Arrows of Dispelling useless?

Remove all ads!

What's wrong with the arrows of dispelling in this game? It seems they are next to useless, I tried them on enemies, I even tried them on my own team members to dispel bad effects, not a single arrow had any effect. It seems they are the opposite of the arrows in the original Baldur's Gate, where a single arrow would leave a mage buffed with all possible defenses butt naked. So is there any use for them or should I just sell them?

 

I personally never use them, so i'd say just sell them.
No idea why IWD2 handles them so differently though - probably something to do with the 3e ruleset.
Afaik the arrows are not enchanted beyond the dispelling effect - maybe the arrows are simply not hitting, and thus not applying its dispel ?

 

I never seem to use them either, I rarely need to dispell and when I do I usually have a spellcaster handle it.
It just strikes me as odd that nobody has noticed that they don't work in the last 15 years. If they were that bad, somebody would have fixed them to have a higher success rate.

 

I think it's because IWD2 mages are (thankfully) nowhere near as broken defensively as their BG2 counterparts. No Protection form Magical Weapons spam, Improved Invisibility/Spell Immunity: Divination/Glove of Invulnerability tactics, Timestop abuse, spell trigger/contingency abuse, etc.
There was little demand for powerful anti-wizard spells/items.

 

The reason nobody tried them is probably because magical quiver is like lightweight currency.
You sell it. You don't throw cash at an enemy and hope they get inconvenienced.
And from their description, they don't seem enchanted enough to affect any major opponent anyway.

"For the low low price of not nothing, avail yourself of the opportunity to dispel an enemy's defences, pending a special effect trigger chance, an armour check, a possible weapon-enchantment-level-immunity check, a preset/weak spell DC roll and perhaps a spell resistance check. Granted, a caster could do the same for free and with higher success%, not to mention it would face fewer dice rolls, but still... er.. It's an arrow. It must be shot from a bow, right?"

 

Yeah, in BG1 they were powerful. Especially before you can cast level 3 spells.
In BG2 I kept them in reserve for when my dispells failed and I didn't have any more memorized, which happened occasionally due to the way the game scripted uninterruptible defenses (calling them contingencies or triggers, but you only get ONE contingency and ONE spell trigger) for the mages, breaking many AD&D rules that the player had to abide by designed to prevent that very thing. So, I did use them in BG2, but rarely.

In IWD2 I usually did not need dispell or did not need that many memorized so I wind up keeping them in my ammo belt (I use the ease-of-use or G3 tweaks to install ammo belts) "just in case".
I can't recall actually using them.

I don't recall using them in IWd1 either. Are they present?

 

I suppose the arrows suffer of the same issue as most other items allowing for a saving throw: the difficulty class of the roll is just plain awfully low. Considering that Dispel is a third level spell, I'd guess DC 10+3=13.

 

IIRC, Team BG's Infinity Engine Editor Pro (IEEP) doesn't work on IWD2, only BG1, BG2, and IWD.
Is there an editor as easy to use that works with IWD2? I forgot what works with that game.
I was thinking it shouldn't be too hard to make a mod to increase the DC for the arrows to make them useful.
I wonder if I figured out how to do it if I could get the guys at Gibberings3 to include it in the next tweak pack?

 

It might be even lower, if the arrows are bugged like the item create spells.