Are you planning on going pure thief, assassin or swashbuckler? I always end up taking swashbuckler for the extra proficiency, Thac0 / damage and +2 AC with no loss of thieving skills (which is quite important when you only reach level 6).
Are you planning on going pure thief, assassin or swashbuckler? I always end up taking swashbuckler for the extra proficiency, Thac0 / damage and +2 AC with no loss of thieving skills (which is quite important when you only reach level 6).
Since I'm dialing from Fighter ( Berserker ), I've little choice. I don't use SK much either.
I'm not seeing where the damage comes from. With 18/50 str the damage range is 4-7 (2-5 without the Sequencer) with 5 apr at a rather poor thac0 (15ish). Have I missed something? I guess you could have DUHM if you're good aligned. A F/T multi can get 4 apr either dual wielding or with a bow, deal a lot more per hit and hit more often.
The damage is in the poison damage. With 5 APR you can stack so much poison it's ridicolous. After about 6-8 seconds in combat with Sarevok you'll have so much poison damage on him that you can walk to the other side of the room and take a coffee break while he dies on his own.
Imagine dual wielding two daggers of poison on a warrior with 5 APR.
[Edited] : The sword spider has 18 poison damage. So if you hit 5 times you'll deal out 90 damage from poison alone.
I thought that the Sword Spider form doesn't do poison damage?
I'm not seeing where the damage comes from. With 18/50 str the damage range is 4-7 (2-5 without the Sequencer) with 5 apr at a rather poor thac0 (15ish). Have I missed something? I guess you could have DUHM if you're good aligned. A F/T multi can get 4 apr either dual wielding or with a bow, deal a lot more per hit and hit more often.
The damage is in the poison damage. With 5 APR you can stack so much poison it's ridicolous. After about 6-8 seconds in combat with Sarevok you'll have so much poison damage on him that you can walk to the other side of the room and take a coffee break while he dies on his own.
Imagine dual wielding two daggers of poison on a warrior with 5 APR.
[Edited] : The sword spider has 18 poison damage. So if you hit 5 times you'll deal out 90 damage from poison alone.
I thought that the Sword Spider form doesn't do poison damage?
The Sword Spider form does 18 poison damage per hit. I have had some installations where it only worked on the Polymorph self spell (Mage level 4) but in my recent installation of Trilogy the avengers spider get the poison aswell.
I thought that the Sword Spider form doesn't do poison damage?
The Avenger's sword spider form has been nerfed.
The Polymorph Self sword spider form hasn't been nerfed.
'
This is for BGEE? As i'm running a patched and up to date trilogy and my Avengers sword spider does poison aswell. Though i have had some installations where it didn't, just curiouse.
I thought that the Sword Spider form doesn't do poison damage?
The Avenger's sword spider form has been nerfed.
The Polymorph Self sword spider form hasn't been nerfed.
'
This is for BGEE? As i'm running a patched and up to date trilogy and my Avengers sword spider does poison aswell. Though i have had some installations where it didn't, just curiouse.
well Sword Spiders shouldn't have poison attacks, so i think the nerf was legitimate
The sword spider isn't 110% identical as the ones you meet in the game have quite a bit higher damage than the one you transform into. It goes from around 6-9 with the enemy spiders in cloakwood / graveyard. To the 2-6 you do if you transform into one yourself.
Hi all. As you've probably gathered from my login name, I'm Alesia_BH from the Bioware forums. Those forums have been my online home for a while now -and I have no intention of relocating- but I thought I'd quickly chime in here since there was some discussion of our No Reload Challenge threads and my posts in particular.
I'm not offended by anything Copastetic said: he's entitled to his opinion of course and skepticism can be a healthy habit of thought. The tone of some of the posts was ungenerous, but that seems to have been a result of the discussion here becoming a bit over-heated more than anything else- something regrettable perhaps, but understandable. I'm glad things ended on a civil note and hope Copastetic, SionIV, and others continue to have fruitful exchanges.
With regards to the veracity of the posts in our No Reload threads, I'll note that the challenge operates on an honor system both by necessity and by choice. Due to the nature of the challenge, photos can't "prove" anything. And being thoroughly skeptical, video can't "prove" anything either since someone could fail, try again, and then just cut a video of the successful encounter. Fortunately, those of us who participate don't feel the need to see "proof" or to "prove" anything ourselves: that isn't what the threads are about.
