Rafael deal to save Orpheus

[Alex6D12HD]

What results I need to expect if you deal with Rafael, and use hammer to save Orpheus?
Or better just kicked Rafael ass?

[Tresh]

Originally posted by Jaeleth:

Originally posted by Tresh:

I avoided cheesing anything in my first playthrough and I found the fight against Viconia and the Sharrans to be way more difficult.

This fight is quite hard, yes. BUT, there is (at least) one way to make it easy. It is not "cheesing" it is simply to use one of the older military strategy recipes... "Make the enemy fight in the ground you chose". So, move forward with only 1, leave all the party (and summons) behind, in the staircase. Fight starts, withdraw and make them chase you in the narrow corridor OR (my preferred strategy) cast wall of fire to lock the corridor entrance. Yes, the Sharrans will cast darkness, but you can always counter with light AND / OR move away further into the corridor and force them to come to you, small numbers at time. Force a larger force to walk into a bottle neck where they'll be facing you one-on-one and gather together behind, then launch AoE (Black Hole the bastards into the wall of fire constantly... Beautiful :D )

300 Spartans held The entire Parthian army at the Thermopylae for 2 days, giving time for the Greek army to organize, using a similar tactic. It is not cheese, it is tactics.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I have no issues fighting the Sharrans now that I know what the fight is about, but I was trying to compare my first fight against Raphael - going in blind - against my first fight with the Sharrans - also going in blind.

[Ghost]

Originally posted by Jaeleth:

300 Spartans held The entire Parthian army at the Thermopylae for 2 days, giving time for the Greek army to organize, using a similar tactic. It is not cheese, it is tactics.

Yeah.... so that's not exactly true. It's a nice story though.

But yes, walling and bottle-necking is pretty much always an effective strategy. Particularly if you combine it with some control magic and ground effects.

[JODEGAFUN]

Originally posted by Jaeleth:

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

If you want to avoid making a deal with Raphael, then you're going to have to break into his home and steal the hammer for yourself.

If you try to ignore him, he will show up at the last moment and force you to agree to his bargain. If you still refuse to sign a contract with him at this point, he automatically kills the entire party, just like Vlaakith if you insult her during the creche meeting.

I reeeeeally hate these scripted fights... I'd dare Raphael to try to honestly kill me (and my entire beefed up party, lol) at game ending, alone... He can't do it in his house, in Avernus, with his entourage of cambions, Yurgir, Korilla and his 4 pillars of souls and he manages to one-shot the entire party on the prime? lol, bad scripting.

The same with a projection of Vlaakith... (Although Vlaakith would be far more powerful than Raphael... It's just a projection)

I am not so sure how powerfull Raphael really is. He is a cambion, so normal not so high ranked as a pure devil normally, but his father is not a common devil. His father is Mephistofeles, one of the most powerfull archdevils.

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by Jaeleth:

I reeeeeally hate these scripted fights... I'd dare Raphael to try to honestly kill me (and my entire beefed up party, lol) at game ending, alone... He can't do it in his house, in Avernus, with his entourage of cambions, Yurgir, Korilla and his 4 pillars of souls and he manages to one-shot the entire party on the prime? lol, bad scripting.

The same with a projection of Vlaakith... (Although Vlaakith would be far more powerful than Raphael... It's just a projection)

Vlaakith is casting WISH to kill your party. If that wasn't made obvious by how she keeps emphasizing "I wish" right before you all drop dead. She may be a false goddess, but she's still a powerful Lich.


As for Raphael, he may be a Cambion, but he is also the son of Mephistopheles, the Arch Devil of the 8th layer of Hell. I'm pretty sure that might come with some extra power beyond what his kind usually get access to.


--------------------

Devils can only be truly killed on their home plane, the Nine Hells. If they are killed anywhere else, they just respawn back in Hell.

That means that when you kill him in Avernus, he dies permanently. But if you kill him on the Prime, he just goes back home to recover. This is a battle of attrition, where Raphael has infinite retries, and your party only has to screw up once.

Under the circumstance you fight him, he has one try too. But yes otherwise if you found no way to reach him in Avernus he is not finally gone.

[Chaos]

Originally posted by Alex6D12HD:

What results I need to expect if you deal with Rafael, and use hammer to save Orpheus?
Or better just kicked Rafael ass?

Kick his magnificent bastard arse. There's a couple of other really good items you can pick up in the House of Hope too like an amulet that boosts a chars constitution to 23 and some gloves that do strength, they are handy, it's also more fun and more content to play. Plus if you bonk the succubus then after ask her/him what Raphael is like in bed then when you confront Raphael you get a hilarious line you can say to him. There an adorable bonkers dwarf in there too, if you knock out her sister (non lethal passive) rather than kill her during the Raph fight she will appreciate that.

After you beat him there's a crystal ball in Devil's Fee that mentions whats happening to him after.

If you take the deal you get a unique little cinematic at the end with the man himself. Giving a devil like Raphael a very powerful artefact like the Crown of Karsus is going to have repercussions., unless causing chaos was your objective then carry on.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Jaeleth:

Hmmm... "I wish a creature dies..." is, at least in the old rules books, named as the "perfect" recipe for disaster (for the caster). Add to this the fact that the wish was cast on the spot, I give 1/1000 chance of Vlaakith not being sent to a distant future and loose her empire in the process, with me and my party laughing all the way back out of the Rosymorn Monastery. Particularly given that, with the simple phraseology she used, even a simpleton like me could find a flaw in her casting and send her there myself :D

Casting WISH also used to age the caster by 10 years back in previous editions.

