Tank issues

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Hey all. I recently reinstalled bg to give it my monthly go, but I've got a few questions. Last time around, I played on insane with all the tougher throne of bhaal fights on, but could not get past Abazigal. I seem to recall all of the tougher npc bosses on insane hitting my fighters with roughly every single hit and, the tougher mods combined with the hardest difficulty setting seemed to make my tanks get hit every time in the harder fights for obscene amounts of damage.

My question, then, was how can I avoid this? Or can I for that matter? If the best ac you can achieve doesn't much save you in these fights, whats the point of fighters? I had thought to try and make a barbarian this time and give him the protector of east-haven, as well as the few other resist items in the game. I believe that, with those items, I could get his resist to bludgeoning up to 90%(helm off the orc bhaal-spawn, 20% from defender of easthaven and 20% from barbarian natural resists) and his slashing and piercing up to 40%(again, the flails properties + barbarian skills. If that doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do.

I know I could defeat these fights if I created my own cheap multiplayer party, but I'd rather do it with single-player for the banter and challenge of it. I plan on going from tutu to tob with just the improved tob fights installed and difficulty on insane. Sorry if this all seems like rambling, I'm just really interested to find out whether or not tanks are viable on insane in the toughest fights.

 

I recently started an no Fighter (or paladin or ranger) party because I was a terrible spell user (basically, in my first run through all I had were protection breaking spells and some Chain Lightnings... didn't cast TS, IA, ADHW, Wish, PI, etc. once the entire gaame). I found that a lot of battles because difficult mid-game (before those spells) with all spell casters (rushing to Haerdalis was not smart.

So it's early game that you have to decide if you want to rest after every single battle early on and abuse PI and other various sorts of limburger.

All that said, I am starting to see a real appeal towards fighter/mages, fighter/clerics and ranger/clerics because they have similar buffs which make the mages so dangerous. In a lot of those improved battles (which have been solo'd by a fighter on Insane so it can be done), a fighter won't be that much better than a Tensor'd Blade for example. So I would look into that.

Additionally, getting your resistances to physical and magical damage is good. Installing Improved Hell Trials and the Inertial Barrier belt can get your Magic Damage Resistance to 80% (or is it 55%?), etc.

And finally, I love tanks. I definately think having a tank (or 6 like my next party will be) is important. But I would focus more on resistances than AC. If you know what is coming and focus your defense on that, you should be able to keep them alive.

 

Ideally your mage should have stripped them of their magical defense and the frontline fighters would have killed the enemy before they really had a chance to cause them much damage but we all have off-days.

If the enemy is causing problems then spells & unnegatable weapons to reduce their stats & attacking capabilities would be the best option.
FoA(any enchantment) to slow, Soul Reaver to reduce thac0, answerer to reduce ac & magic resistance, Blackrazor & sword of mask+5 to level drain. Plus theres always the upgraded ravager & axe of unyielding to 1hit kill (vorpal).

[ May 19, 2006, 02:25: Message edited by: Pseudospawn ]

 

Yes if you reconsider your idea of tanking

The ideal tank is a character who can absorb big amounts of damage and can stay in the frontline as long as needed.In the unmodded game a plain fighter can do it without many problems.Good AC, many HPs and good saving throws are more than enough.
But in a game with some of the toughest mods (Tactics,Ascension,etc.) those characteristics are not enough to make someone a good tank.

IMHO the ideal is first to try to not get hit at all.Something that only characters with stoneskins/ironskins and other buffs can do.

The best tank,as I see it, is the Fighter/Mage (multi or dual).Buffs like stoneskin,mirror image,blur,Prot.f.magic.weapons and others and furthermore his ability to renew these buffs in battle,makes him a character who can resist a lot in the frontline without problems.

Other good characters who can be good tanks are the Ranger/Cleric and the Fighter/Druid.
A Ranger/Cleric with Armor of Faith + Hardiness + the flail Defender of Eastheaven in his off-hand + Roranach's Horn (50% resistane to crushing dmg) and Ironskin on top of that can be an excellent tank.

Another very good tank is the Barbarian as you said,using the items you mentioned and also Hardiness.

That said, it's possible to solo a game with these mods with a plain fighter.
I have done it but it was extremely hard, especially the ToB part of the game.
Items like Defender of E., Ibratha's sword (mirror image), Gargoyle's boots (2x stoneskins),Roranach's Horn and Rods of Resurrection helped but I had to run a LOT .
In battles like against improved Abazigal,improved Demogorgon or the Ascension's final battle,I was taking so much damage that if I used my GWW attacks I was dead (GWW = a lost round - no potions or Rod of Res. for healing).

