I may have to try out a Wizard Slayer one of these days. I'm generally reluctant since I don't really see spellcasters as the be-all end-all of SOA threats anymore, but it might work out anyways.
@Neverused: Wizard Slayers also inflict 25% spell failure on hit, not 10%, despite the kit description. Four hits is sufficient to knock out spellcasting entirely.
I used a Wizard Slayer/Thief in a Shadows of Amn run recently, and with Fire Seeds and Vhailor's Helm, she could take down liches pretty much single-handedly, even very early in the game.
I have avoided wizard-slayers as I don't like the restrictions - limiting kit to that extent takes a great deal of the fun out of the game for me, as playing with toys is a lot of the fun for me. That said, this could be interesting. Question is whether Wizard Slayer to the end, or dual into something else? (Into mage is most amusing ) Playing a straight fighter opens up non-humans as an option - half orc for murderous combat stats, dwarf for regen (with tomes) and shorty bonuses, my first dart flinger was a kitless halfling, so done that one. Choices, choices...
Do we know if the 10%/25% thing is a bug in the doc, or bug in the implementation? As a doc bug, I am not too concerned if this is correct. It would be awkward to set off down this path, for the SoD patches to drop this back to 10% though.
On a side note I've just had great fun Ankheg farming with my soloing, dart-flinging, assassin > mage equipped with the Dale's Protector. The whole concept was so preposterous that I couldn't help laughing all the way to the XP bank.
The other bonus to playing with poison is that you can take down the ghost of Ulcaster, for its little-known bonus of a Robe of the Neutral Archmagi, which looks quite fetching on Neera. Ulcaster is extremely hard to hit though, I think requiring a critical when my THAC0 is currently 7 (level 6 fighter, with archery gauntlets) so darts rate of attack is the best chance of getting the poison to land. The ghost is immune to all damage except poison. As a bonus, Viconia lands a stun from the Stupefier though, and that made it easier to land poison darts, not rolling for the hits.
Sting in the tail is that I lost 2 rep, had not counted on that. My rep had only just dropped from 16 -> 7 for honoring my contract on Charleston Nib. So much for a charismatic evil lead who fools everyone into thinking him the hero of the realm! Foolishly, I have been hoarding gold until reaching Rep 18 and splashing out, a big gamble with Neera on the team! Now I am rep 5 (and just checked the temple rates, the ideal time to buy rep back was at rep 7, just before I killed the ghost. Doh!)
This is an unusual run for me as a I rarely play evil, and certainly the first time I tried to take on Ulcaster himself. That might actually go better when I return to the Blackguard run, as she has more daily uses of poison, and I still need to revisit the archer to see if the archery bonus ever pays off...
A lot of "invincible" enemies in BG1 are indeed vulnerable to poison, you can also kill Koveras in Candlekeep and the Keeper of the Portal (but the latter has -20 something AC and 1,000 HP!)
A lot of "invincible" enemies in BG1 are indeed vulnerable to poison, you can also kill Koveras in Candlekeep and the Keeper of the Portal (but the latter has -20 something AC and 1,000 HP!)
Considering how you can't open the Candlekeep gate by yourself, making the Keeper arbitrarily nigh-unkillable like that feels so pointless.
@GreenWarlock, how much XP is the Ulcaster ghost worth? I am currently running (concurrently) an Elven assassin (short bows) game and a Halfling assassin (darts) game and may need to arrange a detour.
Something I've noticed while eating Cheese and Ankheg sandwiches is that the timer on the Poison Weapon spell doesn't run during resting unless the 8 hours is completed. So it works like this: Ankheg appears, cast poison weapon, kill ankheg, rest immediately, another ankheg interrupts rest, poison weapon still active, kill second ankheg - two for the price of one. Which given that I dualled my assassin to mage at level 2, only giving me one poison weapon per day, is a big deal.
Does dagger of venom poison keep ticking if you leave a building/area? I poisoned the guards at the mines in BG1 at the ground entrance, run out and re-stealthed and then returned to the building and the poison seems to have stopped ticking while I left. I would have expected the ticks to have continued the full 15.
@Aerakar - I don't remember the xp award as it was not a large number, I think around 175. The robe of the neutral archmagi is the main reason to do this, followed by bragging rights.
@dunbar It works like that for every buffs in the game, this is why I have the habit of casting nearly all my spells before resting like Mirror Image and so forth.
