======================================================================== ARCANE SPELL GUIDE FOR NEVERWINTER NIGHTS By tno77 (Daniel Palmer) ======================================================================== As a D&D video game veteran, I have always had a fondness for playing as an arcane caster. The tactical flexibility offered by a mage or sorcerer is second to none. Mages can buff allies, disable opponents, nuke groups of enemies, or flat out annihilate them with save or die spells. Compared with Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, arcane casters appear to get the short end of the stick in Neverwinter Nights 2. A lot of enemies are immune to instant death effects and mind-affecting spells, which were two strengths of mages. Paralyze has been nerfed, and many spells that incapacitate the enemy (eg. stun, sleep, paralyse) don't result in automatic hits. The number of effective damage spells has dwindled. You don't have access to game-breakers such as Time Stop, Mislead, Project Image, or Spell Trap. Yes, arcane casters aren't quite as good as they were in Baldur's Gate II, but they will outclass fighters, rogues, and even clerics, *if* you make prudent spell selections. And this is where the problem arises. Determining which spells are useful, and which aren't, requires a lot of trial and error. You need foreknowledge of game mechanics, what enemies you will be facing in the game, any errors with the in-game documentation, and what works well in practice vs. theory. This is why I compiled a list of arcane spells in Neverwinter Nights 2 and assessed each one's value. This guide assumes you are playing the Original Campaign. However, the advice should hold true for Storms of Zehir and Mask of the Betrayer. ======================================================================== GENERAL COMMENTS ON ARCANE SPELL EFFECTS ======================================================================== - Mind-affecting spells include some of the most powerful status effects in the game (stun, sleep, daze, charm, paralysis and confusion). Enemies affected by these spells are rendered inert (except in the case of confusion, where they may attack the nearest creature). Unfortunately, every man and his dog has immunity to these effects in NWN2, particularly your most deadly enemies, which include constructs, undead, and some boss monsters. Also, unlike previous D&D games, enemies affected by these spells are not automatically hit if an attack is made. - Hold person spells work differently from previous D&D games. Each round the enemy gets a new chance to save against the paralyse effect. If they succeed, the spell is cancelled. This greatly reduces the value of Hold Person type spells. - Blindness, slow and knockdown are powerful disabling spells. Furthermore, they are not considered mind-affecting, meaning that very few of your enemies will be immune to them. - There are several spells in this game that belong to the Bigby's Hand set. Most of these spells don't use a saving throw, but a grapple check. The grapple check is heavily biased in favour of the caster, and only large enemies with a very high strength have a decent chance of resisting. - The paralysis inflicted by Bigby's Grasping Hand/Bigby's Clenched Fist is different from regular paralysis. It lasts for the entire duration of the spell if the enemy fails a grapple check. Unlike normal paralysis spells, it is not considered mind affecting and will therefore affect undead/constructs. It will prevent the enemy from moving, but not from attacking. Therefore it is very useful against melee enemies, but not so much against archers/wizards. - Save or die spells are quite powerful. Unfortunately, like mind-affecting spells, quite a few enemies are immune to death effects, including constructs and undead. The exception to this are petrification spells (Flesh to Stone and Power Word: Petrify) which are not considered death effects. Petrification will not effect enemies who have scripted events or magic immunity. - There are a number of useful spells that require the caster to make a successful ranged touch attack against the opponent. To simplify, you want your PC to have a high dexterity modifier and attack rating, and for your enemy to have a low dexterity modifier/dodge factor/deflection rating. Enemies who rely on dodge/dexterity to be hit (eg. rogues and shadows) are less likely to be hit by ranged touch attacks than enemies who rely on body armour (eg. fighters, golems) - Try to tailor your disabling spells to work against the enemy's weakest saving throw. For example, wizards have low fortitude saves, making Finger of Death or Flesh to Stone an obvious choice. Warriors are a little more tricky. While they often have low will saving throws, making mind affecting spells seem an obvious choice, many also have immunity to mind effects. In this cause, you should employ spells that use a grapple check or ignore saves all together, such as enervation, or spells that roll against reflex saves, such as Web and Sunburst. You could also choose to soften up the enemy with spells that lower fortitude saves. These include the aforemention enervation, the bard's Curse Song, and the cleric's Prayer, Doom and Battletide Spells. As a rule of thumb: - Warriors have low will saves and high fortitude saves. - Wizards have low fortitude saves and high will saves. - Clerics have high will saves and low reflex saves. - Thieves have high reflex saves and low will saves. - Everyone except thieves have low reflex saves. There is one all or nothing disabling spell in the game that works against reflex saves, and therefore is also one of the best (ie. Sunburst). - Summoning spells are under-rated. Yes, summoning spells at lower levels become redundant quickly, but higher level summons provide better damage output than most damage spells, benefit from party buffs, and act to draw fire from your caster. - Many enemies in this game have significant resistance to a form of elemental damage. Fire is by far the most common, followed closely by cold. Acid, magical and electrical resistance aren't common, but you will encounter them against some more irritating enemies. Immunity to sonic damage is very rare. - There are two types of spells that 'sound good in theory, but suck in practice'. The first type are 'damage over time' spell. Certain spells can deal more cumulative damage over time than instant effect damage spells (eg. Incendiary Cloud vs. Ice Storm). However, in practice you want enemies dead as quickly as possibly. The AI also has a nasty tendency to move out cloud spells. The second type of spell is the melee touch spell/cone spell. No matter how good a spell sounds on paper, it's usually a real bad idea to get within touching range of an enemy. The AI already loves to focus fire on your spell casters, so there's no reason to