Soloing as a Swashbuckler - The Adventures of Drogo the Dandy
Permidion_Stark
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I started writing about Drogo the Dandy in another thread but I was enjoying playing the character so much that I thought I would start a new thread to record his ongoing exploits.
If anyone is interested Drogo is introduced here:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/76655/today-was-the-first-time-i/p4
Drogo is swashbuckler who aspires to being a 'beau sabreur' but who is thwarted in his dreams by his lack of charisma and the fact he is a half-orc. He fights with sword and dagger (surely the only weapons a swashbuckler should ever use) and aims to become the greatest jewel thief the Sword Coast has seen.
Here he is reaching level four by picking locks in Nashkel Manor:
Unfortunately his pick up lines are far less successful than his lock picking and his attempts to woo the lovely Samanatha are clumsy indeed.
If anyone is interested Drogo is introduced here:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/76655/today-was-the-first-time-i/p4
Drogo is swashbuckler who aspires to being a 'beau sabreur' but who is thwarted in his dreams by his lack of charisma and the fact he is a half-orc. He fights with sword and dagger (surely the only weapons a swashbuckler should ever use) and aims to become the greatest jewel thief the Sword Coast has seen.
Here he is reaching level four by picking locks in Nashkel Manor:
Unfortunately his pick up lines are far less successful than his lock picking and his attempts to woo the lovely Samanatha are clumsy indeed.
Post edited by JuliusBorisov on
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This is some fairly extreme metagaming on my part. I know when Drogo finally goes to the Friendly Arm Inn he will be ambushed by Tarnesh who will cast Horror at him and then pepper him with Magic Missiles. The Shield Amulet will make him immune to Magic Missiles (so long as I remember to activate it) meaning he will almost certainly survive the encounter. If I am adventuring as a party I always go into the encounter unprepared but when I am soloing I always cheat (I feel guilty about it but it is better than dying and having to start again).
My self-imposed rules for this run are that there are no reloads, I am playing on core rules and I don't use any potions apart from antidotes. I try not to do too much metagaming but I do allow myself to avoid nearly all of the mage encounters until I have acquired the Greenstone Amulet or the Horn of Kazgaroth (either of which make you fairly mage proof in BG1).
So he now has two star sapphires. Perhaps he should get a pair of earrings made? A pair of sapphires glittering on his earlobes would set off his eyes rather well. Drogo also has a Ring of Fire Resistance (in my opinion a must-have for any self-respecting adventurer).
Buoyed up by finding the gems, Drogo still has a spring in his step when he encounters Lena, a damsel in distress, who is worried that her wounded friend Samuel is going to die. Ever eager to appear the preux chevalier, Drogo agrees to carry Samuel all the way to the Temple of Wisdom at the Friendly Arm Inn. Drogo had assumed that Lena would be accompanying them and he would have a chance to get to know her better (hopefully a lot better) along the way. He is therefore disappointed when Lena just wanders off leaving him to cart Samuel half way across the Sword Coast on his own.
The task proves more onerous than Drogo had imagined as he is waylaid three times along the way. In the first encounter he must have taken a wrong turning because he has wandered into a dead end and finds himself surrounded by hobgoblins eager to turn him into a pin cushion. He makes a run for it but takes a couple of arrows in the arse before he can get away.
He then gets set upon by wild dogs and since he has lost half his hit points and is one crit away from death he again takes off on his toes.
He escapes the wild dogs only to be set upon by a couple of worgs. "Better part of Valour! Better part of valour!" he cries as he again makes a run for it.
All in all it is a fairly dispiriting journey. A gallant swordsman isn't really supposed to run away from a fight (and certainly not from three fights in a row). Still there was no one to see him when he beat an undignified retreat. And what happens in the wilderness stays in the wilderness.
