Some observations

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I'm currently playing a fairly heavily modded BG2 game right now with an elven male archer PC. My party consists of my archer PC, Yasreana (a good-aligned female drow fighter mod NPC), Anomen, Jaheira, Nalia, and Imoen.

1) Yasreana is a really nice mod NPC. Perhaps a bit overpowered, but rather fun to play with nice dialog and voiceset. While she dual wields shortswords at creation, and she can continue to do so thru most of SoA, I found that giving Yasreana Crom Feyr (when it became available) to wield in her off-hand made her positively deadly. Oh, I'd switch CF to her main hand when fighting one of the foes that CF can kill with a single hit. But carrying it in her offhand gave her that 25 STR and made her damage with whatever shortsword was in her main hand truly impressive.


2) I'm in ToB now and over all the years that I've played BG2, I never truly appreciated the difference between a +5 and a +6 weapon. I guess that I'm not enough of a PnP veteran to have realized that a +6 weapon can go straight thru even the protections of an Improved Mantle spell, until I read here recently someone commenting on that fact. I always (wrongly) assumed that +6 weapons were just +1 better than +5 weapons in their base Thac0 and damage bonus without appreciating that +6 weapons can bypass some protections that +5 weapons cannot.

I'm writing this after wiping out the Lich (and his flaming skull buddies) who are one of the groups that protect the final seal above the Imprisoned One in Watcher's Keep. I was stunned, STUNNED at how easily my party blew away the lich. Oh, I don't usually have all that much trouble with this guy, but short of nailing him with some cheesey HLA traps or a luck Sunray before the lich gets up his protections or something, I usually have to hit him with a few Breachs before I can start doing real damage. But with Jaheira wielding Ixil's +6 spear and my archer using the +6 Staff of the Ram (Yas was dualwielding the Mace of Disruption and Crom Feyr, and Anomen was wielding the +4 Runehammer), the Lich never got a chance to cast any spells because I was constantly disrupting his castings, even after his contingencies brought up an Improved Mantle. The flaming skulls were more of a challenge than the lich this time around.


It'll be interesting to see how these +6 weapons do during the rest of the way, particularly in the final battles.

 

Well, this PnP veteran can tell you that +6 weapons don't do that in PnP. Mostly because they don't exist. And non-swords can only go up to +3.

 

All +6 weapons' enchantments are decreased to +5 by IA (for those who may like to know).

[ June 06, 2007, 09:32: Message edited by: Sikret ]

 

Felinoid, why should swords have some holy writ allowing only them to have higher enchantments? Seems pretty silly to me.


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Different thought... (really more of a story)

So I just finished with Draconis. Last time I faced him (with my Ftr/Thf PC party), I had a horrific time with Draconis. Must have taken me 6-8 or more reloads. This time, with my Archer party (described above), I decided to try a different tactic.

First of all, I wanted to scout out the area with Nalia (invis'd with the Staff of the Magi) to find just how far onto the "patio" Draconis was placed. I expected to be reloading and didn't bother buffing my party at all. In fact, the rest of my part was back on the steps to the "patio".

So, Nalia "finds" the human Draconis and the dialog got triggered inspite of being invis. Oh well. So rather than reload right now, I just whipped out a Gate scroll and had Nalia summon a Pit Fiend in (human) Draconis' face. This was more than a little amusing. Human Draconis ended up whipping out his big spells against this pit fiend, Time Stop, various symbols, etc. and accomplished nothing more than wasting a bunch of spells. Oh, eventually he cast some spell that nuked the pit fiend, but he wasted all his good stuff. So I say, what the heck, let's see if Nalia (unbuffed, except for the Staff of the Magi) can take him out. Well, Human Draconis had too much Magic resistance, at least for my patience, so I call up my archer, leaving the rest of the party way back on the steps.

Since he'd wasted all his heavy duty spells, human Draconis couldn't do squat to hurt my Archer and my archer just about went up to Drac's face and started pumping +2 arrows into him like a pin cushion, until the inenvitable transformation... when of course, my archer's first reaction was "RUN AWAY!!!"

Remember, the rest of my party was back on the steps and entirely unbuffed. I really was looking at this as a scouting mission that would get reloaded. Anyways, I hold Anomen back, casting some high level summons and high level attack spells, while sending in Jaheira and Yasraena into melee, with Nalia and Imoen casting whatever was required. I had to have Yas and Jaheira run for their lives at various times just after getting nuked by Drac's acid breath (thankfully, not at the same time).

I was really getting into this battle, since it had such a different feel to it, ie. an unbuffed party against a dragon. I was settling in for a long battle, as all my battles against Drac seem to be, when Nalia and Imeon somehow get lucky (my tanks must have really softened Drac up without him casting a Heal) and hit him with a double Horrid Wilting barrage. Draconis dropped like a rock. Thud! One dead and desicated dragon.

For whatever reason, Draconis is usually the toughest dragon in all of BG2, even when I'm fully buffed and ready to go dragon hunting. Surprised the heck out of me that I was able to take him out with an unbuffed party, with little more than good tactics and perhaps a little luck.

 

Something to do with the form being prime for enchantment, but it does seem a bit half-assed, yeah. *shrugs*

 

To my understanding the biggest enchantments also tended to be god Granted to their Holy Warriors so they were very special things like Holy Avengers(all of which were supposed to have names), The Defender, And other supposed to be rare weapons.

However if you get into say. The Books of Magic Items you will find that in Second Ed TSR broke their own rules more than once. There were several Axes, and quite a few staves that were powerfully enchanted as well.

but Fel is right. There was no such things as a +6 weapon in the old PnP play and you had an Idiot DM if they handed out too many or too often. I've been in good games where magic items aren't too terribly rare but rare enough that I've seen Paladin's fall in commiting evil acts because they Desired somebody elses Defender or Holy Avenger. Mages go to war over truely powerful staves... Thieves covet weapons that had magical affects that went well with their trade or dripped their own poisons to the point of destroying guilds...

Flaunting powerful weapons just is never a good idea of AD&D but we see what ammounts to a fair ammount of it in some of the Video Games partly to help keep it interesting. Partly because that's just how some fools were and they are part of your target demographic.