Is this a cheap tatic?

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When I have to fight 3 or more strong characters (guarded compound for example) I protect all my characters from fire (usually at least 80%) with spells or items then send my two fighters in to melee then bombard them with fireballs or that 5th lvl fireball like spell. Is this cheap? It works very well aginst non immune monsters/people.

 

Call it what you want. I think it's a cool strategy you found here, but I also find it a little cheap. I mean, there are so many spells that you can use, like melf's minute meteor. It is a very very good spell and you don't wound your own characters.
And besides, how do you cast all those fire spells on your group? I mean, if you are defeated by a powerful enemy, you start again and then use the spell?
Or do you cast it, when you see a couple of guys that seem strong?
I think both are pretty cheap... But that's just me, if you want to do this...Go ahead, I won't stop you...

[This message has been edited by Da Punisher (edited May 15, 2001).]

 

I usually just always have my group protected from fire. The fighters also have equipment that protects them. Vicona has more than enough spell slots to protect my guys. My fighters rarely take any damage from my fireballs, and I try to keep my casters out of range whenever possible.

 

It isn't cheap. That is what the spell protection from fire for. The description says that it confers 80% immunity to fire, but in most situations the protected character suffers no damage from the fire, even if he/she does not have more protection bonus than that of the protection from fire spell(priest; level 3).

It neutralizes even Firkraag's fiery breath, and that's something!!!

 

I think the only "cheap" tactics are ones that take advantage of game bugs, or limits in the game design (e.g. hit a monster a bit, back off, rest, then go back again to finish it off).

Using protection from fire and then fire bombing is a realistic strategy.

The only time it would be "cheap" is if you used it to bomb things outside the fog of war without moving your tanks up to engage. Then you would be taking advantage of the game's limitation, since in "real life" the monsters would either move forward and attack or move out of range.

 

Another very cheap tactic is to cast protection spells while your foes are still in the black, unexplored area (is this what's refered to as the 'fog of war'?). Just because you know the enemies are there, because they've kicked your ass at least once, doesn't legitimize pre-emptive defense bolstering. And as fast as your foes leap into a melee, it would seem to me that that is what you are doing. Need I remind you that this is a role-playing game?

But then again; to each, their own...

 

Hey Tin_Man, you're wrong! The spell protection from fire isn't given so you can shoot fireballs at your own guys, it's given so other guys can't hurt you (ie. with fireball or with fireshield). Also, it doesn't neutralise Firkraag's breath, because it is a breath weapon. You'll get a special save for this.
I had my character's with prot. f. Fire and Jaheira still died in 1 second, when he used firebreath. Bad luck...

 

It´s not cheap since it isn´t exploiting poor enemy AI or a game bug.
I used a similar tactic on mindflayers with success using sloudkill instead of fireballs.
It works only if you have good savingthrows vs. breath-weapons. I protected my main char with girdle of inertial barrier and added the drow piwawafi when I was in the underdark. He was able to fight without getting hurt by the cloudkill.

 

- Of course it's ok to use Protection From *whatever* in this way. I will argue that a major factor in creating some of the protection spells is so that you can protect against "friendly" attack spells.

- A small addition to Ragusa's latest post:
I have used Protection from Acid to protect against my own Death Fog.

 

I don't find it cheap at all. It could be a lot worse, I remember in BG1 people would just take 6 bow flingers and fire arrows of detonation into everything. Haste them and good bye world. That might be a little "cheasy" but it is exactly how the game designers expected them to be used, only they are not killing your melee fighters, because you have none.

 

Earl: Which spell do you mean? the death fog lvl-6 spell or the lvl-5 cloudkill? I mean cloudkill.

Cloudkill is described as a toxic cloud wheras death fog is an acid cloud - so I´m almost sure that protection from acid wouldn´t help much against cloudkill. Thanks for the hint anyway, death fog could work on trolls ... I never tried that