Drogo's spirits are lifted somewhat when, on the last leg of his journey, he sees something sparkling in a crevice in a rock:
In need of a well-earned rest Drogo heads into the Friendly Arm Inn hoping for a hot bath, a feather bed and a bit of flirtation with a serving wench or two. However, before he can get through the door he finds himself being accosted by a man who seems to know a lot about him. (Since Drogo was at this point down to twelve hit points I was tempted to let him rest outside the Inn before the encounter with Tarnesh. However, this seemed so out of character for Drogo - he is after all fellow who likes the finer things in life - that I decided to let him walk straight into the ambush. This nearly turned out to be a big mistake)
When Tarnesh approaches him, Drogo is more than happy to tell him all about himself. He is therefore surprised when the mage suddenly turns hostile. Fortunately, he has time to activate his Shield Amulet because at this point the battle starts to go badly:
Drogo swings at Tarnesh and misses so badly that he fails to even hit the mage's mirror images. Tarnesh then casts Horror and Drogo panics and runs off like a headless chicken. Despite the fact that he is being chased around the courtyard by an assassin who is firing off Magic Missiles at him only one of the guards comes to his aid and he proves totally incapable of hitting Tarnesh. And after a while the guard actually gives up trying to save Drogo (this occurred when Drogo fled around the back of the Temple of Wisdom. Tarnesh followed him and I think at this point the guard lost sight of him. The other guards had wandered to distant parts of the courtyard and took no part in the battle).
The whole battle was rather undignified for both parties. Drogo kept running away and Tarnesh kept swinging and missing with his quarterstaff. Eventually, Drogo's panic wore off and after a few more swings and misses he was able to slay his would be assassin.
It is not a battle that did Drogo much credit and he hopes it will be overlooked when the bards come to sing of his deeds.
This has knocked Drogo's confidence a bit. He hoped he cut a bit of a dash in the world and it is rather deflating to be taken for one of the lower orders. Still, on the bright side, he did come out of the second encounter in possession of a pair of Golden Pantaloons. He is fairly sure they would increase his charisma if he could only work out how to put them on.
Drogo also managed to acquire a much needed gem bag (which was added to Bentley's stock with the Tweaks Anthology https://www.gibberlings3.net/mods/tweaks/tweaks/ ).
And Tymora seems to be smiling on Drogo because he has had a couple of strokes of good fortune. He found a rather intriguing looking ring in the roots of one tree and a diamond in the branches of another:
He then made his way back to his room at Feldepost's Inn to collect the gems and jewelry he had stashed there and add them to his gem bag:
Feeling pleased with himself Drogo decided to visit a few of the other hostelries in town to imbibe a bit of the atmosphere. At the Jovial Juggler he met with a paladin who was feeling a bit out of sorts after getting roughed up by some half-ogres. Drogo decided to teach them a lesson they wouldn't forget (or remember for that matter since they are all dead). Again, Drogo's fighting style was somewhat less than heroic - he snuck up on them and threw daggers at them - but since they were a boorish bunch of bullies and no one was there to see, Drogo isn't too worried about that and he basks in the praise bestowed upon him by the grateful paladin. However, Drogo does wish the reward for his hard work was something a little more useful than a shield he can't use.
This heroic feat, along with a lot of lock picking and some incidental battles against kobolds, xvarts, wolves and worgs, enabled Drogo to reach level five. On leveling up he put 25 more points in picking pockets so he will now head back to Feldepost's Inn to acquire the cloak of his dreams. His armour class (thanks to his dexterity and the fact that he is a swashbuckler) is now 0, which is respectable but not exactly amazing, and whilst he does a lot of damage when his blows strike home his attacks still seem to miss more often than they hit.
Drogo realises that there is more to the cloak than immediately meets the eye and decides he needs to get it professionally assessed by a nearby mage. Unfortunately, on arriving at the mage's residence, Drogo takes a wrong turning and finds himself getting chased out of the building by the mage's flesh golem guardians. And it happens not once but twice! (This was an intentional ploy on my part. I wanted to turn the flesh golems hostile, lure them outside and then get them to follow me to distant corners of the map. Drogo can't fight them at the moment - he would get slaughtered in a melee and the lack of magical throwing knives in BG1 means that he can't kite them - but I hope one day he will be able to fight them with his sword and dagger. I'm assuming that this won't turn Thalantyr hostile because they attacked Drogo before he spoke to him but I could be wrong about this).
Once the coast was clear, Drogo returned to speak to Thalantyr, who didn't appear to have noticed that his security team had wandered off. As well as getting his cloak identified, Drogo made a purchase: a nice new blue scroll case to replace the rather dull brown one that Firebead Elvenhair gave him. Old Elvenhair is a decent enough chap but he doesn't know how to accessorise:
Wearing his new cloak Drogo feels he looks every inch the dashing cavalier. What's more his charisma is now into double figures! Burghers of Beregost, keep a watch on your wives and lock up your daughters! Drogo the dandy is hitting the town.
