I'd rather not think about the novels. Minsc supposedly has long read hair!
I'm not just considering what classes make sense in the story. In fact, one could argue for most of them (Barbarian's still a stretch, though…). I'm talking about the whole narrative of Baldur's Gate.
Considering story, there are a few a main points that I feel fit better in how the game/games is/are written:
1 - Male protagonist.
2- Jaheira and Minsc.
3 - Aerie
Yep, this is the canon BG2 party as far as I am concerned. 6th slot goes to Sarevok.
Canon party: 1. Imoen (obviously) 2. Jaheira (with you from the beginning) 3. Minsc (with you from the beginning) 4. Jan Jansen (a book/movie of BG needs Jan Jansen) 5. Rotating in SoA depending on the quests and meeting people. Sarevok in ToB
Main character human ( for the reasons explained in some of the above posts). Fighter dual classed to a casting class after Irenicus dungeon as your powers awaken with all of Irenicus tampering. Could work with cleric or wizard/sorc both.
@booinyoureyes Yeah I intend to dual-class my Kensai to Mage at the very beginning of SoA too for the same reason, even though I know lv6-8 isn't ideal for dual-classing. The physical injuries caused by Irenicus is also a handy explanation for why he loses his Kensai skills.
I've watched an LP with Jan in it... he just seems to be comic relief. Aerie has got to be the closest to canon who didn't start in the dungeon.
A dual class canon also makes a fighter/fighter and caster/caster final fights which I consider fitting. Aerie is ok, and has the whole Minsc redemption and witch status side story in her favour. However, two romanceable characters is a clash I would avoid in a canon party.
Jan Jansen is the comic relief, true, but a canon without him is just going to be so much more boring!!
I've always imagined Gorion's ward as a mage, since it makes sense for Gorion to teach his foster child some basics. While sorcerer might make a sense for CHARNAME, at least considering some facts, I would rather see and like a protagonist that is acquiring his/her skills throught study and hard work, instead of natural talent. So, mage over sorceror.
Mage? Wild Mage? Specialst mage? I really don't know.
About gender, it doesn't matter for me in the long run. I can relate more to male protagonist, but then again, seeing female protagonists is always cool, even cooler than males.
Allingment? Probably good, although I'm not sure about lawful and chaotic aspects of it.
I'd probably have CHARNAME start off as neutral, due to Gorion's Harper allegiances having led him (or her, it's fairly irrelevant, but let's say it's a male protagonist for now) to seek a balance. Leaving Candlekeep, he's essentially a blank slate that is influenced by the harshness of the world around him. Sorceror would incorporate both the "innate power" thing and Gorion's magely influence.
I would write a novel from the perspective of CHARNAME gradually being turned towards evil by his growing bloodlust stemming from the battles with Sarevok and Irenicus, only to repent and save the world thanks to the goodness of Imoen. Cheesy I know, but I think the image of CHARNAME summoning huge elementals to royally mess up Faerun as Immy pleads for sanity is pure Hollywood
since imoen is human, female, neutral good and thief/mage i'd say that the series' protagonist needs to be something different from that. i'd make him a male, lawful evil gnome fighter in the books.
Jaheira isn't suitable cos of the very recently dead husband thing.
Hey now, since when was there an arbitrary "you can't be close to anyone for X days after the death of your spouse"? Charname is about the closest thing to a family she has left, and she isn't exactly hopping in to the sack with you. Most of her romance talks are about her reminiscing and your travels together and dealing with the nature of your heritage. I find that more believable than flirty elf or needy elf.
It's not days, but... she is sleeping with the Bhaalspawn within maybe two months of finding the corpse of her tortured husband- a Bhaalspawn she is supposed to be a guardian of. Depending on how experienced you are at the game, it can easily be within one month.
To me, that's squicky. I love Jaheira, but if I take her in to a party with a male, I brush her off ASAP.
...Still like the protagonist being a gal, but, yeah, bias.
She says she's more your companion that guardian, and they live the tough life of adventurers. Tomorrow, you may get eaten by a dragon, pulped by am ogre, turned in to a vampire, etc. Better to live it up while you can.
Of course, when you get in to Canon discussions, everyone has their preferred story, and it's really only what is referenced elsewhere that gives a good indication of what actually happened. Its a good thing BG isn't referenced anywhere else and we can all think what we like about the matter.
