Forgive me, Hexxat

RedWizard

I... I tried, but Jan is just... I can't find it in my heart to kick him out of the group.
If only we could dual class you.

Illustair

She can't be dual classed? She must be non-human then? :-)

Kamigoroshi

Non-human? Nah, Hexxat is just more human than human.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0E0ynyIUsg

Silverstar

I don't get it. You don't feel you can take Hexxat along since you have Jan?

... if so, I still don't get it.

RedWizard

Jan already fills Hexxat's role in my party aka thieving with a few backstabs. Except he's a lot more fun to me with all his awesome banter and also has mage spells with specialist bonus slots to boot.

Schneidend

Jan won't ever have as many Thief points as Hexxat, his backstab multiplier won't be as high for a long time, he's killable whereas Hexxat is immortal, and his stats aren't as good. I'm similarly confused.

RedWizard

Jan barely needs any more thieving points because of all his special gear, and as for Hide and MS he can go invisible and even engage in Mislead cheese. Backstabbing isn't really much fun to me what with every dangerous enemy and their mother starting pre buffed with stoneskin and having contingencies set to trigger stoneskin as soon as their first is breached, at least on SCS.
As for being killable, well, you can easily buff him enough to make him impenetrable. Just Stoneskin and Mirror Image are already more than enough during the beginning of BG2 before he's high level enough to use the better buffs.
Jan's stats are good enough to me for what he is. Hexxat may have 20 STR and DEX but unlike Jan she barely can do anything provided the enemies are not dispelled first.

Schneidend

RedWizard said:

Mislead cheese.

And just like that, your opinion was invalidated.

nano

Yeah, it's hard to outdo Jan. He comes nearly maxed in multiple skills because of his awesome gear. It's kind of crazy.

Still, it's worth picking up Hexxat for a bit just for her Santa sack. She's also bugged in my game and goes invincible a lot... if I let myself abuse that she'd be the best tank in the game

Pantalion

Schneidend said:

RedWizard said:

Mislead cheese.

And just like that, your opinion was invalidated.

Yes, I always ignore entire posts because I disagree with a single sentence,

Hexxat has one attack per round - not optimal for leveraging a high strength - and realistically speaking without micromanagement will get at most one backstab per combat (which doesn't multiply strength damage anyway). She is fragile, and when she dies, she cannot be resurrected without resting.

By the time Hexxat gets an x5 backstab, Jan has level 5 spells, an x4 backstab himself, and with 290 thief skill points he's perfectly capable of covering open locks, trapfinding and detect illusions - and this is without his gear bonuses.

Meanwhile Invisibility replaces hiding entirely, and once they actually fix the spell, Luck is a free floating +10 skill bonus he can grab whenever. He's also not fragile; he's a mage with Stoneskin, Mirror Images and a whole host of crowd control spells.

Incidentally, Jan's Backstab will be at x5 by about a third of the way through SoA, a little over a million exp. We're hardly talking a Sisyphean struggle here.

Schneidend

@Pantalion
Depends on the single sentence.

I guess I'm just not as ga-ga over Mages as some others. Sure, they're powerful, but so much of that power comes from broken mechanics and glitches/cheese that I try to get through as much of the game as possible without relying on wizardry to do it.