I swear, someday I'll find out why people keep suggesting this. People keep saying that beholders will fail to use their rays on summoned monsters and default to melee, but they're clearly playing a different game than me. In my game, they do use them, and death ray acts like the death spell and wipes summons instantly. I wish it were that easy for me.
This has been my experience as well, and I don't usually run SCS or anything similar. Which is one reason why beholders are my most hated enemy in the entire series. They're not fun, or interesting. There are no tactics that work on them. You either rush them and pray, or you use the Shield of Balduran and the entire exercise becomes a foregone conclusion with no real effort or thought on the player's part.
Personally, I blame the poor implementation of the antimagic ray. In PnP, the antimagic eye projects a cone, not a ray, which negates all magic cast within or entering or the area, and suppresses any magic that exists within the area for as long that magic is within the cone. So when a PnP beholder hits you with its antimagic eye, your magical protections go down, but the beholder also can't hit you with its other eyes, nor can any other beholder, or any other spellcaster period. And when the beholder removes its antimagic eye, your magical protections come back up, because existing effects are suppressed, not dispelled. Frankly, a more PnP-accurate implementation, along with more non-magical thralls to fight you while you're thoroughly anti-magicked, would have been awesome and probably very interesting. As it is, though, the antimagic ray just destroys any attempt to deal with the other eyes short of the Shield of Balduran or the Cloak of Mirroring.
Mislead cheese will also defeat Beholders, since they generally can't target you while your Mislead clone is halfway across the map, but that's kind of inconsistent, and I haven't used it in ages, so I don't know if it still works.
Vampires with SCS or maybe Demiliches, nah probably vamps. There are only 2 demiliches and many vamp encounters. SCS vamps are extremely hard to deal with, I mean they have level drain, domination, huge passive regen, high resistances they summon rats and bats and they can shapeshift into a bat at low health and fly away. You can't even target attack them in bat form, you have to use a script that has a auto attack function.
I don't get why people find flayers hard, even in SCS all you need is chaotic commands and your good. Maybe add a few int potions for overkill. Really just death spell the umberhulks and hack n slash the flayers.
SCS vamps are extremely hard to deal with, I mean they have level drain, domination, huge passive regen, high resistances they summon rats and bats and they can shapeshift into a bat at low health and fly away. You can't even target attack them in bat form, you have to use a script that has a auto attack function.
I really, really don't like SCS vampires. They don't feel more difficult, only more annoying - by about a factor of ten thousand. Spells, resistances, regeneration - that's fine. Running away and become unattackable save for (for some reasons) via scripts? That's just ridiculous. As are the 100 rats that do nothing but clog up space (do have fun with them in LoB mode). Not hard, just really, really, mind-numbingly boring to deal with.
Spirit Trolls and Vampiric Wraiths. Stat drain and level drain are painful. Regeneration makes it worse. But enemies who can turn invisible at will are just no fun to fight. You spend half your time waiting for them to appear, and the other half re-clicking them so your characters can concentrate their pressure on a single enemy because the regeneration makes it very bad to spread your damage across multiple targets.
Hear hear.
Spirit Trolls with SCS installed are just plain frustrating. Not a big threat to the party, per se - just really really annoying to fight.
They attack a party member, and then quickly go invisible again before your characters can even launch the first counter-strike with their equipped weapon. You basically have to rinse and repeat until you get a lucky hit in. Then hope you get the next lucky hit in before the bastard has fully regenerated again. It can take many minutes to put one down. Worse if there's a group of them.
True Sight is useless too, because they can immediately go invisible again. Basically, area spells like Fireball are the only thing that can reliably hit them, but as @semiticgod stated, their regeneration makes that strategy ineffective as well, unless you have a huge number spell slots to spare...
Without the SCS "Smarter Trolls" and "Improved De'Arnise Keep" component installed, they're not quite as bad, and there'll be fewer of them.
I usually love SCS, but in this case it really failed to make sure that the difficulty it adds is the kind that makes battles fun and challenging, rather than repetitive and frustrating.
@ineth by the time I do flayers I normally have death spell so their umberhulks and most of their thralls instantly die. Teleporting flayers did freak me out the first time that happened. Most flayer still can't cast spells if I remember correctly, only the big bads with the name I can't remember.
I will admit if your protections go down then the fight becomes extremely hectic.
Tactics doesn't usually qualify since it's a mod and those optional encounters are meant to be hard as hell, at least for me. But there was one time I just tried spicing up Mae'var a little, I just didn't expect him to be THAT enhanced. This was just out of Irenicus Dungeon on my way to pick up Edwin, not stacked up on equipment or anything. I just gave up on it and uninstalled that component.
But from vanilla Mae'var--->tactics Mae'var... Jesus.. -.-
The most hated fight for me in BG games was the encounter with fallen paladins in the Bridge district. Why, or why there couldn't be a peaceful solution to it?
But from vanilla Mae'var--->tactics Mae'var... Jesus.. -.-
This kind of thing is why SCS was created. Tactics made things impossible for most folks. It ramped up the difficulty by a huge margin. SCS forces the player to strategize but rewards good strategy. SCS does NOT ramp up the difficulty just for the sake of making it harder.
The tactics maevar is overkill, so is Chosen of Cyric encounter from Rogue Rebalancing mod. With SCS mage prebuffs you get toasted in a matter of seconds. This encounter is meant to show you that you're a dummy who doesn't know how to use your guys and without detect illusion over 100 and mantles on your mages you are hopeless.
