Kivan is a flavoursome and useful character, and I like him having him along.
I deliberately try to use a wide range of different NPCs in different runs, to experience the full flavour of the game, but I usually select a team within each run which keeps a balance of skills and have similar alignments. Perhaps surprisingly, my experience has been that there's only occasionally a place for Kivan: the various combinations of paired characters (it doesn't usually suit my roleplay to force them to split) and complementary skills and compatible alignments often mean that Kivan is the guy I'd like to take if there were room for one more in the party, rather than actually making it into the final line-up.
Still, I suppose being a little difficult to fit comfortably into a team is actually quite appropriate for a character who is Good-aligned yet a vengeful loner!
Kivan is a strange character. He is gruff, anti-social, obsessed and vengeful, always serious, and a bit of a racist. He harasses Viconia a lot without provocation and if Viconia dies he is happy and says 'may her soul rot in hell' whereas if Kiv dies Viccy just says 'kivan and I never understood each other' and Viconia is supposed to be the wicked one in this duo.
He has low charisma appropriate to his outlook and manners, yet most other npcs tend to like him and compliment him on his fighting skills. And he has a solid fan base, too. :-)
@ZanathKariashi Shar-Teel has great strength - 18/58 and Dex 17 her con is her Achilles heel at 9
The thing is, neither Shar-Teel's CON of 9 and Kivan's CON of 14 result in any bonuses (or penalties) to HP. Not unless you're going to use the CON tome on Kivan. As far as combat ability goes, I think the only place where Shar-Teel falls short is her weapon proficiencies (I seem to remember them being distributed pretty sub-optimally).
@ZanathKariashi Shar-Teel has great strength - 18/58 and Dex 17 her con is her Achilles heel at 9
The thing is, neither Shar-Teel's CON of 9 and Kivan's CON of 14 result in any bonuses (or penalties) to HP. Not unless you're going to use the CON tome on Kivan. As far as combat ability goes, I think the only place where Shar-Teel falls short is her weapon proficiencies (I seem to remember them being distributed pretty sub-optimally).
Yes, dual-wielding a sword and dagger sounds cool because Artemis Entreri does it, but it's terrible in the game because you'd end up having to split proficiency between two different weapons.
Comments
Shar-Teel has great strength - 18/58 and Dex 17 her con is her Achilles heel at 9
I deliberately try to use a wide range of different NPCs in different runs, to experience the full flavour of the game, but I usually select a team within each run which keeps a balance of skills and have similar alignments. Perhaps surprisingly, my experience has been that there's only occasionally a place for Kivan: the various combinations of paired characters (it doesn't usually suit my roleplay to force them to split) and complementary skills and compatible alignments often mean that Kivan is the guy I'd like to take if there were room for one more in the party, rather than actually making it into the final line-up.
Still, I suppose being a little difficult to fit comfortably into a team is actually quite appropriate for a character who is Good-aligned yet a vengeful loner!
He has low charisma appropriate to his outlook and manners, yet most other npcs tend to like him and compliment him on his fighting skills. And he has a solid fan base, too. :-)