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One other thing to realize about mage chess is whether you're playing vanilla or SCS you can sometimes skip it with certain spells. For example, Cloud Kill is devastating even on SCS against enemy mages because it's very rare for them to be protected against poison unless they are liches. And since it's not a targeted spell it doesn't give a poo poo about most spell protections. Death Fog can work on Liches since it's a level 6 spell. I'm not sure how often vanilla Liches put up Protection from Acid as I haven't played vanilla in a while but my guess is only some of the time? If they don't put that up, you can drop that on them and it will get some steady damage and interrupts in while you try to get rid of their other defenses. Cloud spells are my gently caress you to enemy casters. I use them even playing on cranked up SCS settings and they're quite effective. And I don't even use them to cheese by dropping them and sitting in another room. Using them actively in combat is still useful as the damage will interrupt enemy casters if nothing else and can often kill them or zone them away as well.
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Oct 19, 2023 17:34
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zedprime posted:More like mage onion. I'm not the best source on this since I haven't done vanilla in a while but I *think* that on vanilla both Insect Plague and Creeping Doom are insanely OP and just go right through almost anything? Maybe spell trap blocks them? And spell immunity might as well but I don't believe the AI uses that on vanilla SCS nerfs them a bit (though they are still very good on that too).
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Oct 19, 2023 21:53
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Air Skwirl posted:I got through most of BG2 with SCS (I didn't hit a road block or anything, it was just one of a dozen or so runs where I get distracted by another game or another character concept) so I'd recommend that. I haven't actually used it in years but I know a bunch of people in this thread use it regularly so they can probably give you advice on what specific options to enable that make it more challenging and what ones just make certain things more annoying. SCS is highly configurable so it's a good option for people who want more challenge.
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Nov 3, 2023 05:27
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v1ld posted:SCS is great, though I haven't run BG2 with it and have heard goons say it's less impactful there. I dunno about less impactful. High level casters using their abilities more intelligently can be pretty scary. As for Thieves, one other trick you can do that isn't an exploit is to run your Thief out of line of sight of enemies and hide in shadows. If you're far enough away from enemies, you can re-hide even if the rest of your party is fighting stuff. Boots of Speed are a great item to toss on a Thief for that reason. Remember that as a Thief your 1 apr basically lends itself to that sort of hit and run combat style. You're not meant to backstab and then sit there auto attacking. You should be stabbing, running away and restealthing and doing it again. Or backstab and then pop invis potions or items and backstab again. Thieves are probably the most micro intensive character in bg if you want to get the most out of them offensively.
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Nov 3, 2023 20:55
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Air Skwirl posted:In BG2 can't you just make a thief/mage and cast misdirect then have infinite backstabs? You can, yeah. Mislead backstabbing is pretty op.
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Nov 3, 2023 22:02
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docbeard posted:I've never really looked seriously at this cloak and I'm gonna have to try this sometime. I do like Rasaad's sun soul powers but I find him a bit fragile. The sun soul ray is pretty great since it's so fast cast and iirc it can go through a lot of spell protections. Great mage interrupter. Monk imo is a pretty terribly weak class even in bg2/tob but it's far from unplayable and it is a fun class to try and milk some usage out of
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Nov 7, 2023 20:37
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docbeard posted:My initial Ironman plans for this year preclude playing any monks -- I'm thinking of returning to the rock band gimmick party well again because thanks to various mods I can actually do an actual all-bard party properly -- but once that party dies in like Act 3 it might be time to try a monk of some description. I tend to fall into a druid or cleric/thief rut and I feel the need to branch out. I'm not sure how I'd fix them since the whole class design is weird. It's got speed bonuses and bad ac so theoretically it's a hit and run class but it gets a good amount of apr so hitting and running feels like you waste that. And even with the powerful scaling fists it still falls behind in dps to a dual wielding improved hasted fighter. I think either its defensive potential or offensive potential should be increased. Right now it has no niche. Fighter out does it in dps and defensive capabilities
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Nov 7, 2023 20:52
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docbeard posted:I think leaning into monks as skirmishers and disablers is the way I'd go, since that seems to be what they're best at in their various tabletop iterations. Honestly if I were dreaming up my own BG kit I'd probably throw Monk into a blender with Wizard Slayer and see what happens. Maybe give their attacks a progressive chance to bypass combat protections or something. Yeah I wouldn't mind leaning into the fast moving hit and run archetype. Making them a great mage killer would be cool. They're already sorta that with their innate MR but you could lean into it even more by giving them special abilities to help them harass enemy mages. You'd have to be careful on how to balance that I guess or mages would be too easy to kill though. Torquemada posted:They can't get crit immunity because they can't wear hats, right? Correct. They can in vanilla I believe through some (probably unintended?) methods like wearing that helm that lets you see the treasure in Firkraag's Dungeon. Although maybe Beamdog patched that out? Can't recall. Rogue Rebalancing adds some Ioun Stones that give crit immunity that Monks can wear which does a lot to make them more viable as a melee. Having bad ac and no crit immunity and not super great hp = a yikesaroo against hard hitting enemies like Golems
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Nov 7, 2023 23:30
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I didn't find turn based to grind BG3 to too big of a halt except for on the various last two set piece fights of the game where there were so many enemies that combat did feel like a bit of a slog and god help you if you wiped (though it's hard to wipe on the 2nd to last big fight...the last one you can though). I did find it rather easy after level 5 though (even on Tactician), and on my second run I tried to avoid using Haste. It's been a while since I've played vanilla BG but I think that Vanilla bg is probably a harder game than vanilla BG3 is.