From the available NPCs good tanks can be :

- Jaheira (ironskins + other buffs)
- Haer'Dalis (like a F/M)
- Anomen (cleric buffs + DoE)

 

Spells are way to go if you want a heavy and durable tank. Stoneskin, mirror image, protection from magical weapons, these allow you to absorb so many blows harmlessly!

Jaheira is truly a tank. She can have the BEST AC when I equip her with best armor, shield, and other AC boosting items. And then she has Ironskins, which means she can absorb a lot of hits. With all her gear and druid abilities, she is very protected from elemental damages, and her saving throws are excellent once she gets Harper pin, (+5 to save vs spells) and also becomes immune to lightning damage. With better than -13 AC, and all negative saving throws, she is the last one to die in my party, most of the time. I don't even pick Hardiness HLA as she does not really need it as long as she has Ironskins or that 6th level spell to bring back used spell levels.

 

The best possible tank would probably be Jan, with a ton of defensive spells. stoneskin, mirror image, protection from magical weapons, improved invisibility, and so forth. I say Jan because Edwin shoud be your offensive mage, mostly because of abi-dalzims.

For a tank who doesn't rely completely on spells, a ranger/cleric would be the best. Jaheria would be the best npc for tanking with a combination of armor and spells.

 

I don't know about jan tanking, if one of his defensive spells drop before he has time to cast a replacement he won't have the hp or ac to survive many (if any) hits.

Fighter-Mage all the way.

 

Bah, ADHW is nothing. Jan can do five times as much damage with an Incendiary Cloud.

ADHW: 20d8, 20-160
Incendiary Cloud: 20d4 * 10, 200-800

Just keep Jan stealthed right after casting the spell, and noone will even come to investigate. They'll just sit there and burn. (Except maybe Liches and such that can see invisible characters.) IC also has a bigger radius than ADHW (20' radius for IC, 15' radius for ADHW).

But I still wouldn't call either Edwin or Jan a tank. As soon as those defensive spells drop, they're dead. A better tank would have both: hitpoints and buffs.

 

@Fel: Spells like that aren't very useful if you've got some improved AI mods installed. With the improved AI mods I have installed, enemies just leave the area of effect and keep fighting. ABDHW is far more useful when employed against an intelligent AI.

 

That's true. They should be smart enough to do that. But in vanilla they're not.

 

But still not smart enough to open doors

 

Oh...so many places to toss area affect spells through doors and slam them closed.... Come to think of it that was one of my first real use of tactics in BG1 too.

 

That's why Weimer always makes the doors uncloseable in Tactics.

 

Only in Improved Ilyich and Torgal.You can still exploit the doors shutting or invisibility (+100% prot.from fire) and Incendiary clouds will be very ... effective

But it's too cheesy...

 

I was thinking about equipping a tank with foebane+5 as each hit causes larloch's minor drain with no save.

With a gww if each hit connects it would take a total of 10-40 hp from and enemy and add it to your own, causing more damage than alot of other weapons are capable of in a round and healing the tank.

I was curious what (if anything) it is stopped by (negative plane protection, immunity to necromancy, magic resistance?), cause it seems quite useful.

[ May 20, 2006, 13:46: Message edited by: Pseudospawn ]

 

The Foebane +5 is, IMHO, one of the three most powerful swords in the game (along with Blackrazor and the Vorpal Sword).

His Larloch's minor drain :

- Is set to 4 (you don't roll 1D4)
- Ignores SI: Necromancy, Death Ward
- His Lalrloch's m.d. ignores stoneskin,mirror image
- If target has 100% MR he will not take the additional +4 damage, BUT you will still gain the +4 HPs to BOTH of your actual and MAX HPs.

 

Nice. That certainly does make it far more appealing, plus it is always one of the first weapons i was able to upgrade/assemble in ToB.

Is it the same situation with FoA, that there are no other worthwhile weapons in the same category so just dual it with belm or crom?

Also, is Vorpal Sword that much to brag about? Sure you get it midway in SoA, but most everyone i've ever hit with it, saved their throws.

[ May 20, 2006, 16:05: Message edited by: Pseudospawn ]

 

There is the Purifier +5 (if you can use it) which is an excellent off-hand weapon,but no other good Bastard swords.

It's the 25% chance that makes it so powerful.Combine it with G.Malison for better results

EDIT: Also the vorpal effect bypass Stoneskins,Mirror Images so it's effective again Mages (worst S.Throws vs. Death amongst all classes).

[ May 20, 2006, 16:24: Message edited by: thetruth ]

 

Wow, Foebane is kewler than I thought!