The title. Vanilla (non-magical) weapons are useful vs mages who cast protection from magical weapons... but are a bit annoying to micromanage if you have classes with only two weapon slots and use one for best melee and another one for ranged.

I have runs where I do carry vanilla weapons and just smack those mages without bothering with breach (and possibly skipping dealing with improved invis) - they usually have just a few layers of SS that are easy to chip off. How common approach is that?

Interesting. You have much untapped elven arse.

-- Winthrop, the shattered one

So I kicked him in the head until I lost my mommy!

-- Little bandit

Hey sexy, I AM THE LAW!!!

-- Flaming fist courtesan

!!! Alert: MAJOR story spoilers ahead!!!

In BG1 they say something along the lines that Sarevok wants a war which will ignite his Bhaal spark and - somehow - make him a god... which does not really make sense in the context of ToB, where you need to kill enough Bhaalspawn first. This is of course because BG1 was written years before the Bhaalspawn story was finished and thought through to the end - so what would be an explanation of BG1 events that would actually make sense? What would Sarevok actually want and what would haplen next if he won?

The following text is my interpretation of the story and, of course, my fan fiction:

First, let's remeber Sarevok was probably one of the most educated people in the world on the matter of the Bhaal prophecy, studying it systematically (not only) at its very source in Candlekeep. He probably also had some insight into how things would work on the practical level - e.g. in ToB he understands the pocket plane and its general purpose. This combination of the knowledge of the practicalities and the prophecies would be an extremely powerful tool.

Sarevok did not want to directly ascend to godhood through the war in BG1 - that was only the first part of his greater plan. He only wanted to unlock his divine potential, very similarly to what happened to Charname later - and basically what Irenicus would be trying to do. Irenicus had his rituals and "tests" to unlock the divine power in a god childs soul and then wanted to harvest it. He probably succeeded in unlocking the power quite a bit, which is also why Charname becomes really powerful after reuniting with their soul. Sarevok would probably use the great bloodshed from the war with a similar purpose - as a kind of ritual to activate his Bhaal essence within.

This might very well mean that Sarevok would gain access to his own hell trials, eventually the pocket plane or something similar, maybe he would be able to transform to Slayer, possibly even more. He was preparing for this intensively and who knows where the power ceiling of having ignited spark would be - he could easily surpass Charnames abilities or could get their endgame powers much sooner. While Sarevok might not have the exact knowledge of everything he would gain access to beforehead, he would probably have a good general idea and seems pretty capable of figuring out the details with the knowledge and training he had.

At the same time Sarevok most probably very well knew he would need to kill other Bhaalspawn - isn't there in the old into something like "You will be the first and I will be the last"? He would need to not only to gather the essence and claim it, but also to prevent other Bhaalspawn igniting their sparks and becoming a threat to him - he did not know how many Bhaalspawn were trying to do the exact same thing so from his point of view this could be a race against time.

Sarevok did not know about the Throne of Bhaal. But while Amelyssan was able to keep it secret from the Five, Sarevok would be a different case. The Five were very powerful but ignorant. Their sparks were not ignited and Amelyssan made sure they knew nothing important - while Sarevok would have his spark on and would eventually gain access to the plane where the throne was. Charname was able to reach the throne. Sarevok would be able to do so as well and possibly much sooner - because at some point he would probably start actively looking for a place where the essence was gathering.

The overall timeline could go something like this: Sarevok, after igniting his spark in some big battles, eventually abandons Baldurs Gate and goes south with a party of his most loyal servants because the prophecies or maybe even dreams told him to (it is debatable if and how SoA events would unfold at this point). Sarevok would also get some kind of access to the Bhaal plane and would eventually start looking for the Throne. After some time he would discover it, which would lead to Amelyssan immediately noticing him. She would recognize him as a major threat to her plans and would surely try to eliminate him at any cost, using the Five in the process in some way or other. So the finale of the story would be kind of similar and the prophecy would still work (so Solar would probably have no objections), but the details might be diffdrent.

Had Sarevok win this final battle vs the Five and Amelyssan, he would most definitely hunt down any Bhaalspawn left and in the end he would chose to fully ascend.

Of course the lower the better. But sometimes there are tradeoffs to be made - dualling from a fighter is an example of limiting to hit rolls. Or having a multiclass character generally sacrifices a few thac0 points vs a single class one in some stages of the game. On the other hand, thac0 below -10 is needed to ensure hitting on 2+ only vs the most armored enemies and is an overkill vs anything else.