encourage it further. ====================================================================== SPELL RANKINGS ====================================================================== Following is a list of all available wizard spells, along with an analysis and ranking. The ranking ranges from highly recommended to recommended, marginally useful, situational, and avoid. Highly recommended spells are 'must have' spells that work against a wide range of enemies and have significant negative effects (if a disabling or damage spell), or have a long duration and grant significant beneficial effects (if a buffing spell). Recommended spells are ones which you won't be using often, but are nice to have on hand. Marginally useful spells have decent effects, but are inferior to spells on the same level, or lower levels. Situational spells are those that aren't worth spending a spell slot on in normal gameplay, but may be useful in certain rare encounters. Spells that should be avoided are those that don't any real use. ====================================================================== Level 1 ====================================================================== Blades of Fire: With a duration of 2 rounds, this spell is a complete joke, particularly when compared with the druid spell - Avoid Burning Hands: Due to the reflex save that allows for half damage, the damage output from this spell is inferior to that of magic missile. And that's bad. It might be useful as a troll killer, but that's about it - Avoid Charm Person: A disappointing spell since it has been toned down. No longer will a charmed creature attack allies of the caster. Furthermore, the duration is ridiculously short - Avoid Color Spray: The duration is poor, targeting the spell is awkward, and lots of enemies resist stun. Still, at least its effects aren't limited by hit dice - Marginally useful Cause Fear: Like Sleep, this becomes redundant early on due to the hit dice limit - Avoid Detect Undead: Avoid Endure Elements: A once off 20 point reduction in elemental damage is trivial - Avoid Enlarge Person: A fantastic spell for *all* party members. Contrary to the spell description, you have +3 magical damage added to melee *and* ranged attacks, independent of the strength bonus, in exchange for a -1 attack and armour penalty. Considering that Power Attack shackles you with a -6 attack penalty, I'd say this is a bargain - Highly recommended. Expeditious retreat: Increases movement rate (not attack rate) for a short duration of time - Avoid Grease: An *amazing* spell for this level. Enemies who fail their reflex save can't move. Those who succeed have their movement rate drastically reduced. It bypasses magic resistance and Freedom of Movement. Plaster the battlefield with grease, and then pick off oncoming melee enemies with missile weapons at your leisure - Highly Recommended Identify: High lore, a merchant, or certain magical items can identify your items - Avoid Low-light vision: Cast a light cantrip if you find things a little too dark - Avoid. Mage Armor: A +4 to AC bonus is always useful, even late in the game when you can craft your own equipment. Better yet, the duration is fantastic, and unlike previous games, it can be targeted on anyone - Highly recommended Magic Missile: The staple spell of a mage in any D&D game, and highly over-rated. When the damage a spell deals is outclassed by a slingstone, look elsewhere. - Avoid Magic Weapon: Is made redundant by Greater Magic Weapon on Level 3 - Avoid Minor Elemental Orbs: A decent damage spell for Level 1 that offers no save, ignores magic resistance, and can critical hit. Note that the sound orb does less damage (1d6 vs 1d8), and that fire and cold are the most commonly resisted elements - Recommended Protection From Alignment: A +2 bonus to deflection is trivial considering all the gear that offers deflection bonuses, but a +2 to all saves, and immunity to mind effecting spells against good or evil isn't bad for a level 1 defensive spell - Recommended Ray of Enfeeblement: When empowered, this spell will significantly reduce an enemy's attack rating and damage output, *without* offering a save against the effects. Very useful against hard hitting enemies - Highly recommended. Reduce Person: At best, you gain +2 bonus to AC and attack. Enlarge person is better - Avoid Shield: A +4 shield bonus is a better bonus than most shields provide. It's a shame it can only be targeted on the caster - Recommended Shocking Grasp: A touch attack that does as much damage as a melee weapon, but can be countered by spell resistance, and doesn't gain any bonus from strength modifiers - Avoid Sleep: Becomes redundant early on due to all enemies exceeding the hit-dice limit - Avoid Summon Creature I: The summoned critters are far too weak to make this worthwhile - Avoid True Strike: Seems useless due to its short duration of 1 round (actually 9 seconds). However, some of the best spells in the game are ranged touch attacks, so this guarantees that these spells will hit. Use this before you bust out those enervations, elemental orbs, polar rays and avasculates - Highly recommended Highly recommended: - Grease: Spell Focus Conjuration - Mage armour (craft wand) - Ray of Enfeeblement - True strike - Enlarge Person Recommended: - Protection from Alignment (craft wand) - Minor elemental orb (excluding sonic and fire) - Shield (craft wand) Comments: Level 1 offers a fantastic selection of spells, some of which are more useful than Level 9 spells! In the original campaign, it would be wise to create wands of mage armour, shield and protection from alignment. This makes sorcerer spell selection *much* easier. Grease, Ray of Enfeeblement, True Strike, Enlarge Person and a Minor Elemental Orb Spell (preferably electricity or acid) will all act as a good foundation for the budding sorcerer. If you're not playing the original campaign, things become much trickier. I'd drop the Minor Elemental Orb spell, as you're going to have an abundance of better damage spells at later levels, and replace it with Mage Armour, which is pretty much irreplaceable. ====================================================================== Level 2 ====================================================================== Animalistic Power: Provides three minor stat bonuses that are overshadowed by Bull's Strength/Bear's Endurance/Cat's Grace - Avoid Balagarn's Iron Horn: A duration of 1 round just isn't enough - Avoid Bladeweave: The DC of the enchantment is always 16, meaning that this spell becomes redundant quickly - Avoid Blindness/Deafness: I initially thought this was inferior to Cloud of Bewilderment in every shape and form, as it only affects a single target, and does not stun. However, it can affect anything immune to poison, except undead (due to a bug). Furthermore, enemies move out of a Cloud of Bewilderment