Wow. That's all I can say; wow. I recently updated my mods and decided to install the Smarter Mind Flayers component this time. I'd like to say that it was the worst decision ever, but evidently, the worst decision ever was to even add this part to the game.
These Ulitharids and mind flayers and anything else you wanna call them are incredibly unbalanced. Their psionic blast causes at least 80 damage to me every time. Maybe they're just getting lucky with that x % chance of hitting the right person in a mirror image every time, but it seems to go right through that as well; thanks for chunkifying Edwin from out of nowhere you ugly piece of deformed tentacles!
My party is about level 17/18 and it doesn't make sense to have this much trouble with a group of mind flayers. They literally chunkified at least 1 person every time I fought them. In the end, I decided to resort to cheese and using project image + skeleton warriors to take them out with no problem to show them who's boss. However, I wasn't looking to use cheesey tactics on these guys; but they just keep killing me all the time.
Maybe I'm forgeting something, but doesn't chaotic commands protect against their mind draining ability? Maybe it's just been so long since I've even had access to that spell (haven't had a cleric in my party for the past few games) that I'm forgetting something, but they just suck the brains out of every body there. And of course, the greenstone amulet was of no help.
What the hell is up with these guys? I would have thought that Weimer fixed these guys after that huge review that SoS wrote.

My personal take is that they are powerful enough.

However, I would love to see a mod that lets high Intelligence creatures see through low-level illusion spells (as in PnP 2nd Ed). Would be quite fitting for a Ullitharid to see a mage trying to creep through his home...

Similarly, I'd LOVE beyond all belief for the high-level Wisdom abilities in PnP be implemented... spell immunities ahoy [img]smile.gif[/img]

Anyone care to mod this up?

CC is supposed to protect against psionic blast, not INT drain... and I'm glad. You can't really justify that with a spell. You're getting your brains eaten. That spell shields your mind from spells, not tentacles or whatever the hell they're using.

The improved ones can see through your invisibility and target you with their psionic blast even when you're invisible. I guess it's not considered a spell. They also use improved invisibility at the beginning of almost every encounter. They also try to dimension door away when they are nearly dead. I'm not where they are teleporting to, but I tend to get in a few extra swings at that time and take them out before they get away.
Either way, these guys are unbalanced. Way too unbalanced.

<font color = lightgreen>It is really difficult to properly balance highly-intelligent creatures, especially given the limitations of having to work within the rules of the game's engine. The other difficulty is that we couldn't accurately say what illithids would do--not only are they smarter than we are (they even smarter than I am [img]graemlins/petard.gif[/img] ) but they aren't human, thus we couldn't correctly guess their tactics.

Anyway....illithids are difficult enough without someone pumping them full of asiago, roquefort, and brie. [img]graemlins/beigesmilewinkgrin.gif[/img] </font>

Weimer is willing to adjust (most things in) his own work, but he's wary of messing about with mod components written by other people. The Tougher Illithids were scripted by Gebhard Blucher, and it seems that he feels its current form is the way Illithids should be, and Weimer is honor-bound by that opinion.
Of course, my own opinion is that all Mind Flayers should have the ability to see right through Invisibility (they can detect all intelligent thought in their vicinity, so the only way to sneak up on them is if you yourself did not know you were doing so--the jury is still out on whether mindless creatures like Golems could escape their notice), and of course it's silly to say that their BioWare version was already tough enough, since any Warrior with a Potion of Invulnerability (and perhaps a Potion of Genius or two) could waltz through an entire lair of them alone. I simply disagree with their being able to use mental powers to manipulate physical reality (what the heck is this Project Force thing?), and that their powers are so damaging (so....Detonate does major damage to my entire party, no matter *where* they are? Oh good).
What I'd like to see is Illithids that fight by engaging their enemies in a one-on-one psionic duel: Those caught up in them are locked in place, using the "Mental Combat" icon (currently used only when Wizards summon Elementals), and the game compares the INT and WIS of both parties, and Slows them accordingly: The loser is Slowed more than the winner, and melee combat ensues. Those Illithids who have spellcasting abilities should be allowed to Dimension Door away if they know there's no hope, but if they succeed, the party should be awarded 75% of the EXP that they would have earned had they managed to kill the thing.

[ 07-09-2005, 01:57 AM: Message edited by: SixOfSpades ]

I agree. You're supposed to get experience for dealing with an encouter, correct? If you've dealt with the mind flayer, you should get the experience. That's how it works in PnP.

