The Unpopulars

uberduberdad

Hi All,
It's been quite a while since I have been on the forums, glad to see they are still as active as ever.

I am going to do a run through BGEE as the unpopular team. That is, I will fill it with those NPC's that are often overlooked, either because they are considered boring, useless, odd, annoying etc. My theory is that all NPCs have a place in the game and we just need to find out what.

Who are your most unused/unloved/downright despised NPCs?

And for my char, I will used what ever is considered to be the most useless/disliked class or kit and even race.

Love to hear your thoughts.

Uberduberdad

Gotural

I think Garrick deserves a place

Jenzafar

Ha ha! I did this once with BG2. My charname was Sgt. Harvey Walden IV--at the time, he had all these "boot camp workout" infomercials on TV and he was always screaming at people to "suck it up" and "dig deep." I liked to pretend he yelled at Nalia and Anomen all the time.



Anyway, my personal picks for the first game would have to be

Montaron
Kagain
Eldoth (and Skie, if you don't want Montaron anymore)
Tiax and/or Quayle (I use them so little, and they're so similarly annoying, I think of them as interchangeable)
Faldorn

As for your character, I've never been a Wizard Slayer but I've heard it sucks.

meagloth

Charname wizard slayer or shapeshifter. Take Garrick, Skie, eldoth, Quayle. You could take shar-teel, and get some good banters, but I don't know if she's underrated.

Blackraven

Tiax,
Quayle,
Faldorn,
Jaheira,
Eldoth or Garrick (not sure who's the least popular of the two; I think Eldoth).

These aren't my personal picks, but the NPCs I think are least liked. The only personal pick I made was Jaheira, most annoying NPC imo, but many people like her.

Rasaad is also quite unpopular I think (though more for his underpoweredness than his personality.

elminster

Faldorn, Quayle, Tiax, Skie (think of her as your better thief), Eldoth.

So basically you have no group until cloakwood

Lemernis

Hmm. I agree with Elminster that the least popular is probably the group he identified. Maybe insert Rasaad instead of Eldoth.

But as Elminster points out, you can't really put your party together until chapter four.

Maybe you could go with NPCs that are either unpopular or who don't seem to get much love even if they are fairly well respected for their skills. Like the ones you might occasionally hear a good word about now and then, but overall they don't seem to get much mention on the forums...

If you do that then maybe

Kagain
Rasaad
Safana
Shar-Teel
Faldorn

and for the PC maybe a Transmuter who must commit to filling more than half of his his spell slots with Alteration spells:

Burning Hands
Color Spray
Shocking Grasp
Knock
Strength
Haste
Melf's Minute Meteors
Slow
Fireshield
Otiluke's Resilient Sphere
Polymorph Other
Polymorph Self
Stoneskin
Teleport Field
Wizard Eye
Lower Resistance

I guess if you want to go a little easier on yourself you could make him a Fighter/Transmuter (you'll have to use EE Keeper but you'll simply assign the kit after dualing to Mage).

uberduberdad

Hm, I wonder how far I can get with a transmuter solo until I can pick those guys up.

Lemernis

Jenzafar said:

Ha ha! I did this once with BG2. My charname was Sgt. Harvey Walden IV--at the time, he had all these "boot camp workout" infomercials on TV and he was always screaming at people to "suck it up" and "dig deep." I liked to pretend he yelled at Nalia and Anomen all the time.

That's hilarious.

Lemernis

uberduberdad said:

Hm, I wonder how far I can get with a transmuter solo until I can pick those guys up.

Well, you can pick up Kagain right away and then at least you have a tank. I would get either Shar-Teel or Rasaad next. Then Safana. You won't have a healer until Cloakwood, but just buy plenty of healing potions for battle and pay for healing at temples after fights (it's cheaper).

You can go straight to Beregost to get Kagain. Just stay off the road. I think I would get Shar-Teel next.

That's if you use the party I pulled out of the air there. The same principle applies if you assemble a party mostly with characters available in chapters 4 and 5.

As you clearly realize, as a Transmuter starting out the rule of thumb would be to avoid fights until you have assembled enough a party. Stay off the main road early on!

If you make the Transmuter's alignment CN and you pick Find Familiar as one of your memorized spells at character creation, you'll get a cat familiar which has 99 stealth and 50 magic resistance. So you could use the cat to scout ahead. Actually, CN would fit pretty nicely for a wizard that is committed to using touch spells early on (if you do go with the self-imposed roleplaying rule to use Alteration school spells for more than half of your slots)--i.e., at least in the sense of risk-taking, living dangerously, etc.

If this is just a BG run (versus entire saga), and if you decide to dual a Fighter to Transmuter* I would dual at Fighter 3 just to give the character a bit of hardiness and some weapons profs (you can pour profs into a ranged weapon if you like; darts are powerful in BGEE). You can get your Fighter skills back pretty quickly then.

A tip to achieve the dual-classing as described within the first hour of play if you don't mind using meta-game knowledge/powergaming:

After you pick up Kagain, go to High Hedge and buy at least one potion of mirror eyes (better: two to be safe). Then head due east and go get Shar-Teel. However, hold off on having her join until after you have cleared the map of bassilisks. In the same map with Shar-Teel use Korax the ghoul to tank against the bassilisks. When Korax eventually turns on your party, have Kagain use the potion(s) of mirror eyes to tank against the remainder of the bassilisks. If you do this with just Kagain you might be able to get to Fighter 3/Transmuter 4 right out of the gate. As mentioned, use EE Keeper to assign the Transmuter kit after dualing to Mage.

