Anyone find that some high level abilities aren't really that great. Take whirlwind attack for example, my main character has 4.5 attacks. With improved haste cast, I get 9 attacks, and for a lot longer than 1 round. Whirlwind attack is relitively useless for me. Ok, some abilities like Use Any Item are really usefull, but some are useless.

i don't like whirlwind attack simply because of the THAC0 penalty, but i do use the greater whirlwind attack. (but as with your character, yes it is relativly useless.)

Gotta say I just love the mage and druid high level abilities. Good lord some of those spells are ultra powerfull. Can't wait to test them out in an acutal fight. And, yes, I'm moving along rather slow, but then I got tons of other stuff taking up my time :(

Fighting Fire Giants in the Marching Mountain is WAY easier with some Planetar Backup. :cool:

Uhhh god, don't talk about those gay summoning spells. They game was sooooooo frickin easy with those planetars, devas, and elemental princes you can summon. I stopped using them the game got so boring with them.

Anyways, about high level abilities. I found these extremely useful:

Critical Strike, more damage, instant hit
Hardiness, don't underestimate this, 2 of these and a couple of spirit armors from my ranger made him pretty much invulnerable
Assassination, need i say more? especially with assassins who can have x7 backstab modifiers
Greater whirlwind, bah, my mages can't be bothered with memorizing petty improved hastes and it works well with Gram and the Answerer
Energy Blades, now my spell casters don't have to stand around uselessly

That's pretty much all i used, everything else was either not as useful or too cheap(summon spells)

Besides, the special abilities are fast to cast.

Also by this time your fighters have such insanely low thac0s that a -4 modifier won't make much of a difference.



[This message has been edited by Tyresian (edited June 30, 2001).]

I just got high enough level to give this ability to my swashbuckler tonight, so I haven't played around with it, but "Use any item" seems awsome. My single class SB is now dual-weilding the Crom F. and C.Fury -with thac0 of -4 and -5 respectively, and wearing a helmet! :) (I'm still in Chapter 6, BTW, just killed Bodi) Plus if I wanted, she could use the Paladin only sword (sorry the name eludes me at the moment), not to mention bard only harps and flutes, mage only wands, scolls etc...

I gave my DC fighter/cleric (my other user created character) the summon elemental spell, but haven't used it yet. I'll see if it's as unballanced as you say it is Tyresian.

Where can I find a summary of the high level abilities? I'm quite interested in reading about them.

(We don't get ToB in Sweden til July 18th)

Edited in later:
Thank You, Gunthar! :D

[This message has been edited by Earl Grey (edited July 02, 2001).]

http://gamebanshee.com/baldursgateii/abilities.php

cast timestop, then improved alacrity and you'll take a dragon down :D ;)