Wizard Slayers and Beastmasters

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Again, I'm hoping to draw on the experiences of others to fill gaps in my own experiences of the games.

I fairly certain that the Wizard Slayer and Beastmaster are the least frequently taken kits. I've never played either myself, so I would be interested to hear of others' experiences. Actually, that's not quite true. I once tried a Wizard Slayer for the two minutes it took me to learn that they could not use healing potions.

I also have a question about Wizard Slayers. I know that they are in fact more powerful than the kit description (2% MR per level, 25% chance miscast magic per hit). Does the miscast magic effect get through enemy mages' protections. If it does, the Wizard Slayer might be a kit to consider, since is a lich unable to cast magic is a not-very-formidable opponent, regardless of Absolute Immunity and Stoneskin.

 

Problem is, some creatures are immune to spell disruption, so now the Wizard Slayer is possibly even worse off than a regular fighter....

I wanted to try a dual-classed priest-of-Helm//mage, and I gave him a party of NPCs with kits I hadn't tried before, so I made a rogue, an undead hunter, a totemic druid, a beast master, and a wild mage. The beast master hasn't been too impressive so far. You give up a lot, and what do you gain? You get to cast some useless, underpowered (considering the level of enemy you're likely to face at your current level) animal summoning spells at about the same level that a druid normally gets them. HO-HUM! YMMV

I also have an avenger leading a group with an illusionist, a rogue, a bard, a kensai and a wizard slayer. The wizard slayer has impressed me far more than the kensai, but I bet that will reverse itself over time, the closer we get to ToB and enemies immune to casting failure....

 

Regarding the Wizard Slayer and the cumulative spell failure see this thread.

The thread, however, is from the ToB forum and therefore there may be some differences (in ToB the WS can use healing potions fx) compared to SoA Wizard Slayers.

The Beastmaster is not the most powerful ranger kit (duh!). He is not useless, though. I'd equip him with:
Strong Arm +2
and Staff of Rynn +4 (for melee)
or
Sling of Seeking and Saving Grace +3, later Sentinel +4
and Blackblood (for melee).
Actually it would be nice to play a game where the (overpowered) weapons you usually go for aren't allowed. You'd have to be more creative - and the weapon selection above aren't that bad. He'll have sufficient firepower.

Boots of Speed are a must. And as for the rest of the equipment, well...

The Beastmaster obviously isn't a frontline fighter. He uses stealth and summoned animals to distract the enemy while he fires arrows (or bullets) at them. But he can - of course - stand his ground in regular melee. In mid- and endgame his summons won't last long but from a roleplaying perspective he's a pretty cool character.

[ November 03, 2003, 00:26: Message edited by: Victor Eremita ]

 

First, it's 10%, not 25%.

Second, they only recieve 1% magic resistance per level, not 2%.

The 10% spell failure stops everyt spell-like ability on everyone, and I mean EVERYONE!! This means that it'll get harder to rage if you meets a barbarian, set traps if you fights against thieves and most of all, it stops all kind of enemies spellcasting. Nethier Bodhi nor Irenicus is immune to this so it stops most of their effects totally as they WILL survive 10 blows. But remember this exception; spelltriggers and contignecy(sp?) spells WILL work no matter the hits.

But remember, it only gives you 99% no matter the hits and IIRC each blow works for one hour.


And yes, stoneskinned liches will get effected, so will improved mantled Lavok. No matter your protection, you will always be affected by this hizadrous spell failure as long as you hit the enemy with the roll. This makes all these blows against a stoneskinned, fireshield protected mage actually useful.


And to sum up most of these later posts about if he should get dual-classed or not:
DON'T DUALCLASS HIM!! He will get more powerfull in the end, dualclassing ruins him totally.


As you could understand, this is an edited quote from the other thread, and the origin was...

...me!

 

What happens if your Wizard Slayer gets dominated and attacks your mage? Does your mage ever get rid of the cumulative spell failure?

 

The documented kit bonuses are 1% magic resistance per level and 10% cumulative chance per hit spell failure, but the actual bonuses are 2% MR per level and, I believe, 25% chance per hit spell failure. These enhancements make the kit much more viable.

EDIT: everything I've said here is rubbish. Please ignore it.

