Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Deathgrowl wrote:

mrm3ntalist wrote: I do it daily... i wil lbe glad to show you. Right now, one of my casters can clear the frost keep ( kill everything, take all the loot ) in less than 5 mins, got to the Lizard cave, kill everything, then go back to the keep and kill the king without running out of spells.

That's doable. Not in 5 minutes, but I'll let that slide. Do the vault including the dracolich and the gray peaks including the balor. And the yuan'ti temple + boss. And your assertion was that you can do this without archmage/bm/sa. So prove it.

5minutes is a couple of minutes too much. Literally. I will be glad to have you tagged along after the update is done.

I'm not saying mages have it bad right now. They don't. Mages are fine. But so are meleers. It's about roles. People need to start thinking parties in a multiplayer game.

Mundane classes aren't fine. This is why Pathfinder heavily buffed the majority of the non-spellcasting classes in its ruleset: the gulf in power between casting and non-casting classes is too great and requires far too much overpowered itemization to narrow.

This is true of every server that leaves the mundane classes in their more-or-less out-of-the-box state. Rangers struggle for damage output until Improved Favored Enemy / Favored Power Attack are rewritten to allow one iteration of the feat to reference all chosen favored enemies. Fighters have a very specific prestige-class progression to enable damage output that exceeds their gish counterparts, and then they have no utility and are overly susceptible to things that require saving throws; they become a strictly left-click class. Paladin isn't even mundane, but it's a mechanically weak choice unless it's taken to combo with a Charisma-based class to get a boost to saving throws, and this has been combated on almost every server with the Paladin being modified to receive full casting and an expanded spell book or to mirror its Pathfinder iteration.

Rogue is only taken to lead into other prestige classes (of which the mundane still lag behind) or to get a large pool of skills for Able Learner, and Swashbuckler is only useful for Insightful Strike. Barbarian is a feat-starved mess of hitpoints and low AC with an identity crisis that is exceeded in almost every area by the lowly fighter.

That's doable. Not in 5 minutes, but I'll let that slide.

You're doing an awful lot of asserting without proof and demanding that other assertions be supported by proof.

Deathgrowl wrote: Good! Bosses shouldn't be soloable by anyone of their respective CR! What we need to do now is to make the Frost Giant king and Wyrmthrax harder to solo for a mage.

I don't think so. Bosses should have diversity, and be vulnerable to different things.

Other than that, it's all good. You can't solo anything else of high CR as a mage. I've tried. Several times.

I beg to differ. "It's hard" and "it can't be done" often get confused in the NWN2 community.

If I'm wrong, please show me how you do it. The balor, for instance. Or the dracolich. PLEASE, show me how a wizard can solo the dracolich without being a gish. And don't just assert it. Show me with details how it is done.

It's extremely complicated to solo the Balor, especially with a wizard. The HP, regen, SR, flat out immunities and dmg resistances from pretty much every source of dmg a wizard can use are challenging, with a limited spell arsenal.

To solo the Balor, you need to:

-) have a strong summon with a few buffs, of which only one on the breach list (to trigger Mord). Haste and Displacement needed.
-) Dominate one of the Giants and quickly Wail, to clean up everything but the Balor. Heal the summon (negative energy, if it's a Vampire) if needed. By now, it probably is.
-) Bigby 5
-) Curses (they work on him)
-) Arcane Fire if you have it, Force Orbs, Missile Storms, Ice spells (if Frost Mage. Frost Mage is great vs the Balor), Epic Spells that deal dmg and in general, the kitchen sink. Bring along scrolls, because sometimes he's left with 50 HP and you're empty...

Somewhere in between, your summon will die. Run in, Vampiric Feast, and then replace the summon (CGU, SC IX, Gate, Epic Gate...whatever) and use scrolls you find adventuring to rebuff it in the process. Displace it immediately, though, or it dies.

With this, you kill it once in two/ once in three on average, and you never risk dying even when you have to retreat.

As for the Draco, that's not easy, but a lot easier.

In one of my finest days, I had Karond, Mentalist and Seeds with me when I killed it in 3 seconds

The Yuan Ti Queen is an absolute joke. Even a mentally hindered, spastic wizard can kill that one. What's the threat there?! Before an Empowered Mantle is depleted, the boss is dead or dying...

Bottom line is: Wizards = high skill cap.

Wait before saying impossible. Of course, scrubs will scream OP, and then play one and suck donkey balls...but impossible is a big word.

