I haven't orchestrated a party with Alora yet, but I plan to at some point. I've never used Skie. Having to have Eldoth and then sacrifice for a late game thief is too much.
You only need Eldoth for a little while to recruit Skie. Once you have Skie you can just kill Eldoth off.
I definitely like the shorties: Tiax - amazing character and very powerful. Perfect weapon proficiency allocation with staff and THF'ing to put the staff of striking to good use. Easy enough to put his detect traps to 80 (which is fine for the whole game due tothe abundance of perception potions) and the rest into move silently (combined with shadow armor and stealth boots will give good stealth). His summon is awesome too. Quayle - illusionist/cleric is a very strong class in BG1 and he has the added perk of getting most of the useful necromancy spells in his book and a free invis to make up for his poor wisdom. Alora - I wanted to use her as x4 backstabs, shorty bonuses and the lucky foot makes surely makes her right up there as far as thieves go Skie - ahh, no? What possible reason is there to recruit this character besides flavour?
Alora: First playthrough! Quayle: If the mood strikes me. Skie: If I can find a way to get Eldoth out of the picture...he grates on my nerves. Skie does not. Tiax: Not yet, but on this playthrough, I will!
Actually, when I first got to BG and picked up Quayle and saw all his M/C spells, I wnet out and created a new multiclass M/C CHARNAME . The whole range of spells was intriguing.
Later, I got a bit tired of slow-leveling multiclasses I never played it later than BG1 exp cap, but it was still Quayle that gave me the idea.
One time I was doing a minimal reload run, and both Dynaheir and Xan got chunked. Imoen was staying a straight thief. So, my only convenient replacement for an arcane caster was Quayle. (Dynaheir got chunked at the top of the Iron Throne building.)
I found him to be totally competent at doing his job, and his extra clerical spells were a nice bonus. He had some fun dialogues and lines, too.
As others have noted, you encounter them too late, they're not that good, and you've invested a lot of time tuning the earlier NPCs. On the couple of times that I actually picked one of them up, I've always reverted to an earlier save or just dumped them once I realized how mediocre they were. It's a shame, really, because some of them sound like they would be interesting from a personality point of view (especially Tiax and Alora, whom originally I only knew from the remix tracks, having ignored their characters entirely on my first three runs through the game).
I use Tiax quite often. I find using him as more of a "backup" Thief is best (I usually have Montaron in the party if I'm using Tiax) focusing more on the Stealth skills than open lock/find trap. However, with potions and proper point distribution for his remaining levels he can overcome any lock or trap in the game. His backstabs can be insane, fire points into stealth and use the boots/armor of stealth, Guantlets of Ogre strength or the Strength spell and DUHM combined with the staff of the ram (a weapon he starts proficient in unlike every other thief npc) and you're chunking people left and right.
The addition of Sanctuary trapfinding is also very nice. Nothing like running into a room full of baddies and disabling all the traps nearby while they just stand there watching you do it. His summon ghast ability is also fairly useful, not just for fodder, but for absorbing deadly gaze attacks (basalisks and Aec'letec immediately come to mind) that the Ghast is immune to. Add in all the utility, buffing and debuffing of a cleric and you have what i consider to be the best thief NPC in the game followed closely by montaron (dual shar-teel is also good but I'm not really counting her since she's not technicly a thief).
I find that Tiax is a greatly underated NPC and that Cleric/Thief is a greatly underestimated class.
Comments
Tiax - amazing character and very powerful. Perfect weapon proficiency allocation with staff and THF'ing to put the staff of striking to good use. Easy enough to put his detect traps to 80 (which is fine for the whole game due tothe abundance of perception potions) and the rest into move silently (combined with shadow armor and stealth boots will give good stealth). His summon is awesome too.
Quayle - illusionist/cleric is a very strong class in BG1 and he has the added perk of getting most of the useful necromancy spells in his book and a free invis to make up for his poor wisdom.
Alora - I wanted to use her as x4 backstabs, shorty bonuses and the lucky foot makes surely makes her right up there as far as thieves go
Skie - ahh, no? What possible reason is there to recruit this character besides flavour?
Quayle: If the mood strikes me.
Skie: If I can find a way to get Eldoth out of the picture...he grates on my nerves. Skie does not.
Tiax: Not yet, but on this playthrough, I will!
Later, I got a bit tired of slow-leveling multiclasses I never played it later than BG1 exp cap, but it was still Quayle that gave me the idea.
Eldoth's portrait is awesome, though, so I can forgive you for using it.
Eldoth's and Edwin's portraits are the only base portraits I've ever used.
I found him to be totally competent at doing his job, and his extra clerical spells were a nice bonus. He had some fun dialogues and lines, too.
Yes! Yes! I agree a hundred times over!
The addition of Sanctuary trapfinding is also very nice. Nothing like running into a room full of baddies and disabling all the traps nearby while they just stand there watching you do it. His summon ghast ability is also fairly useful, not just for fodder, but for absorbing deadly gaze attacks (basalisks and Aec'letec immediately come to mind) that the Ghast is immune to. Add in all the utility, buffing and debuffing of a cleric and you have what i consider to be the best thief NPC in the game followed closely by montaron (dual shar-teel is also good but I'm not really counting her since she's not technicly a thief).
I find that Tiax is a greatly underated NPC and that Cleric/Thief is a greatly underestimated class.