Recommend underrated Blade weapon prof?

Siona

Hello all. I am about to start a Blade playthrough of 2EE. I'm thinking longswords, great swords and warhammers will be being taken by frontliners. So what would be a nice, offbeat prof to take that could let me still have a decent weapon selection? Will be dual weilding. Not looking to powergame (I don't normally dual-class, multi-class, or min-max stat rolls), but don't want to be gimped in weapon selection. Short swords? Daggers? Something else? Any ideas welcome. Thank you for your time.

CrevsDaak

Short swords are a good choice for SoA, like Daggers, but weak for ToB.
Spears are good both in SoA and ToB, completely underrated and nothing OP (low damage, not very good variants at early game).

elminster

There are always clubs. You can get blackblood and gnasher and they are pretty good (at least for mage disruption). Eventually there is even the club of detonation which (unless you have either Cernd or Jaheira) nobody else is likely to use.

Arizael

I've found Blades to be most effective with stuff that improves their APR. Go scimitars. Dual-wield Belm + Ninja-to = 4x APR, pretty good for Bard.

meagloth

Daggers are great. Really.

mumumomo

I would not call scimitar an offbeat proficiency but they are definitely the best choice for a blade.
Or you should take shortsword which is a decent compromise between flavor and power.

Daggers suck for the most part. they have 1 decent choice for bgee and early bg2 (dagger of venom) but that's it.

Ballad

In my current playthrough, I have my Blade specced in short swords and scimitars. Like @Arizael said, Blades are at their best dual-wielding +APR gear, such as Belm, Kundane or the Sarlet Ninja-To. With two of those and the Gauntles of Extraordinary Specialization, your Blade can reach 4.5APR which is pretty devastating when combined with Improved Haste/Tenser's and Offensive Spin.

Even if you eschew the extra APR for better enchantments, short swords and scimitars are still good weapons to go for. You can get the Short Sword of the Mask and Usuno's Blade pretty much straight out of Chateau Irenicus and the Spectral Brand a little later, depending on when you choose to do Watcher's Keep.

Somewhat off-topic, but does anyone else feel like Blades should be allowed to at least specialize in their weapons? I mean, in the kit description, they are referred to as "expert fighters" - yet they can't become any more skilled with their weapons than a simple priest, thief or a mage!? And if that was not enough the game, as a final insult, slaps you in the face with a crappy Blade NPC that, for whatever reason, starts with two pips in short swords.

I know the problem is easy to remedy with NearInfinity, but it still doesn't make it any less of an injustice.

JuliusBorisov

In terms of daggers, you can try to use the console and create Artemis Entreri, a hidden NPC, then CTRL+Q him into your party. He carries the Life-Steale Dagger +4, with 15% Chance of Level Drain.

If we speak about daggers, Pixie Prick +3 (a target must make a saving throw vs. poison or fall asleep for two rounds) and Stiletto of Demarchess +2 (a 20% chance each hit that the victim must save vs. death or be held for two rounds) are solid choices.

I see Axes as an underrated Blade weapon proficiency. Simply because I, for i.e., always think that Axes are for fighters. But as I think more about it, Axes are good for a Blade too. There're MANY wonderful Axes in BG2: Azuredge - if you're of a good alignment, Frostreaver+3, Stonefire +3...

There're also throwing returing daggers and axes in the game getting ridiculously high bonuses from STR 19 (that can be easily achieved with the girdle from the Adventurer's Mart).