Summoned monsters seem useless
Masklin
Member Posts: 23
Hello!
First: I haven't played all of the game so please don't spoil anything. I'm in the beginning of chapter 5.
When I fight powerful monsters that are immune to normal weapons, I figure hey let's summon a powerful monster to combat that. Like a djinni or hakeashar.
But nooooooo they can't do squat. Especially disappointing was the hakeashar. I relied on it to help me against liches but it just can't do anything.
Weapon ineffective.
*sob*
Am I missing something?
First: I haven't played all of the game so please don't spoil anything. I'm in the beginning of chapter 5.
When I fight powerful monsters that are immune to normal weapons, I figure hey let's summon a powerful monster to combat that. Like a djinni or hakeashar.
But nooooooo they can't do squat. Especially disappointing was the hakeashar. I relied on it to help me against liches but it just can't do anything.
Weapon ineffective.
*sob*
Am I missing something?
0
Comments
I thought the hakeashar was supposed to be good at disarming spellcasters at melee range, by means of it its melee attack? What good is it if not that? And about its magic immunity I very much doubt that... it always dies within a few seconds of lich spellcasting. It just dies like *poof*. Does not seem very immune to anything.
There are a couple of exceptions that are pretty solid, though.
Familiars are often just used as free HP, but they can actually add a lot of utility, depending on how much micromanagement you want to do. The Neutral Evil Dust Mephit casts a couple useful debuffs that'll make life easier in BG1 and early SoA. The Lawful Evil Imp has a Polymorph Self spell that can cheese some encounters, (go go magic resistant jelly imp!). Chaotic Good Faerie Dragon gives a free Invisibility 10' radius that's basically like an extra level 3 spell slot for your mage. Let him out of your backpack before resting, cast it, put him back in your backpack, and rest in safety. The neutral familiars make good scouts at lower levels, and the Ferret and Cat can accomplish some major cheese with their pick pocketing, (lets you carry Ankheg Shells without incurring any weight penalties, lets you smuggle certain items out of certain areas without the game seeing them).
(If you're really into micromanagement, some of the familiars-- Rabbit, Dust Mephit, etc-- have increased movement speed relative to the party, making them phenomenal kiters in early BG1. Have your familiar find an enemy and draw aggro, then run it in circles while your ranged attackers finish the enemy off.)
A totemic druid's spirit animals are fantastic, especially once they get immunity to non-magical weapons. Totemic Druids are strict upgrades over normal druids, and on par with Avengers for the best druid kit.
Spider Spawn are pretty uber at low-to-mid levels, especially when supported with lots of castings of Web. They trail off later in the game, but I like to grab the spell with my Sorcerer, anyway, because they make a solid choice for soaking up Death Spells.
Call Woodland Beings are just a broken summon. Druids should fill almost all of their spell slots with them, if for no reason other than that they come equipped with a free Mass Cure, a level 5 healing spell, (and a good one at that). Summon your nymph, get your free level 5 healing spell out of your level 4 spell slot, and then the Nymph will hang around afterward and cast two Hold Persons (level 2 divine spell), one Hold Monster (level 5 mage spell!), one Mental Domination (level 4 divine spell), and one Confusion (level 4 mage / level 7 divine spell). And then, if there's anything that's not disabled, she can even soak up a couple of hits before biting the dust. It's a level 4 druid spell that also casts four level 4 or higher spells, some of which the Druid doesn't naturally have access to!
If you're talking about total power over the entire life of the game, Animate Dead is probably *the* #1 summon. There are a couple better ones, but they're much higher-level, so the wait is longer and the opportunity cost is higher. Animate Dead lasts for 8 hours, which is long enough to clear an entire map, and they upgrade as you level, capping out as 95% magic resistant skeleton warriors with magical weapons at caster level 15. They're amazing, amazing, amazing troops.
Mordenkainan's Sword is immune to pretty much all forms of damage except for purely magical damage, (think: Magic Missile and ADHW). As a result, they're superlative tanks, literally unkillable by 95% of the enemies in the game, especially if you use lower-level summons to soak up all of the Death Spells first. Shorter duration so they're more "encounter-specific" and less "map-specific" like an Animate Dead would be.
A Druid's Fire Elementals are offensive beasts. Long duration, strong offensive power, a druid will devote most of his or her level 6 spell spots to this beauty, and a handful of them can carry the party most of the way through ToB before trailing off.
Planetars / Devas / Elemental Princes are total monsters. Especially Planetars. Essentially a seventh party member.
But none of them can touch monsters that are immune to magical weapons up to +2, can they?
I expected my greater werewolf to count as +3 at least, but nope...
How is a player supposed to know for example that a balor is immune to +2?
How is a player supposed to know what summoned creatures without 'weapons' to read about hit as, in terms of +x ??
I'm frustrated... thank you very much for helping!
In terms of weapon immunity, very few enemies in SoA are going to be immune to +2 weapons unless it's a mage that casts a spell, (Mantle, Improved Mantle, Protection from Magical Weapons). Those spells grant pretty strong immunities, but they can be removed with Breach and they only last 4 rounds, anyway. Mostly the enemies that are immune to +2 weapons are going to be liches or demons.
By ToB, +2 immunity becomes a bit more common and +3 immunity starts to show up rarely, but I believe +4 weapons will allow you to hit everything worth hitting.
Most summoned minions can't harm monsters that require special enchantments to take damage, but note that many of the enemies you'll be fighting in this game are humanoids. That means (barring wizard protections) they are vulnerable to attacks from any summon.
As for what types of weapons they use, mundane summons (bears, giant spiders, normal wolves/skeletons, ogres, etc) usually have +0 weapons. You generally use these as fodder or against humanoids, against which they can be very effective.
