Finished ToB for the first time - random collection of thoughts

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Hi!

Although I have played BG and BGII shortly after they were released (and several times, on and off), this is the first time I have played ToB. The only mod I used (for the SoA part) was Bonus Merchants. I played on Core Rules and I tried to minimize the number of reloads except for:
- Pickpocketing (usually Amnish Soldiers in Athkatla; they are a great source of mage scrolls (they can go all the way up to spell level 8(!))
- Die roll HP level-ups (early SoA). I used my own house rule here: accept anything in the 'upper half' of the possible roll.

I will describe my party in this post. Next post will focus on my overall impressions of the expansion.



Party description:


Jaheira
Party leader (I like her voice, plus she was my main tank for most of SoA) and sort of a "mother figure" for all of us.
Main weapons: dual wielding Gnasher + Belm (or Blackblood + Belm), in the really late game replaced by Ixil´s Spike
Other notable gear: Amulet of Power (she tanked many vampires...)

Thoughts about her: Once she got good at hitting with two weapons and got a STR-boosting item, she was a great tank through SoA due to good damage output, low AC and recastable Iron Skins. But dual-wielding has a major drawback, IMO - much less versatility. I love having both ranged and melee attacks available for all my characters. In many battles, I did not want her too far up front (attracting additional monsters) so she was often reduced to a spell caster, and Druids do not have that many good spells for battle situations. However, the insect spells were good against many mages, and later on I really learned to like Greater Elemental Summoning. Those guys can sure take a beating...
Many times, she did an excellent job at stepping in and interceptng melee monsters that were going for my three mages.


Anomen
Contrary to some people here, I do not hate Anomen. I think he tries to do the right thing, but he is insecure and puts up a pompous attitude to cover that insecurity. But since I just love to use Turn Undead to splatter the undead, and Anomen is the only single-classed non-evil Cleric in the game, I pretty much have to take him (or play a Cleric myself). This makes me more than a little tired of him. It is also not fair that he is the only romancable male NPC (there are three females to romance, but I tend to play female main characters more than 3/4 of the time in these types of games...grrr!)

Main weapons: Sling of Seeking and Flail of Ages. Very easy choices, and he did great with them.
Other notable gear: Shield of Harmony. Since he usually was the one to rescue (or sometimes, resurrect) the other characters, it made sense to make him hard to take out of a battle.

Thoughts about him: Anomen was primarily my buffer, healer and third tank. He was very dependable to do what I expected of him. I could probably have experimented much more with his spells (Harm combos, Sanctuary + Globe of Blades, etc.) but I didn´t. I was just happy getting him to fight and do occasional summoning (those Skelly Warriors rule in SoA), rescuing and damage dealing (Bolt of Glory, Holy Smite (but watch out where Edwin is!)). He would often "take over" and finish off a tough melee fight when Jaheira or Mazzy had to flee. He had a ton of hitpoints, second only to Mazzy.


Mazzy
The more into ToB I got, the more important this comely lass (in the immortal words of Edwin) turned out to be. Having a whole host of warrior HLAs was just awesome. Jaheira was the only other character in my party to have them, and she did not have that many.

Main weapons: Tansheron´s bow and The Wave (later replaced by Ravager)
Other notable gear: Vhailor´s Helm, Ring of Gaxx, the Short Sword with Mirror Image once per day, Red Dragon Scale Mail and a ring giving her a total of 90% fire resistance.

Thoughts about her: My goodness, what an awesome miniature Paladin-wannabe this was! Her only problem was that I was sometimes overconfident at what she could tank, and for how long. The Simulacrum from the helm was an excellent summon. It´s one thing to have a powerful character, but it´s even better to have one which you don´t care about the safety for...
Mazzy had me instantly love GWW, but I later found out that Improved Haste plus either Critical Strike or Greater Deathblow (using arrows, against certain enemies) was even more devastating.


Edwin
Main weapons: Staff of the Magi and Firetooth throwing dagger
Other notable gear: Robe of Vecna

The Mage. You all know what this wizard is capable of. I could probably have used him in a much more versatile way than I did. His Spell Trigger was usually loaded with a Greater Malison and two Lower Resists, the Spell Sequencer with three Chromatic Orbs and the Minor Sequencer with two of them. When I didn´t plan to use Chain Contingency offensively, I had one with 'hitpoints at 50%, cast Mislead, Stoneskin and Protection From Magical Weapons on myself'. That combo saved him a number of times. Edwin was not needed (almost not used) in most of the fights, but when he was needed, he was really needed.

Near the end of the game, in important fights, he used the trademark sequence of Time Stop - Improved Alacrity - Greater Malison (and a couple of Lower Resists if needed) + as many Abi-Dalzim´s Horrid Wiltings he could get off. Or sometimes (against a single target) Flame Arrows, Melf´s Acid Arrows and Magic Missiles en masse. If it weren´t for Edwin, I would probably have lost my first fights against Draconis and Abazigal (Abazigal had trapped my main character against the wall!) and my second attempt at the Fallen Solar + Marilith mess in the endgame.


Imoen
Main weapons: Gesen Bow and either Celestial Fury or Blackrazor, depending on the situation. (I got the Blackrazor the cheesy way (Give it back, Control Circlet-Charm the Djinn, then fight him)).
Other notable gear: Aslyferund Elven Chainmail, making her immune to non-magical weapons.

