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Why do most HLAs seem underwhelming?

Question2Question2 Member Posts: 74
in Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
Like...deathblow. When you are level 20+, its not like level 10-12 enemies can touch you anyway...

Power attack? Most bosses are immune to crits or stuns anyway.

Resist magic : Oh look it does what a potion does...except it only lasts 4 rounds.

Most of the HLAs seem to be very short duration (so micro intensive) and have underwhelming effects. And you can only activate one per round.

Especially the ones that require a save...at level 20, pretty much every enemy you fight has saves of 1 or better anyway so will pass almost all saving throws. So that 20d10 dragon breath is in reality a 10d10 dragonbreath which averages out to 55 damage...hardly impressive considering all the fire resist enemies have.

Summon planetar/deva? Countered by death spell, which is available way earlier.

Comments

  • O_BruceO_Bruce Member Posts: 2,790
    If I remember it well, Devas, Planetars, Demos and Elemental Princes are immune to Death Spell and the likes.

    Personally I have no problems with Power Strike. Its stunning abillity is not working on main bosses, but it is working on plenty of things, and with improved haste cast by mages, the results are, well... stunning. Critical Strike also works well when combinet with improved haste.

    With fighters in particular, HLAs do a lot as fighters usually by themselves doesn't posses any special abillities (with exceptions of barbarian, berserker and kensai). HLAs changes that.
    Question2 said:


    Especially the ones that require a save...at level 20, pretty much every enemy you fight has saves of 1

    Citation needed. You also miss the fact that you, in fact, can cast Greater Malison to do something about enemies' saving throws. Dragon Breath in paricular has also 3 additional effects you don't mention at all: knockback, putting enemies unconcious for 1 round and bypassing magic resistance.
  • Durmir46Durmir46 Member Posts: 110
    edited August 2018
    I'd add that some classes have clearly OP HLAs (someone said "thief"?). Between spike traps, UAI, bard's HLA song, time stop, improved alacrity, etc., some HLAs are just insane.

    Truth is, fighters have HLAs that are not as good as some other classes, it does not make them useless.... Hardness, GWW for instance are still shining (although arguably you may prefer to use Improved Haste rather than using GWW). Critical strike is awesome: regardless of criticality immunity, it still guarantees you to land all your hits (which in cunjunction with IH is just plain fantastic).

    However it is true that HLAs are not fully balanced: some are weaker, some are just useless, and some are way too powerful. The issue may not be to make them all OP, but maybe to simply balance them appropriately.
  • Question2Question2 Member Posts: 74
    Greater malison sounds great on paper but...I find that it takes too long. For example lets say you are fighting belhifet. You need to spend several rounds lowering his resists and his saving throws before you can even start hitting him with spells...but hes immune to confusion, stun, etc anyway...

    If you are fighting anything that isnt immune to those, its probably something that your fighter can kill in 2-3 rounds max. Without the rest of the party doing any damage. Its very easy to get a fighter to do 100+ damage per round without haste.

    Like...why even bother with spells like finger of death, that rely on a saving throw...i mean its something that can force players to reload, sure, but thees no reason for players to use this spell at all. Anything that will fail the saving throw dies to the fighter before you can lower resists/saving throws and get the spell off anyway.

    About the only thing stun is useful for is to stun admanatinium golems since they take quite a while to kill with their 90% resist. Anything else that can be stunned dies too fast for the stun to matter anyway.

    Pretty much all the bosses have saving throws of 1. Sarevok, Tazok, etc.
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,459
    Nearly all bosses have holes in their defenses. Sarevok for instance can be held if you use something like doom or malison on him (or use a specialist caster or called shot from an archer or nymph hold monster). Even without anything else, he will often get stuck if you run him round inside webs. If you're playing in a party then the slow casting speeds for malison and doom are a non-issue (and even solo an arcane caster has the ability to use stoneskin by that time, while a divine caster has good defensces and won't necessarily be interrupted by damage anyway).

    I agree that thief HLAs are powerful, but that's largely as a result of meta-gaming (knowing when and where to put traps etc). Fighter HLAs are pretty useful in their own right though. It can be pretty handy being able to one-shot illithids if you're being attacked by a group of those for instance. You haven't mentioned smite, but that's incredibly useful - nothing like being able to guarantee a stun on Melissan given she's immune to so many effects :p.
  • BorekBorek Member Posts: 513
    Deathblow/Greater Deathblow are actually quite insane. Anything that lets you 1 shot Beholders and 95% of trash in SoA and probably 75% in LoB should not be sniffed at. In fact i found the easiest way to deal with beholders in a non-cheesy way (No Shield, or SCS options to remove/nerf shield) is to use a ranged attack when GB is up, i actually miss it when i play FMT because my modded HLA's do not include it. It makes late dual class solo runs super fun. I mean sure trash is trash and you can often mash through them, but 5-6 trashy 8-12th level fighters are gonna connect a few times and get in the way a while lot, you can drop them before they reach you with throwing daggers and DB, something that is amazing on the coveted Kensai>.. Dual class options.
  • sarevok57sarevok57 Member Posts: 6,002
    also, usually the best saves that enemies will have even in ToB is save vs death 3, and save vs spell 6 ( these are the 2 most important ones ) the odd enemy ( and i mean real ODD ) enemy might have better but this is usually it

    so with that being said, any ability that requires a save vs spell, has a flat 25% chance to work regardless of whats going on ( unless this creature is wearing/using magical items/effects that increase save )

    and anything that requires a save vs death only have a 10% chance of success but usually HLAs come with penalties to saves in this category

    so topped off with 5 attacks per round ( at least, not including whirlwinds and improved haste ) you should at least worse case scenario get 1 or 2 of your attacks to do something in 1 round
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