Icewind Dale The Icewind Dale Series Thread

[Sykar]

Has anyone ever tried the mod for IWD 2 which adds damage reduction to armors and shields? Does it make heavy armor wearing tanks viable again for the second playthrough, or is the change too little or too much for a fun playthrough?

 

[Cael]

Has anyone ever tried the mod for IWD 2 which adds damage reduction to armors and shields? Does it make heavy armor wearing tanks viable again for the second playthrough, or is the change too little or too much for a fun playthrough?

I haven't used that one. If it is like the normal DR of 1-3 depending on armour/shield type, then it is really too little from mid-game onwards. It would likely wreck the early game as most mobs are doing maybe 1-3 damage a hit, going up to maybe 12 in Shaengarne.

 

[Sykar]

Has anyone ever tried the mod for IWD 2 which adds damage reduction to armors and shields? Does it make heavy armor wearing tanks viable again for the second playthrough, or is the change too little or too much for a fun playthrough?

I haven't used that one. If it is like the normal DR of 1-3 depending on armour/shield type, then it is really too little from mid-game onwards. It would likely wreck the early game as most mobs are doing maybe 1-3 damage a hit, going up to maybe 12 in Shaengarne.

From the readme:
Armor and Shields Provide Damage Resistance
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This changes the game so that a piece of equipment that provides an armor
bonus of +X also provides +X damage resistance. Why? This is for those of
you who dislike 3E's continual use of "armor class" despite the fact that
plate mail makes you (as a unit) easier to hit but harder to damage. This
is also for those who are used to more "complicated" or "realistic" combat
systems that make a more concerted distinction between dodging and damage
resistance.

However, the real reasons for this is are as follows:
(1) Heavy armor still stinks in IWD2 and there is no real reason to use
it. It is almost always better to have an 18 DEX and Studded Leather than
to go out for Chain Mail or Splint Mail. In addition, most of the magical
armor in the game is leather. This provides an incentive to find and use
heavy armor.
(2) BAB goes up as you gain levels but AC does not. A random monster
(like a Yuan-Ti Abomination in Chult) might be a 13th level fighter with
14 STR (say). As a result, it can hit an AC of 34 without rolling a
natural twenty. When was the last time you had an AC of 34? Didn't think
so. Basically, everyone hits you all the time. This makes the game
degenerate: mirror image, blur and blink become all-powerful, as do
stoneskin (or damage resistance in general) and things that take damage
for you (summoned monsters). The replay value of IWD2 is severely
lessened by the fact that combat is so boring in that regard.

Note that this change affects both your paty *and* all enemies. In
addition, enemies that have "innate" armor bonuses (e.g., the Guardian
Dragon has an innate AC of 35) have that transformed into innate damage
resistance (e.g., the Guardian will now have 25 damage res). Again, I think
this only makes sense: a dragon is easy to hit but hard to hurt.

This will NOT show up in the item descriptions, but the items will grant a
damage reduction bonus equal to their armor bonus. Note also that this will
NOT affect any armor you buy from Ribald Barterman (via my Merchant mod).

 

[Cael]

Has anyone ever tried the mod for IWD 2 which adds damage reduction to armors and shields? Does it make heavy armor wearing tanks viable again for the second playthrough, or is the change too little or too much for a fun playthrough?

I haven't used that one. If it is like the normal DR of 1-3 depending on armour/shield type, then it is really too little from mid-game onwards. It would likely wreck the early game as most mobs are doing maybe 1-3 damage a hit, going up to maybe 12 in Shaengarne.

From the readme:
Armor and Shields Provide Damage Resistance
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This changes the game so that a piece of equipment that provides an armor
bonus of +X also provides +X damage resistance. Why? This is for those of
you who dislike 3E's continual use of "armor class" despite the fact that
plate mail makes you (as a unit) easier to hit but harder to damage. This
is also for those who are used to more "complicated" or "realistic" combat
systems that make a more concerted distinction between dodging and damage
resistance.

