The Advantage of Ranged Parties with Summons in Front: Low Stress, Clicks, Pauses

billbisco

TLDR: Here's my main thesis. Please give your thoughts

1. For the majority of the game, A Ranged Party using Summons in Front will be lower stress and less cognitively intense than a Melee or Mixed Party.
2. For the majority of the game, A Ranged Party using Summons in Front will use fewer clicks than a Melee or Mixed Party.

Here's my lengthier thoughts if you care to read.

So, for the Baldur's Gate Series there are 3 ways to approach most encounters with regard to the party members.

Melee Party Members
Ranged Party Members
Mixed Party Members ( Ranged and Melee )

Now, sometimes enemies can do mean things to your party members.

Poison, Fear, Charm, Hold, Slow, Level Drain, Ability Drain, Maze, Imprisonment, etc....Lots of nasty effects which can cripple or kill your party members if suffered at inopportune times. And of course, there's standard HP damage which will kill you if it gets too high.

So, how do you mitigate the chance of suffering these effects? The main ways are

Immunity to X Negative effect(s) via Kit (Permanent)
Immunity to X Negative effect(s) via Kit (Temporary)
Immunity to X Negative effect(s) via Permanent Item
Immunity to X Negative effect(s) via Temporary Item
Good Armor Class (Permanent)
Good Armor Class (Temporary)
Hit Mitigating Spells (ex. Stoneskin, Mirror Image) (Temporary)
Summons targeted instead of Party Members to suffer X Negative effect(s)

However, there are some caveats to Mitigating

1. No Permanent Kit Immunities even when combined with magic items cover all possible forms of nasty attacks.
2. Often a permanent item which may prevent some nasty attacks comes at the expense of improving Armor Class ( Ex. Charm Immunity or Fear Immunity Helmet means you can't wear Helm of Balduran which improves Armor Class. Carsomyr Great Sword which provides 50% magic resistance means you can't use a shield which improves armor class).
3. Temporary Immunities tend to cover a wider swath (ex. Beserker Rage, Protection from Magic Scroll), but you either run out of the temporary item or you'll have to keep on using the temporary ability (Ex. Beserker Rage) or casting the spells that grant the immunity ( Ex. Negative Plane Protection).
4. Even if you're able to cover almost all immunity bases through a combination of Permanent and Temporary Immunities, you'll have to keep on using those abilities, involving lots of clicks.
5. Even with lots of immunities, you're still susceptible to hp damage and need to be ready to chug potions at a moment's notice

So the issue for Melee Party Members is that they both need a very good armor class and likely a swath of immunities and plenty of potions. They will naturally bear the brunt of attacks more than ranged party members. As such, it is difficult to find sufficiently good armor class and immunities in one party member let alone multiple party members who are melee focused.

So, what's the easiest, most low stress way to beat the game with a minimal number of clicks and minimal number of pauses? I believe the answer is a Ranged Party with lots of Summoned Monsters in front.

Advantages
1. Most enemies will target the summons, meaning that the summons will suffer all the nasty spell effects. Summons will take the brunt of hp damage.
2. Party Members can quickly all attack the same target via ranged attacks and take out enemies quickly
3. Fallen summons can be recast / monster summoning wand quickly so that they will once again suffer the brunt of attacks
4. Need for using spell buffing routines ( Stoneskin, Chant, Bless, Mirror Image, Negative Plane Protection, etc.) is reduced.
5. Generally low stress / low decision making in combat. Click and shoot. Need to pause minimized.

Disadvantages
1. Not always feasible with solo or few party members. Lack of party members shooting enemies may not give enough time to take down enemies before they take down summoned monsters.
2. Summoned monsters typically slower than party members; have to click to trail behind them.
3. Have to replenish ammo stacks ( admittedly 80 in EE games is pretty high)
4. Some boss monsters immune or practically immune to ranged attacks ( ex. Behlifet, Demogorgon )
5. High level enemies tend to spam death spell multiple times to kill off summons requiring multiple castings.

gorgonzola

as i like to have versatile parties and test them fighting the same battles in different ways i have a (bg2 related) taste of how ranged + summons meat shield works in comparison to other tactics.

