The Candlekeep Annex: RPed Baldur’s Gate No and Low Reload Adventures

Borco

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Ryland (human blade) & Kalam (halfling assassin by @Finarfin), multiplayer run: Part 10 - Slythe and the Dukes

With all the tomes and Bhaalspawn powers under our belt, we were finally ready for the finale at the Gate. Our plan was to go big with a ProMagic scroll and sweep through the last three battles in one go before its two hour duration expires.

We were not only ready, we were also completely broke. Having spent all of our money on stocks of ammo, potions, scrolls, and wands, we closed our bank account and kept just enough cash to be able to book the best room in the Blade and the Stars (fry-up breakfast included), where we sorted out the gear and finalized our preparations ahead of the summit push. Had the entry fee to the Undercellar been only slightly higher, we'd probably need to pretend that we were staff or something in order to get in the next morning.

Once at the spot, Kalam unrolled the precious parchment and read the incantation. Looking good with that blue globe, my friend!
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He then looked at the small violet bottle in his potion case. "What's the worst that can happen?", he asked Ryland, confident that his friend always knows things about exotic stuff. But no matter how high is your Lore, drinking an unknown liquid from an unlabelled test tube you had bought at a local festival from a nameless vendor in one of the party tents is guaranteed to produce sketchy results at best. "I dunno; it could be death-related.", Ryland replied. Kalam chugged the thing in one gulp.

No one ever said that the area he excels at most is sound judgement. On the contrary. Just check out his starting character sheet if you need proof. In an instant, Kalam started to feel just as nimble and durable as he was wise. Might have been a very bad idea altogether, were it not for the enormous rush of power that accompanied the symptoms, even though you couldn't tell which one was actually the unintended side effect.

But the thing about substances is that sometimes you just have to mix 'em up right. Uppers and downers, right? As it turned out, with potions of Agility, Fortitude, and Mind Focusing, the violet stuff worked like a super steroid. Throw in a Potion of Defense, a Potion of Power, a Potion of Regeneration, and an Oil of Speed, and you're all set for a couple of battles followed by a full-fledged weekend rave in Berlin. Let's just hope this cocktail gets dispelled before it wears off, otherwise I'm not looking forward to seeing the withdrawal.
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Time to meet Slythe and Krystin. I'm not sure they were expecting us. In case they did, they'd be expecting to find Ryland and his short companion. That Ryland was nowhere in sight, and that Kalam turned out to be pretty high that day, must have certainly caught them off-guard.

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Blade fodder? You got the wrong memo, Slythe. Ryland's a blade, so that much is correct. And also that's Kalam's blade sticking out of your belly, if you're looking at it that way. But I'm afraid you're the only fodder around here. Coffin fodder.
25 strength hits hard and the fight was over before our summoned reinforcements could properly join in.
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Sorry Krystin, but we've got places to be. Hope you don't mind if we just take those invitations. Your plus one just got chunked so it seems that you won't be needing them anyway.
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Onto the palace. Ryland joined the buff party with Spirit Armor, Shield, MSD, Blur, ProEvil, MIs, and opened the battle with Haste, casting from the safety of one of the foyer rooms while Kalam held the front line.
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With the mage closing in, Ryland went invisible.
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Meanwhile, Kalam did the heavy lifting against the main doppelganger group in the audience room, assisted by Belt and a few surviving Flaming Fist officers. Most of the damage on Kalam came from a single backstab by the doppelganger assassin.
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The mage kept itself busy by butchering the doormen at the entrance, which gave us* the time to clear the remaining enemies.
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*Note: That's a rather stereotypical example of a manager's use of "us". In fact, Ryland was just chilling there under invisibility and counted the free XP coming his way.

As soon as the mage showed up, Kalam's dispel arrow removed its Stoneskins and MIs, paving the way for a quick melee finish thanks to our superior numbers. I think we never saw Chaos or Remove Magic in this fight.
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To be on the safe side, Sarevok was distracted by a Wand of Monster Spamming charge. Lately I've found the interaction with Winski Perorate to be somewhat unpredictable and, combined with the fact that it's not always possible to aggro him, I believe there's a real risk that he'd strike down the dukes if his teleport gets delayed.
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After we got teleported to the maze ourselves, we rushed through as fast as possible under Oils of Speed and invisibility to preserve our buffs' duration, only stopping to allow Kalam to disarm the traps.
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We'll cover the final BG1 battle in the next post.

