Found a lich and do not how to deal with him? Tired of using dirty tricks such as resting/leaving area when facing a more powerful spellcasting foe than a goblin shaman? Aww, "Cloak of mirroring" is fixed in your modded game? Or do you just want to give playing wizard/sorcerer a shot? I can try and give you a few tips.
What this guide IS: I will try and explain you the most important principles of building your own strategies when facing powerful spellcasters and using your own mages effectively.
What this guide is NOT: You will not find a recipe on how to deal with each and every foe using some cheap strategy. All possible tactic spoilers are under hidden blocks, so that you will not spoil fun of exploring the game by yourself.
Why bother with spellcasters? I like swinging axes/hiding in shadows/roleplaying! Spellcasters are probably the most complex characters both to use as NPC's and to face as enemies. And if one can figure out how to swing an axe more or less easily by.. you know.. swinging it, determining how all those "absolute immunities" and "khelben's warding whips" work may prove a little more challenging.
Who is this guide for? This guide is for everyone who has some experience in BG series but feels like they do not understand something about all those "Lich: Spell Ineffective" and "Lich: Weapon Ineffective" thingies. Or for someone who is thinking about playing a mage and does not even know how interesting and complex it is.
How powerful can a spellcaster be? I have soloplayed vanilla ToB and BWP:Standard using pure-wizard and a pure-sorcerer protagonist on insane difficulty without using any *unfair* strategies. It is not too easy and not too difficult, the difficulty is just fine to keep things interesting throughout the whole game.
Let's get started. Basic strategies
1) Defend 2) Attack Only in that order. You hear me? When you have 50 hp and Fikraag hits ~150 with his fireball, you will definitely want to protect yourself against that somehow. Even a goblin can kill 20-level sorcerer in two hits if you forget your everyday stoneskin.
Always watch for enemy mages' strategies If you think that Lich is powerful and invincible, try mimicing his actions and see how he can counter it! Feedback window is your friend! After a little practice you will know how to breach each and every kind of protection and how to protect yourself against each and every enemy. Remember, your mages(Imoen, Edwin, Nalia, ...) are no different from Irenicus or Kangaax. Ok, Irenicus has a little higher lvl and Kangaax has a few more resistances but other than that they are no different! They have the same spells which act and can be blocked exactly the same way.
Spell level =/= spell usefullness Do not think that if you don't have "time stop" or "absolute immunity" you cannot counter those who do. Bleh, I barely use any spells of level >7. Even more, there are extremely useful spell on every spell level.
A little more in-depth explanation of strategies
Stage 1: self-defence Being a mage, you can protect yourself against any foe. Different foes require different types of protection though. If you are protected properly, you can stand still for a few rounds in front of your enemy without fear of being harmed in any way at all. Yeah, you can do that with *any* foe. If an enemy can harm you in any way, you are doing something wrong. Most brute-like foes can be countered quite easily by simple spells such as invisibility/stoneskin but enemies capable of dispelling protections or using other magical means are usually far more challenging.
Stage 2: attack! Stage 2.1: breach If you are facing a brute-like foe, this substep should be skipped. But you have probably noticed that no matter how hard you try, you cannot kill a mage just sending all your party members head-on via attack button. And after you have mastered self-defence, you probably already know how enemies breach your defences. So you should know how to make the mage vulnerable to some kind of damage. Once his defences are breached, the easiest stage takes place. Stage 2.1: kill I do not want to discuss this stage at all. Swinging axes, 10 attacks per round, hundreds of backstab damage, a whole pack of destructive spells - once the enemy is vulnerable and you are not, it's just a matter of seconds to kill him. You can probably figure that out by yourself.
Notice, however, that some enemies like using Contingency and Trigger spells which activate under certain conditions. You should know which contingencies to expect of an enemy and have your own contingencies ready in case of.. well.. unforseen circumstances.
It is important to remember that the enemy(and you too, if you don't have "Improved alacrity") cannot cast more than one spell each round(6 seconds). So you can breach their defences faster than they build new ones.
