Balor harder?

I had a dwarf fighter, AC31, 102HP, +3Warhammer and the Balor killed him in one round. He hit fo 20+HP 5 times in a roll. Dwarf is dead. The thing is godawful terrible now and you want to make it harder? Remind me to stay away from the Firenode.

 

Smarter not harder.

I am NOT making him hit for more damage, or hit more often, but he should be able to act with more intelligence.

He will be able to use his spells more effectively and react to the things you are doing.

So yes, he will be harder, but not harder in terms of physical combat and damage dealing.

- Livonya

 

Balor.

If your wizard with Orb doesn't make the the save against charm your dead meat. You need to get off the Cone of cold, Ice storm and magic issle spells or you have no chance. The thing is so powerful, it don"t need any more help.

 

What level is your party when you encounter the Balor?

It seems to me with the proper spells in effect the Balor isn't so hard. You know he is there before you fight him, so being properly defended should make it pretty easy.

In any event, the only thing I am doing with the Balor is fixing the errors in his script. His AI script is one of the few spell caster scripts that isn't terribly buggy, so he only took about 20 minutes to fix.

I will add an explosion effect upon death however, as I think this really cool and it is in the rules, plus the death animation supports it... however, I will not make it as dramatic as the actual rules call for.

- Livonya

 

Balor fight.

I had a party of 8 once and my wizard had the ORB. I had Burne and Spugnoir and everyone was Level 9. We had lots of spells, scrolls, and wands. Everyone failed their saving throws and where either charmed or afraid. The Balor killed the wizard then proceeded to slaughter everyone. It was ugly. Better make your saving throw I guess. I did the Water node before one time and everyone was Level 10. The Balor killed the Hezrou, Vrock, and the other guardian, plus several earthelementals before the last magicmissle got him. He took most of the party with when he exploded, but the cleric had the Stall of Life from Mother Screng. It was ugly!

 

wizgeorge, that's the funniest thing I've heard all day. I had similar experiences, especially with the orb and the damn fear/charm business, and it took me quite a few tries to defeat it.
I love anything that Livonya does, but the Balor fight- the hardest in the game- doesn't need too much work (as she already said)
Basically I just wanted to tell you that I had a good laugh reading your posts. So true!

 

I always make sure I craft cloaks of resistance (+3 against the Balor) for everybody before fighting anything with charm effects. The number generator in this game can be extremely streaky (trust me, I've recorded data on this); it sounds like you just got hosed on the save rolls. That's worse than the time my second level party rolled an average of 7.5 against the 14.8 average of Lareth's guardsmen and then got 1, 1, 1, 2, 1 for their HP rolls when they levelled up. :roll:

 

A few tips...

You can cast Charm on a Charmed PC. So if the Balor cast's Charm and it goes through target your spell caster with Charm... I assume you would have more than one spell caster?

Use these spells Spell Resistance, and that Spell that Gives protection from 1st to 3rd level spells (can't think of proper spelling right now)... also protection from evil will help... get your casters pre-buffed with anti-spell spells... keep your casters Invisible so they will be harder to target...

Also, once I release my mod then you can talk to Furnok and get one of his potions of Protection from Magic, or get him to join you and use the potion on your mage. (Currently there is a typo in his Dialog script that prevents him from telling you about them, and also the potion was broken, but I fixed that)...

- Livonya

 

Stormbringer!

I'm a big fan of fantasy sci-fi, and Michael Moorcock. Can you imagine an encounter with a albino guy named Elric and a big black sword called Stormbringer. It would probably make the Balor look like a wimp. I tried this many years ago with a 9th level Paladin with a holy sword. The Paladin didn't last 3 rounds. The realm of random encounters is unlimited. Under the right conditions, this game could get very interesting.

 

The Balor is a mighty thing, so he should be hard. :shock:

Also, as one of the mightiest creatures from the lower planes, he should be quite capable to survive - those bastards are the terror of the Blood War, together with the pit fiends, remember?

So, Liv is right - he should be a more intuitive and intelligent fighter. That is why you should get a lot of mighty weapons and armor when you fight him, and maybe have on your side a troll or a hill giant, if you know what I am hinting at.

 

I wonder.

I wonder how Elric and Stormbringer would fare against the Balor. I'll take all the help I can get.

 

The balor should be next to impossible to take down, and would have been as difficult as Livonya is about to make it if the ai had been created properly in the first place. Your party doesn't need to kill it in order to finish the game, it's the kind of thing players can do for a challenge, like killing Iuz and St. Cuthbert. It would be nice though if the balor was guarding something more than a gem, perhaps it would be a good place to drop some of the more powerful items that are being modded into the game.

 

I don't agree on the it should be nearly impossible to take down angle. A complete run through the game includes completing the Nodes. While they're not required (it's possible to beat the game at 6th level without exploring most of the Temple at all. That doesn't mean the Temple should be an extreme challenge.) they shouldn't be nigh impossible either.

 

The trick is spell resistance

Like with the Galeb Duhrs, an intelligent approach will save your ass.

I had my cleric cast spell resistance on both my wizard and barbarian (in addition to the standard power-ups - stoneskin, etc.). Also, by making the barbarian's armor spell resistant (create magic armor feat), he basically gets 3 saving throws against any spell cast by the balor - armor spell resistance, cleric's spell, and saving throw. I also went in with a minor globe of invulnerability - the Balor prefers to dispel that over charming your main fighter.

My cleric then just summoned a gazillion small creatures against the Balor, while the Wizard summoned the Orb demons. The Balor was too busy attacking summoned creatures to go after my barbarian, who went ballistic on his ass while the wizard lay down a barrage of MMs. Two words - SPELL PENETRATION. This feat got me through many a battle.

I don't understand how the aura of fear works, apparently it's too powerful for a cleric to protect against, even if you level up a remove fear spell. It definitely makes the Balor much harder to fight, since the only to people to be able to fight it with the aura in effect were my barbarian and wizard. But since your other characters are still effective from a distance, they're not entirely useless.

 

What combination of patches are you using? Last I heard, spell resistance for armor was bugged.

I personally have never had a problem defeating the Balor. I was just arguing that he shouldn't be made nearly impossible.

My problem with the Galeb Duhr is they are far more powerful than they should be by the official rules, but still give the XP of the rules version when defeated. That and the fights with them take forever because of their slow walking speed.