Help me create my deadly rogue!

cbarchuk · Post by **cbarchuk** » Tue May 08, 2012 7:19 pm

I hear ya man and I totally agree. I currently waltzed through 4 levels in Watcher's keep solo with an elven fighter/thief. What a beast!

Crenshinibon · Post by **Crenshinibon** » Tue May 08, 2012 9:10 pm

You can tackle those levels by either setting traps up at the start and using your faithful dart and the summons that you have acquired so far. Potions are a huge help in providing immunities and improvements to your character. Personally, I think it's much easier to return after you get UAI, since you have much more options at your disposal.

Worst case, you can always run past the room if you deem it too difficult.

You really have to rely on the activated item effects as well as the scrolls and potions at your disposal in certain scenarios. They really help hide the faults of your class and can even augment your role from the core assassin, to a fighter, to a mage.

cbarchuk · Post by **cbarchuk** » Tue May 08, 2012 10:35 pm

Thanks again for the assassin help. I just finished all of Watcher's Keep as a solo elven fighter/thief and it was the easiest its ever been for me. Now granted, It was only vanilla and on core difficulty but hey...I'm not very good...lol.:laugh:

I like the assassin class a lot. I've played one in almost every edition of D&D so I have a soft spot for them. I just know it would be substantially harder to do what i just did in Watcher's keep with an assassin. There are so many baddies immune to backstab and I assume poison. Minus those two things, you're rolling with a just plain thief with a slightly better THACO. Now granted my fighter/thief was maximum level so I was fully decked out in HLA's. Fighter and thief HLAs were devastating. Rogue Rebalancing mod has a pretty cool version of the assassin that I've messed with a time or two and it's pretty good. It's got pros and cons though with its major con that it nerfs the poison ability big time. I'm not completely sold on it.
Nevertheless I'm going to really give this assassin a go. I'm just worried that he'll eventually become more of a mage wannabe as opposed to an assassin. I think the designers should have thought about some of these things so certain class wouldn't end up useless. Just my opinion.

Crenshinibon · Post by **Crenshinibon** » Tue May 08, 2012 10:53 pm

I believe that the demons you encounter in Watcher's keep are not immune to poison, just as well, while demons CAN see through your stealth, you can still backstab - just be sure to catch them from behind while they're busy with a decoy.

I don't think that any class is useless through any point of the game, however, arcane spell casters were shown a lot of favor, so needless to say, the spells you gain from scrolls are very powerful. Personally, I only ever use them on boss fights, especially those that are related to ToB.

There's nothing wrong with utilizing wands however - they really help you clear areas faster. As a fighter/thief, and other such classes, you don't really have such a reliance on items but instead use (no offense meant) brute force - taking advantage of the resources at hand out of necessity will improve your understanding of how to build an itemize your character.

If you're looking for an interesting combination, try the Cleric/Thief... however, from personal experience a fighter/cleric or a Kensai/Cleric is the real death-dealer in the game.

cbarchuk · Post by **cbarchuk** » Wed May 09, 2012 8:02 am

Yea I've heard about Fighter/Clerics. I haven't played one but I'm sure your right. What I do like about Fighter/Thieves is they still level extremely fast for a multi-class.

Also what made this particular easy for me, solo-wise, is I finally learned to switch weapons and not stick to the same weapon. My character primarily uses long swords and short swords so I've kept and used every single one I've come across. I've done this with other items as well. Picking the right instrument for the job helps a lot. I'm sure you guys are like...well no duh!!!!:laugh: I guess better late than never...lol.:laugh: So I'm still learning after all this time which is what makes this game great.

I agree with you about scrolls. With my fighter/thief I've only been using scrolls if I absolutely have to which is usually on boss fights. Like I said before, I did hit maximum level pretty quick so HLAs are extremely helpful.

Going back to the assassin, I went to watcher's keep and quickly grabbed the crimson dart along with the magical quiver of +1 arrows. So hopefully I'll do better this time using everything I've finally learned from my fighter/thief. My goal: To solo the game with an assassin.

EDIT: Yo Cren. How in the world do I kill Rayic Gethras? I can't even hit him much less poison him.

EDIT UPDATE: Ring of Air Control(Improved Invisibility) along with acid arrows. I didn't acid arrows went through mage defenses. Once his shields and stoneskins were down, I poisoned him and he went down fast. Learned something new again!

Crenshinibon · Post by **Crenshinibon** » Wed May 09, 2012 3:33 pm

Good job on that fight. Against mages, you can use potions (and scrolls) that give you immunity to either spells in general or magic damage. As you've found out, elemental damage does go through magic defenses, as such, the Flail of Ages tends to be very helpful.

