Awkward party advice

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I think Haer's spellbook should be like:
Level 1
Magic Missiles/Chromatic Orb. You have more than enough physical damage (both ranged and melee) so you don't need that many Magic Missiles. I suggest a Chromatic Orb or two for a possible insta-kill or paralyze at lower levels.
Level 2
Knock/Mirror Image. A Mirror Image or two should be useful if you want him to melee.
Level 3
Skull Trap/HASTE/Flame Arrow. Skull Trap damage scales with levels and is capped at 20d6. Flame Arrow's damage isn't capped at all. Haste is haste, you'll want that extra attack for everyone including your conjured minions.
Your monk should be able to handle most traps. Monks have good saves and MR at higher levels, though you'll need regeneration to deal with physical damage traps.
Level 4
Stoneskin/Improved Invisibility/Spider Spawn. Ideally Haer should not be tanking, so you only need two castings of Stoneskin (totaling three, including your Stoneskin from 8 hours ago). Improved Invisibility grants other combat bonuses. Spider Spawn is incredibly useful against humanoids, use these to trivialize some fights without resorting to Cernd's more powerful summon spells (saving your Fire Elementals from death spells).
Level 5
Animate Dead/Spell Immunity/Melf's Meteors/Cone of Cold/Lower Resistance/Polymorph Self. Keldorn's Dispel Magic and True Sight already work on Stoneskin, invisibility and weapon protection spells, those are the only things you want removed really - 4 of your party members are warriors, the fifth is a hybrid and the sixth is a summoner. You don't need many castings of Animate Dead, 1 or two should be enough with Cernd around. More so if you give him the Staff of Fire and recharge it from time to time.
Spell Immunity protects against ANY spell from that school, particularly useful against demi-liches and the like. Cone of Cold's damage also only caps at level 20. Melf's Minute Meteors is an alternative to Cone of Cold. Lower Resistance and Polymorph Self are situational.
Level 6
Improved Haste/Mislead/Tenser's Transformation/Death Spell. In the long run warriors don't need Improved Haste, they already get Whirlwind/GWW and haste is a lot more cost-effective for easier battles. It also helps that all your warriors are single class, so they'll have more than enough HLA uses. The Death Spell is for dealing with summoned minions quickly.

I don't think you'll be able to open a few locks even with 25 strength, and it'll be some time before you get Crom. Haer also won't have enough level 2 spell slots until later on in the game. I guess this means you need a thief, unless you can deal with skipping quite a few locked chests. Or you can just keep resting until you open everything, using Knock spell scrolls to help minimize hassle. Wasn't there an item that allowed you to cast Knock?
With UAI the Helm of Vhailor allows Haer to summon a (relatively) high level simulacrum.
Entangle is a tactical spell that can help you tackle higher level parties early.
I suggest you actually scribe all scrolls you find except one like Limited Wish, Wish, Mislead, Timestop, Find Familiar, etc. More XP for everyone - you'll need every bit, seeing as you'll be sacrificing XP from disarming traps and opening locks.

 

I'm not memorizing all Magic Missiles because I need that many Magic Missiles but because the other spells are crap. Chromatic Orb is not the worst, but it has a +6 save, and at 10th and 11th level it turns people to stone and you can't loot statues.

If it were Imoen or Jan it'd be all Mirror Image, but I need to open locks more than I need another melee guy.

It is, at level 20.

I should probably memorize a single Haste, indeed. It offers diminishing returns, though. Fight hard for two minutes, fatigued for the rest of the day.

That sort of Russian Roulette approach leads to the occasional disintegrating hand screen. Even low saves will occasionally fail. Of course I could just quicksave (and I probably will anyway) before triggering any traps, but I'll pass, if only for roleplaying reasons.

If it looks like he doesn't need it, then I will certainly free up some slots.

It seems a bit short-lived to use it just for a combat boost.

I do love those Sword Spiders. That's one thing I have to admit of Bards; they have high caster levels.

It's too bad the only other valid summon spells are Call Woodland Beings, Animate Dead, Summon Fire Elemental and Greater Elemental Summoning. Very little in the way of fodder. I think I'll rely on the Wand of Monster Summoning instead. It costs around 6k to recharge, but it comes with 50 charges and that's 200 monsters. That would save some of my precious level 4 slots.

