@realmuzzy: I love the cleric/thief combo, but I can never make it work for no-reload. I'm not sure why... player ineptitude, I expect. It seems like it should be the perfect combo, but I always run into something surprising. It looks like you're off to a great start. Good luck
--BW
@ biowherewolf
The problem with the cleric/thief combo is that you can't use your thief abilities when wearing heavy armour.
This is why mage/thief combos are popular. They both restrict armour but then the mage can compensate due to the ability to cast armour spells.
End of run for Saphire. 
I thought that I knew where all the basilisks were located. Clearly I didn't. Saphire died.
Next run:
Hereward the Hammer, A Tiefling Cleric/Ranger
Str 18/74, Dex 19, Con18, Int 19, Wis 18, Cha 2.
25 resistance to electricity, fire and cold.
10% penalty to experience.
Hammers ** Two weapon style ** Two weapon style **.
I had to go into Shadowkeeper to reduce the Charisma by 1 as per the mod description as it stayed at the roll of 3 that I started with.
@Grimwald Condolences. Good luck with the cleric/ranger! I can never bring myself to play this particular multiclass because a ranger that can't dual wield pointy weapons or wield a bow is too strange for me.
Iolo did a lot of wandering up and down the coast, as gnomes are wont to do. When he saw sirines he silenced them out of the bushes and tricked them into following over his traps.
Basilisks were defeated with the help of a jolly ghoul, their "leader" ambushed
Once he had a bit of experience under his belt, Iolo went for Mulahey. He prepared quite a bit, silencing the cleric who was not paying enough attention. None of it mattered in the end because a staff in the kidneys ended Mulahey's life instantly.
Nimble the assassin was killed by the guards and Tranzig by the army of undead directed from sanctuary by Iolo. He then infiltrated the bandit camp and attacked the leaders. The initial attack sadly didn't finish the mage but the following fireball did
A series of smites and some melee finished the rest of the bandits. Outside, with the potion of absorption running, he comfortably meleed Taugosz finishing him with a flame strike before his support could even assemble
Iolo then zoomed though Cloakwood to reach the hidden mine, only stopping to help the druids. He engaged the mine guarding party with a silence and skeletons. Kysus was the only one to recognize something was wrong, and vocalized. Iolo used his roguish-gnomish mastery of illusions to deprive Kysus of his mirror images so the mage took heavy damage. In danger of dying, Kysus invised and tried to run away and heal but was stopped in his tracks by traps waiting by the stables.
Iolo retreated, rested and welcomed dimension dooring Rezdan with the same treatment of skeletons and detect illusions from sanctuary.
Finally the fighters were taken care of the next day with skeletons taking the heat, while Iolo was continually backstabbing.
This opened the way to Daveorn. Iolo meleed his bodyguard and activated the traps protected and invisible, while his skeletons were waiting behind
He backstabbed the horrors down before Daveorn could even notice him but then the mage activated his sequencer. Iolo decided to wait it out while the skellies were valiantly taking the fight.
Once the stinking cloud was down, Iolo buffed some more and came to dispel mirror images and throw some fireballs. Mirror images were reapplied, then dispelled again, and some more fireballs were thrown.
Once the number of guards was manageable, and Daveorn was out of mirror images, Iolo activated his short duration fighting magics and killed Daveorn.
@biowherewolf: It is because of a mod that I have Cha 1 in BG1. You can easily get it in BG2. My mod gives one of the assassins a BG2 staff which is +2, panics opponents, but has a chance of reducing charisma available in the Gate District of BG2 (Possession of a lich!). There is the potential of it killing you as Cha=0 equals death.
And so long as you don't have ToBex installed, it is possible to get a charisma of 25.
With TobEx installed, instead of Cha = 25, you get Cha(racter) = dead.
Azure eventually got a charisma of 25, but it took some time.
She first headed north towards the FAI. On the way she picked up a ring of protection +1 and fled from 2 dire wolves.
At the FAI she found a ring of wizardly and used it to defeat Tarnesh. The crucial spell was blindness. After that she kept her distance casting magic missile to start with. One FAI guard gave some help. However it was her composite long bow that killed him, despite lack of proficiency.
Hobgoblins were then killed before heading northwards where a widow was helped against her undead husband. A girl priestess was then helped against some evil fishermen, (or so she said).
