Veterans may not be surprised to hear I'm having a bit of a dust up with the Fire Node boss. Nearly killed the thing (got 291 HP against it, I'm guessing 300 will do for it) but it's high AC saved it at the death after an agonizing series of misses during which it killed my priest when his stoneskin ran out.. Main issue I have is countering fear - remove fear does not seem to work, nor does break enchantment or dispell magic. I've been using calm emotion which seems to have some effect but not much. Am I missing something here, is there a higher level spell to keep my lads and lasses from running away all the time?
Keep in mind that the demon's fear is cast at at least 20th level. Unless you are a paladin or 16th+ level, you're going to running away. I've always preferred to just be at least 16th level when dealing with him.
I thought the orignal game was capped at level 10 - does this mean that this fellow has been buffed up in the mod?
Craft circlets of wisdom, cloaks of resistance or cast Owl's wisdom, Resistance etc on your party before going in - get your Will save up as high as you can. That usually helps just about enough to not be completely screwed by fear or charm. Courage (bard, or paladin) helps too, and I don't think lvl 16 is of utmost necessity. Also, paladins are immune to fear after a certain point iirc. There's the luck factor also, of course. I can't say how many times I had to try in vanilla until I beat the Balor at lvl. 8 or so. With Co8 higher cap and crafting fixed he's easier to do, I'd say comfortably easy at lvl 12-13, a bit of a challenge lvl 8-11. And yes, I think the guy was buffed a bit for the mod. Or more like "fixed" - now he does most of what he's supposed to do. His HD and stats didn't change much I think.
Hi One spell I find useful is Spell Resistance (5th Level Cleric) . I usually have my Cleric cast it on Elmo and my fighter (after all the other "buffs": Barkskin, Stoneskin, Protection from Evil, etc... have been cast). This makes it harder for the Balor to Fear, Charm, etc... the frontline troops. Make sure you have two spellcasters in the rear with Greater Dispel Magic and Break Enchantment, because at some point the Balor WILL dispell the Spell Resistance and Charm one of your "Tankers". I also find it very useful to have Meleny summon as many large/huge Water Elementals as possible as this sometimes distracts the Balor (and almost always distracts the Efreeti) long enough for the Tankers to score a few more hits. I also recommend that your Wizard/Sorceror fill almost all his/her 1st and 2nd Level Spell Slots with Magic Missile (make sure that he/she has both "Spell Penetration" and "Greater Spell Penetration"). The nice thing about Magic Missile is that each individual missile is treated as a separate spell, so usually out of 5 missiles, anywhere from 1 to 3 will get through the Balor's Spell Resistance. I know 2 - 5 HP may not sound like much, but when fighting the Balor, every little bit helps, trust me, it helps. I just remembered something. If you have a fighter who has "Weapon Specialization" with a pole arm (remember that Holy Ransur on Level 2), make sure to cast "Enlarge Person" on him/her, as this will not only increase his/her damage, but will keep the fighter from getting hurt from the heat of the Balor every time he/she hits it. The Royal Canadian
Thanks for the tips all. I tried Owls Wisdom, and this puts up my clerics will roll to +19, but this is still not enough to stop this fear thing. All five party members are at also at spell resistance 24, and that's not enough either. I also noticed that none of my summoned monsters (like those from the Skull) seem to have any effect on this boss at all. Anyways just got a rec for a let's play ToEE on youtube, so I flicked through to have a quick peak at how this guy handled this battle. Sure enough he gets this fear thing and says u get that no matter what, but what he did was provoke the boss with one summons and one party member untill it cast this fear spell, then he says "that's what I've been waiting for" and starts summoning the big monsters with the skull so they are not affected by this spell. I switched off when one of them immediately hit matey for 30HP. Obviously this is the secret why my summons where having no effect, they were scared too. Makes sense, so I'll try that idea out tomorrow I guess. Oh he agrees with the Magic Missile idea BTW - "Every little helps, and we're going to need it" he says. Crumbs, if you thought u were good at D&D and played an Iron Man game I reckon you'd be shaking in your boots within a couple of minutes in this battle. Hello death. I've never played PnP D&D with people, only computer games. What happens in this sort of situation in a PnP game? Does the DM say, right chaps, you've botched that and your all dead, see you next week and we'll roll up some new level 1 characters.
I've always found that Protection From Evil is my bestest buddy when dealing with the Fear effect from the Balor in the Fire Node. It prevents outside control, which includes emotion effects like Fear and the like. At any rate, it's always worked for me, and since it's a first-level spell even level 10 characters ought to have enough of them to at least cast on their melee troops. NOT Magic Circle Against Evil, btw . . . it doesn't have quite the same effect. :transform
And the winner is........ Protection from Evil!!!!! An effective and long lasting counter measure, thanks guys. Should have remembered that really, IIRC this spell was absolutely essential in winning the final battle with Jon Irenicus in the BG2 Tactics mod (which BTW is most difficult and soul destroying battle I've ever had the misfortune to refuse to give up on, a real challenge for those that like unmitigated punishment). Anyways just leveled up after this battle and I see I get Greater Heroism which advertises immunity from fear as one of its properties (yeah, NOW I get it!!!), so I dare say that will prove useful as I venture on.
^ You surely mean "useless". Balor is about the only thing in the game that's using Fear to that extent, but the G. Heroism has other nice buffs, so it's useful for other purposes I guess.