I rather preferred IWD2 Mind flayers. :/

Actually, i rather preferred IWD2 combat mechanics anyway. [img]tongue.gif[/img]
It´s way better balanced, and skips all the bulls with "instant death" abilities.
BG´s are just full of frustrating imprisonment liches, odd instant death spells, vampires, int drains, and experience based over-rebalancing of low level kuoa-toans (ToB).

I used to be able to slaughter the frogmen with a death spell, but what now?
Suddenly they all start rolling the miraculous saving dice of deathspell immunity?!
Ugghhh...

Luckily BG´s are more roleplay and less fight than IWDs... [img]tongue.gif[/img]


EDIT:
AHEM!
MORE TALK! LESS FIGHT!

[ 07-10-2005, 05:48 AM: Message edited by: GoblinZ ]

I don't know why anyone would want to fight improved Illithid, I mean they're hard enough from before..... [img]smile.gif[/img]

BTW: I guess that you aint no newbie, are ye? :D

[quote]Originally posted by SixOfSpades:

Quote:

Originally posted by Lord: [qb] What I'd like to see is Illithids that fight by engaging their enemies in a one-on-one psionic duel: Those caught up in them are locked in place, using the "Mental Combat" icon (currently used only when Wizards summon Elementals), and the game compares the INT and WIS of both parties, and Slows them accordingly: The loser is Slowed more than the winner, and melee combat ensues. Those Illithids who have spellcasting abilities should be allowed to Dimension Door away if they know there's no hope, but if they succeed, the party should be awarded 75% of the EXP that they would have earned had they managed to kill the thing.

That would be a good method. However, what it does is that it stops the character from fighting any of the other illithid that may be attacking. This could be a problem if the character is soloing...instead of being able to turn around to take a swing at an illithid, you're stuck there and can't do a think about it. So I guess this mental combat shouldn't last for anymore than 1 round regardless of your intelligence.
The part about getting XP before they dimension door away is a good idea. And those attacks that they have...jeez what's up with that?

They are a nasty bunch.

Makes me wish I could get the Psion's Sword before ToB.

Poison still kills them, all I need now are kua-toa bolts.

Moral: Don't solo against Mind Flayers. Seriously, Illithids are supposed to be feared, and with good reason. You can't expect a lone adventurer to change into their stronghold and carve them up like they were nothing more than a band of Shadow Thieves.
Mitigating factors: I would expect a solo character to be able to clear the Illithid lairs--slowly--by using such things as Chaotic Commands, lots of Summons, using Potions of Genius, Insight, and Clarity to boost his mental state prior to combat and Oils of Speed to counter the Slow, etc.

Scenario: Warrior opens a door and discovers five Mind Flayers waiting on the other side. Oddly enough, Warrior does not slam the door and run for his life, but instead walks in. The first Mind Flayer gazes into his eyes and establishes a psionic connection, through which the two mentally fence. Now, the Flayer has to establish and maintain this connection, which is taxing: Due to the stress of carrying the psionic link, the Mind Flayer has (for mental combat purposes) a -4 modifier to its INT score, so its effective INT and WIS are 14 and 9. Let us say that our Warrior has exactly those mental stats: He would therefore beat a Mind Flayer in single combat, simply because of his better THAC0, AC, and ApR. (These 'rebalanced' Mind Flayers would be less fearsome in melee combat than the current versions: Putting your mouth into somebody's brain is a lot trickier than simply shoving a knife into their gut.) Still, this Mind Flayer is not alone: It has four friends advancing on the Warrior as well, and they are free to use their abilities such as Spook and Psionic Blast (now a single-target spell). In addition, both participants in the Psionic duel are under the effects of a single Slow spell, so the Warrior, under the duress of having to having to fight a single Mind Flayer on both the physical and mental fronts at the same time, is rather handicapped when it comes to fighting off the others, nor is he going to have much luck at running away. As each melee hit drains off a point of INT and WIS, he begins losing the psionic battle as well, which means he falls victim to more and more cumulative Slow spells, while the first Mind Flayer, with a literal load taken off its mind, is now no longer Slowed at all, and steps forward to claim its prize of the temporal lobes.

Moral: Either slam the door and run for your life, have some good pets to block off the other Mind Flayers, or buff like hell first.

Chaotic Commands, don't leave home without it.

Slowly clearing out the underdark ilithid lair by CCing my Fighter/Cleric (Currently with the godly AC of -9, only the Ulitharid can hit him with any regularity)

My tactics are simple, open door with CCed Fighter/Cleric, let the flayers attempt to psionic blast him (they generally only use it once anyways), let them go invisible and try to attack him, then I have him run back to where the rest of the party is, have my sorceror cast True Sight, and then crush them with the nice Paralytic Bolts I got from the Improved Sahaugin :D (The moral? A single Illithid can't face a pounding from 6 attackers at once unless it psionic blasts the party, which it already wasted.Since they cycle through abilities, their extra abilities have come at the price of them not blasting the party every round or so.)