spell. In big battles with lots going on, you don't want a party-unfriendly spell with inconvenient targeting, so stick with this spell instead. - Highly recommended Blindsight: There are are abundance of items in the game which allow you to cast See Invisibility or Truesight - Avoid Bull's Strength: Translates to +2 to hit and damage. The effect is minor, but the duration is fantastic. However, clerics can memorise this - Recommended Cat's Grace: Translates to a maximum of +2 to AC, reflex saves and to hit with missiles. Dexterity is the most useful secondary statistic for everyone, as it offers a bonus to AC and ranged attacks - Highly recommended Cloud of Bewilderment: An excellent area disabling spell. Not only is it a long lasting area of effect cloud spell, it *stuns* and *blinds*, two of the most dangerous disabling effects in D&D. Even if the enemy is immune to stun, they will still be blinded. Unfortunately anything immune to poison is immune to this spell, although you can use this to your advantage by equipping an amulet of health. The bigger problem is that is a cloud spell. It's hard to aim this so it doesn't hit any of your party members, and the AI will move out of the area of effect when it gets the chance - Recommended Combust: A mediocre damage spell whose power increases slightly with level. Scorching ray (which isn't in itself that great) outshines this by far - Avoid Curse of impending blades: A -2 penalty to AC is insignificant - Avoid Darkness: Grants a 20% concealment bonus to anyone in the area of darkness (equates to a 20% damage reduction) that is also given to enemies. Too inconvenient to target to be practical in battle - Avoid Death Armor: Minimal damage, targets only the caster, and you must be hit for it to trigger. I'd rather avoid getting hit - Avoid. Eagle's Splendor: Translates into a maximum of +2 to beat the enemy's saves if the targeted ally is a sorcerer or bard. Generally these classes will have items equipped which provide larger boosts to that statistic - Marginally useful False life: The bonus to hit points is minimal. Cast Bear's endurance if you want a hefty hit point bonus, and the added benefit of a fortitude save bonus. Avoid. Fireburst: A poor damage spell - Avoid Gedlee's Electric Loop: A mediocre damage spell with a short duration disabling effect that is easily saved against - Avoid Ghoul Touch: Not only must you make contact with the enemy, the paralyze effect can be resisted every round - Avoid Gust of Wind: The Knockdown effect is useful, but the duration is too short - Avoid Ghostly visage: A decent defense spell early on. 5 damage reduction without any limit on total damage is useful, and immunity to level 1 spells can help early in the game. However, it can be bypassed by magic weaponry. What makes this spell interesting is the the 20% concealment. While Displacement and Improved Invisibility will grant you 50% concealment, they tend to run out quickly. Another perk is that it makes you immune to the Entangle effect - Recommended Invisibility: Invisibility is *the* emergency spell. If one of your characters is taking a pounding or being pursued by a horde of enemies, use this spell - Recommended Knock: A useful spell which makes a thief redundant. However, you should be able to get this from items - Marginally useful Lesser Dispel magic: Very rarely will you need to debuff enemies, and even then, this spell won't be powerful enough to be of value - Avoid Melf's Acid Arrow: A mediocre damage spell whose power increases slightly with level. However, the damage is dealt over an extended period of time, which is inconvenient if you need the enemy dead quickly - Marginally useful Mirror Image: Over-rated. Any decent fighter will tear through this in a couple of rounds, and you're still likely to get hit while the buff is in effect - Marginally useful Protection from Arrows: A decent protection spell in the beginning. However, higher level archers with normal arrows will tear this down pretty quick, and magic arrows will bypass it entirely - Avoid Resist energy: Doesn't provide enough damage reduction to be of use - Avoid Scare: Becomes redundant early in the game due to the hit dice limit - Avoid Scorching Ray: A useful damage spell that offers no saves. The area of effect option will barely scratch opponents, but concentrating all three rays on a single target will rack up decent damage - Recommended See Invisibility: There are are abundance of items in the game which allow you to cast See Invisibility or Truesight - Avoid Snake's Swiftness: The duration is one round. Enough said - Avoid Summon Creature II: Becomes redundant too quickly - Avoid Tasha's Hideous Laughter: Only disables one enemy, has a short duration, enemies gain a bonus +4 to save if they are of a different race, and does not work against enemies immune to mind effects - Avoid Touch of Idiocy: Unique as it ignores saves and resistances. However, it's still not worth it. Spellcasters aren't that common nor threatening. Furthermore, there are far better spells in your arsenal that will not only incapacitate spell casters, but pretty much every enemy. It doesn't help that you need to get within touching distance - Marginally useful Web: Not quite as good as grease, as it allows for spell resistance, and does not stop an enemy from attacking. It is still a fantastic spell, given that few monsters are immune to Web, and most have a lousy reflex save - Highly Recommended Highly recommended: - Web - Spell Focus Conjuration - Blindness/Deafness - Spell Focus Illusion Recommended - Cloud of bewilderment - Spell Focus Evocation - Invisibility - Bear's Endurance - Craft Wand - Cat's Grace - Scorching Ray Comments: Level 2 is remarkable in the numerous and very diverse number of spells available. Unfortunately, a number of them have a very short duration, making them easy to cut from the selection. Of all the disabling spells, Web stands far and above the rest. Nothing in the game is immune to web, and even if the enemy makes their save, they are still slowed. Blindness/Deafness is a great disabling spell, as only undead are immune. Use it liberally against enemies with low fortitude saves, but remember that their duration is lousy. Cloud of Bewilderment can be good, but is usually avoided by the AI moving out of the area of effect. Invisibility is always handy to have memorised. Scorching ray isn't anything special when cast as a normal spell, but shines when it is empowered, so it may be worth selecting as a sorcerer. Bear's Endurance can be made into a wand for only 1000 gold. Cat's Grace and Bull's strength are more pricey, but can be cast by cleric's and druids, who don't have anything better available at that level anyway. Personally, as my fifth sorcerer selection, I'd go with Cat's Grace, as a higher AC, reflex save and attack bonus to missiles is useful