Not paying the cowled wizards ...

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In my recent game I decided not to pay the cowled wizards for the first time. The first fight was really easy (the more since they caught my two wizards, Jan & Edwin casting protections).
So I developed the silly habit to cast spells in Atkathla, resulting in the (expected) appearance of the cowled wizards and their quick death. I'd like to point out that everyone in my party is below 900k xp and that Edwin is ewen lower, at 450k or so.

I happily decided to deal with Anarg's stinkin' bunch of fallen pallys - without using magic at all to prevent the cowled wizards to show up unwanted. Since two of my partymembers were restricted *not* to use magic, I hade quite a tough fight till ...

... well, till the final group of cowled wizards appeared and started to cast funny spells like timestop, power word death, power word stun and stuff like that on my party for a very short period (actually to the point when my main char died ... )

So I fear I have two choices:

(a) leaving Atkathla immediately and returning on higher level
(b) take the challenge and try my luck (and I will need lots of it )
(c) to pay them is out of question - not that I can't afford it - I don't want to since now fighting the final group is a question of honour ...

Well - I will be happy when I am able to resurrect all the fallen partymembers finally ...

[This message has been edited by Ragusa (edited July 24, 2001).]

 

Actually Ragusa, have you tried to send Nishruu or Hakeashar against those wizards?

 

In a ToB-aborted sorcerer/assassin/Jaheria team, I fowled those silly wizards but good.

First, go to The Bridge District. Go to the building that the liche lives beneath. At that door, as you round the corner, is a long narrow walkway, with building on the west and ocean breezes to the east.

It is in this long pathway that I killed every cowled wizard they would send. Piles and piles of staffs, trinkets, sticky wizard goop.

Preparation: Three traps. Sorcerer with haste. Sorcerer casts Wizard's Eye. Be back against the back of the alley before you cast it. Have entangle, cloud kill, and stinking cloud ready.

Action: Run away fast. The first fellow is sent. He talks, and while he is teleporting in and getting trapped, you cast Stinking Cloud. Then cast Cloud kill while Jaheria is casting entangle.

Result: Wizards are trying to kill Wiz. eye, getting trapped, taking a nap, being slowly injured by the cloud kill.

Then you sneak around the corner and fire a few poison arrows at them. Run away.

If one comes around the corner and is fully protected, hid in the house! Or behind the door. Or whack him/her if you can. Stay hidden in shadows and backstab as soon as he comes into view.

Using this method, even with the last hard wizard, who teleports away before you can kill her, the wizards did not stand a chance. Nope.

The nishru summoning is nice, too. But this was faster.

 

On a similar note. I had the same scenario once with Keldorn in my party. I was fighting the fallen paladins without magic for the same reason as you Ragusa. The cowled wizards shows up for no obvious reason.

It turned out to be sloppy programming. The sword Keldorn wields have this special feature that sometimes takes hitpoint from his opponent and heals him. Now this is implemented with Larloch's Minor Drain or something like that with the result that the cowled wizards shows up...

 

No, no. The problem with that sword (Of Roses IIRC) is that it inflicts magical damage back to one who attacks Keldorn which is considered as magic. It IS a bug, indeed.

 

They might have given him a permanent fireshield affect without the animation as every time he's hit the message 'Keldorn: Fireshield' is displayed in the text bar. Just give him sarevok's sword from Irenicus's dungeon when fighting outside.

 

I got a kick out of doing the following:

I wandered into the smugglers/anti-palladins struggle and paused long enough to see that Anarg wasn't there.

Then Jan and Aerie cast Stoneskin as the rest got into position for melee around the corner. When the wizards showed up (hey, I really wanted some nice bracers for Aerie instead of free magic use), Jan and Aerie ran around the corner, and the wizards couldn't/wouldn't follow. We had a nice little magic-aided fight and then snuck out the back way to the Five Flagons where we had a nice nap.

Incidentally, I don't think it makes much sense that if you knock off the anti-palladins before talking to Renald (? The captain who asks for Anarg's cup) that the quest is impossible to complete.

The first time through I quite sensibly saw that the smugglers were going to get whupped so I joined on their side in order to have a smaller # of palladins to deal with when they turned to attacking MY party. Then I killed 'em all off (Hey, the ORH dude said to stop them, not talk to them) and couldn't find Anarg. But if he's got no troops then I stopped him, right? The cup thing is a little silly.


[This message has been edited by Shralp (edited July 25, 2001).]

 

just kill those bastard wizards, don't even think about paying them

summon one skeleton warrior, make one of your mages cast a spell (like stoneskin) and run - wizards waste all their spells on magic immune skeleton, if it goes down, summon another skeleton warrior and send it in

wizards eventually run out of spells, so just walk up to them and hack them to bits

or else just cast protection from magical energy and chaotic commands on your best fighter and just let him do the dirty work instead of the skeletons

 

You just resurrected a thread from over 2 years ago.

 

oh well, didn't want to start a new topic

 

I didn't know it was possible to end confrontations with you and the cowled enforcers short of paying them. How many fights are there and are any of them difficult?? and Does your rep suffer because of it?

 

There are maybe 5 or 6 fights before they stop bothering you, and no rep hits. A single CW teleports in, scolds you, and then three more teleport in. Eventually you'll face "high ranking members of their order," including mages who have a few level nine spells--a few time stops, a gate, and symbol spells everywhere. After defeating this group, they stop attacking.

I didn't think any of the fights were that hard. If you have trouble, you can always cheese since you know exactly where they'll spawn.

 

how much XP do you get for fighting those idiots? It might be worth it this next time through . . .

 

I don't remember it being a terribly significant amount, and they only have a few scrolls for treasure. It's more principle than anything.