Best Protagonist class for party of new NPCs.
Souldancertn
Member Posts: 45
I have been wanting to play a party with all the new EE characters all the way through the series. I know that they are all lacking decent priest spell abilities, but I don't enjoy playing clerics as my protagonist that much. I was considering the cheesy cleric/ranger to spice up the option a bit but I'm worried that I will wind up needing cleric spells more than druid spells anyway and that my character will be needlessly multiclassed. Does a cleric/ranger hold up as the party's sole priest or are their better options?
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Edit: Yes, cleric ranger should do fine if you don't rely too much on spellcasting.
I'm playing with a Fighter and everything is going very well, I've sole'd BG1 and in BG2:EE recruited Viconia, Dorn, Hexxat, Korgan and Neera, definetly I've never had any type of stopping fight and it's very easy.
Dorn isn't a very good frontliner in BG2, in BG1 he is very good, but in BG2 he's better in ranger with Poison Weapon, certainly his low hit points and bad AC make him get killed many times.
Say what... Why don't you try multi? This way you can get quicker access to spells, greater saving throws, and both classes' HLAS, all at the same time!
Also get him to be chaotic good, for familiar's invisibility spell, in case you dual from the beastmaster kit.
If u add buff spells to the mix u can both tank and beat things to death very easily with a hammer, mace or flail
Your job should be primarily that of a buffed warrior (you have access to most of the best buffs) and summoner, with secondary focus on healing and area control (just remember to pop up a sanctuary to lose your aggro before attempting to heal other party members, though).
Ranged combat is, as funny as it might sound, awful for a Ranger that isn't an archer, and especially for a Ranger/Cleric, who only has access to slings as a ranged weapon, because their Ethos forbid bladed weapons (so bows are off-limits) (slings do not actually add STR bonuses to their damage, that is a display bug).
Depending on your kit, if any, different strategies might work, for a Stalker/Cleric, for instance, the best type of weapon available is, counterintuitively, the quarterstaff (Staff Spear +2 for the first game, Staff of the Ram +4/6 for the second), since they hold many bonuses and can backstab (the only other backstabbable weapon is the club, which is sorely lacking in good options).
Honestly, for party members you should have at least a thief (Imoen/Nalia is recommended, as Thief levels become largely superfluous by the end of the game, and potions of perception and master thievery can be easily procured) and a fast character to draw aggro before you wade into the battlefield (Rasaad works best in this regard, due to his fireshield and monk speed bonuses) - Rasaad can also detect traps, or even you could, with the find traps spell, freeing points on your thief to devote to the other thieving arts (they can disable any trap that has been detected, regardless of their skill) - you'll also likely need a character to deal with the many mages, such as Keldorn or Mazzy with poison arrows - Jan is also useful for applying arcane buffs and disabling enemies before you have a chance to reach them, so he is very good as well - Unfortunately, Hexxat is quite useless late-game due to pure-classing as the worst class available, Dorn's strength suddenly becomes overshadowed by the versatility of characters such as Mazzy, Neera's Wild Surges suddenly become a lot more dangerous and it becomes increasingly difficult to deal with her low hitpoints (Imoen and Nalia beat her by a mile in this factor), I do not recommend using Wilson due to his fragility.
In the end, for your character (which is very similar to mine, as you can see in my Postful o' Crazy thread), the new party members are not very good, actually, barring Rasaad, none of them add anything new to the table of the game or are horribly outmatched by old characters (Jan, Sarevok and Imoen are better than Hexxat, Mazzy is better than Dorn, Nalia and Imoen hopelessly outmatch Neera).
Until you dual, you might want to tag jaheira or viconia along and wait to pick Wilson. He does not have any banters anyway. It fits the ranger theme and the epilogue/initial dialog is hilarious but otherwise he felt like a dead weight. Specially when everyone is going around with boota of speed in ToB. He owned the demilich in WK, but that was it. Would have been nice to have more monologues with him