beholder casting imprisonment

[Morgoth]

I'm playing with SCS and beholders keep casting imprisonment on my ranger/cleric. I have 0 clue on how to counter it. Suggestions?

The fact that the spell is supposed to be countered by freedom, and that I should use it every time I fight a single beholder, makes me kinda panic. 

Anyone has touched imprisonment and made it only temporary? Even for longer time than the other imprisoning spell?

[Daulmakan]

1 hour ago, Morgoth said:

I'm playing with SCS and beholders keep casting imprisonment on my ranger/cleric. I have 0 clue on how to counter it. Suggestions?

The fact that the spell is supposed to be countered by freedom, and that I should use it every time I fight a single beholder, makes me kinda panic. 

Anyone has touched imprisonment and made it only temporary? Even for longer time than the other imprisoning spell?

Try berserker's rage or Spell immunity: abjuration to counter it.

There's a mod component somewhere around that changes Imprisonment to a permanent Maze spell, so you don't get game overed instantly if cast on the PC.

[jmerry]

Elder Orbs have the ability to cast spells, up to 9th level. One of the spell choices for a vanilla Elder Orb is Imprisonment.

Normal beholders, gauths, and even Hive Mothers do not have the ability to cast Imprisonment. Which means that, in the big beholder lairs, there's never more than one or two of them that are capable of the spell, and those are only going to have at most one instance each.

So, then, how to counter that spell? Putting up protections like you would against a normal mage ... not great, because beholders are very good at taking that stuff down. On the flip side, because they have a ton of other stuff they can do, elder orbs are less likely to use Imprisonment at any given moment. Also, it's a melee-range spell, so they can't cast it on you unless you get up in their face first. If your only anti-beholder tactic is to send in one character protected by something like the Shield of Balduran, they'll be trouble. But that shouldn't be your only tactic. There are lots of ways to fight beholders. Maybe you could send in magic-resistant skeletons or bombard them with AoE ranged damage like Cloudkill and Incendiary Cloud. Or protect more people and rush in against smaller groups, trusting you can take them down before they wear through your protections and make it truly dangerous.

[subtledoctor]

Use the Item Revisions boots of Etherealness.

Failing that... don't fight elder orbs? I'm pretty sure they are all optional...

[jmerry]

23 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Failing that... don't fight elder orbs? I'm pretty sure they are all optional...

Let's see, the elder orbs in the game ...

- Underdark beholder lair. One generic, one that drops the eyestalk. Can be skipped if you go for one of the other ritual ingredients.

- Fear trial. You get a choice: go through a no-save fear trap to reach the tear, or fight two beholders and an elder orb to reach it. (Those two beholders are named "Elder Orb", but they don't have the spells.)

- Watcher's Keep final seal level. The final green globe fight is an elder orb, a hive mother, and a death tyrant. Not required to complete the dungeon, because the first green globe is the one you need to progress.

- Abazigal's lair. Fight three elder orbs for the gauth eyestalk, or hire a few low-level adventurers for it.

Yeah, they're all optional.

The "elder orb" in the Planar Sphere that the golem fights is functionally just a beholder that's not even focused on you. The beholder in the Twisted Rune hideout doesn't have spells in vanilla, though the SCS component for that fight upgrades it to an elder orb. And finally, the Unseeing Eye is definitely a spellcasting beholder, though it has a different list of spells and doesn't use the same script. Plus you get the artifact to nearly win the fight in one stroke.

[Morgoth]

On 2/26/2024 at 7:09 PM, Daulmakan said:

Try berserker's rage or Spell immunity: abjuration to counter it.

There's a mod component somewhere around that changes Imprisonment to a permanent Maze spell, so you don't get game overed instantly if cast on the PC.

I don't think I've got enough levels and sadly I'm not playing a berserker, but a ranger :P. I think I should probably regret it.