In its current edition, WISH can be used to simulate the effects of any arcane spell of 9th level or lower, as well as perform some additional features. However, if you use it for anything other than replicating a spell, you have a 33% chance of never being able to use it again.

Wishing for the party's destruction could easily be accomplished with a variety of different spells.

Power Word Kill - Speak the word and they drop dead.

Wail of the Banshee - AoE instant kill.

Weird - Also an AoE instant kill

Implosion - Effectively summons a black hole inside their body.

Finger of Death - Point to a target and rip out their soul.

[Simon McAllister]

Originally posted by Яeplicant:

Originally posted by Sonrangeri:

Rafael is killable, but you need prepare battlefield carefully. On boss room where you face him, you can setup bombs and such to all pillars before even starting fight. Split your party, with fire-based ability to all positions if possible, and as soon as fight start, your goal is killing all towers in that room asap. You do get bonus healer in party too, and you can turn his "friend" against him with persuasion.

You really don't need any prep work for that encounter, if you're having a decent to good enough team setup or are more or less steamrolling through Act 3 in general. Yurgir, however, could be a problem, if you need to persuade him to switch sides.

The faster you destroy the pillars the easier it is to deal with Raphael as he draws souls from them allowing up to cast some rather nasty spells. Which he can't if you quickly destroy them.

[Mike Garrison]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

In its current edition, WISH can be used to simulate the effects of any arcane spell of 9th level or lower

Given that Wish is *also* a 9th level spell, this really never made a lot of sense. You spend a 9th level spell slot to get the effect of a 9th or lower spell slot. Hmm.

I suppose it could mean that you don't have to decide which 9th level spell to prepare. Just prepare Wish and you can cast any of them. But in that case, why are there even 9th-level spells at all? Why not just one 9th-level spell Wish, and then list the effects of all the other 9th-level spells as possible variations?

Then again, apparently Wish can replicate any spell without using any material components. So if you play using the material components rule, that could be really important. (But how many people really worry about material components?)

[Ghost]

Originally posted by Mike Garrison:

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

In its current edition, WISH can be used to simulate the effects of any arcane spell of 9th level or lower

Given that Wish is *also* a 9th level spell, this really never made a lot of sense. You spend a 9th level spell slot to get the effect of a 9th or lower spell slot. Hmm.

I suppose it could mean that you don't have to decide which 9th level spell to prepare. Just prepare Wish and you can cast any of them. But in that case, why are there even 9th-level spells at all? Why not just one 9th-level spell Wish, and then list the effects of all the other 9th-level spells as possible variations?

Then again, apparently Wish can replicate any spell without using any material components. So if you play using the material components rule, that could be really important. (But how many people really worry about material components?)

It's 8th or lower isn't it? Unless that's been changed in the 2024 update. Would assume the reason it doesn't just list the effects is because there's already a list attached - replicating spells is just one of the options.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Ghost:

It's 8th or lower isn't it? Unless that's been changed in the 2024 update. Would assume the reason it doesn't just list the effects is because there's already a list attached - replicating spells is just one of the options.

Huh... I swear that feels like a recent change. I'm positive that it was previously 9th level and lower. That's kind of what made WISH one of the most powerful spells in the game, because it could replicate any arcane effect.

----------------

Anyways, you can use WISH to simulate arcane spells without issue. But if you try to use it for a different effect outside of that criteria, you have a 33% chance of never being able to cast it again.

[Mike Garrison]

OK, yeah, the online sources all say "any spell of 8th level or lower". So that would at least explain why there are other 9th level spells.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Mike Garrison:

OK, yeah, the online sources all say "any spell of 8th level or lower". So that would at least explain why there are other 9th level spells.

Hmm, seems that WISH was removed from Pathfinder in the new remaster, as it's not even listed on Nethys Archives. But I managed to find this:

Manifestation: 10th Level

Tradition: Arcane

Effect: You spin secrets from the fundaments of magic, shaping them into a power with nearly unlimited potential. You duplicate a spell of 9th rank or lower of the tradition from which you cast manifestation, or a spell of 7th rank or lower from any tradition. Though you can normally choose only spells that are common or to which you have access, the GM might allow broader options.

[Millstone85]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Hmm, seems that WISH was removed from Pathfinder in the new remaster, as it's not even listed on Nethys Archives.

BG3 is part of D&D, not of its competitor Pathfinder.

[rubberducky102760]

Just a couple of things...
All hell breaks loose when you steal the hammer or other items on display. Raphael starts returning from his day trip the minute you steal something from the Archive, but won't get there until you try to enter the portal. You can thin his ranks by killing off the debtors (who turn into merregons when you hit them), and the two roaming fireballs early, and though everything in the building except Hope turns hostile, Raphael still doesn't show up until you leave. If you can persuade Yurgir to fight with you, that's another bonus & extra hand. Although I wouldn't call him super helpful, he does keep Raph distracted while you're trying to destroy the soul pillars. At times he can be very focused on Yurgir (probably because he's invisible), and will ignore characters standing right next to him. You can also polymorph or banish a couple of merregons here & there for crowd control. I've done barrelmancy on the pillars just for kicks, but you can win this battle handily without it.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Millstone85:

BG3 is part of D&D, not of its competitor Pathfinder.

I'm aware.