For this reason, I like to grab the Firetooh +4 early on as well. It's a pretty damaging weapon, especially with Improved Haste.

cbarchuk · Post by **cbarchuk** » Wed May 09, 2012 7:41 pm

Yea it was awesome. Part of the fun is still learning tactics with classes. I really want to try and use the assassin's main arsenal(poison and backstab) as much as possible and only venture outside of that box if I have to. It's funny though, most of these tactics I'm just now learning have been around a while...lol.

Crenshinibon · Post by **Crenshinibon** » Wed May 09, 2012 10:18 pm

Most of the fights can be solved that way, however, unfortunately you have to deviate from that playstyle due to the nature of the enemies you encounter and the progression of the battle, especially in ToB.

toughchan · Post by **toughchan** » Thu May 10, 2012 3:41 pm

Space Invader wrote: Btw, with mods like Tactics or SCSII, the most common string you read as a fighter is "Weapon ineffective"

Haha so true, that's why it's very tough to use Katana for Tatics mods so I often start out with Celestial Fury (one hell of a battle just to get the damn katana so you'd be better off buying the +4 one in the bonus merchant in slum) + belm and then build up Flail for Flail of Ages and hammer for crom faeyr dual. (you still want to keep a katana on one of the primary slot so you can backstap with it <3 ).
For Assassin class, I love using that class against mages, that's like a mage killing machine with the poison (and later Assassination, time trap and spike trap).

cbarchuk · Post by **cbarchuk** » Thu May 10, 2012 6:38 pm

Yea I'm a big assassin fan and thief fan in general. The only wicked combo I haven't tried yet is the whole kensai/thief I keep hearing about. I started one once before but I didn't know how to get past the kensai's initial weaknesses so I quit. I've learned a lot since then so maybe it will be better for me this time around. All I hear is how amazing the class is so I figure I need to finally see this for myself.

cbarchuk · Post by **cbarchuk** » Thu May 10, 2012 6:45 pm

toughchan wrote:Haha so true, that's why it's very tough to use Katana for Tatics mods so I often start out with Celestial Fury (one hell of a battle just to get the damn katana so you'd be better off buying the +4 one in the bonus merchant in slum) + belm and then build up Flail for Flail of Ages and hammer for crom faeyr dual. (you still want to keep a katana on one of the primary slot so you can backstap with it <3 ).
For Assassin class, I love using that class against mages, that's like a mage killing machine with the poison (and later Assassination, time trap and spike trap).

Yea I don't use any tactics mods because I think it ultimately imbalances the game making certain items/weapons and classes utterly useless.

toughchan · Post by **toughchan** » Thu May 10, 2012 7:35 pm

yeah, I play Tatics mod and i found out that it's not actually impossible or made for macho people, it's just not...right, not polished and a bit unprofessional.

One shining example is the Druid challenge battle in the Trade Meet quest. Probably you already know the quest and the challenge battle in the vanilla version: a dark druid takes over the cove by challenging and defeating the former head druid, so now we have to have another druid (either Jaheira or Cern or yourself if you are playing druid) challenge her to take back the leadership. Here's what happened in Tatics. Basically, i took Cern on the battle (because he got Iron Skins already while I didn't train Jaherra so her spellcasting sucks-i was playing solo that time).

Sooooo into the battle, immediately, the dark druid summons 3 nightmare wolves which is nowhere a threat to us seasoned BG players, the real threat is actually the druid herself since she transforms into an unbelievable strong leopard which has like 3-4 attacks a round, each strike of her takes around 20-40 damages, the druid is hasted and protected with iron skins, spell turning and a sh*ton of other protective spells. To make the matter worse, all of her summoning spell and buff and morph were done within ONE combat round. But that's not too bad, one combat round is plenty enough for us to prepare for it. So what's my problem? I soloed the whole game with a Fighter/Mage/Thief so I didn't train any druid, so no other druids are available except for Cern and Jaheira. And to be honest, I seriously doubt if any fighter could even stand toe on toe with her in such unfavorable situation, let alone pure druid or Fighter/druid like Jaheira (oh right, on top of that, you are stripped off all the magic items). My char wasn't a druid either so I had to use Cern who only has access to 2 level 5 Druid and 1 attack a round...needless to say, i nearly went crazy because i totally got scrapped by this battle so many times. My last tatic worked after about 20 reloads. In short, i memoried 2 Iron Skin for Cern and then summon animal II-III over and over again and used the summons to wall-block the druid (and let's not forget about her damn wolves). I got lucky with my 20th or something try when I got to summon 4 cave bears and a wolf, whose Thaco was nowhere good enough to hit her (out of the 5 beasts i (luckily) summoned, I will have one hit connected per 5 rounds or something, and then, let's not forget about her Iron Skin and super armor class). Cern is not supposed to get close to the druid because as I said, she has the range of a two handed weapon (ironically, the only weapon you are allowed to have is a 2 handed staff (not magical at all), the sucky staff that every level 1 party starts with...that was when I realized that, the people who made Tatics didn't make this game fun or "challenging" anymore, it was about luck and using luck to win is not acceptable in a tatical game like this. Rather than having us using our brains and skills, this mod made us using our "luck" and "powerword: reload". That's the bad thing about Tatics mod. If I were you, I would never run an assassin through the mod because the mod is not balanced nor beatable without cheesing the **** out the Infinity engine.

