Bored with melée - going arcane?
Dordledum
Member Posts: 243
The title basically says it all. I've been Playing NWN (various editions) on and off since it was first released, and somehow, I always end up playing a fighter-type, either a paladin, monk, fighter/cleric, fighter/rogue, or any variety.
Now, I'm playing a bard/monk/RDD (after an alignment-shift to LN), and doing the main campaign again for the first time in years and for the first time while playing NWN-EE. I love this edition BTW, great job and thank you, Beamdog!
But, now comes the crux, I've been playing for a while, and I'm in Luskan, and so fed up with my character! Playing seems to me to be just: point, click, wait, maybe spam a potion (or a couple), and win. Switching to another melee class would probably be the same problem.
So, I'm thinking of doing something contrary to what I've done before, and make a complete new character for the next chapter (using a character editor to level up to the right level) and make myself a spell-caster. No idea why I haven't done so before in all the previous years. To say the least, I'm going out of my comfort zone here.
What would you recommend from that point of view, any multi-class or PRC to keep an eye out? Or better to go single-class Wizard or Sorcerer (maybe Druid?)? And if so, which?
I'm leaning to a blaster build (and probably picking up lock-picking / trap handling cross-class) if that helps?
Now, I'm playing a bard/monk/RDD (after an alignment-shift to LN), and doing the main campaign again for the first time in years and for the first time while playing NWN-EE. I love this edition BTW, great job and thank you, Beamdog!
But, now comes the crux, I've been playing for a while, and I'm in Luskan, and so fed up with my character! Playing seems to me to be just: point, click, wait, maybe spam a potion (or a couple), and win. Switching to another melee class would probably be the same problem.
So, I'm thinking of doing something contrary to what I've done before, and make a complete new character for the next chapter (using a character editor to level up to the right level) and make myself a spell-caster. No idea why I haven't done so before in all the previous years. To say the least, I'm going out of my comfort zone here.
What would you recommend from that point of view, any multi-class or PRC to keep an eye out? Or better to go single-class Wizard or Sorcerer (maybe Druid?)? And if so, which?
I'm leaning to a blaster build (and probably picking up lock-picking / trap handling cross-class) if that helps?
Post edited by Dordledum on
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Comments
Multiclassing is useful for wizards and sorcerers when it helps boost your defenses, though. For instance, a wizard getting monk level at levels 2 , 7 and 12 will boost your tumble skill to multiples of five for extra AC bonus and it also grants you the ability to wear monk robes and you alsp get the evasion feat, so that's a huge defensive boost that works in your advantage. You can do the same with rogue levels to keep your tumble, disable device, open lock and persuasion skills useful , and also enjoy the benefits of better AC and evasion feat.
So the question is : what is more fun to play ?A wizard 12 or a wizard 9/monk 3?
My answer is both. The second option is more independent and it helps in NWN because you don't really have an adventuring party, but the first option will fire up magic and cool summons at a much greater rate.
Thanks, I think I prefer wizard over sorcerer anyway, but then to go single or multiclass as you suggest, a tough choice indeed.
But if I'm playing NWN 2 I always take the Able Learner Feat which allows you to invest in cross class skills and it only cost 1 point (that feat would be nice in NWN EE Beamdog).
A pure caster is more squishy but the offensive capabilities are excellent.
The obvious choice for spell focus feats is Evocation than later Necromancy for Finger of Death, Horrid Wilting & Wail of the Banshee but I ended up with Conjuration and Necromancy.
Most creatures with any form of Elemental Resistance will likely be resistant to Fire than Cold and Electrical and in some cases all three which is why pure Evocation isn't enough, Necromancy helps against some like Demons and Devils can be struck dead like anyone else but they have high saves, that's why I use Conjuration...Mestil's Acid Breath is a great 3rd LVL cone attack which you can later empower to 5th LVL and it works on almost everyone...even the final boss of HOTU ?.
My spell line up is usually
1st Mage Armor, Protection vs Evil, Magic Missile.
2nd Stat Boosts STR DEX ext..
3rd Mestil's & Flame Arrow.
4th Stoneskin, Evard's Black Tentacles, Icestorm, Lesser Spell Breach.
5th Mestil's Acid Sheath & Empowered 3rd, Extended Elemental Shield.
6th Greater Stoneskin, Undeath to Death, Greater Missile Storm, Greater Spell Breach Empowered Icestorm, Extended Acid Sheath.
7th Finger of Death, Shadow Shield, Spell Mantle.
8th Horrid Wilting, Sunburst.
9th Wail of the Banshee, Greater Spell Mantle.
Some spells continue getting better, 3rd LVL spells like Fireball are capped at LVL 10 but not Flame Arrow, at LVL 12 it's 3 arrows dealing 4d6 each and keeps getting better but it is Flame and only hits one target, Icestorm is also uncapped and keeps progressing and Icestorm doesn't allow for saving throws.