for everyone. ====================================================================== Level 3 ====================================================================== Clairaudience/Clairvoyance: Virtually useless in the campaigns - Avoid Deep Slumber: As with prior sleep spells, this becomes redundant too quickly - Marginally useful Dispel Magic: Unnecessary - Avoid Displacement: An amazing spell that essentially halves all damage taken by enemies. The only reason to skip over this is because Improved invisibility is available on Level 4, which offers 50% concealment and immunity to single target effects - Recommended Fireball: Starts out great for crowd control, but gradually wanes as you encounter tougher and tougher enemies, many of whom have fire resistance - Marginally useful Flame Arrow: One of your better damage spells, as it continues to scale with your level beyond that of Fireball and Lightning Strike. If you must choose a damage spell from level 3, this is it - Recommended Haste: An over-powered spell. An extra attack per round can easily translate into your party dealing an extra 100+ damage per round. All of the other bonuses are just gravy - Highly recommended Heroism: Has a nice long duration and provides decent bonuses, but Level 3 hosts even better buffing spells - Marginally useful Hold Person: The paralyze effect is easily shaken off, and even worse, it only affects humanoids - Avoid Improved Mage Armor: A massive bonus to AC, but only +2 more than Mage Armour on Level 1 - Recommended Invisibility Sphere: While it's useful to have a group invisibility spell, improved invisibility is available at level 4, and invisibility is available at level 2 - Marginally useful Keen Edge: At lower levels, when you are dealing damage in the range of 10-40 points, this spell doesn't increase your average damage all that much. At higher levels, you will possess weapons with the keen property, or invest in improved critical feats - Marginally useful Lightning Bolt: Enemies aren't going to stand in a nice straight line for you - Marginally useful Magic Circle against Alignment - A great duration, and a decent bonus to saves for all party members. However, your cleric can cast this, and better buffing spells exist on this level - Marginally useful Magic Weapon - Another excellent buff. This saves you from wasting a crafting enchantment on an object, *and* allows you to add a damage enhancement to backup weapons used against exceptional foes - Highly recommended Mass Curse of Impending Blades: -2 to AC is not significant enough to justify a level 3 slot - Marginally useful Mass Snake's Swiftness - Has a duration of one round. Enough said - Avoid Mestil's Acid Breath: Your third group damage spell on this level, notable only for the fact that it does acid damage, which is rarely resisted - Marginally useful Power Word Maladroit: Short duration, minimal effect - Avoid Power Word Weaken: Short duration, minimal effect - Avoid Protection from Energy: 40 points in elemental damage reduction just isn't noteworthy - Avoid Rage: Contrary to the in-game description, this spell is only half as potent as the barbarian's rage. A +2 bonus to strength and constitution and +1 to will saving throws is not significant at level 3. And you are penalised with -2 dodge AC - Avoid Scintillating Sphere: Same as fireball, except enemies are less likely to have electrical resistance - Marginally useful Slow: Arguable the best group disabling spell in the game. As discussed earlier, losing/gaining attacks per round is game changing. Even better, it will affect enemies who are immune to mental effects. *And* it is party friendly. This makes boss battles a cakewalk - Highly recommended Spiderskin - A decent buffing spell that is worth considering if you don't have barkskin, as these two spells don't stack - Recommended Stinking Cloud: This would be a fantastic group disabling spell if so many monsters weren't immune to daze and poison - Marginally useful Summon Creature III: Becomes redundant too quickly - Avoid Vampiric Touch: Temporary bonuses to hitpoints are not that useful, and the damage meted out pales in comparison to fire arrow. Furthermore, it is a touch spell - Marginally useful Weapon of Impact: See the comments for Keen Edge - Marginally useful Highly recommended - Slow (Transmutation) - Haste - Greater Magic Weapon Recommended - Displacement - Flame Arrow - Conjuration - Spiderskin - Improved Mage Armour Comments: This level spoils us with a number of excellent buffing and disabling spells. Haste and Slow are must-haves, as only sorcerers/wizards/bards can cast them. Greater Magic Weapon is worth memorising if you don't have a cleric who can cast it. Flame Arrow continues to grow in power as you advance past level 20. This leaves you choosing between Improved Mage Armour and Spiderskin. Improved Mage Armour has a +2 bonus over that of Mage Armour, which I don't consider to be significant. You could craft a wand, but that's expensive. Spiderskin allows you to have a high natural armour class bonus without keeping a druid in the party. As a sorcerer, I'd select Haste, Slow, Greater Magic Weapon, Spiderskin, and Flame Arrow. Flame Arrow would be my last pick, as it only starts to exceed the damage of scorching ray at around level 16. ====================================================================== Level 4 ====================================================================== Animate Dead: The allies summoned are weak - Avoid Assay Resistance: Only works vs. one enemy, and only provides the increased chance of spell penetration to the caster - Marginally useful Bestow Curse: Bestows a trivial ability score reduction on a single target, while also allowing a saving throw - Avoid Charm Monster: Takes one enemy out of the battle, but you can't attack them - Avoid Confusion: An amazing disabling spell with a long range and large area, that can neutralize entire groups of enemies. Unfortunately, it is not party friendly, and many bosses and races (undead, constructs and demons) are immune - Recommended Contagion: Hits a single target with a minor status reduction that they can save against. And the DC of the spell is always 13 - Avoid Crushing Despair: It has a will save, an awkward casting range/area, won't affect anything with mind-immunity (unlike Prayer), and doesn't actually lower skill checks (bugged) - Marginally useful Elemental Shield: The damage inflicted relies on being hit, and most casters will not want to get hit. Also, the duration is far too short - Avoid Enervation: The ultimate debuffing spell that does not allow for a save. This comes into its own when it is maximised. A reduction in four levels may not sound like much when NPCs can go past 20 levels, but this will wreak havoc on their saving throws and attack bonus. Note that hit points are *not* reduced, nor is damage - Highly recommended Evard's Black Tentacles: Starts out as an overpowered spell that can paralyse entire groups of enemies while dealing tremendous amounts of damage. However, once your enemies acquire an armour class over 25, this spell will not hit them at all - Situational Fear: Inferior to Confusion, which has a larger area of effect, and a more useful disabling effect - Marginally Useful Greater Invisibility: As good as Displacement on Level 3, but it also prevents single target spells or items from being targeted against the individual. Note that the duration is short - Highly recommended Greater Resistance: +3 to saving throws is nice, but easily replicated by other spells - Marginally useful Ice Storm: The damage is a little on the low side. However, it can't be saved/evaded, and offers two types of damage (bludgeoning and ice) - Recommended Isaac's Lesser Missile Storm: The damage is just too low to justify a slot, particularly when Ice Storm and the Elemental Orb spells are on the same level - Marginally useful Lesser Globe of Invulnerability: Immunity to 3rd-level and lower spell effects is not much use at this point - Avoid Lesser Spell Breach: You will rarely need to remove spell protections. Even if you did, there are better spells available for that purpose - Avoid Least Spell Mantle: Grants you the ability to absorb up to two middle level spells, which isn't that useful - Avoid Mass Reduce Person: Shrink person isn't a useful effect - Avoid Orb of Acid/Cold/Electricity/Fire/Sound: A fantastic damage spell that will take down dragons, golems, and elder elementals. Elemental Orbs offer no save, ignores magic resistance, and can critical hit. Note that the sound orb does less damage (1d6 vs 1d8), and that fire and cold are the most commonly resisted elements - Highly recommended Phantasmal Killer: Your first save or die spell. Unfortunately it checks against fortitude *and* will saves. As a rule of thumb, if an enemy has a low will save, they will have a high fortitude save, and vice versa - Marginally useful Polymorph Self: The forms that this spell offers aren't worth a spell slot - Avoid Remove Curse: I've never been cursed in the game - Avoid Shadow Conjuration: None of the spells granted by this one are worth a level 4 spell slot - Avoid Stoneskin: A damage reduction spell that can be cast on anyone. Nothing spectacular, but damage reduction never hurts - Recommended Shout: For the PC, being deafened is a minor inconvenience. For NPCs, it is even less of a concern - Avoid Summon Creature IV: The creature isn't strong enough to justify a slot - Avoid Wall of Fire: Theoretically this can rack up an enormous amount of damage if an enemy keeps moving in and out of the wall of flame. However, in practice this requires way too much micromanagement - Marginally useful Highly recommended: - Improved invisibility - Orb of Acid - Enervation Recommended: - Stoneskin - Ice Storm Situational: - Evard's - Useful until enemies AC exceeds 25 (mid chapter 2) - Confusion - Spell Focus Enchantment - Swap out once you starting encountering enemies who are immune to mental effects Comments: A level which has a poorer selection of spells than levels 1-3. However, several spells stand above the others on this tier, and even those at higher levels. Enervation is a must-have, as it will strip away a strong enemy's attack capabilities, and their saving throws. However, remember that some enemies are immune to attribute damage (ie. Undead and Constructs). Improved Invisibility grants 50% damage reduction. The Orb spells ignore saves and magic resistance, and deal enormous amounts of damage with maximised. Everything else is icing. Stoneskin is a decent protection spell, but enemies can easily clock up 100 damage in a short time period. Phantasmal Killer is your first save or die spell, and has its uses, but unfortunately offers two separate saving throws and won't work against enemies with death immunities. Ice Storm isn't bad for a level 4 damage spell, however you'll encounter a fair number of enemies who are resistant to ice or bludgeoning damage. Evard's is fantastic early on, but you'll need to switch it out when enemies exceed 25 AC (chapter 2). Confusion is great for cracking groups of enemies who aren't resistant to mind-affecting spells. Personally, I'd select ice storm and Stoneskin as my fourth and fifth spell picks as a sorcerer. ====================================================================== Level Five ====================================================================== Arc of Lightning: This spell is unpredictable in whom it targets, is not party friendly, and does only a moderate amount of damage - Marginally useful Bigby's Interposing Hand: A -10 attack penalty against one enemy is *huge*. Better yet, the enemy can't save against it - Highly recommended Cacophonic Burst: It's not party friendly, and only does a moderate amount of damage. Nevertheless, since sonic damage is almost never resisted, I'd argue that this is actually a decent AoE damage spell - Recommended Cloudkill: A cloud spell that reduces a group of enemies constitution over time, even if they pass a fortitude save. This is useful if you want to lower fortitude saves. Unfortunately you need to have them stand in the cloud for quite some time before this spell takes effect, and many enemies are immune to poison effects - Marginally useful Cone of Cold: A moderate area of effect damage spell that isn't party friendly - Marginally useful Dismissal: Familiars, summons and elementals are not that common - Marginally useful. Dominate Person: While it's fun to turns an enemy to your side and peek at all of their stats, this spell has several weaknesses. First, it only targets one enemy. Secondly, it only affects humanoids. Given that mind affecting spells don't work against a large proportion of enemies (eg. undead, constructs, certain boss characters), it is unacceptable that is further limited to races that constitute a minority of the enemies in the game. Third, if you accidently damage your 'ally', they will turn hostile. And finally, the duration is pathetic - Avoid Feeblemind: Touch of idiocy (level 2) stomps all over this spell, and it isn't that good to begin with - Avoid Firebrand: The only AoE damage spell on this level that is party friendly. I still prefer Cacophonic Burst, simply because fire damage is often resisted - Marginally useful Glass Doppelganger: An interesting spell in theory, but lousy in practice. The creatures you can summon with other spells are far to superior to the weak clones you create with this spell. And you need to get within touching range of the enemy, which is always a risky prospect - Marginally useful Greater Fireburst: More damaging than other area of effect spells on this level, but not party friendly - Marginally useful Greater Reduce Person: Shrink person