LOL the sad thing is i'm good at the game and have been playing on insane mode for so long with mage or any subtype of mages, aka bards, and few others like the norious kenshi/mage, clerc/mages, etc... and ive got quite good at mass killing theose spell caster, that i can do the *spoiler*mage staff quest*spoiler* in one try every single time i play the game and that's without the addon ToB and watcher's keep heh if i did that before the mage staff then well...
anyway egough of my ranting here's some tips.
okay who is in your party? and what level.
An tip, a clerc is very helpful with undead types of mage like liches, cause the clerc is geared toward unnatural creature like demons, undeads.
okay here's some tip and sugrestion for mages if you got any.
For liches( i know u can handle some, but if you hit the *mage staff quest* there is a mega tough lich plus later in game and tob, liches get tougher, not that much tougher but can be hard for peoples who are newer to the game.
Okay every time i fight a lich it never fail to follow the same patten, the second i piss him(she) off an chain contigency and other crap suddenly triggers and theyre all protected up with their protect from god spells. Now most if not all lich start off the same but here is little varration, some start off by casting symbol death, symbol stun, symbol fear.
Now the symbol death is easely countered by the clerc spell death ward (i think little rusty on clercs) then Symbol stun, there are few items in the game i belive that protects from symbol stun i think, *plays mages most of the time so can't use most items* Then symbol fear never affects me because when i face up liches i make sure i include the level 2 mage resist fear, or the level 1 clerc remove fear i belive.
Then those lich follow up with timestop and usualy metor swarm, if you got good fire protection it won't hurt that much if it start to hurt get out and wait for the 4 round to be up then head back in and work on the lich some more. and those who cast the metor swarm usualy follow up by gateing an demon, an tip for demons just cast protection from evil on all your party member then the demon won't know you are there, and just fight the lich, the lich will win of course but he will depline a lots of his spells, and possiable be injuried.
others lich follows different patten but its basicaly the same for most lich.
anyway as i said earler clerc rocks for fighting undeads, if you haven't figured it out theyre geared toward unnatural creature, i mean check holly bolt, or sunbeam, now sunbeam that's a kickass spell for destroying undead, they have to save other wise they get hit by 1000+ pt of damage and nothing i know can surive that kind of damage. to my knowledge. and if you got an clerc/mage like aerie you can chain contigency 3 holy bolt which i think do 8d8 to undead and 10d8 to demon i think, *sorry kind of rusty on spells esp clerc, because i use an specalized set of spells on my uber sorcerer*
now that almost take care of the liches, but there are few more tip if you have a level 20 clerc do turn undead and it usualy explodes liches. Demilitches now that's a different story for an different time
Now correct me if i'm wrong, isn't liches not affected by any spells under level 5? if so don't use them its an wase.
Now if your fighters are not damageing the lich OR MAGES then he probably have stoneskin, and protection from magic weapon, mattatles, etc... now if you have mages cast the spell called Breach which removes all combat protection, but it DOSEN"T remove Spell protection, but breach is useful if you got fighters pounding on the lich/mages however i think liches are immune to level 5 and below spells and breach is level 5 so its useless for liches but for mages now it works on them and is great to rip them up fast, just get your fighters on them then breach them couple time to make sure all combat protection were removed.
Okay general mages, now they got spells protection, if you casted breach u removed combat protection for melee fighters so they can pound on the mages but if your mage/clerc wish to help out then you got to remove spell protection, and that's harder. okay there is the universal useful dispel but if youre low level verus a high level its very unlikely to work however if youre high level verus an low level then it'll work, oh another tip, palidans i think insquishers have dispel as a speical ability and its 2x their levels so an level 40 insquier that use his dispel speical ability has an effective casting level of 80 i think * if the tob level 20 cap don't affect speical abilities, if they do then its casting level of 20* so it usualy dispel most everything, including your own protection
Now if the mage vanishes from view use the spell true sight, and bring that sinking mage back in your view
it also remove mirror images, and invisiablity, improved invistiablity, if the enemy mage has improved invisiablity you can't target him, and even after he makes an attack it still shimmers and u still can't attack him with spells u can with melee but that's different story.
okay there are couple useful spells for removeing mage protection, one of them is spell strike, pierce shield, kabelith warding whip, among many others, if you need more info ask us or read the game manual it should list the spells and their description or check it in game.
another thing is spell casting distruption if your mage get hit there is a chance that he/she will fail at casting their spells. so mief's acid arrow is great in this regard lasts 2 rounds i think, first round u hit the mage and distrupt the mage, then it causes couple acid damage for the following round or two which will give u time to cast a spell or two. and this is great verus long casting spells like time stop which takes time to cast. another great distruption spell is magic missiles, the all universal useful spell. some time simple spells are all that is required to do the job u don't go after the longest and complexest spell when n faster casting and simpler spell will do the job.
another tip is mirror image, its useful with area effect cause each images will take up an area effect say you have 5 images, the mage cast fireball now you won't be damaged but you now only have 4 images. its useful
and also don't forget stone skin so there is less chance of you being distrupted when casting spells, and belive me being distrupted when casting timestop can be painful, its an level 9 spell you don't have many level 9
now here's some tip for thiefs,
my all favorite way to kill mages are to kill them before they even know you are there then they can't bring up their protection at all and dies. the most common and best way is to have thief hide in shadow and backstab the mage as he/she is casting true sight then the mage usualy explodes if not is usualy next to dead, now if there is melee fighters get ur thief out of there and bring the normal front liners up forward and then begun to pop out spells at the fighters.
Now back on the subject of spell distruption have you ever play a druid, they have this great spell called insect swarm, it last 6 round and 100% spell casting failure, great for distrupting mages
one tip instect plague is higher level but imho its not as good as instect swarm cause it only last 3 round instead of instect swarm's 6 round, and the longer the mage is out of the fight the better.
mages charming or dire charming or dormating your front liners, can be annonying and at times deadly, an great clerc spell can save u a lots of headaches, its called chaoic command, it works even with mind flayers's pysonic attacks.
now here's a link to my favorite spell referial page it include pristly spells and also it describes the author's option on the spell you might not agree with him but you got to admit that there is some good materials on the page, it also includes cheeses you can do with spells, cheeses are kind of minor stuff things you can get away in game but an sane DM wouldn't let u
here's the url.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bwscri...s%20Reference/
and oh yeah don't diss the mages an lowly 80 hp mage can whoop your 300 hp fighters with the best equipments
there is some debate on this point but in my option mages own, but fighters can defeat mages but it depends on how good the players are and how good the mage/ and or fighter is prepared.
Oh yeah about the url above, xyx goes into deepth on mages spells and its very useful
bloody heck even an veteran like me uses it some time to u know
and also do read the manual it also contains lots of information and is well written, you noticed didn't u?!? i mean its an inch or two thick!
Oh an update, i was just checking on the site and noticed that liches are immunite to any spells below level 5, so dispel or breach won't work unfortualy so you will have to relay on level 6+ spells to hurt the lich, and ransakha are wrost theyre immunte to all spells up to level 7 so that only leaves the level 8 and 9.... but most of them are in general melee, ive ran into some spell caster but most ive seen were meleers.
[This message has been edited by Thrawn (edited 10-20-2001).]