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Dec 3, 2023 07:18
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v1ld posted:DavidW, the SCS author, published the beta for a new Talents of Faerun mod. The README is pretty long. That sounds pretty cool.
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Dec 15, 2023 03:22
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bike tory posted:drat a spontaneous cast cleric and a druid/mage or druid/thief multi would both be hella fun to play. Might give it a whirl druid/mage sounds kinda cool but also having to hit 14th level Druid on a multiclass sounds extremely hilarious to me
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Dec 15, 2023 07:10
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Zeerust posted:Problem solved! I overwrote the 'spell' folder in TOF with the one from SCS and it installed fine. The readme does mention that SCS should be installed after TOF so that makes sense. I need to get my installs in order with this and play around with it. Looks like a lot of fun. I usually use Rogue Rebalancing as well but I'm guessing that's not compatible with TOF and probably won't ever be. That's fine though because TOF adds a lot of poo poo otherwise. I will miss the special merchants that RR adds.
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Dec 17, 2023 21:33
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v1ld posted:E: I'd definitely skip the rebalanced kits in RR! But merchants/items should be ok is my guess. I might try it and see. Being able to keep the cyric encounter + merchants would be enough for me given all the class changes that TOF makes otherwise. Chosen of Cyric encounter adds some great items and it's just a fun (albeit quite hard) encounter. And adding the Ioun Stones for Monks so they can get head crit immunity is...well pretty necessary for making Monks slightly less garbage, at least on the cranked rear end SCS settings I run
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Dec 17, 2023 22:17
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v1ld posted:I wonder what ToF's going to do to the kits used by that party and how the hand tuned AI will react to any changes in kit. I guess the latter, AI scripts, already work with other kit changing mods so it can't be too bad? Good question. It may not work at all. I'm trying an install right now with RR (just the new items) on and I'll see if even that works with bg1 w/ TOF also installed. If I can get through bg1/sod without crashes then we'll see what happens with that encounter.
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Dec 17, 2023 23:40
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I'm also having trouble getting my install in order. I was able to install all of the mods I normally use (Mod merger/RR(with just the items component)/IWDifcation/Tweaks and then installed Talents of Faerun with no issue. When I go to install SCS though I run into the error "ERROR: Failure("resource [dw#marker_file.itm] not found for 'COPY'")" & "ERROR locating resource for 'COPY' Resource [dw#marker_file.itm] not found in KEY file: [./chitin.key]" when trying to install the improved tactical challenges/ai component. TOF readme indicates SCS should go last so I'm not sure what the problem is. e: I asked DavidW on the g3 forums and he said to try installing the AI component individually. I did and that appears to have worked. Maybe I can get myself a working install yet. Gonna try to get the rest of this install up and running and see how it all fits. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Dec 18, 2023 |
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Dec 18, 2023 00:34
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Well I was eventually able to piece together an install. We'll see how it actually plays. Since Tof is the first version I expect a fair amount of bugs. I guess we'll see
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Dec 18, 2023 03:43
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docbeard posted:Good luck! I'm in love with some of the changes it makes already. Already sitting at character creation paralyzed by indecision! Favored Soul and Druid/Mage are both gripping me. I might have to just random and play the result of my roll lol
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Dec 18, 2023 04:13
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docbeard posted:Hahaha yeah, the one blessing of my woes is it will actually give me more time to make a decision! They do. Some of them look really good actually. drat. Some of the races seem like they might be OP but I guess the base game has that too. Water Genasis in particular looks insane. 15% resistance to physical damage is nuts assuming it stacks with Barbarian abilities. That' would put you at 35% base at level 20, + 20% more from the defender of easthaven = 55%, and then hardiness would make you immune to physical damage lol. That might sound busted but I guess it's not since you can technically already get there in the base game by using Dwarven Defender when popping stance or with Barb + hell trials
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Dec 18, 2023 04:23
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docbeard posted:Well, things finally seem to be more or less working. Imoen's an Air Genasi for some reason (and I don't have the heart to inquire whether this is intentional or not at this point) but whatever, I can live with that. I played a little bit yesterday and ran into some untenable bugs so I did a fresh install today with the new version. I also only installed Tof + SCS and didn't bother with tweaks or any of RR just in case tweaks/RR are causing any compatible issues. Tof + SCS should work fine together since both mods are by the same person and he's taken steps to make them compatible. I feel like any other mods working with Tof right now are going to be a bit of a wild card. Might take a bit of time before it's safe to throw other mods into the mix given Tof probably still has plenty of bugs since it's in beta. Haven't played yet today as I've been busy but we'll see how it looks