Special monsters usually have anywhere from +0 to +4 weapons. Nymphs/Djinns/Ifrit have +0 IIRC but are spellcasters anyway. Dire wolves have +2, elementals can have +1 to +4 (the large Fire Elements have +4), skeleton warriors have +1, Mordenkainen's has +4, etc.
Avoid the Nishruu and the Hakeashar, they don't work as well as they should (and even if they did, you would end up destroying a lot of magical items).
The Shapeshifter is just a druid with some combat presence thanks to his forms. Ultimately he's still a druid, and they're all badass spellcasters.
If one character is hitting and another isn't, look at the difference between their weapons... Are they different enchantment levels? Does one deal crushing damage rather than piercing? Are their other effects like fire or cold damage in play?
Look back through the combat log... has the enemy cast a spell like Protection from Magic Weapons?
Look through your own spell lists and read descriptions... does a particular spell mention anything pertinent? Can you look up the opponent's spell and discover its limitations? Can another spell specifically counter it?
It's a brutal learning curve, but if you can embrace that, it can be tremendously satisfying to master.
https://www.siegeofdragonspear.com/files/AdventurersGuide.pdf
on playthroughs where I basically just run to the underdark as quick as possible, those earth elementals are life savers,
the mage earth elementals dish out great damage, have great to hit, and can even soak up hits pretty well ( the level 6 druid spell summon fire elemental is also a great one as well if you have it)
So I'm more or less satisfied, although... This gives me serious trust issues with games like these. I do find pleasure in figuring out the rules and challenges that are put in front of the player. What I don't like is when something behind the scenes is somehow busted or doesn't make sense at all. That's when immersion breaks and it's instead simply irritating rather than exciting - because I can't know if there's a bug or unintended feature in the game or if I'm just not understanding the situation properly.
I looked into the adventurer's guide, and it does list some +x properties of summons. At least the elementals, which is nice. Did the creators of BG 1 and 2 intend for players to know all of this before playing, or is it technically cheating?
You shouldn't allow yourself to get discouraged if you find the few cases of this in BG2 (I suppose unless you've got something personal about the Nishruu/Hakeashar or something) or you'll never find satisfaction in practically any other major game you play.
The game was always designed with exploration (or "adventuring") in mind, and that applies both in-game and mechanics-wise. Those features in particular got a significant amount of refinement/improvement if you compare BG1 and BG2, which turned out to be just what players wanted (not counting the few who were miffed that the devs decided that BG1 gave you too much freedom).
They can be useful to act as a target for powerful enemy casters, but as a rule there's better 6th and 7th level spells in most scenarios.
Part of the fun of the game is working out what spells and abilities are the most effective given a particular party set up, with so many to choose from some are invariably going to, for want of a better word, suck
Will do!
It's perhaps also worth noting that the hakeashar (unlike the nishruu) needs magical weapons to hit. That means it can be useful in a wider range of circumstances than the nishruu.
What is a problem is that I consider liches to be spellcasters, but out of my ten or so attempts at killing one, the nishruu/hakeashar failed completely to do anything useful. It attacked maybe 3-4 times, with the 'Weapon ineffective' feedback, and then it died to some SPELL.
That is what I mean. :[
That will be death spell - this banishes all creatures classed as summons irrespective of immunity or magic resistance. As was mentioned earlier in the thread the counter to that is to use simple summons initially to draw out the death spell(s) before sending in more valuable summons.
Liches require magical weapons to hit - hence the weapon ineffective feedback. That doesn't though mean that the creatures are useless against them - having the lich concentrate on your summons allows you to concentrate on killing the lich.
I am just wondering if the weapon ineffective was because the Lich had a protection spell up (PfMW or one of the mantle family) or if we is naturally immune to Nishruu/Hakeashar attacks.
In either case, I think other summons are more useful most of the time. In general, there are many very good summons: Elementals, Stalkers, Skeletal Warriors and especially Swords and Planetars are all useful.
Also spiders when combined with Web - very nasty.
So on the one hand we have magic called Death Spell, it banishes summoned creatures instantly regardless of everything. On the other hand we have a summoned creature that it 'completely immune to magic'.
In my naïveté I expected the latter to override the former, since Death Spell is magic. Guess that's not how it is!
All liches I've come across have PfMW in a round 1 contingency/trigger. Some of the meaner variants are probably immune up to +3 or something, but I don't know for sure!
sometimes liches will instead use improved mantle on themselves which means the will be immune to all weapons that are +4 and less for 4 rounds ( so only +5 and higher will be able to damage them)
next, I looked up on what the hakeashar does, and first of all, it's attack is the exact same as the nishruu's attack, plus it counts as a +0 weapon, second it does no damage (lol) but it has 2 effects; drain charges from items, and drain wizard spells, also though what I found interesting is that the weapon itself makes the nishruu/hakeashar immune to lower resistance
The tier of summons (I'd say) goes something like this: Nishruu, Skelly warriors, and Hakeashar, Aerial Servants against high level mages like liches whose Death Spells have been baited out.
Fire Elementals, Conjure Animals, and Skelly warriors vs most melee bruisers, and mid level mages (whose Death spells have been baited out)
Nymphs are incredibly useful early-game for their versatility: keep them safe, and they'll push you through most of the SoA early encounters barring Trolls and the like.
Summon Monsters 1, 2, 3, Carrion Summons, spider spawn, nymphs later in the game: summons you use to bait out death spells
While I understand the situation now, and accept it for what it is... I still think it's quite silly that the Hakeashar can't properly do what their description promises, since most high-level spellcasters use some form of weapon immunity. Perhaps this is only an issue with liches though, since most spellcasters can be breached?
Hmmm. ^_^