Mage multi-classes

rdarken

I am getting close to winding down my first full playthrough of BG:EE. Tomorrow I'm jumping on a plane, so I want to have a backup character planned in case I finish the game in flight and want to start over. I'm considering playing a mage, which I never do, but not a pure mage.

Obviously, Fighter/Mage is an option. But what about a Cleric/Mage or a Mage/Thief? Are either of those any good or really poor? Cleric/Mage is most intriguing to me at the moment, but it seems a tad wasteful (can't use heavy armor) and hard to roll (would need high int and wis and I would like str of 10+, decent con & dex).

Or should I just roll a Skald instead?

IkMarc

You want a power character or play for fun?

Cleric/Mage is fun.

rdarken

Fun, but I'm really not very good at the game, so I would not make it far at all with a character that's hard to play. Even on easy, I sometimes struggle.

Anton

You may want to check out these:
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/13301/magethief-discussion
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/12958/bard-kit-or-fighterthief

Personally I think that Mage/Thief is more fun to play.
Fighter/Mage is quite easy one.
Cleric/Mage if you want to get all the spells and some combos..

IkMarc

rdarken said:

Fun, but I'm really not very good at the game, so I would not make it far at all with a character that's hard to play. Even on easy, I sometimes struggle.

Well, then start a multiplayer game, make a Cleric/Mage as main character and a Half-Orc fighter as tank for protection. Fun and easy.

If you want to make it even easier, load an endgame character from an old save with items, export him, temporarily import him to your multiplayer game and divide the items in your new party.

rdarken

Thanks, I knew there were threads on this, but searching for fighter/mage didn't turn up anything. I think the "/" breaks it.

Well, it sounds like Cleric/Mage will be quite difficult to play. But now I'm even more torn. I think I want to play Skald, but Fighter/Thief sounds cool, so does Fighter/Mage, so does Fighter/Cleric lol

Though, my first character in BG 2 way back in the day was a Swashbuckler... So maybe a lot of these are just redundant.

Pantalion

My overall favourite is probably the Fighter/Mage/Thief. Spend your points into Trapfinding, Detect Illusions and Set Snares, set your spells into either combat buffs or into replacing thief skills, use Melfs Meteors and backstab from invisibility for massive damage, rock a Sling and Quarterstaff combo (or dual-wield Scimitars) and let the other members in your party specialise all they like to support you.

colonel_burger

Play a solo fighter mage thief. You won't regret it!

Justarius

None of the mage combo's are hard, it just means a different team composition.
Cleric/Mage - The ultimate spellslinging tide turner. Party can & should carry you through standard encounters
Thief/Mage - Thief role covered while also providing spell back up. Melee back stab otherwise hang back
Fighter/Mage - Good ranged support option with missiles & spells; initially weak in melee untill you get some spell/magic item defense.

In all three cases I'd look to have 2x melee tanks. Then the usual, thief (if you aren't one), healer (possibly even if you are one), fill remaining slots with a mix of archers, mages or more melee (with reach weapons).

Non standard combinations can be fun but if you find the game a challenge the tried & true meatshields, thief, healer & DPS is a good approach.

Madhax

Cleric/Mages are just fun. Rolling powergamed stats is quite difficult, but they get an absurd number of spells per day, and operate like a swiss army knife once they have a few levels under their belt. Among other tricks, you can place priest spells into your spell sequencers, creating divine/arcane combos. They're more self-sufficient in BG2, though.

szb

I don't understand why cleric/mage would be so good.
Sure you can cast all spells and that makes it look like you get so much chance to combine them, but in reality you can only cast 1 spell at a time so I don't see how it is better then having lets say a player mage + an npc cleric. That way you can still combine spells and you'll be casting them faster.

Lemernis

If you've never played a Fighter-Mage before, that's not a bad place to begin for a multi-class.

As a Fighter-Mage you're unable to cast while wearing armor other than elven chainmail {and removing armor during combat to cast/re-donning it, etc., would be lame, even though the engine allows it). But the Robe of the Archmagi, other AC reducing items, and the spells Armor and Shield gets AC down into negative territory.

