Best buffs in-game?

[zeeb]

I'm really struggling to figure out which buffs are worth taking and which buffs are not.

I would appreciate it if anyone could post which buffs are the best, both Divine and Arcane, also why they're good. On top of this, if there is anything else that makes for great defense, I'd love to hear it. I know AC is good, but never wrapped my head around resistances, they seem to be flat damage reduction? Is AC > Resistance?

Would love to make an epic tank build, if you also have an idea for such a beast then posting a quick "Class (Levels) / Class (Levels)" would be appreciated, no need to go in depth!

Thanks in advance!

[red255]

So if you got stoneskin, you take 10/+5 damage reduction until you run out of stoneskin.

if you have damage resistance from like a Dwarven defender you suck off damage of 6/- at level 10 and 21/- at level 30.

so you take 10 points of damage, the defender eats 6 of it, and the stoneskin eats 4 of it, leaving 96 points on your stoneskin.

If you neglect AC though you might get knocked down or otherwise punished by ranged touch attacks.

Stoneskin being particularly great because you can cast it on your helpers. instead of just yourself like greater stoneskin and premonition.

in the first campaign potions are common drops but the GOOD potions are the potions of HEAL which heal 100% of your hit points, or the scrolls of greater restoration.

which you can buy in shops for about 2000 for the potions of heal and 4-5000 for the scrolls of restoration. its Expensive but the campaign rains high value treasure to sell that its easily affordable.

I mean most potions heal for like 20 but the potions of heal fully heal you which is like 10x better.

you want Buffs? the Cleric has two types of buffs, short term buffs, and long term buffs, theres also bard song which is pretty mindless but it does good things.

the good short term buffs are generally Divine Favor, Battle Tide and Divine Strength things I like combining with EXTEND SPELL..

the good long tern buffs are....this gets lengthy. but in general +STAT, Aid, Bless, Barkskin, Darkfire/flame weapon, Greater magic weapon, Divine Vestment.

if you were to buff your henchmen or summon Stoneskin and Flameweapon or darkfire are typically enough.

[zeeb]

Stoneskin has 10/+5, what is that +5?
6/- = 6 flat damage reduction.
A little confused as to what the "/-" indicates or why it's there.

All in all, I mighty thank you for your answer and the time you put into the post, much appreciated!

Now I'm starting to understand.

[Tesseract]

The number after the slash indicates how powerful a magic weapon has to be to ignore the DR. A dash means nothing can ignore it.

[zeeb]

Ah okay, thanks a lot!

[n00bdragon]

For premier tanking you really want a wizard. Wizards get access to Stoneskin, Greater Stoneskin, and Premonition giving them excellent physical resistances when things actually manage to hit them and can give them an effective health pool far larger than entire team of barbarians. Only certain varieties of cleric can cast Stoneskin without the aid of items and none of them can access Greater Stoneskin or Premonition.

Improved Invisibility should be considered the gold standard of tanking spells. Even after the invisibility wears off the recipient retains a 50% miss chance for a whole minute per level. Miss chance is incredibly powerful because it doesn't care what your AC is or what the attack bonus of your attacker is. It's just a flat chance to avoid a hit entirely before they ever get to roll to actually hit you. Only certain varieties of clerics can get this spell.

Beyond that Wizards have access to a plethora of spells to jack their AC into the stratosphere.
* Mage Armor provides +1 natural, +1 dodge, +1 deflection, and +1 armor enhancement bonus. Depending on your equipment this may mean you get as little as just the dodge bonus, but you will always get the dodge bonus since it stacks with everything, even other dodge bonuses.
* Shield (the spell) provides a +4 deflection bonus. It doesn't stack with other deflection bonuses but you will have to get quite deep into the game before you see an item with a deflection bonus this high.
* Cat's Grace provides +2-3 AC by way of a dexterity increase. This stacks with everything up to the +12 base dex cap.
* Haste provides +4 AC (as well as letting you kite most melee enemies AND cast two spells per round)
* (this is an exploit) The Shadow Conjuration version of Mage Armor stacks with itself, meaning that every casting of it provides +1 dodge bonus, up to the +20 dodge AC cap.
* Bigby's Interposing Hand isn't technically a spell that increases your AC but it will apply a -10 attack penalty (which is as good as +10 AC) to a single target without even the decency of a saving throw.
* Shadow Shield provides a +5 natural AC bonus as well as unlimited 10/+3 DR and a variety of great immunities. It won't stack with your Mage Armor in regards to AC but you are unlikely to find an item that gives such a high natural AC bonus so this is generally a huge AC increase.

For those of you keeping score at home, a wizard with all those buffs would effectively have a +29 to his AC, counting Bigby's but not counting shadow conjuration exploits.

But why stop there? Wizards also have three damage shield spells in Death Armor, Elemental Shield, and Mestil's Acid Sheathe for anything that actually does manage to hit a level 20 wizard would be subject to 1d4+3d6+65 damage. Per hit.

But why stop there? If after all of that you still can't tank whatever it is just summon a Black Blade of Disaster. They are completely immune to everything (Literally. They are marked as Plot creatures in the game). That will tank absolutely anything and everything all at once for you.

[zeeb]

What a legend.
A great post with lots of useful information.

Thanks a lot for the investment, it will prove mighty useful!

[red255]

If you really want the Stoneskin, greater and premonition, the druid gets those and can wear some armor.

was thinking the cleric gets premonition with time domain but apparently thats NWN2.

For most purposes a cleric wearing Enduiku's armor with magic vestment and stoneskin is going to be well protected. things don't hit that hard.

so like if you are taking 12 damage a hit, the armor class of your thing is going to make alot of attacks miss.

of the attacks that DO hit, 5 damage is reduced, so you only take 7 damage from stoneskin. and you can take 14 hits before it starts touching your actual HP and you can restore your own HP easily enough.

Maybe later on you might need something more impressive. but a good old enduiku armor enchanted to +5 with Divine vestment, maybe toss on a tower shield enchanted to +5 with divine Vestment. and some stoneskin. you are pretty well protected.

improved invisibility is also a great spell because it adds 50% concealment for a decent length of time which makes 50% of things miss you.

A cleric with magic and trickery domain is a damn hard to smush if its got its AC buffs and Stoneskin and improved invisibility going.

[zeeb]

Yeah I actually made a Cleric especially with Magic and Trickery, for Stoneskin and Imp Invisibility.

Anyway, thanks guys for your inputs, it's been very useful for me and helped me understand the game in a wider sense than just Hack & Slash.

[Kuba]

There is also arcane spell called spell mantle. Very useful especially against nasty things, like Bigby's Hands which basically can disable a melee fighter

[elvendualwielder]

Haste is hands down one of the best too. Why? An additional attack at full BAB, +4 to AC, and moves twice as fast (also doubles any other speed bonus you get, like monk speed). It makes it a no brainer.

[red255]

its great but NWN, had lots of persistant haste on gear, short sword of quickness, boots of speed, chainmail of speed, robes of the dark moon. boots of the shifting sands.

and the spell doesn't last very long.

so between a short term spell and a permanent gear enchantment, I'd take haste from my gear.

before you get gear its a good potion spell.