Stalker Haste and Fatigue
Loub
Member Posts: 471
in Not An Issue
Er... I have searched everywhere and can't find a changelog that confirms this, but is it me or the Stalker's Haste spell is now applying fatigue once its effects wear off? 'Twas not such in the days of BGT, and since I can't find any source on 2e, I cannot be certain that this is the intended effect.
All of the guides refer to Stalker's Haste as imposing no fatigue once it wears off, which is understandable given their gimped caster levels (at level 12 their caster level is only 5, which gives them a duration of 48 seconds on Haste, just as much as a level 5 Mage/Bard) - in fact, due to the sheer amount of tiredness it inflicts, it is impossible for the party to peruse it without falling into the graces of Leira more than twice between three horns.
Er... I think that last poetic bit requires some explanation: The graces of Leira invokes the phenomenon of dreaming, which most often requires sleep, which is what is assumed to be what the party does when 'resting' other than pounding or being pounded by your LI; and 'horns' is a term found in the Bible indicating twilight - that is, dawn and dusk, or even more simply, sunrise and sunset (also sometimes used metaphorically as to indicate metaphorical light or divine favor emanating from someone, I.E. the horns of Moses (his inner light)) - between two horns would indicate half a day, either from sunrise to sunset or sunset to sunrise, that is, half a day- three horns indicates sunrise to sunset to the next sunrise or sunset to sunrise to the next sunset, that is, a whole day.
All of the guides refer to Stalker's Haste as imposing no fatigue once it wears off, which is understandable given their gimped caster levels (at level 12 their caster level is only 5, which gives them a duration of 48 seconds on Haste, just as much as a level 5 Mage/Bard) - in fact, due to the sheer amount of tiredness it inflicts, it is impossible for the party to peruse it without falling into the graces of Leira more than twice between three horns.
Er... I think that last poetic bit requires some explanation: The graces of Leira invokes the phenomenon of dreaming, which most often requires sleep, which is what is assumed to be what the party does when 'resting' other than pounding or being pounded by your LI; and 'horns' is a term found in the Bible indicating twilight - that is, dawn and dusk, or even more simply, sunrise and sunset (also sometimes used metaphorically as to indicate metaphorical light or divine favor emanating from someone, I.E. the horns of Moses (his inner light)) - between two horns would indicate half a day, either from sunrise to sunset or sunset to sunrise, that is, half a day- three horns indicates sunrise to sunset to the next sunrise or sunset to sunrise to the next sunset, that is, a whole day.
1
Comments
The stalker's Haste spell works exactly the same way as the wizard's version. There are no differences at all. An increased level of fatigue is one effect of Haste, regardless of who casts the Haste spell. This was the same in BG2/BGT. I'm afraid those guides are wrong when it comes to how it's implemented in the game. And the fatigue does not depend on the duration of the Haste effect. Whether a character is hasted for 8 rounds or 23 rounds makes no difference at all - the increase in fatigue is always the same.
Furthermore, using Haste does not mean that the characters are automatically tired after it wears off. Instead, what Haste does is increase the current level of fatigue, but whether that leads to the character needing to sleep or not depends on the total level of fatigue that character has accumulated since the last rest. If you cast Haste on a character with high constitution after having just rested, the increase in fatigue caused by Haste might not fill up the fatigue level to the point where the character needs to rest again immediately.
I am aware of the pointlessness of the duration to the fatigue, which is why I brought it up in the first place - in a party with high CON npcs (Imoen, Jaheira and Anomen in my case), you can only use 2 hastes before fatiguing - no matter if it is from a Stalker or a Mage - and given the caster level penalty of Rangers, it means that you will be able to use 96 seconds of it at most before resting, exactly half the time you would be able to use it with a Mage of the same experience before needing to lay down - which makes the Stalker Haste practically pointless in EE, since it doesn't have the same perks it did on BGT and cannot compete with that of a Mage or Bard.
Another irksome factor is that even if you dispel it before the duration ends, you still get fatigued - if it were not so, interesting strategies could be formed around avoiding it reaching its full duration (slow + free action, for instance), which would make the game more fun.
I hope this served to dispel your confusion - I tried to sound as transparent as possible, I even revised this post 3 times to make it more understandable to laypeople, as evidenced by the extremely narrow vocabulary used in it. Even then, it might be a little sesquipedalian, so I will lay bare to you its basest semiotic semantics:
The main perk of the Stalker's Haste was its lack of fatigue infliction featured in a Mage/Bard's Haste.
Are you sure you haven't been traveling? Doing that builds a lot of fatigue. Try resting, casting Haste, dispelling it or waiting for the effects to wear off and then checking if your high CON characters get fatigued - in theory, they shouldn't.
Yes, but usually only if your characters have zero fatigue before casting Haste. You can check how the constitution score influences the fatigue threshold by looking at the FATIGUE_BONUS values determined in HPCONBON.2da.
@Loub
Thanks for clarifying, I wasn't sure whether you were really talking about Baldur's Gate Trilogy. I used Valygar myself in BG2/BGT. However, as I said before, the stalker's Haste in BGT does not lack the fatigue effect. There is no such perk that you describe. The Haste spell of the stalker in BGT is just as fatiguing as the mage spell, and BGII:EE didn't change anything in this regard. You can check this yourself by comparing the Haste spells from ToB and from BGII:EE using NearInfinity. They both apply the fatigue penalty at the end of the duration. Slight misunderstanding of the stalker's reduced caster level here. It is true that stalkers cast spells at seven levels below their character level. However, this does not prevent them from reaching the level 20 casting level cap, it only means that they reach it at a later character level. When a druid hits character level 20, he has reached the casting level cap because a druid's caster level is equal to his character level. A ranger, on the other hand, simply reaches the casting level cap at character level 27. The same works for paladins vs. clerics: At character level 28 and beyond, the paladin's spells are exactly as powerful as those of a cleric at character level 20 and beyond.
Thanks for the clarification - since I haven't played the Trilogy in years, my memory is fuzzy as to what is true and what not.
But it was widespread knowledge among many sites that Stalker Haste did not fatigue after wearing off, perhaps they are wrong - a myth spawned by hearsay? An oversight from an earlier patch?
Truly, maybe I shouldn't be so trusting of the derelicts that house the knowledge of the game.
@Troodon80: This topic is Not An Issue.