Some tips on specific strategies to start with
Tips on defending the mage There are two kinds of buffs: spell protections and combat protection. And they can be breached by completely different means. For example, "dispel magic" breaches all combat protections but leaves all spell protections. "Spellstrike", on the other hand, breaches all spell protections, but leaves all combat protections intact. Spell protections tend to defend the caster against direct spells attacks and specific magic schools. Combat protections tend to give the caster immunity to certain types of damage and attacks. Combat protections If you just buff your wizard by combat protections, he may become invulnerable to everything: weapons, fire, cold, arrows, magical damage. Everything, except for simple level3 spell "dispel magic"/"remove magic", which if followed by by an arrow will kill your wizard in one round. Spell protections That's why you will probably want to protect yourself against dispelling your protections. For example, you can cast Spell Immunity:Abjuration(level 5 spell) and make yourself completely invulnerable to any dispel-like spells, because all of them belong to abjuration school. Note, however, that even though spell-protection breaching spells are all abjuration, they cannot be countered by Spell Immunity : Abjuration. And remember that spell protections like "Spell turning"/.../"Spell trap" only protect against direct spells. AoE spells such as fireball and dispell magic will bypass those. Protecting your spell protections That may sound somewhat weird and a little more advanced but you will feel the necessity of doing so after catching a "Spellstrike" or "Khelben's warding whip" from a demilich. Think about "Spell shield" level 5 spell which absorbs first breaching spell cast on you. Or about making yourself invisible, because most foes cannot cast direct spells on invisible creatures, and most breaching spells are direct. So you will force your enemy either to breach your spell protections with area-of-effect spells such as "Ruby Ray Of Reversal" or to dispel your invisibility".
Note that there are lots of lots different ways to protect a mage, those tips above are the very basics. At first it all may seem somewhat overwhelming and complicated, but stick to that advice "Always watch for enemy mages' strategies" - try to learn strategies from your enemies. You can mimic them and invent your own.
Tips on defeating non-spellcasting foes Even though a mage can be easily protected against such foes by a simple "Stoneskin"/"Protection from magical weapons" or "Mislead", some enemies have unique offensive or defensive capabilities. For example golems and drows have magic resistance which you will probably want to lower by "Lower Resistance" prior to using damaging magic against them. Note that magic resistance cannot resist "Lower resistance" spell. "Malison"/"Greater Malison" can reduce enemy's saving throws so that they can be killed quite easily by certain instant-death spells. You should also consider using your cleric to protect yourself against specific monster attacks. For example "Mind shield" protects again Mind Flayers and such.
A little bit more in-depth explanation
A few words on specific combat protections This section contains spoilers that some players may want to figure out by themselves. So I will put it under spoiler.
Spoiler
Remember, even low-level spells such as lvl4 "Stoneskin" on "Improved invisibility" can be far more effective than lvl9 "Absolute immunity", which.. well.. sucks.
A few particular spells to consider using:
"Mirror image", lvl2 An interesting spell. Its effect is somewhat random and depends on a particular image being affected by an attack but can potentially protect you against the strongest spells and attacks.
"Stoneskin", lvl4 provides defence agains a certain number of any physical attacks.
"Improved invisibility", lvl4 and any spell that induces similar effect such as "Shadow door", "Project image" completely protects you against most simple foes and protects you agains being hit by direct spells.
"Dimension door", lvl4 when used strategically, it can help you escape or rush into the battle
"Fire shield"(blue/red), lvl4 they look cool. Oh, and in conjunction with "stoneskin"/"protection" from magical weapons they can harm foes considerably. Have I already said that they look cool?
"Protection from fire"/Acid/Cold/Electricity, lvl5 Extremely useful spells which allow you to cast fireballs directly under your feet and protect against elemental foes.
"Protection from magical weapons", lvl6 Just with a single such buff you can stand in a crowd of raging pit fiends for 4 rounds.
"Protection from magic energy", lvl6 Makes you completely invulnerable to magic damage. Any damage that is not physical nor elemental is magic. Helps against magic missles, abi-dalzims, disintegrations, and so on
"Mislead", lvl6 Somewhat imbalanced spell that makes you completely invisible until your clone is not destroyed. Well, give it a shot.
These are the very basic mid-level spells. I want you to discover the rest by yourself.
Tips on spell protections Same as above. Under spoiler:
Spoiler
Spell protections are a little less varying than combat protections. Most important properties of such spells are:
- total amount of spell levels you are protected against. For example lvl3 "Minor spell deflection" protects against 4 spells levels. It means that it can withstand 4 lvl1 magic missiles, or an lvl1 magic missile and a lvl3 flame arrow or a single lvl4 "Polymorph other". Note that if spell protection is active, no matter how many "charges" it has left, it will protect against a single spell. For example if "spell turning" which should normally protect against 4 spell levels has already absorbed 3 magic missiles, it can withstand one more lvl 6 Disintegration.