So my question is - what effective thac0 do you generally consider okay for different parts of the game in your runs? In BG1, SoA, ToB?

After a no-magical-items-and-super-low-xp run I want to try something else: a murder hobo run. In that, I want my charname to attack everyone on sight and see how the game will go. I guess it will be quite challening, but pretty doable and it will be an interesting experience. Vanilla game, core difficulty.

There will be no party members, no summons (I'd have to attack them on sight), no shopping, no weapon upgrading and no questing (this will make a lot of areas in SoA inacessible), which is all part of the fun... But there is a problem: I will still need to do the main story line. And some of the characters are needed for it and will even auto-kill you if you attack them.

So I need to loosen the rules a bit so that I can do the main story but I don't want the rule to be just "you don't have to attack unkillable characters". So far I was thinking I would RP SoA as wanting to kill Imoen - but the good mage would protect her with the magical girdle and then even would take her away. Then I would try to bribe the thieves to get me to her and spare their lives until they do so.. but for other parts I don't really know.

Do you have an idea of what excuses I could make to not kill people like Gorion (or actually anybody in Candlekeep), the dukes of BG, Elhan and possibly others?

Also, what build would you choose for a murder hobo run? I will allow multiclassing with kit via ee keeper. While FMT sounds natural I have no idea if I will even get good scrolls with zero trading and with no access to most of the areas in SoA. I also don't know how much xp I will end up with: I don't want to farm nor do Durlags or Watchers keep as they are too long and would not play much differently than in regular runs.

Link to the Original post here - contains the explanation of this challenge and its rules.

BG1

I created my Chanrame - a dwarven Fighter/Cleric.

I soloed some early game free or easy xp quests until I hit level 3. Then I picked up Imoen, Neera and Kivan. I went for the CHAR and CON tomes early, killed the flesh golems with Spiritual hammer + the potion that gives +10 AC vs crushing.

Then I did the mines and went for the basilisks to get some levels. Then I picked up Baeloth, cleared the bandit camp and went to the Durlags tower for its tome. There I farmed the tower until Baeloth made one level, which gave him a new level 3 spell. I picked the AoE invis - the most broken spell ever. From there it was a breeze: with AoE invis I just went through the main story, skipping every optional encounter. When I did not care about the items (like the boots of speed) the game went really fast. I invis walked right to Davaeorn and killed him, went to BG, pickpocketed the tome of wisdom, stole tomes of intelligence and dexternity. Then went directly to the top of the Iron throne, invis skipped the fight, went to Candlekeep, got last tomes and invis walked to the surface. In Baldurs Gate I invis skipped getting arrested and went for the diary and invitations fights. Then after the palace fight invis skipped the maze and walked right into the final fight. There I put some Skull traps to the place where the mage would spawn. Started the fight, mage died, lured Sarevok to my team and kited him while shooting him down with magic missiles.

The game ended on day 61, with my team having about 70k xp. It was pretty easy, the hardest fight was with the flesh golems, where I needed to use a combo of spiritual hammer and the right potion. I got most deaths at basilisks as I was too careless with them, but the deaths could have been easily avoided if I used Korax more carefully.

BG1 Overall feelings: BG1 was doable with no problems. The first levels where I had to actually fight more were very annoying as having 3 less thac0 than usual (+2 weapon and the gloves) and dealing less damage made fighting feel so inefficient. Also it felt very good to solve the iron crisis and finally get unbreaking weapons.

BG2: SoA

Early game

Starting dungeon was very easy even without resting and it was nicely fast when I did not have to bother with all the optional stuff. After I got out I assembled my dream team: Jan (sadly I removed all his equipment which made him a lot worse), Keldron (for the dispells), Anomen and Aerie (later switched for Imoen). The good news was that Jan had the AoE invis in his spellbook right from the start, so I started abusing it right away. I quickly made 20k gold mostly by going to Trademeet where I picked up Cernd. The druid grove was easy: AoE invis, then walk straight to Faldron without any fighting. With 20k I bought the right to cast spells and sided with Bodhi (I removed Keldron for her quests) as fighting the vampires would be very hard. Cernd proved himself to be an excellent choice for fighting the thieves. With his Fire Elementals and insects even Aran soon fell and I went to Brynlaw.