it can be done, but unless you build the party only for it i find it less effective then other approaches. here some reasons:
without a custom party with maybe a couple of archers is quite difficult to do the same amount of damage then a party that also has mlee fighters.
unless you use returning weapons you consume a lot of ammo and if the not enchanted ones are almost unlimited you can only get a certain amount of enchanted ammo, more then enough for a regular party, but not for a party completely focusing on ranged attacks.
the more you progress trough soa and tob the less the summons from the wand last, it is true that at that point you have mordy swords to tank physical attacks and skeletal warriors to tank spellcasters and later planetars and devas, but enemies like the fire giants or the sendai drows will eat your summons in no time.
there are some places where the tactic work very well, like when you can use a choke point to your advantage, but there are situations like the small rooms in the WK maze or the ambush of samia's party where is not easy to have the summons berween your party and the enemies.

it is certainly possible and i won many battles (insane + tactics mod) that way, with my parties designed for versatility and not to maximize ranged power, but usually the same battle is won by the same party much faster and easier with other approaches.

if your goal is to win with less clicks possible give it a try, i don't mind if i have to pause and click a lot, actually i micromanage very intensively with the toons relocating continuosly, switching from ranged to mlee while they also cast (as is possible to cast and attack in the same round) as the battle evolves.
it is possible to run a ranged oriented party, and for some players can be fun, tastes are a very personal thing, but it is not the best option power wise, actually for some late game battles to win ranged only is a very challenging task.

in bg1 it is different as the summons are better tanks and the ranged weapons more powerful, i can not say anything about SoD that i don't own or other games that is ages i don't play.

sarevok57

i've done set ups like this except a little bit different;

i would have 1 guy in melee, and the other 5 in range combat

in fact somewhere on here i had a play through run with alphus omegus i believe his name was, and the idea of the run was to see how many HP i could legally get by end of ToB

and that team consisted of a

dwarven defender

archer ( using short bows )
kensai ( using thrown weapons )
fighter/cleric hybrid ( using slings )
thief hybrid ( using... dont remember actually )
some sort of wizard ( using throwing daggers )

and i went through all of bg1 and bg2 and ToB with that team, and that team kicked butt, i believe i was able to hit around 321 or so HP with that dwarven defender

jmerry

Aside from the resource cost of having summons up all the time to tank for you, there's another problem. When issuing group movement commands, summons always come after the party in the movement order. Every formation you can set up has either the first or second party member take point, so those summons will form up in the party's rear. You will have to make a lot of extra clicks if you want to fix this and have your melee summons up front where they belong.

Raduziel

I think I never used a summoning spell in any IE game - maybe only Animate Dead.

Will give it a try.

sarevok57

jmerry wrote: »

Aside from the resource cost of having summons up all the time to tank for you, there's another problem. When issuing group movement commands, summons always come after the party in the movement order. Every formation you can set up has either the first or second party member take point, so those summons will form up in the party's rear. You will have to make a lot of extra clicks if you want to fix this and have your melee summons up front where they belong.

or, you can right click and turn the wheel around so your back is in the front

gorgonzola

jmerry wrote: »

Aside from the resource cost of having summons up all the time to tank for you, there's another problem. When issuing group movement commands, summons always come after the party in the movement order. Every formation you can set up has either the first or second party member take point, so those summons will form up in the party's rear. You will have to make a lot of extra clicks if you want to fix this and have your melee summons up front where they belong.

the easy fix for that problem suggested by @sarevok57 work in some situations, but imho not in all situations.
why?
you may want that the summons are far from the party to be sure that aoe spells, both damaging ones like a fireball and disabling or debuffing ones like dispel magic, hit only the summons, it is annoying to improve haste your toon and have them debuffed because they are too close to the meat shield.
in some situations is critical that the summons are placed in key spots to avoid that some of multiple enemies skip the meatshield and focus on the ranged party members.
keeping distance give more reacting time and options if some enemy manage to skip the summons, sometimes is possible to focus all the fire on that enemy and kill him before he reaches the party, but only if a proper distance between summons and party is used.
it is also wise to spread as much as possible the summons to avoid that a death spell hit them all, and with single powerful enemies you have to control the summons movement to send them one by one or to avoid that a single wing buffet throw away your whole meat shield.

