The Trials and Tribulations of Viconia

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Meet Viconia, the lovable neutral evil drow who entered a time warp, renounced Shar, and drew upon her inner elven magics to become a sorcerer!



Sadly drow aren't very popular in the frozen North, so Viconia is all alone in her struggle to defend the Ten Towns against the Horde.

How does she fare in her epic battles? What magics will she channel to defeat her foes? Let's see:

Battle 1:

The tunnels under the docks were much easier than I expected. At this point Viccy was only level 2, with the feat Spell Focus: Necromancy (which is of no use at the moment, but I'm planning to choose Skull Trap at level 6), and the spells Chromatic Orb and Charm Person. I exhausted my chromatic orbs pretty quickly, and started plucking away with my shortbow. Any goblins who got too close for comfort were brained with Viccy's staff.

After resting on Hedron's ship, I returned for another salvo. I successfully Charmed both Ulek and Rukwurm, and the battle was laughably easy from that point on. Most of the goblins locked on to their charmed commanders, and I plucked off a few with a number of well aimed arrows.



After the battle was done, Ulek and Rukwurm had outlived their usefulness, and were put down like the dogs they are:


Piece of cake!

Stay tuned, because the Battle with Phaen is coming up. Will the treachorous wizard's spells penetrate Viccy's magic resistance? Will his goblin servants' axes be her downfall?

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Battle 2: Phaen

Phaen experienced immeasurable pain at the hands of our favourite Dark Elf. After exposing him for the traitor he is, Viccy earnt enough XP to progress to level 3, where she selected Rapid Shot.

Phaen spawned in his goblin lackeys. Bad move. One charm person turned the leader to the light (or at least, the less dark) side, where it starting taking swings at Phaen himself! Panicking, the miserable mage cast a Burning Hands, taking out the majority of his goblin helpers.



Clearly an Intelligence score of 18 doesn't mean much in the Frozen North, because Phaen then proceeded to target a Drow with a Colour Spray. A tactical blunder, given that he sent his remaining helper into slumberland, while Viccy remained unaffected due to her dark blood.



It was then a simple matter of sniping away at Phaen with the shortbow. Rapid Shot ensured a flurry of attacks, resulting in a critical strike that ended the wizard's life.



I don't think anything needs to be said as to what happened to that final goblin. Let me tell you, it wasn't pretty.

 

Nice images, you have a knack for storytelling. I wanted to create some gameplay videos a while back, but I never could get it off the ground. I wanted to show some Otiluke's Resilient Sphere cheese on the horde fortress, as my party blasted a map filled with enemies to smithereens, while they pointlessly hacked away at my ORSed barbarian. I could never get more than choppy, soundless images from the recording programs I used, definitely not worthy of putting up on YouTube.

 

Haha, thanks coin. I'm not going to 'tell a story' of my character's actions throughout the entire game, as that would be too long, tedious, and boring. I'll just describe how she coped with some of the more 'epic' battles.

 

Hey, since when can we post images? Nice!

Looking forward to reading your further posts. I would have been sorely tempted to minimax for CON, or at least push STR down a bit...


TEST:

[snip]

[Please use this thread for image tag testing purposes. -Tal]

 

Battle 3: At the Palisade. Note that this battle is notable for being truly unpredictable, resulting in several reloads due to charm person's buggy nature.

True to Viccy's translation of Goblin-speak, three dastardly goblin leaders attacked the Palisade. After a quick self cast of Eagle's Splendor to make those Chromatic Orbs and Charm Person more effective, and a Pro from Evil spell to, well, protect against evil, Viccy goes into the thick of it.

Her first attempt at Charming Vghotan... succeeded. Vghotan, Olap Tamewater and Viccy then proceeded to beat up on the little goblinoids.



Once the first party of goblins was exterminated, something truly unbelievable happened. Olap Dimwater attacked Vghotan, who attacked the dipstick dwarf in return. As a result, Olap Dimwater turned *hostile*. As a result, I decided to reload. This time Viconia charmed Vghotan, and successful killed him before he could start fighting Olap.

Next was Ghotrag, who was struck with a chromatic orb and blinded. It was beyond easy to snipe him down with arrows, while a few soldiers wailed on him.



Finally came Cabillus the rather talented goblin shaman. Once again, successfully charmed.



His former goblin allies then locked onto him, and most were subsequently butchered. Too bad, so sad. Note that Charm Person is horridly bugged, with the duration of the charm sometimes being indefinite.

We were down to the final hostile goblin, when Cabillus demonstrated that rivvil aren't the only ones with lousy spell targeting skills:


As you can guess, Viconia's soldier allies turned *hostile* due to being colour sprayed by my charmed shaman. *groan* Reload.

