I'm coming back to a playthrough I had stopped three months ago (I was in school and I didn't have much free time).
Mirlen, a Beastmaster in a Horrifically Modded Baldur's Gate: Part 4
To recall, I'm playing using a megamod I created called High Power Baldur's Gate. This mod gives ridiculous powers to nearly all the creatures in the game. This is a mod in which some ettercaps can cast Earthquake and all doppelgangers have 25 Strength. The good news is that the good guys also get ridiculous powers.
The Nashkel Mines were perilous. The party had to fight Kobold Breachers, Extremely Strong Kobolds, Insidious Lightning Kobolds, and a Greater Kobold Jailer. There were also actual demons in the mines, such as exploding manes and quasits that tried to drive the party berserk. But the party got through it okay.
Here's the party currently:
All hobgoblins get +20 to hit with melee weapons, and hobgoblin spellcasters count as 20 levels higher for purposes of determining the power of their spells. Chill Hobgoblins can cast Melf's Acid Arrow, and Glart over there can cast Large Skeleton Horde to summon a lot of skeletons. Ardenor has a lot of spells.
Jaheria used Algernon's Cloak to charm Glart, and had him cast Large Skeleton Horde twice, animating 40 skeletons which ignored the summoning limit. Now that the party had a skeleton army, they attacked Ardenor. All the Chill Hobgoblins came out of invisibility and cast Melf's Acid Arrow on the skeletons. The skeletons that got hit by the spells would eventually die, but there were plenty more of them. Ardenor cast Stoneskin, but by this point he had already lost half his health. A Chill Elite came out of invisibility as well and cast Cone of Cold. That didn't do anything to the skeletons, but it hurt Ardenor a lot. By the time the party killed Ardenor, all the other hobgoblins were out of spells and had started attacking. The party finished them off before they could kill too many skeletons.
(with all these skeletons, it almost feels like I'm playing the original Baldur's Gate before the Enhanced Edition)
Now to move on to the Blacktalons. All human bandits get +20 to hit with ranged weapons. But missiles could only do so well against skeletons. The party threw the skeletons at the bandits so that the bandits would attack them first. The party had no necromancers and hadn't packed spells good for fighting with an undead horde (e.g. Stinking Cloud). Dynaheir shot a fireball at the bandits, but I hadn't gotten the skeletons out of the way and it cooked half the skeletons.
Taugosz Tenhammer came along. He wields a returning throwing hammer, and he has equipment that gives him REALLY good AC against missile attacks. He killed a few skeletons before Khalid cast Time Stop and started hitting him with arrows anyway because attacks automatically hit during Time Stop. Dynaheir used her last Magic Missile spell to kill Taugosz.
By the time the party reached Tazok's tent, they only had 5 skeletons left. Mirlen and Minsc went in and killed Venkt before he could put on any buffs. Then they left the tent, and Raemon, Britik, and Hakt followed them out.
This was where things got rough. Britik and Hakt do a lot of damage, and the party didn't have many resources left. The party sort of scampered around trying to stay alive while damaging them. But then a truly horrible thing happened...
There goes Minsc.
Khalid was in trouble too. The party ran away but Khalid was cornered. He cast Invisibility a few seconds before he would have died. Then a few rounds later Khalid got killed, but I didn't see how it happened. The good news is that he didn't die permanently.
The rest of the party had run away, and only Britik followed them. Britik, like all gnolls, had terrible saving throws, so Dynaheir got him with Web while Mirlen shot him to death. Mirlen and Jaheira summoned some brown bears and sent them at Raemon and Hakt. They attacked the bears but got hit by the brown bears' Bearlightning ability. Then Dynaheir finished them off with a final Fireball!
I realised that I haven't run a halfling or a thief for ages, so my Paladin of Kelemvor is being put on hold for the moment. Asgrim the fighter/assassin has started her run. All stats maximised apart from charisma 8. Open locks was high enough to get the gem in Candlekeep. Pick pockets not high enough yet to get Algernon's Cloak, but points were added to his pick-pocketting ability to make that possible early in the game. The cloak is nerfed a bit, so I am happier using it nowadays. EDIT There I was trying to hide in the shadows in order to backstab Isolde and she backstabbed me!! Such is life!
Having installed Finn Jo's Sub-race mod, I decided to have a Teifling Fighter/Assassin for my next run. The armour and weapons with which I equipped the Canlekeep Assassins to make Candlekeep a bit more interesting are actually beneficial in this run due to the fact that I can actually use all but one of them. One dagger can only be used by evil characters however so it will probably get sold.
Tiffy the Teifling.
Imoen gave me the nickname Tiffy from my Teifling heritage and the name stuck. Although I attempt to be good, this is hindered by the demonic heritage with the result that being considered to be Chaotic Neutral could be considered quite an achievement. The story is about to start in earnest as Gorion has just been murdered. All the assassins did me serious damage, but paid the ultimate price for doing so.
Just a quick update about Jeanluc the inquisitor and his band of paladins. The party did well in the Cloakwood, as well as the Cloakwood Mines. It's funny how Davaeorn didn't have a good response to a simple play as gulping a potion of magic blocking just before combat. He did however manage to hold Heather once the potion wore off. The party then rushed to Heather's rescue. Luckily, Davaoern was pretty much spent spell-wise and was using his staff, which wasn't going to end well for him.
We have just arrived in the great City of Baldur's Gate. We found an aggressive group of mages on top of the Sorcerous Sundries, but thanks to resist fear and true sight, they went down really fast. We also found an Ogre Mage and pets in the sewers, so did some "cleaning" up there.
We then returned a corpse to a mage, then realized the mage smelled bad so killed him. We will resume our quest next session. We are still level 6, level 7 is still quite a ways off (each paladin needs about 13,000 experience).
Microupdate: Jeanluc the inquisitor and his band of paladins and Imoen: Traveling with: Heather (Cavalier), Sarah (Undead hunter), April (Undead hunter), Forrest (Paladin), Imoen (Thief) SETUP: BG 1 EE, no mods, core rules at all times
We finished our Baldur's Gate quests (that we are going to bother with anyways). All that was left was to use a protection from magic scroll to defeat the Iron Throne 5th floor - except my paladins are too stupid to use the scroll, not even with a potion of genius can most of the paladins even use the scroll. Whoops. So instead, I had the two front-liners gulp a potion of magic shielding and also a potion of magic blocking. They absorbed the initial enemy spells, and once I saw confusion cast, then rest of the party then assisted. We won, but the party needed to gulp down quite a few blue potions to keep together.
Paladins are level 7. We will head to Candlekeep next session.
All that was left was to use a protection from magic scroll to defeat the Iron Throne 5th floor - except my paladins are too stupid to use the scroll, not even with a potion of genius can most of the paladins even use the scroll.
Even if you dislike using multiple potions of the same type, what about adding a potion of mind focusing as well?
Sorry to hear about Tiffy, @Wise_Grimwald ! Better luck next time. Maybe he needed a party to protect him?
