no reloas run : solo assassin
mumumomo
Member Posts: 635
The few topics on assassins made me willibg to start an assassin run.
Knowing pure assassins are not so great in bg2ee, i plan to dual to fighter at the beginning of bg2.
Morgane is not a real thief or assassin : just a very clever girl, able to expertly work with mechanical devices or to brew poisons.
She is good aligned and very independant.
Morgane stats :
chaotic good assassin
18/18/16/18/9/10
Assassin with every skill points in disarm traps.
1 pip in shortbow
1 pip in staff
Feel free to move the thread to another subforum if this one is not suitable.
Knowing pure assassins are not so great in bg2ee, i plan to dual to fighter at the beginning of bg2.
Morgane is not a real thief or assassin : just a very clever girl, able to expertly work with mechanical devices or to brew poisons.
She is good aligned and very independant.
Morgane stats :
chaotic good assassin
18/18/16/18/9/10
Assassin with every skill points in disarm traps.
1 pip in shortbow
1 pip in staff
Feel free to move the thread to another subforum if this one is not suitable.
2
Comments
After the death of Gorion, Morgane decides to stay alone, the other people being generally too stupid or clumsy to be reliable.
After gathering the stuff of the late gorion, she goes to the FIA. On her way she is lucky and perceptive enough to find 2 magical rings.
Tarnesh, an evil mage who attacks her, falls
easily to the power of poison weapon.
Jaheira and khalid are quickly dismissed and she decides tobgo to beregost.
There she avoids some bar brawl with a drunk and gets her first level up.
Then she goes to the mage west of town and sells one of her magical ring. With the money, she buys and wand of sleep and a magical bow (from the smith).
Being of good will she helps a few people by using her wand of sleep: the half ogres south of beregost and the spiders in landrin cellar fall easily and she gets another level.
Helping a young man named garrick, she is attackes by Silke, a powerful mage that falls easily to her poisonned arrows.
Finally she goes back to the FIA to get her reward from Landrin (another level up). On her way she kills an ogre with her wand of sleep and take his magical belt.
5 days have gone since Gorion is dead.
Morgane is now level 4, with 26hp and all thieving skills in disarm traps.
Fighter->thief is manageable, probably (berserker at least I think thanks to immunities).
What makes thieves able to solo is UAI and, incidentally, scroll usage.
Shadowdancer should be better anyway to cancel spells on the fly and be able to stealth immediately in instant hostile zones. Not being able to use traps isn't such a bad drawback since you aren't planning on using epic traps anyway.
Good luck and be prepared to reload, A LOT! (And since it is a no reload run, I'm sorry to tell you that your chances of failing are extremely high).
If you don't object to the potion swap glitch, a Fighter/Thief without UAI can use any potion or scroll or wand.
Illithids are optional until TOB, when you get a weapon that makes you immune to psionics.
Mages can be tanked. The Shield of Harmony and Potions of Clarity work great against disablers, and in vanilla BG2, many rely on Improved Mantle, which can be bypassed by many weapons, including the early-game War Hammer +1, +4 vs. Giantkin and the Flame Tongue, assuming BG2:EE doesn't change that. Stoneskin goes down in a round or two, and then the mage is vulnerable. And many mages, and enemies in general, can be trapped before combat. Note that traps do lingering damage, possibly interrupting spells.
Mages can also be taken down quite nicely with ranged weapons and Poison Weapon, which has an area effect with Arrows of Detonation. Backstabs are also often instant kills on low-HP targets like mages.
Fighters can also achieve subzero saving throws, another way to avoid getting disabled. Potions of Stone Form, Invulnerability, and Magic Shielding help with saving throws.
An Assassin/Fighter dual class is quite viable throughout the saga, even solo and no reload. It just isn't the absolute strongest possible build.
Relying on saving throws can be dangerous since a single 1 on an important roll can ruin your run.
The amount of preparation/meta gaming is such a hassle that I would never do it even with the traditional pure thief.
@mumumomo Good luck, keep the updates coming!
Saves are indeed insufficient for no reload runs, if we're talking about disablers, or even non-disablers, if it's a solo run. But thankfully, BG2 has no critical fails on saving throws, so a subzero saving throw can make you immune to certain spells.
But yes, even a 95% chance to shrug off the effects of a Domination spell is not enough for a no-reload run, where you get hit by many such spells. Rolling a 1 on an important roll is very unlikely, but if you're rolling the dice a hundred times over, your chance of rolling a 1 is over 99% (0.95^100=0.005921, or 0.5921% chance of never failing the save).
This is exactly why no reload runs are so complicated. It's not enough to play it well; you have to find ways to outright remove luck from the game.
I'm not saying it's easy, but it is doable.
Not sure if dualing is such a good idea to dual by the way. He'll be a lvl1 fighter with more HP. He'll need to plan quest xp rewards ahead.
Kudos to the challenge though.
Why not assassin/Mage instead?
Once you get uai too you can basically do anything.
The guy died by me playing silly in early BG.
Just to answer a few points: solo assasin is doable (even very easy in BGEE) but i dislike how they suck at fighting in BG2.
Regarding the incapacity to solo/no reload as an assassin/fighter dual, i agree that it is clearly more difficult than with a thief or arcane caster but sometimes you feel like you need the challenge:
- You can get immunity from charm/confusion/hold/fear very easily from items.
- Level drain is a little more of a problem but prot from undead scroll solves the issue
- stun is a real problem and i am not sure on how to deal with (saves being too unreliable especially at -4)
- maze is the biggest issue. A solution would be to avoid all mages casting it but it may be difficult to remember them all...
You can block Maze by using the Book of Infinite Spells' Spell Turning option. And if you use the turn page function via a simulacrum, you can kill the clone and take a new copy of the Book of Infinite Spells from its body (an instant death kill may be necessary), which can prevent you from getting stuck on the Burning Hands page.
Also, there are lots of excess mage scrolls in the game, and if you're not opposed to it, you can use the potion swap glitch to use them before you get UAI. Spell Immunity: Conjuration or Spell Deflection/Turning/Trap will also block Maze. The Staff of the Magi also lets you cast a day long, undispellable Spell Trap, essentially insulating you from all single-target effects.
I don't know about BGEE, but in BG2, items are a great equalizer between classes.
It's a pity the EEs closed the loophole. Most NPC items aren't even all that overpowered. They just have nice situational uses.