When Vengaul shouts "Arrows Away" is he supposed to fire a salvo?

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I just had my monk fight that whelp Callik, and while administering the beat-down, Vengaul was just standing there cheering me on. However, one of this "cheers" was "Don't worry, Vengaul Bloodscalp has got your back. Arrows Away!".
Yet he and the two bodyguards didn't seem to loose any arrows based on the animations, and Callik never took any hits from any of the times he did it. Is this a bug, or is it just something not implemented? I found Calik impossible for my low level monk until I sold practically everything I had for the greater swordsman's belt. A little help would have been appreciated. Now Aribeth gives me a mere 500gp, hardly enough to get some of my items back.

 

I have never seen Vengaul and his bodyguards help out, so I assume they never implemented his intervention. Annoying, as he can be tough enough if you try and take him down!

Callik is definitely one of the tougher Act One bosses. I usually leave him until I'm a high enough level to cope. If this means leaving him to stew in the sewers while I run around the other overland areas getting easy XP for the "fodder", so be it. Try clearing out the Beggar's Nest and Peninsula first, or the "No Man's Land" between the Core and Blacklake. As a monk, you'll find XP rewards are pretty good throughout the chapter, and you'll still get good XP for killing these fodder enemies. Don't overlook the importance of henchmen items, either. From level 6 you can pick these up if you've got the items they want.

Specific tactics that will help you with Callik are to try and take him and his henchmen on one at a time, retreating through the sewer entrance whence you came. You can actually shut the door behind you and split them up as well, even going so far as to run back down the tunnel far enough away as to be able to rest & heal. As always with bosses, try to maximise your AC: potions of Barkskin; rings/cloaks of protection; Boots of the Sun Soul; Improved Robes; maximise your Tumble skil etc.

 

I beat him with a level 4 monk, but I had to hock everything I had in order to afford the Greater Swordsmans belt. That belt rendered me immune to his slashing attacks, although one of his bodyguards did piercing damage. Fortunately the bodyguard was quickly dispatched.

I fear I made a mistake hocking the boots of the sun soul and the robes. I didn't get enough from the fight to buy them back even with Aribeth's reward for the cockatrice feather.

Anyways, my monk is now level 5, and has 8 points in hide/move silently. Would taking the next level in assassin let me do sneak attack damage without worrying about nonfavored class problems? IIRC when I tried it, death attack seems more limited than sneak attack. I'd take a rouge level, but I don't want to worry about XP penalties.

 

XP penalties don't apply to prestige classes, so you can take the Assassin levels without worrying about that.

It's been a while, but I don't really recall any way that death attacks were worse than sneak attacks. It should be better, even, what with the chance of paralysing.

 

IIRC, it didn't seem to work when flanking or if the enemy was paralyzed. It only worked when striking from the shadows in the first round of combat. Maybe I just had bad luck as I don't usually make evil PCs, but that was what I experienced. Of course, that was before I realized I downloaded the wrong patch and updated to 1.69.

 

Death attack has a chance of paralysing the opponent, but there are some requirements for that. One, the enemy must not be in combat mode, so it won't work if they're fighting your henchmen. And two, you must have the initiative (take feats like Improved Initiative and Superior Initiative to help with this).

Well, actually, if two is true one must be true as well so I guess that's a bit redundant, but I hope it's clear this way.

If you're flanking an enemy who is already in combat, your death attacks will still have the same effect as simple sneak attacks.

 

why call it a death attack, if itt only paralyzes?

 

@Rawgrim:

Two reasons -

1. Because a paralysed enemy is open to a coup de grace attack, which is an instant kill
2. To make it easier to differentiate it from a rogue's sneak attack when calculating feat availability etc.

 

How do you do a coup de grace in NWN? It seemed to only do an automatic hit like in the IE games. For that matter, somebody with death attack but not sneak attack doesn't seem to deal the extra sneak damage against a sleeping or paralyzed opponent.

Last time I tried it I took the Drow photograph, made an evil wizard and gave my avatar black skin and white hair. Too bad giving a subrace of Drow or DROW didn't grant me magic resistance, fairy fire, or any other Drow traits. As soon as I was a high enough level, I added one rank of assassin to try to use sneak damage with my crossbow, which I found I was using on 90% of the "effortless" canon fodder.

 

I don't know about coup de grace attacks, but only ever seems to work on very low level opponents for me. You do get free death attacks for the duration of the paralysis, though, which is usually pretty deadly.

Using death attack with a ranged weapon is subject to the same limitations that sneak attack is, i.e. the range in which your attacks still count as a sneak attack is not the same as the attack range of your ranged weapon of choice. You generally need to be standing not too far away from your opponent for your attacks to still count as sneak/death attacks.

Btw, just tested it, and death attacks work fine with a ranged weapon on a paralysed opponent for me.

 

should be called paralyze-attack, or something. if the attack can`t kill you instantly, its not a "death-attack"