Jaheira or Branwen? Druid or Cleric? Four-member pure class parties, role dichotomies

BelgarathMTH

Hello, friends, I'm currently into running four-member parties in BG, and maybe eventually in Icewind Dale.

The challenge concept is to have four pure-class characters complete the game through ToB. You may have your thief dual or multi to thief-mage, but spells are to be restricted to thief-like spells: magic missile (multi-shot archery), chromatic orb (special attack arrows), invisibility (stealth), flame arrow (archery), improved invisibility, etc. Anything you can imagine to be equivalent with a thief's skills goes, remembering that technology is present in the BG world a la Jan Jansen and traditional gnomishness in general.

Druids are allowed to be fighter-druids, i.e., you may choose between Jaheira and Branwen/Viconia/Anomen for the "healer" spot.

This thread is about the "healer" spot in the classic four-member party. Fighter-druid or cleric? Jaheira or Branwen (or Anomen, or Viconia)?

I think that most people would give a knee-jerk response of "Oh, take the cleric, without hesitation, if it has to be a choice."

But, my recent experiences with early BG2 are causing me to rethink the conventional advice.

Some of the things clerics get that druids don't, are Remove Fear, DuHM, Righteous Magic, Protection from Evil 10', Holy Smite, Flame Strike, Raise Dead, Command, Hold Person, Silence, and Aerial Servant, not to mention Restorations. It's hard to argue that replacing the cleric with a druid or fighter-druid compensates for that kind of power.

But, I am currently playing with a skald-thiefmage-cleric-fighter (any fighter class can fill the role) combo, and, I find that I am missing a whole lot of druid perks.

For one thing, my skald song can replace most of the cleric buffs as long as I sing, in a single casting, especially with Rogue Rebalancing installed.

How many times in the game do you absolutely *have* to have an arcane spell to survive? For those times, I'm finding so far that my skald can cover it. And if not, then the thief "mage" can cover it.

Meanwhile, Jaheira or another druid type can provide me with Insect Plague, Fire Elementals, and .... wait for it... Good Berries. Yes, Good Berries, a spell that is maligned maybe only less frequently than the Infravision spell. I am finding Good Berries to be a *very* useful spell, for top-offs of hp between battles, allowing me to rest less frequently, (which breaks my immersion if I have to do it after every battle), and freeing up first, third, and fourth level spell slots that might have needed to be spent on extra curative magic.

Also, with the fighter-druid, merely having the "fighter" in the job description creates equivalency for a lot of cleric buffs. And, the druid can use darts, daggers, scimitars, and spears. Further, the druid gets fast level progression.

I would be very interested in reviewing some of the arguments that a lot of you expert players and friends can present about exactly why, if it's an either-or, the cleric is so much better than the druid, or the sorcerer is so much better than the mage, or even the bard (with his fast level progression and free lore-based Identify), as the party arcanist.

Remember, the criterion here isn't that you can overpower most battles with your four pure-class party, but rather, that you can *win*, difficult as it may be, in a no- or minimal-reload situation.

Quartz

Stand out from the crowd and go for Druid. Hell, I should try the same thing next time I go for the four-member pure-class party.

SapphireIce101

@Belgarathmth - I'm going to agree with @Quartz and say go Druid.

Pick up Jaheira. If you're bored with Jaheira by the time you get to Cloakwood, you could pick up Faldorn.

Now in BG2, I would suggest trying to get Cernd. He is a decent caster, he can heal just as well as Viconia and Aerie. His only downfall is that he can't resurrect, or use restoration spells. I know you can fix the resurrection problem with Rod of Resurrection. I'm not sure if Cernd can use the scrolls of restoration that are lying about though.

BelgarathMTH

Wow, I had totally forgotten about Faldorn and Cernd when I posted this!

They are certainly good candidates for the "healer" role along side Jaheira, as opposed to the various clerics, and each of them has a lot of plusses to make up for the loss of the "fighter" part of the equation, to wit, Faldorn's special abilities and fast-leveling without multi-class division, and Cernd's greater wolfwere plus devotion of all xp to getting over the level 14 barrier.

Still, since I am very attracted to continuity over the trilogy from BG1 to BG2, Jaheira is my go-to girl for the druid candidate for the "healer" role.

I have the new, excellent Branwen mod installed, making her a tempting candidate representing the cleric choice, and also, I have the Ajantis mod installed, in case I want to go that way over Keldorn for my "fighter" role.

Another thing that fascinates me about this cluster of ideas, is that I could roll Charnames representing any of the four classes, and try those against the whole trilogy, along with various NPC mods, and milking the game for great banters, dialogues, and romances among the "four of us".

