Doing damage with casters?

malachi151

It seems that in BG2 even more than BG1 I don't end up doing much damage with casters. Mostly I end up just buffing, de-buffing and healing, etc.

In BG1 I got to where I was actually doing a good portion of my damage with spells, but it seems that in BG2 mostly what I end up doing with Arcane casters is casting Haste and de-buffing targets. I'd say that 99% of the damage dealt is from weapons, not spells. This is of course even more true of fighter/mages, but in any party, even with 3 Arcane casters it seems all the battle time is taken up with buffing and de-buffing.

Is this how it is for everyone?

Artona

How far are you in BG2? Because once you got Incendiary Cloud, Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting and so on mages will be very potent in dealing damage. There are, however, enemies that are much easier to harm with weapons, like golems and drow.

recklessheart

I can imagine that's how it is for everybody, yes. In any event, you aren't doing anything 'wrong'. The reality is that Mages can do everything very, very well. Other classes cannot. That means that Mages naturally gravitate towards the role(s) that the rest of the party cannot fill. A Fighter can do damage: they can do almost nothing else. Even a multiclass Fighter is usually weaving the traits of their second class into the primary function of fighting.

A Mage can do a ton of damage. If you want to use them that way, it is a lot of fun. It's exhaustive, however, reliant on more micromanagement; pausing; and recovering via rest. Doing damage with other classes is more automatic, and for that reason I imagine they will surpass a Mage in damage output for most players.

That said... Nobody clears a room like a Mage. Assuming you only ever use damaging spells as a Mage when AoE becomes necessary, they'll probably still be competitive with most party members for kills by the end of the game.

What you can be sure of is that the capacity in which your Mages are currently serving is a capacity - just like most others - in which they excel beyond their peers. So if you're enjoying it, keep doing what you're doing.

unavailable

Yeah, fighters are are generally better at damage even in the late game. Certianly less fuss. Late game mage is like the baldurs gate version of fallouts mininuke or dooms BFG: they're going to clear rooms almost immediately, and are on occasion the best way of killing things but the simpler guns are going to do the most killing in the long run. Which is why it is recommended to fill spell books full of buffs and debuffs ad other supportive spells.

If you want your mage to do more damage one easy and effective way of doing so is the cleric spell, chant. It raises minimum damage by 1. So a magic missle without chant does 1-5 damage, but with chant it does 2-5 damage. Sounds pretty small until you remember that you'll be casting hundreds of magic missles, and that having the minimum raised is going to increase the damage of those 100 missles by 20%. Also your ighters hit harder, and you take less damage and get instakilled by other casters less often. Chant improves your luck and worsens the enemies, and that is a big deal in such a luck based game as this.

ThacoBell

Baldur's Gate isn't luck based. When you REALLY know what you are doing, you almost completely eliminate luck from the equation.

unavailable

yeah but baldurs gate is not a hard game.

Borek

It does depend somewhat on the difficulty setting, i'm on LOB (SCS) now and truth is most of the enemies have way too many HP's to be killed by a realistic number of damaging spells. I mean it can be done, but if every fight is AA > 6-10 damage spells, that's a heck of a lot of resting and slow progress, so i've been forced to move to using Summons that are usually immune to most/all of the enemy damage with my F/M/T opening with a Backstab then using melee to kill with. Disabling spells are also much more useful like Horror, even Wraithform (only learnable in BG1) is amazing as it is relatively low level and makes you immune to non-magical weapons for long enough to melee down an encounter.

lunar

Chain contingency 3 horrid wiltings for enemy sighted, nearest enemy. (60-480 damage)
Triple cone of cold or sunfire triggers. (120-300 damage for cone of cold!)
Three flame arrows or skulltraps via sequencer hurt, too! (60-360 damage)
Spam Dragon Breath via improved alacrity (four castings give 80-800 damage, sorcerers are the best at this job)
Fill a spawn point with 10+ skull traps and delayed blast fireballs. (10 skull traps do 200-1200 damage)
Fight in triple incendiary clouds while immune to fire (either protected, or dragon sorcerer kit) (60-240 damage per round)
If all else fails, timestop and hurl all of your energy blades-they will auto hit. Cast energy blade again and repeat.

Yeah high level spell casters can have some nice damage output and can obliterate hordes of enemies quickly.

Khyron

I too mostly use mages for debuff, crowd control and own buffs..

But this isn't because I don't know how to deal damage with them, it's because half the time i can't be bothered to cast their spells.. i find that offensive casting script often gets a little carried away and annoys me, and i find it better to just let my melee lads kill whatever is in my way.

Though against dragons, liches etc etc, i find mages to be golden.. but again, that's for debuffs mostly.

Unless i find a specific encounter rather difficult.. then i'll memorize loads of skull traps, cast them, rest, repeat.. and then watch the total obliteration of my enemies.

Pantalion

The optimal use for a mage is not generally dealing damage, but completely locking down the enemy so they are helpless, killing them outright, or generally rendering encounters harmless.

While weapons may be "dealing the damage", the mage already killed them with the stun spell, dropped the mage's defences with Breach, took out the entire epic level mage posse with Polymorph Self, slapped the Demilich to death with a stick, tanked the dragon better than a fighter ever could with Fireshield+PfMW, handled the Mindflayers with some Mordy's Swords, or cast a Death Spell and wiped out the entire troll mound without dealing a single point of damage.

If you really need damage for some reason, a wand of fire deals 12d6 in a line and a Wand of Lightning deals 18d6. Neither needs spells.