Wild Mage party, new questions

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Well. I was having fun with my Chorister party, but...his party ended up being far, too powerful. I was fighting Improved Bodhi final fight, and...it was boring. Even on insane. Really. Immy casts a Time Stop so fast, my Arcane Fist is immune to it by his Lunar Stance, my Chorister is immune to it thanks to his blade from Imp. Asylum party. three people raining down destruction on those vampires in never-ending Time Stops. We all had 5-6 M xp thanks to Planar Sphere mod. Bodhi stood no chance. Consequent rains of Flame Arrows from Sequencers, courtesy of my bards, and Immy, in an Imp. Alacrity Frenzy. She 'died' once, yelled, healed herself, another TS, she is DEAD. Not even 1 HP or level loss from my party.

I have decided to do, some serious rebalance in my mod list and start a new-not so powerful party.

I uninstalled Planar Sphere mod. It adds fun but ridiculously powerful and unbalancing items, spells, and a few million XP to my party.

I uninstalled Exnem mod, never used its joke items, but I was really pissed of finding uber-ridiculous items which I can not use.

I will not use cheese. No multiple PIs, casting from scrolls, or multiple wishes. Further, I will rule that one caster can cast one IA per day, since the spell is very draining.

Furhter, I thought about uninstalling ımproved Asylum mod, but that mod is cool as it really makes Asylum harder. I decided to go there as fast as possible, after doing a few easy quests, so that I will not be able to challenge Imp. Asylum party for their godly items. Or so I hope.

I started a new game, creating a Wild Mage. I know, mages are most powerful in the end, but I never tried a Wild one before. He has crappy stats. Only INT is 18 (for ease of use), others are all 8-10-12 with the exception of CHA, which is 16 for some dialogue and shopping options. This is my first roll, I even left some points out.

And I am having major fun!

Example:

I was battling that annoying duergar mages (from Imp. Ilych mod) in Irenicus Dungeon. My WM casts a magic missile which will kill the Near Death mage, but it wild surges and turns into a Silence Spell:which silences EVERYBODY except the Duergar mage. (she made a save vs spells:-3! Rolled a 2, and with -5 penalty of silence:-3 and she saved. Mister Weimer, I guess you made her drink a potion of magic shielding?) The battle suddenly changed entirely and it was FUN! The panic!

Another one. Fighting the improved Trolls in Nalia's keep. I try to launch a Chain Lightninging via Reckless Dweomer. ZAP! To my suprise, it turned out to be an Area Effect and zapped all of my party too! Well at least those trolls suffered too!

The fact that my mage has 40 HP or something like that (With familiar bonus) is thrilling too, and will add difficulty.

My party will be My WM, a Shapeshifter created via MP (I so despise Cernd) (Do not worry, I do not have shape shifter rebalancing, that is simply insane.) Jaheira (with Druid Remix she can only use studded leather armor, but she now can use bows via Natural Selection:and entirely new strategies for her are needed!) Chloe, (cool woman, will romance Immy but she seems to be romancing ME now even though my PC is male?) Kelsey (mayhap I will pick (crappy) spells I never experienced before?) and Immy. Hmm Immy will be romanced by Kelsey and/or Chloe, promises to be interesting! (wink wink)

Anyway, my questions:

1-Is WM really powerful? Can he cast ANYTHING via Reckless Dweomer later?

2-Does Chaos shield and Imp. Chaos Shield stack?
Are they really useful and worth the spell slots?

3-When should I go to Imp. Asylum? I am already level 11 mage, I did Circus, CC, Bridge District, Harper plot, did some shopping spree, now I will do thief stronghold, then head for Asylum to save Immy ASAP. I guess it will be fun to play those areas and underdark (gasp) with low level party, if not suicide. Hmm...Improved Shaugain and Mind Flayer city, all those Elder Orbs in Beholder Den (I have hardest spawns possible) sounds FUN! Wish me luck!

[ August 07, 2006, 10:14: Message edited by: Silverstar ]

 

I'll never stop praising the greatness of a Wild Mage. If you're lucky, it's the most powerful wizard in the game. If you are not... it's the funniest whenever a nasty wild surge shows up.

Also, every spell that you cast can potentially be 5 levels higher than its real casting level (they can also be casted 5 levels lower, but why considering negative things...?).

1. IIRC, you can (try to) cast any spell from your spellbook via NRD, even those you haven't memorised, or those whose level are too high for your mage. The only condition is that it must be written in your spellbook.

