Good stuff Grond & Corey.
Glad to see Teyl joining us.
Anyway, long update on Eryx and party - I haven't actually accomplished that much plot-wise, but have dealt with a few tricky opponents.
The demon knights were quickly beaten into submission, one offensive spin from Eryx lasted throughout the encounter.
With buffs still up, the party went to free the last inhabitant of the soul prison, the lich Alchra Diagott.
You'd think I'd have learned my lesson about doing that, haste began to expire from the party, which is bad when fighting mages - liches are slow enough to catch anyway, but you need to be hasted to outrun a Dragon's Breath spell!
One weakness of SCS mage AI is their tendency to waste high level antimagic like Khelben's Warding Whip on a character under Spell Shield, as the lich did here. Randolph used a 3x secret word trigger for the first time here, a couple of Breaches later (two or more needed because of contingencied ProMW) and the lich was down.
After meeting Jarlaxle, who taking a cue from Drizzt, intrusively forced his way into the storyline Eryx agrees to fight Deirex, the big lich of Ust Natha, who unlike his exiled cousin (?), was rather troublesome.
I managed to spread the party out of range of his CC wilting, which only did a little damage to Aragrish. The lich then used his overpowered Wish spell to remove the party's protections in spite of my best efforts to debuff him (Holy Word and Randolph's trigger).
Rather amusingly, the lich's next move was a Pierce Magic + Breach + PW:Silence trigger shot at our sorc, but the Power Word arrives before the other spells and bounces off Randolph's spell turning, thus silencing the lich!
It was safe now to bring Eryx over for a Breach spell since Deirex is unable to cast for at least a round, which was all we needed to destroy him.
Tackled House Jae'llat after that without resting, which was probably not a great idea, as we didn't have enough CC spells left to protect everyone and the enemy clerics here cast Greater Command, Aleks had CC & Death Ward anyway, but for some reason I also had him take a potion of Invulnerability, which was a total waste (even though SCS adds a decent mage called Valas Jae'llat to this houses' defenses and another lower level mage). Playing while tired...
Eryx got his first HLA while looting the Jae'llats, chose Sound Burst - this is a Rogue Rebalancing ability which works like a party friendly Sunfire but deals magic damage and deafens on a failed save. RR also allows blades to get Whirlwind (I put my lvl 24 proficiency point in spears, since the only +6 weapon available for my blade is a spear) but not Enhanced Bard song (bards of any type cannot get Spike traps or Time traps).
Cool screenshot but I should have probably taken UAI as my first ability.
Beholder Lair was next, and our party has no shield or cloak of cheese. The first two beholders are dealt with using a triple Sunfire trigger, one arrow from Artemisia finishing off the one who survived - there is no Elder Orb here, he is deeper in the tunnels (this place would be easy with planetars, but I have a personal restriction on summoning those in SoA).
Scoping the area w Farsight reveals a deadly Hive Mother accompanied by a pack of lesser beholders.
Leksa summons some skeleton warrirors which were sent in (guided by farsight) to flank the lesser beholders and prevent them joining the fight to soon (one Anti-Magic Ray per round is okay, since Spell Shield can be recast, but if more than one beholder is shooting AMRs at a party member things go downhill quickly, I should mention that Spell Shield is always removed by the first AMR in recent versions of SCS, unlike vanilla). Randolph the sorc used Improved Alacrity for the first time here, to quickly debuff the Hive Mother and follow up with Wilting.
Aragrish was sent in alone, while the rest of the party contributed w ranged weapons, since Aragrish has Whirlwind HLA and also has save vs spells of 1 while enraged, AMRs aren’t a big threat to him.
The Hive Mother falls, but the battle isn't over, because some mind flayers who were fighting gauths to the south finished them off and decided to teleport over to us:
Two of them right next to Leksa, who was under anti magic from a beholder (note the darkened quickslots), don’t know what would’ve happened next because of sudden shutdown of my PC.
Well, since all these beholders were dead the mind flayers were hardly going to kill the party, though they might have killed our debuffed cleric. Second time I did this battle a little better, managed not to get Leksa dispelled by a beholder or aggro the mind flayers round the corner (seems random whether or not they join in).
To the north, five more gauths are dispatched swiftly, they managed to clear Eryx’s spell deflection but not my mirror images and didn't do any serious damage.
Now the party rests, as there is one more “major” beholder battle to undertake here.
Another spawn of three beholders and two gauths with a nearby Elder Orb, but more worryingly, around the corner is another Elder Orb and two more beholders – thanks to SCS help scripts we can expect them to float over as we battle the first group.
