Any fans of Invokers?
leeowensoas
Member Posts: 81
Anyone love playing Invokers in BGEE/BG2EE at least? I feel like when it comes to power discussions conjurer and gnome illusionist are always the specializations thrown around, and I hate to use the word underrated, but I feel like an Invoker is easily as good as a Conjurer (no beating those Shorty saves tho) if not better; with the caveat that you have a second arcane caster. Conjurers are great cause they give up so little, but their school saving throw penalty/boost doesn't do a whole lot of work except the symbol spells. Illusionists' main benefit is a supercharged spook, but not a whole lot else. Contrast an invoker, whose saving throw boosts are helping you survive fireballs and lightning bolts from start to finish, while making yours more consistently powerful (not to mention the disgusting sickness that is 2× -4 Web in a Minor Sequencer). Meanwhile the only really rough spells to give up are sleep (which has a slightly underwhelming substitute in the wand available straight out of candlekeep, and is nearly useless by BG2) and greater malison. Greater Malison is super rough to lose and almost a dealbreaker, but by the time SoA rolls around and you really start to need it, basically any other mage(single or multi) or bard can toss it out for you and it doesn't stack. I suppose I'm just ranting, but it just seems like a really cool and powerful class that I feel like maybe isn't on everyone's radar (possibly because they were trash in OG BG1 with 2 opposed schools?)
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Comments
The main reason invokers are good though is more from an aesthetic viewpoint, as it’s just satisfying playing a mage who’s main identity is to blow things up. Also regarding the lack of a sleep spell, colour spray also puts creatures to sleep. While it’s not quite as strong, it’s certainly more visually pleasing x).
Dynaheir is my favourite BG1 npc because of her invoker class (and her character is great too). I take her on nearly all my play throughs(with or without Minsc), and all I do is hand her a wand of fire and she basically carries me single handedly from the beginning of BG to the end of SoD.
Unpopular opinion time: she ought to have survived in BG2, not Minsc...
but if the specialist route is taken with a pure mage or a dual with mage as starting class invoker is a sound choice in EE as their spells become more powerful. at least if in the party there are a proper thief and/or secondary mage to take care of the lack of divination and some one that can conjure summons.
This I did not know! Is that true for other wands/sources of invocation spells? (Items/potions)
And yeah I love Minsc, but in BG2 Dynaheir would have been a powerhouse
Invocation's only opposed school in the EEs is enchantment. They already get all the divination spells (it's conjurers who lose them) and only give up conjuration spells in OG BG1, was that what you're referring to here?
you want to talk about penalty to saves?
sleep; -5! ( but as you said, useless in SoA )
emotion hopelessness; -2
hold monster; -4
chaos; -6!
and this is all without having to cast greater malison
now granted undead are immune to mind affecting stuff, but they aren't immune to slows, glitterdusts or finger of deaths and horrid wiltings though.....
in SoA its entirely possible that my enchanter won't have a single damaging spell until level 7 and yet my enchanter is still one of my most important characters in the party ( although if damage is needed before 7, there is always minor drain, acid arrow, flame arrow, skull trap )
You could always try a wild mage
well i never use spell sequencers ever ( or maybe perhaps, very very rarely ) plus usually if i have an enchanter i also have a cleric/mage and a thief/mage to back it up, so they can cast all those invoker type spells if need be
although i love the cheese of chain contingency ( enemy sighted horrid wilting x3 lewls? ) i find a way to not need to use them to get through the game
thats part of the fun trying different class combos that are outside of your comfort zone, it forces you to find different strategies to overcome obstacles and makes you learn new things and all that good jazz
I feel like I always stress about not finding enough of the key scrolls to fill out 3 mages spellbook at high levels, but I guess that's part of the fun haha
i often play very magic heavy little parties, 3 or 4 people, and when i have 4 people able to cast lev 9 spells there are only few spells that i have to choose which of my mages will have to live without.
to be prepared to reload helps a lot in the task of getting high level scrolls as well as to get them a little earlier.
to have 3 wish scrolls you have to gamble and win with aesgareth and win, so for a no reolader it is not granted to get them. (but if you do you can have 2 of them in soa chap 2 and as soon as your mages can cast lev 7 spells so PI each clone can cast 2 times from the quick slot, so potentially you have infinite rests for free, going to each battle with all the spells memorized and items charged...).
for some of them like spell trigger you have to fight many times the CW reloading until you loot the right ones.
but for wail of the banshee, time stop and many other key high level spells to reload until you find them is not needed, if i am not wrong at least 5 time stop scrolls are granted in the game, as not random loot or sold by merchants.
in SoA;
there is almost one copy of every single spell in the game just out in the "adventuring scene"
the only ones that you won't find are;
wraith form
mass invisibility
protection from cold
remove curse
greater malison
shadow door
power word silence
every other spell, in the wild can either be found at a certain location or from random treasure drops
now, for every spell up to level 8, there is at least x2 - x3 copies of every spell from venders through out the lands and underdark
for level 9 there is one copy of each spell except;
x0 imprisonment ( in the vanilla SoA it was in Sulden but when ToB was installed they got rid of that scroll )
time stop, there is 4 copies
wail of the banshee i believe has 2
and in theory you there are "infinite" spell traps ( rare scroll drop from random treasure 5 )
and then in ToB there is x2 copies of every spell in the game at aracana archives except as follows;
wraith from x0 ( although the shop keep at watcher's keep has 3 copies i believe )
wish x1 ( 2 more copies can be found in watcher's keep )
so in theory, you could have 5 mages completely filled to the brim will at spells of up to level 8 at least by the time you hit ToB, but only 3 of them would have ALL the level 9 spells ( except for imprisonment in which only 2 would have it )
as it is possible to have 3 high level mages (let's say jan, F->M and aerie), jaheira and haer dalis and a sorcerer (kelsey or tashia), that does not need scrolls to learn the spells, it is possible to have a party with both an incredibly high magic level (5 arcane casters, 4 of them with lev 9 spells and 2 divine casters, one druid and the other cleric, while retaining a good physical attack power as a F->M, a blade, jaheira and buffed aerie can hit hard while tanking for forever.
with the luxury of having also a real thief, not only a door opener and 2 guys that can use hla traps.
i don't think that more scrolls are needed in the game as most of the parties normally played are way less arcane magic heavy...
Here's one way to ensure all/most of your arcane casters have the spells they need in their spellbooks (since there's ridiculous amounts of gold in this game, this can be abused to create large stockpiles of scrolls... exercising some restraint is recommended for game balance):
http://readme.spellholdstudios.net/readme_atweaks.html
Allow Mages to scribe memorized spells onto scrolls
This component grants all Mages (except Sorcerers) of 9th level and higher the ability to scribe spells from their spellbooks onto scrolls, as per PnP rules. Only spells that are currently memorized may be scribed in this manner. Furthermore, the cost of any raw materials that are used in the process must be covered in full. Finally, inscribing a scroll removes one instance of the spell in question from the caster's memory. This ability can be used at will, as long as the environment is non-hostile.
* Evil Charname casts Find Familiar
* wild surge: Oops, a gate!
* Charname: "now THAT's a badass-looking Imp! I'll call you Archimedes !"
* Nabassu: "..."
* Charname: "........ Cookie, then ?"
I mean you joke but this has happen more times than I care to emit with my wild mages.
My MC actually have lunch plans with him this evening lol.
Rapid reload works only with crossbows. No prerequisites (per 3.5, idk and idc about 3.0). Reloading a heavy crossbow becomes a movement action. This means that it can be loaded and fired in the same round. For light and hand crossbows it is a free action. This allows these crossbows to be fired at the characters normal apr, like bows.