Entertaining as hell to watch it but a bitch to actually complete it without scratch. The best moment is that I thoght my barbarian would withstand the constant backstabs... Turns out the f/m/t has several Maze scrolls in his pocket.
Tactics also blatantly cheated, which while not impossible to beat per se made many people feel very miffed because of the whole "stacked deck" sentiment. SCS fights fairly fairly, which makes people much less upset even if they lose a fight.
Kuroisan (from the "Acid Kensai" component of Tactics), uses a cheat to make himself completely invulnerable to everything for the first 30 seconds of the fight, if I remember correctly...
Liches are annoying because, if I can't get to them before their protections get up, I get Timestopped then incapacitated by Symbols. I have to wait for their PFMW to wear off, which is not fun because of their annoying skeletons that shoot ice arrows even though they don't have bows. Other than that, vampires. My current party has only one person who is immune to level drain–my Ranger–and the rest of them lose 10 levels in one fight.
The demons in planar sphere. They all have some uniqueness to them and at the low lvl I usually head into that mess its generally a challenge. There is also a pretty damn strong mage with an apprentice that summons adds in there. Lazok is cheese compared to those guys!
I should add though that my fig to mage duel pretty much soloed them with the +2 dagger/grave binder unless he got stunned. Popped my best defensive spells, popped hastes and stoneskin and shot and arrow from my long bow and ran up to them and killed them. Using that tactic a lot as it messes up mages with the first arrow if im fast enough while valygar does his backstab. Between both of us were doing 80% of the damage/work lol.
@Abi_Dalzim: That's the Improved Ilyich component, which is likely the second-most challenging fight in Tactics besides the Irenicus in Hell fight. It's a Fallen Deva, not a Planetar, which shares the standard celestial immunity to +2 weapons and below, which means the only two ways to harm the thing in melee combat are to use the Enchanted Weapon spell or a +3 short sword you can nab from the body of one of Ilyich's other cronies.
Doesn't Tactics force you to face a Fallen Planetar in Irenicus' dungeon? For the life of me, I've never understood the sense in that.
And people wonder why folks prefer SCS over Tactics?.../facepalm
OT: I remember really hating the Bodhi fight the first time I did it. I probably should have planned better, but the Drain Level spell really screwed me over.
Comments
Personally, I blame the poor implementation of the antimagic ray. In PnP, the antimagic eye projects a cone, not a ray, which negates all magic cast within or entering or the area, and suppresses any magic that exists within the area for as long that magic is within the cone. So when a PnP beholder hits you with its antimagic eye, your magical protections go down, but the beholder also can't hit you with its other eyes, nor can any other beholder, or any other spellcaster period. And when the beholder removes its antimagic eye, your magical protections come back up, because existing effects are suppressed, not dispelled. Frankly, a more PnP-accurate implementation, along with more non-magical thralls to fight you while you're thoroughly anti-magicked, would have been awesome and probably very interesting. As it is, though, the antimagic ray just destroys any attempt to deal with the other eyes short of the Shield of Balduran or the Cloak of Mirroring.
I don't get why people find flayers hard, even in SCS all you need is chaotic commands and your good. Maybe add a few int potions for overkill. Really just death spell the umberhulks and hack n slash the flayers.
Spirit Trolls with SCS installed are just plain frustrating.
Not a big threat to the party, per se - just really really annoying to fight.
They attack a party member, and then quickly go invisible again before your characters can even launch the first counter-strike with their equipped weapon.
You basically have to rinse and repeat until you get a lucky hit in. Then hope you get the next lucky hit in before the bastard has fully regenerated again. It can take many minutes to put one down. Worse if there's a group of them.
True Sight is useless too, because they can immediately go invisible again.
Basically, area spells like Fireball are the only thing that can reliably hit them, but as @semiticgod stated, their regeneration makes that strategy ineffective as well, unless you have a huge number spell slots to spare...
Without the SCS "Smarter Trolls" and "Improved De'Arnise Keep" component installed, they're not quite as bad, and there'll be fewer of them.
I usually love SCS, but in this case it really failed to make sure that the difficulty it adds is the kind that makes battles fun and challenging, rather than repetitive and frustrating.
The ones in the Temple District Sewers also have human thralls fighting for them, some of which are mages who can dispel your buffs.
Still not too hard, but it gets a little more interesting than "pre-buff, then hack'n'slash".
I will admit if your protections go down then the fight becomes extremely hectic.
But from vanilla Mae'var--->tactics Mae'var... Jesus.. -.-
Entertaining as hell to watch it but a bitch to actually complete it without scratch. The best moment is that I thoght my barbarian would withstand the constant backstabs... Turns out the f/m/t has several Maze scrolls in his pocket.
Other than that, vampires. My current party has only one person who is immune to level drain–my Ranger–and the rest of them lose 10 levels in one fight.
I should add though that my fig to mage duel pretty much soloed them with the +2 dagger/grave binder unless he got stunned. Popped my best defensive spells, popped hastes and stoneskin and shot and arrow from my long bow and ran up to them and killed them. Using that tactic a lot as it messes up mages with the first arrow if im fast enough while valygar does his backstab. Between both of us were doing 80% of the damage/work lol.
I beat it once and never bothered again.
OT: I remember really hating the Bodhi fight the first time I did it. I probably should have planned better, but the Drain Level spell really screwed me over.