She then headed for Nashkel, got some healing ability and some defensive equipment. Lord Foreshadow then gave her a ring which subsequently was used to get her charisma to 25.
She also used it to get Karlat to kill Algernon. She then used the cloak to encourage her enemies to fight charmed people rather than her. In the process she equipped herself quite well.
The Lord Foreshadow ring is a mod, right? Isn't that just a charisma of 18?
I ask because I have a problem. Duno is a Shadowdancer. And in the fine print of the kit. at the bottom -- I didn't notice it before I actually started playing the character -- there is this small note that to dual class a Shadowdancer, you need high strength, dex and charisma. I really don't know how they came up with that. Why would I need a high strength to dual from thief to mage? .. .but I digress.
Anyway, Duno has a natural 18 dex, 17 strength and 12 charisma. With the Tomes, he would be 19,18, 13. To dual, it looks like he needs to be 15+, 15+, 15+.
I want to dual him to mage. But ... what can I do to get his charisma up another 2 points?
Any thoughts?
--BW
Aside from flat out cheating, the only way to get those Cha points is in BG2. You get +1 Cha for going the "Good" route with Sarevok in the hell trials, and you can get +1 more Cha from the Machine Of Lum The Mad.
But that's a long journey from now.
@Borco : congrats on getting Narva to an impressive level. But you don't exactly make me want to drop everything to run Druids. It seems like a really rough class.
@bioww Thanks! Also totemic druids are really fun, you have your little army that scales in a balanced and enjoyable way and is well supported by your druid spells like bless, strength of one and roots (they are immune to roots). Plus, having them on the front line opens you up to cast charms, dooms and so on. People underestimate how fun and useful low level druid spells can be in bg1.
@borco Great progress for Narva! Is there anything you want from Durlag, or are you just doing it for fun? My non-trap finding chars never go there because I don't know which trap does what by heart so it just ends up being stressful and taking up a lot of resources. Once I have shield of archons, death ward, cc, ironskins, I'm more comfortable with traps
.
Alright, time to get back in the saddle, I think! I've been wanting to do another run based off an idea, so this idea is going to be randomness.
Meet Fortuna, our lucky or unlucky test subject, depending on how this goes. The spell picks will be done by RNG; I'm using one I found at mathgoodies.com. Pseudo-random should be good enough for what I'm doing. Every level I gain a spell, I will roll to determine what spell it is, starting at one in the top left, and increasing prioritizing horizontal over vertical. I'll be posting the rolls as well, so...
Level 1 spells: I'm allowing myself to ignore random numbers that give me a completely useless spell, so... pretty much Detect Evil and Detect Alignment and Infravision. I'll see if there are any other useless spells as I come across them. I had pretty decent luck on my first two spell selections.
8: by the diagram, Find Familiar.
19: Shield.
I'm not going to swear that this is going to be a solo run through all three, but if I have others join, Fortuna will remain the only arcane caster.
The Lord Foreshadow ring is a mod, right? Isn't that just a charisma of 18?
I ask because I have a problem. Duno is a Shadowdancer. And in the fine print of the kit. at the bottom -- I didn't notice it before I actually started playing the character -- there is this small note that to dual class a Shadowdancer, you need high strength, dex and charisma. I really don't know how they came up with that. Why would I need a high strength to dual from thief to mage? .. .but I digress.
Anyway, Duno has a natural 18 dex, 17 strength and 12 charisma. With the Tomes, he would be 19,18, 13. To dual, it looks like he needs to be 15+, 15+, 15+.
I want to dual him to mage. But ... what can I do to get his charisma up another 2 points?
Any thoughts?
--BW
In BG2, if you get the rod of terror from the gate district and the ring of influence from the circus, so long as you don't have ToBex installed, when your charisma drops below 0 by using the staff, it bounces to 25. This obviously needs careful planning as it will kill you if you take off the ring at Cha = 0. Similarly, if you use the staff too much before removing the ring, you could end up with a charisma even lower than the one that you now have.
(You don't have to use the ring, it is much more easily achieved using the Nymph's Cloak that you get from the Nymph in Ragefast's clutches)
In BG1 Lord Foreshadow's ring doesn't actually change your base charisma in the way that the rod does. So even with the mod that gives it, (BG1 NPC Project) you will not be able to dual as you wish . My installation also has another mod that gives an assassin at Candlekeep the rod of terror. This would allow raising the charisma.
