Rakshasas and Elven Battle Mages

Remove all ads!

Hi.

As everyone here is probably aware, there is a triggered cutscene in Suldanessellar when 4 Rakshasas battle 3 Battle Mages. Now, I've always been able to defeat the Rakshasas without suffering significant damage (thought it has always been a lenghty affair) but I have never managed to save any of the Battle Mages (there was one occasion when one of the mages panicked, ran away and saved his hide, but I'm not quite ready to cast horror on them yet ).

Any tactical advice on how to save them?

My party: A cavalier PC, Imoen, Jaheira, Minsc and Viconia.
Imoen can end the fight by casting Time Stop and 3 Horrid Wiltings (I'm a bit overleveled) but Horrid Wilting kills the Battle Mages as well.

---
Problem is, all the Rakshasas instantly fire Triggers with Mislead and Protection against Magical Weapons. I have tried casting Time Stop, and then True Sight, Pierce Magic and Breach, but either it does not affect them, or they instantly! put more protections when the Time Stop ends, and shortly thereafter, dominate one of the Battle Mages and kill the others with a fireball-like spell. Help?

 

AFAIK, Those Rakshasa are immune to spells below 8th level, meaning they'll be unaffected by pierce magic, breach and i assume true sight as well.
That doesn't leave a lot of spells that would help in this situation.
some i can think of are :


Pierce Shield - You're probably going to have to resort to this to get rid of their defenses.
Power Word, Blind - Might be your best bet. quick cast, is a small aoe instead of targeted so it *should* ignore spell protections, and has no save. unless them attacking the elves is scripted as well, they shouldn't do anything as long as they are blinded.
Maze/Imprisonment- might be useful to get rid of one or two of them leaving you to tangle with just the 1 left.

Spellstrike will probably do nothing because they're shielded.
You could also try casting Otiluke's Resilient Sphere on the battlemages, though i don't know if that will make them go hostile on you

 

Thanks for the help! I saved two of the three Battle Mages with a Time Stop and True Sight+Pierce Shield and, given the number of tries, decided to quite while I was ahead.

A strange thing I noticed: after the battle starts, a fourth Battle Mage materializes from thin air, and he sided with the Rakshasa. He was the one that casted the Sunfire that did the other Battle Mages in. I had to kill him first.

 

Why would you want to save any of them anyway? Also, don't you start reaching HLAs at that point (or is that just dirty min-maxers like myself)?

 

I always try to save all the non-party creatures that fight with my enemies for roleplaying reasons.

And yes, I already had HLAs available, what of it?

 

And i guess getting HLA's at this point all depends on your party size/the amount of questing you've been doing before hitting suldanesselar.

 

I've gotten HLA's at that point, but it depends on the amount of side quests you've done.
It's quite possible to get them with a 6-member party just by completing ALL the quests in your journal before heading there.

I won't pretend to remember just how many quests I needed. I know that I once did a "gotta find it all" run game on trying to acquire ALL the available unique treasures in the game. The object was to acquire every named weapon and armor (as opposed to a generic longsword+1), and every distinct magic item while maintaining a heroic reputation.
As such, before heading to Spellhold I did most of the side quests in order to empty out the Adventurer's Mart since I couldn't steal those unique goodies.
The thing I recall about that game was that I got HLAs for everyone except Imoen (I had Yoshimo until then) much earlier than usual, well before this point in the game. I had a full party too.