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I'm a level 11 barbarian with Jahiera as a fighter/healer, Valygar as a fighter/ranged, and Jan as a thief/mage and I seem to have to replay fights all the time. It really sucks and I'm starting to lose patience with this game.

Enemy mages always spam fear or stun or some other cheap way of preventing you from controlling your character and it really drags the experience down.

Are there items I can get to prevent this crap?

I've played plenty of D&D based games but I'm still pretty green on spell usage and tactics.

Thanks for any tips.
This question / problem has been solved by ktchongimage
The Paladin kit Cavalier has various immunities to negative effects, and Inquisitor is specialized at crushing magic users. Paladin and its kits are some good classes to play through the game for the first time.

Here is a good tactic against enemy magic user: casting a spell takes time. Some spells take longer to cast than other. If someone casting a spell is hit during the casting, his concentration is broken, and his spell will fizzle and fail.

Always set your game to auto-pause when your party see an enemy. Then use your mage to cast a fast/instantaneous spell like Magic Missile at the enemy magic user to interrupt his spell. Alternatively, if you have a character with perfect or near-perfect aim with a range or missile weapon, use him to shoot the magic user to interrupt the spell. The joinable NPCs Kivan and Coran have good aim; or use the Gauntlet of Dexterity (which can be obtained quite early in the game) to boost a character's Dexterity to 18, and equip him with a good range weapon (with +THAC0) to shoot magic users and interrupt spells.
Post edited November 05, 2011 by ktchong
Use stealth or invisibility to scout ahead and maybe even to position your thief to get a backstab on the mage right out of the gate. Or, use a cheap tactic like AoE spells. Move so that the mage is just out of sight (on the edge of the fog of war) and lob in a Web and/or other spells that prevent movement or debilitate them (stinking cloud, etc), then hit them with some kind of damage spell like Fireball.

Check out your Barbarian Rage as well. I know Berserkers are immune to many of these effects when in the Berserk state. Check to see if Rage has the same immunities (not sure if it does).

There are also things like Clarity spells/potions that will make you immune to mind effects.
Post edited November 05, 2011 by Coelocanth
You only have four in your party so far. Adding someone like Aerie will give you some immediate help against enemy spellcasters. She can use fear-prevention spells from either her cleric or mage class. To protect from things like confusion, Chaotic Commands (available to clerics and druids) prevents all mind-affecting spells (as well as psionics from nasties like mind flayers).

Stuns are harder to deal with but thankfully rarer, the mage spell Free Action though will counter it.

Potions of Clarity seem to be rare, but they are worth having.

If the worst should happen, your mages or clerics can cast dispel magic to remove effects- not always 100% successful, but your last ditch effort.

There are various ways of scouting ahead so you can see who your enemies are before dealing with them. Jan would be good- he can detect traps while scouting ahead invisibly, and if he has the Cloak of Non-Detection (or a Non-Detection spell), enemies who normally see through invisibility won't spot him. You can also use a thief with stealth (who unfortunately can't detect traps while stealthed- that is an annoyance), a ranger with stealth, any invisible character, a mage spell like Wizard Eye, a cleric spell like Farsight.

A thief who can sneak up on an enemy mage and backstab him before he knows the thief is even there will take care of your problem too.

Finally, boosting magic resistance and anything to boost saves helps. Wisdom bonuses add to saves against mind-affecting attacks too.
Post edited November 05, 2011 by bjbrown
I almost forgot two druid spells that bug enemy spellcasters (pun fully intended). Insect Swarm will disable one at a time, and Insect Plague will disable a whole group of them.
All good suggestions. Thanks everyone.

I would have picked the Inquisitor or Cavalier class if I didn't have to be Lawful Good (which is just boring).

I'm mostly up on the spells that prevent mind disruption but many times I won't know which spells are going to be cast at me until it's too late. Then I have to reload and prepare before going into battle. Rinse, repeat = frustration.

I'm going to try scouting Jan with Invisibility. That seemed like a really good idea.

The fight that pissed me off last night was with a vampire mage named Tanova, who kept stunning everyone and then couldn't be physically damaged or dispelled. I was using Lilarcor for my barbarian but then switched to Flail of Ages w/ Frostreaver and just bumrushed her into oblivion.
Post edited November 05, 2011 by MasterKilller45
Remember when scouting using stealth/invisibility, either make sure the scout as a melee weapon selected, or you have the NPC AI turned off. If your scout as a missile weapon selected and AI turned on, he'll immediately fire away as soon as he sees an enemy, which ruins stealth/invisibility.
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MasterKilller45: I would have picked the Inquisitor or Cavalier class if I didn't have to be Lawful Good (which is just boring).
Just a note here, but your protagonist's alignment has almost no impact on the game. It will affect your starting reputation by a couple of points, and if you're evil, turn undead will control the undead instead of fearing and/or killing them. It'll also affect your starting innate abilities, but those aren't exactly gamebreaking, and all of them are useful. A protagonist with an evil alignment also gets a couple of quest options that the others don't get, but those options are so silly and mustache-twirlingly bad that (from an RP perspective) you'd have to be evil AND stupid to choose them.

Your alignment isn't a straightjacket in the BG games, unlike some other D&D games. It's just a roleplaying tool. You can play a deviously-evil "Lawful Good" paladin, and if you're devious enough, you can do it with a full 20 reputation to boot.

All that aside, there are a couple of low-level priest spells that can really turn the tide against casters. "Silence 15' Radius" and "Hold Person" can neuter them entirely. You can also use magic missile to eat through all of their mirror images quickly, and weapons with elemental damage on them will bypass Stoneskin and disrupt spells. Against higher-level mages, "Breach," "Pierce Magic," "Spell Thrust," and similar spells will specifically dispel their defensive protections.

High-level D&D Wizards are very very tough, especially in BG2. You have to fight them with very different strategies compared to other monsters. Wizards generally have almost no hitpoints, but lots of tricks to protect them, and powerful offense. Counter their tricks, and they'll die to a quick swording.
Just a minor thing: I think the proper plural noun for "mage" is "magi", not "mages". It's a very common mistake.
Post edited November 05, 2011 by ktchong
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ktchong: Just a minor thing: I think the proper plural noun for "mage" is "magi", not "mages". It's a very common mistake.
What a way to solve question. :-)
Not by advices how to improve in combats but by simple grammar correction.
According to Wiktionary, either mages or magi is a plural of mage. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mage#English

I use "mages" by habit because that's what the rulebooks for Mage: the Ascension used.