That's It For Minsc

[danconnors]

The dim witted ♥♥♥♥♥♥ has killed my last party member. I have gotten so sick and tired of him attacking and killing my party members in the middle of fights that the last time he died in a fight, after offing one of my party members, I stripped his items, then removed him from the party.

There is no excuse for such pathetic stupidity, and he will no longer get away with it. Must make a note for future games to never let him out of the cage in the first place. The last party member he whacked was Aerie, who happened to have the only raise dead spell in the party

[red255]

If you are allowing evil characters, nobody doubts Korgan and Dorn Kick ass.

I gave Dorn foebane and the equilizer. Summon Fallen Deva is immune to alot of schenanigans and he can get an extra use per level per rest.

[two_or_three_raptors]

Publicado originalmente por The Terminator!!:

So let's not even compare Minsc with any fighters, because you know OP and myself are not keen on him. Let's compare Minsc with Imoen. You know lore-wise, Imoen is a Bhaal Spawn and therefore much better than Minsc. She can just kick Minsc's @ss and his hamster without even flinching and just with bare hands (your logic).

This one you will have to explain to me. Why is this my logic? We were talking about fighters, Imoen is not.

And one final time for you buddy: Minsc best Fighter? No! Minsc good enough fighter? Yes!

The only thing that all the fighter dum dums absolutely need to do is hit the enemy with a big stick in the head. There are enough big sticks in the game. Two pips in a weapon talent are enough to hit things with a stick. Damage comes from high strength, which comes from items/buffs.

All the rest like berserker feat, grand mastery and so on is nice to have, but if you lack it, it's absolutely no dealbreaker. Magic can make up for almost anything in this game.

I'm not trying to convince you to pick Minsc over any other stick beater in the game. Do whatever makes you happy. I am just saying that the differences between all the fighers is not that high, because most of ther power comes from their equipment.

[danconnors]

My PC and Korgan are berserkers, rendering them proof against most magical attacks while they're enraged. I thought it would make the group even more powerful with a 3rd, but Minsc couldn't be made into a reliable berserker. The addition of berserkers to my party enables the tactics I have chosen; two or three normal fighters would render the same tactics useless.

Fighters milling around in confused, frightened, charmed condition are absolutely useless to my party. So, I rephrase; I need fighter/berserkers to run my type of tactics effectively.

[two_or_three_raptors]

Choatic Commands and Remove Fear do about the same. In every party that has a priest. And they last quite long. Okay you don't get protection from level drain, but there is a buff for that as well (and items), and you don't need that very often.

[not sure if serious] Would it not be better to choose kensai over berserker then? If you have a priest in the group you basically become a kensai/berserker/mage for the total cheese fest. [/not]

[red255]

you should totally do a party with MC beserker, Korgan, minsc and wilson.

raging it up.

[danconnors]

The spell remove fear usually fails to work on my affected fighters. It's just not affective--for me. I must risk casters to get close enough to use the spells. Berserkers deal more damage, more reliably than normal fighters. They are more likely to hit, inflict more damage, and be less likely to take damage than regular fighters.

Of course they have only one turn to do their damage, and after that the situation reverses. Thus they have a strictly limited amount of time to resolve the battle. Almost certainly they will not have time to recuperate to the point of launching a second rage in the same battle. Who is Wilson?

[red255]

Publicado originalmente por danconnors:

Who is Wilson?

Wilson is an EE additional character found if Neera's hidden refuge is active, and you do Rassad's quest, when you get to the shadow temple you either save the caged bear by buying the bear or...killing everyone.

the bear proceeds to join your party, his name is Wilson.

http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Wilson

For the purposes of this topic, he can use rage once every 6 levels.

[Vladislak]

Despite it's name Remove Fear works as a preventative spell. You don't need to target your fighters after they've become afraid for it to be effective. Really just cast Remove Fear once on your party before any battle and you generally won't have to worry about fear effects (provided the enemy doesn't dispel your buffs). Resist Fear works like that too. Same with Chaotic commands. I tend to throw in Death Ward on any characters I absolutely can't afford to see dropped by a death spell (my cleric for example).

Unless you're fighting an enemy that frequently dispels your buffs then you really shouldn't have to worry about fear effects or being dominated in any way. A little preperation goes a long way in the BG games.

Admittedly you may not have chaotic commands for a while in the game, but enemies that dominate you should be very rare until you do have access to that spell.

That's not even mentioning the various items that protect from these kinds of effects. For example Helms of Charm protection aren't terribly hard to come by as there are 5 of them in the game (one can even be simply bought at the temple of Lathander).

There's really no reason why anyone with a Cleric should have their fighters be dominated or effected by fear effects. If they are then either you're dealing with an enemy that dispels buffs (surprisingly rare), or you simply didn't prepare for the battle properly.

[red255]

yeah the planetar and devas come with resist fear as I recall. fear being one of those annoying things that gets cast on your party all the time along with chaos.

I only use chaotic commands vs flayers usually. the individual usage is annoying as heck. but I suppose you could hotkey it.

[✪ Wuhan Warrior 🍉🍉]

All fear effects entitles the victims to a save vs spell at no penalty. At higher levels it is almost impossible to pull off an effective or reliable fear spell on just about anyone. Chaos/Confusion on the other hand is possible due to victims having the need to make their saves at - 4.

Ps: I'm a mage player and have finished bg2 and tob at least 10 times.

[✪ Wuhan Warrior 🍉🍉]

Also I don't know why OP is constantly having to worry about effects that disable party members. Every party should have a mage and its the mage's job or both the mage/fighter in combination to kill or disable the enemy's mages first.

Mages are pretty OP in the 4th edition of AD&D universe and I can tell you letting just one successfully cast a time stop will absolutely ruin your party no matter what equipment they have.

[red255]

In BG2 my solution is to just summon a deva, and send him off to 'play nice' with the mage

the rest of my party is a ways off out of sight, the deva get the time stop wasted on him. or several time stops. eventually after he runs out of spells my party shows up yells SURPRISE. and kills the mage.

[Vladislak]

Well that works fine, but you can't summon a Deva until very late in the game. Prior to that things like Remove/Resist Fear, Chaotic Commands, and Death Ward can be the difference between soundly defeating your foes and getting a game over.

I agree that it sucks that Chaotic Commands only targets one person (as does Death Ward for that matter), but with a little strategy you only need a few of your party members with that sort of thing anyways. Just put them on a couple tanks and have them go out ahead of the others and the enemies will likely waste their confusion/domination/death abilities on them since they're the first foes they see.

But yeah Timestop is an issue no matter what and you never know what spells the enemy has prepared so you often should prioritize killing spellcasters in the first place.

[red255]

I generally take a divide and conquer approach.

see you run in, the spell casters put on buffs while the melee charges you, so you fall back and the melee chases you down. leaving the spellcasters behind.

then you off the melee. and the spellcaster buffs wear off, you show up wearing the armor of the fallen tanks. say 'sup magus and slaughter some mages.

[Vladislak]

Haha! Yeah getting them away from their meat shields usually makes them a lot easier. I did something like that in level 5 of the Watcher's Keep, it makes a very difficult battle much easier if you managed to seperate the foes from one another.

Keldorn really shined in that fight as I recall. God bless that dispel ability of his. :P