It would be good against Kangaxx and that one other Demi-Lich in Watcher's Keep, but for roleplaying reasons I like to enter each battle as if I didn't know exactly what I'd be up against (unless it's obvious, of course.) I'm not going to dedicate a spell slot to a spell that I would only be casting twice in the entire game. I won't be immunizing any clones from Abjuration or Divination, and there's little else that Spell Immunity is good for without detailed foreknowledge. Most enemies have a too-varied repertoire to be foiled by a single school immunity.

Level 3 spell. I'm normally a huge fan.

Wand of Frost, and I find myself hardly using even that.

So I can cast more Magic Missiles at it?

Level 4, but I do like the Mustard Jelly. I find myself never actually using it, though.

A single Skeleton Warrior can clear out a room full of enemies and is particularly effective against mages, including liches. Usually only Death Spell gets it, which is why I may need multiples.

Yeah, it looks like this party has to rely heavily on item charges. Vhailor's Helm, Rod of Resurrection, various critter summoning sticks...

Why wouldn't I just kill them the old-fashioned way? I'd think even a Greater Whirlwind Attack from one of my tanks is more expendable than one of Haer'Dalis' precious level 6 spells. He gets so few of them.

There are very few chests that can't be bashed that really need to be opened. It's mostly the "OMGcantignorepossibilityofloot!!1!oneone" compulsion that drives me otherwise, and I'll just have to learn to ignore it.

If only! Maybe in some mod.

I plan to rely heavily on it.

Like Mencar Pebblecrusher's? Or Tarnor the Hatchetman's? Those are really tough for a low-level party, but I don't see how Entangle is going to help. I'd be entangling my own four tanks as well, and the higher level party obviously has better saves.

Always do.

 

Your mileage may vary. I've always found it reliable against certain demons, it ignores spell resistance. And luckily, bards gain levels much faster than mages.

No, the number of arrows generated isn't.

Not quite. Fatigue is not a very serious condition unless you keep going for 4 or more hours (according to the manual), when the penalties start to add up. Well worth it, if it allows you to tackle multiple difficult battles before resting.
At the very least you can simply use haste on your summoned minions.

Most powerful buffs usually are.

There is one other spell, Animal Conjuration I think, that summons bears. The Wand of Monster Summoning's monsters become obsolete far too early in BG2, it's usually best to work with what minions you already have unless you're expecting a death spell casting.

True, but Haer is a bard. Though I'm not really sure how one roleplays high lore.
Spell Immunity also protects you from your own spells. One of the most powerful spells in the game, from a tactical point of view. Steep an area in Cloudkill or force something to fight you in a corridor and spam Lightning Wand charges at them with your character safely immune-kind of powerful. I guess it can be risky to use with Keldorn around though.

Wand spell damage is capped at a much lower level.

Magic Missiles, Skull Traps, Flame Arrows, whatever nukes you had Cernd memorize. Situational though, like I mentioned. Like if a certain enemy decided to me give the initiative by allowing me to choose whenever I decided to start combat, then if he/she happened to me have high SR then I'd certainly memorize a few of these.

The Staff of Fire alone should be more than enough. It starts with very few charges though.

Before whirlwind, when your group may easily get overwhelmed. It also works on a quite a few annoying monsters, like some gauths iirc. I'm not sure how useful it is later on in the game, I don't use the Death spell much after the Underdark and I don't think I've ever used it in ToB.

Exactly.
It's a tactical spell. Multiple entangles + kill them all with AoE damage over time spells, multiple entangles + unload all your AoE spells on them before retreating to a (possible trapped) choke point and dealing with them in order of whoever makes their saves first, multiple entangles + have all your guys use ranged weapons and kill them off one by one. You don't even have to cast it directly at them, if you're an RP purist.

 

There are a few situations where even a 25 strength won't do. For example, even if you have a 25 strength you can't get to the demi-lich. While it is true that it will be a long time before you get Crom Faeyr, there are other, albeit less effective, means of increasing your strength. If you don't feel obligated to open everything, Knock will get you a good long way.

The bigger issue I would have in not taking a thief with me is passing up what would have to total up to hundreds of thousands of experience points for disarming traps and picking locks throughout SoA and ToB.

If you are talking about the 6th level druid spell, it's one of the best summons in the game. You get a pair of werebears. They actually look like polar werebears. They last a long time, and short of a death spell are nearly indestructible. They are like getting Mordy's Swords before you can cast Mordy Swords.

 

It does? Looking at the SPL file in Near Infinity, I only see "Not bypass resistance" in the various effects.

