What NPC's to pick for 4 man parties.

SionIV

Well i just completed SoA on my trilogy no-reload run and i'm standing at the start of ToB and feeling... I don't know the whole enjoyment of playing kind of gets removed once i reach ToB on my saves. I'll finnish it just so i can add another party to the 'Complete and done' list but i won't do it right now.

I did this game without SCS (Waiting on 25) so it was very easy to the point of boring at some points in the game.

My party was :

CHARNAME - Cavalier
Jaheira - Fighter / druid
Keldorn - Inquisitor
Mazzy - Fighter/Thief (Level1 npc)

I hunted for some equipment early on and felt really lucky so i did the first 2 levels of watchers keep right at the start after getting Mazzy and Keldorn. So i ended up with the gear i would use through the whole of SoA before i even got into chapter 3.

[CHARNAME]
FoA +4
Purifier +4

[Keldorn]
Carsomyr +5

[Mazzy]
Firetooth +4

[Jaheira]
Sling of Everard +5

With having those early game and then getting some good armor most fights were 1.) Buff up 2.) Use Keldorns dispel magic 3.) Send in CHARNAME and Keldorn to kill everything while Mazzy shot down any casters.

Anyway i'm looking at taking through 2-3 more teams from BG1 to ToB with 4 man in each and using NPC's from the game. I enjoyed the dialogues with this team and was going for the good party with 2 paladins, Mazzy and then Jaheira. The reason i picked Jaheira was for the romance and BG2 Tweaks turns her into neutral good.

So i'm looking at some teams now to figure out who i want to take, and i would perhaps like some more banter than last game. As between Keldorn, Mazzy and Jaheira they really didn't have any banter between them.

I got one team down and i know i'll be playing it, just trying to figure out the rest. The only limit is that i would like to romance Viconia and Aerie at some point, and it has to be 4 man size.

[Team Evil]

CHARNAME
Korgan
Edwin
Viconia

This is pretty much the normal evil team, and i don't play evil that much so i'm really going to enjoy myself. I played a cavalier in the paladin playthrough, i think i might play a F/M/T in this one.

The next team i would like to play would be something like.

CHARNAME
Anomen
Aerie

And then i'm not sure who to get for the last spot, and this kind of gets me to my problem.

1.) If you're going to make 2 teams out of these characters, what would they look like? I would like to have the teams very rich on banter. You got Jan who works with everyone, and Cernd who is really boring.

Cernd
Haer'dalis
Minsc
Nalia
Valygar
Jan
Anomen
Aerie

2.) If you're going with alignment and RP flavor, who would you put together?

3.) It doesn't have to be a strong team, i would just like to be able to use everyone on a team and get the most out of the banter.

4.) I would like to keep away from Jaheira, Keldorn and Mazzy as i just ran a team with those. And i never play with Imoen or Yoshimo.

Corvino

Anomen, Aerie, Haer'Dalis will give you the CHARNAME-Aerie-Haer'Dalis love triangle for dialogues, which is quite interesting. You've got every class role covered but thief, as Anomen is a capable tank.

You could either switch H'D to a fighter thief and have CHARNAME as pretty much anything or leave him as a Blade and either go some thief variety for CHARNAME, or go without a thief.

SionIV

I kind of wanted Anomen and Aerie on the same team, but they don't really say anything to eachother, do they?

It's the same with Mazzy and Keldorn. You got a paladin of the order and a halfling that would do anything to be a paladin, and they don't say anything to eachother. When i picked up Valygar she had more conversations 15 minutes with him (Love how she wants him to be her squire) than she had with Keldorn the whole game.

Kilivitz

SionIV said:

I kind of wanted Anomen and Aerie on the same team, but they don't really say anything to eachother, do they?

If Anomen fails his test there's a good chance he'll actually end up attacking Aerie after she says something that triggers his berserk button.

Corvino

Minsc, Aerie & Jan could be another decent combo, mixing the Minsc's new witch dialogues with Jan stealing Boo. Again, you've got all roles nicely covered letting CHARNAME be any class.

Southpaw

Well...depends on, what class will your CHARNAME be and what alignment you'd want to play.
I'll list 4-man parties and you just replace the NPC with the role you don't need, because your CHARNAME will have it.
Some possibilities:

Villainous parties
Korgan/Dorn + Viconia + Edwin + Hexxat (thief)
Korgan/Dorn + Jan + Neera + Viconia

Sort-of-neutrals
Anomen + Haer'dalis + Jan + Jaheira
Anomen + Neera + Yoshimo/Jan + Jaheira

Goodie-goodies
Keldorn + Aerie + Rasaad + Jan/Imoen
Valygar + Mazzy + Anomen + Jan/Imoen/Nalia
Minsc + Jan (for extra goofyness) + Aerie + Rasaad

BelgarathMTH

I'm very attracted to the idea of going through the whole trilogy with four pure classes. Banter is a bonus, but not the end goal, for me.

How many combinations of pure classes are in BG where Charname makes the fourth?

In BG1, there could be

Imoen
Jaheira (or Branwen)
Khalid (or Ajantis)

Imoen
Minsc
Dynaheir

I'm mostly interested in BG1 quartets that can be had from early in the game, so late game additions are out, for my purposes.

Rasaad is useless as a fighter in BG1, and, I think, kind of useless in general as far as fulfilling a pure class role.

Neera is a possibility, though, as well as Dorn for evil quartets.

So, you could have

Neera (or Edwin)
Dorn
Viconia

In BG2, you could have

Anomen (effectively true class cleric, with huge melee bonuses - hard to turn him down if Charname is not a cleric)
Yoshimo (or Hexxat)
Minsc

Anomen
Yoshimo (or Hexxat)
Keldorn

(The lack of pure class thieves in BG2 makes it really hard to make a pure class quartet, unless Charname is the thief. Hexxat could really help with this, so I hope that her alignment winds up being some form of neutral.)

Other ideas for a quartet of pure classes?

(You know what? I think this might be fun in IWD, where I can just create the four pure class toons myself. But, I'd also be interested in feedback on how to do it in BG.)

SionIV

I'm going to have to remake my evil team as i would really like to play a F/M/T but it has been too easy with two arcane casters so i'm going to ditch Edwin.

CHARNAME
Korgan
Viconia
????

Are there any neutral characters that have any banter with Viconia or Korgan?

Valygar?
Cernd?
Haer'dalis?

Corvino

Jan has a fair bit of banter with Korgan, but I'm not sure if Edwin has to be present to trigger some of it. There's a line in a three-sided Korgan/Viconia/Edwin argument that ends with Korgan saying "and somebody kick the Gnome!" which always cracks me up.

Korgan is the only party member who actually appreciates Jan's stories, and despite a popular conception that Korgan has little TOB dialogue he does say a number of things to Jan.

(Conflict of interest note: Jan is my favorite BG2 NPC, and I use him all the bloody time.)