Just needed to go up a level first I think.
However I then had an even bigger shock. Helma the Helmite Champion got killed by Mendas in Candlekeep!!!
I HAD made the assassins there more dangerous by improving their weapons and armour, but that was just to make the encounters a little less one-sided. They weren't supposed to WIN!!
Helma is a character that I rolled a long time ago but given an Aasimar Sub-Race.
I will run her again hopefully with a bit more success next time.
All that was left was to use a protection from magic scroll to defeat the Iron Throne 5th floor - except my paladins are too stupid to use the scroll, not even with a potion of genius can most of the paladins even use the scroll.
Even if you dislike using multiple potions of the same type, what about adding a potion of mind focusing as well?
Didn't have one, or would have used it. And there was no turning back.
This time Helma succeeded in Candlekeep... Just!!! It looks like I have made those assassins in Candlekeep just strong enough. Strong enough to cause problems occasionally which is how they are supposed to be.
Here are the starting stats. I decided to change her to Lawful Good this time with EE Keeper.
So far she has picked up a ring of protection +1, ankheg armour, ring of protection from fire, and she has taken Samuel to the FAI.
EDIT
She thought that she was a bit on the daring side when she took on an ankheg. It had Nester's dagger in its gut. Her worries proved to be unfounded on that score, but then she was ambushed by no fewer than TEN bandits. She was doomed from the start.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 157 - update 123 45 6 Rae (lawful evil female half-elf dragon disciple 11, Gate70) Needle (chaotic good male half elf fighter 9 / mage 10, Grond0)
A few undocumented sessions had us clear the Temple sewers, obtain the Ring of Gaxx, observe the demise of Xzar, pick up Kitthix, help Sansuki, deal with the Fallen Paladins and skulltrap Tanova. Eventually though, a greater ghoul found the huge gap in Needle's saving throws and held him. Rae managed to turn him invisible but the greater ghoul had already switched focus onto her and did the same again. The ghoul and a vampire thought they would have a long snack but Rae managed to put up her hand and the game was over.
I was just about to post about a Earth Genasi Champion of Kelemvor. Got up to level 6 and killed all the basilisks. Took on Mutamin who was "Near Dead." Then got charmed! I had forgotten that he had that trick up his sleeve in this set-up. Most frustrating. I was just about to build up my party and enter the Nashkel Mines. Still, remembering these sorts of things is what no-re-loading is all about.
After the previous pairing took an early bath, we had time to generate a new random pairing - this time that produced a couple of goody goody fighters. As I was already running an archer in the Trio MP, it felt like a bit much to have one here as well, but possibly time will sort that out ...
After leaving Candlekeep I tend to kill Imoen rather than recruit her, but Gate70 wanted to use her to identify the magic dagger he had swapped some crossbow bolts for and I decided to let her walk away after she'd done that. Meanwhile Gate70 was roleplaying his paladin who was feeling less generous on finding evil staking out the wilderness and he attacked.
Unfortunately he attacked using a sling and not wearing any armor, while Hoity was still off in the distance burying Gorion . Montaron got a quick hit in before Ajaundis could move away - leaving Hoity to pick up the pieces when he arrived.
A bit of walking later, Hoity had found the temple at Beregost and put the pairing back together ready for next time.
Trio EE attempt 7, 8th and final update Grond0: Peer, Elf Archer. Chaotic Good Corey_Russell: Hunter, Human Undead Hunter. Lawful Good Gate70: Biff, Dwarf Barbarian. Neutral Evil Previous updates:
OK. I posted about the potential concern about running 2 different archers in MP games concurrently - time to see how that would work .
We'd been doing some work on raising reputation in the previous session and decided to continue with that by taking on the Fallen Paladins. They found it difficult to get through Hunter's defenses and didn't last long after Anarg's death.
Moving on to Windspear Hills, the Trio dealt with early encounters easily enough, but ran into trouble when a group of golems ganged up on Biff.
After going to collect some dragon-fighting equipment, Peer ran into a backstab, but otherwise the ambushers had little success.
After going back to talk to Firkraag, Conster was set up as an opponent. He's dangerous from the point of view that he will always target the PC with Finger of Death if given the opportunity. That danger can be avoided by just staying out of his sight, but Peer couldn't restrain himself after seeing the others having all the fun attacking the mage ...
I decided I would have another go with this kit this morning. Last time I got fed up with it after encountering problems transferring into BG2 - if I get that far this time I'll recreate the character from scratch rather than trying to transfer it. Although the War Hulk kit is able to use throwing daggers and axes, I feel that makes it just too over-powered and am not allowing any use of ranged weapons.
After leaving Candlekeep, Burl dodged Imoen (I don't allow recruitment of NPCs in solo runs and couldn't attack from distance). He killed Xzar with a single swipe, but missed with 7 or 8 attacks on Montaron before finally cutting him in half.
The lack of missile weapons meant Shoal was out of bounds as a first easy source of XP. Instead Burl made his way to the FAI where he dodged Tarnesh in order to get inside and buy Buckley's Buckler (constitution regeneration being particularly important for me as I don't use healing potions).
In Beregost, Burl inherited a blood-spattered cloak from Algernon before helping Mirianne got him a first level.
Silke was charmed into killing Karlat before realizing she'd made a fatal mistake in trusting Burl.
Travelling down to Nashkel, Burl boosted his defenses by picking up the ankheg armor before showing the gratitude you would expect from a chaotic evil character after Noober helped him to level 3.
Resting at the Carnival provided LMD as a Bhaal power, allowing Burl to attack Vitiare from distance before he could pick any pockets.
Heading north again, Burl gave Tenya her bowl back on the way to Ulgoth's Beard - Dushai was the latest of his short-lived friends there. That pushed reputation down to 4, so it seemed about time to do a few quests - Firebead was the first of those, helping Burl to get to level 4.
At the basilisk area, Burl sub-contracted all the hard work to Korax while he picked up 2 further levels. He pulled Lindin away and killed him, but didn't risk the others for the moment.
Burl's BG1 bag collection was completed by using LMD on Neera and purchasing the potion bag from High Hedge. He then explored the Cloud Peak Mountains. They offered up a couple of items I don't normally make use of - the Chesley Crusher (particularly suitable for this kit when you want to use a 2-handed weapon as it's restricted to 1 APR anyway) and the Gloves of Dexterity (more useful than usual as the kit includes a dexterity penalty in addition to that for dwarves).
The tome of charisma was also secured before Burl went to find Greywolf. His fast weapon speed gave him a chance of attacking twice before Burl could get a hit in, even using a +1 long sword, and Burl took several lots of damage (running round after each to let rage expire to reduce the chance of going berserk) before getting the final blow in. Greywolf's sword will improve his weapon speed slightly until Burl gets a better option.
A first test for his new sword was against Meilum. For the first time I allowed Burl to just stand and fight there and that illustrated the potential problems for the kit if you don't micro-manage fights - Burl going distinctly low on HPs before getting a killing blow in.
