True. Breach is the only spell that can remove it.

Problem is, are enemy spellcasters scripted to cast Breach on a pure classed warrior ?

(NO Sikret, don't do it )

Fortunately, Valygar doesn't have 3 hands to wield his improved family katana + Flail of Defending an Wounding + JD sword! (Not to mention that forging all these items plus his improved family armor will cost no less than 525000 gp and plenty of other components! )

BTW, what is Shield of Fate? It's not an IA item. (He will need an extra hand for the shield too.)

This post has been edited by Sikret: Feb 26 2007, 11:58 PM

No fighter, barbarian, monk, morituri, or other fighter-type kit should survive timestop (comparing them to fighter-mage types). In an unmodded game, I would play the kensai. He will have a better offense for most of the game, and the unmodded game will not be too much a threat to his survival. In IA, I think it will be much more enjoyable to have that Damage resistance. Not that you can't get 100% DR other ways between items and Bhaal powers. I do admit the defenses of a high level morituri (with Spirit Armor) support is the best of the fighter-types and is why I am taking it for IA. If I find the game tougher than I want, I'll have to switch to PC = illusionist-fighter!

This post has been edited by rbeverjr: Feb 26 2007, 11:52 PM

Why not rbeverjr ?

Even without the Morituri's MR a fighter can avoid many spells (since they take effect when time returns normal).

ADHWs and Dragon's Breaths can be dodged with high speed (and the use of the pause button) (Morituri cannot be hasted but their innate bonuses to movement rate are more than enough), spells which do elemental dmg can be avoided with the right items , immunities from weapons and items can protect from other spells too and since warrior types have the best saving throws and HPs of all classes they can survive more than one Timestop (maybe except some of the "special" Timestops of IA ).

It's easy to script them to cast Breach on Warriors who are under the effect of Hardiness, but I believe that the limited number of breach spells those enemies have are better be reserved for better uses. What do you think, thetruth?

Of course but not only for this reason.

Think about those poor warriors (OK not the Morituri) who don't have other protections since they get dispelled by RM.Hardiness is the only thing that remains.

And enemy spell casters already lose enough time casting protection removal spells, if they have to cast Breach at every single party member the risk is that they will become less effective offensively.

There are a number of ways: imprisonment; stat-drain from mindflayer; chaos blade, etc.; harm and bang from FMC (XP cap removed); Improved alacrity and a ton of no save damage spells (MM, etc.); etc. I'm mentioning this cheese to establish the extent of cheesiness in the BG2 arcane system.

Then again, outrunning wilting and dragon's breathe sounds pretty cheesy too. I've never tried that one.

Ah OK you are talking about hypothetical situations.
I was talking about spells during Timestops in the game (with or without some of the tactical mods).

Then yes spell-casters have many ways to kill a fighter during a Timestop (like in IA as I mentioned in my previous post).

Though Imprisonment can be blocked by the Spell Turning (Book of Infinite Spells) and the Pf Magic Scrolls (obviously).

Harm does not ignore MR.

"chaos blade" ? - You mean Black Blade of Disaster probably.

As about INT drain from Mind Flayers I am not sure if there is an in-game protection for the player except from the PfMWs.
Fortunately I haven't seen it yet in a mod (and I DON'T want to see it ).

Of course, the mage fires off his triggers/chain contingencies before or during time stop. The fighter will have no protections and MR if multiple breach and lower resistance can take care of that. And I'm talking about the bard NPC's dex-drain blade.

Speaking of Lower Resistance (back on topic) is that Demon Lord immune to Lower Resistance?

Ah OK. The Chaos Blade has been nerfed in v.4 of IA BTW.

And I think that the Demon Lord is immune to Lower Resistance, though I am not 100% sure.

He is immune to 5th (and lower) level spells (including lower resistance), but you can lower his MR using higher level spells which can do the job (Pierce Shield and Pierce Magic). I think you should avoid forging JD sword (it's optional after all), because if you have so many problems with this particular demon, you will be much more frustrated against his boss at the second stage of JD plot. If I remember correctly, others have also said this point before in this thread. These difficult battles are optional for those who want to see extra challenging encounters during the game.

As I said before, I killed him the first try after killing those undroppable Soul Reaver Cheese first. If I want to take the time, I generally overcome encounters. It helps a lot if I try in the morning rather than the wee hours of the night. On the other hand, this battle was tougher than I desire. Use the wrong tactics (and how could you know they were using Soul Reavers, resistant to everything, and Lower Resistance doesn't work), and you will die. So, I fully expect that I will be disgusted with your "boss." I'll probably take it on some day just to see if I can. If I can kill Pontifex in 2 rounds on Insane, I should have a chance anyway.

But I am curious why you make such difficult fights. Don't you think your mod might have a broader appeal if it wasn't so difficult? I know you say it is optional, but that's just like Drizzt and Demogorgon are optional. I don't know about anyone else, but I had to kill them once just to see if I could.