Little Sister was my secondary mage, and a really good one at that. She was also quite versatile, adding artillery support, plus she used spells that allowed her to assume the role as a temporary invulnerable target. Even though she was probably the least needed of my characters in the endgame, there was a long time her Planetar(s) was very important. Since she levels up only as a mage, she got to level 18 way before my main character did, and I preferred her Planetar over Edwin´s Dark version (since I really did not want to use Holy Smite with that bugger around...) Plus, Edwin had much more interesting level 9-10 spells to use in battle situations (making better use of his faster casting speed).


Gwendellwyn - elven Thief/Mage
My favourite class combo! I love the stunts you can pull: Stealth bombing, Mislead-backstabbing, Invisibility-trap detecting (aided by SI: Divination if there are True Sight-casters around).
Gwen played solo in BG1. This took her to a massive level 13/11, but she started SoA with 161k, as per the rules.

Main weapons: Tuigan Bow (Arrows +3/Dispelling/Biting, etc.) and Celestial Fury (replaced by Hindo´s DooOOOooom in the endgame)
Thoughts about her: This is the less arcane-heavy but much more "thiefy" version of Imoen! She really was a sneak extraordinaire. Even as a multiclass, she could pretty much max all the thief skills. I could have used traps a lot more than I did (didn´t like to exploit the cheesy 'blue-circle creature that will turn hostile' aspect of them, and it felt like a chore to set them up "properly"). Like Imoen, she could also be made more or less invulnerable for a short period.

This character is great for all the extra XP it secures, both with thief skills used at high level and the erase-rescribing of all those mage scrolls for non-crucial spells that you find. With a natural INT 20 after the Lum the Mad incident, she didn´t even need any potions to be almost sure of success (failed scroll scribing is one thing I never reload). I even took the Scribe Scrolls HLA for the sole purpose of gaining more XP (I used it after every rest).

 

That is cool. Congrats on beating such a grand game. Your party looks powerful indeed, some people can not play with that many mages in a party, but I like having a similar party like yours. (BTW, did you choose ascension or refuse the eeevil power?)

Now that you have finished the game, I think it is time to try mods. They really improve the game and make it all new and fun to play for even the hundreth time!

 

My ugly defeats:

I lost 6 fights in total, making me reload. There was only one where my main character died, but some of them were going downhill in a hurry. It was too painful to continue these fights.

* The second Pocket Plane challenge: the fight looked to be going OK for us, but then Gwen´s namesake went straight for her, killing her extremely quickly. I really do not know what happened...
(and I was too annoyed to read closer in the battle log)

* Demilich in Watcher´s Keep. I had actually fled out as as soon as I saw it, and thought I had prepared us well for the fight. Then the bugger suddenly switched targets and imprisoned Edwin (and he was the one with the Freedom scrolls...ouch!).
The second attempt was sweet: sent down my three mages (all with SI: Abjuration), opened up with Ring of the Ram, then a major shower of Melf´s Minute Meteors from all three mages.

* Demogorgon. I chose to seal the Keep, with the priests inside. Then I read in Dan Simpson´s walkthrough that it was possible to get in anyway.
I was humiliated, simply put. Hardly a dent in Demo and the Mariliths. And I didn´t have any answers to make a re-match better either. Read up a bit in forums for the rematch. The reasons for my succesful second attempt were three:
- The knowledge that Demo is immune to level 1-5 spells, meaning Lower Resistance does nothing (use Pierce Shield instead), and that I had to chew through the Stoneskins, since there was no way to remove them.
- Getting Chan and a Mord´s sword to keep the Mariliths busy.
- Most crucial was the fact that Demo wasted several rounds attacking another Mord´s sword.

* Got creamed by the Elder Orbs in Abazigal´s lair. I know I didn´t have to get there, but I was curious. Major continuity kudos for the Gauth corpse that was there. I don´t know what I did to make the second attempt a win (better protections from instadeaths and moving Jaheira with Cloak of Mirroring closest to them, probably)

* Third (?) fight with Melissan - the one where she summons four shadow-like thingies (not Turn-able) and DDs away. I gave up when I hadn´t killed more than 1-2 monsters, had 2 dead party memebers (one gibbed), Melissan was just Barely Injured and 4 shadows, 3 Slayer Shadows, two Glabrezu and a Baalor was chasing us all over the place...LOL!

* The Fallen Solar, Marilith x2, Alu-Fiend + Succubus battle. I HATE Mariliths! They hit like a freight train and just refuse to die.
I do not know where this battle went wrong. Probably because my own Solar died sooner than I expected, and my defense line just crumbled.
The second attempt was won almost by a fluke. I had made many failed attempts to Wish rest (what are the odds to fail 8 attempts with WIS 18 or 25?...grrrr!) and Edwin had a Projected Image still standing. "OK, I´ll make a special save here and try this battle without a rest." Edwin´s Image did a Time Stop routine (described in my last post) and then I sent the man himself to do another. Ha! That softened the enemies enough so I could defeat them without too much pain for my party.

Gwen felt like a victim of the circumstances. All she ever wanted was to enjoy a good life. This God stuff never appealed to her. Everyone seemed to agree with that choice, with the major exception of Edwin (hardly a surprise).

I will play with Unfinished Business, Banter Packs and probably Quest Pack for the next playthrough (which will be with a Wild Mage as protagonist, teaming up with Minsc, Aerie, Haer´Dalis and Yoshimo). I am not interested in mods that change too much (especially the "rules" of the game) and I am certainly not interested in harder battles. As it was now, I felt a need to go for the 'Super Power Options' far too often for my taste. More about that in my next post.

 

Congratulations on finishing ToB!

I love that you gave Mazzy Wave and Ravager - beware the halfling with a halbred!

As for mods - don't forget about the many NPC mods that are out there (like Keto). There are many threads and boards that can help you decide if any of them would be to your liking (like Keto).