GameBanshee Forums

@Ekental - Very interesting... I'll have to keep that one in mind.

Or do what I did in my second run through the game...
I had debug mode enabled, and instead of walking through those doors, I used CTRL-J to jump to the other side of them without opening them.

About Viconia, remember that the "Draw upon holy might" spell also increases dexterity and constitution. So perhaps there will be even more of a THAC0 improvement with the sling? I'm sure she can deal out a lot of damage with each attack, but it's important to remember that she only gets 1 attack/round, so any gains she gets will only be helping half as much as opposed to when a true fighter-type gains those bonuses.

If taking Valygar with you, then you need not give anyone else any katana proficiency in SoA. From the start, he has 2 points in katana, and 2 in dual-wield. There's probably only 2-3 good katanas in SoA, though the Celestial Fury is absolutely awesome. I am not sure about ToB though, but there is the weapons section of the walkthrough here at Gamebanshee which describes all of the weapons.

When I created my first character to play SoA for the first time, the description for katana skill warned me that not many magical katanas were to be found. I surely wish that it had given me a warning about bastard swords instead. "Warning, nearly every bastard sword in this game sucks, and the best you can hope for is a +2 weapon." *sigh*

By the way, don't those throwing axes, the dwarven throwing hammer, and the firetooth render bows almost useless? The longbows only seem good in the very beginning. The enemies I really want to keep at a distance don't seem hittable by +2 arrows (the best ammunition you can find). The short bows are way better, Tansheron's bow and Gesen short bow, neither requires ammunition, and both count as +3 weapons when deciding what is hittable by them. Seems that a +4 longbow will only hit as a "normal weapon" if you use regular arrows. Sure, you get a THAC0 bonus, but only IF the enemy is hittable by that particular arrow. I was disappointed that I wasted 2 slots on longbow my first time through...

[QUOTE=Snoon]About Viconia, remember that the "Draw upon holy might" spell also increases dexterity and constitution. So perhaps there will be even more of a THAC0 improvement with the sling? I'm sure she can deal out a lot of damage with each attack, but it's important to remember that she only gets 1 attack/round, so any gains she gets will only be helping half as much as opposed to when a true fighter-type gains those bonuses...[/QUOTE]
Are you saying that you would equip a Fighter with a sling?

It's true that a true Fighter-type gets more attacks per round than a Cleric, and Fighters are generally better in combat than Clerics. I certainly wouldn't use a Cleric as my primary melee warrior if I had a Fighter in my party. But the point I was trying to make is that Clerics, even given their limitations, aren't too shabby in combat. If you're going to send a Cleric into combat, she can can cast a lot of buffing spells and use spells like Harm. Fighters (other than Bhaalspawn) can't cast buffing spells like Draw Upon Holy Might, so I'm not sure what you mean when you say that true Fighter-types would gain more from those bonuses.

By the way, the missile adjustment for DEX 21 is 4 (compared to a missile adjustment of 3 for DEX 19), and the missile adjustment for DEX 24 is +5. So Draw Upon Holy Might does indeed improve Viconia's THAC0 with a sling.

Leading into my next point, if a Cleric wants to use a ranged weapon, there aren't many choices besides a sling. A true fighter-type would not be using a sling; he would use a better weapon, and there are lots to choose from.


[QUOTE=Snoon]By the way, don't those throwing axes, the dwarven throwing hammer, and the firetooth render bows almost useless?[/QUOTE]
It depends on which class you're talking about. Generally speaking, a Fighter can do a lot more damage with a melee weapon than he can with a ranged weapon, so I wouldn't give a Fighter any proficiency points in bows to begin with. If a Fighter has proficiency points in axes or hammers, being able to use throwing axes or hammers is a fringe benefit, in my opinion. And they certainly come in handy.

But here's where I make a distinction between the classes: bows aren't so great for Fighters, but they're wonderful for other classes like Thieves. I let my Thieves try to backstab the monsters sometimes (notice that I said "try" because they're not very good at it), but their primary weapons are bows. Thieves tend to have high Dexterity, which gives them missile weapon bonuses, so missile weapons are a natural choice for them. Since they can't wield axes and hammers, bows are not obsolete.

To take my point even further, a throwing dagger is perfect for a Mage, who can't wield bows, axes, or hammers. Let the Fighters keep the axes and hammers and let the Thieves keep the bows, but give the daggers to the Mages--and the slings to the Clerics.

VonDondu, I think Snoon's issue was with long bows in particular, not just all bows. Short bows for thieves like Imoen are indeed very handy, but I agree with Snoon that the long bows available in game are just plain sucky.

