Newbie question about MotB

[cosmicray]

Newbie question about MotB. What's the 'proper' way to tackle the combat? Starting from Veil the fights are pretty much unreal for me. My built is probably crap(playing as a Warlock from NWN2), but maybe I'm missing something else(except brains). Should I micromanage or let other party member do her job? Or should I just lower difficulty to normal and be done with it? Khai Khmun is destroying me in an instant. After several seconds party is paralyzed and that's pretty much it.

 

[Chippy]

Unless you're trolling, I suggest you either play the original campaign again, or prat around with some recommnded mods to get your player skill up a bit. Other than that patronising "get gud" answer, these games have always been about grabbing items that offer total resistance as saves are ususally a save or die scenario. People even build their classes around class resistance.

And Warlocks suck. I was infatuated with the class at first, but they weren't implemented well - you should track down some mods that try to 'fix' the class, but last time I played there was some compatibility issues. There always are.

 

[deama]

If you can't beat Khai Khmun then you'll have to restart as a different build because just after beating him you'll have to fight one of the hardest bosses in the module.

 

[cosmicray]

Nah, I'm not trolling. Since beating original campagn years ago, I decided it's time to play MotB(being on Codex and all that) with the same character. I guess I should restart and better understand D&D system.

 

[anvi]

Is that near the start of the game? I can barely remember the game but I remember the first big boss battle took me about 10 attempts. Beyond that it got easy.

 

[cosmicray]

Yes, that's the first boss battle. After that you probably get more party members, which should make things, I assume, smoother.

 

[Yosharian]

Just make a new character. Warlocks suck.

 

[Jaedar]

Yes, that's the first boss battle. After that you probably get more party members, which should make things, I assume, smoother.

Pretty sure you already have the level 18 wizard, which should suffice ?

Alternatively, make a new character (I have no idea how viable warlocks are). Don't play OC again for it though...

 

[deama]

I think when most people think of the first boss battle in MOTB, they think of the bear and his elves, the OP is on about the one just before that, in the theatre.

 

[Cael]

Unless you're trolling, I suggest you either play the original campaign again, or prat around with some recommnded mods to get your player skill up a bit. Other than that patronising "get gud" answer, these games have always been about grabbing items that offer total resistance as saves are ususally a save or die scenario. People even build their classes around class resistance.

And Warlocks suck. I was infatuated with the class at first, but they weren't implemented well - you should track down some mods that try to 'fix' the class, but last time I played there was some compatibility issues. There always are.

It has nothing to do with implementation. Warlock is close to Tier 5 as a class. They suck, period.

Playing as a character from the OC gives you several advantages, especially in gear and levels. Those make a big difference in high level play. When you mix a low power class with lack of gear, you are in for a beating, I'm afraid.

Your best bet as a warlock might be to spam that Evard equivalent as much as you can to immobilise the wizard. You will never do enough damage to him to kill him off before he gets off a few spells and, as you have already found out, that is curtains for you. Focus on abilities that disable rather than damage. That is your only hope.

 

[anvi]

Ahh yeah the theatre was tough for me too. I always play as a wiz or sorc. They seem to get stronger as the game goes on.

 

[Anomander Rake]

If you are not sick of power playing, you could also go for one of these builds:

https://nwn2.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Power_Builds

Find one with diplomacy and other social skills and you're set.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

What's the 'proper' way to tackle the combat?

severe case of needing to git gud
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/mask-of-the-betrayer-questions.110158/#post-4668069

Warlock is absolutely fine for MotB, in fact, since you don't have to rest and can go on and on it might even be advantegeous in this campaign.
If you have trouble you're probably not using Safiya very well. Give her the robe that can cast shadow shield and use Shadow shield, use improved invisibilty, persistent haste, a spell mantle to defend against those wizards/ some sort of breach to breach their defenses. Stick her spell slots full with disintegrate/empowered disintegrate because as a transmuter RWoT she will get +5 DC on transmutation spells. Buy the +6 int ring for her. While leveling up pick scorching ray and firebrand as spells so you have good lower level DPS spells on spell levels where she hardly knows many spells yet.
Get bigby's forceful hand spell. Typical i win button.

