fight her, is there anything else I should worry about ?
@Arctodus: To escape the Underdark, you either need to return the eggs to Adalon or kill her. Or perhaps simply turn her hostile; I saw a speedrun of a pre-EE game that opened the way to the surface just by hitting Adalon with a lightning bolt from off-screen. She has a scroll on her body that ostensibly opens the Underdark exit, but I don't believe the scroll does it; I think attacking her does.
It doesn't matter if you can talk to Adalon or not if you don't have the eggs; you'll still have to fight her.
To my knowledge, no NPCs leave if you fight Adalon. If it's anything like Edwin's unwillingness to fight Firkraag, the NPCs will definitely not leave if you attack Adalon without talking to her.
It should be possible to still get the eggs from Ust Natha just by fighting your way to the treasury even if the city is already hostile, assuming you've already gotten the treasury key (otherwise the door should be locked). However, I would view this as significantly more dangerous than Adalon, even if you didn't fight all of the drow and tried to sneak most of the way there, using Teleport Field to scatter the enemies when the party gets boxed in by the drow in the many tight corners of the city.
Is the city still accessible to you at this point? I remember trying to get back in one day and finding the front gate was sealed.
Adalon's breath weapon deals cold damage. You can find some Potions of Cold Resistance at the duergar shop to the south. She also has a breath weapon that inflicts paralysis, so keep the Ring of Free Action on Charname and make sure your other party members are buffed with Free Action, Chaotic Commands, or Potions of Freedom.
I have just done a fresh installation and have discovered that the burial of Gorion is missing. Presumably this means that I have at least one mod missing from my installation. Does anybody know which it is?
Now that I muffed my attempt at the eggs in Ust Natha :
1. Is the way out cleared anyway ? If not, what do I have to do ? 2. Can I go talk to Adalon without fighting her ? (I doubt it, but I'd like the confirmation.) 3. If I fight her, will any teammates leave me out of anger, even if she's the one attacking us ? (In the event that she actually attacks us.)
Edit : I wanna know, because, in the past, I always either got the eggs or killed Adalon outright. Now, I need to know if there's a third way out of that situation. And :
4. Silver dragons breathe ice, am I right ? 5. If I fight her, is there anything else I should worry about ?
Under some circumstances you can bribe the gate guards to let you out of the Underdark while you are still a drow, have they turned hostile now?
@Balrog99: On a general question like this, the most important factor is whichever strikes you as most interesting. But if you did want to make the decision primarily based on the power balance, I'd have to say the Shadowdancer is the best thief for a Charname in a no-reload context. Hide in Plain Sight is an absolutely fabulous escape option. The half-orc's 19 STR will make it easier to land backstabs, but HiPS is the more important factor, since it can let you survive many situations that would otherwise be fatal.
For a non-Charname thief, I find Bounty Hunters to have by far the most utility, but a lot of that is because I have other anti-mage options in most of my parties. If you don't have a Wizard Slayer, Inquisitor, Blackguard, at least two mages, and/or a dart user, the Assassin would be more useful due to its ability to disrupt mage spells with poisoned darts.
@Balrog99 and @semiticgod, I agree that Shadowdancers are very strong defensively. In my other post I didn't mention their innate +1 to all saves, making them the best thief kit defensively when it comes to resisting magical and elemental effects or damage. (Swashbucklers have the best physical defenses.)
Still, I'd like to give Balrog a word of warning about the Shadowdancer. You are going to fail your stealth checks every once in a while, even with lots of skill points invested in HiS and MS. My advice would therefore be to always monitor your aura and your stealth checks very, very carefully. Pause immediately when you see the stealth failure notification in the combat log. Becoming visible for a second or less can prompt an enemy to cast a spell at you or use a wand on you. And you may disappear again before the spell-casting has been completed or the wand effect materialized but many (AoE) spells or wand effects will still hit you. SCS Aasim for example will use his wand of the heavens on you the moment he sees you. And many SCS mages like to cast AoE spells like Hold, Skull Trap, Chaos that can still mess you up even when you've gone invisible. Always keep Shadowsteps and invisibility potions at the ready. Shadowstep is a great skill to get you out of trouble, but it does not activate instantly and its "casting" can be interrupted.