2. I think they don't stack, but I'm not sure. At high levels, the Improved Chaos Shield is fairly good. Even when your NRD doesn't produce the expected result, the chances of getting a good surge are way higher.

3. I haven't installed any mods, so I don't know how much harder the Asylum is. A low level WM can be weaker than a normal mage because of negative random level casting. When the WM has reached level 15, it's not that much of a problem.

One thing. It could be me, but I have noticed a higher rate of success with NRD when I use it from a Minor Sequencer in conjunction with a Chaos Shield (first the Shield, obviously). Have you noticed the same, or am I paranoid?

[ August 01, 2006, 11:59: Message edited by: Colthrun ]

 

Hi, Silverstar!

1- If you are looking for new enhanced battles, try my "Improved Anvil" mod (you will just need to uninstall a few components of "Tactics" mod which are incompatible with my mod. Just see the installation document of my mod).

2- As for Cernd, if you have installed "Auramaster Druid Kit V3.0", he is an Auramaster (and not a shapeshifter). So, it's not bad to give him a try. I say this because I know you like Auramasters.

3- As for Wild Mage, yes it is the most powerful character (yes, even more powerful than a sorcerer). In addition to the good points Colthrun mentioned, it is also worth mentioning that a wild mage can cast as many high level spells as he can memorize first level spells. Hence his total number of high level spells is even more than a sorcerer. I have managed to win some very difficult battles with a single wild mage (which I had failed to win them with a single sorcerer at the same level of experience).

 

@Sikret

Ah I totally forgot about AMDK. I was so busy, constantly switching CDs for IWD1, IWD2, PSCT, and ofcourse, ToB. Sorry. I still have high plans for that kit though. I want to make him my future PC, a non-arcane caster PC will be interesting, I hope.

So you say WM is really powerful, and more importantly, FUN as it has the potential to cause interesting things.

I will do theif stronghold for GP and go to Spellhold. I think all those hardest battles there and in underdark will make me have great fun...and perhaps frustration...and countless loads. A thing I missed since I first played all those wonderful mods.

I already have your improved Anvil mod, though did not install it. But I have already spent a lot of time uninstalling and re-balancing all my mods, and since tactics is the first mod I had, uninstalling it may cause...problems. Sorry. It is very unlucky that I can not play with your mods, for some reason or another. Is there a curse or what?

 

The Wild Mage is the best arcane spellcaster and as you pointed out it is a lot of fun to play!

 

As Colthrun mentioned, the Wild Mage can indeed use NRD to cast any spell that happens to be in his spellbook. I'm sure the power-gamer in you will have realised, this means at higher levels (so the Wild Surge is more controlled IIRC) you can cast Time stop with all your 1st level slots instead of Magic Missile.

WMs are potentially very powerful. I have one in my current game and he's saved our collective butts many times by turning around, NRDing Horrid Wilting and praying all goes well. Naturally, you've got to view them with a certain sense of humour- he's also spent a fair bit of the time as a woman due to mucking up the casting of Melf's Minute Meteors!

@ Colthrun:

I haven't actually tried using it in a sequencer yet, I'll have to try it out and see if I notice a difference too.

 

You can even cast spells you shouldn't be able to cast... and as Colthrun said you only need to have them in your spellbook.

The only drawback is that you won't cast Magic Missile much with a high level Wild Mage.

WIS is a good stat for a Wild Mage to use the Wish spell.

 

That's odd. I just tried to use it in a sequencer as Colthrun mentioned, but NRD never showed up as an option to put in it, despite my character having memorised it twice. It would make sense that it couldn't be included as you need to pick an option in the same way as Spell Immunity...

Am I missing something here?

EDIT: Typo

 

Strange, it has always worked for me.

EDIT: Gah! I've installed BG2 and ToB (with the official patch and nothing else) and I can't select NRD in the Sequencer either! I know I've done it, perhaps it only works with TuTu...

[ August 02, 2006, 00:15: Message edited by: Colthrun ]

 

Strange thing about sequencers then, I discovered I can cast spell sequencer via NRD, and my lvl is only 11, this is a tremendous bonus, I love sequencer and trigger spells, but hate the fact that they take up valuable spell slots, but no longer.

Hmm, yes, my powergamer spirit starts to realise the awesome potential of WM. I thought it was going to be fun, but it seems it is going to be both powerful and fun.