Regards,

B. & F.
 
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Alesia_BH

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Ava, Halfling Swashbuckler: Waylays and Such

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So, where were we? That's right. Pre-bandit camp. We had just had our harrowing close call with Rasaad, and were headed north to put the beat down on Tranzig.

On the way we were accosted by bandits. Wolf form made this fun.
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Tranzig was taken down at range under the amulets, Greenstone and Shield. Forgive me for racing through this fight, and the ones to come, but the actual factual Ava is a touch ahead of this coverage. She has a date with Bodhi, in fact.
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The Amazonians and Drakar Noir arrived in quick succession, much to my dismay. We opened with a Greenstone amulet charge, as one does.
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And then we proceeded to take a serious butt whopping. I had promised you close calls, didn't I? Well, this was number 1. This was a consequence of me getting a little to cocky in wolf form. In retrospect, the problem wasn't that Lamalha and Drakar went back to back. It was Lamalha following the easy mode bandits that through my loops. Steamrolling the bandits nudged me into thinking we could just munchy-wunch our way through this ambush too.
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I was tempted to go with an elixir of health here, due to the poison, but a PoI was the correct call. We were guaranteed to get our aura back before we died of poison. We were not guaranteed to survive a round of ranged fire at 21HP. An extra healer came next, followed by an antidote.
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Once we were healthy again, we flipped to human form and used the stab and go method with the Dagger of Venom. The high AC range fighter were our first priority, ofc.
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We traded poison attacks with Maneira. This would have been a closer fight, if Maneira had a potion case and 78 antidotes like we do.
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A little more stabby-stabby for that pesky poisoner.
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I'm not sure why I decided to use darts of stunning on the flail wielding Zeela. Laziness, I guess? That, and magical ammo was a part of Ava's BG1 character concept. BG1 Ava was a crafty archer, not a duelist.
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Once we stunned everyone, we flipped to wolf form. Munch, munch.
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The Drakar Noir fight was more or less the same, except we skipped the step where we almost died.
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Also, we used our bow and +2 fire arrows instead of the Dagger of Venom. Come to think of it, I guess that means it was not the same at all.
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Yup. We finished up with stab and go attacks rather than darts of stunning and wolf form. So, yeah, totally different in every way, at every stage of the fight.
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Same ending point, though. Lots of dead bodies, and a solid haul of loot.
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IIRC, we were kind of broke at this point, so we went on the hunt for bandit scalps.
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Once we had gather our gold and goodies, I took a cue from Borco and talked my way into the camp. I'd actually never done this before. I had it in my head that you could end up fighting Tazok, and I wasn't sure how to avoid that. Turns out it's super straightforward. It's crazy that I feared that encounter for so long. Life is strange.
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And that concludes our episode. I'll be back in a minute to tack on Bandit Camp.

Cheers,

A.
 
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Borco

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Ryland (human blade) & Kalam (halfling assassin by @Finarfin), multiplayer run: Part 11 - Sarevok

Kalam's ProMagic, that we had used for Slythe and the palace, expired just as we arrived at the Temple of Bhaal in the Undercity. In a single player run, it's usually possible to carry it over all the way to the final battle, however multiplayer sessions are generally prone to time leakage since the game tends to be more fluent rather than strictly turn-based.
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As there was no need to conserve our resources anymore, we decided to burn our second ProMagic scroll and reapply Kalam's buffs with Oil of Speed, ProAcid, and Potion of Power. Ryland, who was still running his Mind Focusing, Spirit Armor and Oil of Speed from before, quaffed a Potion of Fire Resistance (each of us was also wearing Ring of Fire Resistance) and summoned some fodder to start with via his wand.
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Kalam opened with a successful dispel arrow on Sarevok to get rid of his haste. Good job!
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Shortly after the arrival of the other goons, Kalam got tagged with Angelo's Remove Magic that stripped him of his buffs. Meanwhile, Ryland played his classic move when things get a little hairy and disappeared under Invisibility.
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Interestingly, in my previous install the enemies seemed to shy away from trying to dispel characters running ProMagic. This was obviously an AI issue, given that the blue globe should not work in the same way as does ProUndead against liches, whereby you effectively become untargetable by them (though the SCS liches will still try casting Remove Magic on themselves in case you happen to be in its range).

