Neutral with a touch of evilness
Merina
Member Posts: 303
Trying to build a mostly neutral party with myself being a true neutral Kensai.
I kicked out Imoen early, accepted Montaron and Xzar temporarily, ignored Khaled and Jaheira, travelled a bit to rescue Branwen. She's mostly quiet and hence boring, but I like a true cleric and her melee skills. Sometimes I've sent Monty and/or Xzar onto a suicide mission or killed them myself. Branwen's early spells make it safe to enter the Friendly Arm Inn without much effort. In a first attempt I've taken a longer journey to pick up also Safana, only to learn that she insists on completing her personal goal very early. She left the party on day 23 already. A similar thing happened with Kivan, who didn't remind the party about it.
So, I replanned and restarted. This time I went with Imoen (out of convenience, trap finding), Branwen, Kagain, rescued Neera and Garrick. With the party of six and just Kagain being evil, I went onto several quests and even decided to kill a commoner to make Kagain happy, but his steady complains started to annoy me. I wish he would influence the party more instead of cursing after a reputation increase. My plans on chaining him up somewhere developed further. I would have been willing to agree on doing something evil for him, but he didn't suggest anything.
Next I had to get rid of Imoen, and this time my companions were competent enough to help Safana with finishing her personal quest. Eventually I reached the Cloakwood Mines and met Yeslick. Heh - I had almost forgotten that he's imprisoned and could replace Kagain, even if being a multi-class guy that would develop slower and would need to catch up, too. And I've had two presents for Kagain. First, the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity, second Elander's Gloves of Misplacement. OMG! He's really ugly as a female. And he didn't complain about getting removed from the party. He even was so stupid to stay in the mines and wait - for what? Guess what my party did when they left the mines... and it didn't even lower my reputation. Haha!
I kicked out Imoen early, accepted Montaron and Xzar temporarily, ignored Khaled and Jaheira, travelled a bit to rescue Branwen. She's mostly quiet and hence boring, but I like a true cleric and her melee skills. Sometimes I've sent Monty and/or Xzar onto a suicide mission or killed them myself. Branwen's early spells make it safe to enter the Friendly Arm Inn without much effort. In a first attempt I've taken a longer journey to pick up also Safana, only to learn that she insists on completing her personal goal very early. She left the party on day 23 already. A similar thing happened with Kivan, who didn't remind the party about it.
So, I replanned and restarted. This time I went with Imoen (out of convenience, trap finding), Branwen, Kagain, rescued Neera and Garrick. With the party of six and just Kagain being evil, I went onto several quests and even decided to kill a commoner to make Kagain happy, but his steady complains started to annoy me. I wish he would influence the party more instead of cursing after a reputation increase. My plans on chaining him up somewhere developed further. I would have been willing to agree on doing something evil for him, but he didn't suggest anything.
Next I had to get rid of Imoen, and this time my companions were competent enough to help Safana with finishing her personal quest. Eventually I reached the Cloakwood Mines and met Yeslick. Heh - I had almost forgotten that he's imprisoned and could replace Kagain, even if being a multi-class guy that would develop slower and would need to catch up, too. And I've had two presents for Kagain. First, the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity, second Elander's Gloves of Misplacement. OMG! He's really ugly as a female. And he didn't complain about getting removed from the party. He even was so stupid to stay in the mines and wait - for what? Guess what my party did when they left the mines... and it didn't even lower my reputation. Haha!
3
Comments
Not surprisingly, I once had a neutral kensai whom I named Budd. The only problem I had with the neutral kensai I created for BGEE last year (not Budd; he was years ago) was keeping her armor class down. In fact, I had to script it--if the party saw an enemy then Faldorn (whom I chose over Branwen because I have adventured with Branwen before and wanted someone different) would Barkskin the kensai.
Indeed, while killing enemies within the well-known area of basilisks, Branwen mentioned how much she likes being with the party. I wonder, is it because she had been petrified? She's quiet again after travelling north towards Baldur's Gate.