As a warlock you really only need the following feats: (optional 1st level feat spellcasting prodigy), blind fight (mobs with concealment are annoying) , shield proficiency to be able to wear a zero arcane spell failure shield (Safiya has all the crafting feats, craft a mithral heavy shield or zalantar light shield or use one of those 0 ASF shields available in MotB), combat expertise and improved combat expertise (requires at least 13 INT) which is basically free +6 AC 24/7 because the attack penalty doesn't apply to ranged touch attacks. You might want to take Able Learner early to easier increase cross class skills.

Get a +8 CHA item for your warlock.

invocations:
1)
Dark One's Own Luck (gain CHA mod on saves)
Leaps and bounds (free +4 DEX and tumble, 16 native DEX+ this let's you max out mithral breastplate which is your armor of choice)
Beguiling influence (free social skills, useful for MotB)

2)
Eldritch Chain (make your blast AoE)
Brimstone Blast (add some fire dmg)
whatever you want, normally I'd say flee the scene but in motB you can have Safiyas peristent haste, so it isn't that important

3)
Vitriolic Blast, not subject to spell resistance, so your goto blast when fighting mobs with SR
Devour magic
Bewitching blast, see how all the enemies are confused all the time

4)
Binding blast, upgrade to bewitching (which you could now switch out for something else if you want) , see how all the mobs are stunned 24/7
Dark Foresight
Retributive Invisibiity

max Spellcraft so you can take Eldritch Master at lvl 21 (blast dmg x1.5). Craft a mithral breastplate, stack regeneration (fire essences let you add regeneration on armor and shields).
Improve AC and saving throws (see link above).

 

[aeroaeko]

Why is NWN2 not on steam? I swear it used to be

 

[cosmicray]

What's the 'proper' way to tackle the combat?

severe case of needing to git gud
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/mask-of-the-betrayer-questions.110158/#post-4668069

Warlock is absolutely fine for MotB, in fact, since you don't have to rest and can go on and on it might even be advantegeous in this campaign.
If you have trouble you're probably not using Safiya very well. Give her the robe that can cast shadow shield and use Shadow shield, use improved invisibilty, persistent haste, a spell mantle to defend against those wizards/ some sort of breach to breach their defenses. Stick her spell slots full with disintegrate/empowered disintegrate because as a transmuter RWoT she will get +5 DC on transmutation spells. Buy the +6 int ring for her. While leveling up pick scorching ray and firebrand as spells so you have good lower level DPS spells on spell levels where she hardly knows many spells yet.

Wow, that's fantastic. Switched to pause every round puppet mode and now I'm at least getting somewhere into the fight with advices. Except these assholes drink potions and continue anew. Disintegrate is surely helping to turn the other Red Wizard to ashes. Probably gonna try some other options/luck in the battle. But I'm a bit more knowledgable now about how this works.

 

[cosmicray]

Well...
Safiya: Shadow Shield, Haste, Protection From Spells, Disintegrate
Warlock: Binding Blast
Plus both summoned creatures before the combat to keep main Red Wizard enemy busy). I screwed a bit after both Red Wizards were already dead, but it didn't affect the outcome. Thanks everyone! (until the the next battle...)

 

[MRY]

Honestly, urging people to engage more with MOTB's character building, combat, and itemization strikes me a cure that is worse than the disease. I'd recommend just cheating so that you can avoid that stuff, probably cheating to expand the party size by one so that you can take all NPCs, and then just playing it for the exploration/C&C/narrative, which are excellent.

 

[cosmicray]

Is it because MotB combat-related stuff is bad and there are much better games to go into depth on D&D? Or simply because it's not worth it since the main attraction(which is why, I suppose, it's beloved) is the story anyway?
I could have lowered the difficulty level and probably beat them no problem on "auto", but I wanted to go the 'proper' way.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

Do it the proper way. MRY is a dev, they dont know how to play games. Dont listen to his lies.

 

[MRY]

I despised the combat. My view of it (perhaps I was incorrect) was that it seldom presented any challenge, even when I was aggressively avoiding resting, provided that you used ample pre-buffing and consumables. Sometimes I'd lose fights because I missed saving throws; I suppose if I had been more strategic, I might have avoided those. But I just reloaded and rammed by head against the wall again, since it almost always was faster/easier to do that than to actually figure out, post hoc, what strategy might be more viable. (Again, the usual "strategy" was just to throw on more prebuffs.) In actual execution, the combat was not particularly attractive, was overladen with particle effects, and performed poorly on my computer.

