To my surprise Spell Immunity: Necromancy doesnt actually protect against the leveldrain of vampires.

This is in the Black Pitts II: Gladiator of Thay minigame coming with the EEs, the sixth battle, the first one of the second tier.

If its not Necromancy, what other school would it be ???

Not that I am short on defenses against leveldrain, best is Limited Wish that actually provides a group version of the priests Negative Plane Protection, I just thought thats a great way to have an actually long lasting defense; since both Limited Wish as well as the single target Negative Plane Protection from priests and paladins only last 5 rounds.

This battle is by the way horribly bugged. Theres two shadowdancers among the enemies and they both do Timestops, but you can clearly see that time still passes by your True Seeing still triggering. Any rage abilities of barbarian and berserker are still ticking down, too.

The only saving grace of this battle is that you can just cast invisibility and these strange vampires will not be able to see you. So you only have those people to act which are protected against charm and leveldrain. Which I thought would include someone with Spell Immunity: Necromancy.

Geronimo, it's been a long time since I looked at the 2e rule books, but I thought level drain by undead monsters was not classified as a spell but instead was considered a special ability of the monster. It sounds like spell immunity is probably only supposed to protect against cast spells, like from a mage or priest. There is a ninth level Necromantic spell called something like Energy Drain. Have you experimented to see if Spell Immunity protects against that?

I recall when playing classic BG2 recently that the "mass negative plane protection" provided by Limited Wish was kind of a disappointment to me, since it had the same extremely short duration as the standard Negative Plane Protection spell. Does it last longer in EE?

My impression is that BG2's Timestop never worked identically to orthodox paper-and-pencil. For one thing, I'm not sure if the casting mage is supposed to be able to cast two or three spells under a timestop and have them all go off the instant the timestop wears off. I get the feeling that P+P's Timestop was supposed to provide the casting mage with a chance to take one or two free actions, not become a spell enabling TPK-level extreme destruction. I think in BG2 the intention is to make you percieve this spell as an extreme threat when cast by enemy mages (and same thing with sequencer spells).

Yes it only lasts 5 rounds BUT its a group version so you have to recast it every four rounds with one of your characters and this specific option only needs wisdom 10, too.

Oh and I checked it out with NearInfinity there is no school set (VAMP.ITM, VAMP1.ITM, VAMP2.ITM, VAMP3.ITM) and no save either. If the vampire hits you, they drain levels. Unless you are immune through class, items, spells, or abilities.

- Class: Undead Hunter, Blackguard
- Items: Amulet of Power, Mace of Disruption +2, Runehammer +5, Spectral Brand +5, etc
- Spells: Negative Plane Protection (5 rounds), Limited Wish (5 rounds, Wis 10 required), Protection from Magic Weapons (4 rounds)
- Abilities: Barbarian Rage, Enrage (Berserker), Boon of Lathander (Cleric of Lathander)

its not a spell effect and that is one reason Viconia is so over powered in the end game as sending Vamps to attack the boss is a strong tactic

p.s, sanctuary blocks their attack against you and doesn't block you from doing turn undead

Hmm...I'm not familiar with that. How does Viconia summon vampires?

Yes, one of the most difficult and painful parts of 2e for players to deal with (particularly in paper + pencil) was that undead level drain had no saving throw. This oddity may have gone back to Gygax's pre-1e gaming groups, which often tended to develop very OP characters. From what I've heard, maybe even kind of shocking by today's D&D standards, in early games, there was often a mindset that the DM was competing against the players, perhaps a holdover from their wargaming origins. That may also account for 1e's infamous lethality for characters. (Apparently, you were always rolling up new ones.)

I guess my biggest hesitation about Limited Wish beyond NPP's duration is LW's very long casting time, To me, that makes it less desirable to use it in combat. 'Course, I'm not always the smartest commander of my party. I often just cast prep buffs and then let my beat 'em up in melee.

BTW, Geronimo, what did you mean by no "school set?" That undead level drain isn't considered a Necromantic spell?

https://www.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/tzhajd/when_someone_with_low_wisdom_casts_limited_wish/

your sister Imoen works best

Right. I forgot about the evil cleric rule.

Why yes.

If you look at the game with NearInfinity, you see the actual game files.

The attack weapon that vampires use are called VAMP.ITM, VAMP1.ITM, etc.

They have no school set, so Spell Immunity does nothing.

They also gives no saving throw. If the weapon hits, and you are not immune to the effect, your will lose levels.

Imoen has Wisdom 11, to summon the six vampires you need Wisdom 9 or lower ?

The video you linked shows Nalia instead, and indeed she would work.

I'm not sure how to LOWER the Wisdom of a character in BG2.

Btw I would cast Protection from Magical Weapons before summoning the vampires, since they initially attack you.

they are not magic weapons so that will not help

have any character with at least 9 intel cast protection from Undead from scroll... that will stop the vamps attacking the one protected

I found a way to reduce Wisdom: you can cast Wish.

If your character has Wisdom 18 or above, one of the five available negative options is "lower the Wisdom of all party members to 3".

Would require a lot of tries though because there are 25 options for Wisdom 18 and so the chance of any specific option appearing is only 20%.

P.s.: That last statement makes a lot more sense if you know that you always get 5 random choices out of the available choices.

Sounds easier to hack the game with a cheat program (like Shadowkeeper or EEKeeper, perhaps?).

It's not a spell, so things that protect from a school of magic won't work.

You need this: https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Negative_Plane_Protection

edit: fixed link