Qwinn

@Snoon - I actually have a problem with my katana choice. One character already has the Dakkon Zerth blade in the off, and celestial fury in the main. One of the mods brings out Kuroisan the acid kensai, who while being tough to beat, has a *very* good sword himself. Now, I'm stuck - three solid katanas, and only two hands to hold them...

@VonDondu - I always loaded up on almost exclusively magic missiles at level 1, so my mages are usually either using magic at a distance, or picking their noses. Do you recall if there are any high-enchantment throwing daggers out there (+3 or better)?

N...

[QUOTE=Nimiety]@Snoon - I actually have a problem with my katana choice. One character already has the Dakkon Zerth blade in the off, and celestial fury in the main. One of the mods brings out Kuroisan the acid kensai, who while being tough to beat, has a *very* good sword himself. Now, I'm stuck - three solid katanas, and only two hands to hold them...

@VonDondu - I always loaded up on almost exclusively magic missiles at level 1, so my mages are usually either using magic at a distance, or picking their noses. Do you recall if there are any high-enchantment throwing daggers out there (+3 or better)?

N...[/QUOTE]
Celestial Fury with Sanchuudoku offhand - wuwu! Set up right, that can make for interesting effects on enemies with fireshield red/blue

Firetooth(?) is a nice throwing dagger you can buy in the Underdark - I may have it's name conflated with a crossbow. +3 Throwing dagger with elemental damage, if memory serves me correctly

There are two different items by the name of Firetooth, so confusion should be expected.

[QUOTE=Nimiety]@VonDondu - I always loaded up on almost exclusively magic missiles at level 1, so my mages are usually either using magic at a distance, or picking their noses. Do you recall if there are any high-enchantment throwing daggers out there (+3 or better)?[/QUOTE]
I can't think of any other dagger that is comparable to the Dagger +3: Firetooth. The closest thing I can think of is the Crimson Dart +3 (available in Watcher's Keep).

You don't start Shadows of Amn at 1st Level, so I assume you mean that the only 1st Level spell that your Mages memorize is Magic Missile. I tend to do that myself. But Grease and Spook come in handy sometimes. If I'm fighting a lot of trolls and I want my Mages to make a few kills, I load up with Burning Hands. I wish that Chromatic Orb had the same effect in BG2 that it does in Icewind Dale, but you can't have everything. At low levels, I find that many of the 2nd Level spells come in handy, such as Glitterdust, Horror, and Resist Fear. I play with parties (rather than going solo), so to me it's all about teamwork.

Frankly, I don't really enjoy using any ranged weapon that requires me to manage piles and piles of ammunition or arrows. Inventory management just isn't any fun. One solution is to install a mod that allows unlimited stacking, and bottomless Bags of Holding and Ammo Belts also help. Returning weapons and ammo-less ranged weapons like the Shortbow of Gesen and the Sling of Everard are a treat.

Oy - I couldn't agree more - the ease of use mod really lives up to its name.

@nephtu - true enough, especially if you upgrade celestial fury to +5... the problem is my kensai/mage needs the zerth blade in the off hand for the extra spells (VonDondu's right in that I load up on magic missiles as my primary first level spell choice, with the occasional grease thrown in). I can't get over the regeneration rate from the acid katana... I think I only have one other character that can wield katanas, and she duals axes, so I don't want to mess with that.

I guess this is a good problem to have.

Give Korgan the drawven throwing hammer from trademeet, and the bext axe you can find. He can't use azuredge cuz he is evil.

Well perhaps I should elaborate on my own setup. I don't play ToB, only SoA. I don't use single-classed thieves, I'd rather have extra magic backup (I haven't noticed that there is much use for higher-level thieving abilities in SoA). I like to use summoned creatures for a lot of the tanking, as it saves me the headache of having to constantly heal my party members and rest. This tactic isn't nearly as effective as it was in BG1, but it is still effective nonetheless.

When my mages aren't casting spells, they are using ranged weapons. I feel that in SoA, thrown missiles are better than launched ones, as they recieve a strength bonus. Since anyone can have 18/50 stength easily with a simple second level mage spell, anyone can have a decent strength bonus with thrown weapons. Unrealistic, but it's part of the game engine.

