More IWD2 spell discussion

Thanks!

Below I have focused on my usage of Entangle -- but obviously I use it in combination with other spells even though I don't mention them.

Well, 70% isn't too far from 66.66%, is it? Shall we compromise and settle on 65%?

Targos, Shaengarne, and on the way to Ice Temple you get maximum use out of outdoor spells. Then you have to remember to unmemorize it for Goblin Warrens. If you're attentive, you will remember to memorize it again for the Horde Fortress exterior, and then unmemorize it again. If you're inattentive, maybe you forgot to unmemorize it for Goblin Warrens and will find it useful outside.

After that you are outside only occasionally. Just outside Wandering Village are the wolves which are dangerous, but Color Spray works just fine with them. Entangle could be useful for them though -- my rogue sets up entangle traps behind the party for the wolves that spawn later. My arcanists set up skull traps and some cloud or other on top of the rogue traps for those same wolves.

Wandering Village is all outdoors, but other than 2 battles with Limha and the barbarians, you are mostly dealing with undead. If you have a cleric in your party, your level will be good enough by now to turn them. I never play with Paladins so I don't know if their Turn level will be effective enough. Either way, entangle is not too useful because most of them are archers.

Immediately after wandering village (Cold Marshes) it's useful -- and again you have to be attentive enough to memorize/unmemorize the spell because you will be going indoors very soon. I don't like to rest just to switch a spell out. I usually don't rest at all throughout Wandering Village until I reach the monastery's Eight Chambers. Cold Marshes has good troll and barbarian battles plus a few spiders, but because I don't like resting, I make do with the spells I memorized long ago. By now I have enough webs, and Sunscorch is more useful than entangle to finish off trolls when I run out of fireballs.

You don't need entangle outside the Black Raven monastery because there's just a few non-hostile wyverns to deal with.

Then there's the underdark and Z'Hinda Citadel. You could memorize Entangle for the battle where Oswald is waiting for you.

Kuldahar is full of undead too. My cleric had enough Turn Undeads to take care of the whole map on her own, with a few seconds of wandering between each to allow them to bunch up.

In Jungles of Chult you don't need Entangle because there are just three low-level mobs. Again, if you are attentive, you will remember to memorize it before defeating the guardian -- as soon as you defeat it, the game automatically rests the party and you have to get out very quickly. So you can't memorize it after. As soon as you return to Kuldahar, Entangle is very useful for the battles against Cedra's minions.

Dragon's Eye is all indoors. I don't think Entangle is effective in the Holy Avenger battle. So the next place to use it is Fields of Slaughter. And that's it. Severed Hand is all indoors.

Of course, all this only applies to how I played 24 hours ago. Now that I've bought a Wand of Entangle, I use it everywhere! I believe I bought it in Kuldahar -- probably from Nathaniel, but I'm not sure. I was like, "Why is the game trying to sell me this wand when there's very little outdoors left? Let's buy it and try it."

 

Oh gosh. I forgot about this. Dragon's eye level 1 gives you 21 sanctuary potions!! Each yuan-ti pureblood thief drops one. I've just been through the level on Insane difficulty and I now have 21 potions in my bag.

 

The gameplay is vastly different in IWD2. It continuously gives you good enchanted missiles of all kinds, so many that you can't possibly use them all up. It also gives you returning missiles of all kinds, spread nicely throughout the game. After my initial stack of normals, I never need to buy any.

In IWD2, I use spells or casts-per-day items for all out-of-combat setup. Items or potions for in-combat. As mentioned earlier, in IWD2 the rogue doesn't need to have cleric or mage points because sanctuary is not a personal spell and invisibility never was. The potions are for me to setup for the second backstab, which was a wee bit trickier because there are very few invisibility potions in IWD2.

Having a rogue/mage in IWD2 learn mirror image + invisibility is nice, but not as crucial as in the other games. It makes it easier to go invisible while in the middle of a mob, but there are many items with casts-per-day that let you do that, especially since sanctuary works exactly like invisibility with a time limitation. (more items with sanctuary than invisibility afaik) A pure rogue can equip most such items.