All in all my problem with the Shadowdancer is that their stealth at will ability is so powerful that it can make you overconfident. If you succeed at HiPSing say 100 times in a row, it's easy to assume the 101st attempt will also work, and that's an irresponsible attitude in a no-reload context.
@Grond0: I wouldn't recommend fighting the SoD lich in a poverty run, even with the unnerfed Insect Plague at your disposal--which should work, since the lich is not immune to level 5 spells; only level 3 and below. But if you do, bear in mind that the lich does have a Web+Stinking Cloud Minor Sequencer that he might use to circumvent spell failure. It looks like he won't cast it under certain conditions, however, so I think you could prevent him from using it if the nearest character to the lich has one or more of the following:
1. Chaotic Commands 2. Save vs. death of 2 or lower 3. Spell Immunity: Evocation
Judging by the script, the lich will not care if you have Free Action active; it'll still use the sequencer to try to knock you out with the Stinking Cloud. And it looks like he'll gladly ignore a spirit animal's immunities, but a skeleton should prevent him from using the attack. If you do want to take him on, you might consider using Spirit Fire; he seems vulnerable to level 4 spells. It won't do much damage since he buffs with Protection from Energy, but he only has 48 HP.
Mollyboo's experience showed me that destroying the phylactery is not enough to kill him; it just prevents him from reforming. Also, it seems impossible to flee the area if you destroy the phylactery but have not yet killed the lich.
Jaheira might be a good candidate for a poverty run, as she gains access to Harper's Call at only 180,000 XP, much earlier than a Shaman gets Recall Spirit or a cleric gets Raise Dead. Considering her spell progression, she'd actually be a decent replacement for a Shaman. She wouldn't be as strong in the early game for various reasons, but her fighter HLAs and access to Earth Elemental form would make her quite sturdy in ToB.
There's no rule in the poverty run that you're not allowed to change around party members. You could play a group with no Raise Dead options whatsoever and still handle deaths perfectly fine. All you'd have to do is drop off one character in a room somewhere, go grab Jaheira, a cleric, or M'Khiin, have them resurrect your fallen characters, and then retrieve the character you temporarily ditched, replacing whoever you recruited to cast Raise Dead/Harper's Call/Recall Spirit. NPCs scale with the player's XP, so once you got to a high enough level, those NPCs will already have the spell you need.
The downside is that you can't resurrect characters unless you can reach an NPC, which means you won't be able to resurrect anyone in Spellhold, City Sushi, or the Underdark until your mages or druids hit epic levels. But it means you don't have to factor in the limited access to resurrection when planning a party. Single-classed clerics and Shamans aren't strictly necessary; they could be replaced with a sorcerer.
So, for BG1, you could use @Grond0's Shoal strategy to resurrect multiple party members as a one-time event, and for SoD and BG2, you could just NPCs to resurrect fallen party members.
I'm looking at a Spell Revisions+Item Revisions install, and after doing the math, I don't think having good melee options is all that important. Your best options for dealing lots of melee damage involve bringing a monk into the party, or Wilson, or using SR's Enchanted Weapon to give a +3 mace to a Cleric of Lathander, or choosing a Fighter/Druid who uses Earth Elemental form. But Minute Meteors and Energy Blades give roughly equivalent damage output. They're 4 or 5 points of THAC0 worse and the damage output doesn't last as long, but Minute Meteors and Energy Blades deal a fair amount of damage and will work fine against most enemies who don't have extremely low AC.
A party composed entirely of sorcerers, with maybe one cleric for Chaotic Commands and a thief for traps and such, would be perfectly viable in a poverty run.
I'm testing out a Spell Revisions+Item Revisions poverty run and the beginning is rough. Command is no longer a guaranteed knockout for critters below level 4, and while Sleep scales with levels, it starts out only affecting level 1 critters. Plus, there's no level 1 Blindness spell, so we have very poor options for disabling enemies. No Protection from Petrification, either, so basilisks won't be safe until we get Break Enchantment.
I'm running four Dragon Disciples, a Cleric of Lathander, and a Shaman. We'll be in excellent shape by late BG1 for various reasons, but the early levels are a mess. The best we can do against ankhegs is Obscuring Fog to effectively blind them (it reduces visual range without a saving throw) while they're busy murdering our summoned gibberlings, then hit them with Magic Stone and maybe throw some spirit critters at them if they survive the process.