- spell protection level determines by which spells it can be brought down. for example "secret word" only removes protections below lvl8.
- some protection absorb spells and some of them reflect spells back.
There's is an extremely important lvl5 spell "Spell immunity" which is vital to protect against certain schools of magic. For example, most damaging spells are of Evocation school, so you can protect against all of them at once including AoE such as fireball by casting Spell Immunity : Evocation. Multiple Spell Immunities can be cast at the same time. Consider protecting against Divination to become immune to detect invisibility spells, against Abjuration to become resistant to dispel/breach spells and Evocation to become resistant to most offensive spells. Use protections against other schools when necessary and try to figure out the meaning of each school to determine school of spells that you do not have.
Another useful spell protection is lvl5 "Spell shield" which absorbs the first dispelling spell. Consider using it to protect your protections.
Tips on breaching spellcaster defences
Spoiler
Consider the worst case. You are facing a pre-buffed demilich which has ALL(I mean it) combat and spell protections at once. He is invisible, protected agains ALL schools at once, his magic resistance is 100%, he is invulnerable to all weapons and all types of damage and all that bad stuff. Your actions:
- First of all you will have to dispel his "Spell shield"-like abilites that block the first spell-protection-breaching spell. The only way to do so is to cast area-of-effect spell-protection-breacher like "Spell thrust", "Secret word"(notice that some mods make this spell direct instead of AoE), "Ruby Ray" or "Spellstrike".
- Then you will want to dispel spell protections. The enemy is invisible, so you will not be able to cast any direct spells on him. So you will have to use either one "Spellstrike". If you want to do so the hard way, without using an expensive lvl9 spell, you will have to use either a lot of AoE-spell-protection-breachers, or use a few "Spell thrusts" to remove "Spell Immunity: Divination" and make the enemy visible with "Detect invisibility"/"True sight" and then breach spell protection by direct breaching spells such as "Pierce magic"/"Khelben warding whip" and so on. Or you can try and breach "Spell Immunity: Abjuration" with a "Spell thrust" anyway, the most important thing is to make the enemy vulnerable to abjuration spells such as "Dispel magic" or "Breach".
- If the enemy has some spell protections left or he is invisible, you cannot use direct spells agains him such as breach. But once "Spell Immunity : Abjuration" is brought down, you can use "Dispel magic"/"Remove magic" to breach almost all combat protections at once, including invisibility.
- That's it. Now the enemy is visible and vulnerable to all types of damage. If you have breached all spell protections, you can also hit them with direct spells. If not, stick to physical attacks and AoE-damaging spells. But if you are a mage/sorcerer, you don't have much of a choice and are forced to use magical attacks. Prior to using those you often need to reduce enemy's magic resistance by casting a 1-3 "Lower resistance" on the foe. And remember that the enemy will not stand still. He will buff himself with lost buffs and attack you, but only one spell every round, it means one spell each 6 seconds.
Tips on being solo-mage/making your mage more self-sufficient
When you are all alone, you dont have a tank to take a few hits, no cleric to heal yourself and only a limited amount of spells to deal with all those damned foes. Sometimes you may find yourself simply to run out of damaging spells and that's really confusing: you have properly protected yourself, breached enemy defences but they just have far too much hp. There are a few tips on how to avoid this, with possible spoilers:
Spoiler
- Be a multiclass or a dualclass with fighter or a thief. It makes life far easier but somewhat less interesting - playing a destructive machine is not as interesting as a wise mage. Well, it's up to you anyway.
- There are a few spells like lvl7 "Project image" and lvl8 "Simulacrum" that literally multiply amount of spells you can memorize. And it's quite fun to make a copy of yourself, cast 1-2 basic protective buffs and rush recklessly casting all kinds of spells without fear of death, because the copy will die anyway. If lives too long, it can dispel itself by "dispel magic". My mage actually had all lvl7 spell slots memorized as "Project image". Simulacrum is considerably weaker but it can act as a decoy-suppoer for your project image clone.
- When your projected image is exploring the location, it cannot see through fog of war. lvl4 spell "WIzard Eye" helps here - just walk together with it.
- Your project image can be dispelled by "Remove magic" or "True sight". Consider using additional buffs to prevent this, you do NOT want to endanger your character themselves. Other than that, most fight(like 95%) are fought by projected image, not the main character.
- Consider being a sorcerer. Sorcerers have less variety of spells, but they do not have to prepare specific ones before each battle. For example I do not want to protect my project image with all kinds of protections, but I want it to cast three times more offensive spells. Sorcerer helps here a lot.
