Abdel - The Shapeshifter

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Then again, Rogues Re-balancing mod re-balances bard and thief HLAs but also adds new HLAs and kits. WHy don't you try them?

 

Hey Everyone,
I haven’t posted here for a while because I took a little vacation time to spend with my family.

The Greater Werewolf form has elemental resistance immunities of 50% and spell resistance of 40%.

When shape shifted to a GW the stats go to Strength 21, Dexterity of 20 and Constitution of 25. The standard AC of a GW is -11 and THAC0 would be 7 at level 13. This is of course without any additional items/weapons being equipped. Now if you equip a weapon, the GW form may not gain the bonus to attacks if the weapon is not shown in the weapon icon but you do gain the weapon special attacks (stuns, elemental damage, etc…). Now if the weapon icon does show the weapon you not only gain the special attacks you also the weapon bonuses to your attack and any additional special abilities provide by the weapon (protection from charm, + AC bonus, etc…).

Also GW has a natural immunity to normal and +1 magical weapon.

With all of this known let me try to see if I can give some of you an idea on how powerful a GW is early on in the game.

Abdel at level 13 had the following items equipped: Bracers of Binding Strike, Cloak of Mirroring, Girdle of Piercing, Helm of Balduran, Ring of Protection +2, Ring of Regeneration and the Staff of Curing.

With the items above equipped to Abdel his AC was -15. Abdel had an AC of -17 the other night when he was equipped with the Ring of Earth and Cloak of the Sewers.

AC aside Abdel THAC0 with the GW natural weapon is 7 but when the icon shows a weapon instead of the natural weapon of the GW the THAC0 is adjusted according to the bonus of the weapon and you also gain the weapon special abilities (charm protection, + AC, etc…). I used the Bracers of Binding Strike with the Spear of Piercing (+10 Piercing Damage) and Abdel had 6 attacks around, within one round Abdel has done well over 100 points of damage. The damage per a round goes up when you calculate in critical hits scored and seeing that with 2-Handed weapons you could score critical hits on 19 and 20 which double the chances to land critical hits. Abdel took down the Elder Beholder in one round.

With all of this info above I believe the most powerful character any one could have at level 13 would be the Druid Shapeshifter class. No class could go toe to toe and survive, even when heavily equipped. I tried this with Minsc and he lasted all but two rounds. He did however hit Abdel for 35 points of damage before he fell.

Besides backing everyone out there who believes Shapeshifter are one of the strongest fighting type classes, I believe that when dual they truly start to shine, more so than any other fighting class. On top of all the benefits of being in GW form you also gain the fighters lower THAC0. If you add in the weapon bonuses I could only imagine the amount of damage a dual class Shapeshifter / Fighter could deal each round.

I did a little experimenting on dual classing my Shapeshifter. First off if you are in GW form and you dual to a Fighter you stay as a GW, even when you level up. Now to me this is just plain old abusing the game mechanics. Now you could have a level one fighter who has all the stats and special abilities of a GW. Given that a fighter with a lowly dexterity cannot achieve a good AC without a ton of equipment, I believe the GW form is beneficial at earlier levels and as you progress I imagine the form only would provide the character with more benefits, so changing back to human form would have a negative impact on this character. This totally takes abuse of the game mechanics but if it is allowed than so be it. I am not sure if I am the first person to discover the ability to abuse the GW form when a Druid / Shapeshifter is dual to a fighter? I do not know if you save, quit and come back at a later date to play if you keep the GW form or if you are shifted to normal form. But I imagine that the character does not shift to your human form since the game does not reset to the natural weapon after dispel magic has been cast on character who is in their GW form.

Now that this info is exposed I wonder who is going to say it is cheating beyond belief. I know I would have a few months ago but is it cheating if the game mechanic allows it? To me after thinking about this for a while the answer is no. If the game was design as such you should be able to use the glitches to your benefits. Now if you go add in code such as Debug Mode = 1, that would be cheating since the code of the game is being altered for the users benefit. I am sure that others will disagree with my idea of what cheating is within gaming. I for one do not use mods since they alter the original game play / code and I feel that changes the true perspective of how the game was designed to be played. Patches for games are suppose to fix bugs that exist and some times some of the bugs are still out there even after the latest patch and that is true with BG2. For me I am going to use all the glitches / bugs within the original game after it is patched, because it is just exploiting what was in the original design even if it should not happen.

Now that I have gotten the dual bug out; is the Shapeshifter a power gaming class? Yes! Even more so once the fighter levels surpass the Druid levels and you start to gain HLA as a fighter.

My goal with Abdel is to get to a level 16 Druid and dual him to a fighter. I should have no trouble with doing that and surpassing my Druid levels. I can deal with a character that is a GW fighter who can dual wield a dagger and scimitar at the same and will be able to attack five times in a round or have three attacks and be a grand master in spears or staffs. Now added in the Bracers of Binding strike and the dual wielding fighter ends up with 10 attacks around, that is of course if he has Belm in his off hand. Now I am curious if Abdel can equip Valygar armor after he surpasses his Druid levels? Maybe I will try that after I complete the Sphere quest. If he can equip that armor, all that will mean is Abdel will have more resistance, hmm…..