@Grond0, what sort of quests would you go for at early levels if basilisks, ankhegs, and sirines were ruled out?
@semiticgod For an IR/SR install, think about a ranger/cleric. They'll have fighter's level and also have access to two +3 weapons at level 9 through druid's spells : Shillelagh and Flame Blade. You also have two different types of melee damage (blunt and slashing) and a weapon that can go through Stoneskin with Flame Blade. Buff him up with cleric and arcane spells and he might be the only pure meleer you can need in a poverty run. With HLAs, he will be a ton better than a cleric of Lathander at dealing damage.
@semiticgod are ankhegs not too unintelligent to target vulnerable creatures? If that's the case you should be able to use shamanic summons produced by a shaman from outside visual range to distract them while you nip in briefly to attack.
Assuming you're making one of your dragon disciples the PC I would have thought it would be worth a spell slot for a familiar for them. Are any of those immune to the basilisk gaze in Revisions?
Other good targets are those who have no range capability - like Shoal, Greywolf, Caldo & Krumm, Mirianne's ogrillons, Bjornin's half-ogres, belt ogre, Joia's hobgoblins etc.
If you lure Vax away from Zal and then attack him he doesn't have his conversation and that leaves Zal still neutral - ready to be toasted by synchronised breathing. On a similar theme I usually lure Brage over to the edge of the map before talking to him - leaving Laryssa behind as a future victim.
Layered breath weapons should also deal with Gnarl and Hairtooth before they could reach you across the bridge.
There are a fair number of potential targets that start neutral. You'd need to practise it as I remember the cone for the breath weapon as being pretty extensive, but I would have thought it should be possible to target multiple breath weapons simultaneously on someone like Silke to give her no realistic chance of survival.
Re your earlier post I'm running under rather different poverty rules to yours - so no possibility of using NPCs (for me the interesting challenge of a party poverty run is about what a party can do using their own capabilities rather than what additional resources they can generate from items or NPCs).
My Dragon Disciples won't get their breath weapon until level 3. It's getting to that point that's giving me trouble. Shoal is a no-go; I might need her for the resurrection thing.
I'd need to scout out the enemy in order to put my Shaman in the right position to let summons kill ankhegs, but I have no source of invisibility due to the lack of a familiar (Charname is Chaotic Good anyway and for some reason Fairy Dragons don't get Invisibility Sphere in my install like they're supposed to) or any thief in the party (I don't want another Bounty Hunter like last time). I have to use gibberlings to distract the ankhegs instead, and cast Obscuring Mist to keep the ankheg blind for 6 rounds if things go poorly.
@Arctodus: A Ranger/Cleric would be extremely easy to kill in a poverty run with SR installed. I'd need to get all the way to level 6 just to cast Ghost Armor on it for a total AC of -4 with 18 DEX and Barkskin. Before then, its AC would be 4 or 6. Soon after that, my sorcerers get Stoneskin and I'll have better choices for tanks.
Flame Blade deals no slashing damage in my install, so no STR bonuses, and Shillelagh does no more damage than a +3 flail created by Enchanted Weapon. Due to the APR bonuses from Holy Power and Boon of Lathander (which stacks), a ranger/cleric would not actually have better damage output until 3 million XP, and that's only for a single round per casting of GWW. It's not worth the sluggish spell slot growth.
@semiticgod To be honest, with a little bit of power leveling, I don't think the first few levels would be all that bad. Actually, at first, you even could rely on Magical Stone to get decent range damage (for the beginning of the game, at least) at 3 APR. Once you get Spirit Armor, you could drop the c/r AC low enough to be acceptable. After that, you could still tank with Sorcerers, but have c/r not tank, but deal good melee damage. It's quite easy to get to 25 strength with cleric's buff in SR. The Entangle effect from the Shillelagh in SR is also something that can be useful throughout the game. And, even if Flame Blade doesn't do slashing damage (you were right, my bad), it still is gonna deal 2D6+3 fire damage on hit - through Stoneskin - at a decent thac0. It has its use.
But you're right on another point : APR. That's where c/r doesn't cut it. It will take ages to get beyond 2 APR with a melee weapon. It would be an ok damage dealer that would only really shine in ToB, sadly.
