Which class has the best booms?

irving15

Hey all!

In my past runs, I think I've gravitated towards the logical way of doing things instead of the flashier way to do things. I would buff my party, disable my opponents and ensure that my team fights with an advantage. I would like to play through with an unbalanced play style, and put it all on nukes, the flashier the better.

This time, I just want to throw grenades, or I suppose in the fantasy setting, nuke things to death. This time there won't be ENOUGH wands of fire. Give Garrick all the guns! How do I best accomplish this?

Several classes come to mind: invoker, sorcerer, dragon disciple and necromancer. I'm not sure about the last one, as I haven't gone to BG2 yet, but I hear the best nukes later on are on the necromancer's list and skull trap is really cool.

I'm considering this on both a mechanical and flavor perspective and I can't decide! Please send me your thoughts and keep in mind if something is impractical, it's worth it if it looks super cool and does a lot of damage.

Thank you!

ThacoBell

Invoker or Dragon Disciple. Leaning more towards invoker, since they bonuses for their school spells.

masteraleph

Cleric|Mage? Takes a while to get high level mage spells, but you get a lot more spells, and some of the Cleric ones (Holy Smite for example) let you throw around lots of damage too.

Cloutier

You've just inspired me to roll a new sorcerer called "Nuker"

jmerry

For massive damage? Fire is the way to go. Sure, Horrid Wilting does a lot of damage. But if you let the spell run its course, Incendiary Cloud deals five times as much. Priests get Fire Storm, which has a shorter duration but ignores magic resistance. Mages also get Fire Storm through a summon; Planetars have three instances of it.

The drawback? These are all party-unfriendly. You'll need a fire-immune party if you want to go all out with them. Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to get fire resistance.
- Dragon Disciples eventually become naturally fire immune.
- Druids get some resistance from levels, and can shapeshift for more. (Avenger - fire salamander form is immune. Shapeshifter - greater werewolf gets 50%. Add 30% from level 24 and 20% from a helm of defense, and they're immune. All druids - fire elemental form is immune.)
- There's a lot of fire resistance gear out there. Rings, armor, helmets, shields. Spells and potions can help temporarily, too.
- Several NPCs have personal gear with fire resistance. Anomen's shield, Nalia's ring, Valygar's armor.

And if you go over 100% resistance, standing around in those fire storms and incendiary clouds will actually heal you.

My next planned party, "Kill it with Fire", is exactly this. A Dragon Disciple leading a party of fire-immune adventurers to burn everything in their path. It will have a thread in the playthroughs forum when I get to it. After my current no-spells run finishes, of course. No boom today. Boom tomorrow. Always boom tomorrow.

You can't go fully immune in BG1 without a really weird paty composition, but my planned party will at least have the two front-line tanks immune so they can throw fireballs into melee. And with necklaces of missiles, everybody can throw fireballs.

ThacoBell

Horrid Wilting is possibly my favorite damage aoe, but its such a late spell. You won't be using it in BG1. You'll probably be using fireball far more often, and as invoker, you'll get a bonus with it.

Blackbɨrd

jmerry wrote: »

For massive damage? Fire is the way to go. Sure, Horrid Wilting does a lot of damage. But if you let the spell run its course, Incendiary Cloud deals five times as much. Priests get Fire Storm, which has a shorter duration but ignores magic resistance. Mages also get Fire Storm through a summon; Planetars have three instances of it.

The drawback? These are all party-unfriendly. You'll need a fire-immune party if you want to go all out with them. Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to get fire resistance.
- Dragon Disciples eventually become naturally fire immune.
- Druids get some resistance from levels, and can shapeshift for more. (Avenger - fire salamander form is immune. Shapeshifter - greater werewolf gets 50%. Add 30% from level 24 and 20% from a helm of defense, and they're immune. All druids - fire elemental form is immune.)
- There's a lot of fire resistance gear out there. Rings, armor, helmets, shields. Spells and potions can help temporarily, too.
- Several NPCs have personal gear with fire resistance. Anomen's shield, Nalia's ring, Valygar's armor.

And if you go over 100% resistance, standing around in those fire storms and incendiary clouds will actually heal you.

My next planned party, "Kill it with Fire", is exactly this. A Dragon Disciple leading a party of fire-immune adventurers to burn everything in their path. It will have a thread in the playthroughs forum when I get to it. After my current no-spells run finishes, of course. No boom today. Boom tomorrow. Always boom tomorrow.

You can't go fully immune in BG1 without a really weird paty composition, but my planned party will at least have the two front-line tanks immune so they can throw fireballs into melee. And with necklaces of missiles, everybody can throw fireballs.

Finally a use for the Club of Detonation!

jmerry

The Club of Detonation +5 is a fantastic weapon, one of the top three in damage dealt per hit against generic enemies (The other two are the all-physical Staff of the Ram +6 and the super-late Flail of Ages +5). The fireball risk ... if you're making your saves, that's an average of less than one damage per hit before resistances to everyone nearby. You might get some troublesome spikes, but it's not bad even in a generic party.
Really, the worst thing about it is that making it eats one of your fire resistance rings. That's why I didn't make it in the run I just finished - I wanted the resistance.

My "Kill it with Fire" party does plan to use the club, of course. At least, when they're not around innocents or fighting fire-immune monsters. Also, the Harbinger sword you can get in the Underdark may see some use.

Oh, and a relevant bug I just did a bit of testing on ... if you use a sequencer or contingency to make an AoE spell target yourself, that spell ignores magic resistance. At one time, this bug meant that Sunfire always ignored magic resistance. That is no longer true - but they only patched it for that one spell. Everything else is affected.
If using a sequencer, you need at least one character-targeted spell in there. If using a contingency, setting it to target yourself is sufficient.

Testing pictures:

In these pictures, the caster testsorc is a high-level Dragon Disciple (for the fire immunity) and Dummy is a high-level wizard slayer equipped with items for over 100% magic resistance.

irving15

Finished a BG run with an Invoker! It was great fun fireballing pretty much everything. I got to use Scorcher and Lightning Bolt sometimes, as well. There were many.... incidents that led to the tank and several innocent farmers to perish, but on the bright side, I think my pyromania has been sated, for now, thank you all for helping me on my quest for carnage

ThacoBell

Aw crud, I'm an accessory to arson.

Blackbɨrd

jmerry wrote: »

Also, the Harbinger sword you can get in the Underdark may see some use.

I've always liked that Harbinger sword it's got some interesting bonuses such as turning Ogres to stone. I think it's great. Just a pity it wasn't accessible earlier in the game. I might have to do a play-through with all of the under appreciated weapons, that I don't really use someday. Someday.

Then it will get it's chance to shine.