Dirty, filthy trick

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I'm at the roof of the horde fortress once again in Heart of Fury mode, and remembering how I liked to use the Otiluke's Resilient Sphere here. A character would break invisibility, round up every foe on the map, then encase himself. I abused the targeting of the enemies, so they would hack away at my encased character, while the others unleashed every area damage spell in their spellbook. Cheesy but fun.

But Tactics4IWD2 mod disabled this targeting cheese, by also making the character invisible. So I'm stuck with conventional methods, I thought.
Then I realized a way I could make the hordes work for me, although it's not without risk... Here's my plan:
I have 2 clerics, an illusionist, bard, sorceress and druid.
I won't even go in invisible, I intend to round up all the foes again, and I'll accept the risk of a few arrows. My buffs beforehand will be my standard long-lasting ones: Bull's Strength and Cat's Grace, Bless, Emotion: Hope, Magic Circle against Evil, Stone/Iron Skins, Mage Armour. I'll add some I don't regularly use too: Barkskin, Death Ward, Mind Blank and maybe Protection from Arrows. They might help out...
When I enter the map, my party will rush around in an attempt to attract the attention of all the enemy groups, then regroup. When I think that a large clutch is chasing my decoy, my Dreadmaster will cast Mass Dominate!
This should make the majority of the nearby enemies become allies, so they'll attack any leftovers, especially those that are targeting my party members. The trick gets dirtier when in the next round, my party members start casting simultaneously:
* My two clerics will cast Recitation and Holy Aura. This will buff my new allies, and at the same time Recitation debuffs any remaining opponents.
* My illusionist casts Executioner's Eyes. This is by far the most devastating spell, and will make my 'foot soldiers' become true juggernauts of destruction.
* My bard has a level cleric mixed in, so she can cast Prayer with either Prophia's Merry Shorthorn (HoF item) or the Tome of the Supplicant (from normal mode). Like Recitation, Prayer will also debuff any leftover foes.
* My sorceress will cast Mass Haste. This is almost as devastating as Executioner's Eyes, and the two combined on the dominated foes, will make them obscenely powerful.
* My druid also has a level Dreadmaster mixed in, which gives her a short-lasting casting of Bless.

The total buff spells amount to:
+8 Attack Bonus (+1 Bless, +1 Prayer, +2 Recitation, +4 Executioner's Eyes)
+1 Damage (from Prayer)
+4 to critical range! (from Executioner's Eyes)
+1 attack/round (from Mass Haste)
+7 Saving Throws (+1 Prayer, +2 Recitation, +4 Holy Aura)
+4 generic Armour Class (from Mass Haste)
+4 deflection Armour Class (from Holy Aura)
+25 Spell Resistance (from Holy Aura)
double speed (from Mass Haste)
immunity to charm/dominate (from Holy Aura)
blinds attacking opponent for 3 rounds unless save vs. fortitude (from Holy Aura)

Executioner's Eyes and Bless will wear off after 10 rounds, or 1 minute. But the rest of the spells will last for about 18 rounds (my caster levels are about 18 all round). The true magic of this technique, happens when Mass Dominate wears off: Moments later, the army of juggernauts returns to being normal soldiers, with regular fighting skills and average saving throws. The remainders can be taken care of with Wail of the Banshee.
It's a dirty trick, and if my original casting of Mass Dominate can be pulled off successfully, the awesome horde of monsters stands NO chance!

 

Interesting idea, using Mass Dominate in that way. I mean, everyone knows how powerful buffs are in IWD2, I guess I never thought to use them in conjunction with dominate/mass dominate.

If you think about it, its the ideal thing to use, because as they lose a monster, you gain one. Ie, while they get weaker, you get stronger, and then suddenly all those buffs get cast, and you get a LOT stronger. That being said, you need to worry about staying alive long enough to get those spells off. Is there Mass Invisibility in IWD2? I know Improved Invisibility is/was broken, I'm not suggesting you abuse that. I mean, it gives good AC bonus doesnt it?

Do you get experience for the kills of your new allies? How long does Mass Dominate last?

 

Yes, you gain XP from their kills. Improved Invisibility is nerfed by the Tactics4IWD2 mod, just like Otiluke's Resilient Sphere.
I tried my plan a few times, but it's not easy. The enemies do a lot of damage, and it's risky to cast the spells. Even after a successful casting of Mass Dominate, pesky archers are constantly barraging my casters. Most of the spells (Prayer, Recitation, Holy Aura & Executioner's Eyes) also require you to stand in the middle of the charmed masses. 1 or 2 of the spells get disrupted, which isn't a problem if it's Bless or Prayer. A bigger problem are enemy spellcasters: Shamans and witch doctors immediately start casting Dispel Magic, which nullifies the domination spell.
Most of the charmed creatures will save against it, since they were immediately buffed. But enemy casters will continuously try to dispel, which reduces your ranks. So taking out the casters is a top priority.
I've done it a couple of times already, but none of my attempts was satisfactory. I've also included Invisibility Sphere as a pre-buff, so I can round up enemies with a single chosen, speedy decoy. I think my biggest mistake is rounding up the entire map at once, because that's too much for even my superbuffed legion to handle all at once. My idea now, is to only round up part of the map. The trick is, to get enemy spellcasters nearby, so they'll be attacked by my new allies immediately. If there are still foot soldiers advancing between me and them, then it gets too messy.

