Late dualing bounty hunter.

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Theres something about the phrase "Righteous Magic Backstab" that makes me smile at the thought of playing a Cleric/Thief.
Similarly the words "ranged, area of effect Maze spell, with no save, that ignores magic resistance"
have opened my eyes to the power of the bounty hunter.

So I made a Bounty Hunter with lots of wisdom and a plan to solo (well almost) my way to level 21 before dual classing to Cleric and recruiting a party. I say almost solo because I took Imoen and Jaheria through the first dungeon to help carry the loot and then ran round Athkatla with lady J until I got the ring of wizardry from the corpse of one of Galverys goons.

Now Anghelena (my BH) is in chapter 2, has just made level 21 and is plagued by indecision.

Should she dual now or wait a few more levels to get UAI? If she waits that long why not wait a little longer and get a few spike and time traps?
How many of the Cleric HLAs are worth having?
Should she grab a party or carry on on her own?
If she does get a party, who? (I was thinking of getting Korgan, Mazzy, Imoen and Kelsy with Savrok joining in TOB).

Any advice?

 

Hmm a few time or spike traps OR use any item HLA will be very good indeed. UAI is critical, you can wear Robe of Vecna to speed up your clerical casting! And use SoM and other cheesy items too!

But it will make re-activating thief class relatively difficult. Use at your own risk.

Faraaz is also heading for a much more hardcore dual-class, so look at his thread for some ideas as well. Especially for dualling into a cleric.

Anyway, she needs to solo if she wishes to re-activate thief levels ASAP. Otherwise progression will be tortoriously slow IMHO.

 

There are only a couple of really useful cleric HLAs that you will want to acquire, but that's irrelevant. Since you are going to have to exceed your thief levels to reactivate your bounty hunter skills, you're going to get any cleric HLA's you need along the way anyway. Thieves require fewer XPs to gain the next level than any other class. That means that while all classes start getting HLAs at 3 million XP, that a thief's numerical level will be higher than any other class when he starts receiving his HLAs. So if your thief receives his first HLA at level 22 (I'm guessing, I don't know exactly what level it happens at), your cleric will gain his first HLA at level 20 (again I'm guessing). So by the time your cleric exceeds the thief levels, you will be given the opportunity to select more cleric HLAs than thief HLAs.

 

^The same thing makes re-activating thief class hard, if you had waited for thief HLAs.

Best Cleric HLAs:

Energy Blades:These are the tools of destruction! You can kill basically anything with these! Look at thetruth's solo cleric thread to feel the power!

Devas can be useful, especially if you are SOLOing.

Implosion:Ignores MR, and does massive damage! Major ouchies for drows and Mind Flayers alike!

Aura of Flaming Death: I think it is rubbish, but I heard from another place that it was actually useful. Well...maybe.

Definitely get UAI as a thief as your first HLA! It helps tremendously! The ability to gulp fighter-only spiffy potions, wield any weapon, use mage scrolls (collect Stoneski+ProfromMagical Weapons scrolls for tough battles!), wearing robes, and using deadly wands! This HLA rocks, and a great helper for practically every build!

 

Thanks guys. I should probably have said that I play with the XP cap removed in my first post as that means that as long as I don't hit L40 with my thief it will be possible to re-activate the class. So I guess the real questions are: How much XP do I need to leave available for the rest of my party (if I decide to stay close to my original plan rather than soloing the whole game) in order that they can get to a worthwhile level.

Its always seemed to me that the hard part of dual classing is not waiting for the first class to come back but the time spent as an extremely low level second class. Because of that I've left myself a fair amount of easy XP to go and hoover up once I do dual. (talk to Aegasfield about Reijak, talk to Aran about Bodhi, etc, and if I get too frustrated I'll go to the coronet and recruit Edwin for just as long as it takes him to work his way through my extensive collection of scrolls.)
Once I've a few levels under my belt I'll be able to take on the remaining Chapter 2 quests or, more likely, go and get Imoen. After which I wont have re-activated my thievery but I will have enough levels to be a useful cleric.

Silverstar, you can't play as many solo F/Ts and assassins as I have without learning how astoundingly powerful UAI is , in fact up to now I would have said its the best thing that rouges have.

Now, however, I have properly tried the Bounty Hunters Maze trap and OH MY GOD ITS GOOD.

