Avengers in BG2EE

Jagged

How do you guys feel druids and the Avenger in particular hold up into TOB. I'm thinking of making a trilogy run with an Avenger but the class seems pretty weak to me.

How do the various shapeshifting forms rate into late game? That includes the HLA forms and the regular Avenger forms. How are the druid HLAs?

Is it worth it to be an Avenger or is the only worthwhile druid either a multi or dual fighter?

Thanks!

the_spyder

Well, I think that Iron Man could make it, and of course The Hulk would Zerk his way through. Sure Cap might have some troubles, but then if he had Hawkeye and Black Widow at his side, he could make it as well.

Iron Man - Fighter/Wizard
Hulk - Half Orc Barbarian
Cap - Paladin
Hawkeye - Archer
Black Widow - Either Swashie or Assassin
Thor - Either Human Fighter or Battle Cleric

Oh, wait. maybe you were talking about the Druid class 'avengers'? My bad.

Jagged

That is actually a pretty great group. I might make Thor a Fighter/ Priest of Talos except for the whole evil thing.

Now, how about them druid Avengers???

KidCarnival

It's been a very long time, but I did play an Avenger through everything and NWN. Frankly, NWN is where it gets really exciting, but in BG, it's still the most enjoyable druid kit. Web and Spider form simply doesn't get old.

Jagged

Actually my Sword Spider seems to get stuck in my own web. I just tested it in TOB. That is kind of a deal breaker for me.

I'm assuming that is a bug?

Astafas

It's a cool kit with few drawbacks. As a pure druid you'll level up faster and get the really good druid spells faster (thus may use them longer). It's as easy as that.

Southpaw

Don't forget, that Captain America is the original Avenger!

Avenger is a nice Druid kit, really brings the spellcasting back to Druids. Make an Avenger, give him a Shield and choose the classic tricolor as "Colors".
Name "Captain Rogers" is optional, but welcome.

the_spyder

Ok, so I have decided to start a run through IWD with 'The Avengers' as delineated above. The only problem is that of character names.

Tony Stark - Fighter/Wizard
(David) Bruce Banner - Half Orc Barbi (with a curiously high INT)
Steve Rogers - Human Paladin
Natasha Romanov - half-ling Thief or Fighter/thief
Clint Barton - Elven Fighter (archer???)

But I don't remember Thor's secret identity name. And I am not sure if I want him to be a Fighter or a Fighter/Cleric? I am thinking F/C simply because I don't have a Cleric in the group.

A little help here. please?

Skaffen

I am playing an avenger in my current game, mainly because I never had a druid before. A bit as expected: shapeshifting useful esp. in the early game. Spiderform and web is a known issue that will be fixed in next patch I hope (too late for me to make a difference though). Does most of his damage through summonings, the elementals are awesome mid-game and still useful in ToB. I throw in the occasional orb and chain lightning but to be honest I mostly use the normal druid spells. Certainly viable but in the end not much different from stock druid.

KidCarnival

the_spyder said:

Ok, so I have decided to start a run through IWD with 'The Avengers' as delineated above. The only problem is that of character names.

Tony Stark - Fighter/Wizard
(David) Bruce Banner - Half Orc Barbi (with a curiously high INT)
Steve Rogers - Human Paladin
Natasha Romanov - half-ling Thief or Fighter/thief
Clint Barton - Elven Fighter (archer???)

But I don't remember Thor's secret identity name. And I am not sure if I want him to be a Fighter or a Fighter/Cleric? I am thinking F/C simply because I don't have a Cleric in the group.

A little help here. please?

Iron Man would qualify as cleric/self buffer. His suit is basically the technological counterpart to DUHM. Could make Banner a berzerk/mage instead (and roleplay it so he only uses magic when not raging; or even pure mage who relies on Polymorph Self), or simply add Dr. Strange or Scarlet Witch to the mix to have a pure arcane caster. It's not like Marvel was ever very structured with who belongs to what team. Thor would be an asimaar fighter; he's not a healer or buffer.

Scooter

The avenger kit is great, one of my favourites, I'm playing it through ToB now and he's pretty badass, haven't tried the HLA shape shift forms yet though.

GamingFreak

Avenger kit kind of insists on the whole "Druids are casters" logic there, so yeah, Avenger is nice since it gives you more spells, some of which are really good ones.

Blastback

Thor's human avatar is Don Blake. And he's total fighter/cleric. Elemental powers and all that.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Mitchfork

Avengers are almost objectively better than pure-class Druids on paper... their only downsides are max 16 STR and 16 CON on character creation. The 16 CON isn't even a downside at all since that's the ideal value for a Druid, and a pure-class Druid shouldn't be relying on melee damage to be effective anyway. BG2 throws STR-boosting belts at you like candy if you really, really want it, and there's hardly any competition for them.

Still... the extra spells are a mixed bag.

Chromatic Orb can be effective with save debuffs but so can almost any other spell.
Web is actually pretty useful.
Lightning Bolt... it's the closest a Druid gets to a pure damage spell, but I can't use it effectively in most situations because of the bouncing. It also caps out on damage at level 10 which is not ideal.
Improved Invisibility is awesome against anything that doesn't have True Sight.
Chaos is a fine spell, especially combined with saving throw debuffs.
Chain Lightning... seems pretty underwhelming on paper but I confess I've never used it. If a save is made you're looking at 5d6 damage at level 20 (which is probably where it caps out like all the other wizard spells), with the bouncing getting progressively worse...