Over at the Lighthouse a potion of clarity ensured the sirines would cause no trouble.
Although the golems hit hard, they were still no match for Burl and the first of those got him to level 7,
pushing his HPs well into 3 figures. The constitution tome gained there will also allow Burl to dispose of Buckley's Buckler and free up another inventory slot.
Deciding it was time to make progress with the main quest, Burl headed for the Nashkel Mine. The kobolds couldn't do much to stop him going to find Mulahey and successfully disrupting the cleric's first attempted spell meant Burl didn't have to run away there. I made a mistake there though when resting immediately, while reputation was at 9 - I had intended to get CLW rather than a second LMD.
Outside the mine Burl pulled away the amazons one by one, before going to find Nimbul. Burl dodged most of his spells before coming in for the kill. Back in Beregost a single blow from the Chesley Crusher sent Tranzig running.
On the way to the Bandit Camp an ogre handed over the Girdle of Piercing. That helped nullify the bandits, though Burl switched back to the crushing girdle while taking down Taurgosz. He dodged in and out of the tent while dealing with the enemies there.
On the way through the Cloakwood though I made a fatal mistake. With the ring of free action already acquired I had decided not to bother with Spider's Bane, so initially ran past all the spiders and ettercaps in the 2nd area. I couldn't resist stopping though to see if Burl could one-shot one of them, but before he could get an attack in an ettercap had hit and poisoned him. Poison is extremely dangerous for war hulks fighting against multiple opponents, as every tick of poison induces rage with the chance of going berserk - and once that happens it almost certainly won't stop while the poison is ticking. Each bit of damage also penalises AC, meaning that any remaining opponents are likely to hit almost automatically (though as you get a benefit to death saving throw you quickly remove the danger of multiple poisonings).
Burl managed to chew through 4 of the 5 ettercaps, but even if he'd got all 5 he still would have remained enraged while the poison finished him off. Getting into that sort of rage spiral is so dangerous you should really aim to avoid it entirely in a no-reload run, but at least it does provide a bit of entertainment when you see non-critical hits doing damage well into 3 figures .
@Grond0 I wish that Karlat et al would follow me through doors. In my latest setup he doesn't, and some other characters don't either. If they do, the results can be quite interesting.
I wish that I knew which mod causes the difference. There doesn't appear to be any consistency.
A new run with a female elven Gloryblood of Tempus. She first made her way to Nashkel picking up the usual rings etc on the way. She found Ankheg armour in Nashkel and a wand in the mine area. She then returned to High Hedge where she found perdue's Sword and helped Mellicamp. She also got rid of a curse of lythancropy that was affecting a young man much to the delight of his girlfriend Aiwell. As a result she was given a long sword +1 that also did fire damage as a reward.
She found two magical belts on the body of an ogre that she killed and took a letter found on an ogrillon to its intended recipient.
She helped reunite Jumper with its owner and took the Colquetle amulet to the family of those killed.
She has just ben asked to rescue Rufie and upon doing so reached level 3. Currently ** in long swords, ** in long bows, and * in dual wielding. Reputation 15.
EDIT
Helped a dryad and 'Drienne. Now officially a hero.
@Grond0 I wish that Karlat et al would follow me through doors. In my latest setup he doesn't, and some other characters don't either. If they do, the results can be quite interesting.
I wish that I knew which mod causes the difference. There doesn't appear to be any consistency.
SCS seems to make them a bit more reluctant, though if you keep tempting them they normally will eventually follow you. If you have a party a good way to trigger a movement through a non-party transition is to send an invisible party member in - the enemy script registers the presence of an enemy, but can't see anything so goes through the transition in search of something visible.
@Grond0: I find it interesting that the metagame for a no-reload War Hulk--a character build with a ludicrously high Strength and a massive HP pool--is all about hit-and-run tactics to avoid triggering a rage spiral, and that the best weapons are those with a long reach or a low speed factor, like a short sword.
Imagine an ogre that's so afraid of getting hurt that he fights by poking people from a distance with his spear and then immediately running away.
@semiticgod it is in keeping with the name though. It's a while since I watched the Incredible Hulk on TV, but I remember the basic plot of every episode seemed to be Bruce Banner trying to avoid getting angry ...
Starting again, this time Burl got 3 early levels by charming the sirines in the Beregost Temple.
I tend not to buy anything expensive until reputation hits 20, even when money is not an issue, so this time prioritised gaining reputation before investing in the Dagger of Venom. I also picked up Hentold's +2 dagger in the meantime - using that with speed factor 0 rather than Greywolf's sword greatly reduced the amount of damage taken compared to the previous run (a short sword is even better at hit and run tactics as it has a longer reach; the +3 staff is great offensively, but doesn't allow shield benefits).
By the time reputation hit 20 with the return of Farmer Brun's son, Burl was already up to level 6 and he celebrated by going shopping. He didn't have quite enough money to get everything he wanted, so went hunting Bassilus to make up the difference.
Korax was able to kill all the basilisks, taking Burl to level 7. Moving on to the Nashkel Mine he quickly dealt with that - the poison dagger preventing Mulahey from casting any spells. Outside the mine he cleared that area - using the Horn of Kazgaroth for the first time to boost his saving throw vs death while fighting Narcillicus's mustard jellies.
The sirines and golems at the Lighthouse provided some quick XP and battle horrors and ghasts at Durlag's Tower plenty more - getting Burl his final BG1 level even before he used a PfP scroll on the rooftop basilisks.
The Bandit Camp didn't put up much of a struggle and Burl moved on to the Cloakwood. I felt compelled to kill the ettercaps that ended his last run, but took them on individually this time - even if he were poisoned Burl had enough HPs to survive that, but none of the ettercaps got the critical they needed to even hit him anyway.
At the Cloakwood Mine Burl first dragged Drasus away to his doom.
He then used Bhaal horror to send the others running onto the point of his dagger. The guards and battle horrors were no real obstacle on the way down to Davaeorn. I was hoping to poison him, but he resisted the first couple of attacks and Burl resorted to the use of the Greenstone Amulet for protection while finishing the mage off.
After resting to get a second Bhaal horror (I don't think I mentioned in the last update that Burl had been caught stealing from a householder in Beregost and slaughtered her for calling the cops), Burl flooded the mine.
A few reputation quests outstanding were completed, though Hulrik refused to accept all the attacking Xvarts were dead and was duly punished for his obstinacy.
The last little task done before heading for the City was to relieve some Red Wizards of the Ring of Energy. A first use of fireballs dealt with the support crew with no problem.
Burl then attacked Denak. A dagger stroke successfully poisoned the mage and I thought he was going to die, but he survived at near death and got off a horror. I elected not to block that and trust to luck and got away with it - Burl failed his saving throw, but didn't run far enough to trip any of the web traps in the area. On recovering, Burl came back to find Denak again and beat his next spell to the draw.