You need a total of 14,000 XP to get the Fighter skills back at Fighter 3/Transmuter 4. The Fighter duals at level 3 which is 4000 XP. Then after gaining 10,000 more XP as a Transmuter you'll reach level 4 and you'll get the Fighter class skills back.

The Greater bassilisks are worth 7000 XP and lessers are worth 1400 XP. You'll be splitting the XP with Kagain, so your PC is getting half of the total. But if there are four greater bassilisks then you're good to go. I forget how many of each type there are. IIRC there's at least three greater bassilisks there. And I'm pretty sure there's around 5 lesser bassilisks.

So start by killing one greater bassilisk and one lesser bassilisk. That gets you to Fighter 3. Then dual to Transmuter. Then kill the rest of the bassilisks.

* Use EE Keeper to assign the Transmuter kit after dualing to Mage.

Lemernis

Note: If you go with the party I suggested, since you can dual Shar-Teel to Thief (and you may want to given the way BGEE changed her weapons profs from vanilla) you might want to add her before clearing the map she's on and include her in the strategy provided in the spoiler above. And for that matter, then you really don't need Safana, although two Thieves is always nice for distribution of Thieving skills. That way Shar-Teel can be your main backstabber/meleer and Safana can handle taps and locks. But anyway, if you dual Shar-Teel to Thief you could swap out Safana for a chapter 5 unpopular NPC.

On the other hand, you could use EE Keeper to change Shar-Teel's weapons profs back to something closer to vanilla, which is

Large Swords ++
Small Swords ++
Missile Weapons ++

I always enjoyed using her with a greatsword in the vanilla game, so I'd probably go with

Two-handed Sword ++
Two-handed Weapon Style ++
Crossbow ++

And by the same token, since you can get by with one Thief, you could take Safana; and instead of taking Shar-Teel, you could opt for a chapter 5 NPC.

Lemernis

I'm really tempted to try this myself with a hulking brute of a (CN and roleplayed as such) Fighter/Transmuter who wields a halberd. :-)

Edit: I think I really do want to do this.

However, in testing it out I realized that I had forgotten that you can't dual to a Mage kit from Fighter. So I'll be using EE Keeper to assign the Transmuter kit after dualing to Mage.

Even more fun would be a totally illegal Barbarian/Transmuter but I'm not sure if that can be done via EE Keeper. As far as I know you can't dual-class from a Barbarian to start, and you can only assign one kit via EE Keeper, not two.

I guess a Berserker/Transmuter might be possible. But the more I think about it, either Berserker or Barbarian/Transmuter is overkill anyway.

element

skie would be my number one pick, she's just flat out redundant imo

Sjerrie

Interesting idea. I was also planning a playthrough using the NPCs I never/rarely use. Quayle, Tiax, Garrick, Skie... maybe Safana... Then later Cernd, maybe Nalia...

I would also apply a few under-used kits to more-or-less appropriate characters.

My Charname for that will be a gnome or halfling jester.

@Lemernis you could start as berserker or barbarian, then dual to mage, and use EEKeeper to change the kit to the desired one (e.g. transmuter). Be advised that every single time you level up, you have to add the extra bonus spell you get from the kit, because iirc it is hardcoded that you can't dual TO a specialist mage. Multiclass specialists do not have this problem, likely because of gnomes.

Lemernis

@Sjerrie For Barbarian there is no option to dual in-game (same as with sorcerer, druid, bard, etc.--i.e., the non-dualable classes). Are you saying create a Barbarian and then assign the Transmuter kit via EE Keeper? Because when you create a Barbarian, when you open EE Keeper to fiddle with the character the class is Fighter and Barbarian is already assigned as a kit... Class options are just that--there's no kit options under Class, just the base classes themselves.

Now for some reason, I do clearly recall though that you can dual from Berserker however, as I have done so with a Berserker/Cleric.

Lemernis

@Sjerrie Btw, a halfling Jester sounds like fun! Myself, I would go with halfling (versus gnome) just for a bit of diversity, what with two gnomes already in that party.

Sjerrie

Lemernis said:

@Sjerrie For Barbarian there is no option to dual in-game (same as with sorcerer, druid, bard, etc.--i.e., the non-dualable classes). Are you saying create a Barbarian and then assign the Transmuter kit via EE Keeper? Because when you create a Barbarian, when you open EE Keeper to fiddle with the character the class is Fighter and Barbarian is already assigned as a kit... Class options are just that--there's no kit options under Class, just the base classes themselves.

Now for some reason, I do clearly recall though that you can dual from Berserker however, as I have done so with a Berserker/Cleric.

Ahh sorry, I forgot I edited a file to make dualing from barbarian possible. You could still do it without editing that file: play as barbarian to the point where you want to dual, use EEKeeper to change to vanilla fighter, immediately dual to mage, then immediately use EEKeeper to assign the Transmuter kit. Might not be worth the extra step though because iirc the berserker's rage (and true, you can naturally dual from that) is more powerful than the barbarian's, it's just that the barbarian gets more hp per level. And the eventual flag will be Transmuter, so any specific dialogue would treat you as a fighter/transmuter. And still the annoying spell issue.

Lemernis said:

@Sjerrie Btw, a halfling Jester sounds like fun! Myself, I would go with halfling (versus gnome) just for a bit of diversity, what with two gnomes already in that party.

You're right, I didn't realise. I'm still leaning slightly more to the gnome though, as she'd be female, and thus the only female gnome in both games. Barring mods.