Posted April 05, 2015
So, I decided to play a little challenge with myself which is quite similar to the no reload challenge for main character death. In my own particular challenge, I aimed to have no perma deaths whatsoever using the traditionally intended party (Minsc, Khalid, Jaheira, Imoen, Dynaheir). I actually made it through the entire game with only a few near death experiences for a couple of my party members. That was until I reached the endgame battle. I applied all the usual buffs, entered the temple, hasted my party, and took Khalid and Imoen up along the left side. My plan was to detect some of those ridiculous traps and simply avoid them while positioning Khalid to take a shot at the mage with an arrow of dispelling before retreating back to the rest of my party. I had not fought this particular battle for quite a while as I had not played Baldur's gate in a couple of years. I figured that the mage would have the same protection spell that Daevorn had and I could actually hear it humming as soon as my party entered the main room. I successfully hit and dispelled the mages magical defense but as soon as I turned khalid and imoen around to run BOOOM!!!! Not only did a stinking cloud seem to simply appear out of thin air, but a web spell as well. Both Imoen and Khalid hit the ground even with amazing saving throw buffs. Ok, I thought, no big deal because I can just take Dynaheir speeding up to the edge of this shit storm to cast dispel magic. However, somehow, the enemy mage was able to not only dimension door all the way up to my party right after casting malison (Which was cast simultaneously along with Web and Stinking Cloud), but he also managed to turn around to target the unconscious khalid from that great distance and cast lightning bolt on him before Dynaheir even began casting. The lightning bolt hit him for about half of his health before the bolt passed through him and the danger was far away. Dynaheir finished her dispel and it began to float over to relieve Khalid and Imoen. But guess what, before it ever even reached them, the lightning bolt had reached the far end of the vast temple room, hit the wall, and rebounded in EXACTLY the same path that it had already traveled hitting Khalid and frying his poor half elven ass into nonexistance. At this point I hit pause only to throw my hands up and shake my head saying W T F. I then decided to take a closer look at the feedback messages to figure out who in the world cast stinking cloud and web at the same time and how I could have missed the orbs flying at my unfortunate characters. I found the message "Samaj casts contingency." I then thought Oh so like the BG2 spell? Well fine, I guess thats fair. So even though my challenge had sorely reached its miserable end so close to victory, I decided to reload so that I could beat the living crap out of that Semaj. But I noticed something quite aggravating to me upon my second attempt which was that the stinking cloud and web orbs DO NOT ORIGINATE FROM THE SEMAJ!!!!! They actually fly in from the very front of the temple as if from two other different ghost mages which is the reason why one would easily not ever notice them. So yes, I have to admit, that is incredibly cheesy and definitely frustrating to discover that only in this one particular instance of the game do you see spells flying in from vacant corners of a room. But knowing about that B.S. I simply backed up in time during my second load so that the spells impacted upon nothing and then proceeded to take on all four bosses at once with only 3 summons for distraction which ended with Semaj smacking the stone floor first, Angelo actually falling to the some war dogs and a magic missile barrage, Tazok being chunked by my Paladin's Knee Capper and finally, Sarevok taking one too many arrows of piercing to the face. Somewhat satisfying to see the intended outcome but still, I mean really..... W T F.
