Vagrant's journal, Building as OP crew as possible Options

[pekkae]

Welcome.

Playing like it was planned to be played. As I have some time on my hands until the end of January and it's like a lockdown here in Finland, what else am I going to do? ( I could ... read books, finish school or something else but ... oh well)

The rules

- No non-protagonist-related drops (no Necro's stuff etc.).
- Our Custom Characters get 90 points to divide among attributes.
- We have the tomes from bg1 to spread among our crew
- Simplified economy + we'll console in the trinkets we need
- No personal stuff, except for the NPC's we are using
(EDIT: - We learn all spells (so we lower difficulty when scribing scrolls)
(EDIT2: - Forging restrictions in place as well)

The exceptions

- We will most likely give our sorcerer (sorceress) the same bonus spell slots as other mages get. I don't get why sorcerers spell slots are not developing in later levels where as every other arcane caster's slots will. Though this will be at such a late stage that it doesn't probably matter at all.
- We have a few supplementing items we'll use throughout the game (described below).

****

Thoughts on the crew

I think I have this figured out.

We are not looking to survive the mod. We are looking to obliterate all opposition and in every and all possible encounters to milk away as many summons as possible to max out our rewards. Our plan is to once again do the demogorgon fight as fast as possible and then just dominate the rest of the way. Demogorgon with my style requires enormous spellcasting capabilities up front while enormous H2H capabilities throughout the fight. We'll try to construct our crew so that every character will be completely and insanely OP once they are fully developed.That's the way we like it. That's the plan. I'm not sure how it will work out. The 2nd thing is that we like characters who can fill out multiple roles, even though in some cases we lose out on some uber-powers.

For Chapters 2-3 we'll just take on rotating crew members so we'll ave as easy time as possible as we want to maximize fun while minimizing endless reloads & trying to figure out tactics. Or our tactic boils down to maximize strengths, enter, obliterate, repeat.

Since we are playing with a Vagrant we won't have a Necro with us. That means we could be somewhat more powerful in chapters 1-5 as plethora of characters are much more powerful than a Necro throughout chapters 1-5 (think: Berserker/Mage, Auramaster, Thief/Mage or even Nalia or especially Edwin). Edwin can easily wipe the floor with a Necro until chapter 6 (+2 spells per level, mirror images, II's). However, since we'll still need 2 spell casters and we absolutely need a sorcerer for early access to all lvl 9 spells, we won't bring Edwin along to spellhold. Most likely. And we want our supporting arcane spellcaster to be able to do something else than just casting, so Edwin won't fill that spot either.

****

Composition

We have our "tank" covered in Vagrant, who by chapter 7 will be better at tanking than any other character in the game. So no DD this time around though we will take one for chapters 2-3 but we most likely won't bring a DD around for spellhold so our tanking capabilities there will take a big hit. Gladly warrior HLA's won't be that far away once in chapter 4 but for a few key fights we'll need a way to survive. As the fights in chapters 4&5 are dominable with 2,5 fighters (that means 2 full fighters +a dual classed / multi-classed one), our plan of bringing along 3-4 full fighters (or characters who count as such under buffs) means we should be more than equipped to handle those encounters.

We are quite set on Vagrant obviously. After that it's Jaheira and Neera. Those are the locks. Neera because of the nice extra quest in ToB and also because she has great stats & personal item. Jaheira because we've never played it and we need healer. She's supposed to be great and she can fill out both "healer" spot as well as dish out huge amounts of damage in H2H (while buffed).

Vagrant is the best tank in the game and can deal & absorb an insane amount of damage as well, but we do need some help up front so we'll take either one of the ultimate damage dishers, so either Riskbreaker or a Kensai. I can't wrap my head around why RB is better than a Kensai, but I've had a Kensai / a version of a Kensai with previous runs so I'm really too familiar with it - I've done everything I wanted with it. Riskbreaker would be a nice change. That's the only reason we are leaning towards a RB.

We need a supportive arcane caster, so we'll do a custom thief/mage, who'll join in Spellhold. This character will fill out a number of roles, it can support in h2h and will fill out the role of supportive arcane caster. It can also hide in shadows and backstab. Yay!

Then it's just the last slot. We have 3 fighters already in Vagrant, RB ( or Kensai) and the Avenger (so 3 chars who can critical strike already). We have our arcane spell casting covered in Neera + Thief/Mage. We have "only" Jaheira as a healer so we have quite the doubts about our healing capabilities, as we are lacking a Necro & Cernd. So we would likely be looking into healing as well as H2H capabilities.

Pure Cleric's are out of the question because the dual classed version is superior in every way, even getting a 7th level fighter dualled to cleric pumps the cleric to a whole new level. So our choices boil down to dual-/multiclassed fighter-cleric characters where a character like Dwarven Fighter/Cleric would probably fit perfectly. Normally we would be looking into Fighter/Druid combinations, since it's easily and by far superior to the cleric-combinations but ... we already have that in Jaheira and I don't want two very similar characters. Also various Paladin's (or a blackguard for it has permanen NPP + immunity to fear) would be a possibility but since they are quite terrible as healers and lose out to a regular fighter in H2H, it will most likely be a smoother ride with another type of a character on board. And last but definitely not least is the Ranger/Cleric combination, enabling the OP version (where the char will get druidic spells as well). We don't really see why if druidic spells aren't enabled would anyone play that class, as losing out grand mastery and/or faster level gains hurts. A lot.

We are leaning towards the R/C or the dwarven F/C. The F/C could easily utilize staves until chapter 6 when it gets the warrior HLA's. It won't be any sort of a problem protecting that character unitl then. Also Rasaad could be an option.

So we would end up with the following, where last changes will be made in Spellhold. It would be easier if we postpone the last changes until chapter 6, but that feels a little bit like cheating.