Kalam responded by reapplying his haste via another Oil of Speed (note that we had bought a fat stack of these from the Temple of Gond) and introducing his weapon of mass destruction - poisoned Arrows of Detonation.
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Oh, wow. Fireseeds + Deathblow/Power Attack/etc. combos in BG2 are certainly punchy, but this is BG1 we're talking about. Stoneskin and MIs offered no protection against the poison either, as it was effectively applied via the AoE fire damage.
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Check out Tazok here, quaffing his Oil of Speed over Free Action that he had previously applied via Potion of Freedom. I mean, honestly, raise your hand if this has never happened to you. I for myself couldn't count how many potions I've wasted this way or while wearing the Ring of Free Action / Spider's Bane.
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Diarmid's own ProMagic scroll offered no protection against Kalam's rain of arrows which strike at power level 0. He became the first to fall, but not before he managed to land a nasty critical on our helmet-less halfling with an acid arrow.
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Ryland quickly dropped another group of summoned monsters in the midst of the enemy ranks, so they could keep busy while we regroup and heal. Note that, similar to other summoning items (such as the efreeti bottle, Ras, Valhalla, or Kitthix), the Wand of Monster Summoning will not break invisibility.
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Here comes another batch, since the previous one got dispatched in less than two rounds.
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Fully healed up and running Potion of Regen, Kalam was ready to re-engage with the second Poison Weapon assault.
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At one point I accidentally navigated Ryland into the AoE zone of one of Kalam's detonation arrows - while his 90% fire resistance cushioned the initial damage, he still got poisoned and had to quaff an Elixir of Health. The positive news was that the very same blast also removed Semaj from the field for good.
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Tazok and Angelo were quick to follow suit. On one occasion, Kalam got hit by his own poison. Despite wearing the Claw, his shorty saves and the Cloak of Displacement gave him a semi-reasonable chance to make his save vs. death against the ticking poison damage, which he did, while save vs. spell and 40% fire resistance mitigated the impact of the fire blast.
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With only Sarevok left, Kalam quickly activated his ProUndead scroll to avoid the skeleton warriors and continued his offensive.
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Ryland, who remained invisible the entire time, readied his Malison scrolls and waited for the right moment to tag Sarevok.
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As you can see from the log in the screenshot above, and for some unknown reason, the skeletons kept attacking Kalam in spite of his active ProUndead. And the archer managed to hit him with its dispel arrow.
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In order to get the situation under control, we both quaffed our PoIs.
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After he chugged his third Oil of Speed, Kalam then broke his invisibility with a Dart of Stunning on the malisoned Sarevok…Alright!
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Seven rounds were more than plenty to beat him down with Darts of Wounding and some freshly summoned monsters.
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I'm not even sure who delivered the fatal blow, but that doesn't matter. We've made it!

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Here are the character sheets and some stats just before moving to SoA. As you can see, we concluded BG1 some 20k exp below the cap and short of our respective L10s. The statistics are bonkers, perhaps due to the occasional disconnects or sync issues, although the overall split of kills seems to be directionally correct, with Kalam leading the game with 64% vs Ryland's 36% and completely dominating the endgame with 98% vs 2% in the final chapter. Our Bhaalspawn couldn’t have asked for a better companion and bodyguard. And he's going to need him in Amn more than ever before.

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Regards,

B. & F.
 
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Borco

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And then we proceeded to take a serious butt whopping. I had promised you close calls, didn't I? Well, this was number 1. This was a consequence of me getting a little to cocky in wolf form. In retrospect, the problem wasn't that Lamalha and Drakar went back to back. It was Lamalha following the easy mode bandits that through my loops. Steamrolling the bandits nudged me into thinking we could just munchy-wunch our way through this ambush too.

Coincidentally, I've had a close call with them as well recently. This happened during my current single player run with a bounty hunter (yep, I'm riding the BH train again) whom I'm planning to introduce into the thread soon. The source of my woes was also Maneira, although in my case it weren't the Darts of Wounding but rather her melee attacks.