Fighter-Mage gives you several basic combat approaches:

1) Use mostly buffing spells (Armor, Shield, Blur, Reflected Image, Mirror Image, Ghost Armor, Spirit Armor, etc.) and concentrate on melee.

2) Go ranged: cast spells and use the bow. Target enemies first with spells like Blindness, Ray of Enfeeblement (on heavily armored enemies), Hold, Slow, and then use the bow to finish them off.

3) Spellcast on the fly, both at the onset of battle during the midst of it, and melee.


The last one is the most risky and challenging. But of course that also means it is satisfying to master. In the midst of melee you're best off firing spells with a relatively brief casting time (casting time of 1 or 2 is fine, even 3). Surprisingly, your spellcasting will rarely get interrupted.

I always have at least one other mage in the party who Hastes, casts area-of-effect spells such as Sleep, Horror, and Glitterdust, and then also targets individually with Blindness, Ray of Enfeeblement, Hold, and Charm/Domination spells.

You can also have your mages use those crazy overpowered wands in the game (the wand of paralyzation is damn near game-breaking imho).

ZanathKariashi

They aren't really needed though. Arcane magic eliminates any need for divine, especially as a solo. As V put it, "Why would I know how divine spells work?! It's not like it's REAL magic anyway!".

Chaotic commands is the only truly unique effect a cleric gets, and that's only cause the developers were too lazy to add Mind Blank for mages, which does the same thing, except better, but is a higher spell level.

Sequencer abuse, while nice, is hardly a good enough reason to put up with clerics. They give you a better melee presence, but just going F/M would've been MUCH more effective. And contingency abuse is of limited use...while a raise dead contingency works just fine, it still gives you gameover 3 seconds after you revive.

They simply don't add enough to be worth it. And this is coming from someone who doesn't abuse rest and still solos as single class mages just fine.

Oxford_Guy

Lemernis said:

If you've never played a Fighter-Mage before, that's not a bad place to begin for a multi-class. You're unable to cast while wearing armor other than elven chainmail (and removing armor during combat to cast/re-donning it, etc., would be lame, even though the engine allows it).

No it doesn't, unless you mean doing this just before combat starts, after scouting out a likely encounter. Once combat starts you can swap shields and helmets, but not armour.

Lemernis said:

But the Robe of the Archmagi, other AC reducing items, and the spells Armor and Shield gets AC down into negative territory.

Fighter-Mage kind of forces you to choose between a number of approaches:

1) Use mostly buffing spells (Armor, Shield, Blur, Reflected Image, Mirror Image, etc.) and concentrate mostly on melee.

This is my preferred option

Lemernis said:

2) Go ranged: cast spells and use the bow. Target enemies first with spells like Blindness, Ray of Enfeeblement (on heavily armored enemies), Hold, Slow, and then use the bow to finish them off.

3) Spellcast on the fly, both at the onset of battle during the midst of it, and melee.

Lemernis

Oxford_Guy said:

Lemernis said:

If you've never played a Fighter-Mage before, that's not a bad place to begin for a multi-class. You're unable to cast while wearing armor other than elven chainmail (and removing armor during combat to cast/re-donning it, etc., would be lame, even though the engine allows it).

No it doesn't, unless you mean doing this just before combat starts, after scouting out a likely encounter. Once combat starts you can swap shields and helmets, but not armour.

Oops! My bad. Thanks! Wasn't there a time back in the day in the vanilla game when you could? Anyway, that's struckthrough now in original post.

Alsn

I'd like to go with the crowd saying that while cleric/mage is fun and versatile, it's not in any way a "powergamers first choice"(although not nearly the last either). They can be ridiculous at the end of bg2 through robe of vecna, improved alacrity, timestop and adding some choice clerical spells into the mix. But then again, the only reason they become powerful late in bg2 is because the *mage* part of cleric/mage becomes super powerful at that point in bg2. :P

Lemernis

Cleric-mage is just fun because of the enormous spell selection. It's up to your creativity and ingenuity how best to combine them all.