The only nastiness comes when on accident more than one follows you. 2 or more illithid are trouble, 2 or more ulitharid is just asking "Monster, please kill me"

[ 07-12-2005, 04:40 PM: Message edited by: Neo the Warrior Cat ]

In the vanilla game, I actually find mind flayers more problematic than dragons. I can't seem to get through the Underdark without someone getting intelligence-drained at least once. I find the Mind Flayer fight that Solaufein orders you into hard (even harder than two certain plot-critical dragons in Throne of Bhaal), mainly because they appear in position to surround you and I never think of stationing my allies outside the circle and sending one guy to talk to Solaufein. (That smells like metagaming, anyway.)

Anything that drains stats or levels kind of frightens me, even vampires. I know some people find vampires easy, but the Protection from Undead scrolls and Negative Plane Protection spells seem to wear off too fast in my game.

Intelligence Drain wears off after awhile.
Chaotic Commands protects against Psionic Blast.
Dragons are really easy if you know the uber-cheesy way to take them down ;)

Neg. Plane Protection only lasts 5 rounds.

Better idea is to have a multiclassed spellcaster character (or a paladin) wearing the Amulet of Power to go thwack vampires.

Really, these improved illithid are delightfully challenging, frustrating until you *suprise!* change your tactics.

The Alhoon, however, is a foe I could not fell. I wisely chose to leave him behind.

The best way for vamps that i found is an invisible cleric with turn undead, chunkifies the lot of them

Not if you don't have a high level cleric it doesn't.

I don't think a 10th level cleric can chunkify a vampire ;)

And here's bizarre news, my paladin has a better turn undead rating than my multiclassed Fighter/Cleric o.O

Still, having the Vamps covering in a corner will give you plenty of time to toss that Azuredge at 'em.

Meh, my Fighter/Cleric has a good enough AC (and wearing the amulet of power) to keep Vampires at bay while whacking them with the mace of disrution :D

Then my pally comes around and chucks azuredge at them while they're whacking away at my F/C.

What? The Alhoon didn't even prove the slightest challenge. An ulitharid is considerably tougher than the alhoon. And for some reason, an (the?) alhoon is worth only 10,000 xp while ulitharid are worth 19,000 xp. The alhoon barely even fought back.

Well, I kept getting clobbered, mostly becuase he protected himself against magic weapons.

That and he kept stunning people, then killing them, all the while smugly laughing as I could not Breach his sorry ass due to magic resistance. (I only have 3 slots for chaotic commands.)

[ 07-14-2005, 10:36 PM: Message edited by: Neo the Warrior Cat ]

Breach ignores Magic Resistance.

MAkes sense to me, IIRC a pally is 2? levels below in turn undead thatn an equivalent level cleric, whereas your Fighter/Cleric would have 1/2 the TU level, as the XP is split between fighter and cleric classes.

Or am I forgetting how it works in BG2?

I think your Turn Undead level is proportional to your cleric level. So if you have fewer cleric levels, if say you're a fighter / cleric, you'll have a lower Turn Undead level than a single-class cleric with the same number of experience points.

I'm pretty sure the Alhoon is treated as a Lich, which is why Breach won't work on him. I think his difficulty varies wildly depending on whether or not you have
- vanilla SoA
- Tactics Slightly Smarter Mages
- Tactics Improved Mind Flayers
- both of the above

In vanilla SoA, he's nothing special, but Tactics can make him extremely tough to kill.

- Imrahil

I had both the Improved Illithid and Smarter Mages components.... well, that explains it >.> (That and he does still have the 90% magic resistance for being an illithid, if I remember correctly ¬_¬)

Tactics Alhoon (with imp. Mind Flayers and CHEATING mages...they're not smarter, they're just been force-cast tons of sweet spells)is one of the toughest, most anxiety-arousing of the whole game.
Alhoon with all those devastating imp. Illithids...
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just try your best to survive and have a fallen Deva take care of Alhoon...remembr how pathetic when liches meet our celestial helpers?

Except I didn't have a Deva then :(

The Illithid weren't that much of a problem, the Alhoon was the problem.

Meh, at least the mages use Melf's Minute Meteors now. Sweet spell, always wondered why enemies never used it. That, and their force-castings are generally stuff they'd put up with in the first round or so of combat, so they're kinda like the player party in the respect that they have their buffs up. (Unless you don't do preparation buffs after resting [img]tongue.gif[/img] ) Plus, most of the stuff they have can be taken down with Breach or a good Dispel Magic.