Which is odd, given that - statistically - we were totally supposed to have the upper hand here thanks to a Potion of Defense (!), while also wearing Shadow Armor + Girdle of Piercing with their AC modifiers against her unenchanted short sword, and attacking with the Dagger of Venom (assisted by the Gauntlets of Weapon Expertise) to exploit her AC penalty against piercing attributable to her plain leather +2. The result was that my character lost close to 50HP in a matter of two rounds. I couldn't believe it, so I checked the log to confirm that all of the hits came from Maneira and not the others. They indeed did, although based on the number of to-hit rolls in the log it seemed that she must have had at least 3APR for each of our 1APR roll. I was also pretty certain that these were melee attacks rather than dart rolls.

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I've checked the wiki to find out she's actually a fighter dual level 4/4, which could partially explain her APR advantage assuming she's got specialization in short swords (the wiki only lists the legacy BG1 proficiencies). Nevertheless it still seemed far below what I saw in the log. I'm not sure, really. Could it be that she's got exceptionally high base APR (the wiki states base APR 5) irrespective of whether she's fighting at range or in melee?

 

WiseGrimwald

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Journal of Jarlaxle

We finished the NToSC quests and have now cleared the top floor of the Iron Throne.

We sold surplus equipment and now have over 100,000gp. We will spend it when our reputation is higher.

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@Borco I too have had a few bugs. One was Firthgill Trollslayer not being able to speak to me because we were held. By the time we could speak, all the foes were dead and then he wouldn't speak. I forced the conversation with EE Keeper.

I was a bit disappointed that my evil party can't use the Mace of Destruction. That's fair enough, but is yet another reason for playing a good party.

Now back at Candlekeep.
 
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Alesia_BH

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Crazy that I never noticed. I guess it's because she uses her darts in my install. I typically have the missile weapon AC to shrug her off and the difference between 5 and 3 isn't ginormous (assuming she stays at 5 while wielding her darts).

She tagged me here because I was sloppy. I neglected to re-equip the Cloak of Displacement and skipped the Shield Amulet, both major missteps.
 

Borco

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Thank you for the intel, @Serg_BlackStrider! I suppose it now makes sense - Maneira is a sword spider. I'll take comfort from the fact that her fifth pip has not been allocated in single weapon style and therefore the stream of uninterrupted critical hits at 5 APR in melee remains an unlikely scenario. Anyway, fighting her at range totally makes sense.
 

Borco

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Edric, human bounty hunter: Introduction

Technical Notes:
Game version: BGEE 2.6.6.0
Mods: SCS v35.25, BG Tweaks (cosmetic changes)
SCS install: all tactical components and AI enhancements, limited spell revisions (only core spell-system changes, rebalancing of powerful spells, spells increased in power), no IWD spells, no spell school changes, no new arcane and divine spells, no revised elementals, no changes in shapeshifting spells
Difficulty: Insane (no extra damage)


Sometimes, plans change. And sometimes, you end up introducing a bounty hunter into the no-reload thread when you were intending to run a sorceress. I'm afraid that's as much as I can offer in terms of explanation, because there's none, really. Or maybe I just got a bit scared and wanted to try something less demanding than learning how to play arcane casters. But wait - do I actually claim to know how to play bounty hunters? Or that they're easier to pilot? No, not at all. I'm just not as intimidated by the prospect of failure as I'd be if I were to re-run Iona. It's strange.

So without further ado, let's enter Edric:

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Starting weapon proficiencies: 1x short swords, 1x daggers

Looking at his stats, he's a healthy lad. I generally avoid min-maxing my characters in order not to compromise the RP aspects. Because I mostly roll female protagonists (go girls!), and because I tend to find its base score overrated, strength is usually the first to go lower when trying to close the gaps in the rest of the sheet. To me, anything beyond gear requirements is a matter of comfort rather than necessity, regardless of the class.

Since we had some extra points to splash around, I decided to make an exception and permit Edric to start with a strength score of 18, mainly to offset his lack of other racial perks as a human. That also explains the starting pip in daggers - to leverage the stacking STR bonus with 2 APR ranged weapons from day one. But not only that, fiddling with knives is kind of a status thing when you're a rogue after all.

