The Underdogs - Please help me create my adventuring party
DragonRider
Member Posts: 43
I thought it would be fun to create a party using only the underpowered Kits. I was hoping you fantastic forum folks could assist me in this endeavor. I have never played the below Kits before, and what may appear underpowered to me on paper may not be in actual game play. Here are my initial thoughts:
1. Wizard Slayer
- The inability to use many powerful magic items seems a pretty bad trade for being able to inflict a small spell failure chance when hitting mages and a small amount of magic resistance.
2. Beast Master
- The inability to use metal weapons and armor is a pretty steep penalty. I can see Find Familiar being pretty strong in the early game, but but becomes a major liability later on if not kept in the backpack. In BG:EE, I don't think the summoning spells making up for the weapon and armor restrictions. The Beast Master has to reach the XP cap before getting the first spell, and even then, only 1 spell slot is available.
3. Jester
- At first glance, Confusion Song sounds nice, but enemies get a +2 bonus to their saves to resist it. Plus, even if an enemy fails the save, being confused does not necessarily stop it from attacking your party.
I'm not sure on the others. What other Kits are underpowered compared to the generic class and other kits?
I definitely need a Thief, but all the Kits seem well balanced to me.
A divine caster would be great too. I guess a generic Cleric could technically fit that bill since the Kits get extra abilities with no penalties, but that seems a bit of a stretch to me. What about a Druid Kit?
I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts and suggestions. Thanks in advance.
~Dragonrider
*Corrected the Jester's Confuse Song information. I had erroneously stated that enemies got a +4 bonus on their saves to resist Confuse Song. While this was true in BG2, but is not true in BG:EE. In BG:EE enemies get a +2 bonus to their saves to resist Confuse Song.
1. Wizard Slayer
- The inability to use many powerful magic items seems a pretty bad trade for being able to inflict a small spell failure chance when hitting mages and a small amount of magic resistance.
2. Beast Master
- The inability to use metal weapons and armor is a pretty steep penalty. I can see Find Familiar being pretty strong in the early game, but but becomes a major liability later on if not kept in the backpack. In BG:EE, I don't think the summoning spells making up for the weapon and armor restrictions. The Beast Master has to reach the XP cap before getting the first spell, and even then, only 1 spell slot is available.
3. Jester
- At first glance, Confusion Song sounds nice, but enemies get a +2 bonus to their saves to resist it. Plus, even if an enemy fails the save, being confused does not necessarily stop it from attacking your party.
I'm not sure on the others. What other Kits are underpowered compared to the generic class and other kits?
I definitely need a Thief, but all the Kits seem well balanced to me.
A divine caster would be great too. I guess a generic Cleric could technically fit that bill since the Kits get extra abilities with no penalties, but that seems a bit of a stretch to me. What about a Druid Kit?
I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts and suggestions. Thanks in advance.
~Dragonrider
*Corrected the Jester's Confuse Song information. I had erroneously stated that enemies got a +4 bonus on their saves to resist Confuse Song. While this was true in BG2, but is not true in BG:EE. In BG:EE enemies get a +2 bonus to their saves to resist Confuse Song.
Post edited by DragonRider on
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I was going to create an entire party (using the set up a multiplayer game, create all the characters, then copy the save files to the single player location trick).
@elminster
I'm definitely open to choosing the generic class over a Kit. Why do you think that a regular Bard would be more challenging than a Jester? I would have thought it would be reverse.
I don't have much experience playing Bards. The only one I ever played was a Skald in BG2 many years ago. I remember really enjoying that play through right up until ToB was released and the defining feature of the Kit (enhanced Bardsong) got replaced by a high level ability available to all Bard Kits. Why play a Skald (other than for role playing reasons) when you can play a Blade who can get the same high level ability Bardsong, has full access to the Two-Weapon Style proficiency, AND can perform combat spins?
*Edit - My apologies, Wikkid_Suhn, for initially mispelling your forum handle.
The biggest drawback is - if confused enemies kill each other, you miss out on the XP. So you have to be careful to always kill the higher XP ones yourself.
A vanilla bard would be more challenging.
For a divine caster, definitely druid. The cleric kits all have no drawbacks and the abilities are pretty good (the "weakest" would be neutral/Helm, in my opinion.) and vanilla don't have real weaknesses either.
All druids start out rather weak, but I'd say in the long run, Totemic or vanilla would be the weakest.
