Desther Fight (end of Ch.1) Possible SPOILERS!

Zyorron

The Desther boss fight to end Ch.1 is a rip. I had to lower the hardness to Easy, AND cheat like hell (cowsfromhell !!) to get him to surrender. The whole event feels contrived. Why in the hells would he surrender,,, when he must have known his execution was the only likely outcome. Also, why would you surrender when you've got ~1150 hit points?? How the hells am I,,, a level 4 Wizard/ level 4 Pale Master supposed to defeat such an opponent... no matter how many buffs and potions I consume. Now I remember why I quit playing NWN years ago, but this time I'm going to finish it, if I have to cheat the entire rest of the way.

scriver

It's easily one of the hardest encounters in the game. The final boss is a cakewalk in comparison.

SuperFunHappy

You don't have to cheat. You just need to use the better classes and the right henchman. If you use a pure cleric, druid or bard and have Grimgnaw as your henchman you should have an easier time beating him compared to going wizard/pale master.

Balkoth

First of all, the TITLE of your thread is a spoiler. There's no "possible" spoilers, that's a "definite" spoiler.

Zyorron said:

Also, why would you surrender when you've got ~1150 hit points??

Would it make you feel better if he had 200 HP and surrendered at 50 HP vs having 1150 HP and surrendering at 1000 HP (or whatever it is)? They wanted to make sure Desther didn't accidentally get killed by a crit from a scythe or something, I assume, and perhaps didn't know of a better way back then when designing the fight.

As to why he'd surrender at all? He'd given up and literally had nothing left to live for besides trying to cause more misery by explaining what happened.

Zyorron said:

How the hells am I,,, a level 4 Wizard/ level 4 Pale Master supposed to defeat such an opponent... no matter how many buffs and potions I consume.

Well, here's a problem: Wizard 4/Pale Master 4 is a very weak build. Pale Master is best used for melee builds wanting to get more AC and critical immunity, not wizards.

If you had been a level 8 Wizard instead you would have had...

1 extra feat (from being a Wizard)
4 more caster level (so double duration and damage on spells)
Access to 4th level spells (like Stoneskin and Improved Invisibility)

Basically, your ability as a spellcaster kind of sucks right now compared to what it could be. Your Fireballs and Magic Missiles do half damage, your spells last half as long, and you don't have access to more powerful spells.

Sulteric

I beat him rather handily as a rogue with dual swords. I just buffed up with potions of aid, speed and barksin.

Artona

I agree that the whole encounter is rather poorly designed - I even think that it would be more satisfying if he went down without a fight, after you taken care of his goons.
But I recall that he is easy to outmanoeuvre - my bard/shadowdancer defeated him with frost wand from prologue by running around and shooting occasionally.
Not very heroic, but he is the bard, so he'll tell slightly different tale.