However, just like in other games, I don't know why one would level up a pure rogue to 30. There seems to be no advantage to advancing a pure-class rogue very far. There are no kits like assassin in IWD2. Their traps are the shittiest and don't develop with levels -- although you can 'cast' them from afar like skull trap which is the weirdest trap implementation I've ever seen. I don't think IWD2 has a backstab multiplier like the EE games (it uses 3E sneak attack rules which I am not very clear on). And you don't need a very high level rogue to be able to disarm and unlock everything. As long as your race is favored for your class, you're better off putting points into another class.

 

Aaah, I must've misunderstood/skimmed over... more likely a combination of the two.

I prefer my main tank to have a blunt weapon (although in my current run he's an axe-wielding dwarf). I like blunts because they are better against undead and constructs. So my usual weapon of choice for the tank is a hammer and returning throwing hammer because the same proficiency works for both. Right now I'm on axe and returning axe. At very high levels, after I have all critical proficiencies, I'll put a second pip into the opposing school (slashing for my blunt tank or blunt for my slashing tank). The secondary choice doesn't have to correspond with a thrown weapon for me. So I could put it into flails (some of which do more than one type of damage depending on what heads they have attached) or an off-hand sword that would give me an extra APR.

If my tank is sharing missiles with other party members (bow, sling, etc.), he always gets the worst of the lot because he is expected to shoot from range only at helpless or near-helpless monsters standing in a toxic cloud. Otherwise his job is to tank, which means toe-to-toe. He dare not try to shoot a missile at melee range (-8 penalty in IWD2, -4 with precise shot, which you should take only when you have no other feat left to take).

Slings give less APR than other (high level) missile weapons, but my personal preference is blunt damage over piercing. I've recently forced myself to play with bows and xbows for other party members instead of all of them wielding slings -- they are good and I haven't faced any major difference in gameplay, but my brain is hardwired to blunts and I just feel better with slings. One thing I have never used in any game ever is darts. First, it doesn't feel right because IRL you can't kill someone with darts unless they are laced with a very lethal poison (okay, same goes for slings but I'm choosing to ignore that). Second is their puny range. Even a throwing knife has better range than darts (or at least it seems so), though in some games they weigh a lot without mods until you find a returning type.

Rogue monks are very good. Though I usually use a wizard to solo the eight chambers, a rogue monk is also very adept at it. If using a rogue monk, I switch to an arcane caster for the spider chamber though. There's just too many of them to bother with hand-to-hand combat. I find 3-4 Fireballs just too convenient for it. Or even Snilloc's Snowball Swarm -- one of the very few places I use that spell if I remember to memorize it in advance. Monks of any kind are also good at Battle Square.

I should add a disclaimer that I'm emotionally attached to pure-class thieves. It's why I end up playing as an Assassin in games where that option is available. The first tabletop DND ruleset game I ever played, I was a thief and loved it. That is why I get constantly peeved at finding no use for high level thieves. The game was simply called Dungeons & Dragons and came in a predominantly blue colored box. It was also my first encounter with 8-sided and 20-sided die. [First game was Hero Quest as a dwarf, so I'm emotionally attached to dwarves too, but that was not based on any DND ruleset afaik and there was no thief.]

 

All very good points. As I said, my brain is just hardwired to blunt damage. I have no good reason to use slings except the personal bias. And I've been working hard to get away from it in my last 2 + current runs.

I'm contemplating doing one full IWDEE campaign with 2 assassins + 1 mage/thief + 1 cleric/thief ONLY. Different races, different primary roles, different melee/missile weapons, all backstabbers. It will be a challenge, but I want to see how far I can get before dying. If I die too often, I'll add another mage/thief to the party. I think there's enough buffing/hiding scrolls for a second mage/thief. Maybe I'll drop it to core difficulty.

