what are the basic rules to dualclassing a npc?
For example would Xan be able to dual class to thief with a dex tome?
where can i find the requisites to dual a char?
where can i find the requisites to dual a char?
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Edit: Also you can dual kits, but not dual into one, e.g. a Kensai can dual to Thief, but a Thief or a Bounty Hunter cannot dual to Kensai (but they can dual to Fighter).
Imoen, thief -> mage: popular one, not bad, but BG1 is drowning in good thieves, and you can't dual to a specialist mage
Shar-Teel, fighter -> thief: aka the coolest one. dual at lvl 3, and you'll get one mean backstabbing machine with next to no downtime
Safana, thief -> mage, requires int tome: same as Imoen, except you need to spend your int tome on her
Xzar, necromancer -> cleric, requires wis tome: another popular-ish one, fits him like... well, not at all.
Dynaheir, invoker -> cleric, requires TWO wis tomes: same as the Xzar one, except more convoluted.
Branwen, cleric -> thief, requires dex tome: why, god, why? WHY? why would anyone do this?
In order to get two Wis tomes relatively early you have to travel to Durlag's (the tower itself, not dungeon). But the rest of Durlag's is very difficult to complete even with the party at level 5. So if you want to dual quickly you'll have to break up the Durlag's experience (do above ground early, return later for below ground).
Imoen and Shar-Teel require no tomes at all.
actually the INT tome is in Baldur's Gate North section, still quite late though.
Shar-Teel is by far the most flexible; Fighter supplements Thief very well, at many different levels, and she can fill many different roles. Imoen is by far the most powerful, becoming easily the second-best NPC Mage in the game after Edwin--who can shoot arrows when she's not slinging spells. Her Int score equals all the other Mages in the game with the exception of Edwin, and Thief levels up so fast you could easily get her all the way to 6 while still reaching Mage 9. I like to pick up Shar-Teel to act as my Thief while Imoen's regaining her skills.
The rest aren't really worth considering. Xzar becomes a half-way decent Cleric/Mage, and you can get the WIS tome relatively early, but he loses out on the best Mage spells, and dualling him into a Thief seems... very dumb (there are tons of Thieves in BG1, and Mage does not bring anything especially compelling to the mix that you can't have with a separate caster anyway).
Branwen really should stay a Cleric for the same reason, Dynaheir costs too much to turn into a Cleric at 2 WIS tomes (on top of the problems we already considered with Xzar), and Safana dualled to Mage comes far too late to regain her Thief skills for any significant period of time... and Imoen does it better and faster, anyway.
So as not to derail this thread, I started a separate thread about dual-classing them all in the same game:
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/14105/npc-dual-class-challenge
That will not work.
When you dual, you lose the extra points, i.e. in your example you will lose the 60k and you'll have to regain that XP a second time.
Necromancer/Cleric is a pretty neat choice for a PC through the entire saga, though. The ToB engine limits the number of summoned creatures to five (six? something like that). But with such a PC you could certainly have skeletons on the battlefield just about all the time.
But animate dead is only a 3rd level spell for a cleric.
You could easily dual him at necro 6 (40k xp), and still become 8 cleric (110k, total 150k of 161k). Which would give him 4/3/3 mage and 5/5/4/2 as cleric.
Aka, 2 more animate dead then if he remained a pure mage + the ability to cast haste/bless/chant from sanctuary without breaking the invisibility (that since he's a necromancer can't cast those kinds of spells for arcane) on his army of skeletons, + several other nasty spells, such as doom, command, inflict spells, and the ability to rebuke/command undead.
I played quite a few dual class characters in the original but I almost always started out with a very small party - maybe just PC and Imoen or possible adding one more NPC depending on what class the PC was - then we avoided the main quest and went off exploring to build up levels. Once that was done I used to go to the Pirate cave and attempt to rest grabbing quick experience from the flesh golems that would spawn until we leveled up enough to get the first class back (sadly this has been nerfed in BG:EE) then went off and grabbed my party and carried on.
If you try to play "normally" you usually end up not getting your first class back until pretty late in the game.
Alternately I played a couple characters like a fight/druid dual that stayed a fighter through all of BG1 and dualed in BG2 - once again I would drop the party size down to 2 or 3 once I dualed to ramp up experience until getting the first class back.
The real downside to dual classing is you usually don't have a "complete" character until late in the game and there is often a fairly long time in mid game when you are fairly (or completely) weak and have to let the party more or less "carry you".
just make sure to use a few potions of perception/mind focusing (or better yet: shadowkeeper) until you level him up a few times, because for some messed up reason, he only has points in open locks and *hiding*, despite being archery focused otherwise. (or pick up Safana until he gets his find traps up)
You then are free to use the 4 remaining skills at your leisure :-)
but yeah, using Imoen also works, just mind the dual downtime.
The total XP cap is 600k.
So XP(1st class) + XP(2nd class) cannot go over 600K.
Some recommendations:
Fighter 9 -> Mage 10
Fighter 9 -> Thief 10
Fighter 8 -> Cleric 10
Ranger 8 -> Cleric 10
Shame Fighter cannot dual class to Druid, otherwise Fighter 9 -> Druid 11 would have been possible...
"Xzar is a badass."