Oxford_Guy

Lemernis said:

Oxford_Guy said:

Lemernis said:

If you've never played a Fighter-Mage before, that's not a bad place to begin for a multi-class. You're unable to cast while wearing armor other than elven chainmail (and removing armor during combat to cast/re-donning it, etc., would be lame, even though the engine allows it).

No it doesn't, unless you mean doing this just before combat starts, after scouting out a likely encounter. Once combat starts you can swap shields and helmets, but not armour.

Oops! My bad. Thanks! Wasn't there a time back in the day in the vanilla game when you could? Anyway, that's struckthrough now in original post.

Yes, in BG1 you could swap armour during battle, but entering your inventory would unpause the game

szb

Alsn said:

I'd like to go with the crowd saying that while cleric/mage is fun and versatile, it's not in any way a "powergamers first choice"(although not nearly the last either). They can be ridiculous at the end of bg2 through robe of vecna, improved alacrity, timestop and adding some choice clerical spells into the mix. But then again, the only reason they become powerful late in bg2 is because the *mage* part of cleric/mage becomes super powerful at that point in bg2. :P

Also, if you go single class mage, you'll still get all the power + you can summon a planetar that can pretty much cast any cleric spells you ever wanted.

Lemernis

I would also highly recommend a half-orc cleric-thief who backstabs with quarterstaves. That's a blast.

leddyhs

I'm playing Enchanter/Cleric right now with Shar-teel as Fighter/Thief. It's a lot of fun.

I chose constitution as my dump stat (7), as I play chaotic evil and I get access to plenty of LMD and VT for high temp hitpoints.

rdarken

Geezzzz, so many great ideas here!

Bercon

In my opinion cleric/mage is waste, because while you get a huge selection of spells, you don't have enough time to cast them. Fighter/mage and thief/mage just give you greater benefit from power gaming perspective.

Oxford_Guy

Fighter/Mage is probably my favourite class and the one I've gone for in my current BGEE playthrough (as an evil elf, dual-wielding long swords...), though I'm tempted to play a good-aligned Skald in my next game for something different.

rdarken

I'm definitely still torn. Fighter/Mage with 2HS, Dual Wielding, or Ranged. Thief/Mage with bow or single weapon. Skald.

Agh.

Rhyme

If you're torn between 2HS, Dual Wielding, or Ranged, then I would point out that two of them go very well with each other, and you'll have exactly the right amount of proficiency points to specialize in both at character creation. Though without armor, I might recommend a nice big shield, especially for its added protection against projectiles.

Nic_Mercy

I always liked the cleric/mage because of the huge variety of situations you could handle with the broad spell selection. A cleric/mage as the main character is the ideal person to carry res spells since anyone else dying isn't a game over. The contingency options are fun and can be taken advantage of as well. For early levels it gives you more to do and the cleric side advances relatively quickly. At later levels when you just have more spells than you can possibly cast in a fight, you can tailor your selection to handle specific situations.

In my case I took many buffing/cleansing type spells on my cleric side and lots of offense on the mage side. The cleric mage as charname also worked out for my ideal party balance. I like having 2 divine and 2 arcane casters in my party. With my main as a cleric/mage that made it simple to have Jaheira and Imoen (after dual class) as my 2nd divine and arcane casters. That made it easy to have npc's of various types in my group without compromising my caster setup and still have npc's in bg1 who'd I take with me in bg2.

One setup I've enjoyed on the original BG series is to have a Cleric/Mage, Jaheira, Khalid, Imoen, Minsc and Dynaheir to finish the game with the cannon party. I usually let Imoen get her dual class for "free" when starting BG2 but have on occasion done it in BG1 when I felt like grinding out the extra xp.

This leads me into BG2 Where my party is my Cleric/Mage, Jaheira, Minsc, Imoen (with Yoshima subbing in while she's away), Keldorn, and a spot to sub npc's in and out for various quest lines and dialogue until I hit ToB when I grab

Sarevok.

Keldorn basically take Khalid's spot and Dynaheir's spot is for my swapper till ToB.