Guys, isn't Tiax supposed to be in Beregost with SCS installed? I've seen him in previous EET installs but not this one. I was hoping to recruit him so we could use his ghast, since his ghast isn't so incredibly weak in my current install (my previous one cruelly nerfed it).
My Dragon Disciples won't get their breath weapon until level 3. It's getting to that point that's giving me trouble. Shoal is a no-go; I might need her for the resurrection thing.
I'd need to scout out the enemy in order to put my Shaman in the right position to let summons kill ankhegs, but I have no source of invisibility due to the lack of a familiar (Charname is Chaotic Good anyway and for some reason Fairy Dragons don't get Invisibility Sphere in my install like they're supposed to) or any thief in the party (I don't want another Bounty Hunter like last time). I have to use gibberlings to distract the ankhegs instead, and cast Obscuring Mist to keep the ankheg blind for 6 rounds if things go poorly.
@semiticgod Vax and Zal are the duo that have the bracers of archery (same area as Rufie).
I assume from what you've said about ankhegs that clerics no longer have access to sanctuary at 1st level. Even without that though the shaman tactic is still possible. I imagine you've got at least an idea of where ankhegs are in their nest. You can avoid alerting the first one for instance by sending characters down there individually and, immediately on transition, moving them north. They can then circle slightly counter-clockwise so that the big rock is hiding them from the ankheg guarding the entrance. If you double-tap the space bar as you inch around that rock you can determine exactly where the ankheg is without alerting it. The shaman can then position itself where it is out of sight, but at least one of its arriving summons will see the ankheg and attack. Obscuring Mist sounds like a pretty useful spell anyway though.
The EE nerfed familiars so that they get a progression in powers from BGEE to ToB. The fairy dragon would I guess get invisibility sphere in SoA (I'm not sure about SoD), although by then that's probably not much use and a different familiar might be better for your purposes (perhaps the cat to give you a stealthy scout?).
Comments
And, by the way @semiticgod, what is your plan to deal with the Ravager or Amelyssan, both requiring +4 weapons to be hurt ? Are you going to rely on your Priest of Helm for these fights ?
1. Activate a triple Pierce Shield Chain Contingency on Melissan to remove her Spell Trap and drop her MR to zero.
2. Hit her with Breach, via spell or the Wand of Spell Striking from Wish.
3. Hit her with Implosion.
4. While she's helpless, attack her with Harm.
I think a Shaman should pick Physical Mirror as a level 6 spell pick, at least once it hits level 21 (otherwise it would have to wait until level 30), because otherwise it has no defense against a Fallen Solar's dispelling vorpal arrows or Illasera's dispelling arrows. Unless you're on a lower difficulty where the Fallen Solars don't spawn at the Throne of Bhaal, all priests should buff with Physical Mirror.
Now that I muffed my attempt at the eggs in Ust Natha :
1. Is the way out cleared anyway ? If not, what do I have to do ?
2. Can I go talk to Adalon without fighting her ? (I doubt it, but I'd like the confirmation.)
3. If I fight her, will any teammates leave me out of anger, even if she's the one attacking us ? (In the event that she actually attacks us.)
Edit : I wanna know, because, in the past, I always either got the eggs or killed Adalon outright. Now, I need to know if there's a third way out of that situation. And :
4. Silver dragons breathe ice, am I right ?
5. If I fight her, is there anything else I should worry about ?
It doesn't matter if you can talk to Adalon or not if you don't have the eggs; you'll still have to fight her.
To my knowledge, no NPCs leave if you fight Adalon. If it's anything like Edwin's unwillingness to fight Firkraag, the NPCs will definitely not leave if you attack Adalon without talking to her.
It should be possible to still get the eggs from Ust Natha just by fighting your way to the treasury even if the city is already hostile, assuming you've already gotten the treasury key (otherwise the door should be locked). However, I would view this as significantly more dangerous than Adalon, even if you didn't fight all of the drow and tried to sneak most of the way there, using Teleport Field to scatter the enemies when the party gets boxed in by the drow in the many tight corners of the city.
Is the city still accessible to you at this point? I remember trying to get back in one day and finding the front gate was sealed.
Adalon's breath weapon deals cold damage. You can find some Potions of Cold Resistance at the duergar shop to the south. She also has a breath weapon that inflicts paralysis, so keep the Ring of Free Action on Charname and make sure your other party members are buffed with Free Action, Chaotic Commands, or Potions of Freedom.