Once again Cabillus was successfully charmed, although this time the effect lasted for the correct period of time. After it weared off, the drow mercenary legged it to the northeast area of the Palisade, resisting a number of Hold Person spells. A Horror managed to break through her resistances, but she recovered just in time. Together with several soldiers of the palisade, a couple of healing potions, a magic missile spell and a blunt stick, she managed to take down Cabillus, *finally*.



So what if a few palisade personalities had to perish (eg. Olap Dimwater), no price is too great for the scalp of the enemy king. Right?

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Yeah, character creation was difficult. Strength was a low priority, but I didn't want a solo character who had a low carrying capacity, so I dropped it to the lowest value possible where you don't get a -modifier.

Then it was a toss up between Dexterity and Constitution. In the end Dexterity gives me an AC bonus and a + to hit with bows. I *need* a secondary means of attack, I can't rely on spells due to their finite nature.

I'm still thinking about what my next second level spell should be. I'd really benefit from Invisibility, but Snowball attack looks rather enticing. Cat's Grace is nice as well.

 

The neutral characters are such a pain in this quest, most people have probably had to reload this map. Charm Person is almost cheesy if you think about it. I've used it a couple times, but it's not one of my regular tactics.

Too bad you didn't get Undead Targos mod; I would've been curious how she fared against Sullabac. He casts mutiple fireballs and lots of necromancy.
The skeletons are probably a bit too much for a solo character, though.

Did you devise this character with roleplaying in mind? Because SF: Necromancy is totally pointless until you get to high level. Evocation is great to start with, as I'm sure you know, and you seem to be relying heavily on Enchantment at the moment.

 

SF: Necromancy was taken with Skull Trap in mind. Once I hit level 6, skull trap will be my main damage dealer for a long time. I might get Spell Focus: Enchantment, since I plan on taking Domination at lvl 10.

Charm Person isn't *too* bad. The unpredictable duration is really the only overpowered element. It's got a lot of drawbacks (can only charm small-medium sized humanoid, quite a few monsters are immune or have high will saves, enemies don't automatically lock onto the charmed foe), but I still think it's a good deal for a level 1 spell. Chromatic Orb is probably better at higher levels.

There is a Ring of Mage armour near the start of the game, and a Grease wand, so I didn't pick those spells.

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OK, I just hit level 7 and selected Stinking Cloud (Slow will be my next level 3 spell, hopefully). True to my word, I selected Skull Trap at level 6 (and greater spell focus: necromancy) which made a *huge* difference. Invisibility is also a god send, it allows me to pick and choose my battles, and fade into the shadows when I'm getting my ass handed to me.

Viccy is about to confront the cannabilistic troll, so stay tuned!

 

Despite what the manual says, E.S. lasts a full 1 hour/level, so you can easily have it active all the time. It will be a long time before you find a +4 CHA item (maybe not even in normal mode; I forget).

Attack the charged guy to break the charm.

You will find several wands of B.S. and C.G. Wand duration is only one hour, but you get a lot of casts per wand. Also, once you find the BOH carrying capacity isn't a big problem.

Snowball Swarm is terrible; don't waste a slot. CG is good, but wait till you run out of wands. Invisibility is only good if you're going the summoner route. Mirror Image is crazy good.

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Technically it isn't cannibalism unless he eats other trolls....

 

I ended up taking Invisibility, and it was well worth it. If I run out of spells and am being swarmed, a simple Invisibility allows me to escape and rest.

Maybe Blur? Or Web?

I was actually thinking of Minor Globe of Invulnerability for my fourth level spell. I'd be able to fire off Stinking Clouds, Webs and Skull Traps point blank. At level 8, it would last 48 seconds a pop.

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Viccy stumbles into a cavern of neutral orcs. Hmm, looks forboding. It might be a good idea to lay a few Skull Traps, in case the orcs behind her attempt an ambush!



Vrek spouts a lot of bravado, claiming that since he has the priestess's moonblade, nothing can hurt him. Let's put that to the test, hmmm? A Stinking Cloud resulted in Vrek looking a little greener in the gills than usual. And lo and behold, the skull traps left to thwart an ambush detonate, taking out two orcs attempting to attack Viccy from behind!



Viconia then made short work of the remaining orcs with a combination of chromatic orb and skull trap. Unluckily for her, Vrek survived, and all her attack spells had been exhausted!

No problem. A self-cast of invisibility and an 8 hour nap, and she's good to go.

Her first chromatic orb stuns Vrek, and it's all over. A few skull traps and a jar of flaming oil, and the femur munching troll is toast.