22 hours ago, jmerry said:

So, then, how to counter that spell? Putting up protections like you would against a normal mage ... not great, because beholders are very good at taking that stuff down. On the flip side, because they have a ton of other stuff they can do, elder orbs are less likely to use Imprisonment at any given moment. Also, it's a melee-range spell, so they can't cast it on you unless you get up in their face first. If your only anti-beholder tactic is to send in one character protected by something like the Shield of Balduran, they'll be trouble. But that shouldn't be your only tactic. There are lots of ways to fight beholders. Maybe you could send in magic-resistant skeletons or bombard them with AoE ranged damage like Cloudkill and Incendiary Cloud. Or protect more people and rush in against smaller groups, trusting you can take them down before they wear through your protections and make it truly dangerous.

The issue if I don't remember wrong is that they use Death spell and are likely to kill your sent in skeletons. But I could remembering wrong

20 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Use the Item Revisions boots of Etherealness.

Failing that... don't fight elder orbs? I'm pretty sure they are all optional...

I wish to install Item revision, but I would kinda rework many items, because it goes too hard on the nerf-hammer.

20 hours ago, jmerry said:

Let's see, the elder orbs in the game ...

- Underdark beholder lair. One generic, one that drops the eyestalk. Can be skipped if you go for one of the other ritual ingredients.

- Fear trial. You get a choice: go through a no-save fear trap to reach the tear, or fight two beholders and an elder orb to reach it. (Those two beholders are named "Elder Orb", but they don't have the spells.)

- Watcher's Keep final seal level. The final green globe fight is an elder orb, a hive mother, and a death tyrant. Not required to complete the dungeon, because the first green globe is the one you need to progress.

- Abazigal's lair. Fight three elder orbs for the gauth eyestalk, or hire a few low-level adventurers for it.

Yeah, they're all optional.

The "elder orb" in the Planar Sphere that the golem fights is functionally just a beholder that's not even focused on you. The beholder in the Twisted Rune hideout doesn't have spells in vanilla, though the SCS component for that fight upgrades it to an elder orb. And finally, the Unseeing Eye is definitely a spellcasting beholder, though it has a different list of spells and doesn't use the same script. Plus you get the artifact to nearly win the fight in one stroke.

Thanks for the explanation

[jmerry]

1 minute ago, Morgoth said:

The issue if I don't remember wrong is that they use Death spell and are likely to kill your sent in skeletons. But I could remembering wrong

Vanilla beholders have exactly one use of Death Spell each, which they will use as soon as they see a summon. It's not something they can spam, so the second wave does the job.

[DavidW]

On 2/26/2024 at 12:04 PM, Morgoth said:

I'm playing with SCS and beholders keep casting imprisonment on my ranger/cleric. I have 0 clue on how to counter it. Suggestions?

Remove your eyes? Only then can you remove the veil of lies and deceit clouding your lives. After that, you can joyfully serve the Elder Orb, and it won't need to imprison you.

[gatperdut]

24 minutes ago, DavidW said:

On 2/26/2024 at 6:04 PM, Morgoth said:

on how to counter it. Suggestions?

Remove your eyes? Only then can you remove the veil of lies and deceit clouding your lives. After that, you can joyfully serve the Elder Orb, and it won't need to imprison you.

Must I be imprisoned at every turn!? You will suffer! You will all suffa! 

[Morgoth]

1 hour ago, DavidW said:

Remove your eyes? Only then can you remove the veil of lies and deceit clouding your lives. After that, you can joyfully serve the Elder Orb, and it won't need to imprison you.

You wouldn't believe it , but if I was Charname I would probably do it.  Only if I was Charname, though.

Edited February 28 by Morgoth

[RoyalProtector]

On 2/26/2024 at 10:35 PM, subtledoctor said:

don't fight elder orbs?

Yes, who likes doing optional stuff in videogames, anyway?

On 2/27/2024 at 7:32 PM, jmerry said:

Vanilla beholders have exactly one use of Death Spell each, which they will use as soon as they see a summon. It's not something they can spam, so the second wave does the job

Ugh, while I understand this, I never liked this. Needing one summoning spell memorized just to be fodder (if summons is your tactic to win, anyway). But I suppose if they cast it mindlessly, you might as well have a cleric of druid cast the lowest of the low, since they have many more spell slots...

Edited March 31 by RoyalProtector