Riiiight. It was obvious that he was sick and tired of being a "lackey" and wanted the money for Black Mamba to get out of the dead end situation that he was in.
Budd was basically done with the ring of assassins that Bill had built up - done with the killing (especially after the Church incident).
Black Mamba was just a means to an end - no malice intended. And he knew, instinctively, that they (he) had wronged her, and that they (he) would pay for it, in the end. Which, of course, he did - though not as he thought he would. That is an extraordinary evil thing to do IMHO. And since it was all planned, it becomes even worse. Your character shouldn't be neutral anymore. Neutral Evil at the least!
First you torture someone and demean them. Then kill them by drowning them under the earth. All on purpose!
Truly an evil act if I ever heard of one!
My neutral party was originally the kensai, Branwen -> Faldorn, Xan, Neera, and Safana. A little thin on fighter/tank, to be certain, but enjoyable nonetheless. I didn't strike me until I was well into that game that Xan was the only male. Given his personality there was role-playing potential there that a pencil/paper group could have enjoyed thoroughly.
About Xan, I've never given him a chance to join because of his voice. ;-) Admittedly, his personal introduction sounds interesting.
About Safana, she has become more useful as an archer. And she looks extremely sexy in the Shadow Armor +3.
This neutral Kensai, who could have become a Mage later on, and his companions haven't had much trouble with completing BGEE, started Shadows of Amn as one option to go all evil without Jan/Hexxat/Imoen for thieving. I know what's it like with a good/neutral Kensai/Mage, but not with a full-time Thief.
I'm undecided yet how to develop him further and whether to give a plain dual-class Fighter/Thief instead, but the idea of converting the Kensai into a Thief at level 9 has resulted in loads of fun so far. Beyond his primary thieving skills (traps, locks, scouting and backstabbing), there are plenty of hitpoints, satisfactory THAC0 and the special abilities acquired during BGEE. I've continued investing into short-swords and two-weapons style to meet the personal preferences of this sword saint. I'm aware of various alternative options for main-hand and off-hand weapons, but short swords are carved into stone for this run. Lucky as he is, he's found Arbane's Sword +2 after a fight during the first day exploring the city. And with his mage-capable intelligence level, he's clever enough to keep a non-magical sword, too.
Somewhat unplanned as he continues with showing a tendency towards doing nasty evil things and would like to team up with evil companions, Jaheira is still in the party and meanwhile is romancing the PC even. D'uh!
Doing evil things is one thing - telling her to shut up at the start of a serious dialogue is not evil, it would be dumb. The reason is, I had made the curious thief want to explore the city districts, sneak into houses, pick up temporary partners and replace them with hopefully more competent evil ones. Gradually. As such I ended up with a mixed neutral/good party and sort of stumbled into Renal Bloodscalp's offering. Even Anomen, starting neutral, on several occasions suggested drastic measures without much thought. On the contrary, Jaheira sometimes managed to convince me. Or almost. Although she didn't agree with my actions always, she kept supporting me. Possibly only because I managed to mess up rescueing Viconia much earlier, because of being afraid of additional reputation decrease and wanting to leave a spare slot for the occasional temporary member ... I've given Cernd a try, but boy his personal troubles come at a very bad time. That didn't sound helpful.
The party has made quick progress, but eventually had to donate at Temple of Waukeen in Trademeet to increase reputation a bit. A couple of times the role-playing has lead to unavoidable reputation decrease, such as killing a screaming cook that had observed the party breaking into and fighting in a house (Anomen's personal quest). From a game-play perspective it makes no sense to me to eliminate witnesses and see a decrease of reputation for that. Nobody has seen me doing it. It has been discussed before. It's different from a freed child returning into town and telling everyone that I've freed it from slavery.
me, Kensai (level 9) -> Thief
Jaheira
Edwin
Korgan
Dorn
Viconia
Almost the pure evil party, except for Jaheira and myself. We're not on Asylum Island yet due to thief stronghold duties and quests popping up like mushrooms.