I think I'd still like a Fighter/Druid better. Always seems like outside of a few specific buffs/debuffs that don't apply to every encounter, divine spellcasters sort of run out of things to do for me in a lot of fights, so I like having them do double-duty as a second class. It also really brings out the power of Iron Skins, one of the best Druid-exclusive spells, when you have a character capable of effective melee combat.

It would be really cool if they made the Avenger more of a Druid/Mage with actual mage spellbook progression and access to limited circles of wizard spells... but to balance that out you'd need a lot more drawbacks than the paltry stat limits that the Avenger gets now. Hard to say what that would look like in play.

nano

Mitchfork said:

I think I'd still like a Fighter/Druid better. Always seems like outside of a few specific buffs/debuffs that don't apply to every encounter, divine spellcasters sort of run out of things to do for me in a lot of fights, so I like having them do double-duty as a second class. It also really brings out the power of Iron Skins, one of the best Druid-exclusive spells, when you have a character capable of effective melee combat.

Fighter/druid is a great class but it's very different from a single classed druid. The multi will have very few high level spells until the very end of the game (like, ToB levels) while a single classed druid can be throwing out Creeping Dooms every fight. The fighter/druid is a fighter first while the avenger is a caster so you should keep that in mind if you're comparing them. They fill different roles despite both having the druid label.

I guess a fighter>druid dual gets the best of both worlds. But fighter HLAs are pretty nice to have if you're going to be fighting most of the time.

The Avenger's shapeshift abilities are cool too.

Anteros

Mitchfork said:

Avengers are almost objectively better than pure-class Druids on paper... their only downsides are max 16 STR and 16 CON on character creation. The 16 CON isn't even a downside at all since that's the ideal value for a Druid, and a pure-class Druid shouldn't be relying on melee damage to be effective anyway. BG2 throws STR-boosting belts at you like candy if you really, really want it, and there's hardly any competition for them.

Still... the extra spells are a mixed bag.

Chromatic Orb can be effective with save debuffs but so can almost any other spell.
Web is actually pretty useful.
Lightning Bolt... it's the closest a Druid gets to a pure damage spell, but I can't use it effectively in most situations because of the bouncing. It also caps out on damage at level 10 which is not ideal.
Improved Invisibility is awesome against anything that doesn't have True Sight.
Chaos is a fine spell, especially combined with saving throw debuffs.
Chain Lightning... seems pretty underwhelming on paper but I confess I've never used it. If a save is made you're looking at 5d6 damage at level 20 (which is probably where it caps out like all the other wizard spells), with the bouncing getting progressively worse...

I think I'd still like a Fighter/Druid better. Always seems like outside of a few specific buffs/debuffs that don't apply to every encounter, divine spellcasters sort of run out of things to do for me in a lot of fights, so I like having them do double-duty as a second class. It also really brings out the power of Iron Skins, one of the best Druid-exclusive spells, when you have a character capable of effective melee combat.

It would be really cool if they made the Avenger more of a Druid/Mage with actual mage spellbook progression and access to limited circles of wizard spells... but to balance that out you'd need a lot more drawbacks than the paltry stat limits that the Avenger gets now. Hard to say what that would look like in play.

Chain Lightning doesn't bounce, it's totally party friendly. It's a pretty nice spell to damage group of enemies without hurting your allies.
I really like Avengers better than pure class druids. All they lack are a spell to shatter mages' defenses and another to shield themselves from enemy spells.

GamingFreak

Anteros said:

Mitchfork said:

Avengers are almost objectively better than pure-class Druids on paper... their only downsides are max 16 STR and 16 CON on character creation. The 16 CON isn't even a downside at all since that's the ideal value for a Druid, and a pure-class Druid shouldn't be relying on melee damage to be effective anyway. BG2 throws STR-boosting belts at you like candy if you really, really want it, and there's hardly any competition for them.

Still... the extra spells are a mixed bag.

Chromatic Orb can be effective with save debuffs but so can almost any other spell.
Web is actually pretty useful.
Lightning Bolt... it's the closest a Druid gets to a pure damage spell, but I can't use it effectively in most situations because of the bouncing. It also caps out on damage at level 10 which is not ideal.
Improved Invisibility is awesome against anything that doesn't have True Sight.
Chaos is a fine spell, especially combined with saving throw debuffs.
Chain Lightning... seems pretty underwhelming on paper but I confess I've never used it. If a save is made you're looking at 5d6 damage at level 20 (which is probably where it caps out like all the other wizard spells), with the bouncing getting progressively worse...

I think I'd still like a Fighter/Druid better. Always seems like outside of a few specific buffs/debuffs that don't apply to every encounter, divine spellcasters sort of run out of things to do for me in a lot of fights, so I like having them do double-duty as a second class. It also really brings out the power of Iron Skins, one of the best Druid-exclusive spells, when you have a character capable of effective melee combat.

It would be really cool if they made the Avenger more of a Druid/Mage with actual mage spellbook progression and access to limited circles of wizard spells... but to balance that out you'd need a lot more drawbacks than the paltry stat limits that the Avenger gets now. Hard to say what that would look like in play.

Chain Lightning doesn't bounce, it's totally party friendly. It's a pretty nice spell to damage group of enemies without hurting your allies.
I really like Avengers better than pure class druids. All they lack are a spell to shatter mages' defenses and another to shield themselves from enemy spells.

They got insect plague and true seeing. The first one doesn't breach defenses but it can keep them from casting again, and the second one will just get rid of their illusions altogether; which is great when fighting those jerks who use Project Image.

meagloth

The avenger made me like Druids