Another tip for potential flingers - the tent in Nashkel Carnival that sells ammo does not run out of darts. If, like me, you hit as much as possible before completing the Cloakwood mines and entering the next chapter (usually because I am trying to get Imoen to reactivate her thief class to deal with traps...) then you will probably exhaust supplies of regular darts from all the other stores.
Of course, you could just switch to magic darts, depending on how well funds are managed, but I tend to use mine sparingly - knowing that they will penetrate the protection from normal missiles that mid-late game mages love to throw.
OK, my very silly dart-slinging Assassin dualled to Mage solo run has just reached BG City (at level 9/2). The real game-changer (as mentioned earlier somewhere) is getting the Boots of Speed - the hit and run tactics with poison darts is incredibly effective. However, getting to the Cloakwood mines in order to acquire said boots is no easy task - and this is where my Mage came into his own: Once he'd acquired the level 2 invisibility spell the Bandit camp was a walk in the park. Suddenly this character that I just made for a laugh has turned out to be not at all squishy and actually rather dangerous (even though as a Mage he's only allowed one pip in darts).
OK, finally took the Iron Throne and on my way back to Candlekeep with the assassin. Lessons so far: Playing a dart-moister can be a lot of fun in the first game - with the right equipment, darts can do a lot of regular damage - 4 attacks/round for 8-10/hit will be felt by most enemies, and you don't need fancy poison or darts to effectively lock down a mage. Useful to have a melee back-up plan when you meet foes immune to piercing, such as battle horrors. The bridge into Durlag's Tower is a good example. Finally picked up my ring of free-action, and discovered what should have been obvious - boots of speed and ring of free-action are not a great combo ;~) Choose between a nice immunity, and the ability to dictate range of any engagement. The latter is far more useful for a dart-flinger, although I have given the boots to Dorn, wielding the spidersword, as that particular combo is too amusing to ignore. Once you hit mid-levels, you should be free to budget for better darts - a bonus from the EE thanks to Thalantyr's stock. I am now hitting Chapter 5 with >140k gp, and still trying to conserve regular darts - need to understand my budget better!
I am still not convinced that this will scale up well for BG2EE, as I think I am at around peak potential now, and other than the crimson dart avoiding micromanaging supplies, don't see what more I would gain in the next installment, as the enemies scale way higher. With that in mind, if you are prepared to make a run of just the first game, I think the ideal build might be fighter, dual into thief or druid at 7. This gives you a decent THAC0, most of your hit points, and 4 pips in darts. At level 8 (max after dual at 7) you regain your fighter abilities, and gain the 5th pip for grand-mastery, and 9/2 APR. While that sounds like lot of downtime, the xp to regain your fighter level is about the same that you took to gain them, due to xp curve of thief/druid - and you are running around a higher-level part of the game where xp comes thick and fast.
The benefit of Archer will probably show more in the second game, so reserving judgement on that build. Likewise, the Blackguard will continue to gain poison, making that a more routine option in BG2 and beyond. Nor is my assassin -> fighter run is not a lost cause at the end of BG, as he is still a level 8 fighter! But I suspect that, as BG2 draws on, he will transition into a more regular melee build with a darts option, rather than finishing the game as a darts specialist.
One last observation on the xp tables is the idea of the assassin -> mage. Looking at long-term gaming, the ideal transition would be at level 9, gaining 2 more poisons/day, extra hit points and skill points, and having no impact on final level which caps 125,000 short of 8Mxp for a mage. Not sure how well that works out for a real play-through though, as you will not gain your mage levels back until early BG2, probably just after escaping Irenicus's Dungeon. You cap in the first game at 9 -> 6, which is annoyingly just short of 4th level spells (by 9k xp). Dualing at 5th may be the ideal for playing through both games, with one more poison dose, decent locks and traps skills, and definitely activating dual in BG1. May even go to 6 for extra thief skills, and triggering bonus xp on locks/traps, but probably not worth the trade-off. 6th is also the max thief before dualing if you want to still hit mx mage level in BG1, but the down-time is much more noticeable.
@GreenWarlock: I'd recommend dualing at 9. That's what I did for my Assassin/Fighter in my last run. It didn't cause too much downtime, and it gave me a fighter with plenty of Poison Weapon uses, as well as 100 in Detect Illusions (I used another thief for other thief stuff). Still, I started out in BG2, and the extra use of Poison Weapon probably wouldn't have been worth the late dual if you're going through BG1 first.