Once one gets Carsomyr, mages don't stand a chance, regardless of what they have force-cast on them.

(Bah, liches are even more pathetic when they fall to Azuredge XD )

Anyways, I just had my tanker run in there and get the hammer and the Wand of Wonders, then hightailed it out of there.

Enemy mages do use MMM. When they use it on you, you'll wish that they didn't have the ability to use it ;) .

well, those disappearing-appearing illithids, with their brain eating ability and blood sucking inflict-attack, always give me tons of problem -- as I have to take care all my party members. That's a tough fight.

I just started a new game, being away from SOA for a looong time, and don't know what the newest version of tactics looks like exactly. But in the past, when CHEATING mages turn invisible, breach cannot target them, and true sight cannot dispel it...you need a detect illusion capable character or TOB item and summon (Deva and Planetar can see invisible beings).

the thing about CHEATING mages is that they don't pre-buff like we do...TIME doesn't affect their immediate force-casting -- all pre-buff spells cast immediately -- (if memory serves, there are mulitple contigencies and such). When we pre-buff, our spellcasters need time and round to do so...very often when we're all done pre-buffing, some of the effects are near expiration. Pre-buffing is not cheap, but disregarding of the time/round rules and spell limits is.

btw, as Lord mentioned, the bad guys did cast MMM, but they seem to cast it when they run out of all other offense spells -- since they suck at melee, MMM is their last resort. Just got through some of that in the Irenicus dungeon (tactics)...we got burnt ^_*

Except maybe Protection from Magical Weapons... ;)

Breach again ;)

And Lord, most of the mages who used it couldn't hit anything for beans with it.

In fact, there's only one mage in the entire game who managed to do great damage with it, and it was a drow dude in Suldanesselar who cast Time Stop and them flung meteors right at my Fighter/Cleric until timestop ended.

My pre-buffs are generally the long-standing type, Armor (Spirit Armor when I get it), Stoneskin, Protection from Evil 10' radius, etc.

Meh, I guess the real reason I have no complaints about the cheating mages is the fact that it didn't make much of a difference, I still mowed through most of them. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

that maybe why you rarely see one MMM casting baddy since you finish them all too quickly.

btw, if breach, any decent weapon or even just normal weapon in the game will do the job, we don't need that captial C thing ~

Naming a weapon really isn't much of a spoiler, teardropmina.

Especially since I didn't hint too much at what it is, does, and where to get it XD (other than it's ripper at getting rid of mages)

Carsomyr just makes it a heck of a lot easier.

ehh...I didn't mean it to be spoiler... I never memorize the exact name of that weapon and so something like "captial C" just flew out of my finger ^_*

[ 07-26-2005, 02:21 AM: Message edited by: teardropmina ]

Hehe, I was just thinking that I should mention the drow guard infront of Demin's House that flings them at you like crazy...but then I finished reading your post ;) .

Actually, there are plenty of mages that can make hits with it. You get a +5 to hit with MMM. And if your mage is targeted, they can quickly eat through your Mirror Image and 5 attacks per round and then take you out unless you either quickly kill them, dispell their MMM, heal up, or protect yourself.

That's the thing. They always went after my front-liners (Cavalier with the Red Dragon Armor and Ring of Fire Resistance, so immuned to the fire portion, and a Fighter/Cleric, both with pretty good AC), so they never did anything major with it.

Though with Spell-50, I'm gonna have fun with my bard and MMM :3

Mostly, if I could hit them, they died, fast [img]tongue.gif[/img]

<Quote>In the vanilla game, I actually find mind flayers more problematic than dragons. I can't seem to get through the Underdark without someone getting intelligence-drained at least once. I find the Mind Flayer fight that Solaufein orders you into hard (even harder than two certain plot-critical dragons in Throne of Bhaal), mainly because they appear in position to surround you and I never think of stationing my allies outside the circle and sending one guy to talk to Solaufein. (That smells like metagaming, anyway.) </Quote>


That fight is easy if you use Chaotic Commands beforehand, as it protects against Psionics as mentioned earlier. Then use a Death Spell roughly in the middle of the area in which they appear. It works in vanilla because they count as summoned units. No idea about whether it works in Tactics though.

[ 07-31-2005, 02:11 PM: Message edited by: Ilyich ]

I concur. That fight is also hard because you can't really use area of effect spells, or order the two neutrals out of the way so you can use said spells.

I didn't really have much of a problem with that little skirmish, but then I had a bunch of Improved Sahaugin Paralytic Bolts :D

(And an Assassin)