If someone wanted to join the No Reload challenge and fib or cheat they could of course. And I personally wouldn't hold it against them if they did. I would, however, feel sorry for them: I'd feel sorry for them because they'd have evidently missed the point. We don't participate in the challenge to showoff before an anonymous crowd: we do so to share our experience -triumphs and failures alike- with friends. That's more rewarding than putting on a show could ever be.
All of us who regularly participate in the threads have done some clever things. We've all also done some intensely stupid things. We post on both. For example, in what was (as far as I'm aware) the first public account of a Improved Anvil solo attempt, I no reloaded a large swath of the mod with an F/M/C named Alena -despite the fact that I had never played the mod or the class before- (clever) but then lost my multimillion exp triple class to a crew of vanilla random spawn hobgoblins (intensely stupid). I and others enjoy sharing successes more than failures, naturally, but we find both rewarding. It is openness- and the knowledge that our friends will support us in both good times and bad- that makes the challenge fun.
Philosophy and failures aside, if anyone doubts that the tactics described work as stated, I would encourage you to take SionIV's approach: try them yourself (Or better yet, join us in the challenge). You may have to tweak things to accommodate your playing style and or the details of your install, but once you are sufficiently familiar with the no reload style of play, the engine mechanics, and the particulars of relevant battles you'll likely meet with success personally and also be in a position to interpret the posts of challenge participants.
Generally, I and others make a point of posting in a way that would permit others to replicate. In battles that are low risk and mutually understood we tend to suppress detail in order to avoid boring each other, but in challenging battles -or in cases where novel tactics are employed- we're likely to spell out the particulars.
The SCS Sarevok battle -while potentially challenging at first- is an example of a battle that has, for many of us, become low risk and mutually understood. That's why the coverage of some of those fights (and BG1 in general) is sometimes sparse: we know the opponents, we know the mechanic- we know what works and what doesn't- and we know that it isn't really difficult to no reload once you get the hang of it. That mutual understanding leads us to use shorthand. If I enter the battle with a solo thief, for example, and write "Drank heavy, used a movement based approach, opened with dispelling arrows, kept Invisibility->rebuff in reserve, bow and opportunistic Aule's smacks for damage, casters first" Grond0 amongst others would recognize the strategy, know that it allows safe completion of the battle, and be able to replicate if he desired. Likewise, if he wrote "Used the scroll, tactical ammo, and the pillars" I'd understand what he meant and would be able to safely replicate as well. Accept my apologies if the use shorthand or concise coverage in those battles has been off-putting to anyone: I'll try to keep that in mind in future posts. At the same time, note that there are instances where the Sarevok fight was described in detail in the thread. We're also all happy to field questions if you ever stop by.
(Huh? I ended up writing way more than I intended here. Oppsy...)
Anyhoo. Here's the upshot of all this (and perhaps the totality of what I should have said really...): we have fun in the No Reload Challenge threads, if you doubt anything, come join us- you're all more than welcome. Hope to see you around.
Cheers,
A.
Btw. A quick note on melee sorcerers. The whole melee sorcerer thing had its origins in a joke really. A number of years ago on the old Bioware forums, we were running an Ascension Solo Challenge. After I had run an Avenger Druid and some other unlikely prospects through, Potty 1 from our forums started a thread inviting others to pick the game's worst class with the understanding that I'd solo it in an Ascension-Tactics (parts) install. The Transmuter was selected, and -noting that Polymorph Self seemed to have the potential to solve many of the Transmuters kit's problems, despite being widely viewed as useless at the time- I ended up experimenting with it. It worked surprisingly well and in the end, my Transmuter, Alastria, successfully completed her run.
After taking a multi-year break from BG, I decided to experiment with the Polymorph based approach again- this time with a melee sorceress, having no direct damage spells. In what was my first SCS play through, sorceress Alastria solo no reloaded up to Suldanessellar before my rustiness and unfamiliarity with the mod ended her run (rested outside plum out of spells, ambushed by Rhakshasas). Despite her end (another example of intense stupidity on my part to be sure...), I was once again pleasantly surprised by how effective the melee based approach can be for a single class arcane character.