With Burl being already way over the XP cap he didn't bother with too much work in the City. He did pick up desired equipment, such as more Necklaces of Missiles from Nadine and Shandalar's daughters
and also couldn't resist acquiring some easy money from high value equipment.
It wasn't long though before he was skipping up and down the stairs at the Iron Throne, sticking a poison dagger into anyone unwise enough to follow him.
At Candlekeep Burl rested to get DUHM and also got a reminder he hadn't completed the poison quest (I'd originally not intended to do that, but then changed my mind in order to get the wisdom tome without trashing reputation again).
I collected the tomes from the catacombs, but didn't bother with Prat's gang - just speeding past
before using a PfP scroll on the basilisks.
Back in the City Marek successfully resisted 2 horror spells. Rather than rest to try that again, Burl just attacked after using the Horn - his dagger was too fast for Marek anyway though.
After going to find Slythe, LMD ensured he wouldn't open a conversation and I then just let Burl fight in melee. That resulted in Slythe briefly sending him berserk, but he never had a realistic chance of winning the fight on his own.
The palace could potentially have been a problem, but I decided not to muck about with using charms to make the outcome more certain. Instead, Burl relied on his horror abilities. The first of those sent 2 of the dopplegangers running and with 3 of the remaining ones attacking him with very limited success, Burl didn't even bother with the second horror - both dukes survived.
The maze proved no problem - even when Burl drew one skeleton warrior away and was surprised to find that its nearby companion had come through the wall behind him.
At the temple, Burl used a scroll of PFM to avoid taking any damage from Semaj after using LMD to annoy Sarevok. However, when Semaj teleported back towards the dais Burl didn't have the patience to wait for him to exhaust his spells and ventured a bit too close - activating Tazok and Angelo. That could easily have been a problem as Angelo's exploding arrows caused regular damage and Burl duly went berserk. However, after finishing off Angelo Tazok failed to hit with a couple of attacks and Burl recovered his senses.
After that it was just a question of putting his superior weapon speed to work. Sarevok did manage to get one attack in, but he was already dying as he did so.
War Hulk L8, 142 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 399 kills
By sheer luck of the draw, everyone in the Trio is some kind of thief. Presumably Grond0 will be wearing metal most of the time, since he is the only one that can. Will edit this post for character sheet screenies tonight - can't do this moment, at work.
Groupmates' character sheets
The Trio got out of Candlekeep without incident. The first real kill was wolf that Duir and Spyder killed - Corthief XVI was still sorting through Imoen's stuff when this all happened.
Despite being the middle of the day and Corthief XVI being level 1, Corthief XVI still managed to hide. His backstab knocked out Xzar with a single blow. This did however draw Montaron's wrath. Corthief XVI ran for his life, but Duir got a huge hit with his throwing dagger and Corthief XVI was thus safe.
Corthief XVI wanted a level for a little cushion, so the Trio sought out Shoal. She was taken out no problem, and the thief and assassin promptly took their levels. Next stop the ogre with the belt fetish. Grond0 and Gate70 were a little careless and got themselves killed. Initially, Corthief XVI tried to kite the ogre, but then a wolf joined the party. This was too much, and Corthief XVI went to FAI to raise his friends.
After being raised and equipped the Trio took out the nearby hobgoblins, without any difficulty. The Trio then sought vengeance on that ogre, and 2nd time around the Trio was successful.
Next up was Beregost. This was pretty routine, except the spiders. Since Gate70 lost all his throwing daggers when he died, he was elected to draw out the spiders, while Corthief XVI and Spyder tried to kill the spiders with missile weapons. In part to their low levels, as well as being thieves, it took forever for Spyder and Corthief XVI to take out the spiders. Duir did a great job keeping them busy and looping them around in a tight area, but no doubt all our misses was a little annoying for him.
The Trio then made their way to Nashkel, without much of note happening on the way. Somewhere around here we saved the session and will continue next week.
EDIT: Put in the character sheets. And just noticed Gate70's character is actually named SIur, not Diur. Oops, sorry about that @Gate70 !
Ugh, I went to the druid Grove and there I am suffering from unkillable trolls. I tried the on-demand mod but that did not fix it either. So now I am trudging on checking if a troll is immune to damage and then shoot it with acid or fire to kill it anyway. Pfff.. Will update soon. This cost me so much time to figure out. I should just remove the trollreg item and be done with them but that would effect all trolls...
@lroumen Sorry for your troubles. I'm not sure if you have a mod that affects this, but even in vanilla, some trolls can be harder to kill than others. Usually, they just need more fire/acid damage at once. Aganazer scorcher, from spell or wand, is very effective for these kinds of trolls.
I think EE 2.3 changed trolls such that they fall asleep when under 1 hp while in 1.3 I think they were still replaced with a new troll. The old method is more reliable if you ask me.
The previous session had granted Shoal a reprieve when Ajaundis was killed by Montaron. That reprieve was short-lived though - like Shoal.
After travelling down to Nashkel, Ajaundis picked up the ankheg armor and decided that represented an upgrade over his previous unarmored state . Hoity suggested going to find some basilisks, but Ajaundis was uncertain whether his single long sword would be up to that challenge. To get round that problem Greywolf got a visit first (and this time we made sure to use a dialogue option that precipitated a fight ). Lagged movement meant Ajaundis found it almost impossible to target Greywolf, so he settled for just being chased while Hoity fired a stream of arrows.
Next up were the basilisks and it didn't take long to pick up further levels.
Tackling Mutamin was a bit of a risk and Ajaundis quickly started running in fear. However, his distraction allowed Hoity to pierce the mage's defenses
and fortunately Ajaundis didn't run into any other enemies. After recruiting Korax, the next target was Kirian's gang. Korax failed to paralyze anyone and soon died himself, resulting in Hoity making a run for it as he was being targeted by spells from both Peter and Kirian.
Kirian's lightning bolt though bounced off an intervening rock (a result of the change to lightning in the beta version). Ajaundis had moved to be close to Hoity in order to intercept the chasing Lindin if Hoity was held - but she saved and Lindin was soon cut down. The others were then quickly picked off.
Back in Beregost, Ajaundis was up to his old tricks of spraying detect evils around to determine who might be his next victim. Silke was chosen and was indeed victimized.
Before selling a few things at High Hedge, Hoity decided to pull the golems outside and shoot them with the +1 arrows taken from Baerin. While doing that Ajaundis managed to hurt one of those with a standard sling bullet - suggesting they are lesser golems rather than the full-fledged variety. I've never noticed that before, but will test out on my next single player game to see if that does provide an easy 4k XP early on.
The final action saw Ajaundis using a potion of clarity to take down a couple of groups of sirines on the way to find more golems (ones that did require +1 weapons to hit).
Burl already had enough XP to level up to L9 on entry to the SoD prologue. After convincing Porios to surrender he used a scroll of PfU to make his way past the undead hordes. A potion of invulnerability gave him a bit more protection while attacking Korlasz - poison and the ring of energy helping to persuade her to give up pretty quickly.