Again, looking at the SPL file... four entries for effect; level 5, level 10, level 15, level 20. That's it.

I suppose that is true. I'll have to see how many spell slots I can pry away from Minor Spell Deflection.

If only the type of trap would be apparent when you detect them. I always wonder what it was that I disarmed... Was it a simple spear trap? The green goo? Or one of those deadly Disintegrate traps? There's at least one Disintegrate trap that I know of (in Brynnlaw), and it's the main reason that I'm fearful of triggering traps without some sort of magical protection.

-4 AC and +4 to hit for one dude is nice but not that powerful. It's still situational; you have to find an enemy that has a bit of trouble hitting you. Then you can turn that into a lot of trouble. Thing is, most enemies like that aren't worth blowing a level 4 spell on.

Are you kidding!? Even Throne of Bhaal bosses can barely keep up with the amount of fodder this thing can generate. Sure, the monsters it summons can't fight their way out of a wet paper bag, but they'll distract and obstruct and occasionally get a lucky hit in. You get four meat shields per use.

Among the unique powers granted by our divine Bhaalspawn heritage I reckon the mystical precognitive powers of "FAQ" and "Quicksave". You should see what some of the other Bhaalspawn get. Still, there are limits.

That said, I'm always sad to see my minor Bhaalpowers taken away by Jonny, only to be replaced by that stupid Slayer. Which I have used exactly once ever, as an emergency measure to keep Evil party members from leaving (Bodhi steals Viconia, Reputation goes up, Edwin and Korgan leave...)

Cloudkill is sooo slow. You have to throw multiple Cloudkills to kill anything worth killing that way, and that's very risky.

Yeah, but even if it did double damage (level 20) I wouldn't use it much. It's just not practical to spam area damage when several of your tanks are engaged.

Helps if you have the (new and unimproved) Cloak of Mirroring, though.

I used Lower Resistance exactly twice in my last game (which currently sits unfinished in the Marching Mountains), and it was to fight the Lesser Demon Lord (in the Temple of Lolth) and Adalon. They are both soft to that approach, and I had several nukers in the party.

Haer'Dalis might be reconfigured to be a decent nuker (though lack of Spell Sequencer and Spell Trigger hurts), but Cernd? Call Lightning is pretty awesome, but there aren't many occasions where you can cast it on a critter that's nasty enough to warrant a Lower Resistance treatment. Only the Black Dragon in Suldanesselar comes to mind.

Is it better than the Staff of Air?

The Staff of Earth can only be used once per day, I believe.

AoEDoT spells are kind of high level, and the Wand of Cloudkill is expensive.

I like running down the stairs in the Seven Vales Inn. Usually only a few of Mencar's guys follow me.

Mencar has two mages. Tarnor has one, but he throws a nasty hatchet himself. They could beat me at my own game.

I just don't like Entangle. The easy save and weak effect make it too unreliable for any sort of strategy. Web and Stinking Cloud, on the other hand, are quite decent.

It's nice, but it amounts to maybe 1% of your total Experience.

They're Mountain Bears, and I'd rather have the Fire Elemental. The bears are a bother to herd around because they're slow and they insist on sticking together. Two bears are better than a single 12HD Fire Elemental, but you could get a 16HD or even a 24HD elemental. The bears last for 4 minutes, the elementals 1 minute per level.

 

The werebears are from a mod. The actual vanilla spell is nowhere near that good which I think is a good thing because the werebears are way too powerful. You can seriously clear entire maps just using those two werebears from that mod.

 

Chromatic Orb's effect (not the damage) ignores spell resistance, and Flame Arrow has always ignored the capped-at-level 20 rule. Tested this and still true. Do you perhaps have fan-made fixpacks installed?

For the other stuff, as with Chromatic Orb, I guess it depends on your playstyle.

The Staff of Fire has charges, like a wand. One elemental per use. Air elementals are nowhere near as dangerous as fire elementals.

 

NOte that the highest level chromatic orb does instant death not petrification. I believe that starts at level 12 or 13.

 

Consider having Haer'Dalis memorizing 1 or 2 emotion spells instead of stoneskins at level 4, it's a party friendly mass disabler with saving throw penalty.

In which order do you plan gathering your party and doing your first quests ?

 

According to people who solo - and therefore don't have spell slots to spend on getting rid of traps - they just take the damage - say that traps are more of a nuisance than anything. There are a couple insta-death spells such as the ones you mention, but in those cases there is a saving throw involved.

