Bought the game over steam, which classes are mandatory?

raxtoren

So, first of all my first language isnt english (... but Swedish) and I finished Baldurs Gate 2 when I was 11 or 12 and hardly knew any english at all.
So yes, im not claiming Baldurs Gate 2 was an extremly hard game at normal - even a child who just learned English could finish it so - however, last night playing BGEE (im 27 year-old now btw) I got wiped/1 hitted many, many times with my Bard.

So I decied to reroll a Fighter tank, like I was in BG2 and 5 hours later I have yet died.

Anyway, back to topic what classes/character is almost a must or great benefit for a newbie to this game.
So far I have Jaheria,Khalid,Neera?,Raasad and Imoen and my PC is a fighter - mainly specced tank.

Now the only thing I remember from BG2 was that a girl in my class said that you need a healer,thief and tank.
So will Jaheria, as a druid be good enough for healing? I remember using her when I finished BG2 and like her very much. However, I used Aerie(?) in BG2 for healing, a cleric... I think.
So the real question is, obviously I need a thief for locked stuff, but is a cleric needed or can a druid be enough?
And if so, where is one? Havnt found one yet and lack real good healing.


And btw please don't give me that you can solo the game with Kensai/Mage, anyone who plays through a game like BG or Dragon Age with just one character... that doesnt even sound fun.
The whole point is having great characters/party members that fight together in a unit. What I mean is, I dont what character made that is way OP because of flaws in the game mechanic.

raxtoren

oh the game came out 2000, I was obviously 14 then, not 11 or 12.

CaptRory

A balanced party is best. Or at least a mixed party.

I like having lots of magic myself. But here's what you'll need:

One Tank (This is a Fighter type of some sort. Could be a Fighter, Ranger, Paladin, etc. His job is to draw aggro so your squishy party members don't die.)

One Divine (Druid or Cleric. Their job is to provide healing and support so you're not resting for 300 days after each battle. Healing is the least useful thing they can do but they still need to cast healing spells sometimes.)

One Arcane (Mage or Bard. They are there to use Wands, support the party with magic, and sometimes toss out fireballs. Damage is one of the least effective things they can do but sometimes you need to toss out a fireball or machinegun a guy with magic missiles.)

One Rogue (Their most important job is to Detect Traps. Second is Opening Locks. They can also add ranged damage and backstabs. Using the Dagger of Venom they can, with a successful backstab, take a mage right out of the fight.)

With those four roles covered you can take two more NPCs to round things out. I like taking a druid and a cleric and two mages because I like lots of magic.

Wisp

Being a multi-classed druid, Jaheira is a bit light on support magic. However, having her along instead of a cleric is certainly doable. You just won't have an abundance of divine spells available to you. (There is a cleric at the Nashkel Carnival, available for a price, and another up in Peldvale.)

One thing to keep in mind is that archery is very powerful in BG1, not to mention the fact that melee at low levels involves a lot of sudden deaths and going down in 1 or 2 hits. Using ranged weapons and staying mobile is a very effective tactic at low levels (less than level 5, say). Melee starts being more viable at higher levels.

Monks are unquestionably weak in BG1, so if you find you have problems you may wish to replace Rasaad with someone else. I'd go with a second mage (there's one in Nashkel and another inside the Nashkel mines, for instance), since Enchantments are very effective in BG1. But if you are less fond of magic, there's an archer at High Hedge that might serve you well.

CaptRory

The game is pretty forgiving about who you have in those roles so long as someone is doing it. Especially at lower difficulty levels.

Jaheira makes an excellent backup tank and backup divine caster for example. But can function perfectly well as the main character in either of those roles. But her versatility as a Multi-Class Druid/Fighter, in my opinion, means she excels at filling in on the fly wherever you need her.

raxtoren

correct me if im wrong, but I think I had a slingshot on Jaheria and that she could summon animals in Baldurs gate 2?
I have a memory, that her bears saved me many times as off-tanking for a short while.

Thats what I rmeember from her, she was like my archer with slingshot, she could heal/buff and summon animals. I might be a noob who never understood BG2 at age 14 but for me Jaheria saved me soooo many times. But maybe it was because I sucked at the game and at normal you can get away with that,

ZanathKariashi

Technically no class is really required (the game can be soloed as anything in it's core form)....though having a fighter, thief, cleric, and mage certainly makes things much less frustrating.