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Dec 19, 2023 03:58
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Hmm so looking at my game and I don't see Favored Soul for some reason. Looking at my install I don't even see it as an option. Weird. All the other new classes/kits seem to be there. I've been messing with this for a few days so I might just roll with it and see if it's working otherwise. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Dec 19, 2023 |
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Dec 19, 2023 04:20
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docbeard posted:That's odd. It might have skipped the component during install if you skipped one of its prerequisites, but that's all I can think of. Not sure. I tried running the installer again a few minutes ago just to see if the prompt even came up but it never did. But every other component seems to be installed looking at my Weidu file. Not a deal breaker if the rest of my install is working. I can try the other poo poo out with it. But would be nice to figure out
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Dec 19, 2023 04:30
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drat. Played a bit of Tof and enjoying it so far but I seem to have encountered a gamebreaking bug. Any multiclass npc I recruit I am unable to level up. I click the level up button but it does nothing. Trying to change their class/kit via the customization option also does not work. Strangely I can level up single class characters just fine and if I change their class to single class I can level them fine too. I might download Shadowkeeper or whatever the equivalent is and see if I can manually edit them up to being level 1/1 and see if it lets me level them from there.
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Dec 19, 2023 07:39
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docbeard posted:Yup, I'm running into the same issue, and some experimentation suggests that yeah, if you set their level to 1/1 they'll be able to level on their own after that, but you'd also have to edit in their proficiencies and such too. Yeah I just threw up a thread on it in g3. I can confirm that like you if I use EEkeeper to set the multiclass characters to 1/1 I can then level them after that. The proficiencies seem to be hosed up in that case though. I'm not sure if anything else would need to be assigned in EEkeeper. You can then kick them from the party and re-recruit them and they'll get assigned the right xp total (if you're using the customization component). I too am starting to wonder if it might be better holding off a month or two on this mod so that DavidW can work out some of these big bugs. I guess for this particular one there's a workaround at least.
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Dec 19, 2023 09:29
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docbeard posted:Yeah, I really really like Dragonspear UI++, and I'm really looking forward to the designer's new UI mod being a little more complete, because it looks amazing. I haven't tried manually adding the prof points yet via EEkeeper. I assume that would be fine, but maybe it'd be a dangerous assumption to make. The characters seem to level just fine once I set them to 1/1 via EEkeeper otherwise, so if that's the workaround for now I can live with it since I only have to do it once.
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Dec 19, 2023 21:32
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v1ld posted:Got tired of these long installs with ToF and SCS and wrote a shell script to automate the whole thing, including InfinityLoader stuff: https://gist.github.com/v1ld/107bb29dddad5493c74e36a41296639c#pcdeck-install-script The long installs do suck rear end, especially when you go through it and then there's a problem with the installation so you have to uninstall certain components to re-install others. ToF is cool and I did finally get it working (for now) but my experience with having to re-install it several times is definitely putting me off beta testing future mods lol. Better to wait for a stable and mostly bug free experience I suppose.
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Dec 20, 2023 21:18
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Flowing Thot posted:Giving your melee protection from magical energy then have 3 mages drop skull traps on the front lines? Pretty good it turns out. Give them protection from fire and sit in some incendiary clouds too
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Dec 21, 2023 20:17
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Yeah CN Anomen is underrated. An extra couple of low level spells that he gets for being LG means very little. You get so many spell slots with him anyways.
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Dec 21, 2023 22:50
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Flowing Thot posted:23 years later I found out there is a fence in Trademeet despite spending thousands of hours playing BG2. That guy has some good scrolls too iirc? I only found out about him because I was looking up where to buy certain spell scrolls and he had ones that I wanted.
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Dec 22, 2023 01:06
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Flowing Thot posted:Baeloth would have been such an amazing companion in BG2 and also completely busted. You can make a strong argument for sorc being the strongest vanilla class. Probably a toss up between them and wild mage. I dunno why they didn't just cram him in there anyways. Not like he's any more broken than Edwin or Neera.