Mid game

In Brynlaw, I went directly to the cowled wizard and killed him. It was very funny how he tried to protect himself with protection from magical weapons. Asylum itself was very easy as it was mostly invis skippable. From the unskippable enemies, Dace was a bit tricky as he needed +3 weapons to be hit and I had only +2 spiritual hammers... so I had to kill him with magic. After completing the asylum trials and fighting Mr. I., I took the portal to Underdark. And I skipped it with invis: went to the gnome mayor, pickpocketed his gem, went to Adalon, killed her with traps, then invis walked to the Sahuagin caves, killed some of them with elementals as they had true sight. Then I invis walked to the surface. Soo much faster than going to the Drow city and doing their quests! On the surface I asked Drizzt to help me destroy Bodhi. I feared that the fights with vampires would be hard, but they were super easy actually. The vampires did not see invis, so I just cast AoE invis on my party, then turned the vampires with invisible Anomen and made them run into Drizzt, who totally pwned all of them. Then on the second level Drizzt again killed all enemies by himself, Bodhi included.

End game

I was really scared of Suldanesselar as there are some extremely powerful enemies immune to normal weapons and my party had very low levels. But good news was that all the hardest enemies were again easily skippable - either with invis or by taking another path around them. I just went straight for the items needed for the ritual. There were some Rakshasas in front of the house with the blade, who apparently had unlimited casts of true sights, which were a bit tricky to get around. I had to make everybody invisible and hasted, then run past them while they were casting their true sights and enter the house before they finished their casting. Then I waited until their true sight wore off, made everybody hasted and invisible again, left the house and run away before they finished their next cast. Then I went to the dragon and wanted to trade all my gold and items with him - something I never do in common runs - but found out that I need to have 30k gold for that, which I did not have. Lol. I had to kill him. Then I performed the ritual (surprisingly not all enemies were killed by that in the city), grabbed the items needed to get to the tree and proceeded forth. First battle with mr. I was easy, I just fed him with magic resistant skeleton warriors until he died.

In the hell I had around 900k xp and was really curious of how on earth will I finish it. First obstacle was Wraith Sarevok - he had hundreds of HP, was magic resistant and had good AC so I hit him only very rarely. And I had like one level 6 mage spell in my arsenal, so no Mordy swords were possible. Well it turned out that if I got the immunity to +1 weapons before confronting Sarevok, I would be resistant to his attacks. So I just ordered Charname to slowly hammer him to death and went to grab a lunch. Then it was time for Irenicus.

The final fight turned out to be.. super easy, actually. The demons Irenicus summoned did not have true sight. So I hasted everybody, lured the demons away, then cast AoE invis and left the demons on some stairs. Slayer Irenicus himself was hard to hit (my thac0s were way above 0) and had good HP regen, but he was not immune to non-magical weapons so I hit him a few times with slings to deplete his mantles and then summons + traps + changing to Slayer did the trick. Irenicus fell on day 25.

SoA Overall feelings: I really feared some of the harder SoA enemies like vampires, but they all turned out to be either easy or skippable. Cernds insects made all mages encounters trivial (you can cast insects on one of your guys, then move him next to the enemy mage and the insects will spread) and his fire elementals dominated many of the early game fights - like with the thieves. He had also decent stats in the greater werewolf form later, just needed to drink a lot of healing potions because of his poor hp.

I totally loved how the difficulty felt in SoA. In normal runs, the game it getting easier and easier with each new level and new powerful weapon unlocked, until it turns into a chore. In this run, the enemies were actually getting more and more threatening and I had get more and more resourceful with how to approach certain obstacles. I had the most deaths in a fight with Shadow Thieves in the second quest for Bodhi - I was fighting a group of thieves when their mage cast a necromancy spell. I thought it was a horror or maybe a skull trap and ignored it.. and it killed me. I did not understand and reloaded a few times with the same result until I realized: it was a Death spell! And my Charname was level 8/8! Took like 4 times before I carefully paused the game and went through the log and my character to find out what was happening :D

