Is there enough equipment to build a party of mages or dual class fighter mages?
FalkonSwiftblade
Member Posts: 51
I've not played the EE yet as I've been holding out for Mac support. I'm just wondering with this version and the new equipment, if there is enough gear I could equip a party of all fighters or mages, etc if I chose to? I got the impression your better off diversifying your party.
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But at the end of the only one of those fighters is going to get to use Axe of the Unyielding or Crom Fayer, and only one of those mages is going to get to use the staff or robe of cheese.
If you built an entire party of mages I would also be concerned about scroll distribution. Several of the games most powerful spells only have 1 or 2 copies.
Scrolls might be the biggest problem. There's probably enough of the important 1st level spells to go around, but second and up you need to plan out who gets what.
That actually sounds like an interesting challenge. Keep us posted!
I played a game in Vanilla with 3 PCs - a conjurer, and elf mage/thief and a gnome cleric/mage and used Edwin, Xzar and Xan and had some fun with it altho as I recall I abandoned the game shortly after the group entered BG City. The gnome and elf very much carried the rest of the party early on but we eventually worked out some interesting tactics (Xzar going melee with the wolf cloak) and I think we probably abused Algernons cloak a bit early on too.
For late-game SoA / all of ToB, a mage-heavy party is a good party.
Six mages won't work at all, simply because you won't have enough scrolls to go around. However, something like two mages, two sorcerers, and two Dragon Disciples might be a cool compromise, since four of the party wouldn't need scrolls. I think if you split the alignments evenly, you'd have enough Archmage robes by the end of the game to equip everybody, provided you have some meta knowledge of their locations.
Six fighters, or six warriors, would be messy. There isn't enough good armor for everyone to get an equal taste. You could supplement your party's strategy and diversity with Stalkers, but that's sort of cheating. If we're talking six fighter-class characters, I suppose two of them could be kensai to alleviate the armor requirement... you can probably get ankheg/full plate for the remaining four.
Six thieves could be interesting. There certainly isn't enough good leather armor for six characters, but you wouldn't be heavily reliant on AC anyway. Coordination of backstabs, traps, poisonings, and arrow volleys would make for sufficiently quick kills to make gear a minor concern. You'd just need to plan out proficiencies to keep them diverse.
But all of that info is really for BG1 as much as it is for BGEE. There aren't so many new items in BGEE as to drastically change whether or not this would work, except for a few new weapons in lesser-used weapon types.
If I was making a multi-player campaign where I generated the whole party...or the Black Pitts...I would do maybe do this:
01. Fighter / Mage / Thief (Elf) - Robe of the Good Arch-Magi (Good Alignment)
++Single Weapon Style
++Long Sword
++Long Bow
Max Find Traps to 100
Put the rest of your thief points in move Silently.
02. Blade (Half-Elf) - Elven Chain-mail (Alignment can be anything)
+Dagger
+Bastard Sword
+++ Dual Wielding
Max Pick Pocket to 100
03. Fighter / Mage / Cleric (Half-Elf) Robe of the Neutral Arch-Magi (Neutral Alignment)
++ Mace
++ Hammer
++ Dual Wielding
04. Dragon Disciple (Elf) Robe of the Evil Arch-Magi (Evil Alignment)
+Single Weapon Style
+Dagger
+Darts
05. Sorcerer (Elf) Robe of the Evil Arch-Magi (Evil Alignment) (Kill Baeloth for his to get a second one)
*Single Weapon Style
*Dagger
*Sling
06. Cleric / Mage (Half-Elf) - Sheild Amulet (Alignment can be anything)
+Staff
+Sling
This way you can wear armor with some of your classes at early levels when you have to...you get all your basic thief skills covered...make everyone memorize Knock once and you'll never have to pick locks...most weapon styles are covered...the Dragon Disciple has more con and a breath attack so you give him/her darts....the Sorcerer stays a little longer range away so you stick with a sling...anyone that's a fighter multi-class can pick up the slack...and the Blade can be a party buffer with bard songs...back up caster...use his/her lore to identify everything...AND pick pockets / use wands.
If you're using normal NPC's...I'd go with this:
Imoen (Dualed to Mage at level 6)
Garrick (Bard) - (Later to be replaced by Baeloth!)
Edwin
Xzar (Dualed to Cleric at level 6)
Safana (Dualed to Mage at level 6)
But this would be kind of an evil party...ish.
Fighter/illusionist charname (tank)
Imoen
Safana
Dynaheir (dualed to cleric like xzar)
Xan
Quayle
With an evil or neutral charname I think it's actually possible to put AC 5 armour as there are 4 neutral archmagi robes (high hedge, ulcaster, shandalar, werewolf island).
The main argument for an evil party is not needing scrolls for Baeloth which is compelling of course but has to be balanced against rep.
Mastery in Longbow at level 3, then dual over. It's not long to hit Mage 4, and then you'll have a very versatile ranged character -- he can throw down a Horror, then pick off the grunts as they run.
Sorcerous Sundries
and buy as many Darts of Stunning as possible.
Give your mages and fighter/mages 18 dex(19 if elves) and specialization in darts and you will destroy anything that stands in your way(except Sarevok and party maybe).
Me likey!
In BG2 there's only one Robe of the Neutral Archmagi located in Saradush (Lazarus Librarus).
But the devs can add another one if they wish.
Simple Robes generally suffice until you get to Ch6 and can get a heap of Elven Chain +1 for those characters you don't have Archmage robes for.
For BG1, I have been playing an all-mage party and it is awesome. There ARE enough Archmage Robes to go around, with a small amount of flexibility (1 Good, 4 Neutral, 2 Evil). Don't cheat and dual characters, play it properly! Mage-blasty fun!
the only problem is that you'll have no healing