 

Could you hit the casters with a Wail of the Banshee/Disintegrate/Other insta-kill spell at the same time you dominate? Remember, if you loose some minions along the way, it shouldn't be too big a deal. Plus, the will-save-vulnerable enemies are probably fortitude-save-strong and vice versa.

 

Yep, sounds like a good plan. If someone starts to cast Dispel Magic, take him out immediately with Chromatic Orb or Finger of Death. Or Otiluke's Resilient Sphere.

-Max

P.S. It shouldn't be a big problem if Domination gets dispelled on some of your minions, since you were planning on killing them at some point anyway. In the meantime they're extra "decoys" and tanks.

 

Mass Dominate by itself is pretty amazing. The rest is just win-more.

 

I use a similar tactic with my bard party. It helps that everyone in the party can reliably and repeatedly cast illusion spells (like Invisibility, Blur, Mirror Image) when needed and that all of them can cast Wail of the Banshee, and that altogether they can cast all the necessary buffs mentioned in record time, with two sets of song buffs on top of everything.
I've never tried doing it in Tactics tho.
I usually let my summons do the rounding up (or drawing in), although I'd probably try something else if casters kept trying to dispel them.
The one problem I've encountered while doing this in the original game were enemy casters' own Mass Dominates. iirc, if your enemies also end up killing your "new" allies then you won't get XP for those slain.

How dare you decoy-users call this a dirty, filthy trick! Arcane spell, AC-abusing, AI-undermining, cheese-using... ah well.
Sure beats creating "danger zones" at least, imo.

 

Danger zones? What are those? Like chokepoints?

 

Hey, not all of us decoy-users think it's dirty. Whatever works, I say.

And in fact, I'm a decoy-user so risk-averse that I often make my decoys run around so that even the 5% chance of a natural 20 can't occur[1]. Casting Mass Domination on a bunch of grunts, exactly as it's designed to be used, is far less cheesy than exploiting both the linearized AC curve (decoy) and the IWD2 movement rules as I do.

-Max

[1] To a lesser extent this works even for characters who have horrible AC. Typically it takes a measurable fraction of a round to prepare an attack, and if you move out of range while the attack is prepping it fizzles.

 

It's part of a tactic mentioned in the original UPP iirc. Basically you steep an area of the map with persistent spell effects like entangle, web, cloudkill, creeping doom, etc (this is the danger zone) and then lure monsters in it. Maybe throw a few delayed blast fireballs or whatnot while you're at it.

 

That's not cheesy. It doesn't even sound terribly effective (especially in HoF), although if you HAVE to find a use for your low-level spells it's not a waste.

-Max

 

It's not particularly cheesy, but it still counts as abusing monsters' AI. If they had common sense they would just avoid the area.

I only mentioned low levels spells but you can include high level ones and even try to shoot down remaining monsters with ranged attacks and nukes if you wanted. It's not a particularly effective or daring tactic, but it's straightforward and should still do the job I guess (in time). I don't use it much in IWD.

 

I found the danger zones to still be useful in HoF, although admittedly less so than in normal mode. What I do, is have a decoy lure a gang of enemies towards my party, which will be far away. Once the decoy is safely back with my party, I set up the zone. It's important that there's no other entrance, even if enemies have to travel the whole map to go around, it's still annoying if they manage to sneak up behind you. So get your party in a dead-end corner, with a narrow entrance.
The most effective spells for the zone are ones that slow enemies: Grease, Entangle, Web, Spike Growth/Thorns, Stinking Cloud, Slow, Acid Fog. And the best damage spell is still not to be sneezed at in HoF: Fiery Cloud theoretically deals more damage than Delayed Blast Fireball. 6d6 fire every round for 10 rounds adds up to 60d6; average is 210 dmg! The trick is to keep opponents in the area. Attacking the enemies in front with ranged weapons will halt the advancement of the already severely slowed gang.

 

Ye, danger zone isn't about effectiveness at all. It's all about style points and a slow roast. Thanks to HOF mode, the monsters can actually take some punishment without keeling over at the first contact.

"Torture ain't worth doing if it's over right away."

 

Heh. If they had common sense they would run and hide until the adventurers go away. Everyone knows you can't win against the protagonists of a video game. Sherincal, Isair and Madae are the only ones for whom fighting to the death makes any sense at all, since they're idealists.

-Max

P.S. Other common-sense actions to take would include running and hiding until buffs wear off, and attacking in large groups instead of scattering themselves around in little bands all over the map. Exploiting the monster AI is what makes IWD2 a game instead of a wholesale slaughter of adventurers.

 

Well, in some areas them being scatted is justified. They need to guard the entire area and theoretically don't know from which direction an attack might come. Now, once the alarm is sounded, they should concentrate most of their forces on eliminating the threat en mass, although they do have to worry that that band of 6 adventures is only a diversion.