You ever get gussied up for a battle, and it's over in the first act?
Maurvir
Member Posts: 1,090
For my party, this was last night in the Cloakwood Mines. They had gotten pounded by that Hareishan one level up (forcing a reload, as my MC, Eilrie, was killed). Of course, that was due to a massive tactical failure on Isra's part that resulted in guards pouring out from too many directions, but still.
So, expecting Davaeorn to be, well, hard - especially with SCS installed - I had the party go back to High Hedge for some potions of explosions and spells. Aura spent an afternoon bulking up her spell book. I optimized Tenya's spells, switching out healing for skeleton warriors. They were ready to rumble.
They get to the bottom of the mine/enclave and Imoen is clearing traps when he (somehow) sees her and casts a skull trap at her. I'm not sure how, as she was still invisible and I didn't see anything about spells that allow him to see through that. (It's possible she set off the last trap, but I'm almost positive she cleared it just before he spoke and she took damage) Weirder, he didn't continue the attack - he just stood waiting.
Psyched up, they retreat to one of his ante areas where the dead guard was and form a plan. Imoen sneaks around behind him for the backstab while Tenya's lesser water elemental attacks from the front. I expect to have to get Immy out of there fast, so I have Isra and Sirene ready at each corner of a hallway.
Go time. Because they are still invisible, the elemental attacks first and scores a hit. Almost immediately, Imoen rolls a natural 20 and Davaeorn is laying dead on the floor. I'm still shocked when the chapter narration starts. He didn't even get a chance to start casting! Now the party has a bunch of potions of spell blocking and explosions left over...
The only mistake was forgetting to loot the one dark corner with the jelly. Isra saw it, but they totally neglected to kill the thing and examine the cupboards. The whole place is flooded now, so no going back. Still, that was unbelievable.
So, expecting Davaeorn to be, well, hard - especially with SCS installed - I had the party go back to High Hedge for some potions of explosions and spells. Aura spent an afternoon bulking up her spell book. I optimized Tenya's spells, switching out healing for skeleton warriors. They were ready to rumble.
They get to the bottom of the mine/enclave and Imoen is clearing traps when he (somehow) sees her and casts a skull trap at her. I'm not sure how, as she was still invisible and I didn't see anything about spells that allow him to see through that. (It's possible she set off the last trap, but I'm almost positive she cleared it just before he spoke and she took damage) Weirder, he didn't continue the attack - he just stood waiting.
Psyched up, they retreat to one of his ante areas where the dead guard was and form a plan. Imoen sneaks around behind him for the backstab while Tenya's lesser water elemental attacks from the front. I expect to have to get Immy out of there fast, so I have Isra and Sirene ready at each corner of a hallway.
Go time. Because they are still invisible, the elemental attacks first and scores a hit. Almost immediately, Imoen rolls a natural 20 and Davaeorn is laying dead on the floor. I'm still shocked when the chapter narration starts. He didn't even get a chance to start casting! Now the party has a bunch of potions of spell blocking and explosions left over...
The only mistake was forgetting to loot the one dark corner with the jelly. Isra saw it, but they totally neglected to kill the thing and examine the cupboards. The whole place is flooded now, so no going back. Still, that was unbelievable.
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Comments
But yes, such things have happened to me regularly. Typically in final fights though. I often make lists of buff spells and potions and scrolls, so that they would all be cast/consumed in the right order for maximum duration.
I believe the most extreme case (not Baldur's Gate) was half an hour of prep-work and then ~20 seconds of actual combat. The fight would have been over much quicker, but it had 3 stages and cut scenes between each one. At the end of the fight I realized that I had not yet gotten around to actually sending my protagonist into the fight yet.
Baldur's Gate related, probably the Imprisoned One at the end of Watcher's Keep. Some 15 minutes of prep-work, and then my mostly melee-oriented party rushed in and started hacking at him. Whenever he summoned up some help, my party would happily turn around for a few seconds to cut those demons into fine slices. It took me a round or two to notice that the only reason the Imprisoned One was not defeated yet was that he was taking too much damage too quickly to say his last words. So we stepped back and watched him be released from his prison.
Really, any fight against a single enemy, especially a mage, can be prone to this.
Also had one fight against the Amazons where I started with a One Gift Lost fireball and a Horror spell, and all 4 failed their saves and ran away on fire.
In that encounter, Imoen missed the backstab, and it was fun getting her out of that spot, as she was the first party member he saw. Massive amounts of web were involved, and Aura and Eilrie pelted him while Isra hacked away with spider's bane. Had he not failed his save several times, that could have gone poorly.
As an aside, the party had already learned not to bunch up after fighting sirenes. Thus, his fear spell ended up only affecting Imoen, who was mostly stuck with him.
Ironically, the battle with the kobold shaman prior had almost gone worse than Mulahey himself, as my MC got hit by fear and wandered back out into the cavern. Tenya sent the water elemental to babysit her, taking out a bunch of kobolds we had missed. Eilrie got herself under control right before the elemental poofed.
That happened on my last BG1 run. My MC laid down enough web to make Cloakwood Forest blush, then had Minsc (with Spider's Bane) kite Sarevok and crew into it. Imoen (dualed in that run) emptied out her fireball spells on each side of the central statue as soon as Minsc cleared the web. By the time she was done, everyone except for Sarevok was either dead or so close to it that a single arrow finished them off. I think one party member lost a couple of hit points when someone on Sarevok's side managed to save vs spell long enough to get off an arrow.
That was pre-SCS, though. I'm expecting that fight to be harder on this run.