[SixOfSpades]

Originally posted by SpongeBobTheDestoyer: I've got a NRL party going and I plan on getting to her right before Improved Irenicus since I can't face her afterwards.

Actually, if you're playing No-Reloads, I would strongly advise avoiding Faldorn altogether. The way Weimer has it now, pretty much the only* way you can beat her is through luck. At least nothing truly essential is blocked off: You won't become the Hero of Trademeet, and you can't do the Trademeet Crypt or the Skin Dancer quests, but at least you can buy things like Blackblood, Tansheron's Bow and the Belt of Inertial Barrier.

Originally posted by Hank Parsons: Six, are you totally opposed to Tactics "cheating" to the very letter of the law? In real p'n'p D&D, the DM can fudge skills in any direction he pleases, especially to make an enemy more challenging.

I have no real objection to fudging the rules, provided that A) It's done in moderation and B) There's a good reason for it.

Example 1: There is a Demi-Lich (reasonably) late in the game that is immune to instant death. This means that it is immune to the Undead-slaying abilities of weapons like Azuredge, and also to the Turn Undead ability of a very high-level Cleric (and a party Cleric could very well be high-level enough to Turn a Demi-Lich by the time they meet this one). Now, this is a cheat. But all it really does is make the battle less contingent on cheesy tactics like Reloading until the Demi-Lich fails his Save vs. Death.

Example 2: In the Improved Twisted Rune, the Rune Assassins can all see invisible targets. This makes less sense than in the previous example, since it'd be next to impossible for a Thief to hear somebody sneaking around in a room with tons of spells flying all over the place. I'd have preferred having them actually Detect Illusions, but at least Weimer has this in his defense: The Rune Assassins really aren't much of a threat anyway, and they could see the invisible even in the original, unmodded game (go to the Tanner's basement and see for yourself).

Example 3: TorGal's Claw, on top of its being a +3 weapon with some rather nice on-hit enchantments, does 2D6+3 damage. I think the only other SoA weapons that can beat it in terms of raw damage are Warblade and Carsomyr, at 1D12+4 and 1D12+5, respectively. Since when does a Dagger do more damage than a Two-Handed Sword?

Giving a human enemy 19 STR doesn't seem unreasonable at all.

19 STR is indeed not truly overblown, but it is a cheat. I wouldn't complain about it in something like my Tactics Review, but it deserves being listed here. Especially since in BG1, Faldorn's stats were 12/15/11/10/16/15. Boy, I wonder how much steroids she needed to take to crank herself up to 19/18/16/13/18/15. And what a shock for the player who actually had Faldorn in the party at the end of BG1!

What I hope to glean from SixOfSpades reviews, is not whether Tactics cheats, but whether a Tactics battle is winnable/challenging/and fun.

Hmmm....I thought that my Reviews covered the fun/challenging points pretty well....can you quote any examples you found insufficient or misleading? True, I did (and will) point out any noticable instances of cheating, but note that I also gave each one of those a qualifier on how it affected gameplay: I shrugged off the matter of the Rune Assassins mentioned above, but I was not so forgiving of Stalman's infinite "Heal, Heal, Zone of Sweet Air" B.S.