Case in point:
My first time through the game, I had a single-classed fighter PC who was wearing the girdle of hill giant strength. Was at Brynnlaw, fighting pirates who appear in random encounters. Had a lot of darts, and since I hate to leave items behind, and darts can't be sold, I decided to use them. Not magical darts, just plain, ordinary darts. I thought that rather than waste time unequipping my shield so that I could use a bow, I would just keep darts in a quick weapon slot. Bear in mind that my fighter had no skill with darts, not even proficient in their use. Minsc was using something like a +3 longbow, and my fighter was making more damage with the darts than Minsc was with the longbow! Not only that, he was getting 3 attacks/round, whereas Minsc, who had 2 proficiency points in longbow, was getting only 2! Based upon this, I feel that longbows just suck!

Now, as for the shortbows, I feel that Tansheron's bow is quite decent. Short bow of Gesen didn't seem to hit for much damage when I used it, and its damage is also electrical, and I believe that a lot of tougher enemies are immune to that. The Tansheron's bow, on the other hand, seems to cause purely physical damage. I had Mazzy in my party for a short while (no pun intended ), and her 4 proficiency slots in shortbow gave her 4(!) attacks/round with Tansheron's bow and she made usually around 7-11 damage per hit with it, with critical hits doing sometimes over 20 damage. Not bad for a ranged weapon, to be able to make around 40 damage/round consistently, IMO. Unfortunately, I dropped her in favour of additional mage support, as I found that having a character who did nothing but fire arrows constantly was extremely boring.

Now, back to my main point, I find that the longbows are quite useless, once you aquire throwing weapons which require no ammunition. Remember, thieves can't use longbows, only the fighter types can, all of whom can toss axes. So my point is that the longbow skill is uselesss, shortbow skill is not. This would certainly be a huge disappointment to someone who has never played through the game before, and chose an archer PC, and, not realizing how sucky longbows are, stuffed their longbow proficiency to grandmastery. Lack of thought on the part of Bioware, IMO, since the shortbow should mainly just be a crippled version of the longbow designed for use by classes who have weapon restrictions. How were we to know that the shortbows in SoA rule supreme over the longbows? (I won't get into the fact that I feel that there should only be a "bow" skill, like there is only 1 skill for crossbow, and not have them separated into 2 skills as they are in SoA)

To VonDondu: I think that I wasn't thinking straight when I made the comment about fighters being able to receive double benefit from those spells. At any rate, I only have my clerics slinging rocks so that they have something else to do besides picking their noses while the battle is going on. In the case of Aerie, who is a cleric/mage, I have her using Melf's Minute Meteors a lot. If anyone hasn't used this spell extensively yet, I'd suggest that they try it. 5 attacks/round, and I've yet to see an enemy that it won't damage. In fact, Melf's Minute Meteors seemed to be the only thing that would damage the Demilich when I took him down. Nearly all level 3 spell slots for all of my mages are taken up by this spell.

Oh, something else I forgot to mention. Sword and shield style is a waste of proficiency points. It only increases your AC vs. missile weapons, which is nearly useless. Projectiles launched and thrown at you in BG2 are hardly a threat. I'm more than halfway through my third run of BG2, and if I recall correctly, on only one occasion was my spellcasting ever interrupted by an arrow, and the damage dealt by enemy missile attacks is paltry. If you have nothing else you want to spend the proficiencies on, then by all means, go ahead, but I consider it to be a waste. You get the regular AC bonus from a shield even with no proficiency in shields, and you suffer no penalties whatsoever without it. +2 AC vs missiles isn't worth a proficiency point at all, IMO.

I've rarely used shields... even when fighting beholders, so I'd have to agree that it's easy to waste points on sword and shield style.
N..

Yep, I don't use shields a lot, but Aerie has a sheild equipped all the time. Even so, I don't give her proficiencies in shield style, because as I said, it only helps vs. missile weapons. All of the enemies in SoA that I've seen using missile weapons weren't strong at all. Kuo-Toans, Drow, some weaklings in Athkatla... not worth wasting proficiency points to protect yourself against those weaklings. I don't think I've even seen an enemy with archer kit in the game (they have to be of good alignment, so likely they won't attack you). The toughest enemies in the game have powerful melee, and/or spells. Shield style doesn't improve your AC for melee, so it's not worth it, IMO.

[QUOTE=Snoon]Yep, I don't use shields a lot, but Aerie has a sheild equipped all the time. Even so, I don't give her proficiencies in shield style, because as I said, it only helps vs. missile weapons.[/QUOTE]

I give her a shield because of whatever bonuses a very few provide. She doesn't train in it, but just holding it means she gets the benefits.

I like to use the shield of Charm Protection on Aerie, nothing to me is more annoying than having your paper bag healer turn against you when you seriously need a heal or two thrown out.

Though I don't use Aerie so moot point...