In any case, Edric is a spiritual successor of Alagar, my halfling bounty hunter whom I ran some months ago and who gave me a feel for the basics of the BH playstyle. In order to delve deeper into the class, I deliberately rolled a human this time, instead of reincarnating Alagar with his shorty saving throws. Doing so should push me outside of my comfort zone more often and force me to rely more heavily on the class itself. Whatever the outcome of the run, I'm hoping it'll at least give me a chance to sharpen my rogue game.

Regards,

B.
 
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Borco

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Edric, human bounty hunter: Part 1

If there's one trait of Edric's that stands out, it's that he's systematic. He keeps his checklists. He plans ahead. He sets milestones when trying to achieve larger goals. He evaluates both success and failure. The best I could do as his operator was to try and follow suit by embracing the same mindset from the very beginning. But how do I keep the pace with a character sporting intelligence 17, I ask? Mine is…well, definitely far below that level, and I suppose I'll simply have to bridge that gap with the benefit of foresight.

So what was our plan for early BG1 then? First, we set out to identify our interim goal - something reasonably achievable in the short term, with low to medium risk, yielding the most relevant benefits relative to the challenges that we'd be facing in the next stages. I'll spare you the details of the thought process, however we concluded that we want our inventory to go from this:

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to this, in the fastest manner possible (noting that the equally important part are the contents of the potion case):

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The first items, such as studded leather, Wand of Magic Missiles and Oils of Speed, came from Imoen and Montaron. RoP +1 was the next low-hanging fruit, followed by the Girdle of Piercing. Allocating all of Edric's starting points into Set Traps did not eliminate the risk of critical failure, so using them at level 1 was a no-go. Therefore, the belt ogre had to be taken down with a backstab + throwing knives instead.
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In FAI, we got a free PoI from Jaheira after bypassing Tarnesh under stealth. Selling the accumulated gems and scrolls to Bently allowed us to start building up our reputation by making donations to the temple of 300gp and 500gp, respectively. Another point was earned by recovering Joia's ring from the hobgoblins.
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I'll note that life is indeed slightly easier with a decent base strength. Despite only being added on top of the multiplier, the damage bonus can be meaningful for early backstabs, especially when rolling low on weapon damage. Obviously, the extra damage with throwing daggers is convenient as well.

Our next destination was Beregost, with its free XP from Marl and the additional reputation to be obtained via Firebeard. By earning his first level-up at 1250 exp, with an additional 20 points invested into Set Traps and his one permitted max-HP roll, Edric was now officially allowed to attempt setting his traps.

Just in time for the ogrillions south of town! In the context of BG1, the bounty hunter's special traps are nothing if not brutal.
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Removing the green-clad hobgoblin in the same area gave us access to Zhurlong's boots.
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I can't stress enough how important these are for Edric. With thieves, it usually takes a couple of levels to build up reliable stealth capabilities, since HiS/MS will often be competing with other priorities, in our case Set Traps and Find Traps. The Boots of Stealth play a critical role in closing the gap and, for the same reason, we also had our eyes set on the Shadow Armor.

Reporting back to Mirianne got us to L3, increasing Edric's Set Traps score to a decent 95 (same as Ava, he's expected to obtain those last 5 points via the DEX tome later on). Selling the Ring of Wizardry gave us a much-needed equity injection, however we decided to hold back on major spending until we would further improve our reputation. The only exception was the Wand of Sleep, which we wanted to have in reserve as soon as possible, since we were about to pay a visit to Melicamp and Zargal.

