I want to be a bad boy in BG:EE

Meyahi

I want to make my 1st evil playthrough in BG:EE, even if I did it a million times with a good party. I'm not sure about party composition.
I have a lot of mods installed including the hardest settings of SCS so this is intentionnally power gamey.

My mind is mostly set on 4 of my companions:
Dorn
Baeloth
Edwin

And from Dark Horizons

Morwen Alanadel

Race: Half-elf
Class: Skald Bard (specialised in bows)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

STR 12
CON 10
DEX 18
INT 16
WIS 12
CHR 16

If I take Viconia, I'll have to roll a thief variant. Fighter/thief looks best I guess.

If I take a thief NPC which one should it be? (I have Vynd NPC in mind http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/29207/vynd-drow-assassin-npc-now-available-for-bg-ee-tutu-and-trilogy ). But then what of my PC? Priest of Helm looks very strong (dat Seeking Sword) but RP-wise it doesn't seem to fit -there are Paladins of Helm iirc- or multiclass fighter/cleric. Fighter/cleric dual is not and option imo: while stronger eventually, I need the healing spells early.

My last option is to replace Baeloth/Edwin for Kagain since I have a Skald. I want to know what you guys think about this? If you guys think it better to get the dwarf, I'll probably remove Baeloth since I want Edwin's banters -people say they're great- unless there's a good Baeloth banter pack.

Edit: Since apparently, my questions are not clear, here they are:
-Does the backbone of the party look strong?
-Is it worth it to run 2 arcane spell casters in BG1?
-Priest of Helm PC+ Assassin (or other thief evil NPC) or Fighter/thief PC+Viconia?
-Is there a Baeloth banter pack?

Bonus:
-Which reputation level should I aim for?
-Are there NPC fights between those mentioned?

lroumen

My suggestion is to broaden the scope to other alignments. Watch them fight and swap them of the party like jenga blocks. Just make sure your party does not tumble.

Alternatively, carry montaron for a while and if desired swap an npc with tiax late game.

Meyahi

lroumen said:

My suggestion is to broaden the scope to other alignments. Watch them fight and swap them of the party like jenga blocks. Just make sure your party does not tumble.

Alternatively, carry montaron for a while and if desired swap an npc with tiax late game.

I'm afraid that if I don't plan my party early, I'm either going to get destroyed/hit a wall or it will be too tedious with all the additional, quite hard encounters. I don't want to lower the difficult settings to get through some parts .

Musigny

My very first BGEE playthrough was based on :
F/T
Viconia
Kagain
Edwin
Dorn
Baeloth

I did not play for the challenge.
I had not played BG1 for several years and I was much more interested in the new engine and interface.
This being said, I advise against including Baeloth. Too powerful and no real background.
Dorn is overpowered too. However he has rp elements to offer.
Stratagems will probably not raise the bar high enough.

OlvynChuru

Here's my piece of advice. I don't know what race you are using for your protagonist, but it shouldn't be human or half-orc. The protagonist starts the game as a 20 year old, and those two races don't live too long, so if you actually want to be a bad boy instead of a bad man...

Frond

I've never been able to complete the saga with anyone *but* an evil PC. My thoughts:

I used Dorn, Edwin, Viccy, and Baeloth for BGEE. It was a blast. Can't speak for Dark Horizons party members, I ended up uninstaling it when I found those +5 weapons.

I rolled a Dark Moon Monk and solved the thief issue by EEKeepeeing Vic into a Cleric/Shadowdancer. From an RP perspective I rationalized this quite easily. Shar is a godess of darkness...
She had limited thieving abilities but nothing potions couldn't overcome. They ended up being a pretty heavy hitting group.

Havinh two arcane caster won't be a detriment if you have Dorn and another melee. On the contrary, Edwin and Baeloth are both powerhouses, and with both a sorc and wiz you'll have tonnes of scrolls for Edwin and spells flying around like crazy.

I ran through BGEE with about 5 rep. I had the SCS component "Discounts with Low Rep" so the prices at stores were quite good. I would suggest, if you're continuing to BG2EE to keep your rep at 5 or above or it becomes a real chore (or joy, depending on your preference) to slaughter all the Amnian guards that come after you.

Anyway, welcome to the dark side. ENJOY IT.

kcwise

Considering the topic title this discussion could have been a very different thing...

Good luck with your evil campaign!

wubble

kcwise said:

Considering the topic title this discussion could have been a very different thing...

Good luck with your evil campaign!

Viconia is a bit of a dominatrix so she'll punish you if you're a "bad boy".

kamuizin

Before read anything lemme give you my piece of advice.

I played a couple of runs with evil party (a lot in fact), recently i made an new one with an huge difference, skip Viconia. For that i played without an priest in BG:EE.
My main char was a shadowdancer that dualed at level 13 (In BG2:EE) to cleric (staff focused of course to keep the backstab).

