The Power of Clerics.

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Unless you have some mod about it, high dex and heavy armor bonuses do stack. One mod modifies the heavy armors to give a penalty to DEX though.

 

I believe the word you're looking for is dumb, and no, it's not animal intelligence. Animal intelligence is 1 (unable to communicate via language), with Non-intelligent being 0 (yes, some magically created creatures like golems and such are allowed to have it), 2 being...something I can't remember, and 3-5 being low, blahblahblah, getting up to 17-18 being genius, 19-20 being Supra-genius (yes, that's what they actually call it), etc.

Good for you. In that case, put it at exactly 10 (very average and no lore penalty, even though it won't matter) or somewhere near. Sacrifice STR and/or CHA, and you'll be fine.

 

Well, currently im still at the starting dungeon. Dont have much time these days. Anyways, im loving the cleric! Unlike druids, he has more useful spells for the party and enemies. And a good thing is that a cleric(especially the Helm's clerics) can turn himself in to an engine of destruction for a short period of time.

So, any tips on spell selections?

 

Holy Smite is absolute damage dealer.

Animate Dead is of great use after level 15, it summons nasty skeleton warrior with %90 MR. And clerics have it as a level 3 spell!

Hold Person is very useful against enemies with low saves. Try it on a group of mephits, they will all be held!

Protection from Evil 10'radius is an absolute winner, with huge duration and area of effect. Have it before all fights!

Harm is VERY powerful, if you can hit the target he is as good as dead, no matter how high his HP was.

Righteous Magic, Holy Power, THEN Draw upon Holy Might will give you godly STR and battle prowess. Improved haste yourself when dual-wielding heavy weapons and you will be a fierce melee-er. Have Globe of Blades for extra nastiness.

 

Clerics don't get improved haste but your right about animate dead after lvl 15. They can use oil of speed though...

My most used cleric spells are:
Lvl1-Armor of faith, sanctuary, doom and sometimes Bless
Lvl2-Holy Might and Holy might! Sometimes Chant and Silence 15'. Find traps if you have no thief.
Lvl3-Animate Dead, Dispel, Holy Smite, sometimes Protection from fire.
Lvl4-POE 10', Death Ward, Free Action, Holy Power, Defensive Harmony and Neg Plane Prot (for Vampires if you don't have the mace).
Lvl5-Righteous Magic,Chaotic Commands, True Seeing
Lvl6-Aerial servant (till you get lvl 15 Animate dead), Blade Barrier, wondrous recall.
Lvl7-Gate, holy word, Symbol Stun as a trap. Fire storm and Sunray have their uses.

Turn Undead is awesome too.

 

Don't you memorize healing spells? That's probably what half my level 1, 3, 4, and 5 slots are used for. Light, medium, serious, and mass heal respectively. And usually one heal in case someone gets really banged up.

 

I chose a name i regret now. It is really bothering me. Is there some way of changing the name without restarting. An editor or some such?

 

Yeah, use Gatekeeper. It can be downloaded on this site.

 

I only use healing spells very early in the game...after that I use regeneration equipment, rod of resurrection, scrolls, innate heal abilities. temples, sleeping, potions etc...there are a LOT of potions in the game. I sometimes use mass cure and heal but not too often....usually if I memorize them they just sit there and waste a spell slot.

 

Hmmm, i couldnt find this Gatekeeper. Can anyone give me the link, please?

 

If you're playing SoA, you'll want Shadowkeeper, not Gatekeeper.

http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/index_editors1.php

It's the very last item on the page.

 

level 3 spell slots should be reserved to animate dead. Take that Mind Flayers. I like to mass load with summon spells as much as possible, the cleric's level 7 summon earth elemental is nice because it DOESN'T have the chance to go berserk on you, Aerial Servant is another nice one to mass load.

Having summons typically works better then buffs for me, if my characters can be ignored in favor of bashing the hell out of a summon monster, all the better.

 

I'll agree that once your cleric hits level 15, you should be memorizing a hell of a lot of animate deads. Before level 15, you get skeletons, which are very meh as far as summons go. Skeleton warriors OTOH, whole 'nother story. Plus by the time that you hit level 15, cure medium wounds is far from a necessary spell as you have so many other healing spells.

I must admit that with healing spells, I tend to take more at level 1 (cure light wounds) and level 4 (cure serious wounds) than any other level, because there aren't that many other great spells at that level. For level one, I'll take a couple of dooms and a couple of resist fears, and then the rest in cure light wounds. I don't particularly like sanctuary - at least I've never been able to use it effectively - if I want to go hidden a thief with stealth and a robe of non-detection works just as well.

