Demons and Demigods and Difficulty

My current party is approaching lvl9 (5 pcs + Zaxis + Ronald, who is now a monk with 2 Rgr levels also). I visited Verbobonc and had a quick look round the arena... When he gets to level 20 my wizard is planning to come back on his own to fight the avatars of Iuz...

 

I've made it to the arena 3 times now... I skipped the Iuz & Cuthbert avatars fight after trying a few times. The Balor fight was way better, You have a chance at winning this fight.

The others... :dizzy:

 

I found the first round is the most important. I got the Iuz's and my cleric melded to stone. After that its a very long and very boring fight. All my other chars run away to distance themselves from the insanely hard hitting Iuz avatars and ol' cleric gets walloped for no damage forever. My lvl 19 wizzo got a few spells past the SR but often for no points of damage. I couldn't get the 5 step thingy working after a single attack so my fighters were useless, coz they can't survive 9 strength draining sneak attacks, of which many are critical.
So, it was all down to my Bard and Rogue firing Lolo's Joy and a crafted bow. They had cat's grace cast on them and still could only hit once in three turns. The only hits that did damage were the critical hits, and they are rarer than rocking horse poo. So, if you have a day off and the weather is terrible, the fight could be better than watching the newly painted wall dry.

If you don't use meld to stone type invulnerability spells, you have a snowball's chance in Hells chance of winning. Use it and its a very long and very boring fight.

 

You can't use player created Paladins in the Balor fight though unless you use the console =(

The first round is also the roughest round since you're thrown in without buffs and your party is caught flat-footed. Amusingly enough unlike most of my battles where my Monk/Rogue is the premier tank, in this battle its my Bard/Fighter. Throw up Displacement, Blur, Greater Invisibility and Mirror Image and he's untouchable. The Iuz Avatars are kind enough to give him time to buff himself too... since they only attack him after everyone else is dead... T_T

I've never really won against them (Only ever managed to kill only one of them at most). I feel you need a party catered towards dealing with them, which my party is anything but. My Conjurer (The only pure classed toon in my party funnily enough) can distract them with Summon spells but anything less that Summon Monster VIII isn't strong enough to buy us any time. My Sorcerer/Paladin can deal colossal damage with Disintegrate but the number of times she can cast that is limited and her other spells have little effect on the avatars. I haven't tried any of her Touch spells (Like Vampiric Touch), they might work but I really don't want her to move into melee, even if she is fully decked in buffs.

My Cleric/Fighter usually the first to die so I never get a chance to cast Meld to Stone. No DEX mod means his Initiative is abysmal. Guess that's what I get for making him a Dwarf =/

 

Never really used paladins much, so no problems there!

 

Died horribley.

But on a different note diddnt like the way the encounter fitted into the game story as a whole. Why four avatars ? No explanation. It was so totally out of step with everything else. I sort of felt cheated on the story line of the game. It also seams that to win you need a very technical and mechanistic approach. It was to much about playing the game mechanics than playing the game for me. I would be happier with a more gradual build up to the fight. (again a problem with how it stands their is a huge jump in difficulty compared to what had gone before, I found this jarring

I would prefer only one avatar and three other equally powerfull but different mosters. By widening the range of monsters it would hopefully widen the range of fihting them that will work

 

I wonder if it would be possible for one of each(Iuz,Balor,Cuthbert,andZugg.)Under the guise of the party hereing the evil avatars convinceing Cuthbert.That the party must die before becomeing powerful enuff to become demi-gods themselves.:roll:

 

I have been thinking about this fight and tried a new tactic, which works.
WARNING SPOILER FOLLOWS



equip mage with magicmissile spells in all 9 levels either by dragging lvl 1 mm into each position or
filling each level with lvl enhanced magic missiles, I used enhanced and heightened. Along with ring of resonance you get 124 mm's to fire at the avatars. (in 63 rounds I fought so far in this fight, the mm's only scored zero damage 6 times. So my wizard can kill approx 1.5 - 2 avatars alone.

Get the meelee fighters to use single attack then step back so they can't be hit 9 times.

the cleric uses Meld to Stone to keep the avatars busy.

the ranged rogue and bard can help plug away at the same target as the wizard.

The fight is not over yet, but one avatar is dead and 2 are a quarter dead and I'm in round 63

So this is possible without taking up the whole day.

 

I just finished the battle. It took 93 rounds, but I didn't start in with my meelee fighters until this 1st avatar was nearly dead, so it would probably take less than 60 rounds. Out of interest, the total number of rounds where magic missile failed to do any damage was 9, so less than 10% failure rate.
I used my last Magic Missile in the final round.
Also, Scather might have hit every time, but my crafted greataxe +3 Keen burning frost and sparks got far more criticals, many at over 50 damage and did not miss that often, about 6 times. My fighters are more or less identical, both dwarves and with all the same enhancements. I also noted that the iuz avatars never did any AoO damage as tumble was one of the skills I used throughout whenever my fighters levelled. Although the battle is a long haul affair, its doable the way I fought it this time around in about 3 hours. I ticked the not very challenging box because the only round that had be sweating adrenalin was round one. The only buffs I used was the bard song greatness? and cats grace.
Oh and the reward? 3 greater temple robes, 3 leather boots and gloves and the xp, that was 15000 for my 6 pc's.

 

Nice job.
Am I correct in believing that you didn't use either of the answering swords for this?

 

Huh, that's actually pretty clever. Unfortunately my Conjurer is barred from Evocation =/

 

@ Nightcanon only Scather and a crafted axe
@ Goshi I took Evocation as my specialization so I probably got more bang for my buck.
I did notice that there wasn't a great deal of difference between level 1 MM's and Lvl 9 which heightened twice and enhanced? twice or 3x, can't remember off the top of my head. In fact the only time where all 5 scored were with a level 1 salvo.

 

Here is the victory pose

 

Magic Missile has no DCs so it doesn't benefit from the increased spell level.

 

The higher the level of MM the more missiles you get, to a maximum of five.

Of course I'm betting all you guys already knew this.