From the thieves, depends. If you usually backstab a lot, go with Swashbuckler and completely lose backstabs.
(Aye, I know...just that the poison simulates backstabs a bit ...for a kit that can't figure out what to do when you are stealth-ed and standing behind the target with a blade in your hands)
From what I gather, your lineup should be:
Monk
Druid (vanilla or totemic)
Assassin
Swashbuckler
Bard (vanilla)
Jester
Kick. Ass.
3 males and 3 females
max 2 humans ( 1 of each gender )
1 half elf
the other 3 can be one of any of the other races
1 Assasin
1 Bounty Hunter
1 swashbukler
1 Blade
1 Jester
1 Skald
That should be an interesting playthrough
Wizard Slayer
Beast Master
Vanilla Bard: The jester has a better song, although it doesn't matter once you get Enhanced Bard Song.
Vanilla Thief: Yea, he has plenty of points, but that only matters in the early game. Pretty weak in combat when not backstabbing.
Invoker: 2 opposed schools
Vanilla Druid or Shapeshifter: The shapeshifter is actually very strong early game, but if you're planning to use him primarily as a caster he's actually worse than a regular druid since he wear use armor.
http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/index_soundsets.php
It's packed together with a lot of other soundsets in a "Soul Calibur 3 Voice Pack by Freedan the Eternal", though I regret to inform you that Voldo's is not amongst them. Also, not all of the soundsets have every single sound in place. I also might have rearranged some of the lines of Siegfried's soundset (btw featuring lines spoken by Crispin Freeman, one of the actors who voiced just about everything) to better fit my playstyle, so others may have a rather different experience should they use it.
And, since I've been speaking about evil, there is another excellent soundset there at Sorcerer's Place, or even two of them. Namely Rayne soundset from the original BloodRayne game and from the sequel (voiced by a most remarkable Laura Bailey). Both contain a lot of really nice language (thus those who are legally bound to avoid such language should avoid it) and there is even one epic "WTF?!". Should you ever need a Charname who would use (preferably) Bodhi's paperdoll (that goes well with a portrait I uploaded somewhere else on these forums), be bitchy and have high charisma, these are the very best soundsets for that. Oh how my vampiric Charname Julia enjoyed all the blood-sucking around Forgotten Realms! I even took her through IWD
Wizard Slayer
Beastmaster
Bard
Dark Moon Monk
Druid
Final (Thief?) slot
KidCarnival reminded me about the Dark Moon Monk. From what I have read on the forums, the general take on the kit is that it is underpowered compared to the other Monk kits. MonkLover also brings up a very good point about Monks being difficult to play in BG:EE.
I'm leaning towards Vanilla Druid. I think a Totemic Druid is slightly more powerful than a vanilla Druid because Shapeshifting forms that a vanilla Druid can turn into are nothing special. Summoning spells/abilities have many more uses than wolf and bear form.
mylegbig's suggestion and go with Shapeshifter that remains in human form would definitely make for an underpowered character. Not using certain abilities of a good class/kit to make them weaker is not what imagined for The Underdogs. My vision was to build a team of the least powerful classes/kits and come up with strategies for using what abilities they have to make them successful. Maybe after I finish the game with The Underdogs, I'll put together a team that focuses on class/kit weaknesses. It could be very interesting playing a team like that. Human form only Shapeshifter, melee Archer, ranged Berserker, etc. KidCarnival's and God's fallen Paladin/Ranger idea would work well in a group like that too.
Southpaw's idea about choosing Assassin or Shadowdancer is interesting. In no way are those kits underpowered (in fact in many situations they can be absurdly powerful). However, being the only Thief in the party forces them to spread the few thieving points they get each level around to focus on party success instead of individual power. While this is similar to the above and doesn't exactly fit my vision for The Underdogs, this is the only option I can see of creating a Thief kit Underdog.
What if The Underdogs had to get creative about disarming traps and opening locks? mylegbig's idea of playing an Invoker because of the 2 prohibited schools, could work for this. The Invoker could cover the lockpicking by memorizing a lot of Knock spells. I could also have the Druid and the Bard memorize summoning spells to cover trap disarming. I know that a Sorceror can be very powerful, but what about Dragon Disciple? The one less spell known per level seems a pretty steep price to pay for the other abilities it gets. A Dragon Disciple with Knock and Summoning spells could handle traps and locks...
The spell "Find Traps" only finds traps. It can't disarm them, you still need a thief for that.