Drogo leaves in a foul mood (a mood matched by the author who feels it is totally unfair that you miss out on 2000 XP just because Thalantyr's spell goes awry).
However, Drogo's mood is lightened somewhat when he breaks into a chest in a nearby cottage and discovers an aquamarine - a gem that seems relatively rare here on the Sword Coast.
Maybe this thread belongs to the Challenges and playthroughs sub-forum : https://forums.beamdog.com/categories/challenges-and-playthroughs
Thanks @Adam_en_tium I'm glad you are enjoying it. You are right though, I have put it in the wrong place.
@JuliusBorisov - Can you shift the thread to the appropriate place.
Edit: The thread has now been rehoused in its proper place thanks to @JuliusBorisov
So it turns out my cunning plan wasn't very cunning after all. The flesh golems stop being hostile as soon as you talk to Thalantyr. If I want to kill them later on I will have to start a fight with them, which I am pretty sure will turn Thalantyr hostile. So before Drogo does anything rash he had better make sure he has bought everything he needs from the grumpy old mage.
As a swashbuckler his armour class and the damage he deals are both better than a straight thief of the same level but then a straight thief probably shouldn't be attempting to engage in swordplay in the first place. But of all the problems the swashbuckler faces I think it is vulnerability to critical hits that is the most significant. It means you are always one unlucky die roll away from serious trouble.
Even so, I am really enjoying playing Drogo, the half-orc would-be d'Artagnan, and I want to see how far he can get before his luck runs out. To this end I have allowed him to buy a Wand of Sleep from Thalantyr at High Hedge so that he can take down large groups of low level enemies. I wasn't going to do this because it seems out of character for him to use such a thing but at this point I am starting to think he needs all the help he can get.
I also decided to give Drogo a leg up by sending him to wander in the Valley of Tombs where he just happened to bump into a distressed guy who insisted on giving him something rather useful:
Excellent! Drogo has found himself a free +2 dagger. He is very pleased with this though he can't help but feel that it is not so aesthetically pleasing as the +1 dagger he was wielding before. It also looks oddly blunt and daggers really are better when the pointy end is, well . . . pointy.
While in the merchant's tent Drogo decides to browse through some of the wares laid out there and is extremely indignant when he is mistaken for a shoplifter and accosted by a guard who won't believe his innocence. The guard has to be bribed with no less than 200GP before he allows Drogo to leave. (This was an odd encounter. There is a table and a rack of weapons in the merchants tent that you can click on. The table just contains mundane items and Drogo didn't take any of them, he just looked at them. So it turns out that at the Nashkel carnival you can be arrested for browsing).
So Drogo heads back to the wilderlands south of Nashkel looking for trouble and he finds it in the shape of Vax and his buddy Zal, who is said to be "the fastest dart thrower that ever walked the Sword Coast". The pair of them are planning to rob Drogo but he manages to separate them, luring Vax away so he can kill him first, then sneaking up on Zal and attacking him before he can start chucking darts around the place. Again, it's not particularly heroic but these fellows were nothing but common brigands so they deserved exactly what they got.
I find myself wondering whether for BG1 at least a swashbuckler wouldn't be better off going with single weapon style with its armour class bonus and improved critical range. I also suspect that Drogo would be better off just using his longsword until he gets a bit more proficient at dual-wielding but I like the fact that he is an archetypal sword and dagger fighter so he is going to stick with that even if it kills him .
I have, however, realised that I am going to have to break my no potions except antidotes rule if he is going to go all the way. He is bound to run into some basilisks (and maybe the odd tanar'ri) so the new rule is no potions except antidotes and Mirrored Eyes.
This encounter made me decide to do a bit more metagaming and I sent Drogo wandering far to the north, heading for Ulgoth's Beard. To do this he did, of course, have to risk being attacked by Ankheg's but strangely he managed to cross the whole of the Lower Chionthar map with out encountering a single one of the creatures.
