Class Suggestion for Otori Takeo!
Heindrich
Member, Moderator Posts: 2,959
I don't know if anybody has read the "Tales of the Otori" series of novels by Lian Hearn.
I loved it, both the setting and the characters, especially the protagonist, Takeo.
I am looking to put Otori Takeo into BG EE... I want suggestions for his class.
He is a 15-year old boy (at the start of the saga) who has the blood of the Tribe within him. The Tribe are a fantasy version of ninjas basically, with various fantasy powers, including:
1) Exceptional hearing.
2) A gaze that puts animals/people to sleep.
3) Leave an image of themselves behind. (Actually almost exactly like Mislead).
4) Invisibility.
5) Detect illusions/invisibility.
My first instinct was to roll a Fighter/Thief. But then Takeo was never a thief. He was an assassin initially and later on, a samurai lord. Naturally I thought of the Stalker and Assassin kits, which would fit the flavour quite well.
However, as far as I am aware, those kits cannot use Mislead, Sleep, Invisibility and Purge Invisibility/True Sight.
So now I am thinking Fighter/Mage... but then the Fighter/Mage cannot use Hide in Shadows or Backstab, and if I was gonna be faithful to the character, I cannot use any of the spells outside of Illusion and Divination schools (Except Sleep).
Is there anything I've missed? What would you recommend for the character I described?
I loved it, both the setting and the characters, especially the protagonist, Takeo.
I am looking to put Otori Takeo into BG EE... I want suggestions for his class.
He is a 15-year old boy (at the start of the saga) who has the blood of the Tribe within him. The Tribe are a fantasy version of ninjas basically, with various fantasy powers, including:
1) Exceptional hearing.
2) A gaze that puts animals/people to sleep.
3) Leave an image of themselves behind. (Actually almost exactly like Mislead).
4) Invisibility.
5) Detect illusions/invisibility.
My first instinct was to roll a Fighter/Thief. But then Takeo was never a thief. He was an assassin initially and later on, a samurai lord. Naturally I thought of the Stalker and Assassin kits, which would fit the flavour quite well.
However, as far as I am aware, those kits cannot use Mislead, Sleep, Invisibility and Purge Invisibility/True Sight.
So now I am thinking Fighter/Mage... but then the Fighter/Mage cannot use Hide in Shadows or Backstab, and if I was gonna be faithful to the character, I cannot use any of the spells outside of Illusion and Divination schools (Except Sleep).
Is there anything I've missed? What would you recommend for the character I described?
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Comments
Assassin>Fighter sounds like it'd work considering the whole Assassin>Samurai thing you want. Assassins have pretty crappy skill points though so I'd rather take a default Thief unless you plan to dual late.
Also I'm pretty sure the fighter dual allows you to use Vhailor's Helm for Simulacrum, so there's your Mislead thing.
It takes most of BG1 (using a party) just to get *two* thief skills built to 100, and none of them are very reliable without being 100.
If you use another thief to cover locks and traps, and put all your PC's points into move silently/hide in shadows and detect illusions, that might work.
You might also consider going triple class fighter/mage/thief, since the mage spells that duplicate your character's abilities are fairly low level spells. (You wouldn't get True Sight, Mislead and Project Image until pretty late, though, maybe around final act SoA or even ToB.)
Another choice might be mage/thief, or even cleric/thief, using "spells" that buff and increase fighting ability. You could go cleric/thief and make up your own backstory about where the cleric abilities are coming from, maybe, say those abilities are racial rather than divine.
If you put "mage" in the character's job description, remember that you'll need to not wear armor for your magic-like abilities to work. That would necessitate at least using Mage Armor, Ghost Armor, and Spirit Armor, in addition to Invisible and then Improved Invisible as soon as you could get them, if this is supposed to be a melee character.
The idea sounds related to kensai or monk - the two non-magic, non-armor fighting choices. I don't think that those can be legally dual-classed to or from thief, though.
It's possible to use Keeper to create your own character class by messing around with putting stuff in the special abilities button, but you'd have to keep doing it at level-ups if you wanted a level progression in number of abilities and number of times useable per day for each ability.
Everything I just said was an attempt to help you brainstorm ideas. You can take or leave any of it.
No, I haven't played the mod, but I understand she's a paladin of some sort. Takeo is certainly not that. The saga is pretty epic... he starts off 15 years old, and ends the saga with his own eldest child around the same age.
I should mention, my initial idea is to create this character for BG EE: Black Pits, as a member of this party:
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/29032/black-pits-questions
Although if I really enjoy the concept, I may take him again from BG 2 EE: Black Pits, or maybe even a full saga playthrough with him as the protagonist.
To be frank, from the posts it seems like he is a formidable fighter as well as his abilities (which in my mind sounds like a stalker). But the list you put up seems to indicate a thief/mage. Thief skills in detect illusion, and hide in shadows/move silently. And mislead/sleep as mage spells obviously.
I would say that the young Takeo was more a rogue than a warrior. He was smaller and lighter than battle-hardened samurai warriors, and won most of his early battles using his innate gifts.