However, the real reasons for this is are as follows:
(1) Heavy armor still stinks in IWD2 and there is no real reason to use
it. It is almost always better to have an 18 DEX and Studded Leather than
to go out for Chain Mail or Splint Mail. In addition, most of the magical
armor in the game is leather. This provides an incentive to find and use
heavy armor.
(2) BAB goes up as you gain levels but AC does not. A random monster
(like a Yuan-Ti Abomination in Chult) might be a 13th level fighter with
14 STR (say). As a result, it can hit an AC of 34 without rolling a
natural twenty. When was the last time you had an AC of 34? Didn't think
so. Basically, everyone hits you all the time. This makes the game
degenerate: mirror image, blur and blink become all-powerful, as do
stoneskin (or damage resistance in general) and things that take damage
for you (summoned monsters). The replay value of IWD2 is severely
lessened by the fact that combat is so boring in that regard.

Note that this change affects both your paty *and* all enemies. In
addition, enemies that have "innate" armor bonuses (e.g., the Guardian
Dragon has an innate AC of 35) have that transformed into innate damage
resistance (e.g., the Guardian will now have 25 damage res). Again, I think
this only makes sense: a dragon is easy to hit but hard to hurt.

This will NOT show up in the item descriptions, but the items will grant a
damage reduction bonus equal to their armor bonus. Note also that this will
NOT affect any armor you buy from Ribald Barterman (via my Merchant mod).

That just made you invulnerable to physical damage in anywhere up to Chapter 4. In Chapter 2, you get the 1/4 weight full plate, which is AC 8, and together with some +3 AC shields, you have a DR of 11. Good luck anything wounding you then.

 

[Sykar]

Yeah that is my fear as well. Though it would be really nice to see armored tank character being useful for anything past act 3. I guess it is somewhat mitigated by the fact that enemies profit from this as well.

 

[Cael]

Yeah that is my fear as well. Though it would be really nice to see armored tank character being useful for anything past act 3. I guess it is somewhat mitigated by the fact that enemies profit from this as well.

More than you, which is not necessarily a good thing. It screws over Dex fighters, for example

From memory, even the most powerful plate armour in normal mode is about 10 AC. Shield is about 4 AC. Your DR max is around the 15 mark. Enemy giants and golem would be able to punch through that. Dragons would also. That dragon with a DR of 25 is pretty bonkers. Even Urggzob would have a hard time punching through that.

I think the mod will screw you over more than the enemy towards the end game, and it would definitely make casters even more powerful than they already are. Not a good thing.

 

[Cael]

This amuses me tremendously:

Yes, this is just after Torak's village. I am on my way back to give the Moonblade to Emma.

 

[Sykar]

Nice portrait!

Yeah that is my fear as well. Though it would be really nice to see armored tank character being useful for anything past act 3. I guess it is somewhat mitigated by the fact that enemies profit from this as well.

More than you, which is not necessarily a good thing. It screws over Dex fighters, for example

From memory, even the most powerful plate armour in normal mode is about 10 AC. Shield is about 4 AC. Your DR max is around the 15 mark. Enemy giants and golem would be able to punch through that. Dragons would also. That dragon with a DR of 25 is pretty bonkers. Even Urggzob would have a hard time punching through that.

I think the mod will screw you over more than the enemy towards the end game, and it would definitely make casters even more powerful than they already are. Not a good thing.

Yeah but on the other hand full armored tanks would be worth a damn again. I find these unarmored deep gnome abominable character combinations so damn boring.

 

[Cael]

Nice portrait!

Yeah that is my fear as well. Though it would be really nice to see armored tank character being useful for anything past act 3. I guess it is somewhat mitigated by the fact that enemies profit from this as well.

More than you, which is not necessarily a good thing. It screws over Dex fighters, for example

From memory, even the most powerful plate armour in normal mode is about 10 AC. Shield is about 4 AC. Your DR max is around the 15 mark. Enemy giants and golem would be able to punch through that. Dragons would also. That dragon with a DR of 25 is pretty bonkers. Even Urggzob would have a hard time punching through that.

I think the mod will screw you over more than the enemy towards the end game, and it would definitely make casters even more powerful than they already are. Not a good thing.

Yeah but on the other hand full armored tanks would be worth a damn again. I find these unarmored deep gnome abominable character combinations so damn boring.