For level 4 it's more of the same. I'll take a couple of protection from evil 15' radius, and that's really the only cleric spell on level 4 that I use other than cure serious wounds. I take a high priority of equiping several characters with equipment that give them negative plane protection, which eliminates the need for that spell, along with restoration.

 

Can anybody please explane me the workings of the turn undead ability? I cant seem to understand what it does because no undead is affected by it.

 

It kind of works like a thief's detect traps ability. In other words, when you turn undead, the only other thing you can do is move. If you attack something, or cast a spell, it turns off the turn undead icon. Also, similar to the detect traps ability, sometimes it takes several seconds for it to work. The game does a turn undead check at the start of each round, so if you activate it mid-round, you will have to wait until the next round before it takes effect.

The effects depend on three things: The level of your cleric, the alignment of your cleric, and the type of undead you are attempting to turn.

The level of your cleric effects the chance of success - the higher the level of your cleric, the greater the chance of success.

The type of undead you are attempting to turn also impacts the chance of your success. It's much easier to turn low level undead like zombies or skeletons, as opposed to high level undead like vampires or mummies.

Finally, alignment affects what happens if you are successful in your attempt to turn a creature. For good and neutral aligned clerics, the undead will turn and walk away, or if you're a really high level cleric, you'll destroy them - they'll just explode into chunks. Again, the odds of chunking a skeleton or zombie are a lot higher than a vampire or a mummy. For evil clerics, you can't chunk the undead. A successful turn would mean you take control of them and they start attacking their former undead companions. IMO, the neutral and good effects are better, as eventually you'll have to stop turning undead and kill the formerly friendly undead anyway.

 

Turn undead is a 'mode' just like using Find Traps with a thief. You can move around while using it but If you attack or take any other action it will shut off, so you might want to turn your ai script off. You just activate it by hitting the icon and walk near the undead. If it's successful they will explode or try to get away from it (assuming your good aligned. Evil clerics can control undead). The higher your level the more potent it is. Try going invisible or use sanctuary with it to learn how to use it. It is definitely worth learning to use considering how many undead there are in the game. One good early game place to try it out is in the pit area just before you get to the Unseeing Eye lair. Everyone there is undead I believe.

PS-Dont use it with your summoned skeletons...they wont like it much.

 

Clerics are indeed powerful and far more than lowly druids who really got the short-end in the BG series.

My biggest beef with clerics is the lack of stoneskin or ironskins: surrounded by enemies and you try to cast one of the million very useful and powerful cleric spells and *pop* spell failure from taking damage. That's one advantage druids have over them -- about the only one.

 

The way i see clerics are healers, buffers and enchanters of their group. However, when danger strikes they can turn themselves in to monsters of destruction.

Druids, as i understand, are supposed to be offensive divine casters who can also turn themselves in to more powerful beings. However, they do not have much of anything from the evocation spells. And their shapeshifting powers are just crappier than a clerics buffing spells. The annoying part is that they dont improve. And the elemental shapes...? Why did they even include them, so useless are they.

By the way, Bioware made the same error with NWN. The shapes there are even more useless than in BG. They actually *lower* your stats.

Clerics always have these weapon enchanting and thaco giving spells that druids never have. That just annoys the hell out of me. Hopefully in NWN 2 druids will be balanced.

I wonder how the beta testers could have missed this. A perfectly good class is unplayable.

 

Turning undead with evil clerics is just so much fun. A couple of days ago I had my Priest of Talos (Lawful Evil) turn undead in Spellhold (he was already very high level). After converting about 10 Greater Mummies, Skeleton Warriors and Ghasts to my cause, I send them over to deal with those six Umber Hulks that spawn in that trap. Great fun. Although some of my undead army became confused, they seemed totally unaffected by it and the Umber Hulks were dead meat in no time. Those Greater Mummies rule. Contrary to what I read someplace, I still got xp for the killed Umber Hulks.

This works best in a dungeon with mixed undead and other creatures, as the turn undead duration is limited, so I usually have my cleric stay in between them (sanctuaried, that is) while turning undead. If you do this while fighting other undead, it will convert them after a while, which will cause infighting, because they are still targeting each other.

Another great place to do this would be in the Firkraag dungeon. Convert those vampires and send them against those Greater Werewolves, or all those genies. There's a ton of those vampires and Greater Mummies (if you're high level), which should be great fun to pit against all the other enemies in that dungeon.

 

Yes but did you get XP from the undead?

IMHO Druids are more fun to play than Clerics (especially Fighter/Druids like Aldeth said) but that's just my opinion.
Druid spells are much more offensive (Insect Plague, anyone? Iron Skins is too cheesy for words and Conjure Animals is way too powerful)
On the other hand a Ranger/Cleric is a powergamer's dream.