Create your main and recruit 5 npcs? Or create more than 1 player and only a couple of npcs fillers?

DeathKnight

What type of player are you? Confess your playstyle, NOW! You create your main char, and recruit 5 other npcs? Possibly changing them along the way? You create ALL of your party yourself in multiplayer, Icewind Dale style? Or you happily stand in between, creating 2-4 players by your own hand, and recruiting only a couple filler npcs, just to fill your party slots?

Emptiness

By "always" I mean "usually". After I finish my current game I'm probably going to make just one main character and aim to get some good interaction with some of the EE NPCs.

Heindrich

I've played 'create your own party' games before too, most notably the Avernum games. But I think BG is 'meant' to be played with NPC companions. In BG 2 they have so much character that I wanna keep all of them! (Well... maybe not the evil ones.)

cervanntes

I've tried creating my own party a couple of times, but never made it far. I just enjoy the interactions with the NPCs too much to pass it up. And frankly, it just makes the game more interesting and atmospheric.

DeathKnight

It's very complicated. I really love what they have done with the npc characters, the backstories, the living personalities, the reactions to your choices and playstyle... But there are many problems. Most of them, have horrible stats. Some make amends with special items or abilities. Others are simply fodder, or obligatory decorative junk, much like Khalid in 1.

You can raise their stats, but is considered a cheat (export-import, tomes). And their purpose and functionality is self-negated this way. Also, their class (class combo), many times, is poorly chosen (bad choice), poorly performed (poor stats in primary stats) and in 2, not changeable (kits and whatnot). Also, in 2, the absence of a *real* thief (progressing at skills) is so evident, it is not even funny (in 2EE, Hexxat somewhat fixed this).

The biggest issue though, are wizard spells. If your main, or secondary *handmade* character is not of the arcane caster variety, you literally waste a fortune, hours of adventuring and exploration to buying and looting rare scrolls, some of them found only once throughout the entire game, because you cannot export or otherwise preserve this character for next playthroughs! And most arcane caster npcs, are specialists, which means they cannot have a complete spellbook!

Some classes, like cleric or fighter, though, have npcs that are arguably better than anything you can create yourself (viconia, sarevok) or even hope to immitate. Most of the classes, on the other hand, lack a good representative, recruitable npc. Or a popular/desired class combo.

The worst issue by far, last but not least, is their weapon specialization. Especially in 2, in which most chars begin at a relatively high level, their weapon proficiencies are scattered meaninglessly or randomly, and you cannot rearrange them as you see fit. VERY, annoying. Your thoughts...?

Kurumi

I love creating characters and to try out a wide variety of classes.. but like DeathKnight already mentioned, I also enjoy the the backstories, the living personalities, the reactions and banters etc. of the included NPCs.. so a mixture of both is always my "solution" to get the "best" of both worlds *^_^* !!

Moczo

In BG2 at least. In the first game it doesn't really matter (unless you mod it of course) but in the second, the characters just have too much... well, character. They add to the immersion, make me care more. It's one of the main reasons I like the second game better than the first. They don't feel like a bunch of sprites on a screen, they feel like my TEAM.

Emptiness

DeathKnight said:

Your thoughts...?

I agree with everything you said. Those are the exact reasons I usually make my own party.

moody_mage

If not doing a solo run I always pick NPCs, however I may respec their starting weapon proficiencies to tailor them to whatever role I want them to fill in the party.

CrevsDaak

Well, I started a Poverty Run with a complete party yesterday, so, well, and I made a run with a M/C and a F/T and no others party members, but then all my runs are complete solos or 1 PC with 5 NPCs.

Fafnir

The only time I created two chars was when I installed Amber and did a double romance run.

Brannak

Originally I created one and played through but as a lot of magic exponents are capped or aligned to one school of practice I then went on to create five and leave existing slot for npcs. Wizard, dwarf (fighter), thief (or thief & bard half elf), fighter and cleric allowed for top level progression as well as questing ( keeping all neutral or neutral/good) ..... Only prob is game can crash alot

Archaos

There are some class combos that you aren't going to find with the NPCs.

For example: Barbarian, Kensai, Shadowdancer, Cleric of Talos, Dark Moon Monk, Archer, Totemic Druid.
None of those is available for any NPCs.

I really want to make a playthrough with a unique combination of characters and see how it goes.

OR a combination of both worlds, it to simply change the classes of the NPCs with EEKeeper or some other mod to the classes you like.

For example:
Minsc as Barbarian
Jaheira/Cernd as Totemic Druid
Imoen/Hexxat as Shadowdancer
Valygar/Haer'Dalis as Kensai
Viconia as Dark Moon Monk (Shar and all) only problem is the animations
Nalia as Sorcerer/Dragon Disciple (very fitting to her)
Fallen Anomen as Priest of Talos