What do you consider to be among the best area effect spells (NOT Summoning spells)?

Since the only mage in my party is Dynaheir, I couldn't cast any of the Enchantment/Charm spells. But still, I had my due share of fireball-slinging . Usually I would incapacitate groups of monsters with Web, since I can then send in my Free-Moving fighters to whack them senseless; or just take them outright with Fireball. Anyone fancy Skull Trap instead? (I just don't see the point of using it, due to its short range) For my cleric, Branwin, I use Entangle/Hold Person (the casting time is darn long, though) with the 3rd lvl Protective Sigil (?? Forgot the actual name) as a (sole) offensive - it dishes out quite a hefty amount of electrical damage.

A well placed Stinking Cloud in combination with a Cloudkill spell can do miracles too...



Petrarcus ap Bhaal.

i always do that!! well, the last time i did that had to be when i got nalia as a temp charecter in my improv npc group that....errr..... did some stuff in bg2, and i never changed her spells, but i did make her kill a few groups of certain mediocre strength nme in bg2.. well. ok..

I just make sure that Minsc feeds Boo beans and there's a surfiet of stinking cloud spells...

WELCOME AGAIN OPUS !!! Finally people is starting to come back...

About the area effect spells, I like the tipic FireBall. In fact it is the only area that I use, cause I normally like:

level1: magic missile
level2: Melf´s arrows and mirror image
level3: fire arrow and fireball
level4: pffff, anything, there isn´t anything special
level5: monster summoning 3 and sometimes cloudkill (i don´t like it very much)

Just tried Cloudkill in Durlag's Tower Chessgame level, and man, it's spectacular!!

I pretty much wiped out everybody using

1. Cloudkill
2. Fireball
3. The Cleric Sigil Spell

without moving a single character!!