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Originally posted by PeeWee:
I agree with saving the scrolls for harder fights due to the limit of what's available.
I've seen lichs start up the dialogue and right afterwards there is a small time frame where you can melee it. If your guys are hasted before the fight, they can lay some decent dmg to wear him thin if they can reach him in the few seconds you have. Afterwards he may time stop things. Prepare to take some fire damage here. He will also trigger 3 buffs. One could be the shield against magical weapons. Another of his buffs is the flame shield. And this is when you would want to use breach.
It's somewhat of a fast kill if you can buff up early on...I normally use chant, draw upon holy might, barkskin, aid, protection from fire, haste, and defensive harmony.
I keep all the melee guys spread around the lich and watch for when it says my weapons are ineffective. I then use the mage spell thrust or breach right when I see I can't melee it. Then attack again and if a guy is low on health I use a potion or pull him away from the fight to heal and go back in.
IF the lich gates in a pit fiend, I pull all my fighters away from the lich and use dispell. This will negate his protection from the fiend and "normally" makes the fiend turn on the lich. There is a spell that dispells only the enemy but forgot the name of it. If the pit fiend is beating up the lich, I then summon companions to use as fodder and check to see who is doing damage to who. If things go bad, you will be looking at a mad lich, a pit fiend, and an elemental.
This is just a basic method I use for a few encounters. Be careful using dispell since it affects your party too if they are in range.
About Anomen: I like his blade barrier spell and his self buff from his shield, his amount of hitpoints is decent, and of course when he and Aerie turn undead, it's fun to watch(try it in the graveyard sometime once ya ready or feeling risky). His melee does lack alot. So far he's been proven useful during the early stages of the game. May switch him out later on when I find other characters who are compatible with my group.
SPOILERS
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If you want an easier way to kill that lich this early in the game, haste one member of your party (you should have potions of speed by now; use one on your party's thief). Buy a potion of invisibility if you don't have one, and give it to the thief. Have them run in, unlock the chest in the room, and take the sword in there. Then drink the invisibility potion, and wait for the lich to cast time stop (he only has one of them). You'll be pretty scared, but remember, he can't target your thief while the invisibility is up, and the spells he casts while time stopped won't affect you until the time stop ends. So he'll waste a bunch of time casting true sights, then summoning a demon. As soon as you see that he summons the demon, leave, and go do other things for a while (go to Nalia's keep, do stuff around town, etc.). This will give time for his spell protections to wear off and the demon to go away (unlike players, monsters don't recover their spells). Make sure to identify the sword; it is very powerful against undead (like the lich). When you come back later, give the sword to your main fighter, haste the entire party and go in. Run your main fighter right up next to the lich, and use the sword's Sunray power. If this doesn't finish him off, it will weaken him greatly (just rush everyone up next to him and hack away until he drops). Bit cheesy to run away like that, but better to live to fight another day.
Anomen is an arrogant SOB, but put him in your party, and when the first of his quests kicks in (a courier comes up and tells him to return home), you'll see where he gets it from. If you do the good guy version of this quest (remember, vengeance without any proof of guilt is wrong), he'll eventually get knighted, which jumps his clerical abilities greatly. And unlike the other clerics in the game, a person who was a dual-class fighter can grandmaster in weapons (put five proficiency slots in a weapon, thus achieving the greatest skill you can with that weapon). He also goes up quickly as a cleric (since he dual-classed over, he does not divide up experience points between classes like Aerie and Jaheira). Admittedly, he is very obnoxious, especially as a romance, but if he gets knighted, he keeps his trap shut most of the time (and becomes a better cleric to boot). To get him knighted, just do the good guy version of his quest (you'll know what I mean when it happens; just remember that vengeance without proof of guilt is wrong). If you want someone to keep Anomen in his place until then, keep Yoshimo in your party. He does a great job of humiliating Anomen. Once you get his skill up in a weapon, and get the Gauntlets of Dexterity later on, he becomes quite good in combat. I'm playing ToB, and Anomen is right up front with Minsc, buttkicking for goodness.
Then again, if he irritates you too much, dump him and let Aerie cover your clerical needs (just use those healing potions that you accumulate along the way, since she can only memorize so many healing spells, and you eventually accumulate a lot of healing potions). Viconia works as well if you are neutral or evil in nature. But as a male player (who doesn't have to worry about his advances) he has been a valuable addition.
Hope this helps!