I tried it out on Bohdi and her crew. In combination with stealth, backstabing (with daystar) and the cloak of non detection it turned the whole encounter into a veritable cake walk.
My favorite fight has to be the one in the lower level of the dungeon where I snuck in, memorized the position, number and descriptions of the enemies then withdrew.
Chuck a special trap through the open door and they all get mazed, only to reappear one at a time with more than enough time in between each of them for me to backstab and hide before the next one showed up.

 

Get UAI. It's the best HLA in the game, IMHO.And only with UAI you will be able to backstab with something else than staves.

- Energy Blades is enough (see Silverstar's comment).I add that they give you 10 attacks/round (if dualwielding) and combined with Righteous magic (and Holy power if enemy has good AC) can kill almost all those enemies you cannot backstab...And most importantly you will do it from a safe distance.

- As for Implosion, it does ignore MR,but it is supposed to do 10d10 fire damage + 10d10 blunt damage (with a save vs.spell for half).Well, every time I have used it with my cleric, I was never able to do more than 50-60 dmg to anyone.And also I have noticed that if the enemy is immune to fire he doesn't take any damage at all ! Now my only guess is that implosion (at least in my game) doesn't do any blunt damage at all.Has anyone else noticed this too?

- Aura of Flaming Death is good mainly for characters who engage in melee (ranger/cleric,fighter/cleric),so I guess you don't need it.

The best 7 level cleric spells are (IMHO) Energy Blades,Firestorm (massive fire damage ignoring MR) and Shield of the Archons (life-saver against many nasty spells - imprisonment included)

Well I am a fan of soloing,so my answer is obvious.But if you feel you are missing party interaction a lot,then you can take some NPCs later.
Without mods there isn't much experience available in the game (since you have already completed solo many quests) and your NPCs, in a full party, will have trouble reaching high levels.
OR you could just take Imoen and Sarevok (in ToB) and play an only Bhaalspawns-game...

It makes me smile too

 

@thetruth

Maybe you casted Implosion on stone-skinned enemies (dragons?) and stoneskin can block the blunt damage AFAIK.

 

This is a really good point. Without the ability to use most thief class weapons, the only backstab options you'll have is the quarterstaff and a club. I'll be the first to admit that there are some really nasty quarterstaves you can pick up, especially once you get to ToB, but wielding a two handed weapon was never really my thing, with the exception of insta-kill weapons like the Ravager, or extremely powerful weapons, like Carsomyr.

Especially considering a quarterstaff only does 1d6 base damage, thereby eliminating one of the main benefits of using a two-handed weapon - more damage. With your character, you'll be better off either dual wielding, or using a shield. So yes, I agree that you'll definitely want to pick up UAI just to enhance your backstab options once you get your thief skills back.

The only thing I would add to thetruth's list of HLAs is you'll definitely want the deva/fallen deva. You can never go wrong with a powerful summon spell, and the deva/fallen deva is about as strong as it gets for clerics.

 

In the end I dualed at level 26. I took UAI, one spike trap and one time trap. Before I did that though I made a save that I will probably revist a little later on. A few conversations took me up to level 9, then Korgans book, Gorf the squisher, the spellhold dream sequence and Imoens spellbook study fest got me almost to level 11.

As for my backstabing weapon of choice, it will almost always be a staff. Simply because the good ones (Striking,Ram) offer the best damage of any backstabing weapon when you get them.

Having said that, the extra flexibility afforded by UAI is very welcome.

[edited to read level 26, not level 27]

[ March 21, 2006, 19:57: Message edited by: Rudiger ]

 

Hope all goes well. When do you think you will re-activate the thief levels?

Is your UAI active now? I mean, I never tried this sort of thing before, can your cleric use any item without thief levels active? Just curious.

 

UAI is active, as are my HLA traps
Re-activation should happen sometime around mid TOB.
Now that I write that I know I'll definitly go back and solo the game with this character. Probably the game after next.

 

Wow, UAI is active at the START of the dual (I wonder if this applies to all HLA's).

Are you also getting a new HLA at every level up?

 

I've never dualed a character this late before, so I can say for sure if all HLAs would remain available.
I suspect that things like greater whirlwind or hardiness that show up as special abilitys would stay with you, but that L10 spells would not.

No Im not getting HLAs with every level.