I have to concede that I never bother with rods of monster summoning. If I want to summon a creature to act as a meat shield in a battle, I'll grab a Mordy's Swords, Devas, Elementals, etc.

On the other hand, I love cloudkill, and later on incendiary cloud. Usually, I'll cast cloud kill first before shooting off fireballs.

Most of the time, LR is not the best approach to a fight. The issue is usually not that they have a high MR, but that they have spell protections up. Then the other thing is level 5 is a spell level where there are a lot of good options for spells, including Breach, which is what you'd normally want to cast to take down protections. Against something like a demon is a case where it would make sense, as they don't have spell protections.

Just think about what you said there for a minute. Most 6 player parties finish a game with ~6 million XP. 1% of that is 60,000. So let's multiply it by 6 players, and it's 360,000. Let's say the average pick lock is 1,000 XP, and the average disarm trap is 2,000 XP (we'll ignore that the values are significantly higher than this is ToB - traps are worth 3,250 XP each IIRC). You really think you're only going to get to 360,000 XPs that way? Hell there are 15 pickable locks and 5 disarmable traps in one room of Mae'Var's Guild. That's like 25,000 XPs right there!

I have no inclination to actually go through a game and count up all the traps and locks I go through, but there has to be hundreds of each. I'd say by not having a thief, by the end of the game you're costing each of your characters a level.

Oh, the 7th level druid spells for conjuring an elemental absolutely rock. Especially once you get the Greater Elemental Summoning as an HLA. But it's a false comparison. The bears are level 6, the elementals are level 7. It's not an either/or decision. And given the rate of druid leveling where you get access to level 6 spells relatively early, but have to wait a long time to get more than 1 level 7 spell, it bears mentioning.

Be careful getting HD. In one party I tried to get him shortly after leaving the opening dungeon. There are more than a couple creatures in the Planar Prison that are immune to weapons less than +2 enchantment - not just the Warden, but also the demon who immediately summons in two air elementals. If you have only one poor sap who can hit them, the battle can be challenging.

 

Wait... I see... some of the effects bypass resistance. Originally, the stun, petrification and slay abilities bypassed resistance, but the Baldurdash fixes and its spiritual successor the Fixpack should fix that. However, the petrification still bypasses resistance, at least in the Fixpack version.

That's weird. I also tested it, and my level 28 Wizard causes 8 lines of "did damage to". That's four times piercing and four times fire. Should be five times if it was uncapped.

I don't have SPWI303.SPL (Flame Arrow) in my override folder, which means it can't have been modded. Are you sure you don't have a modded version?

Hmm... there are lots of discrepancies here.

• The Staff of Air claims to work the same as the others, but has a single daily charge.
• The Air Elemental is big, though it is still only 8HD.
• The Fire Elemental has no AI script, which means you can't send it out of sight.
• The Fire Elemental is (of course) immune to fire.
• They each have a different weapon; Air: 1d20, Fire: 3d8 +8 fire, Earth: 4d8.

There do not seem to be any other differences.

The game files are a complete mess (more so than usual) where elementals are concerned. There must be at least 20 different Fire Elemental creature files, most of which are virtually identical. It's not strange to see so many errors resulting from this copy/paste development mentality.

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I actually planned that out:

1. Escape Chateau Irenicus, dump everyone except Minsc.
2. Go to Temple District, start Unseeing Eye quest, enter sewers (avoid center and top tunnel), pick up Keldorn.
3. Go to Government District, talk to Tolgerias, start Planar Sphere quest. Go to Docks, enter Valygar's Home, find Umar Hills clue.
4. Go to City Gate, talk to Flydian, start Trademeet quest. Go to Trademeet, pick up Cernd.
5. Go to Umar Hills, pick up Valygar. Enter Merella's cabin, find Temple Ruins clue. Go to Temple Ruins, enter dungeon, pick up Mazzy.
6. Go to Slums, open Planar Sphere, dump Valygar.
7. Go to Bridge District, enter Five Flagons, yadda yadda Mekrath yadda Planar Prison, pick up Haer'Dalis.

Just got Cernd. Plan's worked so far. Not looking forward to taking this low-level bunch into the Planar Prison, though.

 

Like I said in my prior post, so long as you have at least a couple of characters with +2 weapons or better (and you definitely have at least one with Keldorn and a second somewhat functional one with Mazzy just with their starting equipment), it's not too bad. The party I took into the prison straight out of Irencus' Dungeon had exactly one person with the ability to hit some of the stuff in the Planar Prison.