- Find as many items that add additional spells to memorize. It does help.
- Assign most frequently used spells to hotkeys. It speeds up long battles and buffing process.
- "Improved alacrity" high level ability is quite essential for a solo-mage. In conjunction with items that reduce your casting speed, you can cast dozens of spells just in a two seconds, using game pause and/or hotkeys.
Tips on being a sorcerer
I strongly advice against choosing a sorcerer as a first experience in playing a spellcaster. Sorcerers have extremely limited amount of spells, so if you do not want to tear you hair later, you will have to choose which spell to pick at each level prior even creating your character. Otherwise you will 100% find yourself with a character who has unnecessary dubbed spells(such as "Secret word" and "Spell thrust") and you will notice that you use some spell levels far more than others. If you are creating a solo-powergaming sorcerer, you must play a wizard prior to that and choose exactly 5 spells for each spell level. Which spells to choose?:
Spoiler
- you cannot obtain every spell you want. You will have to cope only with 5 spells per level.
- during tough battles, monsters simply have a lot of HP overall. In order to deal that much damage, your sorcerer will probably want to have exactly one damaging spell on each spell level, so that when you create a project image, it can cast ALL spells as offensive spells. You will not want more than one damage-dealing spell per level, because if you have "flame arrow"(lvl3) and "fireball"(lvl3) you will end up using only one of those.
- never choose two spells that act almost the same in a weaker and a stronger way. For example, never choose "minor globe of invulnerability" and "globe of invulnerability" - the first one will be just a waste. Same goes for "minor spell turning"/"major spell turning and such".
- consider choosing spells that act in more than one way other than getting those effect from separate spells. For example, "Pierce magic" acts as "Lower resistance" and spell-protection-breacher at the same time. "Pierce shield" breaches both spell and combat protections. And so on.
- in vanilla game your project image is able to use spell sequencers. It is a good way to increase amount of spells your image can cast.
- when inventing your own set of spells for a sorcerer, remember that you will not obtain them all at once. For example you will probably not want to choose a single "spell trap" as a spell protection, because you will not be able to protect yourself till 18-ish level.
- things get far easier when you are not a solo-sorcerer. If you have a support wizard who can cast a spell you dont know, or a fighter to deal some damage you lack, you can make a few mistakes in your build and still be good.
I hope this guide can help those who find it difficult to play Baldur's Gate or encourage someone to develop their own unique strategies in the battle system I have tried to view from another perspective.
So you will force your enemy either to breach your spell protections with area-of-effect spells such as "Ruby Ray Of Reversal"
I don't want to have to guess why RRR is AoE in your game, so you should pretend most players don't use the same mods. If this is a mod-specific guide, that mod's forum is a more appropriate place for this guide.
So you will force your enemy either to breach your spell protections with area-of-effect spells such as "Ruby Ray Of Reversal"
I don't want to have to guess why RRR is AoE in your game, so you should pretend most players don't use the same mods. If this is a mod-specific guide, that mod's forum is a more appropriate place for this guide.
Shame on me, I have not played the vanilla game for quite a while and I have even forgotten that those breaching spells were not originally AoE.
But hey, since "Spell thrust", "Secret word", RRR, and "Spellstrike" are all targeted in vanilla, how is it possible to breach combination of SI:Divination, SI:Abjuration + improved invisibility? I think one can cast targeted spells on semi-invisible creature by spell sequencers, but I hope there's a better way.
While Phordicus does have a point (I thought Ruby Ray of Reversal targeted a a single natural or magical hazard), the guide is still general enough for me to allow it here. It is my opinion, however, that choosing to play as a sorcerer can be a rewarding experience, even for a first playing experience, as having too large a choice of spells is sometimes confusing and annoying. Of course, it make take a bit of trial and error to figure out what spells you want to use, but I hardly even bother with the other mage classes anymore. To each his own, I guess.
Thanks for the kind words. I have tried to make the guide as general as possible. I did not even want to include references to any particular spells at all, because my primary goal is to explain the very basic principles to help the player to discover everything else by themselves. But in the end I have decided to add those sections under spoilers with more.. specific strategies.
But anyway, calling those spells AoE is definitely my fault and I will fix that.
