To answer your Qs:
1. Party for sure. But my companions, like my houseplants, have a very short shelf-life and I seem to struggle keeping them alive. Many will probably get chunked along the way. So I don't want to completely rely on a party member for an essential protective element, if that makes sense?
2. Oh, interesting question. I suppose a balanced build? But I do lean more towards debuff/controller/defensive spells (if only I could use them well!)
Got it, thanks!
The majority of my hands-on experience with crafting a book comes from playing solo. That's one of the reasons why I'm not best positioned to opine on the topic in a party composition. The other reason is that I've never completed a no-reload, neither solo nor with a party, neither in vanilla nor with SCS. But I'll try to provide my views nevertheless.
In theory, I see two main differences between solo vs. party play which could affect the way one approaches the book-building process:
a) Slower level progression: With a solo character, you'll be less concerned about having to wait a few levels for a particular spell pick to come, whereas with a party you'll want to maximize the impact of a given spell at the time it becomes available. Another side effect of slower level progression will be shorter spell durations, which may especially be felt when trying to run parallel 1 round/level abjuration protections at lower levels .
b) Outsourcing: The flip side of travelling with side kicks is that they can share some of the load, either in terms of specific protections (you've already mentioned a good example of Chaotic Commands), exposure to physical attacks, or offense.
Taking into account the above and your slight preference for a control/buffer role of your sorcerer (while maintaining the overal balance of the build), this is how I personally would approach my book. At least directionally, with a huge caveat that my actual experience with the late Throne of Bhaal content is totally outdated and virtually non-existent.
Unless stated otherwise, the choices are primarily driven by SCS. For sake of simplicity, I've also ignored the fifth picks at L3-L7s, given that these typically only come very late in the game, although especially with a smaller party it can certainly be an additional resource to tap into. Numbers is brackets indicate the sequence of the picks. I've also divided the spells as follows:
C = Core picks: Spells I'd want to have most of the time.
S = Style picks: Spells designed to promote the selected role.
H = Honorable mentions: I'd be willing to consider picking these instead of other spells under certain circumstances.
O = Notable omissions: Spells that would otherwise qualify as C or H, but for some reason are obsoleted (in most cases due to outsourcing within the party).
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L1:
C: Shield (1), Magic Missile (3), Chromatic Orb (4)
S: Blindness (2), Charm Person/Friends/Anything goes (5)
H: N/A
O: ProEvil [outsourcing]
L2:
C: Mirror Image (2), Invisibility (3), Blur (4), Melf's Acid Arrow (5)
S: Web (1)
H: N/A
O: Resist Fear* [outsourcing]
*Party-wide fear immunity is certainly a critical defensive instrument. While I appreciate that you might not want to outsource such critical capabilities to a party member, in this particular case there should be plenty of other divine or arcane casters to fulfil the role.
L3:
C: Fireball* (1), ProFire* (2), Spell Thrust (3)
S: Slow (4)
H: Skull Trap
O: Remove Magic [slow level progression], Haste [outsourcing]
*Given the prevalence of fire damage in the game, often in the AoE form, it'd like to have as broad access to fire resistance for my party as possible. Its long duration combined with the fact that eventually it can be handed around by your Project Image gives it a decent cost-benefit ratio. Consequently, I'd take Fireball instead of Skull Trap to take advantage of the fire resist synergies during the mid parts of the trilogy. In the long run, Skull Trap probably makes more sense, it being of a less commonly resisted damage type and slightly higher damage. Edit: I realized that Skull Trap has a much higher damage cap in vanilla compared to 12d6 with SCS (vs. 10d6 Fireball), so that's potentially another consideration.
L4:
C: Improved Invisibility (1), Stoneskin (2)
S: Greater Malison (3), Teleport Field (4)
H: Spirit Armor
O: Fire Shields [less relevant in a party context]
L5:
C: Spell Immunity* (1), Spell Shield** (2), Sunfire (3),
S: Chaos/Feeblemind*** (4)
H: Cone of Cold
O: Breach [outsourcing]
*Spell Immunity could have lower priority in vanilla, depending on how often the enemies will try removing your other buffs with Remove Magic and/or divination magic, but I'd still want it quite early on for SI: Enchantment.
**Similarly, Spell Shield would be high priority in SCS since enemies tend to be very aggressive with their magic attacks, although I'm not sure the same would apply to vanilla.
***I'd totally want to experiment with Feeblemind in case I would already have access to sorcerer Malison + Doom from a party member.
L6:
C: Pierce Magic* (1), PfMW (2), Spell Deflection** (3)
S: ProMagic Energy*** (4)
H: Death Spell, Contingency
O: Improved Haste [outsourcing], True Sight [outsourcing]
*Pierce Magic could be swapped for Lower Resist at L5, but I wouldn't want to fully outsource the MR-reduction capabilities to the party. The main reason for taking it at L6 here is the bottleneck at L5 with its too many all-round useful spells.
**The inclusion of Spell Deflection mainly assumes the you'll be battling enemies that can see invisible creatures (and therefore are able bypass Improved Invisibility for single target spells) before acquiring Spell Trap. These enemies are not uncommon in SCS, however I don't recall what's the vanilla take on this (maybe it's just few selected final bosses).
***While it may be eventually become obsolete for the Charname due to Protection from Energy + Belt of Inertial Barrier, the long duration makes it an attractive option for party-wide buff (alongside ProFire), noting that with Project Image it will eventually only take like one L7 spell to get everyone fire + magic damage resistances to 100%.
L7:
C: Ruby Ray (1), Project Image (2), Limited Wish (3), Spell Sequencer (4)
S: N/A
H: Mordy Sword
O: Mass Invisibility [outsourcing]
L8:
C: Spell Trigger (1), ADHW (2), Protection from Energy (3)
S: PW: Blind (4)
H: N/A
O: N/A
L9:
C: Spell Trap (1), Chain Contingency (2), Imprisonment (4)
S: Wish (3)
H: PW: Kill
O: N/A
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Ultimately, I don't think there is such a thing as a perfect book. And if there is, then it's certainly not this one, lol. The best thing about this whole process is that there's just some much flexibility that one may keep exploring different approaches with every new character, which in turn allows the game to still feel fresh even after all these years.
Lastly, if there is one actual recommendation that I would be prepared to give, it's that you should go with whatever will make your game enjoyable. That matters more than any strategic choice you make, because you're never closer to failure in a no-reload as when you start loosing interest and, consequently, your focus.
Regards,
B.
