Annoying battles in ToB (spoilers)

[Drawde1]

I don't know if anyone agrees with me about this, but I've been finding that most of the battles in the ToB add-on, especially the "boss" battles, are extremely frustrating, not only very hard but also not much fun. Most of the time you are swamped with hordes of enemies (fire giants, bone blades, drow, slayer shadows, etc. depending on the battle) which have incredibly low THAC0 and AC plus a huge number of attacks per round, and often regenerate themselves when you kill them (bone blades and slayer shadows particularly) which means that all your characters, regardless of how many protective/enhancement spells or abilities they've cast, and how many ultra-powerful magical suits of armour and trinkets they have, get hit constantly, disrupting their spells/abilities and making it impossible to use any real strategy other than hacking away at the enemy, drinking healing potions as fast as you can, and occasionally using an area-of-effect spell like Horrid Wilting or Holy Smite. (And I've tried casting every single enhancement/protection spell plus abilities like Hardiness/Whirlwind Attack before the battles, plus summoning devas, elementals, golems etc, it still ends up the same chaotic melee scrum). In some battles you can position your characters strategically, allowing your spellcasters to stay out of things, but more often, your characters all get placed near the enemy in a cutscene (as with the Melissan battles in the Throne of Bhaal).
As I say, the main annoying thing is that you get hordes of (often regenerating) enemies with both a very low THAC0 (i.e they hit the most well-armoured fighter with every attack) and several attacks per round, whilst you can at best cast one spell, use one ability, drink one potion etc. per round.
I know that a fighter-heavy party (I have only one real "tank", a paladin) might have more success due to also having high HPs and attacks per round, but it seems a bit unfair to a more magic-oriented party! My paladin with an AC of -10, wielding the upgraded Purifier or the Answerer, and with Hardiness and Greater Whirlwind activated, still gets demolished, as do devas, elementals etc.
I have managed to fight my way through ToB, though I'm stuck on the third Melissan battle (having exhausted most of my protective and summoning spells), but I've found most of the battles very annoying.
It's odd that many reviews mention that having to fight lots of spellcasters with powerful protective spells was an annoying aspect of ToB, but I never have much problems with fighting other casters, it's the fighters that are the problem!

[Dundee Slaytern]

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I feel your pain brother. Me being a Sorcerer and all. For the Melissan battle, I decided to fight cheese with cheese. I lay Spike Traps at the spot she spawns... heeheeheehee... ...

Ravager and the Bone Blades, basically, I use summons to distract the Bone Blades, while my tanks with +5/6 weapons wail on the Ravager itself. My Mages also lower its' magic resistance, and blast it back to where it came from.

Firegiants? WAHHAHAHAHA!!!! Greater Malison, followed by Emotion.

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If not a Sorcerer casting total oblivion, then a Paladin meting out justice. Otherwise, I think I will just be a bard and torture my enemies with, "My Heart Will Go On".

Platinium Sorcerer of ALSB, Aerie Loving Sacred Band! She's MeowRrrr, and more!

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Baldur's Gate Item Mart

[Sir Kenyth]

You have to be creative with the spell casting. Mantles and time stop. Non-detection and invisibility. Lower resistance and Gr. Malison. Imp. haste, Black blade of Disaster, and Tensers trans. if you need a tank in a pinch. It sounds to me like you might not be changing your memorized spells and stategy to meet the needs of the battle. Demogorgon beat me down the first time, but the second time I whupped him with hardly any HPs lost. Don't forget about useful abilities like turn undead when the shadow slayers appear. Prot. from undead scrolls make great gifts for shadow slayer fighting too!

[Drawde1]

I think my main problem is that I don't have a single-classed mage in my party. This restricts me from the really powerful spells like time stop, chain contingency and improved mantle, and means I can only have one or two Horrid Wilting or similar spells. I have a fighter/mage, thief/mage, cleric, shapeshifter druid, cavalier and archer. I've got plenty of priest spells but am very low on high-level wizard spells. If I'm only fighting one enemy (like a dragon), I'm OK, but when there are loads of other minions, my spellcasters just get swamped, and my fighters and summons can't hold them off for long. Area-of-effect spells like ADHW, Holy Smite etc work very well when the enemies have low MR, but usually they don't, and you can't use Lower Resistance on a whole horde of enemies, especially when they regenerate.. (shame there isn't an area-effect Lower Resistance spell)
Also, I do change memorised spells whenever I need to, though in the final battle you can't rest which is VERY annoying (one reason to play a Sorceror I suppose!). If you can rest in Hell or other similar unpleasant environments, why not the Throne? (I know that you're supposed to kill Melissan ASAP before she becomes a god, but there are plenty of other occasions in the game when you're supposed to do something as quick as possible (such as liberating Suldanesslar), but actually can take as much time as you like doing subquests without any adverse effects.
I used spike traps against Melissan once, but ran out of them (my thief/mage can set 5 normal plus 1 each exploding and spike trap). Skull traps, symbols and delayed-blast fireballs would probably fail due to magic resistance.
Anyway, the next time I play the game I'll definitely take a single-classed mage or sorceror along, there are many times when I wish I had those high-level spells, or had mid-level ones earlier.