BG2: ToB

Early game

Illasera was trivial as always because of traps, summons and insects. When I got to the pocket plane, I swapped Keldron for Haer Dalis so my final team was: Anomen, Cernd, Jan, Haer Dalis, Imoen (I wanted to keep her though she is worse than Neera or Edwin). In Saradush I did the Lazarus quest and bought all the scrolls I would need (writing 9th level spells required a potion for Imoen) as the game generously gave me tons of expensive items at the beginning of ToB, which I could sell. I invis skipped right to Gromnir, which was a very hard fight for a party with 2,5M xp and only vanilla items. Here I quickly realized that ToB will be very different from SoA, the difficutly already surpassed anything I encountered previously. In the end I won the Gromnir fight by Cernd casting Natures Beauty, blinging most of the enemies. Then I went to the Myr forest, with its annoying level-draining invis-seeing wraith and its minions. Luckily the wraith was not immune to the effect of Harm. Then I used invis to talk to the mommy and went to the Marching Mountains. And they were the best area in the whole trilogy! Full of super dangerous giants who luckily could not see invis, but also a home of some guardians of the runes, who did have true sight. Doing the area with Jan felt like a true misson impossible - full of careful planning, stealing and running away where every mistake could ruin everything. The first level area was much harder, often requiring Jan summoning some minor mobs for distraction, then stealing a rune and running away before guardians would kill the summons. The second floor was much easier as the elemental prince could be avoided and then there were just two invis seeing cats guarding the heart, who could again be easily lured away by a small summon. After the temple both mr. Shura and his mommy were not immune to Harm, so I killed them easily.

Mid game

The Oasis was just invis skip. Then I talked to Balthazar and went to the Abazigals lair first. And the difficulty went even higher. I quickly realized I can't kill Draconis in any normal way, not even with traps (I did not have HLAs yet). So I did it with this simple cheesy tactic: I fed him some summons to deplete his most powerful spells. Then I approached him with Charname immune to +1 and lower weapons, which means immunity to Draconis and also the stalkers attacks. I lead Draconis behind one of the pillars next to the entrance to the lair. Then I punched him until he transformed into a dragon - which made him become stuck in the pillar. The dragon still had very dangerous breath attack, but could be killed by offscreen AoE spells. After Draconis, there was another super hard fight - maybe the hardest of all the run. There is a greater werewyvern in a cave, immune to vanilla weapons, with true sight, 12hp/s regen, good magic resistance, -12 AC, 130hp and very dangerous attacks. My thac0 was still way above 0, so after a few attempts I figured out I have no chance to win this in a fair fight. So in the end I had to tank it a bit while lowering its MR resistance and then I would nuke it with skull traps in a spell trigger. It took some time to perfect the strategy but in the end it worked.

The rest of the Abazigal lair was straightforward and could be mostly invis skipped (like the annoying magical skulls). In the end I did not go for Abazigal directly, but would go to the Sendais enclave first - I still did not have HLAs and wanted to wait for more XP before facing the final dragon.

Sendais enclave was hard but doable. Parts of it could be skipped with invis and other parts were much easier than what I remembered from my SCS runs. A common tactic there was to enter an area with invisibility, lure everybody to one place with small summons, then cast three fire storms (they ignore magic resistance) at once - I had Anomen, Charname and Cernd with the access to the spell and when all three cast it on one spot, the results were truly devastating. I got my first HLAs just before Sendai, which helped a lot.

End game

It was now time to eliminate the rest of the Five. Sendai fight was a very hard test in resources management as I had barely 3M xp and the fight was very long. And I found out that in the final stage Sendai had infinite casts of protective spells and occasional heals and my team was just not able to kill her with regular weapons, so I had to make sure to keep enough summons to overcome her final form (and she had death spells too). This as probably the most fun fight of the whole run. In the end I needed to carefully micromanage Sendai - luring some of her weaker forms offscreen with summons so I could save and prepare some traps etc. so I could really efficiently use all I got at my disposal.

After Sendai I went back for Abazigal, who was really easy - I lured him to a Mordy sword, cast 3 fire storms, he transformed into a dragon and then run into spike traps. Then I went for Balthazar - invis skipped inside the monastery, then lured Balthazar to spike traps. Bye bye Five.

After that I started doing all the pocket plane trials. They were pretty straightforward and Cernd was as helpful as alwas - vs alternative Charname he had insects, vs the level draining Slayer he had lots of casts of Energy blades. And vanilla Cyric ambush was probably the easiest fight in ToB. The hardest was obviously the Ravager - who has hundreds of HP and immunity to +3 and lower weapons. I beat him like this: I summoned three Mordys swords and gave my group AoE protection from evil. Then I started the fight, making sure all the bone blades and the Ravager target my swords immune to their attacks. Then I summoned a few Pit fiends (who have +4 weapons) with the Gate spell to attack the Ravager. I also had Cernd memorized 6x Energy blades (he had so much more 7th level spell slots than Anomen, who had only 2!), for some extra damage output. I killed the Ravager right after my Mordys started unsummoning with the last batch of the E-blades.