Not really. All you do is make it so that two-weapon fighters are screwed, Dex-based melee characters are screwed, archers are screwed, sword and board characters are screwed, and the only effective builds become two-handers and casters. That seems even more boring than vanilla.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, I don't really get the complaint either. Yes, if you only have, say, 30 AC then a Yuan-Ti in chult would hit you 25% of the time... on their first attack. Thanks to 3rd ed. the successive attacks are all at a 5% chance to hit. That's quite good. Furthermore critical hits in 3rd ed. require confirmation, meaning the first attack only has a 6.25% chance to crit and the successive attacks 0.25%. That's really, really good. Your chance to be hit is fairly low and the chance of a huge spike of damage from a crit is almost non-existent. You're taking about ~35% of a hit per round. That's not too shabby. The maximum possible AC would have 5% to be hit by all attacks for an average of slightly over 15% of a hit per round. So overall for missing out on 5 AC you're only taking ~133% more damage. This is not "basically, everything hits you all the time". This is avoiding about 90% of all melee damage rather than 95%.

Let's compare to the AD&D base of IWD1. Say you are 5 AC short there. Suddenly every attack is hitting you 25% of the time. Furthermore, because crits don't require confirmation, 1/5th of those are crits (maybe 2/5ths depending on weapon). That's really, really awful. You're looking at around 400%-500% more damage taken, and its highly spike-y and unpredictable due to the crit chance which means that there's a good chance characters go from half dead to dead in a single round.

As to the +damage resistance, it would just make power-attacked two-handers OP to an insane degree. The feat is already an OP damage increase that is supposed to be balanced out by an awful to-hit penalty... which now wouldn't matter. You'd basically have to give the feat to everyone and then train the AI to use the feat properly. For all weak weapons it would basically change the crit roll into the to-hit roll for everything else, since without a crit they do no damage.

We also have to consider that low-dex fighters and clerics aren't underpowered at all in IWD2 currently. IWD2 is point buy, those points are used for good shit like strength. This isn't IWD1 where everyone just rerolls to have 17-19 Dexterity + full plate by default, along with maxed strength and constitution. Sacrificing a few AC points to triple the damage you dish out per round is a really good trade on normal difficulty. The weak front line classes in IWD2 are stuff like pure-class rogues and monks, which are made way worse by changing AC to resistance. On HoW difficulty, yes min-maxed cheese is required, because HoW is a min-max cheese difficulty. Nothing is going to change that, and DR from armor ain't going to do shit against even prologue HoW enemies.

Finally, it really fucks up all of the other itemization and spells available. Every +1 AC ring or spell that is supposed to be important to stack now becomes useless for half the party. +AB bonuses similarly become useless. Paralysis and similar effects won't void resistance the same way they make all attacks auto-hit, so enemies designed to counter your tanks by targetting your saves now (presumably, assuming resistance is enough to matter) wail on your paralyzed tanks and you don't care. Why prepare your spells to make your tanks immune to save-or-get fucked enemy abilties if they perform their job just fine after failing saves? It's just an overall bad idea, you need to re-build 3rd ed D&D from the ground up for something like this, not slap together a mod that hastily changes around a few values for a few items in a game that is already mod-unfriendly.

 

[Cael]

Yeah, I don't really get the complaint either. Yes, if you only have, say, 30 AC then a Yuan-Ti in chult would hit you 25% of the time... on their first attack. Thanks to 3rd ed. the successive attacks are all at a 5% chance to hit. That's quite good. Furthermore critical hits in 3rd ed. require confirmation, meaning the first attack only has a 6.25% chance to crit and the successive attacks 0.25%. That's really, really good. Your chance to be hit is fairly low and the chance of a huge spike of damage from a crit is almost non-existent. You're taking about ~35% of a hit per round. That's not too shabby. The maximum possible AC would have 5% to be hit by all attacks for an average of slightly over 15% of a hit per round. So overall for missing out on 5 AC you're only taking ~133% more damage. This is not "basically, everything hits you all the time". This is avoiding about 90% of all melee damage rather than 95%.

Let's compare to the AD&D base of IWD1. Say you are 5 AC short there. Suddenly every attack is hitting you 25% of the time. Furthermore, because crits don't require confirmation, 1/5th of those are crits (maybe 2/5ths depending on weapon). That's really, really awful. You're looking at around 400%-500% more damage taken, and its highly spike-y and unpredictable due to the crit chance which means that there's a good chance characters go from half dead to dead in a single round.

As to the +damage resistance, it would just make power-attacked two-handers OP to an insane degree. The feat is already an OP damage increase that is supposed to be balanced out by an awful to-hit penalty... which now wouldn't matter. You'd basically have to give the feat to everyone and then train the AI to use the feat properly. For all weak weapons it would basically change the crit roll into the to-hit roll for everything else, since without a crit they do no damage.

