Hi folks,
Before the final showdown in the Hand I was doing a final sweep to make sure i had not missed anything out and i thought "lets take out Orrick and see if he has anything useful".
I buffed up to the max and attacked one of his Gollums. My entire party was nuked on the spot!
Is there anyway to defeat him?

Orrick is needed for the end sequence. So I strongly doubt it.

I´ve tried myself this very same thing in the past.
If anybody(I mean ANYBODY) in the mage tower dies, you´re screwed.
It´s like killing Neero Fuuma in the Dragon´s Eye.
I wonder if there´s any other "have to survive" NPCs in this game.(this could be a different topic,no?) :)

There are plenty of essential NPCs. Try killing Deidre when you first meet her and you'll see.

I wasted Orrick with a quivering punch from an evil high level monk. He is an essential NPC and his death forces a mandatory reload. Your only option is to pickpocket him and see if he has anything useful in his pockets...otherwise, leave the grey mage to his studies.

Scary Finger of Death and mighty Disintegrate spells also work, he is a mage, supposed to have low fortitude saves. Cast it, if you are lucky POOF he is gone...dust.

But if he succeeds his saving throw, you are toast, for Orrick's Soul something is just one nasty auto-party kill and there is no way around it AFAIK. (it does massive damage, and likely bypasses SR. Death Ward does not protect as it kills by massive dmg.)

Even if you do kill him the game will still be over like others mentioned. So don't bother!

I wish game desginers could devise a 'Plan-B' for situations such as this other than:'You have killed a plot critical PC, we are so strictly linear that we can not allow that, reload and don't ever do it again!' :p

I think they should just let you kill them and then get stuck later in the game and be screwed.

Killing Orrick should lead to an alternate ending where you actually defeat Isair and Madae completely instead of having Orrick intervene just before the end.

You should have the latitude to smite all the NPC's without ending the campaign. In RPGs, the more freedom the more better.

You should have the latitude to smite all the NPC's without ending the campaign. In RPGs, the more freedom the more better.I don't agree. The campaign always has an ending; why should it always end satisfactorily for the party no matter what they do? If you kill someone or destroy something that is essential to accomplishing your goal, then your goal should be impossible to accomplish. Unless of course you believe every campaign should be designed such that the party never needs help from anyone or anything which IMO would make for a pretty one-dimensional campaign.

Blackthorne, the campaign you describe is more linear than the one I propose...forcing a party to make nice and cooperate with NPC's is as one-dimensional as it gets. In a D&D game you should be allowed to follow alternate paths to the same ends when it is not completely impractical to do so.

To set up a permanent impasse in the adventure because you decide to whack that wench Deidre, for example, is unreasonable. The party could just as easily buy arrows from the barbarian in the Salty Dog and finish the quest to get arrows to the palisade.

The end goal is to defeat I & M, logically, you can do that with Orrick or without Orrick as your party will be powerful enough to destroy the two of them. The developers should have let the user decide if it is better to get Orrick's help or kill him and go it alone in the last battle - just as they did with Ormis and his gang.

I agree that choices made in the game should not be without consequence. When you choose not to save the villagers from Torak and/or take advantage of Emma Moonblade's weakened state you must pay for your decision in the next area. Every NPC interaction should follow this general pattern and never force a reload or cause an impasse.

Oh, I was talking more in general. I agree that specifically for Orrick it's artificial that he's needed.

I'm not saying that you should have to make nice with every NPC; I'm saying that killing a NPC for no reason other than you want to should not always be OK for the party's goals. I would love to see a game where an indiscriminate killing or destruction would be allowed at the beginning and the player wouldn't find out until the end that that person or thing was necessary to the overall goal and the game ends with an "unsatisfactory" ending.

That's one of the things I like about games that at the end describe in an epilogue what happened to various people/things that the player encountered that changes depending on how the player acted throughout the game. Much more interesting than the same ending no matter what you've done along the way.

I disagree. Crpgs are for entertaining, not for educating the players to act like the developers want them to.
If I reach a dead end which doesn't allow to reach the main goal any more I want to be informed, I'd prefer a "game over" screen over being screwed no matter what I do.
A little change in the epilogue is ok, but not a real punishment.

Who said anything about forcing you to act like the developers want you to? I'm talking about actions and consequences. I find it really lame when no matter what you do everyone acts the same to you, and no matter who you kill or what you destroy the game progresses the same.

But I agree that simply being stuck and unable to progress would probably not be very entertaining, so as I mentioned in the last post, I'd like to see endings for games that are "unsatisfactory" (e.g. the PC doesn't accomplish the major goal and fades into obscurity) if certain things of import are indiscriminately destroyed.

OK, it's rather about educating the players to play like you want them to (not going on a killing spree).
Your "action and consequences" looks like "behave or get punished" to me.

The end is a very important part of the game and getting a "you sucked" ending can be very frustrating, and it's dishonest if the game doesn't show any signs of bad consequences directly (so it can be corrected with a reload) but punishes you 30 hours later at the end and forces you to play the same stuff again (boring, you can only roleplay once unspoiled) or forego the happy ending forever (frustrating).

It's a severe punishment and probably no one likes to get such a sneaky punishment from a game he spent a lot of money and time for.

I didn't say you should be prevented from going on a killing spree. I said indiscriminate killing or destruction of things of import should cause important consequences including being unable to gain a "satisfactory" end.

And I didn't say there should be no sign or that it should be deliberately sneaky. Obviously, killing some random peasant shouldn't directly cause consequences of such severity, but IMO killing important and/or powerful people that are not directly threatening you should always have that possibility (note I'm not saying they all should have dire consequences to the plot, but that the potential should be there).

You are roleplaying a character that has a goal as defined by the campaign; you think the character should be able to kill someone without knowing if they are important to the goal or not and always come out smelling like a rose? IMO, if the character is rash enough to kill someone of import without considering the possibility that they could be useful in achieving the character's goal, then they deserve the "you sucked" ending, because they did.

BTA: "they deserved the 'you sucked' ending, because they did."

Do you really believe that someone can suck at a role playing game? There is no wrong way to roleplay - the only possible way you could suck at a CRPG is to not have fun playing it...and some people have fun by playing chaotic evil characters who kill NPC's on a whim. Many characters which can be generated in IWD2 are completely liable, when roleplayed, to kill NPCs with little to no provocation. The developers should account for differences in gaming style and allow alternate paths to a satisfactory end when an appropriately roleplayed character acts as he should.

If a user wishes to play rash characters who kill NPCs indiscriminately then he should get a satisfactory ending just as you should when you play *correctly* as a completely rational party who doesn't kill a single NPC for fear of killing the wrong one and suffering dire consequences.

Actually, you should define what you consider an "unsatisfactory end". As long as the end scenario is well developed and fits your actions throughout the campaign and doesn't seem to be a punishment for not playing as the developers intended (by not killing essential NPCs, for example), then it would be a good ending IMO.

Multiple satisfactory endings for multiple ways to complete the task at hand is not too much to ask from a CRPG.

I was referring to the character not the player.

And there is a wrong way to roleplay when there is an overarching goal for the campaign. I don't believe the goal should have to be compatible with every possible action.

If a user wishes to play rash characters who kill NPCs indiscriminately then he should get a satisfactory ending just as you should when you play *correctly* as a completely rational party who doesn't kill a single NPC for fear of killing the wrong one and suffering dire consequences.I agree they should get an ending; by unsatisfactory, I meant they did not accomplish the overarching goal of the campaign. Any character that kills indiscriminately will have every hero in the vicinity after them, and should get an ending something like they are captured/killed by a stalking hero after they've depleted their resources from the last difficult fight.