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From thr Icewind Dale II forum.
Damien Foletto (Puuk)Stealth Missions
There are some stealth missions. Of course, you may choose to forgo strealth and bull rush your way through the mission(s) - it's up to you.
Josh SawyerMages and useless spells
Since you guys have it all worked out, don't play wizards, since they "suck" so "bad". Executioner's Eyes is a really "horrible" spell. It's so god-awful, I can't stand having the first three characters in my party critically hitting left and right every round.
Keen Weapon + Improved Critical + Executioner's Eyes = Critical Hit on a roll of 13-20 = 40% chance per successful attack.
Also, keep in mind that while your high level fighters, rangers, and paladins will almost always land their first attack, there is no guarantee that they will land their second, third, or fourth -- especially against a "boss" character.
Remember, a 20th level fighter has +20/+15/+10/+5. That's the equivalent of a 0, 5, 10, and 15 THAC0. If you want to bank on that and ignore a +4 bonus to hit (which is, BTW, the largest to-hit bonus granted by any spell in IWD2), feel free to do so.
About the executioner's balls spell
Q: Executioner's balls forces you to rely solely on your fighter characters, which is really a lame thing to do on your part.
A: Solely on your fighter characters? How do you figure? I can cast that sucker on my 18th level cleric teammate with a +13/+8/+3 BAB. That raises his three attacks to +17/+12/+7 with a 20% greater chance to critically hit with each blow. The same benefits would apply to my 18th level rogue and 18th level bard teammates, since they use the same BAB. If you're planning to use weapons in combat, the spell is useful. If you aren't, well, I guess you shouldn't cast it. I trust in your judgement to not do things like cast a Fireball at fire salamanders or cast Horrid Wilting on a pack of undead. This should be no different.
Q: Play a solo mage with executioner's balls, then you'll see how worthless your creation is.
A: Okay, that's a fair request. As long as you play a rogue who intentionally doesn't put points in stealth skills, wields a two-handed sword, and attempts to sneak attack creatures with it.
Come on, you have a brain in your head and the ability to evaluate spells, feats, and other variables for usefulness in your party. When your solo mage gets to 18th level, look at this list:
Aegis
Black Blade of Disaster
Executioner's Eyes
Gate
Mass Dominate
Meteor Swarm
Monster Summoning VII
Power Word: Kill
Wail of the Banshee
Though you might involuntarily spasm and scribe "Executioner's Eyes", you may be able to regain enough muscle control to scribe and use the other spells that, coincidentally, aren't quite as useful when you have a full party (like Meteor Swarm).
About backstabbing
You will be able to activate backstab by editing icewind2.ini. "Backstab" and all terms and tables relating to "backstab" will appear nowhere in the game, nor in the documentation.
Spellcraft
In turn-based 3E, Spellcraft is only useful for identifying a spell if a) its casting time is one round (which it usually isn't) or b) you're going to counterspell it. In IWD2, it should be useful for moving your characters and/or attacking casters based on the spells that they are casting.
E.g.: There's a bad, bad priest of Bane in IWD2 who casts a variety of necromancy spells. All of the necromancy spells use the same casting animation. If he casts something like Inflict Moderate Wounds or Poison, I'm not particularly concerned about it. However, if he's badly wounded and he steps away to cast Heal, I want to make sure I disrupt that guy as quickly as possible.
Fighter only parties
If you make a party full of fighters and rangers with low wisdom, you will blow a lot of Will Saves. Really.
I watched a funny scenario involving a QA tester and six gold dwarf fighters. They mowed through almost every melee battle. After he gleefully made his way through the area, he encountered the exit battle -- which happened to feature a high level wizard and several underling casters. Within two or three rounds, his entire party was held, dominated, or confused.
Chad Nicholas (Briareus)Anti-aliasing
An IE game won't look any better because the sprites are all drawn using an "alpha" that is on or off. For anti-aliasing to work, you either need to oversample the image (not really possible in a 2D game) or build it into the engine by using an alpha channel for your sprites that have a bit depth higher than 1.
Other 2D engines can do realtime alpha blending (like Reflexive's). |
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Icewind Dale II Forum Update