I didn't mention Time Stop because I find it a bit cheesy and makes things too easy for me so I try not to use it.
Oh and don't hit yourself with Evard's Black Tentacles...your squishy Mage will die.
And related (maybe the reason why I never played a caster before): Any suggestions for easy workarounds for the clunky spell selecting system? I know I can add specific spells to my quickslots, but that's quite annoying if I change my spell selection a lot (again: less of an issue with a sorcerer).
Is there a way to just add the cast spell option (the wheel) to a quickslot? Or something similar? I'm afraid of RSI if I have to rightclick/leftclick/leftclick/leftclick everytime I want to cast a single spell.
Also, another question, if I use summons, will I get less xp? - apparently yes, so no summoning/animate dead...
Tips welcome!
The various Bigby spells are also worth a look, in my opinion. In particular, the 5th level spell Bigby's Forceful Hand, and the 9th level spell Bigby's Crushing Hand, are both excellent choices for incapacitating enemies with weak Strength/grapple checks.
In other D&D games, I tend to loooove Enchantment spells like Charm/Dominate Person/Monster, but unfortunately the way that NWN is coded means that you can only ever have one additional "ally" at any time, so if you have a summoned monster and you charm an enemy, it dismissed your summoned monster and vice versa. As such, I would recommend avoiding such spells as being fairly hamstrung.
Yes Flame Arrow is horrible against enemies with any fire resistance, best used against Cold types, mostly I use Mestil's.
@Dordledum
Definitely check out the Bigby's spells Zaxares mentioned but I hope Zaxares doesn't mind if I make a correction, the 5th LVL is Bigby's Interposing Hand which reduces the targets Attack Rating by -10 for all attacks and no saving throw...very useful, there are some powerful warriors out there and reducing their ability to hit the squishy Mage is invaluable.
If your going Sorcerer are you playing the OC? There are several Henchman items that boost Charisma, otherwise I'd be looking for Nymph Cloaks to boost Charisma.
If your playing from LVL 1 Magic Missile is solid and reaches its peek at LVL 9 with 5 missiles, Burning Hands is only good against groups of weak enemies.
I like the Mage Armor spell but if you need protection from Magic Missile the Shield Spell will make you immune but it has a shorter duration.
I recommend you focus of Evocation until you get 6th LVL spells than I'd started getting Necromancy Spell Focus for Undeath to Death and Finger of death at 7th, but this is your character so don't feel pressured.
One more spell I forgot to mention is Premonition 8th LVL, very powerful protection against physical damage and my Wizard Necromancer is not allowed to use because he gives up Divination ?.
Since your playing Sorcerer you can use a Spear which is a solid two handed weapon with X3 Crit, also I'd have a crossbow handy.
Oh and the Sorcerer will be behind the Wizard in spell selection until LVL 20, the Wizard gets 3rd LVL spells at 5th LVL but the Sorcerer has to wait until 6th ?, this continues until 20, the upside is you will get to cast more spells per day ?.
LVL1: Magic Missile, Identify, Protection From Alignment, Mage Armor, Grease
LVL2: Melf's Acid Arrow, See Invisibility, Death Armor, Flame Weapon, Balagarn's Iron Horn
LVL3: Flame Arrow, Haste, Protection From Elements, Mestil's Acid Breath
LVL4: Improved Invisibility, Lesser Spellbreach, Elemental Shield, Ice Storm or Isaac's Missile Storm
LVL5: Firebrand, Lesser Mindblank, Mestil's Acid Sheath, Greater Shadow Conjuration or Lesser Spell Mantle
LVL6: Isaac's Greater Missle Storm, Bigby's Forceful Hand, Shades or Globe of Invulnerability
LVL7: Shadow Shield, Bigby's Grasping Hand, Spell Mantle or Finger of Death or Mordenkainen's Sword
LVL8: Premonition, Greater Sanctuary, Horrid Wilting
LVL9: Mordenkainen's Disjunction, Bigby's Crushing Hand, Time Stop or Gate
Ice Storm is technically superior to the lvl4 Isaac's but if I am playing in a setting with friendly fire enabled I tend to prefer Isaac's. I like grabbing Greater Shadow Conjuration and Shades for the extra spells they provide, particularly Stoneskin (for familiars, allies and/or summons), Minor Globe of Invulnerability, Web, and Ghostly Visage. The Summon Shadow, Cone of Cold and Fireball are "nice to haves" but not vital.
If I don't take the Greater Shadow Conjuration and Shades, I also don't take the lvl7 Spell Mantle (since I take Lesser Spell Mantle), and drop Balagarn's for Web or Ghostly Visage. I like having Lesser Spellbreach to have an low level method of removing Globes and Mantles, as well as reducing Spell Resistance. Time Stop isn't always an option on some persistent worlds so Gate makes for a decent alternative and sometimes its just nice to not use the same spells all the time.
