SCS Illasera and the small Halfling thief

Rigel

Sometimes I try to create characters directly in ToB to check how my BG1 characters would evolve. Today I had a strange surprise. Creating a character in ToB gives you a lot of nice gear directly but none which will help you winning over Illasera. I play SCS Tactical level. She appears with some black reavers and very quickly you get all 8th and 9th spells over the head (even a Comet ...). And if you try to attack them they all have Protection against Magical weapons... and in your equipment you just received MAGICAL weapons ,..
So which character can win this fight ? A simple Halfling thief with four "basic" traps wins. Perhaps a wizard (well played not like I do ...) ? But will you have time to resist to all the attacks of Illasera (she hurts like Sarevock ^2) and her goons ?

Maurvir

Do you get any potions of invisibility? Alternately, does your thief have enough skill in hiding in shadows to pull it off? If so, get to a corner and wait out their protection spells.

Still, that's a tough one.

Rigel

@Maurvir No you do not get invisibility potions. I am not sure that I may have the time to hide into shadows once Illasera attacks. But eith the thief, it is a piece of cake ... with the traps. I wondered if another class, particularly one which is not an arcane spell caster, can win this fight with a new character (an not an imported one).

DavidW

David Gaider comments (in the Ascension readme) that the original Illasera (high-powered archer with invisibility) had to be toned down for just this reason: she was way too powerful for a player just starting a new ToB game, without a party.

SCS doesn't really worry about that. If you want to play from ToB directly, and you like the challenge, great; if not, turn the difficulty down sharply until you get to the Pocket Plane and can acquire a party.

Rigel

@DavidW Yes that sounds right !!! But interesting that a simple plain thief can win this fight ...

tedmann12

Well traps are the cheesiest and probably most OP thing in the game, so it makes sense tbh. I mostly avoid traps. Sometimes I just need them, like when I do scs twisted rune I always trap the lich because that fight is really fricken hard unless you have basically cleared watcher's keep.

Rigel

@DavidW SCS is amazing. I have just started playing with it, and it's a really brand new experience. You never know what will happen, this is like a new game.The kobold shaman, for example, the first time I met him, ouchh... it was painful.
And of course, Ulcaster... it used to be a simple XP harvesting promenade, now it's pretty tough.
I love it, and I am just starting discovering it !

Rigel

@DavidW I have just realized that you are the author of SCS ! Congratulations, amazing work.

DavidW

@Rigel: thanks!
@tedmann12: I've never played with traps myself, and I couldn't really see any very good counters to them that didn't just amount to blocking the ability to use them, so I decided to leave it alone. You can probably trap your way all the way to ToB if you want to.

Danacm

The scs Illasera obviously is the easiest with arcane casters and fighter/mages. I did it with an archer too, and the traps of course is a cheese factor.

Maurvir

I don't consider traps out of line in this fight because you are warned ahead of time (and don't actually have that much time). While I haven't used them, it's not nearly as meta-gamey as some uses of traps.