About sorcerers. I think I have created more than 4 sorcerer characters and leveled them up till ~20 level each(by honestly completing BG1->SoA numerous times) just because somewhere in the middle of ToB I have decided that I am not using some "Melf's acid arrow" often enough and it would have been cool if I had chosen "Knock" instead of it. That's enough for me to start all over. I do want to prevent that from happening with other players lol. It's far harder to screw any other class build. And anyway, if you are not that serious about your choice of spells, you can just ignore that advice ; )
Besides, English is apparently far from being my native language and I would really appreciate if you guys would point out the sentences that you have found the most weird/unreadable.
The strategies are entirely dependent on the mods used, especially the two I'm guessing you have that are of relevance. If your guide is only valid with Mod X + Mod Y, you should indicate that. If you really want to be a badass, give a vanilla guide and a modded guide side-by-side. It'd be a great point of reference.
Strategy I discussed with AoE secret word, RRR, spellstrike, etc. can only be used with Spell Revisions. But I do not remember how to dispel SI:Divination + SI:Abjuration + Mislead in vanialla, so can you help me here?
I'm not saying you have to do the side-by-side (BG/2 is one of the few games I actually haven't written a strategy guide for), but at least point it out for the reader what mods you use. I've modded my own spell system beyond recognition, in large part to get far away from the all tedious and uncreative A-counters-B-counters-C-counters-D stuff, so I must decline. I definitely admire the effort that's gone into the R mods, but for me the flaws are deeper than the spells/items/whatevers themselves.
Actually, doing it specifically for SR is a good idea because there are already a ton of mage & sorcerer, party-based and solo, guides out there which would be impossible to add anything of value to. Speaking of which and of no relevance to anything, I didn't get a lick of modding done today.
I echo the sentiment of an SR (and IR as well, as the changing of equipment gives other options - like no-cheese Robe of Vecna etc) strategy guide. There are lots of vanilla guides, good and bad. But to my knowledge there isn't one for SR, and SR is hugely popular. Just note that this is for SR+IR and keep at it, it's appreciated and needed.
-max- Wow, that's definitely weird. I suppose it's either forum engine's bug or your browser's. And the second seems to be more possible since guys above managed to open the spoilers, at least according to their comments. What browser are you currently using?
I have just checked this thread as a guest in my firefox 11.0 and it seems to work fine. Scary. Do you have any related plugins installed? Can you please try this with Internet Explorer? It works for me as well.
I say well done, Suslik, your guide is a very good overview of how to play either a mage or a sorcerer. It took me quite a few play-throughs to understand the most efficient way to use either a mage or a sorcerer.
I haven't played solo with any class. The best I've done is to get through SoA with myself as a fighter-thief accompanied by my darling Aerie, who becomes a mighty priest-mage at higher levels.
We probably all develop our own sets of strategies. I use similar protection methods to yours, but for offense I do a lot of summoning. From the first skeleton warrior who knocks the stuffing out of mind-flayers, the summoned allies just keep getting better. They substitute very well for the tank NPC if necessary. They often die quite quickly, but by then I've usually knocked down the enemy defences.
I did battle with monsters, and they became me, and when I gazed into the abyss, the abyss looked away shyly. See, it helps not to believe all the stuff that philosophers spout.
I say well done, Suslik, your guide is a very good overview of how to play either a mage or a sorcerer.
Glad you like it.
I use similar protection methods to yours, but for offense I do a lot of summoning.
I intentionally did not mention anything about using summons as I count them as a somewhat "dirty" strategy : D No offense, of course but I find it unsatisfying when there are all kinds of summons who do the fighting instead of my tweaked and polished companions/protagonist. But no doubt, you have a point here - summons are an effective offensive and defensive tool(remember how lvl3 skeletons tanked basilisks in BG1 ? ; ) )
Consider the worst case. You are facing a pre-buffed demilich which has ALL(I mean it) combat and spell protections at once. He is invisible, protected agains ALL schools at once, his magic resistance is 100%, he is invulnerable to all weapons and all types of damage and all that bad stuff. Your actions:
Couldn't you use a thief detect illusion ability to drastically shorten this process?
Edited by taltamir, 09 September 2013 - 11:07 AM.
I do not have a superman complex; For I am God, not Superman!
Good Lord. Spambots with religion now. I suspect the title may have done something to attract the bot, so I changed it and will be watching in case it pokes its head out.
Edited by Tempest, 14 June 2014 - 07:37 AM.
"The righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress. Though the song of yesterday fades into the challenge of tomorrow, God still watches and judges us. Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesterday, but it was never the streets that were evil." - Sister Miriam Godwinson, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
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