just isn't that great - Avoid Hold Monster: As with all single target paralyze spells, this isn't that useful - Avoid Lesser Mind Blank: You will commonly be the target of mind-effecting spells (eg. sleep, stun, fear, dominate, charm, daze, confusion). Therefore this spell is a must-have - Highly recommended Lesser Spell Mantle: Blocks two high level spells. Not worth the spell slot - Avoid Mind Fog: A -10 to will saves is one of the biggest debuffing effects in the game, and is great for softening enemies (particularly those already with low will saves) up for mind-affecting spells. Unfortunately, most mind-affecting spells don't remain useful for the entire game - Marginally useful Lesser Planar Binding - The creatures summoned by this spell are weak - Avoid Power Word Disable: You can take multiple targets from 50 to 1 hit point with a well placed Cacophonic Burst - Avoid Shroud of Flame: Causes a pathetic amount of damage to one enemy over time, but only if they fail their reflex save - Avoid Summon Creature V: Summons a reasonably strong ally, but the duration is a little too short - Marginally useful Vitriolic Sphere: A single target spell that does mild to moderate damage in a small area of effect, and allows for a save - Marginally useful Wall of Dispel Magic: Dispel magic is already unnecessary, but having it in an awkward to use wall form makes it less so - Avoid Highly recommended: - Lesser Mind Blank - Bigby's interposing hand Recommended: - Cacophonic Burst - Spell Focus Evocation Comments: Level 5 is the nadir for arcane spellcasters, possessing only three decent spells. Bigby's Interposing Hand will reduce an enemy's attack rating by 10 without allowing for a save. Immunity to mind-affecting spells is also necessary, so Lesser Mind Blank is an obvious pick. This leaves you with Cacophonic Burst, which is easy to target, quick to cast, and is rarely subject to damage reduction. Some players rave about the benefits of Cloudkill, but I find it causes more grief for my PCs than the enemy, who often have immunity to poison. Level 6 Acid Fog: This spell does negligible damage over time. It also slows the enemy's movement, but does not reduce their number of attacks per round. Slowing movement rate is useful, but Grease, Web and Slow already do this, while also either immobilising or debuffing the enemy - Marginally useful Bigby's Forceful Hand: Like most of the Bigby's Hand spells, this doesn't use a saving throw, but a grapple check, which is done versus the target's strength and size modifier. Without getting into the technicals, I'll say that the grapple check is heavily biased in favour of the caster. Only very large enemies with a high strength will have a good chance of beating a grapple check. Better yet, while most enemies are immune to daze, very few are immune to knockdown - Highly recommended Chain Lightning: Sounds more impressive than it actually is. The damage is halved for all secondary targets, and will be halved again if they succeed their reflex save, meaning that you may only deal 20 damage with this spell. An empowered Lesser Elemental Orb does more damage that that! - Marginally useful Circle of Death: You'll be fighting enemies who exceed 9 Hit Dice very early in the campaigns, meaning that this spell becomes redundant as soon as you get it - Avoid Create Undead: The summons produced by this spell are weak - Avoid Disintegrate: This spell can causes huge amounts of damage, particularly if maximised. However, it is inferior to Flesh to Stone. Both use a fortitude save, but Flesh to Stone will always kill the enemy if successful. Marginally useful Ethereal Visage: Contrary to the in-game description, this spell offers 20 damage reduction/adamantium, not 20 damage reduction/magic. That's quite powerful. Unfortunately the duration is quite short - Recommended Extract Water Elemental: Does damage that is inferior to disintegrate, and produces a very weak summon if you're lucky enough to kill your enemy - Avoid Flesh to Stone: A save vs die spell that can affect undead and constructs, making it far more useful than Finger of Death (a Level 7 spell) - Highly recommended. Greater Dispel Magic: You'll rarely need to dispel any effects in the game - Marginally useful Greater Heroism: An excellent buffing spell with a long duration. The bonus to skill checks is hard to replicate, even with clerics. The bonus to saves stacks with other save boosting spells, as it is considered a morale bonus, rather than a magical one - Highly recommended Globe of Invulnerability: Immunity to level 4 spells just isn't that useful, and can be emulated by various other protection spells - Marginally useful Greater Spell Breach: You'll rarely need to strip away magical defense - Marginally useful Greater Stoneskin: A fantastic protection spell, although strong enemy fighters will tear through this quickly - Recommended Isaac's Greater Missile Storm: The damage isn't bad, but you can simply empower or maximise a level 3 or 4 damage spell to obtain a similar effect - Marginally useful Legend Lore: It's easy to identify your items without this spell - Avoid Mass Contagion: Has a DC of 12. Need I say more? - Avoid Mass Bear's Endurance/Bull's Strength/Cat's Grace/Eagle's Splendor/Fox's Cunning/Owl's Wisdom: Use multiple castings of the equivalent Level 2 spell instead - Marginally useful Planar Binding: The allies summoned are weak at this point in the game - Avoid Stone Body: This offers a decent number of protections. 10 damage reduction for *hours*, and immunity to poison, stun, blindness, critical hits, electricity, deafness, disease, and electricity. Half damage from acid and fire isn't bad either. The arcane failure can be circumvented with Still Spell - Recommended Stone to Flesh: I've never had to de-petrify someone - Avoid Summon Creature VI: The creature summoned is relatively strong, but will become redundant when you access level 7 and 8 spells - Marginally useful Superior Resistance: Provides a massive bonus to all 3 saves, with a fantastic duration - Recommended Tenser's Transformation: The attack bonus provided by this spell is significant. However, all of the other bonuses are replicated by other spells. And even if you want to go toe to toe with the enemy, you're better off being able to cast spells, which you can't do in this polymorph form - Avoid True Seeing: Very rarely necessary, and even when it is, it is outperformed by blind sight (a level 2 spell) - Marginally useful Undeath to Death: Completely devastating against undead, if they fail a will save - Recommended Highly recommended: - Flesh to Stone: Spell Focus Transmutation - Bigby's Forceful hand Recommended: - Undeath to Death: Spell Focus Necromancy - Greater Heroism - Stone Body - Greater Stoneskin - Ethereal Visage Comments: Level 6 hosts a slew of inferior spells. However, two stand above