Can I just take back whatever I've said before about beholders, illithids and golems and instead rant about how much I despise trolls in this game? At least with every other type of enemy there's at least some opt-out tactic for the laziest among us to resort to. Not trolls, nope. No matter what, save for a Death Spell (which I don't think even works with SCS) you always have to beat them to an inch of their life then stop to give them 'breathing room' to fall down. There's no way around it, and there's nothing more annoying than watching your party ineffectively beat a troll while it's down before you redirect them and give them proper orders. Not to mention their immunity to the majority of status effects just to make sure they are capable of falling over. It's amazing how such a relatively weak foe can inspire such hatred. And now they're in all three games too!
@Artemius_I: Death Spell does work on Trolls with SCS. It even kills Spirit Trolls and Giant Trolls. I've made a habit of only going to the De'Arnise Hold after getting the Death Spell.
The fights in Watchers Keep that follow a "dead magic" zone or are in one.
I tend not to ever play with a very hard hitting front liner/tank, so getting a mass attack with no buffing/prep is a nightmare.
The only way I have managed so far is to immediately trigger all the items for summons I have (golum book, genii bottle, horn berserker, spider ect.) to give us some time to move and regroup at lower levels or planaters/divas at higher levels.
@Artemius_I: Agree with you completely. Hate doing the De'Arnise Keep, as that is the place where you encounter the most trolls in the early game in BG2. It is probably the reason I play as a thief or a ranger in most cases, just so I don't have to go out and do it immediately.
Draconis. I don't think I ever beat in a real fight. I always use spike traps to instant-kill him.
Long time ago, before the shield of Balduran I especially hated the beholders across the Rift bridge, with the shadows that come at you at the same time.
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.
I strongly disagree with many things told about Tactics Mod in this topic, not only with the phrase quoted here. Tactics cheats? Sure it does. Using reallyforcespell scripts or other tricks that make enemies not disruptable, giving to a certain mage 2 familiars that cast as mages, and so on. Where Tactics doesn't cheat at all, afaik, is in Irenicus prison, it simply puts stronger enemies as guardians of his headquarter base. And is quite logical that a mage that can aspire to become a God, that can conquer alone Spellhood, that is respected by a Drow Mother and that can set up a hidden base of that dimension in the town can also recruit a lev19 cleric and fighters better than goblins or low level durgars.
Is perfectly possible to defeat Improved Iliych without any cheese, I did it multiple times, even if my usual strategy is to disrupt the cleric before he gates in the deva or to wait for the summon to expire. Imo the genius of that modded dungeon is that it force you to fight at low level and with limited equipment, you don't have even enough bullets to successfully kite the enemies as the rest of the party kills them using ranged weapons. In that component the durgar mages use in a clever and fair way their spells, they are tough only because the vanilla mages AI is so stupid. And the Iliych's group patrol a certain area and make the luring them few at a time more difficult, but perfectly possible, and still Iliych alone can kill a couple of yours before you kill him.
The choice if using cheap tactics, cheese or cheating or to use fair but effective tactics is up to you. I did beat any Tactics encounter without any cheese at least once. With my charnames with stats in the low or mid 80s, and without maxed HP gain on level up, that probably mean 30% less HP than other way.
SCS ramps the difficulty in a different way, and not all tactics is cheat and cheese, there is also better AI and there are things, like how it prevents to trap spawning points, that force you to don't use cheese. Also SCS adds new powers, new more powerful enemies, is more oriented towards improving AI, but the beholders in their full glory are certainly not using only a better AI.
And I find also some prejudice in some of the things that I read. LoB imo is cheating even more than Tactics, Tactics puts good fighters and casters in the initial dungeon, but you have still a chance to backstab and kill, to do significant damage with spells, to have enemies failing ST. A goblin with fighter's HP and thac0 and ST that make him almost immune to save or else spells seems to me plain cheating. And form what I read the game of more than one player who is using LoB is becoming a feast of kiting, bombing from the fog of war, and so on.
But SCS is clever, LoB is a fair game and Tactics is cheesy, is the only bad guy that cheats and force you to cheat... If and when I cheat is only because I decide to do it. If I am forced to cheat or use not fair tactics is usually because I want to run an environment that is too hard for me, my ability and knowledge. But almost all the battles that at first sight I judged as impossible without cheese was later beat with fair means. Improving further many of them was even possible without any pre buff or special preparation. I have still to play LoB to see if that also fits there.