His innate gifts, mastered without instruction, were acute hearing and detect illusions, which I guess can be modelled by Detect Invisibility, which is only lv2. He also learnt how to put dogs to sleep (he later found it worked on people too) with his gaze by himself, which is easily done with Sleep.
He had to train and practise quite hard to learn literally 'Move Silently'. The name of the first book in the saga is "Across the Nightingale Floor", and it refers to a counter-assassination device in the tyrant's castle, a corridor where the floor boards are designed to creak (like a nightingale's song) when somebody walks across it, thus alerting guards to potential assassins. Takeo's training eventually allowed him to cross it silently.
At the same time, as the adopted son of a samurai lord, he was learning how to use the katana and other weapons of the samurai, though he never became a sword-master per see.
Later on he receives more advanced training from members of the Tribe, and learns split image, (Mislead) and invisibility, which are fairly advanced techniques that he could not use reliably before.
There are also a few tribe gifts that he never learnt, like 'changing faces', basically a master of disguise ability.
fighter/thief- don't forget that a thief doesn't need to be so much a thief as they can be a rogue. focus on improving stealth instead of things like pickpocket and you will have an assassin. thieves can detect illusions and do backstabbing, so it is a good fit. though some of those things are spell effects he would be capable of them in TOB using scrolls with the UAI ability
stalker- a stalker will also have the ability to backstab, but what is great is that he will get the druid spells. invisibility purge and charm animals would both be available to help realize the character. yes i know it isn't sleep but it is something.
fighter/mage- here you will lack the backstabbing and stealth, and things won't be so much inherent as needing to be activated by magic. however, at least you will be able to sleep and mislead in the first place.
fighter/thief would do the greatest to realize your character late game, while stalker would be more realized in the SOA time. they will be mostly equal in BG1 because of low levels. i think fighter/mage would do the least for you. you could also possibly maybe add these abilities to whatever class you choose through EEKEEPER. the most effective that would make it feel cheaty is probably mislead, though I never used it. I just heard it can be cheesy.
The other thing you can do is use eeKeeper to make him a fighter/thief (maybe shadowdancer) and give him True Sight as a special ability (like from the Inquisitor Kit options) to emulate his talent at detecting illusions.
Thanks for all your input! It's really appreciated! I think I am pretty close to a decision now. After careful consideration, the ideas I have ruled out are:
Assassin: Although Takeo carried out a few assassinations, he never used poison as far as I can remember, and the Assassin kit doesn't have the mage spells I'd like to have.
Shadow Dancer: It appears to just be a thief with extra stealth capabilities.
Thief/Mage: He will never become a particularly capable warrior, which seems wrong given that Takeo does don armour and fought several pitched battles, where he performed competently as a warrior and commander. Also I will be sorely tempted to use more spells like Mirror Images, which is similar to his Tribe skills, but not quite, and it'd generally be a waste of a mage to limit myself to Illusion and Diviniation spells, especially for a full saga playthrough.
Fighter/Mage: He won't be able to use Hide in Shadows/Move Silently, which is pretty central to his character. I've also just been playing a F/M for the last 300 hrs or so, and if I am strict about his spells, again it's gonna be a 'waste of a mage'.
So that leaves Fighter/Thief and Stalker. They seem very similar functionally, and I am not sure what the difference would be. My idea now is to use one of the those two classes, and EEkeeper in some spells from time to time as innate abilities. I wish I was skilled enough to know how to mod a custom class for him, but I think I can replicate it with EEkeeper. Not an elegant solution, somewhat tedious, but I think it's the most satisfying I can think of.
Oh and before u shout "Cheater!"... I got my excuses/penalties too!
For a start this will be Takeo's stats:
Str: 14
Dex: 18
Con: 12
Int: 16
Wis: 10
Cha: 15
Instead of the typical 18/18/18's
Also he will not ever wear armour heavier than Splint Mail, which is roughly analogous to the samurai armour he sometimes wore.
I didn't realise that Detect Illusions was a thief skill... I guess that means he doesn't even need any Divination spells, though I could justify Far Sight with his exceptional hearing, which he uses in the saga repeatedly to check if there's people beyond doors, and spy on secret conversations etc...
If I am strict, the only spells I need to edit in are: (haven't decided levels yet, need to make it balanced, obviously, so probably when an equivalently experienced mage gains those spells.)
1) Sleep - lv1
2) Invisibility -
3) Improved Invisibility -
4) Mislead -
Which I don't think is OP given armour limitation and his stats.
edit: remember the battle of the gnoll fortress
Oh... Stalkers are limited to studded leather? I assumed cos it was a ranger kit, and Minsc is a ranger, Stalkers can also go "fullplate and packing steel!".
As for his strength, I am happy enough with 14, he is a 'small Japanese dude', afterall, and as I said, he won't wear any armour heavier than Splint Mail anyway, as a personal restriction.
Major derpiness from me not thinking about "Detect Illusions". Thanks for the correction!