I'm not inclined to compare the efficacy of a melee sorcerer with, say, a fighter in the general case: There are too many contextual factors that would need to be taken into consideration to render a meaningful judgement including player objectives, player style, character level, encounter specifics, and install details. I concur with Sion IV that one should take a holistic approach when evaluating any character -focusing on both defense and offense- and that damage per round analyses can be fun in and of themselves but have the potential to mislead. At the same time, I'll note that these days the pendulum seems to have swung the other way and that there is a tendency to over-estimate the Polymorph Self based approach. I'm not implying that Sion IV in particular is over-estimating it of course -it may very well be the bee's-knees (or spider's knees...) for his purposes- but others should experiment with alternatives before committing to what is, in many ways, a boutique character build. One further note here: I still haven't gotten around to employing the Polymorph Self approach with a C/M and I haven't seen anyone explore the potential there thoroughly. There is a lot of fun to be had there by, amongst other things, running the Holy Triumvirate (Holy Power, Righteous Magic, Draw on Holy MIght) through the high APR forms. I'd love to see Sion IV -or anyone else for that matter- give it a whirl.
Remember for BG:EE that the Polymorph Self sword spider doesn't do poison damage like it did in BG2 so the ability to solo melee has been reduced for the EE.
I'm not an EE player so I can't comment on the mechanics there. In any event, the presence or absence of poison in a given install would be an example of the contextual factors that need to be taken into consideration when weighing alternatives.
My intention wasn't really to engage the melee sorcerer debate: I'm glad others enjoy discussions of that ilk but they're not my cup. Interpret my post as a howdy-from-a-far coupled with an attempt to provide a little context on the No Reload Challenge posts and melee sorcerer play. That's all.
Not to be rude to folks discussing melee use of thieves in big battles... but fo serious? Just use movement and either HiS or invisibility potions. And seriously, again, if you are dealing with something that has lots of hp in bg1, bs with the dagger of venom. A halfing fighter thief can EASILY take down anything in the game by making very judicious use of backstab. Is it cheesey to run away and hide?? Erm, no more than in real life; I'm sure lots of people yelled 'hax!' whenever Subedei slaughtered armies more than twice as large with no significant losses... didnt stop him from being he most successful general of all time, in terms of hilarious victories.
Standing there and trading blows for either an archer or thief is frankly ridiculous. Both types rely on forcing the enemy to fight the battle that cannot be won, ie forcing them to wait helplessly for death. Why would a f/t sit and melee someone that can hurt him when he can zip away, hide and return to inflict horrible death. Sarevok chose to hide in an underground temple with pillars to hide behind, and imo any thief that doesnt use this better have ~5 int.
Erm, sorry, but it always bothers me when someone argues that something is better in melee than a f/t... and then has the multi play exactly like a pure fighter. Defeating the purpose, ya know, of playing thief at all. Itd be like me declaring a caster couldnt prebuff.
Good post from that vet... wasnt aware somebody did a serious solo of Transmuter.
Edit: imho, you add fighter to thief for two reasons only, beating up mooks FASTER, and making your bs vs powerful guys actually hit. For dragons, just make traps. Nobody says you need to set 5m traps on the dragons feet, most are in very large areas.
IMHO F/Ts are valuable more for their versatility than their sheer power. The Fighter-fuelled backstabs are excellent, but to me the real appeal of the class is the way that it can function as a scout, an assassin (taking down mages before the fight starts), a frontline fighter, a capable ranged attacker, a rampant backstabber, and your anti-traps/locks man. They fulfil all sorts of roles, and I believe they gain levels faster than any other multiclass. I don't know why people hate on Montaron so much because IMHO he's one of the most useful NPCs, suited for virtually any situation.
That being said, without any doubt whatsoever a F->T is superior to a F/T. I modded my game to allow F/Ts to gain GM, and that goes a long way towards evening the scales.
IMHO F/Ts are valuable more for their versatility than their sheer power. The Fighter-fuelled backstabs are excellent, but to me the real appeal of the class is the way that it can function as a scout, an assassin (taking down mages before the fight starts), a frontline fighter, a capable ranged attacker, a rampant backstabber, and your anti-traps/locks man. They fulfil all sorts of roles, and I believe they gain levels faster than any other multiclass. I don't know why people hate on Montaron so much because IMHO he's one of the most useful NPCs, suited for virtually any situation.