[ November 02, 2003, 16:15: Message edited by: Chris Williams ]

 

Chris, I have finished both SOA and TOB at least twenty times each with the Wizard-Slayer, I know what I'm talking about. The magic resistance IS 1% per level and the culmulative spell failure IS 10%. You will have to show me some proof to make me change my stand here.

 

I was going by this thread:

However, I have precious little experience of playing the kit and stand corrected. Indeed, I just created a TOB Wizard Slayer character to test it out and magic resistance is, indeed, only 18%. Happily, healing potions were usable. Presumably, the undocumented bonuses have been fixed away, either by an official patch or a Baldurdash fix.

 

But that was fixed in a patch IIRC, prove me wrong.

 

I really like the Beastmaster. He can summon a Familiar, so he gets more HP than anyone else (except for a Half-Orc Barbarian). Also, not bing able to use metal weapons isn't so bad. There some really good staves out there, not to mention Blackblood, the +3 Club.

I'll admit that he's probably the weakest Ranger, but he's still fun to play.

 

In my game, my wizardslayer could use healing potions and he got 2% MR a level. I don't know about casting failure as it doesn't really show up anywhere.
I thought the casting failure was pretty neat, but I'm not entirely sure if it will work through PfMW and Mantle. And while I'm willing to believe that nobody is really immune to it, I do believe that it will be rendered absolete by forcecasting. Some though opponents have a script that will allow them to cast spells no matter what...

And can Velve Zauviir (or someone else) please explain to me again why dualclassing a wizardslayer is such a waste? AFAIK the only kitbonus a wizardslayer gets per level up, is the MR. This can be easily remedied by the use of MR enhancing items.

And I never played a beastmaster, but he didn't seem really powerful to me.

 

I've never played a wizard slayer, but my immediate reaction is that its main strength is the 10% spell failure. In order to get it to work, you have to hit the enemy; that, in turn, depends on thac0. If you dual, your thac0 is probably going to be stuck at the level it was at when you dualled (ie. not that great), so you're better off leaving it single-class.

Then again, I could be way off-base here.

 

More so to Splunge's point, the biggest benefit is that they gain IIRC 2% magic resistance per level. If you dual at, say, level 7, that's only 14%. Whereas a level 20 Wizard Slayer would have 40% magic resistance.

Here's a question about Wizard Slayers...does the 10% cum spell failure apply to ALL weapons? If so, I would think that a Wiz Slayer with Grand Mastery in bows would be the best mage-killer in the game. Thoughts?

 

Death Rabbit,
To answer your second question, yes, it applies to all weapons. Yes, a wizard slayer with a bow is vicious.

 

Darts with a beastmaster would mean some good odds on spell disruption, though darts are an odd choice for a fighter.

 

Why use darts? A Beastmaster can use Bows. A Beastmaster just can't use metal weapons. There aren't any really good Darts in SoA, except Asp Nest, but you can only get 5 of 'em.

Or did you mean the Wizard Slayer?

 

LKD,
My comment was about wizardslayers, not beastmasters.

Are darts considered metal? I've never tried using them with a beastmaster. You're right in that it's a strange choice though.

Giving the wizardslayer a bow would work out pretty well. I don't think a beastmaster with darts would have any better odds of disrupting spells than any other character.

 

I don't really like the idea of a wizardSLAYER with a bow. The word 'slayer' causes me to think of a real melee character. When you say you slayed someone, I wouldn't exactly think of an arrow. More like an axe or something. Isn't slaying what a butcher does (or did a long time ago)?
Might just be my bad English though.

 

In my fully patched SOA+TOB installation wizardslayers DO NOT cause spell failure with ranged weapons. And yes, I also had this in mind when I first played one. He'll just stay back in use Tuigan with Grandmastery in Short Bows. Heh, nothing happened. Now I give them something with a long range - so that they are in the second line of attack - my favourite weapon for a Wizardslayer is Soul Reaver.

 

Leslie,
The problem is that many scripts for mages use the ForceSpell() command, which allows the mages to cast the spell even if it isn't memorized and it also ignores the wizardslayer's abilities.

Chalk it up to unthoughtout programming on the part of Bioware.