In Baldur's Gate, Burl relieved Minsc of his equipment - including a helmet that protects against fear. More headgear (protecting against fatigue) was gained by finding some wine for Irina (permanently dealing with Korlasz while doing that)
and the Spectacles of Spectacle provided a further alternative to the Helm of Balduran before Burl hit the road.
The first objective in SoD proper was to get yet more headgear - this time a source of regeneration from Tsolak the vampire. Burl's speedy dagger was able to hit Ikros before he buffed and, checking his HPs, he only had 4 left - a LMD therefore finished him off (I'm pretty sure I did a screenshot of that, but it appears to have gone AWOL). Isabella then stood no chance on her own.
Travelling back to the Coast Way Crossing, Burl came across a group of orcs and trolls - but chose to ignore those and carry on. He also did no work at the Coast Way Crossing - just hiding behind the tent from the enemies at the bridge until Caelar called for a parley.
At the Troll Claw Woods there was only a group of hobgoblins blocking the road. Rather than take the time to kill them all himself, Burl led them back to the Flaming Fist camp to get some helping hands.
Travelling on, Burl hit another ambush area with a large group of goblins. I'm not certain what spells the witch doctor has, but scaring him from out of sight ensured he had no chance to try anything dangerous.
In the cavern below, the feeblemind effect from the Blue Myconid was a potential problem, so Burl used the Horn to boost his saving throws.
The Spell Breaker sword found there provides another way to improve his spell saving throw.
On arrival at the Forest of Wyrms, Burl chewed through some wyverns - his standard save vs death was now -1, so poison was no longer much of a danger (except to the wyverns of course).
Ignoring the spider cave, Burl ran through the dragon cave to a bugbear area. He took bits of damage from the traps and multiple opponents there, using the Trollblood ioun stone to keep HPs up.
In the temple proper most enemies needed a critical to hit and Burl had no difficulty eliminating the guards before confronting Ziatar. He proved immune to poison, so Burl switched to his +3 short sword to inflict enough damage to prompt Ziatar to use his uninterruptible sanctuary - Burl responded to that cheese by targeting him anyway with his ring of energy.
I'm not sure whether the Neothelid has a penalty on saving throws against its charm and hold attacks, so took a potion of invulnerability to boost saves there. The Neothelid managed a hit in melee to follow up its poison attack though - causing Burl to go berserk. However, he'd already used a firebreath potion as a precaution against that danger and one more hit ensured the Neothelid didn't last long enough to take advantage of Burl's condition.
The Shadow Aspect managed one decent backstab on Burl, but the potion of invulnerability taken meant further spells bounced off him as he cut down his opponent.
To ensure that the potion was still active while tackling Darskhelin, Burl used a potion of regeneration to rebuild his HPs rather than wait for the slower Trollblood Ioun Stone. An opening horror failed to affect anyone and Burl chose to immediately run away rather than risk going berserk with multiple opponents nearby. He then settled into running and fighting - Darskhelin becoming the first victim.
Jhan Redmoons was the last of them and I noticed that invulnerability ran out during the fight with him. It would have been annoying if he had got a critical with the one dart of stunning thrown before Burl used the Horn (and Burl had rolled a 1 with his saving throw) - but Jhan's one shot missed .
Moving on to Akanna, Burl started off by taking on the aerial servants individually. There was an interesting bit in that contest when he stunned one of those with a critical hit.
There's a 20% chance of stun occurring on a critical hit by a War Hulk, but this was the first time in the run where something had been stunned that wasn't also killed by the blow - the stun only lasts for 6 seconds though, which means that (as on this occasion) it won't normally allow a free attack. Akanna resisted 2 horrors, so Burl activated the Horn once more and attacked - the ring of energy again dealing with a cowardly use of sanctuary.
Normally as I exit I use a throwing dagger to kill the green dragon. However, as Burl was not permitted that he took another potion of invulnerability and attacked. Going berserk from a wing buffet or poison breath could have been a problem with 3 attackers present, but Burl kept his senses and 3 firebreath potions ensured Morentherene didn't last too long.
Burl felt a bit sorry about killing Morentherene for his skin though and did penance by saving a young green dragon from some hill giants on his way to Boareskyr Bridge.
War Hulk L9, 161 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 559 kills
Comments
Mirlen, a Beastmaster in a Horrifically Modded Baldur's Gate: Part 4
To recall, I'm playing using a megamod I created called High Power Baldur's Gate. This mod gives ridiculous powers to nearly all the creatures in the game. This is a mod in which some ettercaps can cast Earthquake and all doppelgangers have 25 Strength. The good news is that the good guys also get ridiculous powers.The Nashkel Mines were perilous. The party had to fight Kobold Breachers, Extremely Strong Kobolds, Insidious Lightning Kobolds, and a Greater Kobold Jailer. There were also actual demons in the mines, such as exploding manes and quasits that tried to drive the party berserk. But the party got through it okay.
Here's the party currently:
All hobgoblins get +20 to hit with melee weapons, and hobgoblin spellcasters count as 20 levels higher for purposes of determining the power of their spells. Chill Hobgoblins can cast Melf's Acid Arrow, and Glart over there can cast Large Skeleton Horde to summon a lot of skeletons. Ardenor has a lot of spells.
Jaheria used Algernon's Cloak to charm Glart, and had him cast Large Skeleton Horde twice, animating 40 skeletons which ignored the summoning limit. Now that the party had a skeleton army, they attacked Ardenor. All the Chill Hobgoblins came out of invisibility and cast Melf's Acid Arrow on the skeletons. The skeletons that got hit by the spells would eventually die, but there were plenty more of them. Ardenor cast Stoneskin, but by this point he had already lost half his health. A Chill Elite came out of invisibility as well and cast Cone of Cold. That didn't do anything to the skeletons, but it hurt Ardenor a lot. By the time the party killed Ardenor, all the other hobgoblins were out of spells and had started attacking. The party finished them off before they could kill too many skeletons.
(with all these skeletons, it almost feels like I'm playing the original Baldur's Gate before the Enhanced Edition)
Now to move on to the Blacktalons. All human bandits get +20 to hit with ranged weapons. But missiles could only do so well against skeletons. The party threw the skeletons at the bandits so that the bandits would attack them first. The party had no necromancers and hadn't packed spells good for fighting with an undead horde (e.g. Stinking Cloud). Dynaheir shot a fireball at the bandits, but I hadn't gotten the skeletons out of the way and it cooked half the skeletons.
Taugosz Tenhammer came along. He wields a returning throwing hammer, and he has equipment that gives him REALLY good AC against missile attacks. He killed a few skeletons before Khalid cast Time Stop and started hitting him with arrows anyway because attacks automatically hit during Time Stop. Dynaheir used her last Magic Missile spell to kill Taugosz.
By the time the party reached Tazok's tent, they only had 5 skeletons left. Mirlen and Minsc went in and killed Venkt before he could put on any buffs. Then they left the tent, and Raemon, Britik, and Hakt followed them out.
