Going to give BG2 another whirl

Rowdy game so far. I can see the potential. I'm glad I stuck with it. At the moment, I'm at the ruins by the Umar Hills. I love the atmosphere. However, I'm having some trouble with the skeleton warriors. They're immune to magic. I have 2 mages and that bounty hunter. Best I can do is bring one of them down to barely injured, hehe. I've tried dispel magic too. Any advice. These two guys are hard.

Get your spellcasters some summoning spells, and use the summoned creatures to take them down, or at least tank them while your party takes them down. You can summon up to five creatures at once, so it shouldn't be much of a problem once you have such spells.

Skeletons take only half damage from slashing or piercing weapons, use Hammers, Flails and Maces on them, or Weapons with elemental damage - you can lower their magic resistence with some Spells too.

Ah, cool. Will do.

Clerics and paladins can turn undead using their special ..wait for it..Turn Undead ability. This makes a lot of them run away for a bit, so you can take out a few at a time rather than being mobbed. You have to have a cleric or pally in your party, though. Not that that's a bad idea. They both come in handy for healing everybody up as well.

is there no druid class in the game?
that could be the deciding factor if i do or don't play the collection i've got,
some day in the future.

In BG2 there has to be a druid class, since that is Jaheira's claim to fame. I actually think it was either BG2 or the IWD's where I found the druid spells to be the most amazing devastating and interesting( "Creeping Doom"=sends swarms of bugs to distract and devour your enemies like little piranhas on legs) but it's been so long I could be wrong. It may be all shapeshifting like NWN druids.

Originally Posted by magerette
In BG2 there has to be a druid class, since that is Jaheira's claim to fame. I actually think it was either BG2 or the IWD's where I found the druid spells to be the most amazing devastating and interesting( "Creeping Doom"=sends swarms of bugs to distract and devour your enemies like little piranhas on legs) but it's been so long I could be wrong. It may be all shapeshifting like NWN druids.

Druid is certainly an available class. It was in IWD that Druids were phenomenal, with their various entangling/damaging spells and area effect spells. I forget the spell names right now, but you could ensnare mobs of baddies with a spell that damaged them and held them, then lob other area effect damage spells on them. Could take out large amounts of baddies like that.
I don't remember Druids being that great in BG2, but then I never really played with them much.

thanks for the info you two!

If I'm remembering it right, druids in BG2 had that creeping-doom spell where the insects swarmed you. It took a long time to cast, but it was worth it! Nothing defeated enemy mages like that one!

Yes, and they have very powerful summoning spells. Use Jaheiras/Cernds ability to summon bears, and they will tear down skeleton warriors/stone golems in no time because they not only have very high damage/hitpoints, they also do blunt damage.

Also, the fire elemental they summon always becomes friendly, unlike the mage version that might attack you. These elementals are immune to a lot of things, so they can be used as tanks in many places.

Insect swarms in BG2 are incredibly powerful, causing not only spellcasting failure (AOE spell, so ignores spell turning, etc), but causes morale failures and fleeing. This spell alone makes Jaheria a powerhouse, especially when you consider that she can wear full plate on top of everything else!

Yeah, Jaheira with a shield and full-plate has really good AC, which makes her a good tank with good healing abilities too. Not sure how good she is in ToB though…

Übereil

Yeah, but she's such an obnoxious person!! I'll take Viconia anytime!!

BG2 Jaheira is a good character, her personality is much more developed than in BG1. The same of course can be said for Viconia and probably to a greater degree. But I liked Jaheira in BG2 a fair bit.

Originally Posted by Corwin
Yeah, but she's such an obnoxious person!! I'll take Viconia anytime!!

I always wanted to have a party that included Viconia, but it's a real pain in the arse getting her to stay. She leaves your party if your reputation goes higher than 18(which mine always seems to do), or if you have Keldorn(who is one of my favorite npc's) in your party.

The key is to romance her!!

Originally Posted by Corwin
The key is to romance her!!

They made achieving that goal too long and complicated in my opinion. It's ridiculous how easy it is to accidentally break the romances. They also take far too long, spanning multiple chapters. With Viconia that becomes a real problem because I have to try to balance my reputation during that entire timespan. It also means I can't have Keldorn in my party.

Maybe someday I'll give Viconia a try If I do an all evil party, otherwise it's too much work.

I kept them both for a LONG time, but it was hard work, I'll admit!! Once they tried to kill each other, which was fun till I had to reload!!

My current party is my lev 9 fighter, valygar, jaheira, and kelsey. I just finished getting that harper bird to return to Xanthas or that wizard and this vampire named Del attacks me. She's really hard and since Kelsey can't cast any spells because he has no permit, the battle is really tough. Any advice?