Under some circumstances you can bribe the gate guards to let you out of the Underdark while you are still a drow, have they turned hostile now?
And, @semiticgod, the city is not accessible anymore once you're revealed and you go out. I just tried it.
Half-orc thief, which kit is best? For solo I'm thinking swashbuckler or bounty hunter. For non-solo I think maybe assassin is best. Thoughts?
For a non-Charname thief, I find Bounty Hunters to have by far the most utility, but a lot of that is because I have other anti-mage options in most of my parties. If you don't have a Wizard Slayer, Inquisitor, Blackguard, at least two mages, and/or a dart user, the Assassin would be more useful due to its ability to disrupt mage spells with poisoned darts.
Still, I'd like to give Balrog a word of warning about the Shadowdancer. You are going to fail your stealth checks every once in a while, even with lots of skill points invested in HiS and MS. My advice would therefore be to always monitor your aura and your stealth checks very, very carefully. Pause immediately when you see the stealth failure notification in the combat log. Becoming visible for a second or less can prompt an enemy to cast a spell at you or use a wand on you. And you may disappear again before the spell-casting has been completed or the wand effect materialized but many (AoE) spells or wand effects will still hit you. SCS Aasim for example will use his wand of the heavens on you the moment he sees you. And many SCS mages like to cast AoE spells like Hold, Skull Trap, Chaos that can still mess you up even when you've gone invisible. Always keep Shadowsteps and invisibility potions at the ready. Shadowstep is a great skill to get you out of trouble, but it does not activate instantly and its "casting" can be interrupted.
All in all my problem with the Shadowdancer is that their stealth at will ability is so powerful that it can make you overconfident. If you succeed at HiPSing say 100 times in a row, it's easy to assume the 101st attempt will also work, and that's an irresponsible attitude in a no-reload context.
1. Chaotic Commands
2. Save vs. death of 2 or lower
3. Spell Immunity: Evocation
Judging by the script, the lich will not care if you have Free Action active; it'll still use the sequencer to try to knock you out with the Stinking Cloud. And it looks like he'll gladly ignore a spirit animal's immunities, but a skeleton should prevent him from using the attack.
If you do want to take him on, you might consider using Spirit Fire; he seems vulnerable to level 4 spells. It won't do much damage since he buffs with Protection from Energy, but he only has 48 HP.
Mollyboo's experience showed me that destroying the phylactery is not enough to kill him; it just prevents him from reforming. Also, it seems impossible to flee the area if you destroy the phylactery but have not yet killed the lich.
There's no rule in the poverty run that you're not allowed to change around party members. You could play a group with no Raise Dead options whatsoever and still handle deaths perfectly fine. All you'd have to do is drop off one character in a room somewhere, go grab Jaheira, a cleric, or M'Khiin, have them resurrect your fallen characters, and then retrieve the character you temporarily ditched, replacing whoever you recruited to cast Raise Dead/Harper's Call/Recall Spirit. NPCs scale with the player's XP, so once you got to a high enough level, those NPCs will already have the spell you need.
The downside is that you can't resurrect characters unless you can reach an NPC, which means you won't be able to resurrect anyone in Spellhold, City Sushi, or the Underdark until your mages or druids hit epic levels. But it means you don't have to factor in the limited access to resurrection when planning a party. Single-classed clerics and Shamans aren't strictly necessary; they could be replaced with a sorcerer.
So, for BG1, you could use @Grond0's Shoal strategy to resurrect multiple party members as a one-time event, and for SoD and BG2, you could just NPCs to resurrect fallen party members.
I'm looking at a Spell Revisions+Item Revisions install, and after doing the math, I don't think having good melee options is all that important. Your best options for dealing lots of melee damage involve bringing a monk into the party, or Wilson, or using SR's Enchanted Weapon to give a +3 mace to a Cleric of Lathander, or choosing a Fighter/Druid who uses Earth Elemental form. But Minute Meteors and Energy Blades give roughly equivalent damage output. They're 4 or 5 points of THAC0 worse and the damage output doesn't last as long, but Minute Meteors and Energy Blades deal a fair amount of damage and will work fine against most enemies who don't have extremely low AC.