Personally, new content and a moderate increase in difficulty appeal far more to me than grinding hack-n-slash. Hopefully, I'll get around to posting a review of this mod on Game Banshee and Bioware after I finish it through ToB.

Well, If they were resistant to "everything" you couldn't kill them at all.

As for writing the review, we have already started to prepare a story-like walkthrough for the mod. Silverstar has written a section of it which you can read here; others also sent me their works, but I asked everyone to wait for IA v4 before writing any new story. V4 has much more and better content than V3 and many things in the mod have been revised and enhanced. If you want to take part, just wait for v4 and then send your review to me, I will publish everyone's work with their own names. When the walkthrough is complete, it will be available for download separately.

@Sikret: resistant was not meant to imply 100% resistance, particularly when I listed it above. The kind of review I'm talking about is to brief the general BG2 player population concerning what they can expect from your mod: what is the difficulty level, comments on items, added content, etc. without giving away too much. It's not a walkthrough. It's just to let them know if they may want to use this mod or not. I know v4 is due out soon, and I will reserve judgment on it. However, if every little fight will become a challenging ordeal, then I won't be interested. I had no problem with any of your fights from Irenicus at the tree, through Saradush and Watcher's Keep, up until the fight with the Demon+Death Lords (where I finally had an objection). I noticed in v3, the initial quests were made more difficult. They were made too difficult in my opinion. I have no doubt that I could beat every one, but I like a more relaxed game than that. After I get some equipment and more XP, I'm sure I can handle the greater challenge as long as it doesn't get too far overboard. I can probably handle that case too, cursing each time I reload.

Happened to me couple of times Mainly on Valygar and Keldorn.



Forged them all, and yes, it almost send me rocketing to the poorhouse But they were of great help, and you can keep JD and family katana in main hand, and then just switch them, and the flail in off-hand. Should be no problem.

As for shield of fate, I mean armor of faith, first level cleric/druid spell that raises your damage resistance for max 25%. My mistake.

[quote name='thetruth' date='Feb 26 2007, 04:47 PM' post='20905']
[quote]But even a high level F/M with every protection possible can be defeated since his/her protections can be dispelled.[/quote]

That's why smart mages have spell immunity abjuration and perhaps also SI divination ready - could be a buff or part of a contingency/chain/trigger. It seems that Alesa-BH is a caster that is not easily defeated.

True. But in IA v4, "Spell Immunity" spell has been tweaked so that multiple immunities will not stack. You can't have both SI:Abjuration and SI:Divination simultaneously. It's true for enemies as well.

SI:Abjuration is also fixed to grant immunity to all magic-attacks (except Rubay Ray of Reversal which is not an abjuration spell), but dispite this improvement it can be ruby rayed and removed. Since it won't stack with SI:Divination, nothing can prevent a smart enemy to Ruby Ray your SI:abjuration. Spell Shield may protect against the first Ruby Ray spell, but multiple and successive Reversal spells will eventually remove SI:abjuration.

If you use SI:Divination instead, Dispel/remove magic can dispel it.

Just a note on the battle with the demon lord and prince. The difficulty of the demon lord I agree is warrented, after all you get the last component for judgement day. However, the battle with the demon prince I don't remember getting anything for it. Defineatly the toughest battle of the game and beats Melisan hands down yet in ia30 the reward seemed to be a wash.

Has this been changed in ia40? I hope so otherwise why do it, too much frustrations just for bragging rights I would think. Just my opinion.

Romulas

Of course, but I could put it back up or enjoy a free round of offense while you work on that... In high level battles on table top, the first action (let alone the first round of actions) can make the difference in the battle. Unfortunately, nothing in unmodded BG2 or modded BG2 has reminded me of the high level battles in DnD 3.5 table top.

I don't like the Demon/Death Lord battle. Now that I know the secret, I am sure that I can beat it every time without reloading and probably without deaths. BUUTTT... Until I figured out that the Death Lord's have undroppable Soul Reavers and must be targeted first, realized the extremely high resistance of the targets to all forms of damage, suspected that Lower Resistance and Carsomyr were not doing their job, that HLA summons were inferior to Mord's sword ... etc. - I had no way of winning. Once I looked at the monsters and considered the results from the first battles (reloads) - particularly reinforced with comments from people on this forum - the battle was mine. Still, the battle costs a lot of resources and even real time to beat them down. (Yeh, my high level cleric made his knowledge: the planes roll sufficiently high to identify their resistances - in DnD 3.5 terms, just joking )

I expect to have to reload sometimes simply because I play when I'm too tired to think. But this was nothing more than a puzzle.

I also think that the Soul Reavers were a bit much. Regardless, this fight will not trouble me in the future. I'll learn the secret of the next battle too - maybe with hints from the accomplished players of this forum. We'll see. Hopefully, it will be a Saturday morning (when my brain is actually functioning) when I face "the boss."

This post has been edited by rbeverjr: Feb 27 2007, 03:47 PM

@Romulas
The reward of the battle against the demon prince is the XP you gain (from killing him and his summons), plus keeping the sword for the rest of the game, plus the challenge.