Well, lemme stop ramble.

Evil parties aren't well received by the game structure in general, the game quests aren't made for evil party players, you get a crumble here and there, but in overall you lose more than you win, be it in money or XP.
The huge difference? Stronger NPCs, more clearly strong in BG2 (but dorn, kagain, edwin and viconia are surely gifts to have in BG:EE).

Answering questions:

1° - Strengh of the party:

Yes, it's strong in overall. BUT, you need a thief, specially if you go inside Durlag's Tower. My piece of advice? Shar-Teel. Take her (at low level preferable, unless you have a mod to set all adquired NPCs to level 1 at the start), up her to level 3 and dual to thief (or level 6 for +1 prof pt /7 for +1/2 atk per round if you're hardcore).

2° - 2 Arcane spellcaster? If they're edwin and Baeloth, no problem. Huge number of spells and there are 2 wizardry rings to be found in the game

one south of friendly inn arm and other inside a house in the southwest district of baldur's gate (at the side of the inn with the fucking anti-evil paladin that attack on sight)

3° - About main char, it's preference. You're running the game with Dorn, Baeloth, Edwin and a Skald Bard. A Fighter and 2 mages and a half.
Sincerely i don't see much need for priests in BG:EE (They're strong and hold person is gold here), but you can go without them.

If that's your final team, i would go with another fighter, maybe a barbarian or an Dwarven Defender (i don't like them much by the way), you could go for a ranged fighter (unless you take my advice and recruit Shar-Teel to dual her to thief (Edited mistake, mage to thief), if so, put any proficience point in dagger and go for throwing daggers and normal daggers for backstab).

Still you have in fact 5 characters atm (including yourself). kagain can play tank well, if you want to go for thief. In the end, as i said, it's a preference question.

4° - Banters for Baeloth.
Sincerelly i don't know.

5° - Reputation objective:

Metagaming? 18
Roleplay? 1

There are mods that turn the reputation system into an "U", so low reputation become bonus to purchases. Just try to roleplay the lose of reputation if you want, it's funnier that way. Don't lose rep by killing innocent ppl, lose rep by doing quests in the evil way.

6 ° - NPC fighters.

I assume you're aiming for evil NPCs, then: Shar-Teel (18/52 Str and 17 Dex) and Kagain (20 con) are core evil NPCs Fighters.


OBS (to have other NPCs options), spoiler alert:

Probally it will not change the reputation system of NPC abandon*, but now the helm of opposite alignment is an 100% drop of the Demon Knight, the final boss of Durlag's Tower. It change the alignment of any NPC that equip the helmet to the opposite alignment (so the NPC must accept helmets as equipment).

This can turn Ajantis (paladin), Coran (Fighter/Thief with 20 in Dex), Khalid (Fighter), Kivan (Ranger), Minsc (ranger) and Yeslick (Fighter/Cleric) in Evil NPCs.

If for a luck i'm wrong and the NPC abandon system is changed with the alignment, i highly advice the recruit of Coran. With an bow he's a monster in BG:EE


NPC abandon system:

If party reputation reach 2 or less, any good npc in the party will leave (in bad terms sometimes) at the first moment you get any xp point.

If party reputation reach 1 any neutral NPC in the party will leave (in bad terms sometimes) at the first moment you get any xp point.

If party reputation reach 19 or more any evil NPC in the party will leave (in bad terms sometimes) at the first moment you get any xp point.

Meyahi

I thank you all for your advice!
I recruited Vynd to test him and he proved to be a very fun guy so I decided to keep him!

This is what I settled for:

-Dorn (main melee/tank/romance?)
-Half Orc Berserker/Cleric PC (secondary melee/tank/healer juicy 19str no exceptional strengh tedium 20 con with tome for regen. Cheated but at least makes sense)
-Vynd (Assassin backstabber/scout/thief duties -potions of master thievery-)
-Morwen (Skald, her song is great if I run out of spells in my party. Bowoman/support arcane-wand/best portrait ever)
-Edwin (casting'n'slinging)
-Baeloth (casting'n'slinging)

I'll keep you posted for when I finish this and before I start beta BG2.

Meyahi

Musigny said:

Stratagems will probably not raise the bar high enough.

I agree, I steamrolled through everything. Backstabbers were dangerous at first though but 1 billion magic missiles can kill everything (thanks OP rings of wizardry). More casters should have the shield spell to at least counter that. Nothing that horror/confusion/hold person can't handle though.
In times of trouble haste then silence+skald song+blackguard aura and even my arcane casters shred things with slings.
The assassin was not very useful (backstab multiplier too late), Viconia (give her those tasty 18dex gloves)+ fighter/thief PC would have been even better I think.

Darkcloud

I wanted to recommend you tondual viconia into a thief but then I remembered that this is only possible with the other races can dual class component from the tweak pack.