Also, side note here, anyone else like to think that Jaheira may have been playing Charname, since maybe you told her to bugger off in BG1? Like she sees your memory is fuzzy and says "oh, yes, were totally friends and I'm not keeping an eye on you for the harpers in case you go bad. Nope, guardian and companions we are."?
Jaheira isn't suitable cos of the very recently dead husband thing.
Hey now, since when was there an arbitrary "you can't be close to anyone for X days after the death of your spouse"? Charname is about the closest thing to a family she has left, and she isn't exactly hopping in to the sack with you. Most of her romance talks are about her reminiscing and your travels together and dealing with the nature of your heritage. I find that more believable than flirty elf or needy elf.
@Bigfish What can I say, I'm a conservative fella. :P
To be fair, I roleplay my Charname to be around 18 years old, and I treated Jaheira and Khalid, but especially Jaheira (since Khalid is not very assertive at all) as a mentor/guardian figure following Gorion's death.
Having a weak Charname (non-min/max'd ability stats) also means that in the early game, he really was relying on the protection of others to stay alive, which further reinforced the mentor/guardianship relationship. In fact for all of BG 1, I only considered Imoen to be Charname's peer, and everyone else was an elder/protector/guardian of some sort. In fact, the killing blow on Sarevok was struck by Dynaheir with a Magic Missile, when Charname was stunned/disabled (maybe Webbed) and on the verge of being chunked by Sarevok.
I know that the age imbalance is an issue with Aerie too, since she's an elf, but I either ignore that, since Aerie's personality is quite immature anyway, or I imagine that elves mature much slower (which I think is lore-correct), so she's still a teenager in elf terms.
On the other hand, Jaheira is clearly much more experienced than a 18 year old boy/half-elf only a few months into his adventuring career.
Actually, iirc, Jaheira is basically not much older than CHARNAME, but her storyline was always a bit messed up did to Bioware making their timeline wonky and not aligning too well with the official one. I see her impression of bring mire experienced more as an attitude she wants to give off.
If you do the fighter quests or the bard quests and then jaheira all the way to her pin in chapter 2-3 then hit the under dark, you can be like 4-6 months in before she sleeps with you though, which is still short but I guess if I died I'd be happy my wife found someone to help her through...
Yeah, I don't think the issue is Khalid. Khalid, despite people's opinion on his morale failures and a horrible novel we're pretending was never written, was a genuinely good guy. Jaheira may be having bad dreams about him, but I certainly don't think they were sent by Khalid. I think he'd be happy Jaheira moved on.
But for me, she moved on too fast to a child that she was supposed to be the guardian of. How old Jaheira is is one of those things everyone has their own opinion on, but I always thought she was in her 40's or so (not too old, for a half-elf). CHARNAME, no matter what their race, is 20. If you assume Jaheira is younger (only 30 or so), then the relationship becomes a lot less 'squicky' in my eyes, but... I still don't like her moving on so quick. No matter what, though, her age is never referenced anywhere, so it's up to you to decide how old she is.
Viconia (and Hexett) is obviously meant to be the experienced, older gal to the Bhaalspawn, and Aerie and Anomen (as well as Rasaad and Neera and Dorn) are meant to be around the same 'emotional maturity'. I think Jaheira shows herself as much more emotionally mature then the average Bhaalspawn I play, so... I don't really like the pairing with her and CHARNAME.
No offense to those who do like it, of course. I love Jaheira as a character; she's one of my favorites. I just don't like her romance, and think if canonized, the Aerie romance would be more likely.
(Or Anomen, as I'm continuing my stubborn 'Gorion's ward is a gal' crusade.)
(Or Anomen, as I'm continuing my stubborn 'Gorion's ward is a gal' crusade.)
I like Anomen, I really do. He's been in my LP from the beginning, and has consistently been arguably the most powerful single individual in the party, and indeed the only NPC to survive my 'Imprisonment Crisis of Watcher's Keep'.
Khalid might be okay with it but I don't think Jaheira and Charname would be okay with it. 6 months is really not that long considering you found your husband/friend chopped up on a table... that's the sort of thing that would traumatize someone for years. I'd have liked it better as a friendship track, just two friends helping each other along after a traumatic loss (with some unresolved sexual tension if you really must have it ◔_◔). The writing was good though.
Since this is posted on the BG2EE forum I'd say a sorcerer is a great choice to go after Irenicus. For a trilogy run I'd say the Fighter->Mage dual would make the best story.