I had tried to install and appreciate the Arath mod for a druid candidate, and a gay romance as well, but, the fact that he has no voice actor and no voice set kills that mod character for me. I *need* a good voice-actor in order to have any chance to appreciate the character. So, Arath is not a candidate for me, unfortunately,

Jaheira, Faldorn, and Cernd, on the other hand, in addition to a potential future Charname druid for the role in my ideal four-member party, give me excellent fodder for replays.

BG is the most replay-worthy game I have *ever* experienced. No other game released from 1998-2013 even comes close.

BTW: I have installed the SCS component into my BG:EE game that allows easy separation of NPC pairs, so, I can have Jaheira with or without Khalid as my "fighter" and "healer", respectively, and, I can have Minsc with or without Dynaheir as my "fighter" or "arcanist", respectively.

nano

My knee-jerk response is "take the fighter multi, without hesitation, if it has to be a choice."

You can get Remove Fear through mage spells so it's not too much of a loss there. All the other spells are "nice to have" but not "super important". I do prefer the cleric spells overall, though. Besides the elemental summons and Iron Skin, I don't think my Jaheira uses any of the druid-only ones on a regular basis.

BelgarathMTH

@Nano, those are good points, but, Insect Plague and Fire Elemental are two of the most powerful spells in the game - especially Insect Plague - what's not to like about *100 percent* spell failure, over a huge AoE?

nano

Yeah, Insect Plague is a nice one but I have the SCS component that allows fire shields to block it. It ends up being a bit useless because every mage worth casting it on runs two fire shields behind a wall of spell defenses. But it also gives your own mages a recourse besides running around screaming, so it's not all bad news.

I agree that Fire Elemental is a great summon. That the one I had in mind when I mentioned "elemental summons", though the HLA ones are even better! On the other hand, the Cleric's Animate Dead is pretty sweet as well. They may not have the power of the elemental but their magic resistance is very useful. Both druids and clerics have good summons and I like them about the same.

Dragonspear

I think it might be fun to do something similar but split it up into 2 different parties:

Party 1: Back to Basics
Single Class Fighter, Mage, Thief, Cleric as you said.

Party 2: Back to Nature
Single Class Barbarian or Ranger, Sorcerer, Bard, Druid

Yes you wouldn't have detect traps. Half the challenge would be finding a way around that

BelgarathMTH

@Dragonspear, I think that Bard and Sorcerer in your Party 2 are actually a class duplication, since bards in BG and IWD are actually arcane caster substitutes rather than thief substitutes, notwithstanding the bard's pick pockets and rogue hit dice, Thac0, and level progression.

Now, either Barb/Ranger-Sorcerer-Thief-Druid, or Barb/Ranger-Bard-Thief-Druid, would be interesting candidates for a classical four class mix with a "nature" theme.

You could do the thiefless party you suggest as a very interesting handicapped challenge, but it wouldn't really be a classic four-class deal. The full array of thief abilities - locks, traps, stealth, stealing, and backstabbing - are an integral part of the classic mix, and one of the four party members needs to focus on those skills to fit my ideal of the perfect pure-class quartet.

EDIT: Btw, thinking more about doing BG1 without access to Silence and Hold Person, and BG2 without Protection from Evil 10', or IWD without access to Turn Undead, is making me nervous. I may still come down on the side of cleric>druid, after all.

GamingFreak

In BG1? Clerics will have a much much MUUUUUCH easier time. They can use a sexy +2 Warhammer that is brain-dead easy to get, self-buffs up the ass as early as level 2 on their spell list, and they can summon skeletons for the sake of an undead army of doom to help you take down some of the more annoying boss fights. Druids aren't bad but the lack of self-buffs is annoying and Jaheira has a few annoyances with her that keeps her from being that character you'd want to keep on your team (not to mention she's forcefully tagged with Khalid, which means two characters that need specific equipment to buff them up).

She got better in SoA but yeah go with Branwen or Viconia (Pure Cleric) or Yeslick (Fighter/Cleric) if you really want to meta-game this.

Keep in mind that my first full playthrough of the game was Me (Kensai), Minsc + Dynaheir, Jaheira + Khalid, and Imoen (on BG Tutu); I was able to get through the game, but it was much harder than it needed to be.

Dragonspear

While its true it that bards gain access to the arcane spell casting, you could restrict them spell wise. I actually think considering the part and the lack of some significant early priest spells (especially remove fear), that having a secondary arcane caster would more be balancing it out myself. The bard can also partially help on Knock/Invis duty.

In IWD2 however, I'd prolly go Ranger/Rogue, Druid/Barbarian and Bard/Sorc since they all go together so well.

And yes I was aware of why the classic mix is so good, I just thought I'd throw a natural or untrained spin on it. As much as I want to try a thiefless party (although I'd rather do an arcanistless party first), there are too many traps, especially early in BG1 that I'm afraid would gib me that you really can't avoid.

I also think it would almost certainly rule out Durlag's tower in BGEE.