This was where things got rough. Britik and Hakt do a lot of damage, and the party didn't have many resources left. The party sort of scampered around trying to stay alive while damaging them. But then a truly horrible thing happened...
There goes Minsc.
Khalid was in trouble too. The party ran away but Khalid was cornered. He cast Invisibility a few seconds before he would have died. Then a few rounds later Khalid got killed, but I didn't see how it happened. The good news is that he didn't die permanently.
The rest of the party had run away, and only Britik followed them. Britik, like all gnolls, had terrible saving throws, so Dynaheir got him with Web while Mirlen shot him to death. Mirlen and Jaheira summoned some brown bears and sent them at Raemon and Hakt. They attacked the bears but got hit by the brown bears' Bearlightning ability. Then Dynaheir finished them off with a final Fireball!
And that's Chapter 3. Yikes.
EDIT
There I was trying to hide in the shadows in order to backstab Isolde and she backstabbed me!!
Having installed Finn Jo's Sub-race mod, I decided to have a Teifling Fighter/Assassin for my next run. The armour and weapons with which I equipped the Canlekeep Assassins to make Candlekeep a bit more interesting are actually beneficial in this run due to the fact that I can actually use all but one of them. One dagger can only be used by evil characters however so it will probably get sold.
Tiffy the Teifling.
Imoen gave me the nickname Tiffy from my Teifling heritage and the name stuck. Although I attempt to be good, this is hindered by the demonic heritage with the result that being considered to be Chaotic Neutral could be considered quite an achievement. The story is about to start in earnest as Gorion has just been murdered. All the assassins did me serious damage, but paid the ultimate price for doing so.We have just arrived in the great City of Baldur's Gate. We found an aggressive group of mages on top of the Sorcerous Sundries, but thanks to resist fear and true sight, they went down really fast. We also found an Ogre Mage and pets in the sewers, so did some "cleaning" up there.
We then returned a corpse to a mage, then realized the mage smelled bad so killed him. We will resume our quest next session. We are still level 6, level 7 is still quite a ways off (each paladin needs about 13,000 experience).
Traveling with: Heather (Cavalier), Sarah (Undead hunter), April (Undead hunter), Forrest (Paladin), Imoen (Thief)
SETUP: BG 1 EE, no mods, core rules at all times
We finished our Baldur's Gate quests (that we are going to bother with anyways). All that was left was to use a protection from magic scroll to defeat the Iron Throne 5th floor - except my paladins are too stupid to use the scroll, not even with a potion of genius can most of the paladins even use the scroll. Whoops. So instead, I had the two front-liners gulp a potion of magic shielding and also a potion of magic blocking. They absorbed the initial enemy spells, and once I saw confusion cast, then rest of the party then assisted. We won, but the party needed to gulp down quite a few blue potions to keep together.
Paladins are level 7. We will head to Candlekeep next session.
However I then had an even bigger shock. Helma the Helmite Champion got killed by Mendas in Candlekeep!!!
I HAD made the assassins there more dangerous by improving their weapons and armour, but that was just to make the encounters a little less one-sided. They weren't supposed to WIN!!
Helma is a character that I rolled a long time ago but given an Aasimar Sub-Race.
I will run her again hopefully with a bit more success next time.
It looks like I have made those assassins in Candlekeep just strong enough. Strong enough to cause problems occasionally which is how they are supposed to be.
Here are the starting stats. I decided to change her to Lawful Good this time with EE Keeper.
So far she has picked up a ring of protection +1, ankheg armour, ring of protection from fire, and she has taken Samuel to the FAI.
EDIT
She thought that she was a bit on the daring side when she took on an ankheg. It had Nester's dagger in its gut.Her worries proved to be unfounded on that score, but then she was ambushed by no fewer than TEN bandits. She was doomed from the start.
Rae (lawful evil female half-elf dragon disciple 11, Gate70)
Needle (chaotic good male half elf fighter 9 / mage 10, Grond0)
A few undocumented sessions had us clear the Temple sewers, obtain the Ring of Gaxx, observe the demise of Xzar, pick up Kitthix, help Sansuki, deal with the Fallen Paladins and skulltrap Tanova. Eventually though, a greater ghoul found the huge gap in Needle's saving throws and held him. Rae managed to turn him invisible but the greater ghoul had already switched focus onto her and did the same again. The ghoul and a vampire thought they would have a long snack but Rae managed to put up her hand and the game was over.
Hoity (elf archer, Grond0); Ajaundis (Human paladin, Gate70)
After the previous pairing took an early bath, we had time to generate a new random pairing - this time that produced a couple of goody goody fighters. As I was already running an archer in the Trio MP, it felt like a bit much to have one here as well, but possibly time will sort that out ...
After leaving Candlekeep I tend to kill Imoen rather than recruit her, but Gate70 wanted to use her to identify the magic dagger he had swapped some crossbow bolts for and I decided to let her walk away after she'd done that. Meanwhile Gate70 was roleplaying his paladin who was feeling less generous on finding evil staking out the wilderness and he attacked.
A bit of walking later, Hoity had found the temple at Beregost and put the pairing back together ready for next time.
Hoity, Archer 1, 13 HPs, 8 kills
Ajaundis, Paladin 1, 14 HPs, 1 kill, 1 death
Grond0: Peer, Elf Archer. Chaotic Good
Corey_Russell: Hunter, Human Undead Hunter. Lawful Good
Gate70: Biff, Dwarf Barbarian. Neutral Evil
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/975701/#Comment_975701
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/977126/#Comment_977126
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/980290/#Comment_980290
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/981756/#Comment_981756
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/984046/#Comment_984046
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/985799/#Comment_985799
OK. I posted about the potential concern about running 2 different archers in MP games concurrently - time to see how that would work
We'd been doing some work on raising reputation in the previous session and decided to continue with that by taking on the Fallen Paladins. They found it difficult to get through Hunter's defenses and didn't last long after Anarg's death.
Moving on to Windspear Hills, the Trio dealt with early encounters easily enough, but ran into trouble when a group of golems ganged up on Biff.
Original post and previous run:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/975692/#Comment_975692
I decided I would have another go with this kit this morning. Last time I got fed up with it after encountering problems transferring into BG2 - if I get that far this time I'll recreate the character from scratch rather than trying to transfer it. Although the War Hulk kit is able to use throwing daggers and axes, I feel that makes it just too over-powered and am not allowing any use of ranged weapons.
After leaving Candlekeep, Burl dodged Imoen (I don't allow recruitment of NPCs in solo runs and couldn't attack from distance). He killed Xzar with a single swipe, but missed with 7 or 8 attacks on Montaron before finally cutting him in half.
The lack of missile weapons meant Shoal was out of bounds as a first easy source of XP. Instead Burl made his way to the FAI where he dodged Tarnesh in order to get inside and buy Buckley's Buckler (constitution regeneration being particularly important for me as I don't use healing potions).
