Azuredge allows you to keep your distance which is very helpful. I'd say 2nd place goes to the mace since it protects against the annoying level drain. Daystar is excellent but you only get one Sunray...
Yeah - turn undead, sunray etc. But I think that they don't work against those liches in the tombs or kangaxx (not sure never tested it because I die too quickly when attempting to fight them)
The liches in the tombs are higher level than the random liches that pop up in a few places like the shade temple. That doesn't make them immune to Turn Undead - it just means you need more levels before it works.
The first form of Kangaxx is immune to Turn Undead - turning would break his transformation script, so it's disallowed.
Sunray ... OK. Sunray does a decent chunk of magic damage to undead, and then on a failed save it does a massive amount of magic damage to them, enough to instantly kill. That's not foolproof.
- Liches tend to have excellent spell saves; even the random liches have a spell save of 1, so they'll always make the save against Sunray unless you have some additional modifier going for you. Which leaves you with the basic damage, and the lich lives unless you had some damage on it already.
- Liches are capable of casting spells. Protection from Magic Energy is a spell that blocks Sunray completely. So is Spell Immunity: Evocation. I don't think you'll see these without AI mods as they aren't part of the vanilla spell selection, but once those mods come into play protections like that are very likely. And if they do, you'll need to take those protections down.
- Demiliches are immune to spells from level 1 to 9. Even dedicated anti-undead spells like Sunray won't get through that.
And of course, there's the fabled scroll of Protection from Undead, which when combined with a reasonable magic weapon can turn any combat against undead to victory...provided you position your party correctly
I always smile when I find one of these as a random treasure drop
Or you could just buy some PfU scrolls. Practically every temple has two of them in stock. That way, you don't have to rely on the 0.5% or 1% chance from high-tier random treasure. Guaranteed drops? Now that's rare - only one in the entire SoA campaign, and that's in EE content (Dragomir's tomb).
Comments
The first form of Kangaxx is immune to Turn Undead - turning would break his transformation script, so it's disallowed.
Sunray ... OK. Sunray does a decent chunk of magic damage to undead, and then on a failed save it does a massive amount of magic damage to them, enough to instantly kill. That's not foolproof.
- Liches tend to have excellent spell saves; even the random liches have a spell save of 1, so they'll always make the save against Sunray unless you have some additional modifier going for you. Which leaves you with the basic damage, and the lich lives unless you had some damage on it already.
- Liches are capable of casting spells. Protection from Magic Energy is a spell that blocks Sunray completely. So is Spell Immunity: Evocation. I don't think you'll see these without AI mods as they aren't part of the vanilla spell selection, but once those mods come into play protections like that are very likely. And if they do, you'll need to take those protections down.
- Demiliches are immune to spells from level 1 to 9. Even dedicated anti-undead spells like Sunray won't get through that.
I always smile when I find one of these as a random treasure drop