[Kitka]

i think its limited wish, so long as youve never asked for it before, (a one time wish) that rests your party and restores your spells. a handy trick if you know its coming. spell trap will restore used spells too, the trick is to get spells cast at the mage with the trap on though..

[Black Knight]

I don't know if I entirely agree - I just finished with Me (paladin), Savrok, Jaheria, Aerie, Nalia, and Imoen (I did BGII with an all chick party, then had to have Savrok for ToB what can I say) and I ended using mostly mage spells. Try using spells that take away magic, like pierce magic, against Melissan and hacking on here with the Paladin - distract the others with summoned creatures - concentrate your fighters on her, though. She is the key.

But like I said, I am more used to a melee combat party and this definitely made me think a lot more. Get creative, learn your spells and what combos to use - entangle with a web or two then make the baddies into your own personal target practice was one of my favs.

Let us know how it goes! Good Luck

BK

[etherus]

Well komrade,
It seems we have a similar problem. Though the great forces of Rasheman have been seemed to have stopped dead in their tracks by hordes and hordes of frickn' huge skeletons and shadows that like to eat you, I have yet to find a way to disrupt the power of Melissan also. Along with getting to the Demogorgon, the third portal won't open on the seal and I've completed the three quest of the helmite ghost. What can we do other than go berserk like Minsc and myself do and beat that puny lock into nothingness (which can't happen, I've tried), sit and pray for the Player Character Gods to have inspiration from a truly high god Memnoc to come and give us inspiration and guidance to our times of need. Onwards Minsc, hit it again while I bite it! Quickly gods, find us a way, Boo and Tanus (my frost weasel) are too young to be on their own.

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The Krazy Communist Ivan
Bronze Elven Monk ALSB

[Drawde1]

Still no luck fighting Melissan so far, I've beaten her the first two times but the third time has utterly defeated me. She stoneskins herself then teleports up to the other side of the Throne whilst simultaneously summoning half-a-dozen Slayer Shadows. If you go after her, the shadows get you (they're faster even than a hasted character) but if you stay to fight the shadows, she just summons more, along with liberal use of Storm of Vengeance, Time Stop, symbols etc. I've tried using devas, magic swords etc to hold off the slayers whilst my party go up and deal with Melissan. After casting a few dispel magic and breach spells on her, and with my paladin wielding the Holy Avenger or Answerer, archer firing +3 arrows from the Heartseeker, and casters casting away, I can start to injure her, but then she -inevitably- Mazes the paladin (and/or any devas/elementals I have attacking her in melee), then summons a horde of demons,slayers,bone fiends etc. to swamp my non-mazed characters. I can fight them off for a while, but she keeps summoning them endlessly and it's soon all over. Of course, Maze doesn't have a saving throw and ignores Magic Resistance..
I could probably do some damage with spells like Skull Trap and Horrid Wilting, if only my casters could get close enough to cast Lower Resistances etc. without being overwhelmed by demons (of course the enemies ALL do additional cold/fire damage which gets through stoneskins and disrupts spells
Using Limited Wish to rest the party would be a good idea, but my two mages have 9 and 7 WIS respectively and so would probably be unable to get any decent wishes, needless to say I don't have any Potions of Insight handy..
I think I will give up with this particular party, then the next time I play, keep some high-level spell scrolls (Time Stop etc) and some Potions of Insight, for wishes, saved up for the final battle.

[Tuor]

I'm not trying to be cocky but I didn't have huge problems in the final battle, however I think it was more my choice of characters rather than a particularly good strategy.

mage
one fighter/age dual class at 12th level
a thiefa fighter cleric dual classed at 9th level
an undead hunter
and a bard

I used lots of summoning spells to get creatures between me and Melissan, lots of lower resistance spells, breach, warding whips and so on and used my ultra high level cleric to turn every undead sod in sight long enough to deal out a world of pain to the big M.

Also used lots of whirlwind, greater whirlwind and assassination strikes.

I was lucky on the first couple of battles because I did not have to use to much in the way of spells but the last ones were hard and I think I had a magic missile left-out of all my spell casters spells left at the end.

I know its obvious but make sure all your contigencies, triggers etc are loaded up before you go in, and all your protective casting is done in advance.

[Drawde1]

It seems that melee power is the only really effective way to deal with Melissan, in the first battle I gave all my characters the best armour and weapons possible, activated hardiness, whirlwind and assassination for the relevant characters, and defeated Melissan in about 20 seconds.. The next time I had my thief set traps around the place she appeared, then finished her off with arrows and slingstones. The trick seems to be to defeat her ASAP before she can summon any slayers or demons. However the third time I had to rely more on magic, with much less success (Melissan not only has high magic resistance, but complete immunity to elemental damage, so the only things that work are pure magic damage spells like Horrid Wilting, Skull Trap and Holy Smite; she's also immune to level-1 spells of any type, regardless of level)
Also, slayer shadows are not undead, as far as I can tell; Turn Undead has absolutely no effect, neither do anti-undead weapons like the Mace of Disruption or Hammer of Clangeddin (you don't even get a saving throw message). Sunray and holy smite work to an extent, but only because they're evil-aligned.
Anyway I hope my next party will have more success when I eventually reach the end of ToB, as I said, I'll stock up on high-level scrolls and powerful potions.