The nice thing about Poison Weapon is that while it doesn't really improve as you gain levels (aside from extra attacks to inflict poison from dualling to Fighter or receiving Improved Haste), spellcasters never really get better at countering it. Since you always get a poison effect even if your target saves and poison resistance is rare, it never stops being an effective way to add damage and interrupt casters.
The last time I played a similar character, I elected to dual at level 5 while playing through BGEE. Once Siege of Dragonspear comes out, though, I think an Assassin 9->dual is going to be a lot less awkward, as even the more conservative estimates for the XP cap in SoD give you enough room to reach Thief 9->Mage 10 before BG2EE.
What I'm finding with my solo assassin->mage run (now at 10/2) is that just the one poison dart attack (along with Improved Invisibility) is enough to disrupt opponents carefully prepared magical defences sufficiently for me to clean them up quite quickly while they're still wondering what's hit them. I'm currently in Ulgoth's and off to the Isle of Balduran next - so far so good, but none of this would be possible (for me anyway) without the boots of speed (and the fact that I'm soloing - it wouldn't be nearly so effective in a party).
Latest update: fresh out of Candlekeep after a trip through the lower levels, I'm at max level (8th), and most NPCs are just one level below max. Deciding between going for Sarevok now, of maxing the xp first (as I want to import into the next game on the cap) I figured it was time to finally have a shot at that Drizzt fellow, since for once I am playing an evil party. I don't remember seriously trying this before, but have wiped out most spectacularly with the odd half-hearted effort in the past.
After planning a bunch of ideas, I just let my party roll in with minimal pre-buffing, to see how we would do. Viconia cast DUHM, which boosts her strength from the Gauntlet's of Ogre power resulting in a handy buff. I switched up to Darts of Stunning, and both myself and Dorn used poison weapons. Imoen cast Haste, but that was about it. Then an opening salvo of two fireballs when we saw the gnolls. Both of which Drift's MR kicked in for, of course.
My one lucky break is that Drizzt chose to focus on Kagain, who was distinctly my most durable party member. I don't remember seeing any of the darts I flung actually stunning him, and not sure if the poison had much impact, but he went down in 4 or 5 rounds without casualty, although I did get nervous when he switched from Kagain to Neera as target. (Although what was Neera doing in melee range anyway? would be a fair question to ask )
So for the first time ever, I get my hands on the legendary Drizzt items! I have no-one to make use of the chain, as front line is in field plate, and his chain is not mage-friendly (or usable) for Imoen. One of the scimitars is usable only by Good-aligned characters, so not on this party then. That leaves me a +3 scimitar upgrade with fire resistance for when darts run out - luckily I have 2 pips in scimitars
Looks like a little Ankheg farming to get Neera to 9th (she still needs 1300xp) and then we can head back to the Gate. Looks like I will be skipping the werewolves and most of Durlag's on this play through.
Then we get to do it all over again with the Blackguard and Archer
Latest discovery - DUHM Bhaalpower is underwhelming on this build, giving only +1/stat. I think it must act on the average of my active and inactive dual levels, rather than my current level, so at 8/2 I get the effect of casting at 5th. That is an annoying an unexpected side-effect of the early dual, but probably worth the trade-off of permanent +1/+1 hit/damage and once/day poison. Swash-buckler dual-at-10 is looking more interesting again though, especially for an import into SoD.
Last update for a while: completed BGEE and ready to import.
In fact, I am considering an entirely needless re-run with the same character for a second round of the tomes, simply because losing that extra point of Dex at the end of SoA irks me for this build - although maybe that should not be a problem playing evil?
In general, Garret (my Assassin -> Fighter) was regularly scoring > 40% of the party kills, with most of the rest going to Dorn (20-30%) and later in the game, Imoen/Neera were picking up kills on trash-mods with their fireballs.
