Volourn said:
The fact that you found TOEE hard means you are a pussy. It required very little thought.
Yeah, it has nothing to do with the fact that i didn't care about any dialog in town, composed my first characters ever in 3rd ed and went straight to the dungeon. Or the actual fact that at first level you die a lot.
Elric said:
As if 3E/3.5E aren't broken too?
Andrej, did you play the game at standard difficulty, or did you use mods like SCSII? Not trying to make any judgments, just curious.
3rd ed is broken aswell, but in my opinion not as broken as second ed or "2.5ed" which they tried in BG2.
I played the game at standard difficulty.
Ammar said:
You oversimplify. For example, Liches are immune to Breach and other spellcaster also use Misdirect spells, requiring you to use True Sight as well. Besides, there are no "Breach-Type Spells" in BG 2 but the 5th Level "Breach" Spell. The other remove spell-protections like GoI , Breach removes protections like "Absolute Immunity", "Stoneskin",...
When i spoke of "Breach-Type Spells" i meant those who in general dispell and break protections. "Breach-Type Spells" is my own name for them. There's no point in discussing terminology when it's obvious what I meant.
But you're absolutely right, when the enemy caster disappears into thin air you need to cast detect inviss-type of spell of the highest level you have available. Very intellectually challenging.
felicity said:
The highest "breach spell" is Lv 9, you can't spam it, Lv 9 spell slots are too precious for that purpose. Lv 9 breach is THE spell supposed to break mages... complaining about it is silly, given that you can only cast a few per day. And that spell removes only spell protection, you still need other various breach spells for tanks to deal damage. Killing with spells will deplete your spell stock way too soon, unless you abuse the resting system by resting every encounter. Many mages rebuff with contingency when they are hurt, so you will need to debuff again, if you rely only on the limited spell slots that Lv 9 has, you won't go far.
Half the recruitable characters are mages – there’s no real limited supply of 9th level slots. Far as I recall, the 6th and 7th level ones work here as well, just not as fast.
felicity said:
All other "breach spells" have their pros and cons, the higher level ones aren't always better. For example, spell turning will reflect breach, but dispel magic casted as an AoE will remove spell turning at a successful check. When enemies have spell turning on, it may be more effecient to use aoe dispel than spamming the higher level ones that are capable of removing spell turning but do so at one buff at a time. I remember some enemies have spell immunity - abjuration, breach (and a lot other similar spells) don't help in such cases.
It might be more efficient but it’s not needed, just pick the highest level breach-type spell you have and then if that one doesn’t work go a level lower, rinse repeat.
felicity said:
And then there are spell level immunity (lich - Lv 6), spell school immunity (undead - necromany), spell resistance (drow/rakshasa/lich). Some spells can lower SR but not so good at debuffing, some spells are the opposite. It's not as simple as you are making it out to be.
A lot of spells remove both protections and lower SR – spam them and you’ll get to the core. One's level 7 and will pass the liches imunity.
felicity said:
You can go through the game by spaming various breach spells mindlessly but that doesn't say much about the magic system, rather the permited rooms of error of the encounter... You can make it through the smart or efficient way and come out unscathered, or you can make it through the stupid way and say this game is so retarded.
Not saying the game is retarded, but the fact that you can just spam and not even bother to think about things like SR, protections and such doesn’t make it a mensa membership test. I enjoy it, spell caster battles more than the other parts of it – but spamming spells will get you through the resistance more than nine out of ten times. Assuming your party’s total level is anything comparable to the enemies.
When I'm playing the game now, I'm thinking and casting whatever spells work best for the situation, but that doesn't change the fact that you don't have to think - if you don't want to.