Attacking high level mages - what's your strategies and bugbears?

[Philos]

That is what I usually do as well to take care of Faldorn. Something about her just rubs me the wrong way. Not that I dislike Cernd, but just don't care for him enough to want him for the entire rest of the game or for ToB.

It's funny, until I recently picked up BG I, I didn't realize Faldorn could have had previous close ties with your PC.

As I don't have any mods installed (yet), I am not familiar with the Edwin romance "gang". Since they are all high level mage types, they probably all have very good saves versus spells, so the insect plague tactic might not work on them, unless they have some fighter or thief support troops nearby.

I still think True Seeing should dispel any and all of the illusionary spells they use like Mislead, Improved Invis., etc.

[kiwidoc]

Maybe they all had Boots of Etherealness ...
I'm currently wandering through ToB and I've found that its best to tackle a wizard if you arrive with a True Sight already in place, and then cast any kind of spell remover as fast as you possibly can - use sequencers, haste, clean your aura ... anything to get your spell off before they vanish. Of course it helps that I haven't been fighting four wizards at the same time

[Philos]

That sure does sound llike one nasty crew. :speech:

I had gotten about halfway through ToB a few years back when I experience a nasty crash on my computer. Lost power at the worst possible time, while it was in the shutting down process. Would've been better had I just turned it off. Unless I wanted to spend a couple hundred bucks for a tech to access the drive and pull off my saved games, my only recourse was to have the computer revert back to its original set-up. All updates/data/info were removed. I can't recall the mages I faced but will be reacquanted with them soon enough. Hope my strategies still hold.

[Fates_ward_2010]

Hello,
I tend to use Ranger/Clerics to take down mages; With the level 5 insect summoning swarm, and level 7's creeping doom . Watch them constantly fail to cast spells hehe :laugh:

[Yamato]

Yes, Insect Plague and Creeping Doom work perfectly. They keep any mage from casting spells until his/her protection wears off.

Another useful spell if you have priests instead of druids is the storm spell you get as an attribute. It does area effect damage, but only on enemies.

[Siouxie Sioux]

One of the problems I think I've never really got to grips with is attacking high level wizards. I thought it could be interesting to find out the problems other people run across, and the ways they tackle them.

My strategy:

The first thing I do is poisoning the mage/infecting with disease to prevent casting. (Insect plague works excellent)
Death spell or similar to slay summoned creatures instantly.
Have True sight and similar cast before the battle.
Have one or mostly two melee fighters to distract eventual fighters around the mage and let my mages do their job (I usually have 2 spellcasters, Jan and Edwin/Aerie so if the mage succeeds to charm or kill one of them another one will finish him off, they both cast Breach, Pierce magic, Secret word and then Lower resistance, in the end Finger of death etc). This works nicely with Time stop cast previously and I use solely this for killing dragons.
I usually send Keldorn and Viconia on the mage because of high magick resistances and I often use Protection from magic/Chaotic commands/Death ward (Death ward is very useful with opponents who cast Time stop) on them and on the main spellcaster.