If you had a MC F/C and T/M, you could get away with 2 characters, without sacrificing anything, which is handy if you find partying with a large group annoying.

In BG1, there's plenty of NPCs to cover whatever you need, no matter what class you decide to play. In BG2...less so...thieves especially are very limited in choices, just 2 that are able to continue progression, while the other 2, 1 is completely useless as a thief, and the other is only somewhat useful, without skill buffing items.

atcDave

It is always most useful to have all four main character types available, they can be combined any number of different ways. Jaheira is an extremely useful character because of her mix of abilities. It is easy to make it through BG with her as your only healer. My preference, when I use her, is to have her as a tank and secondary healer. But she can be an excellent "archer" with her sling too.
For myself, I like having two or three tanks, two healers, two mages and a thief. And the fact that adds up to more than six means one or more characters will be multi or dual class. But I have played with a wide variety of combinations and all the different ways of balancing things is one of the really great things about this game.

raxtoren

Yeah, I try to remember what my party was in BG2... I think it was Me, a fighter tank, Minsc 2h, Jaheria buffer/healer,Aeria/healer and I can't remember the two last characters I used. No really, I cant. Its blank.

Edit, oh now I remember a Wizard named Edwin. so thats 5... maybe Yoshimo or Imoen since they were thiefs...

karl_maulder

Personally i find Khalid terrifically usefull as an archer/tank. Just have him specialize in longbows at level 3! Jaheira is great as a tank/healer like previous posters already said. Imoen is the best thief in the game IMO, but don't feel obligated to have her dualclass.

Playing as a fighter is pure fun in BG, as the powercurve of other classes like the clerics or the mage powers hasn't escalated to bizarre heights(As in BG2). That leaves us to your two other npcs. Neera is a good character, however slightly unpredictable as a wildmage. Rasaad, well as a monk(an inferior class at low levels) with low stats he probably won't help your party much(read nothing ). I would swap him out for either Kivan(fantastic archer), Minsc(good tank/archer) Xan or perhaps Edwin(same guy from BG2).

Don't forget that range is "king" in BG. Melee is mostly, if only viable at higher levels.

raxtoren

thanks for the advices, think I will go with Jaheria,Khalid,Imoen and the rest 2 will probably be a mage and a healer, like Neera and a paladin or cleric!

Its not that I really love Khalid, but I do like Jaheria and so ... yeah... but I also love Minsc - but I can save his accompany for BG2.

Heindrich

raxtoren said:

So, first of all my first language isnt english (... but Swedish) and I finished Baldurs Gate 2 when I was 11 or 12 and hardly knew any english at all.
So yes, im not claiming Baldurs Gate 2 was an extremly hard game at normal - even a child who just learned English could finish it so - however, last night playing BGEE (im 27 year-old now btw) I got wiped/1 hitted many, many times with my Bard.

So I decied to reroll a Fighter tank, like I was in BG2 and 5 hours later I have yet died.

I haven't played BG 2 properly yet, but I imagine BG 1 might actually be harder, cos u start off extremely weak and squishy, especially if u do not roll a really cheesy stat line for your character. Bards and Casters are especially vulnerable at the beginning.

At the start of the game, you should get as many characters equipped with bows/crossbows as possible. They really do keep you alive until your mages and fighters can actually cast spells and fight well in combat.

If you want to make your BG 1 and BG 2 story make sense from a RP perspective, you should recruit Dynaheir and Minsc as your final 2 NPCs. If you just want the most powerful NPCs, you should probably turn evil, recruit Dorn (new to BG 1 EE and has ridiculously good stats), Kagain and Edwin.

raxtoren

Well storywise you could say that after the adventure minsc or for ex jaheria met up with the "hero". So storywise I think it could make sense to skip them and still be faithful to the canon in BG2 , but not let them die though.

Kaltzor

Well, The only thing I think absolutely necessary in the game is a Thief...

But a well balanced party should have atleast 1 warrior class, 1 Thief, 1 mage and 1 divine caster...