For the first game, once you hit 8-10 damage/dart, and 4 APR, then the poison does not really matter - I am getting more from the permanent +1/+1 from the assassin instead. This is because there are few opponents with high hit points in the first game, especially not mages where poison is thought to be most effective, and regularly hitting for that kind of damage will kill most enemies in a round or so. You also get to pick up a high kill rate as you clean up the enemies everyone else is beating on
Dorn gets a fair share of kills simply because he got the speed boots. In retrospect, I should probably have given those to Kagain, who already enjoyed the Big Fisted Belt and the dex-gauntlets. Boosting him with Balder's helm/cloak, and the +2 ring of protection, would get an regenerating front line with AC around -10 and lots of hit points and crazy saves - just the character we want the enemy to engage with.
I'm expecting this character will tail off towards the end of SoA, and certainly for ToB, but could be in his prime for SoD - so holding off on the SoA import until we run through the next game.
Work is going to keep me busy for the next month or so, but should be interesting to compare the blackguard and archer runs, which I expect to come into their own in the next game as we hit levels 15+ - blackguard can rely on repeatable poison, archer keeps upping the damage. And I'm still wondering about what to try for the Swash run...
So far, the experience is that dart-flingers are very viable for the first game - don't be so quick to mock Zal on your next run, he may have a lesson to teach ;~)
Back to the topic of darts, I was wondering about setting up one of the NPCs to be my dart-meister in BG2, if my PC is on some other plan. This quickly shows why the PC is generally the best candidate for dart-flinging, and why the option is taken so rarely.
First up, there are no archers, assassins or swashbucklers available and NPCs, so we are looking at a straight fighter to go the grand-master route. Our options are: 1) Anomen, who has dualed into cleric, so is not allowed to play with pointy darts any more 2) Korgan, who is a berserker, so not allowed to specialize in flinging anything but axes or daggers 3) Mazzy - who has stats to make a good choice, were it not for a stronger specialization in bows. A speed-bow would be equivalent to darts, whose only real benefit is 3 APR. Still a possibility if determined, her low strength is not a penalty to a dart build. 4) Dorn - giving up mastery, and even the +1/+1 of the assassin, but still poison darts are handy. Possible, but not great, and prefer a char with more dex. 5) Wilson? Have not played the bear yet to know how this might, or might not, work. I don't /think/ he is allowed to wield anything but his paws/claws though? 6) Super-sekrit NPC you can pick up at the start of ToB. Has all the stats to make it work, but picking them up so late, it will be a push to get grand mastery by the end of the game, and SoA seems a much better stretch of the game to play playing with darts.
Generally speaking, I can see why darts are not a common weapon of choice, as there are few good NPCs to exploit them, so it falls on taking a PC through BG with a dart affinity to begin with - luckily, that turns out to be quite good fun
Do we know if the 10%/25% thing is a bug in the doc, or bug in the implementation?
Yes, we do, it was a bug in the docs, the release notes for version 2.0 say: "The Wizard Slayer kit has always caused 25% spell failure on successful attacks, but this was mistakenly documented as 10%. The error has been corrected in the kit description."
Comments
I used a Wizard Slayer/Thief in a Shadows of Amn run recently, and with Fire Seeds and Vhailor's Helm, she could take down liches pretty much single-handedly, even very early in the game.
Do we know if the 10%/25% thing is a bug in the doc, or bug in the implementation?
As a doc bug, I am not too concerned if this is correct. It would be awkward to set off down this path, for the SoD patches to drop this back to 10% though.
Sting in the tail is that I lost 2 rep, had not counted on that. My rep had only just dropped from 16 -> 7 for honoring my contract on Charleston Nib. So much for a charismatic evil lead who fools everyone into thinking him the hero of the realm! Foolishly, I have been hoarding gold until reaching Rep 18 and splashing out, a big gamble with Neera on the team! Now I am rep 5 (and just checked the temple rates, the ideal time to buy rep back was at rep 7, just before I killed the ghost. Doh!)
This is an unusual run for me as a I rarely play evil, and certainly the first time I tried to take on Ulcaster himself. That might actually go better when I return to the Blackguard run, as she has more daily uses of poison, and I still need to revisit the archer to see if the archery bonus ever pays off...
So it works like this: Ankheg appears, cast poison weapon, kill ankheg, rest immediately, another ankheg interrupts rest, poison weapon still active, kill second ankheg - two for the price of one. Which given that I dualled my assassin to mage at level 2, only giving me one poison weapon per day, is a big deal.
Of course, you could just switch to magic darts, depending on how well funds are managed, but I tend to use mine sparingly - knowing that they will penetrate the protection from normal missiles that mid-late game mages love to throw.