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
The fallen Deva is only one of the many elements of a battle that is a lot more complex, give to yourself a weapon that instant kills devas and you have not won the battle, and you have ways to win it without the deva being summoned or having him summoned but not able to target your party. The sense of the whole thing is to give you the opportunity to explore in depth the resources that a party/soloer has at early SoA levels, without resorting on uber equipment and nerfing some of the easy tactics that in vanilla give an easy and almost automatic victory. If someone instead of becoming a better player prefers to go for the easy cheat/cheese route it is only his own fault, and this is true for every difficulty enhancing mod, Tactics make it only a little more explicit. When I read similar comments I always think to the readme of Soulafein mod, also written by Weimer, in the FaQ the question is "Undead Sola is just too strong, I can not hit or damage him and he destroys my whole party, why did you make him so OP in respect of the NPC version you give to us?" The answer was "the NPC Sola is actually even more powerful, is just you that are not able to buff properly a F/M". And this is true for a lot of other situations, when Tolgerias and his helper kill your party in a pinch in vanilla is your fault, he has the same spells you can use, possibly less casters than your party and no mlee helpers. And he really kicked my butt a lot of times, before I was able to use my casters in a decent way. I learned to beat him with good tactics, not with cheese, cheese is some that I enjoy a lot and use a lot, but later, when I am able to do without it and I want to spice up things, try new things, do some research or just have some fun seing a whole dungeon explode in the first 4 rounds from when I get there. Maybe this is the reason why I prefer Tactics over SCS, that anyway is a really good mod. Maybe this is the reason why I prefer to find in the initial dungeon a strong party of 10-20 level people that use in a clever way their (legittimate) abilities, instead of finding goblins with HP, thac0 and ST good for dragons, in an environment that changes completely the in game balance making backstab, save or else and damaging spells and tanking with good AC almost not effective and forces you to kiting or anyway reduces your freedom of playstyle. And I am obviously referring to LoB here. You may be become a master in kiting or using potions to buff, but the whole game balance is altered and you are forced to ignore, and never learn, half of the tactics a mage or thief can use.
Imo the very few that are able to beat SCS +LoB with fair tactics, maybe using well the battlefield making good use of choke points and similar, but avoiding cheap tactics, illegal increase of levels or HP for their party and exploits, can play and learn a lot. But I am convinced that for those who can win there only using not fair things some runs of Tactics mod, with the goal to use the less cheese they are able, would be really useful. I am not the strongest player around, but if I have some strength is thanks to playing Tactics and trying to don't cheat even when cheat seems to be the only way possible.
Comments
I tend not to ever play with a very hard hitting front liner/tank, so getting a mass attack with no buffing/prep is a nightmare.
The only way I have managed so far is to immediately trigger all the items for summons I have (golum book, genii bottle, horn berserker, spider ect.) to give us some time to move and regroup at lower levels or planaters/divas at higher levels.
Long time ago, before the shield of Balduran I especially hated the beholders across the Rift bridge, with the shadows that come at you at the same time.
Tactics cheats? Sure it does. Using reallyforcespell scripts or other tricks that make enemies not disruptable, giving to a certain mage 2 familiars that cast as mages, and so on.
Where Tactics doesn't cheat at all, afaik, is in Irenicus prison, it simply puts stronger enemies as guardians of his headquarter base. And is quite logical that a mage that can aspire to become a God, that can conquer alone Spellhood, that is respected by a Drow Mother and that can set up a hidden base of that dimension in the town can also recruit a lev19 cleric and fighters better than goblins or low level durgars.
Is perfectly possible to defeat Improved Iliych without any cheese, I did it multiple times, even if my usual strategy is to disrupt the cleric before he gates in the deva or to wait for the summon to expire. Imo the genius of that modded dungeon is that it force you to fight at low level and with limited equipment, you don't have even enough bullets to successfully kite the enemies as the rest of the party kills them using ranged weapons. In that component the durgar mages use in a clever and fair way their spells, they are tough only because the vanilla mages AI is so stupid. And the Iliych's group patrol a certain area and make the luring them few at a time more difficult, but perfectly possible, and still Iliych alone can kill a couple of yours before you kill him.