That being said, without any doubt whatsoever a F->T is superior to a F/T. I modded my game to allow F/Ts to gain GM, and that goes a long way towards evening the scales.
F/T is imho a damage machine with bs... if you do it right nobody can do a thing to you. So I disagree, a F/T is basically your Patriot Missile... they hit their target so hard the target doesnt know what happened, which is why I like the DoV... once poisoned, enemies move slow, so its easy to setup another brutal backstab... but if you use a f/t as a fighter, you are not wrong, just not taking full advantage imho. Imho, as a f/t , with good cons, they can play as a tank even, esp vs mooks, and vs non-mooks, you have backstab. If you are using a f/t or t as I would, you runaway and hide after a bs, with dov to help. Imho, lather, rinse and repeat.
Comments
Edit: auto correct is awesome. Dualing.
The Polymorph Self sword spider form hasn't been nerfed.
This is for BGEE? As i'm running a patched and up to date trilogy and my Avengers sword spider does poison aswell. Though i have had some installations where it didn't, just curiouse.
Might be different next patch.
I'm not offended by anything Copastetic said: he's entitled to his opinion of course and skepticism can be a healthy habit of thought. The tone of some of the posts was ungenerous, but that seems to have been a result of the discussion here becoming a bit over-heated more than anything else- something regrettable perhaps, but understandable. I'm glad things ended on a civil note and hope Copastetic, SionIV, and others continue to have fruitful exchanges.
With regards to the veracity of the posts in our No Reload threads, I'll note that the challenge operates on an honor system both by necessity and by choice. Due to the nature of the challenge, photos can't "prove" anything. And being thoroughly skeptical, video can't "prove" anything either since someone could fail, try again, and then just cut a video of the successful encounter. Fortunately, those of us who participate don't feel the need to see "proof" or to "prove" anything ourselves: that isn't what the threads are about.
If someone wanted to join the No Reload challenge and fib or cheat they could of course. And I personally wouldn't hold it against them if they did. I would, however, feel sorry for them: I'd feel sorry for them because they'd have evidently missed the point. We don't participate in the challenge to showoff before an anonymous crowd: we do so to share our experience -triumphs and failures alike- with friends. That's more rewarding than putting on a show could ever be.
All of us who regularly participate in the threads have done some clever things. We've all also done some intensely stupid things. We post on both. For example, in what was (as far as I'm aware) the first public account of a Improved Anvil solo attempt, I no reloaded a large swath of the mod with an F/M/C named Alena -despite the fact that I had never played the mod or the class before- (clever) but then lost my multimillion exp triple class to a crew of vanilla random spawn hobgoblins (intensely stupid). I and others enjoy sharing successes more than failures, naturally, but we find both rewarding. It is openness- and the knowledge that our friends will support us in both good times and bad- that makes the challenge fun.
Philosophy and failures aside, if anyone doubts that the tactics described work as stated, I would encourage you to take SionIV's approach: try them yourself (Or better yet, join us in the challenge). You may have to tweak things to accommodate your playing style and or the details of your install, but once you are sufficiently familiar with the no reload style of play, the engine mechanics, and the particulars of relevant battles you'll likely meet with success personally and also be in a position to interpret the posts of challenge participants.
Generally, I and others make a point of posting in a way that would permit others to replicate. In battles that are low risk and mutually understood we tend to suppress detail in order to avoid boring each other, but in challenging battles -or in cases where novel tactics are employed- we're likely to spell out the particulars.
The SCS Sarevok battle -while potentially challenging at first- is an example of a battle that has, for many of us, become low risk and mutually understood. That's why the coverage of some of those fights (and BG1 in general) is sometimes sparse: we know the opponents, we know the mechanic- we know what works and what doesn't- and we know that it isn't really difficult to no reload once you get the hang of it. That mutual understanding leads us to use shorthand. If I enter the battle with a solo thief, for example, and write "Drank heavy, used a movement based approach, opened with dispelling arrows, kept Invisibility->rebuff in reserve, bow and opportunistic Aule's smacks for damage, casters first" Grond0 amongst others would recognize the strategy, know that it allows safe completion of the battle, and be able to replicate if he desired. Likewise, if he wrote "Used the scroll, tactical ammo, and the pillars" I'd understand what he meant and would be able to safely replicate as well. Accept my apologies if the use shorthand or concise coverage in those battles has been off-putting to anyone: I'll try to keep that in mind in future posts. At the same time, note that there are instances where the Sarevok fight was described in detail in the thread. We're also all happy to field questions if you ever stop by.