Then it was a time for the Amelyssan fight. When I teleported to the final arena, I was able to pause the game before the dialogue started - which allowed me to lay two spike traps with Jan and Haer Dalis. This made Melissan take enough damage to teleport right away. Then I just abused the Wish spell and save/reloaded to ensure I could have unlimited rests and cleared the islands - mostly by sending there mordy swords and casting 3x fire storms into the area. For the final island I needed to use some traps too but it was still nothing too hard. Apart from the islands, all Melissan fights could be insta-won by 3-4 spike traps. On the 49th day, with about 3,3M xp, Charname ascended.

ToB Overall feelings: ToB was absolutely brutal and I really had to use all I got - no powerful items and low xp changed the game a lot. There was a part where I had to use a lot of mage spells on greater werewyvern (which is btw the place where I died the most, either by the enemy attacks or by killing myself with poorly targeted skull traps). There were a lot of parts where cleric spells like Harm, Gate or Fire storm were very useful. There was a fight with Gromnir where Natures Beauty was a king. There were even times where amassed skeleton warriors and fire elementals were still very good. In the fire giants temple stealing the hearts with good old invis was the most viable strategy... Having to figure out what tactic to employ and what enemy weakness to exploit was so different compared to "I cast PfMW and just kill everything" and in the end every of my party members had a moment when they really shined. ToB was really a good tactical challenge. The very ending with the spike traps and Wish spell was very cheesy, but I really did not see a good way to do it without it (and it was also a bit annoying to reload so much when Imoen had only one level 9 spell slot). Maybe someone will find a way to do it and will write a report one day - I will be sure curious to read it!

Some time ago I wrote here about a no-magical items challenge. I actually did the run and just finished it - and it was super fun, absolute blast! I altered the original rules a bit in the end, this is what I went for:

- absolutely no equippable magical items allowed (but weapons conjured by spells like Spiritual Hammer were ok)

- from consumables, only potions and tomes are allowed

- scrolls are ok to copy but no casting them

- no sleeping mid-dungeons. In ToB where pocket plane is available going there to sleep is fine from Amkethran and forward

- low XP run: I tried to keep myself on rather low levels and would not end up with no more than 50 % of the actual XP cap at the end of each part of the trilogy (in reality I skipped almost all optional stuff)

- vanilla game, core rules

__________________________________________________________________________
I completed BG1 on day 61, with 70k XP. I did SoA on day 25 with 900k xp and finished ToB on day 48 (the timer continues from SoA) with 3,3M xp - yea I got almost the same amount of xp in SoA and ToB. So Charname ascended after 109 days of active adventuring, getting the "good" ending with Solar joining her cause :)

For BG1 the strategy was not so different but for SoA and ToB the difficulty for this set of rules was just perfect, which impressed me a lot. With no magical items and shitty levels I had to resort to tactics I never employed before. Like - at the end of SoA Imoen could cast just one 6th level spell :D And I got first HLAs just shortly before fighting Balthazar. My absolute favorite area was the fire giant temple, which I just robbed with Jan - just using invis to get the runes, sneak upstairs and steal the hearts, all done with zero kills.

The best party member, who carried me through the whole SoA and ToB? Cernd and by faaar! He was such a powerhouse right until the final battle, totally surpassing any other party members I had on me.

The hardest fight? In a cave after killing Draconis, there is a Greater Werewywern with good AC that my shitty guys were not able to reliably hit. She also had good magic resistance and insane HP regen. I had to kill her in one huge burst of magic damage, otherwise it was just not doable. It is funny that from regular runs I don't remember this encounter to be dangerous at all.

__________________________________________________________________________
I totally recommend trying this kind of run.

If you have any questions on how I did things, feel free to ask. Or if you want I can make a post with more detailed notes on what I did where and what were some difficult parts of the game, how I killed the bosses etc.

I am going to do a no-magic-items challenge, full trilogy (no SoD).

Rules:

- no enchanted items that can be found in the game can be equipped (not even +1 weapons). Exceptions: conjured weapons (by Enchant weapon spell, Flame blade etc.), auto-equipped attacks gained from shapeshifting, monk fists and similar

- special ammunition for (cross)bows is fine as long as it does not hit as enchanted

- for consumables, only potions and tomes are allowed (no Horn of Valhalla, no wands etc.)

- scribing scrolls is fine, but no casting from them

- zero sleeping in dungeons (all mages and clerics party sleep spamming would be too easy)

What charname and what party would you pick for this (edit: no custom party, just pcs provided by the game)?

The funny part is that there will be little reason to complete everything in the game as the possible rewards from quests would be just xp and gold to buy more potions - so I actually expect it to be a quite easygoing run. But at the same time I feel I could be horribly wrong :)