PC: Vagrant
Jaheira the Avenger
Neera the Sorceror
Custom T->M
Custom RB (or a Kensai)

And the last slot (most likely) goes to;

Custom Dwarven F/C
Custom Ranger/Cleric combination
Mazzy Fentan
Blackguard (possibly Dorn)
Rasaad

****

Non IA Item's we'll use.

I think compliment IA's items quite nicely while not being OP (with the possible exception of Aegis of Torment)

Tymora's gift (belt +10MR, +3Luck, ch 3)
Black Wolf Talisman (amulet, +10HP, +10Resistance to Cold, +1 AC, ch 2)
Clasp of Bron's Cloak (amulet, +5 phys resistance, ch 3)
Aegis of Torment (amulet, +3AC, +2CON, +15HP, ch 6)
(Edit: we also upgraded the reaching ring to a version that has bonus spells from levels 1-7, instead of levels 5,6 & 7)

+ possibly

Amulet of Ilmater (amulet, +1 AC, +3 Saves, immunity to poison, chapter 6)
Sash of the Black Raven (for a monk, +2 thac0, +2 AC, chapter 6)
Heaven & Earth (mace +4, +2 str, ch 6)
(EDIT: ^We only used amulet of Ilmater)

(EDIT: If anyone is interested the item packs are "Item Pack by Daulmakan 1,8" & "Item upgrade mod pack by Westley Weimer v 4.0". In addition to the items up above they do introduce items that are completely OP, which we do not use & new ways of forging (like rings of protection +2 for 5k), which we do not use either).

This post has been edited by pekkae: Feb 23 2022, 06:55 AM

[pekkae]

We've had a bit of a pause playing but we did finish the following fights in the last couple of weeks

Kangaxx
Nothing special here. We have enough arcana casting capabilities to drop the pre kangaxx liches and kangaxx goes very smooth (contact with nature for PC, SI:Abjuration / Death Ward's for everyone else). We just CS away. Jaheira gets breached and she just misses renewing death ward so she's imprisoned by Kangaxx, which is a bummer but luckily there's a scroll of "freedom" so we can unbind her immediately.

Illithid hideout in the sewers
This was quite fun. I'm used to this fight being extremely difficult but this time it's quite the *meh*.

We summon to the max before entering. Then enter, Vagrant runs to take the dispel & ADHW alone. Summons move in first to whack the flayers, then the rest of the crew follows. Once the flayers are dead Vagrant runs to the next room and GeG follows. The rest of the crew follows. Neera stays debuffing & summoning in the main chamber. Vagrant moves around a little bit to avoid getting thrown around, we lure the spawns to the chamber before the main chamber (where the flayers & umber hulks used to be) and dismantle the summoned golems there. Vagrant & Jaheira take turns in tanking the GeG. After Neera has debuffed alhoon and it's surrounded by summons (greater swanmay, a few trolls & a few skeleton warriors) Neera moves to meet the rest of the crew. Then we just milk away. Every now and then we send a summon to the main room, where Alhoon is battling summons. After we've milked maybe 6 golems out of the GeG we see a strange "party has gained 17500exp points" and are like *hmh ?!?*. We visit the main chamber and find out that our summons had killed Alhoon. Nice. So we move the remaining summons with our main crew and milk total of maybe 9 spawns out of the GeG.

***

But the thing is, we're not really happy with our crew composition. Nalia is great, but the thing with the F/M is that I've already played such a character. So I've done pretty much everything I want with it, though Nalia is quite a lot more powerful than the version I had before.

So we decide we're not following the rules, or to be more precise, we'll make up our own rules for a little and we let go of Nalia the F/M and get our T/M (So Assassin->Mage back). We also revert all of the changes we made for Nalia. The way we see it is that there's Vagrant's OP stuff in the game, and Necro's OP stuff in the game. And we can't get them both. We would actually revert Vagrant to DD, which would mean we would be quite a lot more powerful immediately (and would have been for quite a long time until now ) but this whole journal is Vagrant's journal, not DD's journal.

So instead of F/M (with Vecna + De'Arnise Signet ring (the OP one)) we have our T/M with MotA, a quick comparison...

F/M has a lot more hit points (+30 or so, but T/M has access to equipment to offset this)
F/M has better base Thac0
They end up with equal number of spell slots (since F/M gets +1 spells per level from level 30 or so)
F/M gets +3 Thaco from weapon expertise and +1 from gauntlets +1 from helm (+5), T/M gets +2 from gauntlets and +2 from hood and +1 from assassin (+5)
F/M gets +7 to damage (+5 from weapon specialization & +2 from gauntlets)
F/M can dual wield properly (so can reach 3,5-4,5 APR), T/M is "stuck" with 2,5 APR
T/M can get -5 casting time, F/M can get -4 (as T/M can use circlet of the woods)
T/M has access to a few useful items, that the F/N doesn't have like harp's and grandfather of assassin's (at very late stage)

=> F/M is quite a lot more powerful in H2H, while the T/M is more versatile and slightly bit better spellcaster from mid-game onwards. Overall a party with F/M is much better off for much of the game, than if one is dual-classing a T/M like we did and the difference in chapters 3-5 is very, very stark. Then again, suffering for a little bit more power later on is perfectly fine for us. And we've already done most of the suffering anyway.

And since we're casting time junkies we'll take T/M. And we don't get to forge other stuff's of the vagrant, besides the Red Coral Armour. So essentially we swap the necro amulet & helm & cloak for FoDW. We would be insanely more powerful, if we just skipped the Vagrant's stuff altogether and just use Necro's stuff. This also means that we haven't dragged along the T/M for nothing, our suffering wasn't in vain.

And we have fun again, while being hilariously absurdly OP.

This post has been edited by pekkae: Feb 13 2022, 03:41 PM