The choice if using cheap tactics, cheese or cheating or to use fair but effective tactics is up to you.
I did beat any Tactics encounter without any cheese at least once. With my charnames with stats in the low or mid 80s, and without maxed HP gain on level up, that probably mean 30% less HP than other way.
SCS ramps the difficulty in a different way, and not all tactics is cheat and cheese, there is also better AI and there are things, like how it prevents to trap spawning points, that force you to don't use cheese. Also SCS adds new powers, new more powerful enemies, is more oriented towards improving AI, but the beholders in their full glory are certainly not using only a better AI.
And I find also some prejudice in some of the things that I read. LoB imo is cheating even more than Tactics, Tactics puts good fighters and casters in the initial dungeon, but you have still a chance to backstab and kill, to do significant damage with spells, to have enemies failing ST. A goblin with fighter's HP and thac0 and ST that make him almost immune to save or else spells seems to me plain cheating.
And form what I read the game of more than one player who is using LoB is becoming a feast of kiting, bombing from the fog of war, and so on.
But SCS is clever, LoB is a fair game and Tactics is cheesy, is the only bad guy that cheats and force you to cheat...
If and when I cheat is only because I decide to do it. If I am forced to cheat or use not fair tactics is usually because I want to run an environment that is too hard for me, my ability and knowledge. But almost all the battles that at first sight I judged as impossible without cheese was later beat with fair means. Improving further many of them was even possible without any pre buff or special preparation. I have still to play LoB to see if that also fits there. The fallen Deva is only one of the many elements of a battle that is a lot more complex, give to yourself a weapon that instant kills devas and you have not won the battle, and you have ways to win it without the deva being summoned or having him summoned but not able to target your party.
The sense of the whole thing is to give you the opportunity to explore in depth the resources that a party/soloer has at early SoA levels, without resorting on uber equipment and nerfing some of the easy tactics that in vanilla give an easy and almost automatic victory.
If someone instead of becoming a better player prefers to go for the easy cheat/cheese route it is only his own fault, and this is true for every difficulty enhancing mod, Tactics make it only a little more explicit.
When I read similar comments I always think to the readme of Soulafein mod, also written by Weimer, in the FaQ the question is "Undead Sola is just too strong, I can not hit or damage him and he destroys my whole party, why did you make him so OP in respect of the NPC version you give to us?" The answer was "the NPC Sola is actually even more powerful, is just you that are not able to buff properly a F/M". And this is true for a lot of other situations, when Tolgerias and his helper kill your party in a pinch in vanilla is your fault, he has the same spells you can use, possibly less casters than your party and no mlee helpers. And he really kicked my butt a lot of times, before I was able to use my casters in a decent way. I learned to beat him with good tactics, not with cheese, cheese is some that I enjoy a lot and use a lot, but later, when I am able to do without it and I want to spice up things, try new things, do some research or just have some fun seing a whole dungeon explode in the first 4 rounds from when I get there.
Maybe this is the reason why I prefer Tactics over SCS, that anyway is a really good mod.
Maybe this is the reason why I prefer to find in the initial dungeon a strong party of 10-20 level people that use in a clever way their (legittimate) abilities, instead of finding goblins with HP, thac0 and ST good for dragons, in an environment that changes completely the in game balance making backstab, save or else and damaging spells and tanking with good AC almost not effective and forces you to kiting or anyway reduces your freedom of playstyle. And I am obviously referring to LoB here. You may be become a master in kiting or using potions to buff, but the whole game balance is altered and you are forced to ignore, and never learn, half of the tactics a mage or thief can use.
Imo the very few that are able to beat SCS +LoB with fair tactics, maybe using well the battlefield making good use of choke points and similar, but avoiding cheap tactics, illegal increase of levels or HP for their party and exploits, can play and learn a lot.
But I am convinced that for those who can win there only using not fair things some runs of Tactics mod, with the goal to use the less cheese they are able, would be really useful. I am not the strongest player around, but if I have some strength is thanks to playing Tactics and trying to don't cheat even when cheat seems to be the only way possible.