6 months is really not that long considering you found your husband/friend chopped up on a table...
They've seen worse. He actually got off pretty easy considering all the nasty stuff that can happen to you and they've personally seen happen to others.
Many of us aren't likely to be in a position to judge the timeline of the Jaheira romance. Six months of adventuring, constant danger, and constant contact is a pretty dense life. It isn't exactly like pursuing a widowed coworker in the next cubicle.
Debating between canon romances is difficult. I understand those who prefer Aerie, but it is entirely possible to play BG2 and never even see her, however unlikely that may be. Jaheira is in the same room with you when you begin and therefore quite difficult to miss.
I may be biased because I personally vastly prefer Jaheira's romance vs all the others.
The only way Jaheira's romance is taking six months is if you're resting after every battle, resting everytime you change screens, and then just throw in some random resting just for the sake of resting. It's much more likely to be a two month period, one month if you play with little resting.
The only way Jaheira's romance is taking six months is if you're resting after every battle, resting everytime you change screens, and then just throw in some random resting just for the sake of resting. It's much more likely to be a two month period, one month if you play with little resting.
I kind of disagree. I thought the game moved too fast tbh. You go from the Docks to Imnesvale half a day on foot with no rest? I think if you do "realistic rest" (I include resting after a tough fight, since that makes sense for an adventurer) you could get 3/4 months before Spellhold easy, especially since your charname is just dumped in a massive city with very few supplies and no idea where to go or what to do to earn money.
We kinda power through nowadays because we've played it so many times and know where everything is/what to do. The game isn't designed for that.
Nah, Jaheira should be as dead on the inside as Khalid is on the outside. Her husband is dead and gone, which makes her untouchable in the eyes of her comrades. Any time she wants to get close to someone, she needs to remember she is a widow, and emotional intimacy is reserved for the unmarried, those with living spouses, and necromancers.
What, she can't get close to someone without sex? I don't see why she can't open up and share her thoughts with a girl. She has a lot of interesting discussions with Charname about the nature of being a Bhaalspawn and her relationship with the Harpers and her memories of Khalid, which could easily work as part of a close friendship rather than a romantic relationship.
Now I want to make a Jaheira friendship mod, where you interact with her and have some similar talks to the early parts of her romance but don't sleep with a woman who's only had two months or so to process her husband's death. Because she's an interesting and lovely character, but the sleeping with the Bhaalspawn so soon just... does not work for me at all.
The problem with the Bioware romances- all of them- is that you never get close without romancing them. I mean, personally, I sometimes feel that both Aerie and Anomen could use some emotional maturity before they entered a romance, because both of them have some major past griefs that are weighing them down. Why can't I play the supportive friend to them, listen to their problems, support them in their growth, and stand by them in their pain rather then following the 'must be sexually interested or no conversations' path? That's no fun. Viconia has a lovely friendship mod made for her over at SHS, but the other three don't, nor do the new kids.
I welcome any character development that progresses organically, irrespective of any "romance". That stuff is difficult enough to put up with in real life, but the saving grace has always been that there's a person on the other side of things that makes it all worth it. I've always stayed far, far away from them in any videogames.
Comments
1. Imoen (obviously)
2. Jaheira (with you from the beginning)
3. Minsc (with you from the beginning)
4. Jan Jansen (a book/movie of BG needs Jan Jansen)
5. Rotating in SoA depending on the quests and meeting people. Sarevok in ToB
Main character human ( for the reasons explained in some of the above posts). Fighter dual classed to a casting class after Irenicus dungeon as your powers awaken with all of Irenicus tampering. Could work with cleric or wizard/sorc both.
Jan Jansen is awesome, but I don't see him as canon
Yeah I intend to dual-class my Kensai to Mage at the very beginning of SoA too for the same reason, even though I know lv6-8 isn't ideal for dual-classing. The physical injuries caused by Irenicus is also a handy explanation for why he loses his Kensai skills.
I've watched an LP with Jan in it... he just seems to be comic relief. Aerie has got to be the closest to canon who didn't start in the dungeon.
Jan Jansen is the comic relief, true, but a canon without him is just going to be so much more boring!!
Mage? Wild Mage? Specialst mage? I really don't know.
About gender, it doesn't matter for me in the long run. I can relate more to male protagonist, but then again, seeing female protagonists is always cool, even cooler than males.
