Kensai/Thief dual at level 13 in full party?

GamingFreak

Would this still be the better option to go with or should I just dual at 9 if I plan on using a full party? This is with me using True Grandmastery, btw, so the extra half-attack at level 13 is not as necessary.

zur312

13 is really late

Tsyrith

The difference is recovering 160k XP for getting back your level 9 fighter levels, and 880k XP for getting back level 13 fighter levels. 880k XP is a fair chunk of game in a full party. Meanwhile I think your Kensai disadvantages are still in effect even while your Fighter class in inactive, so there's that.

Lord_Tansheron

If ever, 13 is only worth it in small parties or under other extenuating high-XP circumstances (e.g. through mods). You gain comparatively little for a fairly steep XP cost. The extra 1/2 APR will only rarely make a difference, and only on the highest difficulty settings. For 99.9% of cases, dualing at level 9 is the better choice.

Lace

@GamingFreak I did this very dual myself not too long ago, and I found that I had my mage abilities back in a blink using this simple trick. Kick everybody else out of your party, and scribe a bunch of mage scrolls. At the time, I'd only done Aerie and Nalia's quests, so I scribed all the scrolls from there, plus sold all of my extraneous loot and bought every scroll I didn't already have memorized from the scroll guy in Waukeen's Promenade. With just my PC in my party (no other characters), it got me enough Exp to get all the way up to level 10 then and there, and got to enjoy both classes for the majority of the game. Some people consider this cheesy, however.

Honestly, I wonder if the downtime really would've been much longer for my character if I'd stuck it out to level 13 and used the same strategy. I'd have to try on another run, I guess.

If you plan to stick to level 9, make sure you collect enough exp to jump from low level (either level 3 or 4) to level 10 because after that you pick up another proficiency point. If you place it as a pure mage, you'll likely waste it somewhere you don't need, since you can't stack pips as a mage. If you wait until after your fighter class reactivates, you can put that pip anywhere you like, up to grand mastery in your weapon of choice. Very useful.

Dragonspear

@Lace

Did they boost the xp gain from scrolls/locks/traps then for BG2EE. I know that trick worked in BG2, but I also know the seriously nerfed the xp gain from it in BGEE. That said a Thief would have to max I think lock picking first and go to town in the Shadow Thief stronghold iirc for those locks.

Tsyrith

Yep, the XP values for scroll-learning, lock-picking and trap-springing are back. I doubt there's enough traps and locks to make a thief dual as breezy as a mage dual however.

Lace

Dragonspear said:

@Lace

Did they boost the xp gain from scrolls/locks/traps then for BG2EE. I know that trick worked in BG2, but I also know the seriously nerfed the xp gain from it in BGEE. That said a Thief would have to max I think lock picking first and go to town in the Shadow Thief stronghold iirc for those locks.

If I remember correctly, the exp varied between 1000 exp and 5000 exp per scroll depending on spell level, so we're talking about a serious amount of exp gain. I don't remember what it was in vanilla BG2, but I think they're comparable?

EDIT: Whoops, just realized this person is talking about a thief, not a mage. My bad (sorry about that). You could at least pick up half the exp if you did this with a mage NPC, so the strategy's still somewhat viable, however I think I'd go at level 9 then.

Dragonspear

That is exactly what it was in BG2, so yes its back.

GamingFreak

Tsyrith said:

Yep, the XP values for scroll-learning, lock-picking and trap-springing are back. I doubt there's enough traps and locks to make a thief dual as breezy as a mage dual however.

to get 14 levels, definitely not. to get 10 levels? It's a breeze. Anyway, I guess Kensai/Thief at level 9 is gonna have to be the lucky winner.

Lord_Tansheron

It's very easy to regain levels as a 9-dual, even without "creative" use of game mechanics. BG2 xp values are high enough that the downtime is over in a flash. 13 on the other hand will take a while, even maximizing XP gains through heavy metagaming. I used to do it in 4-person parties with 2 mages, but even then it took a while and was quite annoying to deal with - too annoying, in fact, for the meager advantages over a 9-dual.