the rest: Flesh to Stone, a save or die spell that will work against practically everything, and Bigby's Forceful Hand, which knocks enemies with high fortitude saves on their ass. Greater Heroism is a fantastic buffing spell, making this my third pick as a sorcerer. This leaves Undeath to Death, although undead you want to kill with this often have high will saves. I find Flesh to stone or Bigby's Forceful Hand to be more effective against undead. Stone Body offers a bunch of useful protections. However, the need to use Still Spell means you can't Empower or Maximise your other spells. Ethereal Visage is a decent damage reduction spell, but it's limited to the caster and has a very short duration. Greater Stoneskin is a decent damage reduction spell that can be cast on party members, but seems sort of redundant if you choose to memorise Stoneskin on Level 4. Still, I choose Greater Stoneskin as my fourth sorcerer spell pick. ====================================================================== Level 7 ====================================================================== Avasculate: Halves one opponent's hitpoints *without offering a save*. The only thing that will protect them is immunity to death magic, which unfortunately a lot of boss characters have. Still, this spell is on the edge of being overpowered. Note that as this spell halves your enemy's hitpoints, it can also be used to deduce how many hitpoints they have remaining (ie. whatever damage is inflicted with the ray is also how much health they have remaining) - Highly recommended Banishment: At this point, summoned creatures aren't such a big deal - Marginally useful Bigby's Grasping Hand: This spell offers no save, but uses the grapple check, which most enemies will fail. Enemies are held in place, but still allowed to attack. The paralyze effect works against everything, including undead, bosses and constructs. Hold melee enemies in place with this spell, then pelt them from afar with missiles and spells - Recommended Control Undead: Dominates one undead enemy for a long duration. While there are a lot of undead enemies in this game, most of them have very high will saves - Marginally useful Delayed Blast Fireball: The damage isn't bad, but it's no better than Greater Fireburst, and is outclassed by many other Level 7 spells - Marginally useful Energy Immunity: Complete immunity to one element is nice, although it's hard to predict exactly what type of elemental attack will be thrown at you. The duration is nice and long - Recommended Ethereal Jaunt: Essentially the level 2 spell invisibility, except it can't be targeted on allies - Avoid Finger of Death: A useful save or die spell - Recommended Greater Shadow Conjuration: Allows you to cast a bunch of barely useful lower level spells with a +5 to DC - Avoid Hiss of Sleep: The benefits: It has a colossal area of effect, is party friendly, and ignores spell resistance. The drawbacks: Most enemies are immune to sleep - Marginally useful Mass Hold Person: As with all of the paralyze spells, many enemies are immune, and it's very easy to shake off - Marginally useful Mordenkainen's Sword: A moderately powerful summon with a short duration - Marginally useful Prismatic Spray: Even if the enemy fails their save, over half of the effects this spell deals aren't that great. 20 acid damage? 40 fire damage? Poison ? Paralyze? Pathetic for a Level 7 spell - Avoid Shadow Shield: The bonus to natural AC is easily replicated with barkskin or spiderskin. However, 10 damage reduction excluding adamantite (NOT magic weapons, as stated in game) for such a long duration is already overpowered. Immunity to death effects, necromancy spells and negative energy damage is the icing on the cake - Recommended Solipsism: At this point, you have a variety of spells that disable an opponent, which don't even require a will save - Marginally useful Spell Mantle: Blocks 3 high level spells - Marginally useful Summon Creature VII: The creature summoned is quite powerful - Recommended Highly recommended: - Avasculate - Bigby's Grasping Hand Recommended: - Shadow shield - Finger of Death - Spell Focus Necromancy - Energy Immunity - Summon Creature VII Comments: Level 7 has a lot of junk spells, but also a handful of overpowered ones. Avasculate will completely ruin your enemy's day. It has no save and actually improves as your enemies increase in strength. Bigby's Grasping Hand is a godsend against high fortitude melee warriors, holding them in place while you bombard them with arrows and spells. Shadow Shield is quite nice, with its long duration, damage reduction and death immunity. However, the damage reduction is similar to greater stoneskin, and negative energy/level drain protection can be granted by death ward. Energy Immunity sounds amazing, but I rarely get very little use out of it, as enemies that hit with high elemental damage are few and far between. Finger of death is outdone by Flesh to Stone (a Level 6 spell that actually works against Undead and Constructs), although it never hurts to have more save or die spells. Personally, I'd say that it might be worth memorising a couple of Shadow Shield's and Finger of Death's, but Avasculate and Bigby's should dominate your spell slots. ========================================================================= Level 8 ========================================================================= Bigby's Clenched Fist: The damage is OK, but at this point, the enemies you'd like to stun are immune to that effect - Marginally useful Blackstaff: Enchant weapon (a level 3 spell) will grant any weapon a +5 enchantment, and a dispel magic effect on a weapon is useless - Avoid Create Greater Undead: The vampires summoned by this spell are eaten alive by the elementals you can summon with Summon Create VIII - Marginally useful Greater Shout: 60 damage is lousy, and the stun can be saved against and has a short duration - Useless Greater Planar Binding: The creature summoned is not as useful as the elemental summoned by Summon Creature VIII - Marginally useful Horrid Wilting: At this point, 120 damage that can be saved against isn't that impressive. Worse, the spell isn't party friendly, and the negative damage won't affect undead - Marginally useful Incendiary Cloud: At this point, an average of 14 fire damage per round (which can be saved against for half damage) is lousy. A maximised ice storm trumps this spell any day - Avoid Iron Body: Outclassed by stone body - Marginally useful Mass Blindness/Deafness: A decent disabling spell that is outclassed by sunburst - Useful Mind Blank: Like lesser mind blank, except it effects all of your party members at once. It's more economical to cast Lesser Mind Blank multiple times, since most Level 5 spells suck anyway - Useful Mass charm monster: A poor disabling spell that is outclassed by sunburst - Marginally useful Polar Ray: A decent single target damage spell that is over-rated. A maximised Elemental Orb spell will outclass this any day - Marginally useful Power Word Petrify: A save or die spell that offers no save and ignores death immunity. This works well with Avasculate. If your Avasculate does less than 101 damage, then you know a casting of this spell will succeed - Recommended Power Word Stun: At this point, everything is immune to stun. And even then, the stun effect doesn't last that long - Marginally useful Premonition: The grand-daddy of damage reduction spells. 