Can I get away with taking only one arcane caster into ToB?
dunbar
Member Posts: 1,603
Whenever I've gone on to ToB before my charname has either been a mage or a f/m and I've always had Edwin along as well.
This time though I've gone tank heavy: Charname (berserker), Korgan, Viconia, Edwin and Hexxat are currently going through SoA like a hot knife through butter but I'm worried that just one mage won't give me enough defence-stripping spells for the big fights in ToB.
Thoughts anyone?
Also, who could I give the sixth slot to?
This time though I've gone tank heavy: Charname (berserker), Korgan, Viconia, Edwin and Hexxat are currently going through SoA like a hot knife through butter but I'm worried that just one mage won't give me enough defence-stripping spells for the big fights in ToB.
Thoughts anyone?
Also, who could I give the sixth slot to?
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About the sixth slot: Sarevok would feel right at home in your party.
as ThacoBell said, you don't even need one, but that is IF you know what you are doing
my normal party set ups are usually this:
3 melees
1 ranged cleric
1 ranged thief
1 ranged wizerd
and as i said before many MANY runs done this way, in fact for ToB i find a more "warrior" heavy crew to be more useful with all the dead magic zones, wild magic zones, and the fact that so many enemies have such high magic resistance/ saving throws and the like
nothing like having 6 characters all using greater whirlwind at once
Bottomline, if you have some kind of Plan B for dealing with mage protections then feel free to do whatever you want.
Obviously, if you run mods that makes mages more powerful (like SCS) then the meta changes and you have to adjust accordingly.
As for the Wizard chess then over 90% of the time all you need is Staff of the Magi, go invis until PFMW drops then bash once dispelling everything, re-invis, see what new defenses they cast and tailor your next spell. For the sneaky ones (with SCS) that cast Spell Immunity-Abjuration it's a shortish duration spell so again just wait it out invisible. Heck most fights i use wand of fire, wand of Cloudkill and Staff of the Magi, it's not even worth throwing spells around unless it's a boss fight
Wand of cloudkill is flat out obscene, non-Lich mages are rarely immune to poison and if you stack more than 1 cloudkill it's almost guaranteed they won't be able to cast, with RIng of Gaxx and SOTM you can stand in the middle of it invisible chuckling as they all die from your potent Bhaal farts.
breach can be done away with with wands of spell striking, and i dont recall if only wizerds can use them, but a thief with UAI can use them, so that takes care of breach
important battles where haste is required i can just use GWW, even early ToB i will start having 2+ of these per day, and it's very difficult for foes to live through 30+ attacks in a couple of rounds, so that takes care of haste
mass invisibility on the other hand, this is mostly just for that mammoth +4 saving throw bonus and the -4 penalty baddies have to hit you with, but i suppose if your front line has hot saves, or if you have 3 berserkers going berserk that its almost the same thing, slap on some hardiness before battle and getting hit isnt too much an issue, especially if you are around 200 HP and have potions of superior healing, so i suppose that takes care of invisibility
@BelgarathMTH Its a casting speed of 6. It will cast faster than level 9 spells, so you don't have to worry about being immediately wrecked. In practice, the cast time doesn't even matter, as enemy mages will ALWAYS put up spell protections first. Which won't stop the swarm.
stack 3 web spells and as the foe is webbed pelt him with a MMM barrage, but is only 1 of the many ways a low level mage can kill "impossible" enemies. to become good with the wizard class you have to play it over and over, researching every time different strategies. this is a good reason to bring 2 mages.
for draconis 2 mages are really not needed, a high level mage can solo him using only 2 lev 7 spells without getting a single scratch. 2 mages are useful when you have less levels so few spells to cast each day, if you don't want to rest and re memorize often.
not true if we factor in the RoV and the fact that only very few foe need lev 9 spells to be disabled. breach is immediate with the robe and so is greater malison, a mage in full array casts at speed 4 spels that need speed 9 to a naked mage.
The mage NEEDS that overpowered robe to compete though. A naked druid will trounce a naked mage. Breach also doesn't always work, and can be blocked. Insect Plague cannot. Even with a casting speed of 4, thats 1 spell. The druid can hobble the mage further with nature's beauty. Its a pernamanent blind wih no save. So the mage cannot even target the druid. Mages get a lot of advantages over other classes, but the druid was pretty much designed as a mage killer.
Now Vs NPC mages, sure, Druids do well, but so does a lobotomized Boo. Against an actual player, no, just no, Druid is in with no chance.
i was only telling that for game purposes, player vs engine, the player mage can cast lev 9 spells faster then the player druid casts insect plague, supposing they use the equipment we have in game.
and this is a fact, not an opinion, give to the druid the AoP or to the mage AoP + RoV and everyone can do the math.
that told a druid is a good anti mage in the game and the very moment insect plague kicks in the npc casters are disabled. the player mage uses different tactics against npc casters and if well played they are both effective. it boils on taste and playstyle.