The wolf was taken down with a sequence of pitiful backstabs, whereby we used the rock formations in the canyon for cover.
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For Zargal, we deployed both of our snares - the special snare was tossed towards the hobgoblin group in advance, while our normal snare was prepared to cover our retreat if need be.
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As soon as they turned red-circled, the first trap sprang, killing both archers and damaging and slowing Zargal.
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Edric used his movement advantage to fall back and hide. We wanted to finish Zargal with a backstab while he was quaffing his healing potions, but the plan hit the wall of our THAC0 limitations.
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That contingency snare proved useful after all. Procuring +2 weapon without spending a single charge from the Wand of Sleep has rarely been easier.
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Next stop: Bjornin's half-ogres. For encounters such as this, Edric already developed his routine - observe the situation -> toss the snare -> finish the slowed survivors at range.
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Escorting Brage to the Temple of Helm could be seen as a questionable move from a bounty hunter, but Edric never accepted the contract here. At the same time, the goodwill of the local church and sympathetic citizens (presumably coming exclusively from the ranks of those that didn't have their family members slaughtered by the former captain) would be of more value in the long term than any monetary bounty.
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Reaching level 4, Edric earned a proficiency pip in darts and pumped 20 points into HiS to solidify his stealth before we turn our focus to Find Traps with later levels. Despite our handling of the Brage business, we eventually managed to win Oublek over as well by correcting his false assumption regarding our identity. Edric also agreed to look into that Prism business in due course.
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We concluded our brief stay in Nashkel by collecting the ankheg plate and stealing the short sword +1 from the barracks to serve as our off-hand weapon against helpless enemies.
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En route back to Beregost, we stopped by the bloodthirsty hobgoblin crew to interrupt their barbecuing of Mr Colquetle's family. Observe and toss, Edric, observe and toss.
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Returning the family amulet and reporting to Bjornin increased our reputation 18 - we concluded that sufficient to proceed with the shopping, whereby we acquired the Shadow Armor from Thunderhammer's, as well as potions (Magic Blocking, Freedom, Strength) and a stack of +1 darts from High Hedge. Since Edric's human saving throws would be nowhere near the zeros even after we'd acquire the Claw later on, the Shadow Armor - with its superior AC and HiS bonus - seemed to be a better option than unenchanted studded leather with RoP +1.

With that, our first goal of building up Edric's inventory was accomplished. We'll focus on the XP side of things in the next session.

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Regards,

B.
 

Alesia_BH

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In any case, Edric is a spiritual successor of Alagar, my halfling bounty hunter whom I ran some months ago and who gave me a feel for the basics of the BH playstyle. In order to delve deeper into the class, I deliberately rolled a human this time, instead of reincarnating Alagar with his shorty saving throws. Doing so should push me outside of my comfort zone more often and force me to rely more heavily on the class itself. Whatever the outcome of the run, I'm hoping it'll at least give me a chance to sharpen my rogue game.
Best of luck with Edric, Borco! I'm looking forward to this one!

And I whole heartedly approve of your decision to go human. Human thieves are a ton of fun, since they force you to use your wits. My sorcerer, Alanis, taught me how to cast, but my human bounty hunter, Alesia, taught me everything else. Enjoy!
 

WiseGrimwald

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Journal of Jarlaxle

It was a tough battle against the skeleton warriors below Candlekeep!

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It taught me to send skeleton warriors ahead against such enemies.

So glad that Artemis survived. It would have been a tragedy not to have had a thief in this area.

The next battle against similar enemies was a walkover using this tactic. We then had a rest.

I have found this sort of banter quite amusing. One of the reasons why this is the first evil run that I have enjoyed.

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@Borco I've never played a Bounty Hunter, so your write-up has been most informative. :)

You're right. You learn such a lot from solo runs. I did quite a few back in the days of Tutu. I was able to complete ToSC with a thief mage without killing anyone. Repeated backstabbing of Sarevok with my fists was amusing, particularly when he was killed by the lightning bolt from a trap. Not intended!

In a similar game I was SO disappointed when I killed Sarevok by backstabbing with my fists which were SUPPOSED to be non-lethal.

At the moment I'm enjoying the banter of playing with a party.

PS

The rest of Candlekeep was a doddle. All that was needed was a little more care!
 
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Borco

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Btw, Borco, thanks for tuning me into SCS v35's use of Dimension Door. Ava is finding that factoid super useful.

The Bounty Hunters' Association would hereby like to offer honorary membership to Ava. And Edric's pale with envy - his duel with Ruhk was much less elegant.
 
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Borco

Habitué
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@Borco I've never played a Bounty Hunter, so your write-up has been most informative. :)

That's great to hear! And you should certainly consider trying them out one day - they're loads of fun, even though you eventually might find their special traps slightly overpowered in the context of BG1.
 
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