Oops, yes. That was a typo on my part. Bigby's Forceful Hand is the 6th level spell, not 5th. But Cerabelus made some good points about Bigby's Interposing Hand too; it's one of the few spells in the game that applies a penalty to the enemy's attack bonus rather than boosting AC (which tends to run into hard caps). Still, I usually find that a combination of defensive items, Stoneskin et al and Improved Invisibility is enough to keep my Wizard safe in most fights, so if you're hard-pressed for good spell choices for 5th level, I think Interposing is one you can drop.
Mage Armor is a decent choice for 1st level spells, but because it's actually a combination of four different AC types (Armor, Deflection, Natural and Dodge), which won't stack with other defensive AC items of the same type, it usually means it becomes irrelevant as soon as you start to discover items like Ring of Protection +1, Amulet of Natural Armor +1 etc. Conversely, Shield is a straight +4 Shield AC bonus, which you likely won't be using as a spellcaster (due to the arcane spell failure chance), so it will remain useful for most of your adventuring career.
I also echo Nic_Mercy's advice of picking the Isaac's Missile spells, because very, very, VERY few enemies have resistance against Magical damage, which means the spells are practically guaranteed to have maximum effect on just about any enemy you encounter. Because the missiles target multiple foes, it's an excellent spell to use against "boss" enemies where there's only one target for the spell to focus on. A Maximised Isaac's Greater Missile Storm spell is a terror to behold. XD
It's worth also noting that the various Spell Breach spells are excellent candidates for spells to carry via scrolls or wands because there is nothing about them that is dependent on level, meaning that a Spell Breach spell is just as effective whether it's cast by a level 11 character or a level 33 character. You may as well simply carry some scrolls of it for the situations where you do need them and save your spell slots for something else.
I just started again yesterday evening, and 'm playing on from chapter 3 in the OC, so about lvl 15.
My current sorcerer spell list is (IIRC):
LVL1: Magic Missile, Identify, Protection From Alignment, Ray of enfeeblement, Shield
LVL2: Melf's Acid Arrow, Cat's Grace, Eagle's Splendor, Ghostly Visage, Knock
LVL3: Flame Arrow, Haste, Mestil's Acid Breath, Fireball
LVL4: Stoneskin, Lesser Spellbreach, Ice Storm, Isaac's Missile Storm
LVL5: Firebrand, Lesser Mindblank, Mestil's Acid Sheath, Lesser Spell Mantle
LVL6: Isaac's Greater Missle Storm, Greater Spell breach, True Seeing
LVL7: Prismatic spray, Spell Mantle
For feats, I've got: Combat Casting, Expertise, Improved Expertise, Extend Spell, Spell Penetration, Greater Spell Penetration, Spell focus Evocation
I'm still open for tweaking though, haven't done much actual playing yet.
From the remarks above, I gather i should cut the Spell breaches for scrolls, and enter Bigby spells there, scrap knock for a chime of opening, and maybe switch out fireball for something more useful?
A chime of opening is plenty for the rest of the game and for the nasty traps use the good old Pixie.
I noticed you got Ghostly Visage, i forgot to mention that spell saved me so many times in the early to mid games but at this point it could be limited, Bears Endurance would boost your HP nicely but it's dangerous as if your HP is too low and the spell wears off...you die
If your going Evocation I'd consider swapping out Flame Arrow for Scintillating Sphere as it's Electrical damage so you can vary your available damage types and it has the same radius as Fireball but lesser range.
At this point 4th lvl Isaac's Missile Storm is ok but once i get 6th lvl i swap to Improved Invisibility, it does help a lot to prevent some physical attacks from hitting with the 50% concealment.
Since you have 7th Spell Mantle you could consider swapping out 5th Lesser Spell Mantle for Cone of Cold...you may need it for the Fire types up ahead.
When you get another 6th lvl spell you could consider picking up Chain Lightning, IGMS is a great spell against bosses but against groups the missiles spread out to many targets, Chain Lighting hits the first target for up to 20d6 damage at lvl 20 than lesser damage to more targets as it chains out.
Prismatic Spray is interesting i like it but i always swap it for Delayed Fireball, it say's Delayed but if you target them directly it explodes immediately for up to 20d6 at lvl 20.
Firebrand is perfect against many targets as it will spawn more arrows the more enemies there are up to your lvl which would be 15 arrows right now but only one for a single target, they all get hit for 15d6.
For Extended spells i don't Extend spells that last for 1 hour per caster lvl but use it for spells that last 6 seconds per lvl to maximize their usefulness, Mestil's Acid Sheath is one of those low duration spells.
