Was Aran Linvail's assassination a tough fight?

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It's been at least a year and a half or longer since I've sided with Bodhi, but I recall the fight where you kill Aran Linvail was quite tough.
However, this time he went down about as fast as the mooks you meet on the street.

Is this a result of me reading too many powergaming threads, or was he an easy fight? It's been years since I tried siding with Bodhi, so my memory might be wrong.


For those interested, my party was
Sorceress Lina Inverse
Valygar
Jaheria
Anomen
Jan
Yoshimo

Before opening the door to his room, I had Jaheria summon a fire elemental, then had Lina use a Wand of Monster Summoning to get some Gnoll cannon fodder.

I then had Jan cast Haste, while Jaheria & Anomen cast bless, chant, defensive harmony, and protection from evil 10' radius.
I also had Jan and Lina cast mirror image, but that didn't matter in the end.
As soon as I opened the door, I had Jaheria cast insect plague, Jan cast greater malison, and Lina cast a bhaalspawn horror (so it would come after the malison). Just about everyone was scared by the horror of the bhaalspawn, so I didn't follow up with my planned Chaos spell.
Meanwhile I sent in a gnoll, but the mage didn't cast Death Spell like I expected. However, it did get hit with a fear spell before the insect plague reached the mage. I sent in the rest of the summons and the fire elemental, and they made quick work of everything in there as they were either confused or running around scared, while the mage and priest were rendered impotent by the insect plague.
I didn't even get a chance to line everyone up at the door to fire missile weapons into the frey. I only got two into position as everyone was dead from the buffed gnolls!

I'm just shocked at the effectiveness, since I've considered the gnolls worthless canon fodder at this point in the game, only good for absorbing a death spell or keeping the enemy occupied while I pelt him with missiles & spells. Yes, there was a fire elemental in there that mostly took out aren, but it was the gnolls that killed everyone else and finished him off.

Am I remembering it wrong about Aren being a tough fight? I admit I did do just about all the other quests before reaching this point. Only Jaheria's romance quest and Jan's quest remains, and Dermin just appeared when I left the guild after the pitiful battle.

 

I can't say much about this fight but in general I find that once you get more experienced at BG and you really start trying to play the game with better tactics (or even sometimes with actual strategies) many fights that were hard become easy.

For instance I had a roommate who played BG1 and could not beat a bounty hunter fight. I took the same party (with the same terrible spell selection) and steamrolled it just by summoning a few critters and switching to ranged weapons. The few rounds that the summons distracted the bounty hunters gave us all the time needed to insure victory.

Long story short your skills and strategies have probably just improved and so fights of that sort are no longer hard even if it would be for a newer player.

 

I really never had any issue with this fight or the bhodi one....my best party has been

main toon - Sorcerer
Keldorn (with dex bracers so he actually has defense)
minsc
jaheria
anomen
Imoen/Yoshimo

its been a while, but I would generally summon 2 fire elementals and some skeletons and send them in....after that minsc would have a field day and that would be that

 

I realized that I hadn't cleaned out the mindflayer lair in the sewers using the key I got from slaying Firkraag, and went back to do that. I had more trouble with the last two rooms of the mindflayer lair than I did with anything in the thieves' guild.

Any advice on tactics I could have used there in addition to what's in Dan Simpson's most excellent FAQ?
I know I'll be taking on mindflayers in the underdark and don't recall them being this difficult.

 

That place also has Ulitharids and one or two unique Illithids iirc. Easiest way (from a minimalist point of view) would be to show them someone using Arbane's Sword and have them waste their psionics on him/her. Then have your hasted party members run in and finish them off. Alternatively you could Cloudkill (wand, not the spell) them to death. Lightning wands also work, but are much riskier.

From a more general perspective, just remember that to counter psionics you have the Free Movement and Chaotic Commands spells. Skeleton Warriors and Mordenkainen's Sword are immune to psionics, summon these vs Ilithids. Everything else is standard fare: keep an eye on your party member's int score, kill Illithids one at a time, use chokepoints, have a hasted/protected character run around and hold their attention while you kill them off, lure them into well-placed traps, etc.

 

Somehow they killed the skeleton warriors I summoned with some instant-death effect OTHER than death spell. Then did the same with one of my buffed up party members.

My tactics were to summon some skeleton warriors with two castings of animate dead, then use the wand of cannon fodder summoning. I then buffed everyone with bless, chant, defensive harmony, haste, and protection from evil 10' radius. I also put chaotic commands on the bhaalspawn.

I then opened the door with a stealthed Yoshimo and sent in the cannon fodder one at a time to try to waste their best shots, before sending in the skeleton warriors and having the party use ranged weapons (even the sorceress throwing darts from the back).

They killed the skeleton warriors pretty quickly, and Valygar. Valygar didn't die from HP damage, and I didn't think he was INT drained to death in one or two hits.


Maybe I need to reinstall baldurdash or try the fixpack, since I did have to reinstall the official TOB patch when I switched to XP. I thought backing up my override folder and restoring the contents after reapplying the patch would do the trick.

Note that I refer to cannon fodder because for the first room I got ogres, the second room I got kobolds.

 

I can't memorize that many of them, I think at most I can memorize 4 at this point. Still better than just one.

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It makes me reconsider an idea I had a while ago: Make a 6th level spell called "Chaotic Commands 10' Radius". It is to Chaotic Commands as Protection from Evil 10' Radius is to Protection from Evil.

The only thing is, to be really true to the AD&D system, it should be a quest spell instead of a 6th level spell. However, I'm going with "rule of fun" instead of being a rules lawyer.

 

Fight is still tough, it is just that you improved your skills