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Jan 2, 2024 10:01
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DeadButDelicious posted:In vanilla BGEE/BG2EE (so without SCS or any tweaks or whatever installed) do you actually suffer a penalty to use ranged weapons at melee range? It's bugged me since NWN had a feat for using ranged weapons in melee (point blank shot, or close shot, or something?) and I've never noticed what the deal was with ranged weapons at melee distance in BG1/2. Yes I'm not 100% sure on the numbers but I believe it's something like enemies have a +4 to hit chance against you in melee if you're using a ranged weapon and you take a minus 4 penalty to your attack rolls if trying to point blank shoot them. A nasty penalty but not too big a deal since you should always be kiting your archer away from meleers anyhow. And tbh the Archer class gets such massive thaco bonuses that you would probably still hit most enemies even point blank as an archer in bg.
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Jan 2, 2024 22:43
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If you hate how long prebuffing takes you might want to check out either Tweaks Anthology (which has an option to give you out of combat improved alacrity which lets you chain gun off your buffs faster) or Enhanced Powergaming Scripts which is a mod which adds a button that will cast all of your long term buffs without you having to do anything or another button which casts all of your buffs without you having to do anything. After like 25 years of playing this game I have no qualms about using either of those mods to speed up the buff process. None of them affect the balance of actual combat, they just take away the tedium involved with prebuffing.
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Jan 30, 2024 21:11
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Lawman 0 posted:Gonna give baldurs gate 2 a shot again as a fighter/mage. Multiclass F/M ? Max str/dex/con. Get int up if you can although it really only matters for scribing scrolls and for number of spells you can know. Has no effect on spell slots. For weapons you can really do whatever you want. If I were going for a powergamer F/M build I'd probably dual wield Flail of the Ages plus Kundane or Belm in the off hand (those give +1 attack to your mainhand which lets you swing Flail of the Ages more often). But really most any weapon choice is viable. Use what you like. Playstyle-wise just buff up and beat poo poo up. You can mix in offensive spells if you want but the most efficient thing to do is gonna be just tossing up like mirror image and stoneskin and then beating poo poo up. Eventually imp haste as well. With your buffs up you'll be pretty untouchable defensively and offensively you'll still hit things hard.
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Feb 5, 2024 05:37
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Candlekeep is fun on Ironman runs because it's hilarious when you die to Shank or Carbos
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Feb 22, 2024 21:28
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I like Davaeorn. He runs a pretty solid stream and has good content for learning poo poo about spells and items and what not. His stuff is heavily slanted towards the settings he plays on (cranked up SCS) but it's still pretty good info generally
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Mar 3, 2024 21:50
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Vargatron posted:Yeah I was just planning on playing with Core rules. I'll probably give it a whirl. Core rules unmodded? Monk should be just fine.
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Mar 13, 2024 23:00
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Fruits of the sea posted:IIRC he respects Korgan for being totally honest and forthcoming about being an evil prick. And to be fair, Korgan is totally upfront about murdering his last party. You know where you stand with that guy. Anomen is too horny for Vicky to think about hurting her
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Mar 17, 2024 03:58
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It's probably been like twenty years since I played iwd2 but I agree with Air Skwirl that you should be fine with your current party.
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Apr 7, 2024 09:15
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The Shame Boy posted:As i beat Irenicus again i kinda realize something, i've been playing unmodded this whole time and while i've seen streams of the game with people playing with SCS and i was kinda curoius to try it myself eventually, but it didn't occur to me until now that making the mages smarter just basically means every single mage you will run into will be like fighting Irenicus right? Basically a knowledge test of how well you know the magic system? I like it but it's not for everyone and I would not recommend using it until you feel like the core game is too easy for you. It does also change how some spells work (for example, in vanilla you can pretty much cast breach on any mage to kill them, whereas SCS makes it so you have to strip certain mage protections before doing that) so you do kinda have to relearn certain things as well once you use it. That said, it is highly customizable and you don't have to throw it on max settings out of the box. Davaeorn is a good streamer to watch if you want to see what maximized SCS gameplay is like. He plays with pretty cranked up settings and does no reload and all that.
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Apr 8, 2024 08:15
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voiceless anal fricative posted:It's not quite the same. SCS does randomise mage spellbooks and tactics a bit, so you don't know exactly what they're going to throw out. But yeah by the time you're liches and other high level mages in BG2 it's more a question of how many of the same defensive spells that you have to deal with, rather than which tactics you need to use. There are certain tricks you learn to use like seeing that an enemy mage hasn't cast protection from poison and dropping a cloudkill on their rear end. But certainly by late SOA and TOB they tend to have protections from god damned everything so at that point you pretty much have to start stripping protections. Fortunately by that point you're also a bit less scared of mages because saving throws and hp have scaled pretty well by that point. Tbh in TOB I fear powerful melee enemies more than I do mages, especially if I'm playing no reload. I've seen fire giants end a run in seconds when they pop whirlwind and mulch someone.
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Apr 8, 2024 20:53
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Man I need to play some IWD/IWD2. I probably haven't dusted them off in like 15 years.
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Apr 24, 2024 05:36
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