The reason why ToBex changed things was that the writers of ToBex thought using this tactic was cheating. However ToBex is also a mod.
In the vanilla game this tactic can be used, though things could be different in EE. I don't have it so don't know.
It looks to me that for this game you won't be able to dual for even if you installed mods they would not become effective until your next game.
)
It looks to me that for this game you won't be able to dual for even if you installed mods they would not become effective until your next game.
@Matuse & Grimwald: That's what I was thinking. I may shelve the character for a while until I figure out what I want to do. The thief class and kits are all great, but I am more interested in magic users in the long run.
Thanks
--BW
Sorry to disappoint you biowherewolf.
The roll that you got at the beginning of your last game would have been good enough to do what you wanted, though possibly the attributes would not be where you wanted them.
Bladesinger or fighter/mage multi perhaps. Berserker or thief dualling to mage at level 3 might give you what you want.
With a gnome, the fighter/illusionist is a good combination. Illusionists are very strong in BG1 and are OK in BG2.
I have just rolled up an excellent Fighter/illusionist/thief who could well be my next character, Your set-up may not allow it though as it is clearly not the same as mine.
.
Hereward went to get Lord Foreshadow's ring. He got badly injured in some ambushes and had to come to terms with the fact that he is NOT a fighter.
Upon his return to Beregost his actions resulted in carnage. This gave him Armour of Lathander, a hammer +2, and a sling +3.
He was not the one doing the killing, though he did kill the spiders with the rod of terror which resulted in the sort of charisma boost that biowherewolf wants.
Algernon's cloak will now stay in the bag of holding.
He has helped the priestess against the fishermen and as a result, levels have gone up.
Buffs then enabled the slaying of Nester's killer. Now he IS a fighter perhaps.
Chant, DUHM, Barkskin and two command spells were sufficient. The Barkskin proved to be unnecessary as the ankheg never had a chance to land a blow.
Killing the caravan guards at the FAI has given him good armour in which he can use stealth.
Selling loot enabled the buying of protective bracers and cloak and a better hammer. He is now poor again.
edit
The hammer isn't better and it wasn't cheap!
Hereward cleared the southern border area apart from the gnoll fortress itself. Near there he killed some assassins, the necklace of missiles being invaluable. He then headed northwards where he was given a pair of boots for protecting someone from a bear. He then went to the temple near Beregost where he fought a mixed pack of wolves including two vampyric ones.
From there he headed east and disposed of more assassins before dealing with the bassilisk problem. He used a scroll of protection from petrification and some oil of speed. He also used countless healing potions and will now have to acquire some more. Though he came close to death, the area was eventually cleared and he is now a level 6 cleric/level 6 ranger with proficiencies of ** in hammers, *** in dual wielding, ** in sword and shield and * in slings.
Clearly he will have to stick with hammers and slings for the moment.
Finances are still a problem due to an unwise choice of purchase earlier, as he will soon have to recharge his necklace of missiles.
Hey guys
I had an update planned for Farideh, but I wanted to do it after a short session before cooking myself some dinner. I am saddening to report that she ended up adding to the Basilisk meme of unfortunate endings as she was ambushed while taking a trip south to collect purple and red potions. It is my fault for not carrying that potion of mirrored eyes, I thought I did, but no..
I will consider what to roll up next and report back
I like your concept idea, Epsil0, will be interesting how it works out. Crossing fingers for Fortuna!
Now it is time to catch up on the thread while I comfort eat some dinner.
Sorry to hear that Grond0. Not allowing antidotes is rather rough. Phase spiders and Wyverns have some pretty strong poison.
Hard luck Grond0.
Trying to play with your restrictions is not something that I am willing to try yet.
I'm already finding my current set-up more than enough of a challenge since I rarely get to Amn.
With vanilla it became too boring. I could win virtually every time. Not now, which is now enough of a challenge.
If you don't get beaten, you obviously think that it is too easy.
Hereward has just left the Nashkel Mines.
He beat the assassins with some difficulty and returned ostensibly to return Joseph's ring, but in fact to lick his wounds.
It was well he did for Mulahey and his summoned monsters also proved a challenge. Also the shaman at the bottom of the mines cast horror which was not as bad as it could have been as most of the other kobolds were dead, though the shaman and the captain were all too alive. Hereward was fortunate not to run over the traps as that could have killed him. He stopped a whisker short of them. Not wanting to return once more to the surface, he consumed most of his ordinary healing potions
DUHM, chant, stoneskin, freedom of action and shield of faith, proved sufficient to defeat Mulahey.