A party composed entirely of sorcerers, with maybe one cleric for Chaotic Commands and a thief for traps and such, would be perfectly viable in a poverty run.
I'm running four Dragon Disciples, a Cleric of Lathander, and a Shaman. We'll be in excellent shape by late BG1 for various reasons, but the early levels are a mess. The best we can do against ankhegs is Obscuring Fog to effectively blind them (it reduces visual range without a saving throw) while they're busy murdering our summoned gibberlings, then hit them with Magic Stone and maybe throw some spirit critters at them if they survive the process.
@Grond0, what sort of quests would you go for at early levels if basilisks, ankhegs, and sirines were ruled out?
Assuming you're making one of your dragon disciples the PC I would have thought it would be worth a spell slot for a familiar for them. Are any of those immune to the basilisk gaze in Revisions?
Other good targets are those who have no range capability - like Shoal, Greywolf, Caldo & Krumm, Mirianne's ogrillons, Bjornin's half-ogres, belt ogre, Joia's hobgoblins etc.
If you lure Vax away from Zal and then attack him he doesn't have his conversation and that leaves Zal still neutral - ready to be toasted by synchronised breathing. On a similar theme I usually lure Brage over to the edge of the map before talking to him - leaving Laryssa behind as a future victim.
Layered breath weapons should also deal with Gnarl and Hairtooth before they could reach you across the bridge.
There are a fair number of potential targets that start neutral. You'd need to practise it as I remember the cone for the breath weapon as being pretty extensive, but I would have thought it should be possible to target multiple breath weapons simultaneously on someone like Silke to give her no realistic chance of survival.
Re your earlier post I'm running under rather different poverty rules to yours - so no possibility of using NPCs (for me the interesting challenge of a party poverty run is about what a party can do using their own capabilities rather than what additional resources they can generate from items or NPCs).
My Dragon Disciples won't get their breath weapon until level 3. It's getting to that point that's giving me trouble. Shoal is a no-go; I might need her for the resurrection thing.
I'd need to scout out the enemy in order to put my Shaman in the right position to let summons kill ankhegs, but I have no source of invisibility due to the lack of a familiar (Charname is Chaotic Good anyway and for some reason Fairy Dragons don't get Invisibility Sphere in my install like they're supposed to) or any thief in the party (I don't want another Bounty Hunter like last time). I have to use gibberlings to distract the ankhegs instead, and cast Obscuring Mist to keep the ankheg blind for 6 rounds if things go poorly.
@Arctodus: A Ranger/Cleric would be extremely easy to kill in a poverty run with SR installed. I'd need to get all the way to level 6 just to cast Ghost Armor on it for a total AC of -4 with 18 DEX and Barkskin. Before then, its AC would be 4 or 6. Soon after that, my sorcerers get Stoneskin and I'll have better choices for tanks.
Flame Blade deals no slashing damage in my install, so no STR bonuses, and Shillelagh does no more damage than a +3 flail created by Enchanted Weapon. Due to the APR bonuses from Holy Power and Boon of Lathander (which stacks), a ranger/cleric would not actually have better damage output until 3 million XP, and that's only for a single round per casting of GWW. It's not worth the sluggish spell slot growth.
But you're right on another point : APR. That's where c/r doesn't cut it. It will take ages to get beyond 2 APR with a melee weapon. It would be an ok damage dealer that would only really shine in ToB, sadly.
I assume from what you've said about ankhegs that clerics no longer have access to sanctuary at 1st level. Even without that though the shaman tactic is still possible. I imagine you've got at least an idea of where ankhegs are in their nest. You can avoid alerting the first one for instance by sending characters down there individually and, immediately on transition, moving them north. They can then circle slightly counter-clockwise so that the big rock is hiding them from the ankheg guarding the entrance. If you double-tap the space bar as you inch around that rock you can determine exactly where the ankheg is without alerting it. The shaman can then position itself where it is out of sight, but at least one of its arriving summons will see the ankheg and attack. Obscuring Mist sounds like a pretty useful spell anyway though.
The EE nerfed familiars so that they get a progression in powers from BGEE to ToB. The fairy dragon would I guess get invisibility sphere in SoA (I'm not sure about SoD), although by then that's probably not much use and a different familiar might be better for your purposes (perhaps the cat to give you a stealthy scout?).