 

It's really good. Not for killing stuff, but it works wonders for distraction.

I also like to (Limited) wish for "a horde to overrun my enemies!" 20 bunnies with green circles. They get in the way like crazy.

I tried Death Fog a couple of times. Wasn't bad. Basically a double Cloudkill.

Let's say 200 locks and 100 traps. The locks give 490-1050 each, the traps... let's say 1750-3500. That's about 400000 total, slightly over 1%.

The numbers you list would require 1000 locks and 500 traps.

Heh, pun intended?

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Minsc also has the Chaos Sword from Chateau Irenicus, and Cernd has a +2 staff, so it's just Xi-Xi the Monk that's sidelined.

 

Hmmm... I would guestimate that the total number of locks and traps in the game lies somewhere between the 200/100 number you assume and the 1000/500 number that it would require for my number. I also think it would be closer to the 1000/500 number than the 200/100 number. Like I said earlier, the total number of locked containers in MaeVar's Guildhouse alone would be at least 20 (there's 15 in one room).

Actually, no - but funny nonetheless.

 

Nope, no mods. Only the official patches.

Fire Elementals can hit and damage any type of creature, except certain ones immune to fire. They're deadly against Kangaax. As far as survivability goes they're about the same, the air elemental seems to do slightly more damage but not as much as an Aerial Servant.

 

Yes, but that is hardly representative.

Right... a quick search using Near Infinity reveals 170 locks with Lock difficulty > 0 (155 containers and 15 doors) and 98 traps with Trap removal difficulty > 0. These searches also include some inaccessible leftovers such as Durlag's Tower.

A different search reveals 1611 trapped items, but I think most of these are either erroneously flagged as trapped (loads of stuff has bad flags) or not actual traps but stuff like lava floors. Either way, if they can't be removed you can't get Experience from them.

 

Agreed. I'm just saying that I find it impossible to believe that MaeVar has about 10% of all the locks in the entire game in his stronghold. There's several more locked containers (some trapped) in the Thief Guildhouse to boot. And then of course the locked and trapped door to the demi-lich, and the pirate cove in the tavern is also locked. So just in the docks district, you're looking at 30 or so locks and 10 or so traps. Granted, there's probably more here than anywhere else, but it can't be 20% of all the locked containers (assuming the 155 number is correct).

Also there are a freakin ton of traps and several locked containers in Chateau Irenicus. Together, you're looking a about 25%-30% of the total for the game in just those two areas. And 15 locked doors seems like an impossibly small number... Then again, as you already said, 1600 traps seems like an impossibly high number. (The traps alone would be worth over 3 million XPs!)

 

You don't have to enter Planar Prison to get Haer'Dalis so you can do other stuff like the slavers in the slums with your full party first.
I guess you'll be siding with the assassins and blackmailers to keep Keldorn pleased.

 

I thought he'd go back to Raelis Shai after you de-zombify him in Mekrath's lair. Would be nice to level the bunch up a bit before we dive into the Planar Prison.

Keldorn is particular about the type of murderers he works for?

Either way, Shadow Thieves it is. I prefer Bodhi, since that way I get to kill 'em all, but I installed the multiple stronghold tweak since I never actually got to see any stronghold other than the De'Arnise Hold, and this is probably the last chance I'll get.

 

Which will promptly be destroyed by a Death Spell by the enemy mage. I tend to use the Wand of Monster Summoning as the Wand of Death Spell Canon Fodder.
I summon some useless canon fodder, send them in and let the spellcaster waste his Death Spell while I summon something good.

Well, for the really tough fights I'll summon and buff the good things before engaging while leaving one slot available for a low-level summon. Then I'll send the canon fodder from the wand in, let it be banished by the (often scripted) Death Spell, and then summon in the real summons to do their job with impunity.

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People, for the debate on XP gained by picking locks and disarming traps, I should point out that the amount of XP awarded for doing so is directly related to the level of the thief that does it. I do not think it is affected by anything else.
The information on how much is awarded at each level can be found in the .2da file "XPBONUS.2DA"

Code:

2DA V1.0
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              1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40
PICK_LOCK     250  250  250  250  250  400  400  400  400  400  950  950  950  950  950  1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550 1550
DISARM_TRAP   1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1750 1750 1750 1750 1750 2750 2750 2750 2750 2750 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250 3250
LEARN_SPELL   1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0