Hereward used sanctuary to get into the position he wanted before the fight started. (Near the chest so that there was a clear space to use necklace of missiles.)
Mulahey normally moves away before the fight. He didn't on this occasion which made it harder as only his minions got caught in the blast.
Iolo had plenty of opportunity for mischief in Baldur's Gate. He pranked and tricked his way right to the headquarters of the iron throne where he uncovered the plot to take over the city. He went through Candlekeep quickly and returned to save Duke Eltan and face the assassins Slythe and Krysten. (*accidentally deleted all screenshots up to this point, oops*).
Solo put down some traps, summoned his skeletons and greeted Slythe with a backstab. Kristen appeared and Iolo ran away to invis and dispel their illusions/invisibilities.
However when he hid in shadows, SCS hid Slythe and Krysten with an invisibility undispellable by detect illusion, so Iolo sent in the skeletons and backstabbed Slythe as soon as he showed himself. One more whack of the quarterstaff and the rogue was dead.
Krysten fought a losing battle against the skeletons, but running wouldn't save her as she ran straight into the traps. A whack or two later and she was dead, her only threatening move in dispel magic long gone.
With his tickets to the palace Iolo was ready to save the day
He focused the shaman with his wands, while meleeing enemies closest to Liia and put his best effort into getting the dopplegangers down before the inevitable confusion.
The mage failed to dispel but managed to aim the perfect lightning bolt centered on Iolo, Belt and Liia that bounced back and forth off the back wall. The lucky bastard evaporated Liia and brought Belt to Badly wounded, but fortunately Atweaks Bhaal healing is pretty decent and brought Belt back to barely wounded.
Iolo chased down the mage, and once Sarevok joined the fray occupied him with the skeletons long enough for Sarevok to decide he's had enough.
There's no running away from vengeful gnomes though. Sarevok's gang was defeated using the standard pattern: enter, get dispelled, invis to rebuff and kite the group while immune to their ranged damage slowly whittling them down. The mages tried to invis to wait out his protection from magic potion (*which is one of the rare parts of SCS scripting that I really don't like. I agree that it's a reasonable thing for mages to do, but waiting out a multiple hour duration potion especially in an area where you can't go away to rest is too annoying for the sake of realism*) but he canvased the area with his 100% detect illusion multiple times to put a stop to that.
Once the helpers were gone, Iolo put all of his invis potions to good use and took down Sarevok in style with a kidney punch here and a groin punch there.
Well done, Realmuzzy! Keep focus in Amn.
Realmuzzy, your set-up and mine are hardly recognisable as the same game. Well done.
After clearing the mines, Hereward cleared the area around the exit before setting off for Durlag's Tower.
I thought that I would be paying a quick visit, but found that he was well able to cope with all the enemies he met, though lightning Bolt Traps hurt him.
Lack of forethought meant no potion of mirrored eyes, so the basilisks were left in peace. Three of the warders riddles were solved, but I chose not to give love his wine. Further downstairs my game gets buggy!
Thalantyr upgraded the belts, making one out of three.
Then dealt with the sirene and sil.
Due to a potion they were no problem.
EDIT
Killed another assassin at Nashkel and told the mayor about my exploits.
I then visited the bandit camp and used my stealth to avoid all conflict there except for killing Tazok with my trusty sling, oil of speed being used to keep my distance.
On the way killed Molkar and associates.
The DSoSC assassins were similarly killed though necklace of missiles was also brought into play.
In Tazok's tent oil of speed plus sanctuary got Hereward to the chest. The contents were extracted and then hide in shadows to leave unmolested.
Went to Cloakwood where we collected a cloak that was hanging on a dead tasloi, and then for a change sided with the druids.
Then killed loads of spiders and a dragon. Realised afterwards that returning to the druid was a bad idea. it is far more profitable to kill her.
Made one mistake. Forgot to go and speak to Transig after killing Tazok. Lost a bit of equipment and experience there.
Second Edit
Run came to an end at the top of the Cloakwood mines due to a confusion spell.
After that it was downhill all the way.
It was partly bad management as positioning was wrong. However it could still have happened, solo is always a bit risky.
Perhaps I should have used stealth as in my installation Davaeorn has boots of speed too..
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