Itemization was lame because it encouraged you to vacuum every container, and since the containers were often not obvious because of lighting and camera, the game encouraged you to hold down the "highlight containers" button/option, making it like a Where's Waldo? where every Waldo was marked in highlighter. Except that rather than being whimsical and unique, the scenes (which you now had no reason to look at anyway) tended to be tediously same-ish, with bad camera angles and bad lighting. The items also strained suspension of disbelief well past the breaking point, as every barrel contained thousands of gold worth of items, and every vendor had hundreds of thousands of gold to buy that trash (and even more valuable goods to sell to you). The mind-numbing tedium of vacuuming garish trash, arranging in it a stupid Tetris inventory, painstakingly figuring out what garish trash would give some marginal benefit over the garish trash I was already wearing, etc., added nothing to the game. Crafting, which added compulsive hoarding to the degenerate min-max gameplay, made things worse still.

I certainly did play the game "engaging" with its combat and itemization, but I'm fairly sure that it only detracted from the game. The narrative has nothing to do with the protagonist's ability to fight -- his supernatural characteristics are basically tangential to the combat system. The attrition of fighting (and thus the need to rest) was supposed to play into the spirit eater mechanic, but the mechanic doesn't work very well -- in my experience, it just encouraged a further level of somewhat degenerate gameplay (not as bad as items and combat) around suppressing spirit hunger. (If anything, the ability to suppress the hunger hurts what otherwise would have been more interesting, I think -- the need to feed at least sometimes on innocent, ancient, beautiful, or otherwise not-someone-you'd-want-to-annihilate spirits. In a "good" playthrough you can basically avoid hurting anyone, which understates the danger of your condition.)

 

[Mr. Hiver]

I despised the combat.

The game dev.

See? This is what im talkin abut!

The very first thing that comes out of a game developer mouth is how gameplay is bad (as combat is majority of the gameplay in this case and many others) and best avoided and cheated through- so you can enjoy the story and C&C and whatever else! Nice graphics!

As if the combat somehow ISNT part of the story you are creating as you play. Even integral to it.

And then he goes on to write a novel about how writers in games have a hard time.


edit:
Mind you, all those other issues are more or less true and all of those are done so inadequately because developers fail to see how all those mechanics and features are and must be seen as integral parts of the setting, gaming rules - world rules and conditions - and the story, plot, quests and everything else.

/ For example, Itemization is always bad because all devs can think about it is a version of "well the "players" like finding items = lets drown every barrel and box with everything!"

Instead of thinking the mind boggling: "We should put items in places only where they would fit according to the setting and the story. So in a poor village youll only find worthless cheap crap, and in places where there is hunger there shouldnt be food items in every orifice. There shouldnt be any food at all."

And economy goes the same way. Lets please the "players" - those, you know who will cry if they dont find gold in every bucket.

 

[anvi]

The combat is the only reason to play it.

 

[Jaedar]

Honestly, urging people to engage more with MOTB's character building, combat, and itemization strikes me a cure that is worse than the disease. I'd recommend just cheating so that you can avoid that stuff, probably cheating to expand the party size by one so that you can take all NPCs, and then just playing it for the exploration/C&C/narrative, which are excellent.

HNNNG.
I mean you are right about cheating to increase party size. The game is ezmode after chapter 1 anyway, and its not like adding an epic level warrior/rogue/warlock will contribute anything to the powerlevel when your party has 3 epic level casters in it (assuming PC isn't one...).

But building your PC is like half the fun man, come on.

 

[MRY]

But building your PC is like half the fun man, come on.

It ought to be, but it wasn't any of the fun for me. The only stats that the game seems to really meaningfully engage with are the social stats so if you build a PC neglecting those stats, you're just shortchanging yourself. But since you have ample attributes and skill points to max all of those stats, there's no strategy in pursuing the social stats. On top of that, as I think I've written elsewhere, I find a lot of AD&D leveling extraordinarily unsatisfying because you're just incrementally progressing in the same scores, while the game is basically level-scaling (prescriptedly, to be sure) in those scores to keep up with you. Very rarely did an MOTB level-up feel like it was suddenly opening some new avenue of playing to me -- it's like a tech tree in which every tech is just a modifier, and you're railroaded into only pursuing one or two branches of the tech tree. The RPG systems where I really have enjoyed character building (AOD, Deus Ex, V:TM:B) feel a lot "chunkier," and it's super exciting to level up. (This is slightly true in AD&D with respect to magic users, especially at the level when you get fireball.) Somewhere I did a long post about this; maybe I'll try to dredge it up.