Crenshinibon · Post by **Crenshinibon** » Thu May 10, 2012 9:44 pm

I would suggest the Kensai/Cleric instead. I tried the Kensai/Thief and I honsetly can't say that it's any fun - for me at least. The character is strong at all points of the game, especially since the Kensai has virtually no disadvantages at the start.

The Kensai/Cleric can destroy most opponents with a single hit (or rather two hits, since the first one bring them down to 1d4 life) - much more interesting in my opinion.

cbarchuk · Post by **cbarchuk** » Thu May 10, 2012 9:55 pm

toughchan wrote:yeah, I play Tatics mod and i found out that it's not actually impossible or made for macho people, it's just not...right, not polished and a bit unprofessional.

One shining example is the Druid challenge battle in the Trade Meet quest. Probably you already know the quest and the challenge battle in the vanilla version: a dark druid takes over the cove by challenging and defeating the former head druid, so now we have to have another druid (either Jaheira or Cern or yourself if you are playing druid) challenge her to take back the leadership. Here's what happened in Tatics. Basically, i took Cern on the battle (because he got Iron Skins already while I didn't train Jaherra so her spellcasting sucks-i was playing solo that time).

Sooooo into the battle, immediately, the dark druid summons 3 nightmare wolves which is nowhere a threat to us seasoned BG players, the real threat is actually the druid herself since she transforms into an unbelievable strong leopard which has like 3-4 attacks a round, each strike of her takes around 20-40 damages, the druid is hasted and protected with iron skins, spell turning and a sh*ton of other protective spells. To make the matter worse, all of her summoning spell and buff and morph were done within ONE combat round. But that's not too bad, one combat round is plenty enough for us to prepare for it. So what's my problem? I soloed the whole game with a Fighter/Mage/Thief so I didn't train any druid, so no other druids are available except for Cern and Jaheira. And to be honest, I seriously doubt if any fighter could even stand toe on toe with her in such unfavorable situation, let alone pure druid or Fighter/druid like Jaheira (oh right, on top of that, you are stripped off all the magic items). My char wasn't a druid either so I had to use Cern who only has access to 2 level 5 Druid and 1 attack a round...needless to say, i nearly went crazy because i totally got scrapped by this battle so many times. My last tatic worked after about 20 reloads. In short, i memoried 2 Iron Skin for Cern and then summon animal II-III over and over again and used the summons to wall-block the druid (and let's not forget about her damn wolves). I got lucky with my 20th or something try when I got to summon 4 cave bears and a wolf, whose Thaco was nowhere good enough to hit her (out of the 5 beasts i (luckily) summoned, I will have one hit connected per 5 rounds or something, and then, let's not forget about her Iron Skin and super armor class). Cern is not supposed to get close to the druid because as I said, she has the range of a two handed weapon (ironically, the only weapon you are allowed to have is a 2 handed staff (not magical at all), the sucky staff that every level 1 party starts with...that was when I realized that, the people who made Tatics didn't make this game fun or "challenging" anymore, it was about luck and using luck to win is not acceptable in a tatical game like this. Rather than having us using our brains and skills, this mod made us using our "luck" and "powerword: reload". That's the bad thing about Tatics mod. If I were you, I would never run an assassin through the mod because the mod is not balanced nor beatable without cheesing the **** out the Infinity engine.

All I can say is wow! :speech: Thanks for the tip. I'm glad I haven't tried it. Yikes!

Space Invader · Post by **Space Invader** » Fri May 11, 2012 1:41 am

That's why I prefer SCSII over Tactics, which is still good for challenges like Kurosain, Pontifex and the Ritual, the venom party, ecc

I can't stand the vanilla AI anymore... With enemies chargin the closest target like brainless bulls, casting spells when you are protected or attacking when you're under pfmw and so on.
THAT is like cheating to me.
Edit: another interesting thing with an Assassin is using a Mislead+Improved Haste+Tenser scrolls for a backstab machine

cbarchuk · Post by **cbarchuk** » Fri May 11, 2012 7:04 am

Space Invader wrote:That's why I prefer SCSII over Tactics, which is still good for challenges like Kurosain, Pontifex and the Ritual, the venom party, ecc
I can't stand the vanilla AI anymore... With enemies chargin the closest target like brainless bulls, casting spells when you are protected or attacking when you're under pfmw and so on.
THAT is like cheating to me.
Edit: another interesting thing with an Assassin is using a Mislead+Improved Haste+Tenser scrolls for a backstab machine

That does sounds nasty! I'll make a note of it. Thanks Space.