Warrior classes are Fighters, Barbarians, Paladins and Rangers just in case clarification is required...

zur312

i would say you need part thief part cleric + mage + melee/archers for power to walk easily everywhere
so almost all npc's are compatible with this
but there are some npc's that are far more powerfull than others like edwin and neera have more firepower than others
coran and montaron are great archer
kagain is great tank
this ranger dude from west of beregost is great archer/fighter too

part thiefs are especially good because pure thiefs are pretty weak but combining fighters strength and specialization + thief skills they became really good characters like coran and montaron

part cleric is good too like jaheira and yesclick they are fighters combined with powerfull spells probably stronger than pure fighter

mages going pure level 2x fast than multiclassing so it is good

pure fighters are never bad they will just destroy everything minor and bigger with little support from mages clerics druids or archers


if i could make a party from the start it would be
fighter/druid or fighter/cleric
strong mage
fighter/thief
add any npc you like

ZanathKariashi

MC only level about 30% slower overall (making them flat out superior to single class characters). Your mage grows in power slower, but also has other abilities that pure mages do not so it's not like it is a penalty and Fighter or Thief/Mages are arguably MUCH MUCH more powerful then a pure mage is, since you're generally only 1-3 levels behind, until very high levels...and anything above 20 is just icing anyway.

zur312

yeah but faster spells(less experience needed) = easier game
so this is trade of do you need another half fighter?

for example
5th level mage need 20k exp for 3rd level spells
multiclassed mage need 40k exp for 3rd level spells (20k*2)
this is much slower

i need to test this multi vs single class because it is probably more efficient actually playing single class because there is no level/experience scalling with party size in BG

ZanathKariashi

Except that the MC can kill stuff more easily without spells (or get a crap ton more options, in case of C/M), while the pure mage is a useless load once their tiny amount of spells are spent. = MUCH easier game.

And at the end of BG1, you end up 9 mage vs 7/7 F/M or 7/8 M/T, or 7/7 cleric/mage. Two almost full classes for the price of 1 full capped class.

zur312

i did not say max level mage was better than max level multiclass

ZanathKariashi

Max level doesn't matter. A MC is better at every stage of the game. It's part of why they dropped it in later editions...the penalty was non-existent, since most people also removed the racial level caps which means eventually the MC would catch up when the single class players capped at 20 or 30, eventually becoming 20/20 or 30/30 respectively.

zur312

it matters and i explained it earlier

and it actually matters in bg2 too when you can have edwin with X spells of level 7 or jan without level 7 spells (7th level is just example)
level 14 mage for 7th level spells
edwin 1 500 000xp
jan 3 000 000xp


not that you need mage in the party to complete the game

raxtoren

What combo is best for off-tank/healing,

Branwen and Raasad or Khalid and Jaheria? cant decied between these.

Moomintroll

I would take Khalid and Jaheira, they can both wear good armour and hit hard, as well as Jaheira's healing. A lot of people like Rasaad, but I don't think he will make the game any easier for you.

zur312

i think most of the players actually don't like rasaad

khalid and jaheira are way more powerfull

Moomintroll

I was trying to be diplomatic!

elminster

raxtoren said:

What combo is best for off-tank/healing,

Branwen and Raasad or Khalid and Jaheria? cant decied between these.

If you go with Rasaad you get a useful belt during his quest line. Honestly that is at least for the moment the only powergaming reason to take him along. You don't need to keep him once you get it either >: )

raxtoren

The only reason for Raasad is that, I havnt done his side-quest, which Is apparently a new area and grant some rewards. without spoiling, if they add him to the sequal well... Khalid you know... in the canon storyline...

Anyway,

What if I have this party:
Me, tank
Khalid offtank
Imoen Thief for traps/lockpick
Jaheria for slingshot archery and some druid healing/buff/debuff
Neera Mage , can always need some spells O_oV

And Raasad!

Or is Branwen, as a Cleric, almost a most for a newcomer to the game? I mean, will I have to rely too much on rest/healpotions otherwise?

Btw Im at the gnoll stronghold and my party is level 3, im doing pretty well ...

zur312

you will do pretty well unless raasad is weak like everyone is saying

raxtoren

Wait, what if I restart and make my own character a cleric? then I dont need a healer since my PC is one. Then I can keep everyone and just skip Branwen.

If so, what weapon should a cleric use? 1h + shield? or 2h hammers?

Moomintroll

You should be fine with just Jaheira.

There is a fighter cleric in the cloakwood mines. If you pick him up, you can ditch khalid and Jaheira and have Rasaad too.

atcDave

raxtoren said:

Wait, what if I restart and make my own character a cleric? then I dont need a healer since my PC is one. Then I can keep everyone and just skip Branwen.

If so, what weapon should a cleric use? 1h + shield? or 2h hammers?

Actually I think that's an excellent option. Although all hammers in BG are one handed. I think quarter staff is the only two handed weapon usable by clerics.