Drogo then had the honour of meeting his hero, the great Drizzt Do'Urden! And to his amazement Drizzt was in need of his aid. So the two of them fought side-by-side. Half-orc and drow shoulder-to-shoulder. Brothers in arms! Equals in every way! Matching blow for blow as they cut down the hordes of gnolls that crashed upon them like waves crashing upon the shore. And Drogo saved Drizzt's life on more than one occasion, deflecting blows that would surely have severed the renegade drow ranger's head from his shoulders. They parted as comrades in arms, with Drizzt telling Drogo that he was glad they would never cross swords for he was not certain who would prevail. (It is a tale that gets bigger with each telling and you can be sure that Drogo tells it often).
Drogo was wandering through Beregost, his thoughts now full of Drizzt not Dorotea, when he bumped into a rather attractive bit of tumble who was in need of his aid. Eager for the chance to prove himself he readily agreed to help the comely lass against the spell slinging bandits she claimed were pursuing her.
At first everything goes according to plan. Drogo may not be wise (WIS 7) but he is very smart (INT 16) and he manages to steer the conversation in a way that so enrages Bassilus that he forgets about his undead army and attacks alone.
I suspect Sendai must also be lacking in points in two-weapon style because for a long time they both seemed equally incapable of hitting each other. Eventually, when she did land a blow it was of course a crit, doing 22 damage and stripping him of virtually half his hit points in a single swing. Things looked touch and go for a while but Drogo kept on battling and finally managed to skewer the mouthy aristocrat. He then proceeded to sneak up on Alexander and Delgod before they could shoot any arrows at him and also laid them hors de combat.
To the victor the spoils. When Drogo stripped Sendai of her armour he realised it was magical in nature so he took it to the Thunderhammer Smithy to have it identified. There Taerom informed him that the armour was special because it had once been worn by none other than the famous Telbar.
I'm playing EET with the Tweaks Anthology, SoD Tweaks and EET Tweaks so maybe one of those changed her weaponry? I don't remember making the change but she was definitely dual wielding and she dropped a +1 scimitar as well as her +1 longsword.
Still, he agreed to help and in the end he had to admit that he benefited from the experience:
The journey from level seven to level eight was probably one of the quickest in terms of time taken because Drogo basically did it all in ankhegs. I have been playing Baldur's Gate since it first came out and I have lost count of the number of characters I have lost to ankhegs during that time. It came as a complete surprise to me when I discovered that they are susceptible to Sleep spells, I always assumed they had far too many hit points for that. Even so, I was worried that Drogo might come a cropper when fighting them because they do a lot of damage and he is only ever one crit away from serious trouble. In the event I needn't have worried. The Wand of Sleep did its work and Drogo came away with barely a scratch.
On leveling up Drogo invested all 25 points in Find Traps and, more importantly, got to put a vital second pip in Two-Weapon style. Now, at last, he is starting to feel like a force to be reckoned with.
So Drogo decided instead to take a look around the local area and he came upon a young sculptor who needed his protection form a ruffian called Greywolf. Drogo, always keen to be seen as a patron of the arts, readily agreed to protect the youthful chiseler.
Drogo felt confident that he could defeat Greywolf. He was, after all, an experienced duelist, with incredible strength, magnificent dexterity and the finest armour money could buy. Surely the bounty hunter would be no match for him.
Unfortunately for Drogo the first time they crossed swords Greywolf proved far more than a match for him. Our hero was cut to pieces and had to flee:
Drogo, somewhat chastened, went back to Feldespost's Inn and rested up in his room (the royal suite, naturellement). When he was returned to full health he went back to teach Greywolf a lesson, convinced that this time he would prevail. Just to make sure he had an advantage he started the combat by sneaking up on the bounty hunter and stabbing him while he wasn't looking. Or at least that was the plan. Unfortunately, Drogo managed to miss his foe and a much angered Greywolf proceeded to slash him to ribbons. Drogo only managed to escape by the skin of his teeth.
Drogo may not be very wise but he is smart enough to know that sometimes you need to change tactics. So he want to the Thunderhammer Smithy and purchased himself a Dagger of Venom.
And at the third attempt Drogo was able to defeat the boorish bounty hunter. But it still wasn't an easy victory. Even with the Dagger of Venom in his off-hand Drogo only managed vanquish his foe by creeping up on him and stabbing him when he wasn't looking and then running away and throwing daggers at him from a distance. Again it wasn't the most heroic of displays and Drogo hopes when the bards come to sing of the battle they will skip over some of the more sordid details.