so in my experience if the battle is complex you have to control the summons, in some situation one by one, dinamically as the battle evolves, better in a pro active way. and the summons have the characteristic to be difficult to control, even with AI disabled, they often change target, try to group when you want to spread them and so on.

i don't see the tactic as a point and click one, to really work the summons have to be controled so they can cover their true role of meat shields instead to be (wannabe late game) damage dealers.

an other problem when using the wand is that you can randomly get mlee summons or ranged ones.

on easy difficulty settings the best way to run the game point and click is probably a balanced party with a couple of good tanks, a couple of ranged toons and some caster, eventually using summons when needed,
even if the ranged party and summons tactic work, but playing on high difficulty settings and particularly in some battles, let's say the red mages stronghold in the neera's quest, a lot of micromanaging is needed anyway.

about the cost of having summons each battle you certainly need some mage and cleric and use many of their spells to summon. but in SoA the wand give you a lot of mileage and a fully charged wand last for a very long time even if is used often. it is also possible to have it charged for free if is sold to a fence and you steal it back from him.
if is sold and you buy it back it is possible to sell it and buy it also in ToB, but in late SoA and ToB the party should have plenty of money to do it.

i see the summons+ranged approach more as a different way to approach the game then a lazy way as to use it in some battles and on hard settings it need almost the same number of clicks then other approaches.

monico

I like your idea.

In fact, I did fiddle with the "ranged party" theme quite some time ago, I still have tons of calculations sheets.

My thoughts were that:
1- although some melee builds do higher DPR, the benefits of not having to move from enemy to enemy and start shooting once you see the enemy makes for higher DPR
2- I never played ranged-heavy parties, and was curious to try one
3- Like you, I thought that ranged and physical-damage focused party would require the least micro management (although it was my main reason to go the ranged route, it just became a side objective afterwards)
4- I wanted a "scaling" party, not just the hardest hitting party after HLAs

I think I first tried 1 tank (Dwarven Defender) + 4 ranged specialists + 1 scald. It was SO effective that by the beginning of BG2 I stopped and thought "ok, this must be done on LoB difficulty". Enemies fell too fast.

... I actually found my notes for my LoB ranged party.

It was a 5 man party :
- PC : human priest of lathander (9) / fighter (tank or slings)
- half orc Kensai (thrown axes BG1, thrown daggers BG2)
- scald (haste than sing sing sing, all day long). With the bard's hat, could also use darts or Melf's Minute Meteors for "some" DPR (really marginal compared to the rest of the team)
- elven archer (short bow)
- human assa (9) / fighter (crossbow)

Theoretical max damage output (with temporary buffs, so not consistent obviously) was:
- 400 dmg/round end BG1
- 425 dmg/round end SoD (cause of the duals not regaining their levels back, not much of a progression, also note the lack of cleric spells for the whole SoD campaign)
- about 550 dmg/round by 750k XP (duals regaining levels, plus some mid level gear)
- 850 dmg/round by 1,5 million XP (with the +0,5 APR from lvl13 on warrior classes so... everyone but the scald)
- more than 1.750 dmg/round once HLA's are available.
Those number are theoretical only, and I'm sure I miscalculated some stuff, although I have to say, I was quite thorough in my researh ^^.

To be honest, I can't remember how the run went, nor how far I got before restartitis kicked in (I think ToB, but again, not sure I don't mix it with another run)

This party, not relying on spellcasting, does not require much in term of micro management (very few clicks), has a very high damage output potential, and can use some summons to soak enemy debilitating spells (if they manage to fire one with such high DPR and disrupting ability of Poison Weapon and certain weapons/missiles).

Since the goal was also to not rely too heavily on micromanagement, the party was voluntarily low on spellcasting (one "semi" cleric, dualed early, and the bard for haste and a webs or the like).

It is also not the MOST powergaming party (the Priest of Lathander would have been way better dualed at lvl11 for example, and a second Archer would have been better for the crossbow but I wanted a thief for utility).