Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The fight to protect Isobel is badly done

In the fight to protect Isobel she doesn't even count as your ally.

So number one, my fireball can't avoid her with Sculpt Spell, despite my clear interest in doing so.

Number two, she will calls out my rogue's current location to the enemies, stopping him from hiding.

And number three, she only uses mage armor after all the active threats I.E. the nearby enemies who want to pummel her, are all dead, when that's the first thing she should do in the fight.

I had the same problem with Mayrina, the victim of the hag, "Auntie Ethel".

She happily reveals you to the hag when you try to surprise the later.

I will say it's too difficult in general, considering the massive consequences for failing.

But there are tricks to make it easier, like casting Warding Bond on her before talking to her.

You can just skip it by never talking to her. No bad consequences.

This is an RPG game, part of the RP part is cutscenes and dialogue. Metagaming like that or cutting dialogue/cutscenes to get surprise/ambush advantage is not everyone's cup of tea, for most it's degenerate gameplay.

OMG yes, that fight is just - bad - on so many levels.

1) You can't improve your reputation with her by any means prior to the fight - like jumping into a trade window and giving her gold to make her "green" so AOE spells won't hit her.
2) You can't cast Feign Death on her because she isn't an ally.
3) You can cast Sanctuary on her before and during the fight but she will immediately break it and then you can't cast it again for a round. Also, meta knowledge, and why doesn't she cast this on herself anyway? She is a cleric.
2) Calling her AI imbecilic would be giving it too much credit. She immediately runs away when she is surrounded without disengaging so she triggers ALL the opportunity attacks - which usually kills her since she is wearing pajamas.
3) You can lose the fight without taking any actions on a bad initiative dice roll and the consequences are severe.
4) The only solution I have seen is to take all the boxes on the balcony and stack them against the doors outside the room to prevent mobs from coming those directions. However, I hate this solution because it requires meta-knowledge of the fight - which isn't good design.

The simplest solution would be to mark her as an ally so you can better protect her.

After the first time the fight isn't too difficult unless the initiative really goes against you.

Concentrate on Marcus and heal Isobel as required. The horror things aren't that tough and don't do big damage but they can clutter up the place. You can cast Sanctuary and Invisibility on her to buy some time but as has been said she will break them by attacking.

Surround her completely with your group and have 2 hard hitting martials and if you have SH cast Spirit Guardians then Spiritual Weapon close to your pack hemming in Isobel then pound Marcus.

Spirit Guardians will damage her if she runs into it - which she totally will.

Marcus will be dead 2nd round if not 1st - at least he has been for me

Huh, spirit guardians (at least the radiant damage ones) don't damage her?

Like I don't understand what is your problem during that fight. Yes aoe spells are off the table, unless they're party/npc friendly aoe spells like spirit guardians.
With the right preparations it was super easy even on tactician. Have bloosthirst elixir up on your highest heavy hitter. Just pound on Marcus and try to get rid off him asap like the others suggested. If anything, Jaheira is more of a problem during that fight than Isobel being slightly suicidal. Like Jaheira WILL destroy her own harpers with ice stroms given enough time lol.

OP/Blackheifer criticisms are fair.

During the dialogue when Marcus reveals his intent, you do have time to reposition companions, go turn based, repick spells, and cast short term buffs. In this way you can have multiple Sanctuaries prepared and up on Isobel already.

Without a cleric/devotion paladin, you might be able to use Invisibility?

But yeah, she's not an ally (fair) which has all kinds of tactical implications. And her combat AI is... inexperienced.

I've seen her go down to two flying ghouls; one paralyzes and the second auto-crits. With her AI as is, it's possible she breaks Sanctuary/Invisibility and then gets ganked. I suppose a blocking wall of crates is the best answer for this.

1. Sanctuary her.
2. Kill Marcus as fast as you can, you usually can if you have 1 fighter.
3. Shart can cast turn undead, making the flying eejits flee.

It's quite simple really.

so long as i have four in the room marcus dies. I have never had her die only once get captured because I put people outside the room so Marcus could carry her away.

Her AI never gets to fight much and she does heal herself.

lol WRONG, it's degenerate game-design that allows this. Accusing plays of developers fuck-ups is ridiculous.
And no, in this concrete case you are not even missing on dialogue, as you can have it AFTER freeing asimaar. Do your math, pal.

I played this initially on my normal run, went fine, then on 2nd run through game, on Tactician this time, it was going OK, but Gale dropped a fireball near her - not realizing she would be affected - since Gale can sculpt evocation spells and this should allow you to select who is excluded - but clearly that is not implemented correctly. She was immediately unconscious *boom*, end of fight (that I had almost won)...annoying. I was going to redo it, but was curious to see how it panned out with her being kidnapped, so just carried on from that point. Everyone at the Inn died and turned undead *everyone* including Dammon, so no more fixes for Karlach's heart. Afte rthe fight inside, I then had to deal with all the former harpers etc outside too. That only left Jaheira to help when I attacked Ketheric, which was quite a different experience.

Anyway, since you are protecting Isobel, it makes sense that you should be able to apply any boost you do to allies. And sculpt spell should work in this case. This seems more like an oversight of the devs (one of many, to add to their list -esp around spells/rules implementations). They should really have marked her as an ally...

She even puts a protective blessing on the party beforehand. So yeah, I think she should be marked green ally. Although now that I think of it, we've had yellow-marked allies before (gnomes).

This said, I do like the change of pace with this encounter. For once the enemy comes to the party, not the other way round. And there is wiggle room for maneuvering during late dialogue.

Overall, I'm inclined to be satisfied with this encounter as is. Yes, even with clever mitigation, you can still get smacked by the whim of the RNG - with big repercussions and high emotion!

But come on, this is Kethric and Balthazar's doing, and they're not chumps. (Kethric's my favourite bad guy btw.) Them pulling off a devastating attack sets the scene.

If anything, I'd like a second attempt from Z'rell if Marcus fails. But I guess by then moving the amassed army onto Baldur's Gate is priority #1.

I agree that it is not the best designed encounter in the game and it will catch people offguard. But I actually like it for several reasons:

- Failing acutally has consequence and you are rewarded by an amazing cut scene for failing. So I encourage people not to win and look at the next point.

- Let's face it, save scumming IS a core mechanic of the game and you miss amazing content, if you are not willing to lose from time to time. So enjoy the ride and try again (or actually live with the consequence of failing, you can still beat the game).

- The encounter kinda highlights, that your enemies are no pushovers, they try to exploit weaknesses and have personal reasons for doing stuff. That encounter is crucial to the overall story.

- The encounter in itself is not very difficult, I did it first try on tactician, had more problems on later tries because the AI sometimes does really stupid stuff and dice rolls were against me.

A general tip: Most encounters really favor single target burst damage and not AOE, there are notable exceptions, but these are rare. If you keep that in mind an bring e.g. a paladin of any flavor, Lae'zel as a pure fighter, and either Karlach or Astarion, you will breeze through most stuff. If you respec Shadowheart into a Tempest Sorcerer she can also do insane burst damage.