I love Arcane casters and every level has great choices except Level 8 which has virtually nothing I care for or ever use (Okay ADHW - one Spell) . What Spells does anyone find useful? Pierce Shield is not much better than Pierce Magic , PW Blind is pointless , I don't find much use for Maze (if you can Maze it , its easier to kill it).
Does anyone agree? What Spells does anyone find useful?
Also I love the 7th Level Spell Khelben's Warding Whip - a pity that it has no real place in IA. What if it materialised as a spectral whip (use the Greater Command animation) and thus became a conjuration spell? Now its a nasty 9th level spell.
I know it has been stated here many times before but the 9th level Spellstrike should have more Power. Perhaps the Spell Description could be changed to allow it to dispel Magical and Combat protections. Then move it down to 8th level.


Also does anyone think that Clerics should have access to a Spell to block summary dispelling? One Dispel/Remove Magic wipes out layers of CC , AoF , BB , RM , DW , etc. Maybe allowing Clerics to have an Arcane Barrier (6th Level Spell) of some sort that gets more powerful by level. At 12th level you need at least Pierce Magic to bring it down , at 14th you need Ruby Ray or Khelben , at 16th Pierce Shield at 18th you need Spellstrike. It is not an absorber like Shield of the Archons - simply a barrier to incoming dispelling magics (i.e. Remove/Dispel Magic will never work on a Cleric while Arcane Barrier is active). Too often the Cleric is in the midst of a major encounter and one high powered dispel renders him instantly weak and fleeing slowly for the fringes of battle to become a passive healer. This spell would not IMO make him over powerful , it simply makes an enemy specifically target him for debuffing.

If Khelben was moved to 9th level and Spellstrike down to 8th then the requirements to take down the Arcane Barrier would be as follows
12th cleric Pierce magic (6th level spell) or better
14th cleric Ruby Ray (7th level spell) or better
16th cleric Pierce Shield or Spellstrike (8th level spell) or better
18th cleric Khelben's Warding Whip (9th level)

Have an idea for Spellstrike.It would be much more usefull if it could dispel SI:Div (very small aoe).

It would be, but then the battles with mages once the party got access to Spellstrike would be too easy and over too quickly.

But they are very easy and very quickly when you gain Ruby Ray(and its just a 7 lvl spell).And there are much less mages with SI:Div then SI:Abj(and most of the mages with SI:Div are on lower lvls).As counterbalancing measure Spellstrike could dispel only one spell protection at a time(same as Ruby Ray).

The main point is that I strictly disagree with the idea of allowing anti-magic spells to be cast on invisible or partially visible targets as it negates the entire point of Improved Invisibility and SI:div combo. Giving antimagic spells a small "aoe" is simply wrong (in my opinion) and is nothing but adding a bug to the game when the original game happens to work as intended and correctly.

Hmm.Have an another idea then.To make Spellstrike remove spell AND combat protections but only one at a time.It could make battles with liches a bit quicker(not easier,even grave lich in gate district doable on 12-13 lvls with a bit of luck and some tactics).For now Spellstrike is plain useless(even pierce magic and pierce shield have much more uses).Sorry for bad english,not my native.

SpellStrike isn't useless. It is the only anti-magic spell which is bullet-proof against the infamous "spell Shield" bug. It's also the best choice against dragons, demons and all those casters who do not use SI:abj.

Met this bug only once on Firkraag and he doesnt need spellstrike to remove spell shield(killable very easy very fast with normal weapons while he's dispelling spell protections from casters,he need immunity to normal weapons at least,easy +5 sword this early in game is a bit unbalancing,the only problem is conster,to be more precise-his tall friends).Used this spell once,but through scroll and while experimenting in one battle.

Exactly!

I'd defeated Green Wyrm, not to mention Firkraag, Black Dragon and Saladrex, using this spell.

Spellstrike is not useless at all. It's pretty useful actually. Pretty good 9 lvl spell and not cheesy like Timestop for exemple.

Incidentely , when confronted by an adversary who has Spell Shield active + other magical protections like Spell Turning , Globe of Invulnerability (but not any S.I) will one Spellstrike do the trick? Or are 2 reqiured to strip all magical protections?
What about limiting the amount of Spellstrike scrolls in the game a la Spell Shield?

The only difference(beside using spellstrike to avoid bug with spell shield,and this is purely random,as i wrote before i met this bug only once) is in time you need to strip enemy from his spell protections.And in most times every party have at least 4-6 ruby rays memorized.For 9 lvl spell Spellstrike uses are too limited and completly avoidable to waste 9 lvl slot on it.Besides.Most of the usable high lvl damage spells are AOE and spell protections will not stop them(except for globe,but thats for lower lvl spells).If target can be breached-spell protections will not make almost(almost go for spell shield) any difference in speed of killing the enemy.

Only one spellstrike is enough. The spell shield's description is also changed to show the information that it cannot block spellstrike.



Even if it was a good idea, it's not practically feasible, because some enemy spellcasters also hold spellstrike scrolls for occasions on which they detect a mage in the party who's not running SI:abj. The number of spellstrike scrolls a player can find in the game varies depending on the number of scrolls the enemies use or drop.

So basically if you face mages while employing Imm. Abj. protections you will gain More Spellstrike scrolls and if you use other magical buffs you will gain more Ruby Ray scrolls?

yes. More spellstrikes, and the faster you kill them more pfmw and apsolute immunity scrolls