The real game-changer (as mentioned earlier somewhere) is getting the Boots of Speed - the hit and run tactics with poison darts is incredibly effective. However, getting to the Cloakwood mines in order to acquire said boots is no easy task - and this is where my Mage came into his own: Once he'd acquired the level 2 invisibility spell the Bandit camp was a walk in the park. Suddenly this character that I just made for a laugh has turned out to be not at all squishy and actually rather dangerous (even though as a Mage he's only allowed one pip in darts).
Playing a dart-moister can be a lot of fun in the first game - with the right equipment, darts can do a lot of regular damage - 4 attacks/round for 8-10/hit will be felt by most enemies, and you don't need fancy poison or darts to effectively lock down a mage.
Useful to have a melee back-up plan when you meet foes immune to piercing, such as battle horrors. The bridge into Durlag's Tower is a good example.
Finally picked up my ring of free-action, and discovered what should have been obvious - boots of speed and ring of free-action are not a great combo ;~) Choose between a nice immunity, and the ability to dictate range of any engagement. The latter is far more useful for a dart-flinger, although I have given the boots to Dorn, wielding the spidersword, as that particular combo is too amusing to ignore.
Once you hit mid-levels, you should be free to budget for better darts - a bonus from the EE thanks to Thalantyr's stock. I am now hitting Chapter 5 with >140k gp, and still trying to conserve regular darts - need to understand my budget better!
I am still not convinced that this will scale up well for BG2EE, as I think I am at around peak potential now, and other than the crimson dart avoiding micromanaging supplies, don't see what more I would gain in the next installment, as the enemies scale way higher. With that in mind, if you are prepared to make a run of just the first game, I think the ideal build might be fighter, dual into thief or druid at 7. This gives you a decent THAC0, most of your hit points, and 4 pips in darts. At level 8 (max after dual at 7) you regain your fighter abilities, and gain the 5th pip for grand-mastery, and 9/2 APR. While that sounds like lot of downtime, the xp to regain your fighter level is about the same that you took to gain them, due to xp curve of thief/druid - and you are running around a higher-level part of the game where xp comes thick and fast.
The benefit of Archer will probably show more in the second game, so reserving judgement on that build. Likewise, the Blackguard will continue to gain poison, making that a more routine option in BG2 and beyond. Nor is my assassin -> fighter run is not a lost cause at the end of BG, as he is still a level 8 fighter! But I suspect that, as BG2 draws on, he will transition into a more regular melee build with a darts option, rather than finishing the game as a darts specialist.
One last observation on the xp tables is the idea of the assassin -> mage. Looking at long-term gaming, the ideal transition would be at level 9, gaining 2 more poisons/day, extra hit points and skill points, and having no impact on final level which caps 125,000 short of 8Mxp for a mage. Not sure how well that works out for a real play-through though, as you will not gain your mage levels back until early BG2, probably just after escaping Irenicus's Dungeon. You cap in the first game at 9 -> 6, which is annoyingly just short of 4th level spells (by 9k xp). Dualing at 5th may be the ideal for playing through both games, with one more poison dose, decent locks and traps skills, and definitely activating dual in BG1. May even go to 6 for extra thief skills, and triggering bonus xp on locks/traps, but probably not worth the trade-off. 6th is also the max thief before dualing if you want to still hit mx mage level in BG1, but the down-time is much more noticeable.
The last time I played a similar character, I elected to dual at level 5 while playing through BGEE. Once Siege of Dragonspear comes out, though, I think an Assassin 9->dual is going to be a lot less awkward, as even the more conservative estimates for the XP cap in SoD give you enough room to reach Thief 9->Mage 10 before BG2EE.
I'm currently in Ulgoth's and off to the Isle of Balduran next - so far so good, but none of this would be possible (for me anyway) without the boots of speed (and the fact that I'm soloing - it wouldn't be nearly so effective in a party).
After planning a bunch of ideas, I just let my party roll in with minimal pre-buffing, to see how we would do. Viconia cast DUHM, which boosts her strength from the Gauntlet's of Ogre power resulting in a handy buff. I switched up to Darts of Stunning, and both myself and Dorn used poison weapons. Imoen cast Haste, but that was about it. Then an opening salvo of two fireballs when we saw the gnolls. Both of which Drift's MR kicked in for, of course.
