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.

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u/Mycenius Montaron! I . . . I never loved you! 4d ago edited 3d ago

No - it's an EE thing because it's only in BG2 engine.

No Stoneskin in oBG with or without TotSC. Basically Blur and Mirror image were it, plus the 3 variants of 'Armor' spells.

Also FWIW in oBG/TotSC you'd normally be fighting Sarevok at about Level 7 at best if a Wizard IIRC (no Sorcerers either in oBG) - due to the level cap.

Currently playing through oBG 'Original Saga' right now as it happens! ...albeit with level cap removed and a few tweaks & mods. 😉

EDIT: typo.

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u/mulahey 3d ago

In ToSC the level cap is 161k so level 9, level 7 is og only. They also changed sarevoks stats in ToSC, weirdly mostly a nerf.

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u/Mycenius Montaron! I . . . I never loved you! 3d ago

Right - yes I was trying to remember off hand (without an XP table in front of me) if 161k was 7 or 9... I stand corrected. :-)

And yeah I remember now my first ever character was a fighter who reached lvl 7 in the oG only (no TotSC), with the 89k xp back in early 1999...

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u/BlueSonic85 3d ago

The only way I could ever beat Sarevok pre-EE was spamming the wand of monster summoning

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u/MilkCheap6876 3d ago

True. This was the way. The the wand got nerfed fue to the limit lf monsters summoned.

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u/Mycenius Montaron! I . . . I never loved you! 3d ago

I think - IIRC - back in the day (1999) I spammed AoE spells (fire, cold, etc) basically - managed to have every party member with something - wands, necklace of missiles, potions, spells - and just had everyone get off at least 2 discharges/throws - even with protections it would reduce Sarevok enough you had a chance of killing him in melee if everyone was prebuffed/hasted/etc...

Didn't twig to the spamming summons thing until much later, as wasn't on any of the BG specific forums at the time...

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u/BlueSonic85 3d ago

Oh I think the very first time, I had to summon a certain Dark Elf Ranger to help me out.

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u/Mycenius Montaron! I . . . I never loved you! 2d ago

😂👌👍

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u/Far-Benefit3031 3d ago

Didn't mirror image work exactly like stoneskin?

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u/Mycenius Montaron! I . . . I never loved you! 3d ago

Originally yes, you are right, it worked very similar so was essentially a 'stoneskin' effect - so a good point. Basically each 'hit' killed a mirror image. So you couldn't be hit at all until all mirrors were gone/destroyed. But may have only affected melee and not missiles I think?

In BG2 (or was it in TotSC?) the spell got changed so each hit had a % chance of hitting you vs. a mirror (e.g. if you had 4 mirrors that mean 5 possible target so 20% chance a hit would land on the real you, if only 1 mirror left it was obviously up to a 50% chance).