Priest spell tactics

Remove all ads!

Mage spell tactics are pretty well established and discussed, but I'd like to hear your favorite spell combos for priests. Particularly if you're soloing any flavor of priest, or if you decide to go without a mage. How do you deal with enemy mages? Magic resistant baddies?

As a side thought, to me most spells in BG2 can be classified as buffing, weakening, summoning, or damaging. Traditionally my priests buff up my party and summon help, while mages weaken and damage the enemy.

 

In my parties, cleric's work is healing, dispel magic, invisibility purge, removal of various conditions, restoration, protection from evil, paryer/chant and melee with his nice self-targetable buffs.

For druids: healing, protection, ironskin and melee, removal of various conditions, occasional summoning of bigass elementals.

I rarely use 6+ level spells for tactical advantage in a particular situation. I mostly have a fixed set, elemental summoning or implosion, but not exclusively.

 

For my F/M/C or M/C I put 3 mass healing into triggers. I use magic resistance in early game (chapter 2) to drop the resistance of drags (non tactics). R/C holy power is very sweet. Holy word is cool. I use mass buffs all the time, chant, defensive harmony and all the others. False dawn rocks vampires.

Hmm, there are more, especially with M/C, ill try to remember them later.

 

My favorite druid spell is Summon Insects. It keeps the enemy spellcaster from using further spells, and quickly eats thru his mirror image and stone skin.

On another thread someone posted the brilliant move of casting it on someone less magic resistant in the enemy party... one of their thiefs or fighters. This way it still affects the whole enemy party, including the mage, and is less likely to rebound off the mages save or magic resistance.

 

Chaotic commands is a definite must for my clerics and it lasts quite a while too. Prevents nearly any type of charm spell from affecting you -- especially those who seem to never save against it (Minsc comes to mind).

I've had a great deal of success using Harm as well. There is no save against it and IIRC it ignores MR -- just smack and they're down to 1 HP. Gotta love that.

 

@ Spelladonna

Ok - here's a question about harm. It says it knocks your enemy down to 1 hp for one round, and then after which they get their hp back. Within that round, you have to score a successful melee attack. But is this true? And does it have to be from the priest who cast it? Could I (with a cleric mage) put harm and magic missile in a sequencer and have like an instant kill spell? Or at least, could I cast it while my melee fighters are going to town on somebody, and just hope one of them scores a hit in the next round?

I've never used it because it sounded too good to be true. I never trusted my priests melee ability enough to give it a try.

 

@ Tayja
You're talking about Summon Insects or Insect Plague? The latter is my favorite early in the game for taking down spellcasters. Combine with Greater Malison or Doom and they usually run in fear, too . Thanks for the tip about casting it on less magic resistant members of an enemy party; I gotta try that one.

@ Spelladonna
Harm really ignores MR? What THAC0 does it use, your base? I've overlooked this spell as well but it sounds good, especially if you're using a Fighter/Cleric or Ranger/Cleric.

 

About the summon insects / insect plague / creeping doom spells, what resists them? What can a mage have as a defense to it? Also another spell I've never taken advantage of.

 

DR, I pretty much kept Jaheira around ONLY for Insect Plague and Summon Fire Elementals in my first time through. I haven't tried it on liches, but no party of clerics/mages before the drow have withstood it. Preempt with Greater Malison and typically over half of them start running. The rest can't do jack. Breach their defenses and embarrass them as they stand. Insect Plague even covers invisible enemies. I think what Spelladonna said is that if your initial target has high magic resistance, the spell will fail completely. But if you cast it at a less resistant enemy, the swarm should spread without checking for MR. There's pretty much nothing they can do after it takes effect; they can't even cast Dispel Magic.

 

In the PnP games, a spell called "protection from vermin" would have worked.

but unfortunately this spell apparently doesn't exist here.... bummer for bad guys. When I put Jaheira to "offensive/defensive", she casts her insect spells at every enemy till she's out. LOL never lasts more than three or four fights, no matter how many I've had her memorize.

 

So Insect Plague ignores stoneskin, greater mantle, invisibility, spell deflection, globe of invulnerability...etc, all except for super-high magic resistance? Is there no defense against it?

 

About harm:
You don't target the enemy with the spell; you cast it on yourself, and it replaces your weapon with the harm attack. (like cause light wounds or chill/ghoul touch) Then you must engage in melee and roll a hit. IIRC the THAC0 is your base, but the spell description might have a +2 or something to the hit roll... I can't remember. So you can't put it in a sequencer with magic missile. Also where'd you hear that it drops the target's HP to 1 for a round? I thought it was permanent (assuming he doesn't heal himself).

Sunray and False Dawn is great against undead, but as your cleric levels up, turning undead is more efficient (no risk of spell disruption and you free up a slot for a different high level spell).

I'm surprised no one mentioned Slay Living yet. Slay Living makes short work out of summons, like Efreeti. Add Doom in there against non-summons for more reliability.

The 3rd level spell Holy Smite is comparable to the mage spell Ice Storm. ie: Light in damage, but affects groups of monsters. Except it affects evil monsters and only hits once. Good if you don't want to bother with goblins. But you might need more than one for orcs.

 

Well i dont know about you but i usualy keep all level 1 slots as sanctuary and use my offensive spells like solls searing ord holy might etc.For every spell level from 3 i put on one healing exept mass which i put on two unless i'm in a solo which i woud say recuires at least two healing spells of each level. I casts ofensive spells using my sanctuary to get my cleric out of danger and when its safe again i ussuly summon a deva or two and attack an oppnent(unless it is a demon or draogn which requires preperation). Finally i would like to say that most people use clerics as complete defenders and this is a very big mistakes as some spells they have can be truly devastating to the enemy.(example: repel undead)

 

just an FYI, you can never have more than one planetar/deva on your side at any one time.

 

@Death Rabbit
If the target of the spell (the enemy you clicked on when casting) has protections, then the spell will fail. But, if you click on one of his buddies, the spell ignores any protections that the enemy mage might have. That's why you should always target it on a fighter or a cleric (without high magic resistance or shield of the archons.)

About harm:

So, the effect is permanent. The spell will only work if the priest makes a successful touch attack in the next round of combat after casting the spell. Your MM/Harm combo would not be a good one, DR.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned yet that shield of the archons (vs. mages) and physical mirror (vs. archers) are good spells for a combat cleric.

 

My priest are always just used for healing and killing undead. I've never found Harm really good, I can either never hit the enemy or die straight after. So just healing and undead slaying for my priests. Oh and how could I forget True Sight.