We also have to consider that low-dex fighters and clerics aren't underpowered at all in IWD2 currently. IWD2 is point buy, those points are used for good shit like strength. This isn't IWD1 where everyone just rerolls to have 17-19 Dexterity + full plate by default, along with maxed strength and constitution. Sacrificing a few AC points to triple the damage you dish out per round is a really good trade on normal difficulty. The weak front line classes in IWD2 are stuff like pure-class rogues and monks, which are made way worse by changing AC to resistance. On HoW difficulty, yes min-maxed cheese is required, because HoW is a min-max cheese difficulty. Nothing is going to change that, and DR from armor ain't going to do shit against even prologue HoW enemies.

Finally, it really fucks up all of the other itemization and spells available. Every +1 AC ring or spell that is supposed to be important to stack now becomes useless for half the party. +AB bonuses similarly become useless. Paralysis and similar effects won't void resistance the same way they make all attacks auto-hit, so enemies designed to counter your tanks by targetting your saves now (presumably, assuming resistance is enough to matter) wail on your paralyzed tanks and you don't care. Why prepare your spells to make your tanks immune to save-or-get fucked enemy abilties if they perform their job just fine after failing saves? It's just an overall bad idea, you need to re-build 3rd ed D&D from the ground up for something like this, not slap together a mod that hastily changes around a few values for a few items in a game that is already mod-unfriendly.

That was what I thought at first, but the mod actually gives you DR on top of AC. So, the full plate is +8AC and +8 DR. It makes AC still viable, but it really frakks up everything else with the DR thing.

 

[Maggot]

I'm getting a strange delay sometimes when I try to activate stealth mode in IWD1. I'm using the fixpack and the 1pp animation fix. Anyone else have this issue?

 

[Cael]

Interesting. I installed the Light of Selune mod, and some of the merchant mods, and suddenly, I am facing a hell of a lot more bad guys than I recall from other runs. Some of them don't have any loot on them when they normally would have, leading me to believe that they were added in by the mod. The added bad guys were higher level types, too, and I am facing orc witch doctors and shamans and goblin sorcerers in groups of 3+. And this time round, they are actually throwing things like Hold Person, which added to the chaos and fun.

 

[Cael]

This is why you should never put in any form of unlimited enemy spawners in RPGs:

If you make the enemies too hard for the party, they will get killed badly from the unending stream of enemies. If you make the enemies too easy, you just gave them an unlimited loot and XP grinder. Either way would fuck up the game balance.

 

[laclongquan]

Dualwield, archer, sling, dex based builds really on number of hits instead of damage to hurt.

High Dmg resistance would hurt them tremendously. Logical but hurting gameplay.

Even playing normally, in HoF mode I prefer 2hand weapons than one hand because of the increased damage offset the high dmg resistance from high level enemies (stoneskin, ironskin).

You can notice such thing even as early as Orc Fortress with the Half Goblin mixing in, carrying 2hand sword or halberd. They hit like a truck among the piddly damage of one hand axe or arrow.

 

[Average Manatee]

Fairly certain those spawners run out of enemies eventually. Regardless they drop roughly 1 gp worth of loot apiece and due to the way XP works you'll get maybe one level out of them then get reduced XP for the rest of the chapter due to being overleveled.

 

[Cael]

Fairly certain those spawners run out of enemies eventually. Regardless they drop roughly 1 gp worth of loot apiece and due to the way XP works you'll get maybe one level out of them then get reduced XP for the rest of the chapter due to being overleveled.

I am getting 20-50gp per plus chance of other loot like rings and necklaces. I killed about 20x2 from one drum and got bored. Doesn't seem to end.

 

[Average Manatee]

Maybe they end when you leave the area or rest? Not sure.

 

[Cael]

Maybe they end when you leave the area or rest? Not sure.

Well, they aren't coming any more because all the drums are dead. I got bored :D Kill 'em all!

 

[AwesomeButton]

This is why you should never put in any form of unlimited enemy spawners in RPGs:

If you make the enemies too hard for the party, they will get killed badly from the unending stream of enemies. If you make the enemies too easy, you just gave them an unlimited loot and XP grinder. Either way would fuck up the game balance.

It all depends on how the player is playing.

It's not always bad. An enraged autist will start grinding. A more normal person like me will feel discouraged to pass through the same place and the respawning mobs may induce him to try to play more efficiently instead of rest spamming.

