Act 2 boss fight

[Gamekight]

Am i too underleved for the Balthazar fight? My party is level 7 and he immediately one shots one of my party members as soon as the fight begins

[AokiYakumo]

Typically you get to Balty by lv. 8/9, so technically yes you are under-leveled.

That said, he's cheesable.

Bring someone who knows Knock, Knock his bedroom door in the gauntlet, get him involved in the Justiciar Fight. He burns his Haste potion there, and if you time it right, you get 2 whole turns to burst him down which is easy to do with most party setups.

Remember, his gimmick is he is a mage boss: meaning very high damage and magic bullsh*t shenanigans, but like 80 HP and a middling AC. If he goes down before he gets any of his major attacks off, or you break his concentration on Cloudkill . . . he's doneskies.

[Ironwu]

There are probably a lot of things going on here that changing would help. But yes, Lvl 7 is a level or two to low.

Without major changes, you could switch to Explorer for the fight. Or, there are more significant changes you could make.

That being said, you are on the path to even harder fights, so there is that. :/

[Dizzy Ladybug]

use counterspell to cancel his spells, along with the advice above

[AokiYakumo]

Originally posted by dizzy ladybug:

use counterspell to cancel his spells, along with the advice above

Another one that's a classic is . . . He's undead. Smites and Turn Undead do pretty good on him as well.

Other than that, this would be the one fight where prepping poison resist is actually useful since all he casts if Ray of Sickness and Cloudkill, both of which do poison damage.

[Steffan]

Originally posted by Gamekight:

Am i too underleved for the Balthazar fight? My party is level 7 and he immediately one shots one of my party members as soon as the fight begins

You can beat that fight at level 7, if you have at least one character with counterspell and any means to counter paralysis. I also used elixir of vigillance on my main. I had Wyll, SH, a sorcerer and Astarion ( I had just levelled up after Yurgir, which is a more difficult fight). I did not feel the fight was that tough but I did lose Wyll in the process and had to resurrect him.

A small but important detail is that Flesh, the golem of Balthazar, was used as a meat shield in a previous fight and had died, so Balthazar did not have his strongest minion around. Also there was only one of his skeletons still living (but very badly injured). His ghouls were his only bodyguards.

P.S. The difficulty was on Tactician, played in September 2023

P.S.2 Arrows of arcane interference, sussur dagger, elixirs of poison resistance are also very useful but I did not use any of them (lack of experience, I guess).