jaegar

My current group is a Kensai/Thief, Jaheira, Vicky, Aerie, Tashia, Imoen. I've played on Impossible for this current game, and really had fun for the most part of the game. Even the shadow thief encounter right after being thrown into Bodhi's gauntlet and losing of my equipment was doable with the right tactics. That portion of the game simply gives me a new respect for those summoned weapons (hammer of faith etc).

Then I was in the illithid city. It was nuts. Almost nuttier than I can stomach. Let's take a look of one of the illithid innate ability.

Ballistic Attack
Instant activation
12d6 Crushing Dmg (12-72 dmg, 42 average on Core difficulty)
Bypass MR
No school, spell level

For people playing on impossible, the average dmg rises up to 84. The only person who has that many HP in my party is my kensai/thief, everyone else just gets chunked as I reach for the reload button.

The problem is not the insanely high damage, or the seemingly carefree way the mind flayers use it every few rounds. The problem is there is no way to counter the mind flayer innate abilities. It is instant, so no trying to interrupt. It is innate ability, so they can happily use it while you're improved invis. It doesnt count as psionics, Chaotic Commands cant help you here. It has no school or spell level, so no spell turning/spell immunity works. There's no spell that protects against crushing dmg (except possibly Storm Shell, druid spell, i'll have to check on that), so you're entitled to all 12d6 of dmg (24d6 on Impossible)

Other mindflayer abilities have ways to be countered

Project force (throws you away and put you to sleep) - insanely annoying when it throws you through doors to the furthest end of the dungeon, tho for some reason sleep effect can be dispeled.

Ego whip (has a save, thank god) - the hold effect can be countered with free action.

Detonate (6d6 instant area effect magic dmg) - Because it is magic, it can be countered with Protection from magic energy.

Psionic Blast (stun, no save or MR) - countered with Free action.

The 5th level cleric spells, Chaotic commands, which is supposed to protect you against psionics doesnt really do its job against the above mentioned innates. Perhaps the best solution is to make each ability has a save, albeit at a high penalty. A 24d6 dmg with the posibility of half dmg at -10 save vs spells is heck more tolerable than instant chunks heh. It's the spirit of BG2 (if not DnD) I think, every attacks, tactics etc has a counter.

I was looking over news spells in BP using NI and I noticed something. None of the new spells (I assume they are from TDD) are dispellable and check against magic resistance.

For example, Bull's Str, a 2nd level priest spell that boost STR randomly by 1 to 4 is not dispellable at all.

Execution (lvl 7 wiz) 30+6D10 dmg (max of 90 dmg) or save vs spells at -3 for half, no MR check.

Suffocation (lvl 8 wiz) silence and do 2d6 dmg for 8 rounds also does not check against magic resistance.

Needless to say, all of the new spells are way more powerful (perhaps too powerful) than their description would suggest. I modified all the lower level buff spells (Bull's Strength, Endurance, Cat's Grace) to be dispellable, but I'm not so sure about the higher level ones. Are these intentional or an oversight by the TDD team?

Is there anywhere I can look up the FAQ or similar for Check the Bodies? The homepage in the sticky is down, assuming it had worked before. Also how compatible is CtB with BP?

thankee

I'm trying to figure out how to map the new spells introduced by the BP package.

Let's say Bull's Str (lvl 2 priest spell). The spell number is SPPR217. I added this line 'SPPR217=Bull's Strength' in language.txt right under SPPR214. Then I opened keymap.ini and added 'SPPR217=D'. Okay, under BGConfig everything seems fine, the D key is shown mapped to Bull's Strength as it should.

However it doesnt work in the game. With all other targettable spells, clicking the hotkey will turn to cursor to the cast symbol (star and moon), but nothing happens when I press my new supposedly mapped D key. Any thoughts?

I've finished SOA with BP, and while reading the README of Weimer's Tactics mods I realize that not all components are included with BP. If I install Tactics on top of BP will there be any problems?