In Beregost, Burl inherited a blood-spattered cloak from Algernon before helping Mirianne got him a first level.
Travelling down to Nashkel, Burl boosted his defenses by picking up the ankheg armor before showing the gratitude you would expect from a chaotic evil character after Noober helped him to level 3.
Heading north again, Burl gave Tenya her bowl back on the way to Ulgoth's Beard - Dushai was the latest of his short-lived friends there. That pushed reputation down to 4, so it seemed about time to do a few quests - Firebead was the first of those, helping Burl to get to level 4.
At the basilisk area, Burl sub-contracted all the hard work to Korax while he picked up 2 further levels. He pulled Lindin away and killed him, but didn't risk the others for the moment.
Burl's BG1 bag collection was completed by using LMD on Neera and purchasing the potion bag from High Hedge. He then explored the Cloud Peak Mountains. They offered up a couple of items I don't normally make use of - the Chesley Crusher (particularly suitable for this kit when you want to use a 2-handed weapon as it's restricted to 1 APR anyway) and the Gloves of Dexterity (more useful than usual as the kit includes a dexterity penalty in addition to that for dwarves).
The tome of charisma was also secured before Burl went to find Greywolf. His fast weapon speed gave him a chance of attacking twice before Burl could get a hit in, even using a +1 long sword, and Burl took several lots of damage (running round after each to let rage expire to reduce the chance of going berserk) before getting the final blow in. Greywolf's sword will improve his weapon speed slightly until Burl gets a better option.
A first test for his new sword was against Meilum. For the first time I allowed Burl to just stand and fight there and that illustrated the potential problems for the kit if you don't micro-manage fights - Burl going distinctly low on HPs before getting a killing blow in.
Over at the Lighthouse a potion of clarity ensured the sirines would cause no trouble.
War Hulk L7, 115 HPs, 116 kills
Previous updates:
Deciding it was time to make progress with the main quest, Burl headed for the Nashkel Mine. The kobolds couldn't do much to stop him going to find Mulahey and successfully disrupting the cleric's first attempted spell meant Burl didn't have to run away there. I made a mistake there though when resting immediately, while reputation was at 9 - I had intended to get CLW rather than a second LMD.
Outside the mine Burl pulled away the amazons one by one, before going to find Nimbul. Burl dodged most of his spells before coming in for the kill. Back in Beregost a single blow from the Chesley Crusher sent Tranzig running.
On the way to the Bandit Camp an ogre handed over the Girdle of Piercing. That helped nullify the bandits, though Burl switched back to the crushing girdle while taking down Taurgosz. He dodged in and out of the tent while dealing with the enemies there.
On the way through the Cloakwood though I made a fatal mistake. With the ring of free action already acquired I had decided not to bother with Spider's Bane, so initially ran past all the spiders and ettercaps in the 2nd area. I couldn't resist stopping though to see if Burl could one-shot one of them, but before he could get an attack in an ettercap had hit and poisoned him. Poison is extremely dangerous for war hulks fighting against multiple opponents, as every tick of poison induces rage with the chance of going berserk - and once that happens it almost certainly won't stop while the poison is ticking. Each bit of damage also penalises AC, meaning that any remaining opponents are likely to hit almost automatically (though as you get a benefit to death saving throw you quickly remove the danger of multiple poisonings).
Burl managed to chew through 4 of the 5 ettercaps, but even if he'd got all 5 he still would have remained enraged while the poison finished him off. Getting into that sort of rage spiral is so dangerous you should really aim to avoid it entirely in a no-reload run, but at least it does provide a bit of entertainment when you see non-critical hits doing damage well into 3 figures
I wish that I knew which mod causes the difference. There doesn't appear to be any consistency.
She first made her way to Nashkel picking up the usual rings etc on the way. She found Ankheg armour in Nashkel and a wand in the mine area. She then returned to High Hedge where she found perdue's Sword and helped Mellicamp. She also got rid of a curse of lythancropy that was affecting a young man much to the delight of his girlfriend Aiwell. As a result she was given a long sword +1 that also did fire damage as a reward.
She found two magical belts on the body of an ogre that she killed and took a letter found on an ogrillon to its intended recipient.
She helped reunite Jumper with its owner and took the Colquetle amulet to the family of those killed.
She has just ben asked to rescue Rufie and upon doing so reached level 3. Currently ** in long swords, ** in long bows, and * in dual wielding. Reputation 15.
EDIT
Helped a dryad and 'Drienne. Now officially a hero.Killed some half-ogres Reputation 18.
Imagine an ogre that's so afraid of getting hurt that he fights by poking people from a distance with his spear and then immediately running away.
EDIT
She headed south, killed Zargos Flintblade and helped Prism thus reaching level 5.Previous run:
Starting again, this time Burl got 3 early levels by charming the sirines in the Beregost Temple.
By the time reputation hit 20 with the return of Farmer Brun's son, Burl was already up to level 6 and he celebrated by going shopping. He didn't have quite enough money to get everything he wanted, so went hunting Bassilus to make up the difference.
Korax was able to kill all the basilisks, taking Burl to level 7. Moving on to the Nashkel Mine he quickly dealt with that - the poison dagger preventing Mulahey from casting any spells. Outside the mine he cleared that area - using the Horn of Kazgaroth for the first time to boost his saving throw vs death while fighting Narcillicus's mustard jellies.
The sirines and golems at the Lighthouse provided some quick XP and battle horrors and ghasts at Durlag's Tower plenty more - getting Burl his final BG1 level even before he used a PfP scroll on the rooftop basilisks.
The Bandit Camp didn't put up much of a struggle and Burl moved on to the Cloakwood. I felt compelled to kill the ettercaps that ended his last run, but took them on individually this time - even if he were poisoned Burl had enough HPs to survive that, but none of the ettercaps got the critical they needed to even hit him anyway.
War Hulk L8, 137 HPs, 250 kills
Previous updates:
At the Cloakwood Mine Burl first dragged Drasus away to his doom.
After resting to get a second Bhaal horror (I don't think I mentioned in the last update that Burl had been caught stealing from a householder in Beregost and slaughtered her for calling the cops), Burl flooded the mine.
A few reputation quests outstanding were completed, though Hulrik refused to accept all the attacking Xvarts were dead and was duly punished for his obstinacy.
The last little task done before heading for the City was to relieve some Red Wizards of the Ring of Energy. A first use of fireballs dealt with the support crew with no problem.
With Burl being already way over the XP cap he didn't bother with too much work in the City. He did pick up desired equipment, such as more Necklaces of Missiles from Nadine and Shandalar's daughters
At Candlekeep Burl rested to get DUHM and also got a reminder he hadn't completed the poison quest (I'd originally not intended to do that, but then changed my mind in order to get the wisdom tome without trashing reputation again).
Back in the City Marek successfully resisted 2 horror spells. Rather than rest to try that again, Burl just attacked after using the Horn - his dagger was too fast for Marek anyway though.