 

[Piotrovitz]

Just finished my first full IWD run - couldn't get my hands on the original, so I had to settle for beamdog's degenerated EE. I made a few attempts before, but always lost steam in Dragon's Eye.

Holy fuck the original campaign is short - I thought I'll start HoW/TotL after Dorn's Deep, but no, it was already endgame.

What struck me the most, is how easy the game was on insane difficulty (with no double xp bonus) with melee-heavy party. And mind you, I'm no IE veteran and got my ass kicked when I tried BG2 with SCS.

Courage and hope from mage, plus stackable cleric's buffs, and even the toughest fights could be won on auto attack. I don't think I even used lvl 5 & 6 spells, mostly just MM, glitterdust and skull trap. It doesn't help that the game constantly keeps throwing at you epic equipment, like the belt with permanent blur, rings/cloaks +2, +2 AC rogue hood, mage ring with permanent shield spell, bunch of stuff giving bonus to THAC0/AC etc etc. This is some serious shit, considering that you're fighting stuff like yuan ti's, salamanders or giants.

That said, every location is beautifully crafted - imo it's the prettiest of all IE games.

 

[Cael]

Anyone know of a mod that removes favoured class for IWD2? Wanting to play a Drow Paladin/Sorcerer but the xp penalty is pretty shit.

 

[octavius]

Time to lift this thread up.

Just completed Icewind Dale Classic (no mods or expansion) with a power trio based on Sword&Sorcery legends Fafhrd, Gray Mouser and Cappen Varra. Using the character stats provided by Zed Duke of Banville (if only he knew I'd use them for one of the accursed IE games) and CV's stats from Thieves World, I used GateKeeper to edit the characters.
Deciding on their classes was more troublesome.

Fafhrd is a mix of the Fighter, Thief, Barbarian, Ranger and Bard AD&D classes. I decided on Ranger, since they are more fun than straight Fighters, and there's no Barbarian in IWD 1. Optimally he should probably have been a Thief/Fighter dual class, but that would mean no legitimate exceptional strength. In IWD2 it will be easier to "shop" for the right classes.

Gray Mouser is supposed to be like the world's best swordsman, so he should really be a Thief/Fighter dual class too, who eventually gets Grandmaster skill in Short and/or Large Swords, but I guess I chickened out a bit and made him a Half-Elf Fighter/Thief instead. Might have been better to make him a Halfling, though, to get the small sized avatar. Also he should have had a few levels of Mage; again IWD2 would have been more suitable to get the "real" character.

Cappen Varra was easy. He's a Bard and no question about it.
I thought he would eventually become the healer of the party with the overpowered War Chant of the Sith song, but in classic IWD there's only one song that offers a one point bonus to THAC0 and saving throws.

So I relied a lot on potions and healing services instead. I bet Oswald Fiddlesticks (?) rarely had better customers...
I always try to complete games in as short in-game time as possible, but still leaving time for beauty rest, so resting until healed is out of the question.
In the end my trio used 54 days and 3 Hours to complete their quests. Would have been shorter if I didn't have to replenish potions and missiles a couple of times. No containers for gems and scrolls in the base game meant inventory space was always cramped.

Worst difficulty spikes:
The entry to the second level of Kresselack's Tomb, when you face the first Skeleton Mage, was especially nasty.
The Yuan-Ti Elite hit very hard and often.
The entry of Lower Dorn's Deep with those very nasty Tarnished Sentries.
After finding the hidden Deep Gnome camp and getting healing services the game got much easier, and my party only rested once in Lower Dorn's Deep, after defeating The Idol and before facing Pokemon Poquelin.

Most annoying enemies:
Bombardier Beetles. There's a shit load of them, their acid attacks stun and you face them at relatively low levels. Fortunately it's not too difficult to dodge their attacks.
Spell casters. For some reason their spell casting was more difficult to disrupt than I remember from AD&D games. Even standing in the middle of a Cloud Kill and getting hurt every round was no hindrance! Just about the only times I reloaded was when my two frontliners were victim of Hold Person. For some reason I had overlooked the Dispel Magic scroll for sale in Kuldahar; with that spell I could have cut down on the reloads. Annoying.

