Gnome or Half-Elf Cleric/Mage

Severon

I'm torn between having a Cleric/Mage Half-Elf or a Gnome Cleric/Illusionist. The half-elf is almost inferior in almost every aspect. Gnomes have far better saving throws, plus the additional spell slot which I consider to be critical. However I really dislike the gnome paper doll, the avatar and I much prefer the elven one.
My question is, would you consider it cheating or overpowered if I changed a half-elf to a cleric/specialist mage using shadowkeeper?

Pantalion

I don't consider it cheating or overpowered to add any kit to any multiclass, since in PnP you could apply any kit you wanted. That may not apply to being a specialist mage specifically, but honestly, who cares? You're still gimped compared to a Gnome.

As an alternative, why not Keeper your appearance and paper doll of your Gnome into a Half-Elf? You'll have a more powerful character overall, and you'll still get to look pretty.

Severon

Well it a seems a fair trade off to lose the saving throws. Not just that, but It wouldn't feel right to be classed a gnome but look like a elf. I know, picky :P

jflieder

Nope. My advice: do what you want to do."Playing the game right" is largely relative. If other people don't like it, they do not have to play it that way.

Madhax

Like @jflieder, I'm a big advocate of rule-breaking with Shadowkeeper. It's a single-player game, you aren't hurting any one. If you want to blatantly disregard the rules of race/class combos, multi/dual class restrictions, or stat requirements, make it happen. It's not like BG doesn't already do this with half the NPCs in the game, after all.

ZanathKariashi

Just change the appearance of his paper doll (not his race), and pretend he's using some minor illusion spell to make him look that way (Illusionist after all).

Quartz

gnome gnome gnome gnome gnome gnome gnome

Oxford_Guy

The Gnome paperdoll in BGEE is not nearly as bad as the BG2 one, at least... I haven't checked whether the avatar for female gnomes still has a beard or not, though...

Quartz

Female gnomes are represented in BG:EE. They have no beard, boobs and all. Not sure about female dwarves though.

lunar

Go for half-elf cleric/wild mage! Wild surges happen with cleric spells too! You try to cast a healing spell and a cow lands and chunks your friend! Hillarity ensues!

SCARY_WIZARD

lunar said:

Go for half-elf cleric/wild mage! Wild surges happen with cleric spells too! You try to cast a healing spell and a cow lands and chunks your friend! Hillarity ensues!

This is all that the Tome of Universal Knowledge consists of, written over and over again in every language known in the Planes.

raywind

GNOME youll get 20int 20wis at the end of the game

MurrayConfederacy

@raywind 21wis*, there are 3 wisdom tomes

Gnomes are worse than half-elves as gnomes can't romance!

raywind

20int 20wis because gnome starts at 17wis

badbromance

Random question that is kind of relevent (going to play a gnome cleric/mage). Can Gnomes romance all 3 options in BG2? Not keen on having 2 cleric/mages

P.s Gnome

artificial_sunlight

Romances are overrated, julst like irl :P

No serious, cheat all the way to oblivion and back, I did it always when I didn't like a disision of the game

[Deleted User]

MurrayConfederacy said:

@raywind 21wis*, there are 3 wisdom tomes

Gnomes are worse than half-elves as gnomes can't romance!

They can romance the new NPC's!

elminster

MurrayConfederacy said:

@raywind 21wis*, there are 3 wisdom tomes

Gnomes are worse than half-elves as gnomes can't romance!

male gnomes can romance aerie.

KingGhidorah

badbromance said:

Random question that is kind of relevent (going to play a gnome cleric/mage). Can Gnomes romance all 3 options in BG2? Not keen on having 2 cleric/mages

Gnomes can only romance Aerie in Bg2. I found out the hard way...

EDIT: I should learn to read apparently. *points to Elminsters post*

Severon

ooh. Cleric/Wild Mage, that would be pretty awesome, I didn't know Gnomes couldn't romance. That actually will probably swing in favour of playing an elf as I really don't want to miss out.

[Deleted User]

Severon said:

ooh. Cleric/Wild Mage, that would be pretty awesome, I didn't know Gnomes couldn't romance. That actually will probably swing in favour of playing an elf as I really don't want to miss out.

I'll just point out that if you're planning on romancing one of the new NPC's, they will in fact romance Gnomes. And if you're willing to use Shadowkeeper to add a kit to a multiclass, then it's trivially easy to tweak the variables and romance whoever you want with whatever race you want.

kilroy_was_here

It's one of the options in the BG2 Tweak pack to disable race restrictions on romances if you didn't want to dig through the code yourself.

Severon

Curious, I tried making a quick Human Wild Mage and got to level 2 but it can't dual class? I have the prerequisite stats, is that they can't dual? Doesn't say it can't in the manual.

Cheesebelly

@Severon : I believe they never were able to, along side with Barbarians.

Illustair

Since this is the only Cleric/Mage thread I found in the forum, I might as well ask away. How far behind are them in terms of spellcasting level esp at higher levels?

And for OP, I would pick half-elf just solely for the appearance.

Severon

at the end of BG 1, they'll reach Lv 7/7, meaning 5,4,3,3,2 mage spells if a specialist and 5,3,3,1 priest spells if with a gnome with 17 Wisdom. An additional 4th preist spell slot if with a half-elf.
By the end of ToB, I believe its lv 23 Mage, 30 Cleric. But not too sure

elminster

Severon said:

at the end of BG 1, they'll reach Lv 7/7, meaning 5,4,3,3,2 mage spells if a specialist and 5,3,3,1 priest spells if with a gnome with 17 Wisdom. An additional 4th preist spell slot if with a half-elf.
By the end of ToB, I believe its lv 23 Mage, 30 Cleric. But not too sure

For the end of ToB they would be level 20 as a mage and 25 as a cleric.

Wanderon

Severon said:

Curious, I tried making a quick Human Wild Mage and got to level 2 but it can't dual class? I have the prerequisite stats, is that they can't dual? Doesn't say it can't in the manual.

The only (legit) dual class options available are those supported by multiclasses - if the class combo is not available as a multiclass for any non-human it's not available as a dual class for human.

That said I have seen someone post the stat page from the game with a fighter/wild mage/thief so there must be some way to hack it in.

Corvino

@fredmora generally they're not far behind in BG1 due to the non-linear amount of XP required to level each class. At the end of BG1 they're not far behind a pure caster of either class.

At BG2 XP levels the level progression is more linear so they begin to fall behind more. However at TOB levels you gain less for each level attained, and multiclasses start picking up High Level Abilities quite early.

In summary: they're relatively more powerful casters in BG1, less so for much of SOA and then become more powerful again at TOB levels. They're flexible throughout but due to XP mechanics level fast at low levels and do well once past the SOA cap.

sandmanCCL

Severon said:

Curious, I tried making a quick Human Wild Mage and got to level 2 but it can't dual class? I have the prerequisite stats, is that they can't dual? Doesn't say it can't in the manual.

What exactly are your guy's stats? You need at least 15 int and 17 of whatever the prime requisite is for what you want to dual into (so 17 str for fighter, 17 dex for thief, 17 wis for cleric)

Have never tried to dual-class a wild mage so maybe that one is barred for some reason. I'll have to test it out later. I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be able to, but likely it made it through testing without anyone noticing because generally speaking people dual-class INTO mage rather than out of it.

Illustair

@Corvino
Thanks, that's very informative. I might try half-elf cleric/mage on my next run, then.