Now it is only a matter of time before I find out how powerful Abdel truly is?

 

Now I'm all for people enjoying their own games. If you want to abuse bugs and take advantage of everything "in the game mechanic" that you can get your hands on, feel free. It is, after all, your game. But bringing that information to the forums and trying to use it to say one character is stronger than another or one class is stronger than another is just not the way it should be done.

If you say your Greater Werewolf wielding a weapon is so powerful, I say put him up against any character who's smuggled the Unseeing Eye Rod (the one with a ranged, resistance-ignoring Harm) out of the sewers. Your Werewolf wouldn't have a chance, end of story. And what's more, it's within game mechanics so, according to your argument, I'm fully allowed to do it and then come here and compare it to your character. So sure, your Werewolf is great, but ranged harm + dart is better. Why do we have to have a thread about which bugs are the strongest?

 

Hey. I pointed out that Cernd can wipe Minsc in the early levels without it and that he can stand up to Minsc at high level without the bug. You jsut don't like it and I'm sorry for that. About the only thing that the shape shifter druid is missing is a couple of the fighter HLA's like whirlwind.

For those numbers people. At level 15 against Cernd at level 13. Misnc still has to roll a 16 or better. And that's if Cernd isn't wearing a belt that affects your particular kind of attack Or AC boosting items of which there are many Cernd can wear and may or may not be doing so by the time he reaches level 13.


However. if you truely want to give the shape shifter class some real limits. My suggestion is that you go and give the power to shape shift a time limit that it lasts for. And make a person use up their 7 and 8 and 9 times a day to shape shift and be forced to spend time in human form and even give them the possibility to turn human when they don't want it in the middle of battle. That would be a serious and true limit. A price of being what they are. Your Excuse. They can only stay in their shape shifted so long or they risk losing themselves to their affliction instead of controlling it.

And by the way. it does take the shape shifter until he has a round to make an action in to shape shift even in the core game. I found this out testing everything.

 

I was referring to Abdel's post (and yours, though you abandon the notion for this most recent post) of wielding a weapon while shifted. It's a bug and abusing it is cheating, end of story. If either you or Abdel introduce bugs, I will do the same.

Now you saying Cernd, without exploitation, can beat Minsc, although I am skeptical of it, since I haven't tested it, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and say that's fine. In your most recent post, you did not mention bugs so I will not do so here. It is my opinion that, although Minsc may not have an AC to match the Greater Werewolf, he has a much greater ability to do damage and have special bonuses from his weapons and armor. I am not denying the power or versatility of either class (because after all, Cernd is a powerful caster in his human form) but my preference is to Minsc for fighting. I am not willing to sacrifice a Druid's casting ability to have a fighter.

 

Actually. I went back and pointed out some things about his being able to do it even without said bug but you've decided to stay fixated it which makes me think that you only tend to read about a quarter or half of my posts. Which is your choice and fine. You also don't like when I point out that certain things you consider cheating aren't actually bugs.

Even strength. Their own combat powers. One on one they are about equal. Depending on what luck is with you.

I also pointed out that I found out the interesting little tidbit that single weapon fighting style actually works with Werewolf Claws. It's up there in another post. But none of that matters now and you haven't tested it. You just went by your assumptions of what you felt was correct. I've been playing with Cernd. Between his shape shifting and his high level druid bonuses he's powerful.

Hell. I even took the flail of ages against him just to see what would happen. He negated 6 of the 10 extra elemental damage from it. It was the slow affect that really worked against him. Immunity to that and he very well could have won.

Then again I also pointed out a method of using Cernd Fully and doing a lot of damage while getting significant regeneration thanks to a fire spell and greater than 100% fire resistance and a druid must have buff in one of my posts that got ignored as well. An Area affect spell that's got several rounds to it and can do as much as 50 damage a round. Which Cernd can turn into a source of regeneration for a few rounds. Something a level 16 or above Cernd can pull off very easily.

 

Starwalker, I specifically said in my last post that if you are beating Minsc without wielding a weapon, that's fine and I believe you. Since I haven't tested it personally, I have no right to argue the point.

In my previous posts, I wasn't arguing against Shapeshifters being powerful or against Cernd's ability to stand up to Minsc. I was arguing against using a bug to do it. I ignored the Firestorm+100%+ Fire resistance combination because it's not a bug, though it is creative use of what you are given. I was fine with that. I ignored using single weapon style with werewolf paws because that seems open to debate as to whether or not it is a bug. Once again, I'm fine with that. I'm not selectively reading, just selectively arguing. My arguments hinged on using a bug to prove one character superior to another. Since you seem to have developed an argument for Cernd that does not use bugs, I'm in full support of it whether I agree with it or not. Now that I believe we have all articulated our concerns clearly, let's not leave this thread on harsh terms, hm?