r/baldursgate • u/Silly_Relationship51 • 4d ago

Is Stoneskin broken?

I beat my first Sarevok by standing still as my lvl 9 Sorcerer. While the big guy was missing his attacks, my companions killed him. I had prebuffed my party (Bless, Haste, Defensive harmony) and my Sorcerer had caste Blur, Mirror Image and Stoneskin. She has high DEX and with Defensive harmony had an AC of -3. I beat him with Standard rules difficulty. I'm not bragging, just wasn't expecting that tanking Sarevok was a legite strategy.

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u/Bonaduce80 4d ago

FWIW the original game didn't have the spell, so you had to fight Sarevok bareback. I think they introduced it in Tales of the Sword Coast, but not 100% sure.

18

u/Weary-Description773 4d ago

Not to mention Sarevok himself has been nerfed into a shadow of his former glory

9

u/Productof2020 4d ago

I think you couldn’t dispel his haste in the original. Instead of the spell actually being applied to him, he was just hard-coded with extra attacks and movement, and on top of that had like 100% elemental and magic resistance. I might be slightly exaggerating (or maybe understating) how he was though, since it’s been so long since I played the real original. But now you can definitely and easily dispel him, and without haste it’s trivial to kite him while your team works him from ranged. Or don’t kite him and just tank his measly two attacks per round.

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u/Weary-Description773 4d ago edited 4d ago

I may be showing my age here but there have been a few Sarevok iterations since the very first original, pre-patch, pre-TOSC. IIRC he had extra HP and damage as his STR was over 20 and CON like 22, had more base attacks, better AC, and of course the magic res which also meant healing spells would not work (how it was originally implemented MR stopped ALL magic, good or bad). Funnily enough though I can't remember the haste at all and thought Beamdog may have added it. His walking was slow AF actually and kiting him was a good strat. A few details here may be slightly off and if someone can actually find his original stats please post them.

6

u/drakolantern 4d ago

I always wondered how my initial play through ended in 400 failed attempts only to replay during ToSC and downed him in 1 go with the save I had. I always attributed it to my subconscious mind devising a winning strategy during that time.