(Huh? I ended up writing way more than I intended here. Oppsy...)
Anyhoo. Here's the upshot of all this (and perhaps the totality of what I should have said really...): we have fun in the No Reload Challenge threads, if you doubt anything, come join us- you're all more than welcome. Hope to see you around.
Cheers,
A.
Btw. A quick note on melee sorcerers. The whole melee sorcerer thing had its origins in a joke really. A number of years ago on the old Bioware forums, we were running an Ascension Solo Challenge. After I had run an Avenger Druid and some other unlikely prospects through, Potty 1 from our forums started a thread inviting others to pick the game's worst class with the understanding that I'd solo it in an Ascension-Tactics (parts) install. The Transmuter was selected, and -noting that Polymorph Self seemed to have the potential to solve many of the Transmuters kit's problems, despite being widely viewed as useless at the time- I ended up experimenting with it. It worked surprisingly well and in the end, my Transmuter, Alastria, successfully completed her run.
After taking a multi-year break from BG, I decided to experiment with the Polymorph based approach again- this time with a melee sorceress, having no direct damage spells. In what was my first SCS play through, sorceress Alastria solo no reloaded up to Suldanessellar before my rustiness and unfamiliarity with the mod ended her run (rested outside plum out of spells, ambushed by Rhakshasas). Despite her end (another example of intense stupidity on my part to be sure...), I was once again pleasantly surprised by how effective the melee based approach can be for a single class arcane character.
I'm not inclined to compare the efficacy of a melee sorcerer with, say, a fighter in the general case: There are too many contextual factors that would need to be taken into consideration to render a meaningful judgement including player objectives, player style, character level, encounter specifics, and install details. I concur with Sion IV that one should take a holistic approach when evaluating any character -focusing on both defense and offense- and that damage per round analyses can be fun in and of themselves but have the potential to mislead. At the same time, I'll note that these days the pendulum seems to have swung the other way and that there is a tendency to over-estimate the Polymorph Self based approach. I'm not implying that Sion IV in particular is over-estimating it of course -it may very well be the bee's-knees (or spider's knees...) for his purposes- but others should experiment with alternatives before committing to what is, in many ways, a boutique character build. One further note here: I still haven't gotten around to employing the Polymorph Self approach with a C/M and I haven't seen anyone explore the potential there thoroughly. There is a lot of fun to be had there by, amongst other things, running the Holy Triumvirate (Holy Power, Righteous Magic, Draw on Holy MIght) through the high APR forms. I'd love to see Sion IV -or anyone else for that matter- give it a whirl.
My intention wasn't really to engage the melee sorcerer debate: I'm glad others enjoy discussions of that ilk but they're not my cup. Interpret my post as a howdy-from-a-far coupled with an attempt to provide a little context on the No Reload Challenge posts and melee sorcerer play. That's all.
Best,
A.
Standing there and trading blows for either an archer or thief is frankly ridiculous. Both types rely on forcing the enemy to fight the battle that cannot be won, ie forcing them to wait helplessly for death. Why would a f/t sit and melee someone that can hurt him when he can zip away, hide and return to inflict horrible death. Sarevok chose to hide in an underground temple with pillars to hide behind, and imo any thief that doesnt use this better have ~5 int.
Erm, sorry, but it always bothers me when someone argues that something is better in melee than a f/t... and then has the multi play exactly like a pure fighter. Defeating the purpose, ya know, of playing thief at all. Itd be like me declaring a caster couldnt prebuff.
Good post from that vet... wasnt aware somebody did a serious solo of Transmuter.
Edit: imho, you add fighter to thief for two reasons only, beating up mooks FASTER, and making your bs vs powerful guys actually hit. For dragons, just make traps. Nobody says you need to set 5m traps on the dragons feet, most are in very large areas.
That being said, without any doubt whatsoever a F->T is superior to a F/T. I modded my game to allow F/Ts to gain GM, and that goes a long way towards evening the scales.