CptAmyrica wrote:Mundane classes aren't fine. This is why Pathfinder heavily buffed the majority of the non-spellcasting classes in its ruleset: the gulf in power between casting and non-casting classes is too great and requires far too much overpowered itemization to narrow.

I would like the devs here to consider implementing Pathfinder changes to the melee classes. This would help them a lot, I feel.

That's doable. Not in 5 minutes, but I'll let that slide.

If (and I think Mentalist means that) we are talking about running in and killing the King, plus taking all the chests, and disabling or killing anything in the way...

I'd say 5 mins is far too long. I've seen him doing it (and done myself) in far less. That doesn't even take a free evening to demonstrate, really!

Miniguide for the dracolich:

- Counterspell his one Greater Spell Breach (that's his only dispel)
- Counter his breath weapon with Energy Immunity to fire + cold and Shadowshield
- Spell mantle his Isaac's storms and chain lightnings (or Energy Immunity to lightning for the latter)
- After he's out of spells, protect yourself from his melee attacks by keeping a bigby 5 on him and Displacement + Mirror Images on yourself
- Step back when he does the Vampiric Feast (usually he does it as soon as someone is in his melee range)

And that would be it. Now you have to deal around 2500 (?) acid damage. Or magic, to which he has a percentage immunity. If something goes wrong in the melee phase, you can always Ethereal Jaunt.


As for the balor, yeah, you need to have lots of scrolls.

matelener wrote:Miniguide for the dracolich:

- Counterspell his one Greater Spell Breach (that's his only dispel)
- Counter his breath weapon with Energy Immunity to fire + cold and Shadowshield
- Spell mantle his Isaac's storms and chain lightnings (or Energy Immunity to lightning for the latter)
- After he's out of spells, protect yourself from his melee attacks by keeping a bigby 5 on him and Displacement + Mirror Images on yourself
- Step back when he does the Vampiric Feast (usually he does it as soon as someone is in his melee range)

And that would be it. Now you have to deal around 2500 (?) acid damage. Or magic, to which he has a percentage immunity. If something goes wrong in the melee phase, you can always Ethereal Jaunt.


As for the balor, yeah, you need to have lots of scrolls.

QFT!!

and, if you're not hasted (to dodge VF), being mantled will absorb that too anyway.

2500 HP is a friendly number for an offensive caster. You can get there.

Invoker wrote: QFT!!

and, if you're not hasted (to dodge VF), being mantled will absorb that too anyway.

2500 HP is a friendly number for an offensive caster. You can get there.

Except you've already spent all your spells getting there...

Deathgrowl wrote:

Invoker wrote: QFT!!

and, if you're not hasted (to dodge VF), being mantled will absorb that too anyway.

2500 HP is a friendly number for an offensive caster. You can get there.

Except you've already spent all your spells getting there...

Mantles come from wand. One of Many boss holding the key can be killed with an Empowered Undeath to Death. Big chunks of the Vault can be skipped with Etherealness. Extended Firewall can kill as many Undead as you want.

No. I won't.

The funny story is, doing all these things (Balor, Draco, King, Epic Areas...) is even easier on:

-) Druid
-) Warlock
-) Bard
-) FS
-) Cleric
-) Sorc
-) Tanky DD

and many more. UMD WM/FB was right there with them, until now.

That's to explain why only new players talk about "OP" mages. Experienced ones know full well just how many builds can do just that (with different means, of course).

so basically KH should be happy...anyone that wants to play a non-caster must make a Dwarven Defender to be useful/not require the aid of his or her betters. :p

chad878262 wrote:so basically KH should be happy...anyone that wants to play a non-caster must make a Dwarven Defender to be useful/not require the aid of his or her betters. :p

When you see my former post, and you notice there are only Barbarian, Swash and Rogue out of it (because Fighter is there in two builds at least, and there are a few more decent ones), do you think it's time to nerf all the others, or help these three classes (not necessarily buffing, but balancing the world accordingly)?

You're QC. You tell me .

Invoker wrote: The funny story is, doing all these things (Balor, Draco, King, Epic Areas...) is even easier on:

-) Druid
-) Warlock
-) Bard
-) FS
-) Cleric
-) Sorc
-) Tanky DD

That is my entire point. People keep throwing out that wizards are the masters of this. That meleers can't do anything now. Which is just utter male bovine excrement.

I see one melee in there, the rests are casters

Two if you include the meleer that has to relay on magic to get shit done

Bobthehero wrote: Two if you include the meleer that has to relay on magic to get (#2) done

Five. Sorcerer and warlock are the only of those that rely more on offensive magic than the rest.

So you're including full casters as meleers now?

Okay