High Level Spell Scroll Availability

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I don't think armor is useless. Armor is only useless in HoF, but HoF is a contrived example. HoF does not follow PnP at all - it is cheesy difficulty by simple stat boosting.

Thus, because armor was already fine in normal, if you add damage reduction it is overpowered for normal while being balanced for HoF (roughly balanced at least).

I don't know I would do if I were to mod HoF mode. The thing is, it is possible to finish HoF with wide-ish variety of parties. It is just that the way that the difficulty is done means that certain parties will find it much easier, and this restriction (ie high AC makes it much easier) irritates people, who want to play HoF the way that they play normal.

So, if I were to mod it, what I would probably do is buff certain classes so that they can be used in HoF, but leave others alone. Maybe give HoF-only armors some kind of buff, I don't know. Things like allow the Barbarian to add his constitution modifer to his armor class when armored, as the monk does. It is actually something they added in 5th edition and I think it is pretty cool. Not many ways of boosting constitution, unlike wisdom. I'd also increase the amount of damage reduction that the Barb gets, but only at higher levels, so as to leave normal difficulty alone.

 

for the sake of accuracy: i reached lvl 34 after traversing normal mode, then icewind gate, then heart of fury, then halfway through icewind gate, HoF mode. terrifying ambushes at the end: a shadow thief can do well over 100HP damage with a simple dagger sneak attack!

that infamous bow is from the Light of Selune mod. although my sorceres would eventually have taken a ranger level mix in, she took it earlier to get the bow.

 

Did you finish the game with that party without tactics and without any other mods, including an XP limit remover? Did you use summons or did you send your high HP battleclerics to the frontlines?

 

@proteus: as i said, summons are a large map tactic. i didnt do it all the time due to the tedium, pathfinding issues, and the sacrifice of spells involved. Tactics also forces you to mass heal summons, which start nearly dead.
i was into mods from the start, so i never completed a pure vanilla game. think what you will of that.

the early mix-in of ranger is a rare occasion where i chose to adjust my build to modded items. the only other instance i can think of, is my choice of bastard sword specialization, which mainly pays off because of the ease-of-use improved bastard swords component (weimer felt they were weak and underrepresented). without the mod component, axes is probably better. anyway, both of these aspects are explained in detail. for the rest, my build choices can apply to a vanilla game. what good is a guide that isn't applicable to the basic game?

 

But you did complete the game without using the Tactics mod?

I'm just wondering how applicable your idea of high CON is for an unmodded game.

EDIT: I'm starting to wonder if Black Blade of Disaster is an underrated spell in the game.

It allows a Fortitude save at +4 against the disintegration effect right? Because it is a 9th level spell, the DC for it will be the same as a 5th level spell. The difference is, the save must be made every attack, and a high level spellsword could attack 4 times per round with haste. Considering that a spellsword will have a minimum of a +5 modifier to his spell DC class, and in most cases +8 or 9, it could be devastating. +10 to attack bonus, so you don't need to worry about not connecting either.

Pity it counts as the Conjuration school, and thus not boostable with feats. If it were, it would be absolutely devastating. In any case, a caster with a +8 modifer would have a DC of 23. Any monster with a HoF fortitude saving throw of 13 or less would be disintegrated more than half the time. Hmm, maybe not that good. 13 sounds low for HoF.

 

i already answered that. yes, i completed normal and HoF without tactics. as i said, the HoF bonuses didn't apply to my party, so i only experienced the DR component and more epic battles. perhaps it made things easier sometimes, but it was a significant improvement to my enjoyment the 2nd time around. enemies popping up unexpectedly was great fun. i believe tactics was first released later than 2008, when i wrote my guide's 1st version.

CON has worked well for me. i do take damage, but i inflict enough damage combined with interference to come out on top. it's very fulfilling, though i imagine others derive more stistfaction from seeing mr.72 come out unscathed by enemies that can't inflict regular hits. to each his own.

that mod bow really isn't a big deal. i usually used it for minor encounters only; all 6 characters would switch to ranged and gun down small fish. the sorcererX/pal1/rgr1 would switch to melee weapons for serious encounters, for the bonuses mostly (cera sumat) and perhaps some well-buffed melee. i wouldn't want to equip any ranged weapon when it's crunch time: you'd be giving enemies a targeting bonus.

 

Seems you can't put quotes in your sig, oh well.

 

I would prefer to avoid receiving damage at all. Even characters with high CON and many fighter levels just cannot sustain that many hits from a HoF monster, not when they do 40-50 damage per hit. You would need pretty epic damage reduction to survive it.

Put it this way - I think investment in high AC has better returns than investment in high HP. Consider the difference between 16 CON and 24 CON - 4HP per level. This means that a level 30 character would have 120 more HP with a higher consitution score. But, he will get far more often, and his high HP are only good for about 3 hits. Whereas, the high AC character who can only be hit on a roll of 20 will actually survive longer.

I think survivability is the key metric - how long could such a character survive in combat? My feeling is that a high AC character will last longer than a low AC character with high HP. Note that this is not considering tactics, which changes the balance completely.

Yes, with sufficiently high damage output, you could take care of the monsters before they can kill you. The question is, how much killing power do you sacrifice to go after high HP rather than high AC? In my mind, not a lot, if any. Both of our parties have that one gimped character with low strength. The rest of them tend to be superhuman athletes with one good casting attribute. In fact, the only way to really max out damage would be to up neither dexterity nor constitution but up strength instead. Which I only do for two of my party members, not sure about you. So, whether you up constitution or dexterity, I think your damage output will remain similar.

I'm now just about to enter the Zhinda citadel in my game. Character levels are 11, 11, 11 (Drow), 12, 12, 12 (Human). Going extremely well so far - once they gained sufficient levels, battles got a lot easier. Battles that I have found pretty difficult in the past were over in seconds. The iron golems, for instance, got steamrolled. No reloads necessary, nor any resurrections. This time around, I am using spells that I've never used before, which I think is also making a difference. Spells like sleep (not useful now, but very useful earlier on), free action (no need to worry about the likes of web etc), star metal cudgel (hits as a +4 and extra 2d6 damage to golems and undead, worked great on the iron golems).

With everyone having evasion now, I can literally drop fireballs on my entire party, casters included, without worrying about it. It's great. About 1 in 20 fireballs gets through, which is fine. No need to worry if monsters get too close for a fireball - no such thing as too close anymore.

 

glad it's working out for you. all of my characters have either SR or evasion, only my druid doesn't have excellent reflexes to make it reliable. i'm more into enchantments and other disablers like chromatic orb. area effects are for large battles, and in HoF the best they do is soften up targets. like i said, running interference is the key: delay, distract, disable, then destroy.

p.s. I just realized something: The reason why all the Tactcs bonuses didn't apply for me, is probably because of the 65MAXHP.BCS file that the author sent me years back. I installed it to disable the Iyachtu Xvim quest aligment change, but it probably also overwrites the bonuses when dropped in Override. I remember starting a quick HoF game to see the bonuses, and they applied. But when my party actually transferred to HoF, the bonuses weren't there anymore. I realize now that it's probably because of 65MAXHP.BCS, which I installed to avoid alignment change.
So, if anyone's interested in trying out HoF Tactics without the bonuses, this file should be the way to do it. It's included in my IWD2_4dummies guide (see link-list).