Allingment? Probably good, although I'm not sure about lawful and chaotic aspects of it.
I would write a novel from the perspective of CHARNAME gradually being turned towards evil by his growing bloodlust stemming from the battles with Sarevok and Irenicus, only to repent and save the world thanks to the goodness of Imoen. Cheesy I know, but I think the image of CHARNAME summoning huge elementals to royally mess up Faerun as Immy pleads for sanity is pure Hollywood
i'd make him a male, lawful evil gnome fighter in the books.
To me, that's squicky. I love Jaheira, but if I take her in to a party with a male, I brush her off ASAP.
...Still like the protagonist being a gal, but, yeah, bias.
Of course, when you get in to Canon discussions, everyone has their preferred story, and it's really only what is referenced elsewhere that gives a good indication of what actually happened. Its a good thing BG isn't referenced anywhere else and we can all think what we like about the matter.
Also, side note here, anyone else like to think that Jaheira may have been playing Charname, since maybe you told her to bugger off in BG1? Like she sees your memory is fuzzy and says "oh, yes, were totally friends and I'm not keeping an eye on you for the harpers in case you go bad. Nope, guardian and companions we are."?
What can I say, I'm a conservative fella. :P
To be fair, I roleplay my Charname to be around 18 years old, and I treated Jaheira and Khalid, but especially Jaheira (since Khalid is not very assertive at all) as a mentor/guardian figure following Gorion's death.
Having a weak Charname (non-min/max'd ability stats) also means that in the early game, he really was relying on the protection of others to stay alive, which further reinforced the mentor/guardianship relationship. In fact for all of BG 1, I only considered Imoen to be Charname's peer, and everyone else was an elder/protector/guardian of some sort. In fact, the killing blow on Sarevok was struck by Dynaheir with a Magic Missile, when Charname was stunned/disabled (maybe Webbed) and on the verge of being chunked by Sarevok.
I know that the age imbalance is an issue with Aerie too, since she's an elf, but I either ignore that, since Aerie's personality is quite immature anyway, or I imagine that elves mature much slower (which I think is lore-correct), so she's still a teenager in elf terms.
On the other hand, Jaheira is clearly much more experienced than a 18 year old boy/half-elf only a few months into his adventuring career.
But for me, she moved on too fast to a child that she was supposed to be the guardian of. How old Jaheira is is one of those things everyone has their own opinion on, but I always thought she was in her 40's or so (not too old, for a half-elf). CHARNAME, no matter what their race, is 20. If you assume Jaheira is younger (only 30 or so), then the relationship becomes a lot less 'squicky' in my eyes, but... I still don't like her moving on so quick. No matter what, though, her age is never referenced anywhere, so it's up to you to decide how old she is.
Viconia (and Hexett) is obviously meant to be the experienced, older gal to the Bhaalspawn, and Aerie and Anomen (as well as Rasaad and Neera and Dorn) are meant to be around the same 'emotional maturity'. I think Jaheira shows herself as much more emotionally mature then the average Bhaalspawn I play, so... I don't really like the pairing with her and CHARNAME.
No offense to those who do like it, of course. I love Jaheira as a character; she's one of my favorites. I just don't like her romance, and think if canonized, the Aerie romance would be more likely.
(Or Anomen, as I'm continuing my stubborn 'Gorion's ward is a gal' crusade.)
However... Anomen romance. *Shivers*.
If that is not definitive proof, I don't know what is!
Debating between canon romances is difficult. I understand those who prefer Aerie, but it is entirely possible to play BG2 and never even see her, however unlikely that may be. Jaheira is in the same room with you when you begin and therefore quite difficult to miss.
I may be biased because I personally vastly prefer Jaheira's romance vs all the others.
We kinda power through nowadays because we've played it so many times and know where everything is/what to do. The game isn't designed for that.
The problem with the Bioware romances- all of them- is that you never get close without romancing them. I mean, personally, I sometimes feel that both Aerie and Anomen could use some emotional maturity before they entered a romance, because both of them have some major past griefs that are weighing them down. Why can't I play the supportive friend to them, listen to their problems, support them in their growth, and stand by them in their pain rather then following the 'must be sexually interested or no conversations' path? That's no fun. Viconia has a lovely friendship mod made for her over at SHS, but the other three don't, nor do the new kids.