After going to find Slythe, LMD ensured he wouldn't open a conversation and I then just let Burl fight in melee. That resulted in Slythe briefly sending him berserk, but he never had a realistic chance of winning the fight on his own.
The palace could potentially have been a problem, but I decided not to muck about with using charms to make the outcome more certain. Instead, Burl relied on his horror abilities. The first of those sent 2 of the dopplegangers running and with 3 of the remaining ones attacking him with very limited success, Burl didn't even bother with the second horror - both dukes survived.
The maze proved no problem - even when Burl drew one skeleton warrior away and was surprised to find that its nearby companion had come through the wall behind him.
War Hulk L8, 142 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 399 kills
Corthief XVI - thief, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Duir - assassin (Gate70)
Spyder - fighter/thief (Grond0)
By sheer luck of the draw, everyone in the Trio is some kind of thief. Presumably Grond0 will be wearing metal most of the time, since he is the only one that can. Will edit this post for character sheet screenies tonight - can't do this moment, at work.
Groupmates' character sheets
The Trio got out of Candlekeep without incident. The first real kill was wolf that Duir and Spyder killed - Corthief XVI was still sorting through Imoen's stuff when this all happened.
Despite being the middle of the day and Corthief XVI being level 1, Corthief XVI still managed to hide. His backstab knocked out Xzar with a single blow. This did however draw Montaron's wrath. Corthief XVI ran for his life, but Duir got a huge hit with his throwing dagger and Corthief XVI was thus safe.
Corthief XVI wanted a level for a little cushion, so the Trio sought out Shoal. She was taken out no problem, and the thief and assassin promptly took their levels. Next stop the ogre with the belt fetish. Grond0 and Gate70 were a little careless and got themselves killed. Initially, Corthief XVI tried to kite the ogre, but then a wolf joined the party. This was too much, and Corthief XVI went to FAI to raise his friends.
After being raised and equipped the Trio took out the nearby hobgoblins, without any difficulty. The Trio then sought vengeance on that ogre, and 2nd time around the Trio was successful.
Next up was Beregost. This was pretty routine, except the spiders. Since Gate70 lost all his throwing daggers when he died, he was elected to draw out the spiders, while Corthief XVI and Spyder tried to kill the spiders with missile weapons. In part to their low levels, as well as being thieves, it took forever for Spyder and Corthief XVI to take out the spiders. Duir did a great job keeping them busy and looping them around in a tight area, but no doubt all our misses was a little annoying for him.
The Trio then made their way to Nashkel, without much of note happening on the way. Somewhere around here we saved the session and will continue next week.
EDIT: Put in the character sheets. And just noticed Gate70's character is actually named SIur, not Diur. Oops, sorry about that @Gate70 !
Pfff.. Will update soon. This cost me so much time to figure out. I should just remove the trollreg item and be done with them but that would effect all trolls...
Hoity (elf archer, Grond0); Ajaundis (Human paladin, Gate70)
Previous updates:
The previous session had granted Shoal a reprieve when Ajaundis was killed by Montaron. That reprieve was short-lived though - like Shoal.
After travelling down to Nashkel, Ajaundis picked up the ankheg armor and decided that represented an upgrade over his previous unarmored state
Next up were the basilisks and it didn't take long to pick up further levels.
Back in Beregost, Ajaundis was up to his old tricks of spraying detect evils around to determine who might be his next victim. Silke was chosen and was indeed victimized.
Before selling a few things at High Hedge, Hoity decided to pull the golems outside and shoot them with the +1 arrows taken from Baerin. While doing that Ajaundis managed to hurt one of those with a standard sling bullet - suggesting they are lesser golems rather than the full-fledged variety. I've never noticed that before, but will test out on my next single player game to see if that does provide an easy 4k XP early on.
The final action saw Ajaundis using a potion of clarity to take down a couple of groups of sirines on the way to find more golems (ones that did require +1 weapons to hit).
Hoity, Archer 5, 64 HPs, 33 kills
Ajaundis, Paladin 5, 58 HPs, 26 kills, 1 death
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/987830/#Comment_987830
Burl already had enough XP to level up to L9 on entry to the SoD prologue. After convincing Porios to surrender he used a scroll of PfU to make his way past the undead hordes. A potion of invulnerability gave him a bit more protection while attacking Korlasz - poison and the ring of energy helping to persuade her to give up pretty quickly.
In Baldur's Gate, Burl relieved Minsc of his equipment - including a helmet that protects against fear. More headgear (protecting against fatigue) was gained by finding some wine for Irina (permanently dealing with Korlasz while doing that)
The first objective in SoD proper was to get yet more headgear - this time a source of regeneration from Tsolak the vampire. Burl's speedy dagger was able to hit Ikros before he buffed and, checking his HPs, he only had 4 left - a LMD therefore finished him off (I'm pretty sure I did a screenshot of that, but it appears to have gone AWOL). Isabella then stood no chance on her own.
Travelling back to the Coast Way Crossing, Burl came across a group of orcs and trolls - but chose to ignore those and carry on. He also did no work at the Coast Way Crossing - just hiding behind the tent from the enemies at the bridge until Caelar called for a parley.
At the Troll Claw Woods there was only a group of hobgoblins blocking the road. Rather than take the time to kill them all himself, Burl led them back to the Flaming Fist camp to get some helping hands.
Travelling on, Burl hit another ambush area with a large group of goblins. I'm not certain what spells the witch doctor has, but scaring him from out of sight ensured he had no chance to try anything dangerous.
On arrival at the Forest of Wyrms, Burl chewed through some wyverns - his standard save vs death was now -1, so poison was no longer much of a danger (except to the wyverns of course).
In the temple proper most enemies needed a critical to hit and Burl had no difficulty eliminating the guards before confronting Ziatar. He proved immune to poison, so Burl switched to his +3 short sword to inflict enough damage to prompt Ziatar to use his uninterruptible sanctuary - Burl responded to that cheese by targeting him anyway with his ring of energy.
I'm not sure whether the Neothelid has a penalty on saving throws against its charm and hold attacks, so took a potion of invulnerability to boost saves there. The Neothelid managed a hit in melee to follow up its poison attack though - causing Burl to go berserk. However, he'd already used a firebreath potion as a precaution against that danger and one more hit ensured the Neothelid didn't last long enough to take advantage of Burl's condition.
The Shadow Aspect managed one decent backstab on Burl, but the potion of invulnerability taken meant further spells bounced off him as he cut down his opponent.
Moving on to Akanna, Burl started off by taking on the aerial servants individually. There was an interesting bit in that contest when he stunned one of those with a critical hit.
Normally as I exit I use a throwing dagger to kill the green dragon. However, as Burl was not permitted that he took another potion of invulnerability and attacked. Going berserk from a wing buffet or poison breath could have been a problem with 3 attackers present, but Burl kept his senses and 3 firebreath potions ensured Morentherene didn't last too long.
War Hulk L9, 161 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 559 kills