My one lucky break is that Drizzt chose to focus on Kagain, who was distinctly my most durable party member. I don't remember seeing any of the darts I flung actually stunning him, and not sure if the poison had much impact, but he went down in 4 or 5 rounds without casualty, although I did get nervous when he switched from Kagain to Neera as target. (Although what was Neera doing in melee range anyway? would be a fair question to ask
So for the first time ever, I get my hands on the legendary Drizzt items!
I have no-one to make use of the chain, as front line is in field plate, and his chain is not mage-friendly (or usable) for Imoen. One of the scimitars is usable only by Good-aligned characters, so not on this party then. That leaves me a +3 scimitar upgrade with fire resistance for when darts run out - luckily I have 2 pips in scimitars
Looks like a little Ankheg farming to get Neera to 9th (she still needs 1300xp) and then we can head back to the Gate. Looks like I will be skipping the werewolves and most of Durlag's on this play through.
Then we get to do it all over again with the Blackguard and Archer
Latest discovery - DUHM Bhaalpower is underwhelming on this build, giving only +1/stat. I think it must act on the average of my active and inactive dual levels, rather than my current level, so at 8/2 I get the effect of casting at 5th. That is an annoying an unexpected side-effect of the early dual, but probably worth the trade-off of permanent +1/+1 hit/damage and once/day poison. Swash-buckler dual-at-10 is looking more interesting again though, especially for an import into SoD.
In fact, I am considering an entirely needless re-run with the same character for a second round of the tomes, simply because losing that extra point of Dex at the end of SoA irks me for this build - although maybe that should not be a problem playing evil?
In general, Garret (my Assassin -> Fighter) was regularly scoring > 40% of the party kills, with most of the rest going to Dorn (20-30%) and later in the game, Imoen/Neera were picking up kills on trash-mods with their fireballs.
For the first game, once you hit 8-10 damage/dart, and 4 APR, then the poison does not really matter - I am getting more from the permanent +1/+1 from the assassin instead. This is because there are few opponents with high hit points in the first game, especially not mages where poison is thought to be most effective, and regularly hitting for that kind of damage will kill most enemies in a round or so. You also get to pick up a high kill rate as you clean up the enemies everyone else is beating on
Dorn gets a fair share of kills simply because he got the speed boots. In retrospect, I should probably have given those to Kagain, who already enjoyed the Big Fisted Belt and the dex-gauntlets. Boosting him with Balder's helm/cloak, and the +2 ring of protection, would get an regenerating front line with AC around -10 and lots of hit points and crazy saves - just the character we want the enemy to engage with.
I'm expecting this character will tail off towards the end of SoA, and certainly for ToB, but could be in his prime for SoD - so holding off on the SoA import until we run through the next game.
Work is going to keep me busy for the next month or so, but should be interesting to compare the blackguard and archer runs, which I expect to come into their own in the next game as we hit levels 15+ - blackguard can rely on repeatable poison, archer keeps upping the damage. And I'm still wondering about what to try for the Swash run...
So far, the experience is that dart-flingers are very viable for the first game - don't be so quick to mock Zal on your next run, he may have a lesson to teach ;~)
First up, there are no archers, assassins or swashbucklers available and NPCs, so we are looking at a straight fighter to go the grand-master route. Our options are:
1) Anomen, who has dualed into cleric, so is not allowed to play with pointy darts any more
2) Korgan, who is a berserker, so not allowed to specialize in flinging anything but axes or daggers
3) Mazzy - who has stats to make a good choice, were it not for a stronger specialization in bows. A speed-bow would be equivalent to darts, whose only real benefit is 3 APR. Still a possibility if determined, her low strength is not a penalty to a dart build.
4) Dorn - giving up mastery, and even the +1/+1 of the assassin, but still poison darts are handy. Possible, but not great, and prefer a char with more dex.
5) Wilson? Have not played the bear yet to know how this might, or might not, work. I don't /think/ he is allowed to wield anything but his paws/claws though?
6) Super-sekrit NPC you can pick up at the start of ToB. Has all the stats to make it work, but picking them up so late, it will be a push to get grand mastery by the end of the game, and SoA seems a much better stretch of the game to play playing with darts.
Generally speaking, I can see why darts are not a common weapon of choice, as there are few good NPCs to exploit them, so it falls on taking a PC through BG with a dart affinity to begin with - luckily, that turns out to be quite good fun