30 damage reduction is the highest offered by any spell. Sadly it can only be targeted on the caster, and by this point you have access to numerous other damage reduction spells (Shadow Shield, Stoneskin, Greater Stoneskin) - Recommended Protection from Spells: Spellcasters aren't that much of a threat, and you can gain bonuses to all saves via other means - Marginally useful Summon Creature VIII: Summons a powerful elemental that really turns the battle in your favour - Recommended Sunburst: The ultimate disabling spell. From reading the spell description, you'd think that it would only be useful against undead. However, Sunburst is fantastic against virtually any enemy, as it functions as a mass blind spell that rolls against reflex saves, meaning it is almost guaranteed to disable all of your enemies. Better yet, it's party friendly - Highly recommended Wall of Greater Dispel Magic: Becomes redundant quickly as your enemy's level exceeds the roll you require to strip away their buffs - Marginally useful. Highly recommended: - Sunburst - Spell Focus Evocation Recommended: - Power Word: Petrify - Summon Creature VIII - Premonition Comments: Level 8 is the level of redundancy, with *three* summon spells and 4 disabling spells. For me, the spell choice is easy. Sunburst is by far the best disabling spell, trumping mass charm/blindness deafness/power word stun. It rolls against reflex saves, which almost every enemy will fail against, does massive damage against undead, and is party friendly! Better yet, few creatures are immune to blindness. Bigby's Clenched Fist sounds useful, until you realise that lots of enemies are immune to stun. Furthermore, why try to stun one enemy when you can blind multiple enemies? Summon Creature VIII would be my second pick. My third selection is Power Word: Petrify. Use it as an opener against low hp enemies (mages and rogues), or as a follow up after bombarding them with missiles or avasculate. Premonition is useful, but you can cast this using the Level 9 spell 'Shades'. ====================================================================== Level 9 ====================================================================== Bigby's Crushing Hand: Look, it's Bigby's Grappling Hand! The only differences are that it deals moderate blunt damage each round, and is slightly harder to resist due to a bonus to grapple check. Yes, it's a little redundant to select this when you have Grappling Hand at Level 7, but you don't have much better to pick from - Recommended Burst of Glacial Wrath: I honestly can't think of anything worse than a damage spell that checks against a fortitude save. The fact that cold resistance is common, and it has inconvenient targeting, makes this a lousy spell for Level 9 - Marginally useful Dominate Monster: As discussed earlier, Dominate just isn't that good, particularly when a significant proportion of your enemies are immune - Avoid Energy Drain: Contrary to the spell description, this spell doesn't allow for a save. Even then, you're better off relying on maximised enervations, which will guarantee a drain of 4 levels - Marginally useful Etherealness: Etherealness is slightly better than being invisible, but enough to justify a level 9 slot? I doubt it - Marginally useful Gate: This summon is inferior to the elemental summons of earlier levels - Marginally useful Greater Spell Mantle - It will absorb a few high level spells. This is unnecessary, as there are better ways to gain complete immunity to magical effects - Avoid Mass Hold Monster: As with all once off paralyze spells, it just isn't that useful - Marginally useful Meteor Swarm: Meteor Swarm is, and always has been, an over-rated amped up fireball spell that does more damage to your own party members than the enemy - Marginally useful Mordenkainen's Disjunction: Unrivaled in ripping away spell resistance and protections, it's also very rarely, if ever, needed - Marginally useful Power Word Kill: Might be worth considering if death immunity wasn't so common, and Power Word: Petrify didn't do the exact same thing, while also bypassing death immunity - Marginally useful Shades - A very handy spell. By allowing you to cast Premonition and Summon Creature VIII, it frees up Level 8 spell slots for sunburst, and spell picks for Sorcerers. Having access to delayed burst fireball doesn't hurt, either - Recommended Shadow Simulacrum - A spell that sounds interesting in theory, but isn't that useful in practice. It doesn't work on the monsters you'd like to copy, and you need to get close enough to make a touch attack, which is near suicidal for most arcane casters - Marginally useful Shapechange - None of the forms provided are any better than having access to a spellcaster - Avoid Summon Creature IX - The elder elemental summoned is powerful, but not that much more than the elemental summoned by the Level 8 spell - Marginally useful Wail of the Banshee - A save or die area of effect spell that gets better as you gain levels. There's only one problem: By the end of the original campaign, almost everything is immune to death effects. If you intend to continue on to SoZ or HoU, this spell is very useful - Recommended Weird - It needs to beat two saves, and is rendered ineffective by death immunity, mind-affecting immunity, and phantasm/fear immunity - Avoid Recommended: - Bigby's Crushing Hand - Wail of the Banshee (Spell Focus Necromancy) - Shades Comments: Level 9 really is a bit of a let-down. I remember when Baldur's Gate II offered Level 9 spells such as Time Stop, Imprisonment, and Spell Trap. Luckily Wail of the Banshee is still present, and would be great, if only you weren't fighting all those undead when you reach level 17 in the Original Campaign. Bigby's Crushing Hand is useful for its paralyse-everything effect, but a significant number of enemies have damage reduction against bludgeoning damage. Shades allows you to save on Level 8 spell slots/picks. If you're playing the Original Campaign, I'd pick Shades, then Wail of the Banshee. On any other campaign, I'd selection WoTB, then Shades. Bigby's would be my final pick. This document is copyrighted to Daniel Palmer 2013. Feel free to send any comments or questions to: [email protected]
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