Please help me fight spell casters

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Hello

My biggest problem with the Baldur's Gate games has always been fighting spell casters, because they have the ability to incapacitate your party members, or take control of them away from you.

I beat the original (non-enhanced) Baldur's Gate by the skin of my teeth some time ago, but got stuck in the second one when I had to fight a dragon.

I'd like to play and beat both games with the one character, so I think playing as an Inquisitor is the way to go, since the Enhanced Edition lets you play as one in Baldur's Gate from the outset.

My question is, though, how do you protect the rest of your party from spells that paralyse them with status ailments, or make them run around so you can't control them, or make them attack each other?

Thanks

 

Your options for protection against these type of spells are fairly limited. In BG, you could use a scroll of Protection from Magic to protect you against all magic, and there are some potions that increase your resistance to magic. These are actually relatively easy to get in BG, much more so than in BG2, in any case.

In BG2 your options are a bit more varied, ranging from the various spell shields or the right kind of spell immunity for mages to chaotic commands for priests, to various items that convey an immunity to such and such.

An inquisitor has a powerful dispel, that you can use to either dispel protections from a mage (and true sight to get rid of various types of invisibility and other mirage type things (mirror images, mislead, project image). For fighting mages, an inquisitor is really a potent class. His dispel can also be used to dispel effects like charm, confusion, and fear from your party members.

 

A few ways you can deal with those in BG:

space your party out, so that the area of effect can only take out 1 person at a time, at most.

do you have a cleric? your first level disabling spell can be casted quicker and can prevent them from casting theirs. an under-rated spell for the early portion of the game, this is.

use a thief with decent backstab capability and take the mage out before it can let off a single spell.

as BA suggested, turn em into pincushions. this right here is generally good advice for anything in BG.

Inquisitors are the perfect anti-mage and you certainly won't have any trouble with them. They are definitely a major contender for potentially most powerful PC.

 

Okay, thanks guys

By turning them into pincushions, do you mean hitting them with arrows?

I also never learnt how backstab works. Can Imoen backstab?

 

Yes, Imoen can back stab. You have to hide in shadows first and of course be behind the person before you attack

 

Imoen won't ever be really proficient at backstabs, capping at thief lvl 7, for a x3 multiplier maximum.
Also keep in mind that you need to use a weapon that a pure thief would be able to use.

 

In BG, she is a pure thief, though. But yeah, backstabbing really becomes useful with higher multipliers. Pure class thieves have pretty poor AC, though; it's not that unusual to miss a backstab, which is pretty annoying if you have to run away again and hide in shadows, then to try again. Or just let the rest of the party handle it.

For interrupting spellcasters, not only arrows are good, but weapons with elemental damage are good as well, especially against casters that like to throw up stoneskins (which are pretty much all of them in BG2, though not so much in BG), because the physical damage might be negated by the stoneskins, the elemental damage is not, and can still interrupt them.

In BG, arrows are typically the best, not only because it's typically safer to engage from a distance, but also because bows have an extra attack per round.

 

The trick to spellcasters is to hit 'em early and hit 'em hard. This works well in BG1, whether you backstab them with a thief or shower them with projectiles.

In BG2, it gets trickier because NPC spellcasters cheat with their scripted contingencies, but BG2 also gives you a lot of options to protect yourself.

Against enemies with heavy crowd control (confusion, charm, hold person, etc.), I tend to place most of the party out of reach and have the casters waste their spells on a single character that's well equipped to handle the effects. At worst, when strategic positioning isn't possible, you might have to pre-buff with your own spells and consumables and just rush them.

I've never had any issues in vanilla game. If you're playing with SCS or other mods, it's a different beast entirely.

Reminded me of this:

 

As for wasting their spells, a wand of summoning can work pretty well, too. Doesn't always work that well, as a lot of spellcasters in BG2 have scripted spells and/or infinite spells, but it may still take care of some of the more annoying spells.

 

Okay, thanks guys

I'm going to try backstabbing Mulahey in the Nashkel mine

 

Did you bring along Montaron? As a fighter/thief he is a much more reliable backstabber.

(shameless plug)

if all else fails, you can also try my NPC mod for BG1. It adds a Wizard Slayer to the game, which causes magic miscast upon hit

 

Did you make another NPC for the game?

 

Oh, yes. That's quite a popular thing in this series. I didn't play my first run through of BG1 until I installed the mod that adds random banters to the already existing NPCs. Playing BG2 first spoiled me

anyways, if you follow the advice here and fire arrows/magic missles/Command spells and a backstab to any magic users you really should have no problem. at least until the next game

 

If you are keeping her along, Imoen with a +2 or +3 weapon (Rashad's Talon, Quarterstaff +3, etc) isn't too terrible against a mage with lame AC, and even better if you give her the Potion of Power (?) that boosts her to 18 STR. Get her hasted, invisible, powered up, and hack away.

Also, as mentioned, launching arrows at a distance is a good strategy. I especially like Arrows of Biting, assuming you can find any, as they'll whack the victims with poison each round for several rounds, making it impossible for them to cast. One thing to watch for is the information scroll at the bottom, so you can see if the spell-casters saved against that poison. If they haven't and are poisoned, don't waste anymore at that target; instead, start launching at another to poison him/her. Early on, those arrows are hard to find and expensive to buy. Later on, you'll probably have a ton of them and can fire away with impunity.

Side note: I really like them against the Sirines who will charm you as well as firing their own Arrows of Biting at you. Once you've killed them, loot those arrows from them.

Oh, and there is also a venomous dagger that could be used to great effect for backstabs and multiple rounds of poison hits upon any spell-casters.

 

Thanks for the responses

I don't think I was able to pull off the backstab with Imoen. Is there a way of telling if it actually worked? It just showed up like a regular hit.

 

If you pull off a backstab it should show up in the text. What weapon were you using? You need a dagger, long/short sword, or staff if I recall correctly. Also, are you sure you were in stealth?

 

It didn't say anything special in the text, so I guess it didn't work. Maybe I wasn't properly behind him.

I was using a regular dagger, and I'm pretty sure I was in stealth. It said "hide in shadows succeeded", though it failed a bunch of times before that

 

You'll need to actually land an attack before stealth's invisibility breaks.
if you do manage to hit a backstab the game will tell you in the combat log by displaying the following

Depending on your level and thus backstab multiplier the message can change a little bit, for example a lvl 11 thief gets a x4 multiplier so it would say 'Backstab Quadruple Damage' instead.

Of course, all of this is assuming you have combat infornation turned on i nthe gameplay section of the game options, though it's turned on by default and i cannopt imagine anyone turning it off by accident.