Yes, Fighter/M/T and Fighter/C/T would make it very easy, but that's not the point. I want to see how much a band of thieves (or thieves' guild if you please) can do on their own, having to spread out limited equipment among themselves. For flavor, I could add some sub-class of bard into the party (thieves' guild that travels with their personal entertainment in an era without MP3 players or smartphones).

Don't want to do it in IWD2 because those rogues are just so basic. In IWD2, I would end up with a few levels of rogue and many levels of monk, mage, cleric, druid, etc. So by level 15, I would inadvertently end up with the same party I have now. I see no reason to punish myself for that.

 

I've described my thief-only gameplay in this thread in case you are curious.

 

I have noticed that the IWD games made crowd-control so much more effective than in NWN2 and the BG games.

BG games you had so many open fields where enemies swarmed in on you from every angle.

NWN2, you just couldn't get any crowd-control off before the enemies had already been long gone from your hoped for zone.

The IWD games has LOTs of bottlenecks where you can plant all of Web, Spike Stones, Grease, Spike Growth, Entangle. With so many saving throws to make, nothing would ever get out of the crowd-control zone.

 

I believe I bought the wand from Nathaniel.

I can't play IWD2 without a druid! Even though I recently played IWDEE with only a mix of thieves, I so desperately missed my druid. Their offensive spells, despite the long casting times, are very powerful. Their defensive spells are useful despite being average. Summons are nice-to-have though nothing spectacular until higher levels. I very rarely use them for healing. Never used shapeshifted druids though.

A druid gets Entangle at L1. Plus, they are able to tank. I can play without a warrior in my party (fighter, monk, etc.) as long as I have a druid or two.

 

I'm a slinger myself. Not only is it the most versatile weapon -- anyone can use them (except Kensai but that is outside IWD2 realms), but there are so many ways to increase the wielder's strength (damage) and dex (THAC0). [Talking about usual weaklings like mages here.] Even the most basic Bull's Strength and Cat's Grace last for long periods and there are quite a few sources (wands, potions if you don't want to memorize) of those. And an arcanist doesn't have to memorize Bull's Strength -- a cleric can do that instead, freeing up a slot for the arcanist's much more powerful L2 spells.

And blunt is generally the least frequently type of damage resisted whereas piercing seems to be the most frequently resisted. I have not bothered to work out how many monsters resist blunt vs piercing, this is just an estimate off the top of my head.

Disclaimer: Missile weapons for my parties are primary choice only for back-line weaklings. My frontliners hold missile weapons for the sake of it but after character level 5 or so, they rarely use them. Also, usually my frontliners are wielding either throwing hammers (blunt) or throwing axes (slashing). Sometimes you just need slashing damage.

 

Slings: I don't care about crits. I don't care about anything that could happen "by chance". For me a crit is only a bonus. I prefer to work with the guaranteed stuff. And since piercing damage is so often resisted, I consider slings to be the most effective missile weapon in all infinity engine games. What's the point of doing 3x crit when the monster is immune to it?

Hammers/Axes: Again, in my parties people who wield throwing hammers/axes end up almost never using them -- they are frontliners and hold the enemy lines in toe-to-toe, usually as enemies are advancing out of cloud spells. They might throw some hammers/axes when enemy backliners are still stuck in a cloud spell that I don't have a protection against. So I'm fine with +2 (throwing hammers in IWD2 go up to +5 but they are not the returning type). But this saves a feat point for whoever is wielding it because their primary weapon also happens to be a hammer or axe, and they benefit from those proficiencies.

Ranged weapons in IE games are generally the least used anyway. They can almost never be your primary weapon because most monsters will find a way to get into melee range -- including archers if they are alive after they run out of ammo. So slings, bows, throwing hammers/axes are all situational weapons when you are able to successfully get a reasonable crowd stuck in Web or something like that. Therefore, I don't want to give too much consideration to my ranged weapon choices -- thus, I default to Sling because it's blunt and will work most of the time (as against piercing).

* Btw, whenever I'm half-assed about creating my party and can't be bothered to properly work out who gets what, ALL party members get slings