Insect Plague doesn't stop spell triggers or contingency spells so I think @Borek is right. A properly played high-level mage should beat a high-level druid close to 100% of the time in a head to head, bump into each other around a corner type situation.
and this is also the way a mage kills the mighty draconis, for the second form he has to distract the dragon with some summon if soloing or with some party member that survives adhw (thanks to the protection the mage casts on him) and time the TS casting so time freezes when the lizard is not invisible.
or maybe can cast imprisonment if the mage is lazy and cruel...
or at lower level the fact that the mage can disrupt the insect plague casting with a magic missile, melf magic arrow or flame arrow (all with cast time 0 due to equipment).
This is what I mean when I say that some people seem to put too much stock in what works in paper while completely ignoring what's actually happening in the game. Are you next going to say that bringing 2, 3 mages is wholly superior to any other setup? Are you actually suggesting that everyone who wants to "powergame to the max" MUST go through the trouble of doing the whole pre-buffing/pausing thing on *three* separate mages?
Well more power to you, I'll just go with what actually works in half the time and which requires (probably at most) half as much effort and enjoy the game that way.
And you're in for a rude awakening if you think a BG2 starting mage. which is actually up there as one of the more powerful starting classes in the game (bar no/minimum-rest runs), is "special" for being able to handle Improved Tactics fights. This, for example, was done more than a decade ago - even before people turned playing BG2 into a number crunch/"optimal method"-fest, and is a far more impressive feat I'd say.
probably i did misunderstood you or you misunderstood me. i never told that the only class that can solo tactics irenicus dungeon is the mage, and i personally back stabbed everything there with a thief as i usually solo it, finding minsk and jaheira only when i am ready to leave the dungeon so i gain more xp and find them and the other npcs at a higher level.
i felt that you was under estimating what the mage class can do, so i quoted you and wrote what i wrote.
now you tell:" a starting BG2 mage. which is actually one of the more powerful starting classes in the game" so it seems that you are well aware of the power of the mages. and this is where i did misunderstood you.
you did misunderstood me because i never told that other classes can not solo that modded dungeon or that the other classes lack of their own power. i never suggested "that everyone who wants to "powergame to the max" MUST go through the trouble of doing the whole pre-buffing/pausing thing on *three* separate mages? " or that your own setup is not fine.
also i never turned playing BG2 into a number crunch/"optimal method"-fest, for me the rp aspect of the game is as important, i like to run difficulty enhancing mods but the powergaming part is not my only priority.
the really powerful class is the player himself, as only a good player can make the classes he is proficent in playing powerful. there are players that think that the bard is a weak class, the jack of all the trades but inferior to someone else in everything he can do and other players able to make the bard shine and dominate. there are players that call the cleric "the healer" because they use him mainly for healing and eventually to cast some protective spells, keeping him in the back with a sling and the "a cleric is having fun" run shows how using a cleric only for that is using only a fraction of his potential.
the same is true for almost every class.
about "are you next going to say that bringing 2, 3 mages is wholly superior to my setup?" i can only answer that 3 arcane casters is my preferred setup. i love to play parties like charname bard, aerie and jan or charname F/M aerie and nalia->imoen. because a party of 3, maximum 4, is easy to micromanage the way i like to do, because i think that the defense is superior to the raw damaging power, because i like more the versatility, the ability to fight a battle in many ways than the raw power or the ability of win fast.
but i never told that this is superior to your setup or that is the epitome of powergaming. it is only the way i like to play, the way that brings me more fun and enjoyment.
i hope that now our misunderstanding is cleared.
I don’t have much for the debate, wiz, tree hugger, I love both but for different reasons. This I can say with absolute certainty, Driuds were the easiest ToB play throughs I have ever had until Mel. They just don’t have a problem with so many bosses that other classes struggle with. The problem is that the Mel fight is beyond ridiculous for a Druid. Over the what? a decade and a half I have spent two, maybe even three hundred hours trying to kill her with a Druid. I only bring it up because there was talk of Draconis. A Druid has very little trouble with this fight. Really, other than Balthazar I just made it up as I went along every time and there were many times.
I think that a mage has an answer for everything but is not better at everything than any other class. It just plain isn’t, but... I have no fear taking a mage into any combat. That probably makes no sense at all.
Think about that for a second, i can cast 9th level spells like Imprisonment faster than they can cast IP and have it actually land on me. That is a 100%, guaranteed win, casting from Invisible with a spell that can NEVER be prevented by a Druid unless it's interrupted during casting. Heck i'm still in Ch2 so i don't even have access to the REALLY powerful spells yet and they still are laughably easy to beat.
Just 1 item, Staff of the Magi, makes most fights fairly irrelevant, guess who can use it? Yeah, not druids :P
There's also more than one way to look at these class vs class battles. How about from a more "raw" PoV, like if a level 9 druid straight out of character creation seeks out his level 8 (XP equivalent) wizard counterpart. If in-game druids were (in theory) ever as common and ferocious as their SCS mage counterparts then mages would be hard pressed to break past the levels where they can actually reach items like the Staff of Magi. Imagine only having access to level 4 spells max but then forced to fight druids (plural) that can summon two nymphs and use Insect Plague (each) every other new area.