Speed is essential, and by speed, I mean alacrity: Randolph under IA hits the beholders with a 3x Sunfire trigger (Sunfire is not instacast, as we have no robe of Vecna yet. Actually, triple Sunfire triggers don't even break invisibilty, so you could Sunfire spam the beholders in safety, but I don't use that kind of cheese). One surviving beholder is finished off with a PW:Kill and a gauth with MM (PW:Kill takes effect instantly unlike MM and other spells with “projectile” effects, so was used to ensure the beholder wouldn’t have time for an AMR).
Still under IA, Randolph moves forward to challenge the elder orb, whose CC buffs include simulacrum! Elder orb simulacrums are bad because among other things they mean twice as many AMR’s and unlike mage simmys have quite a bit of hp.
Now, the obvious thing to do is to use Death Spell from the Skull of Death to get rid of the simulacrum, but I stupidly left the skull in our bag of holding rather than inventory, meaning it doesn’t recharge on rest (ToBEx feature, to fix the exploit of putting things in a container to recharge them)
The real Elder Orb was knocked out with a lucky Greater Command spell, but the simulacrum stayed awake, and about this time the other beholders arrived, great. Need to watch out for the Greater Malisons these things cast! The barbarian's saving throws might not be as reliable as I thought.
Anyway, a Wilting (which I think Randolph started just before IA wore off) and a fireball from Eryx crisped the regular beholders, Aragrish levelled up in this fight and took Greater Whirlwind, which was put to immediate use on the simmy-orb. Leksa also got a level somewhere here and chose Implosion for her first HLA, as did Artemisia, taking Power Attack.
For some reason the Elder Orb around the corner hadn’t moved, he didn’t stand much of a chance by himself. Although he had a clever 2x web minor sequencer (Arbane’s sword offhand for Aragrish here – it grants immunity to web in my games, as per vanilla). Btw, has anyone else wondered why a beholder lair has STAIRS!?
Returning to the city with the elder orb’s eye, we help Phaere betray Ardulace, then take Solaufein’s advice to betray her in turn; I’ve never liked this for good aligned parties but doing it any other way means fighting the demon Lord the drow summon which the party cannot kill (we have no +5 weapons and our sorc doesn’t know Lower Resistance or similar, though now I think of it Eryx does), either that or fighting the entire drow city (with SCS upgraded defenses).
With the deed done, the party fights several waves of improved drow on our way out (didn’t use Invisibility-10’-Radius this time).
Decided to retreat after haste wore off (in the marketplace), as it became clear that we were going to get separated and surrounded, we’d need those long lasting oils of speed for everybody if we were going to make a stand against all the drow of Ust Natha, not to mention plenty of Incendiary Cloud/Firestorm spells.
I was going to take on the exit party without rest, but changed my mind as they usually give me a run for my money.
The drow wizard managed to get off one Timestop, but was debuffed already and focused on protecting himself without doing anything really harmful. His second Timestop was interrupted easily. I always attack these guys before talking to Adalon, otherwise she teleports the party to them in really awkward formation where everybody gets hit by the wizards initial CC wilting and also usually a squishy character comes under attack by the glabrezu and golems here (Adalon will also steal your xp).
Reporting to Adalon gets Eryx and Randolph level ups, choosing UAI, extra level six slot and Chain Contingency respectively.
Returning to civilization, go on a spending spree buying Ras in Trademeet (thanks Grond for reminding me of that), Helm of Brilliance, Scrolls of BBoD and Chain Contingency from Ribald plus 9 potions of Invulnerability. Scarlet ninja-to from Joluv (won’t be using it offhand though…), 3 potions of storm giant strength from Roger. Also forged Crom Fayer, Gesen Bow, Equalizer, Frost Dart +3 (RR item; adds 1d3 cold damage and has a 15% chance to slow target for one round), Rogues Ward buckler +3 (ditto; +3 save vs death, +15% stealth, Improved Invisibility 3x per day - usable by thieves and bards).
Feeling a little guilty of hoarding Eryx also donates some cash to a temple of Helm.
Party still has some interesting challenges in SoA, Bodhi is no big deal with so many of the party able to protect themselves from level drain but there is still Chosen of Cyric, Twisted Rune and Kangaxx (I usually leave him alone with SCS + no-reload, not worth the risk IMO). Will probably do them in that order.
Current levels:
Eryx, blade 25
Aleks, priest of Lathander 11 -> fighter 19
Randolph, sorcerer 19
Leksa, swashbuckler 10 -> cleric 22
Artemisia, archer 19
Aragrish the Cliched, barbarian 21
Retour en haut
).
) by the time I used all of my PfMW. There was a little bit of panic when I realized that Mantle doesn't work against him. Thorn drunk Oil of Speed and ran around for a round, then cast Stoneskin followed by Summon Planetar and Minor Sequencer. Planetar turned out to be extremely useful and practically 