The Shield spell has a duration of 1 minute per caster lvl which in low lvl's is lame but at 15 that's more than long enough for a few battles.
Finally Haste is Excellent but if i remember Neurik in town has Boots of Speed for sale which would free up another 3rd lvl for something else like Clarity to protect you against Mind Effects which you could than swap out 5th lvl Lesser Mind Blank for Energy Buffer to protect against some Elemental damage, alternatively you could just swap Haste for Protection from the Elements in the same lvl.
Amended spell list looks now like this:
LVL1: Magic Missile, Identify, Protection From Alignment, Ray of enfeeblement, Shield
LVL2: Melf's Acid Arrow, Cat's Grace, Eagle's Splendor, Ghostly Visage, See Invisibility
LVL3: Haste, Mestil's Acid Breath, Fireball, Scintillating Sphere
LVL4: Stoneskin, Ice Storm, Isaac's Missile Storm, Improved Invisibility
LVL5: Firebrand, Lesser Mindblank, Mestil's Acid Sheath, Cone of Cold
LVL6: Isaac's Greater Missle Storm, Bigby's Forceful Hand, Chain Lightning
LVL7: Prismatic spray, Spell Mantle
Defensive Casting Mode forces a Concentration check even when you're not in melee, which can be failed. ("Oh, how nice, I cast Bull's Strength while standing here alone and failed my Concentration check.")
Because of this, I consider Combat Casting to be a noob trap. I find it way more efficient and less risky, as well as easier to control, to just keep the Concentration skill maxed and have a good Constitution.
By higher levels, your Concentration will be so high you'll almost never fail a Concentration check any way.
Combat Casting is a completely wasted feat slot.
Thank you, never realised that!
I wasn't planning on using defensive casting anyway, because it's not compatible with improved expertise.
In NWN 2 they slow the rate in which you can swap out spells.
I use to play the Warriors all the time but eventually moved to Sorcerer's and loved it, eventually playing BG 2 taking Edwin and after a while I found swapping out spells more useful and tried it in NWN and loved it more... especially the bonus feat every 5th LVL.
The Sorcerer is a great class and has more spells per day as well as being Charisma based and having an edge in conversation over the Wizard, but the Wizard gets more feats and is able to change spells before rest and more Intelligence = more skill points but I find myself conserving spells and rounding up enemies for maximum effect so I don't run out in a pinch...sometimes still do ?.
The wizard can get some more spells per day by taking a Speciality on creation but this prevents the use of opposing schools of magic, I play Necromancers and they give up Divination which is Identify, See Invisibility, True Sight and Premonition and losing Premonition hurts but it forces me to be more careful against Warriors.
Similar classes but different in ways to make things interesting.
Belgarath also makes a good point about Combat Casting. I sometimes will still take the feat just for flavour, but I agree that it's mostly irrelevant. Why improve your casting AC when you could just use spells/items/feats to improve your main AC and not get hit at all? If you're a Wizard, DEFINITELY invest in the Expertise/Improved Expertise feats. Using these feats drops your Attack Bonus by 5 (10 for the Improved version), but improves your AC by the same amount. (And this bonus stacks with all other AC types too!) You're not going to be swinging your weapon at your foe in the vast majority of cases anyway, so activating Expertise essentially means you're boosting your AC by an insane amount for practically zero downside. (Alas, since Sorcerers usually don't pump Intelligence, you probably won't meet the Int 13 requirement for Expertise unless you specifically min-max your stats for it.)
The Sorcerer has a low feat progression available so yeah try to pick the ones that complement the spells your gonna focus on when you find out what those are, at Chapter 3 Greater Spell Focus would be ideal but you'll get by mostly at this point you need good protection so you can last long enough in battle to nuke them down.
I haven't tried Expertise in a long time but since it's a combat mode does that mean you have to reactivate all the time? in NWN 2 you can toggle combat modes which is nice and would be great to have added to NWN EE.
One spell i haven't mentioned is the 9th lvl Mordenkainen's Disjunction which is like a combination of Spell Breach and Dispel Magic, you have to roll to attempt to remove magic like the Dispel but also you lower magic resistance of the target for a duration and if you target an area all creatures will be effected.
Spell Breach has guaranteed results as it doesn't need a roll but if you roll higher with Dispel you can take away much more, if your fighting a much higher lvl creature Dispel won't be that effective.
Next time i play I'm gonna try out Expertise, In certain situations I've not needed the attack rating and more AC would be handy.
Hehe. Usually either on RP servers ("Zaxares casts defensively!" DM: But you don't have the feat...), or for low level modules where you won't be able to get higher level feats anyway so there's not much point in setting up the various pre-req feats and such.
Once activated, Expertise basically lasts until you move or end the mode manually, near as I can tell. If your Mage is just standing still casting spells, then Expertise will last until the end of the combat, barring situations where you need to re-position yourself.