Best encounters:
The game is really rather a slog during the Vale of Shadows, Temple of the Forgotten God (most uninspired, but thankfully smallest dungeon in the game) and the upper levels of Dragon's Eye. But from Presio onwards things really picked up, with the highlights being:

Presio. I had no Fireballs left, and no Cleric with Turn Undead, so this became a fun fight, with one fighter holding the doorway, the other trying to disrupt Presio with missiles, and Cappen Varra casting Grease after he had provoked the Imbued Withs to waste their Magic Missiles on him.

The snake people pretending to be nice peaceful people. Haste was a key spell to rach the High Summoner as soon as possible, and getting help from Waterdeep made it more fun.

The High Archer. The snakes are much smarter than trolls and wouldn't come out of their room to play. The room is also too large for a Fireball to be really effective. First Haste, then Fafhrd rushed The High Archer, Gray Mouser went to one side opening the battle with a backstab, while Cappen Varra used the Horn of Valhalla to keep the elites on the other side busy.
The whole lower level of Dragon's Eye was a highlight with few easy encounters. Yxunomei herself was an anti climax when she was stunned by a Chromatic Orb, making the fight against the 6 or 8 Priests the most difficult one on this level.
I found the biggest problem with only three characters and none of them with divine magic was to prevent enemy spell casting, but thanks to scouting I usually knew what I was facing, so could quaff the right potions.

Most of the set battles against Shadowed Elves and the ambushes by Shadowed Orcs. Very nice use of terrain and formation, which we never saw in the Baldur's Gate games.
Overall The Severed Hand is a very good area, with only the regular undead being a bit of a chore.

The welcoming comittee of Drows and Orogs in Dorn's Deep. The Phase Spiders kind of ruined my battle plan when Fafhrd had to retreat to save Cappen Varra's ass. When the spiders had been taken care of Fafhrd used one of the Translocation Arrow on one of the two Drow Sorcerers and was actually able to prevent him from casting Mirror Image and he went down quickly. Gray Mouser tried to get behind the other one, while Cappen Varra again used the Horn of Valhalla to distract archers. The whole party was Hasted and managed to clear out most of the level before the spell expired. Those Drow Avengers were really nasty.

The undead, trolls, salamanders and giants following was again a bit of a slog, with no clever tactics. Used Haste to clear out the Frost Salamanders and Frost Giants.

Things picked up again in Lower Dorn's Deep, with the fights against Malavon, the Shriekers and The Idol being the highlights.

The fight against Pomab was the weirdest one and Behlifet was somewhat easier than I thought. Funny thing about the final fight is that once you enter the portal you have no time for buffing, but if you buff before entering your buffs are all dispelled.
I felt my characters became extra powerful during Lower Dorn's Deep, while they struggled more in the previous chapters.

Favourite spells:
Strength. To give Gray Mouser extra Strength for a whole day before finding the Girdle of Giant Strength. Not as effective as Enlarge in the Gold Box games, though.
Haste. A good spell when you want to clear out a whole level quickly and there's no clever way of doing it, like in the Frost Salamander area. Doubling APR is extremely effective, especially if you combine with potions of Giant Strength. Potions of Speed is even better, since they don't leave you exhausted.
Slow and Fireball are also good level 3 spells.
Chromatic Orb. Very nasty effects already on quite low levels.
A's Scorcher. I can't help it, but I think this spell is fun.

So I used quite different tactics from Lilura who swears by Web. Since I don't pickpocket in CRPGs I never had access to permanent Free Action, and thus rarely used Web myself.

My characters at the end of the game:

 

[Lilura]

So I used quite different tactics from Lilura who swears by Web. Since I don't pickpocket in CRPGs I never had access to permanent Free Action, and thus rarely used Web myself.

Since you didn't even have a Cleric, trio enhanced XP progression over sextet is perhaps one of the reasons you were able to forego Free Action status. Because you would have +saving throws vs. immobilization over sextet. And maybe you buffed saves, too. If we're sextet, it's touch and go because we are often threatened by immobilization; early on, by ghasts, carrion crawlers, Hold Person etc.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

A's Scorcher. I can't help it, but I think this spell is fun.

With some micromanagement, this spell can be very useful. Move your mage to one of the extremities of the battlefield, cast it at an enemy to the center & rear of their side, then march your mage across the field while the beam is active. You can hit quite a few enemies with its secondary burst. I love doing this in pure mage parties later when buffed. You can weave the party like a fire loom doing tremendous damage. Used this way, it helps keep your lower level spell slot relevant even late game.