I killed that ridiculously difficult gnome illusionist (he killed two of my party with his staff!) and scribed his Spell Trap (lvl 9) scroll. Just for the fun of it, tried casting one via NRD. Well, first try succeeded, with double caster level as wild surge! YAY! This sounds delicious.

Ofcourse, later I needed a True Sight badly, prayed and casted NRD. A cow landed on my PC and his stoneskin was dispelled, which saved his life I think. Fun!

My WM has crappy stats other than CHA and INT, he has little wisdom as I RP him as a naive, reckless and sly mage who is needlesly brave (and perhaps foolish) to toy with dangerous magics. He is smart, but rather childish in wisdom. Makes up for fun and dangerous playing style! I know WIS helps in Wish, but other than that, is it really neccesary for WM? Does it help in Wild Surges? (I don't think so) Well there are plenty of Potions of Insight in the game. If needed badly.

Thanks for your answers, you are really helpful. I did not know WM was everybody's favourite caster...well, almost. It sure has my favour right now. Especially after an extremely lucky Wild Surge (I think) in Improved Torgal fight (and I was losing too!)=Refreshed, all of a sudden my WM had ALL of his spells back, which meant more Glitterdusts, Slows, to hamper the insanely fast, and always invisible Torgal. A few more Magic Missiles and MMMeteors also meant a Dead Improved Torgal. Die you beast!

 

Yes he is. Among other things people have posted there are also multi-effect surges - that is, you get to have another wild surge happen on top of the first. The longest "chain" I've ever made was five - from the "refreshed" surge to the falling cow surge and finally to the summoning-a-pit-fiend-in-the-middle-of-Irenicus'-Dungeon surge. The most powerful spells I've casted with a surge include a high LvL Chromatic Orb with the surges area effect and no save; an area effect Wish and an area effect Chain Contingency with a few Horrid Wiltings.
If you cast Chaos Shield the chance of casting the spell normally increases - but it's because of this that I don't think it's worth the spell slot.
Especially since the chance of casting a spell normally with NRD gets higher as the WM gains levels.

There's some info about this in the game somwhere - I think from the spell descriptions. But iirc they don't.

Nononononononono.

Better stock up on spells scrolls first.

 

@Scythesong

Cool, I knew you were good with Blades, but it seems you are quite experienced in dealing with WMs too! You gave me neat ideas. Thanks!

I agree I should stock some spell scrolls before leaving for Spellhold. A few Pro from various things and Magic weapons, a Time Stop, (female lich in Docks has some, but she sure is tough! Mommy!) hmm, should I scribe Time Stop scroll if I get it, then I can try casting it via NRD? It would be a huge bonus if it worked! What is the chance of casting a TS via a level 11-12 WM? I guess it improves with Chaos Shield active?

 

@ Silverstar

They stack only if you use them in a Sequencer/C.Contigency


This means that a level-25 Wild Mage using a CC with 3 I.Chaos Shields can avoid 100% all the wild surges.

They are useful but I would use them only in a No-reloads game
Wild Surges are the most funny part of this class and with some luck they can make the W.Mage even more powerful.


Also I agree with everyone who said that Wild Mage is the most powerful spell-caster in the game.IMHO he is also the most powerful class in BG2.

 

It improves with Chaos Shield on, yes. There was an old thread here that discussed all the rolls associated with the WM casting a single spell. I've been trying to find it lately but there've been too many other posts about Wild Mages.

Unless he gets the hiccups. No save, 100% chance of spell failure.
Pray he doesn't cast it with the "area effect" surge.

 

Or pray that he does in a spellcaster-heavy battle. Disabling all enemy spellcasters in one go is quite a feat.

 

Are you sure you don't have the baldurdash fixpack?

I remember putting two NRD's into a spell trigger and it gave me limitless spells as long as I didn't pic another character while in the WS mode. Maybe it's the official patch that fixes this over-powerful bug by not letting NRD to be picked into a spell trigger...who knows, but since I've installed the official patch and the baldurdash fixpack, I no longer could pick the NRD's into the spell trigger.

 

@ Carahdras:

While Wild Mages really are great, and a lot of fun, IMO the Sorcerer is more powerful. But you haven't had any fun until you've played a Wild Mage who fills all of his first level slots with Nahal's Reckless Dweomer, and does NOT use any of the "shielding" wild spells.