The Expendables (from the movie of the same name) - A tale of hope for the magically challenged.
dunbar
Member Posts: 1,603
Loads of spoilers ahead.
A while ago, when I first got my copy of BGEE, I formed a party purely to try out the new npcs and a new (to me) charname race and class (in this case a half-orc berserker).
This party was never meant to be a roleplaying exercise or even an epic tale, I put no imagination or creativity into it, it was simply a technical experiment - which got completely out of control and took on a life of it's own.
So, this run started life in Candlekeep with the aforementioned chaotic neutral charname called (and this shows how little effort I put into it) 'Orca'. With complete disregard for the storyline he ditched Imoen and went off to recruit first Viconia (just, because) and then Safana (no new thieves in EE1), swiftly followed by Neera and Dorn. Much later I picked up Baeloth and my BG1EE party was complete.
With two blood splatterers up-front nothing much slowed the party down and I was in my element as I've always been a 'blood on the walls' type of D&D player, relying more on Might than Magic. However I was starting to worry about BG2: Neera had proved to be unreliable in a crisis and I knew that Baeloth wouldn't be available - oh well, I'd just have to burn that bridge when I got to it.
The run through BG1 was, to put it bluntly, disorganised mayhem but I finished it quite easily (albeit with my reputation in tatters). Then I installed Dungeon-Be-Gone, fired up BG2EE and started a new game with Orca on his own trying to put his old party back together again - which is when the wheels fell off......
All I knew about BG2EE at this stage was who the new npcs were, nothing about where they were or what their quests involved, so I decided to just wander around until I found them and go with the flow. So I went to the Copper Coronet to stock up, and recruited Hexxat by default (my aim was still to try new EE npcs, and I needed a thief). She immediately wanted to do the whole Tomb Raider thing but I was short of both personnel and XP, so a quick trawl of the suburbs turned up Viconia and Dorn (who of course was on his own mission). I now had a party of four (2 fighters, a cleric and a thief) and a rapidly growing 'to do' list. Being in desperate need of a magic-user at this stage I picked up Jan to help initially but dropped him as soon as I came across Neera.
It was at this stage that I started thinking of the party as 'The Expendables' because a) I'd never swapped out party members before, b) Orca, Dorn and Viconia had reverted to their old bad habits and the streets were already running with blood and c) the movie of that name had just been on TV.
Still with a spare slot in the party Orca, Dorn and Viconia decided it would be a good idea to invite Korgan along (again, I'd never used him before), so I now had three demented fighters, a cleric with a bad attitude, a vampiric thief and a completely unreliable mage - what could possibly go wrong?
Well for starters we accidentally killed Nalia in the Copper Coronet before we could get the d'Arnise Keep Stronghold quest (that was a fight that started in the Slaver ship, ran of control and ended up in the bar with AoE spells being flung around all over the place).
Somehow the party eventually made it to Brynnlaw despite conflicting quests causing whatever plan of action I once had to be thrown out of the window. At this point morale was quite low as we hadn't managed to kill any dragons and had been totally thwarted by the Chromatic Demon in Watcher's Keep. Anyway, we made it through the Asylum only to fall foul of the Simon Havaerian/Genia bug - so we'd now missed out on not just the Stronghold quest but also the Sahaugin City (and a whole shedload of XP) and morale dropped another notch.
At this point I had pretty much given up on the party, believing that the lack of reliable magical support (and my lack of magical knowledge) had doomed it to oblivion, and only went back to it intermittently to defeat Bodhi and tie up a few loose ends. Until yesterday....
.......when I decided to end it once and for all - in style. First I dealt with Kangaxx (tricky, but I got there in the end). Then I literally stormed the Twisted Rune, threw everything including the kitchen sink at it and won at the first attempt with no reloads (now I'm starting to think something's wrong somewhere). Just out of interest I went back to Watcher's Keep and, to my surprise, walked through the Chromatic Demon like it wasn't there (and left the rest of the Keep for later). Still in shock I then went off and trashed both Firkrag and the Shadow Dragon - and all of this without using any buffs except Haste (I still can't bring myself to rely on Neera for anything but the simplest of spells and I keep on thinking of Viconia as a tank who just happens to be able to heal people).
Greatly cheered, I duly returned the Rhynn Lanthorn and hacked and slashed my way through Suldenessalar and the Tree of Life until I suddenly found myself in Hell, about to face down Irenicus. I was so surprised at having got to this point so (comparatively) quickly that I even forgot to cast Haste when Irenicus appeared and just attacked without thinking. My unhasted, unbuffed party waded in and apart from chugging a few healing potions the battle was all over without a spell being cast by anyone in my party - and all without reloads.
Obviously, somewhere along the line my fighter-heavy party had got itself into shape both tactically (they fought in pairs) and equipment-wise (not just weapons but choosing the right bling as well - generally things that work just by being equipped rather than having to be activated).
Next stop, ToB.
So it just goes to show that there are indeed many ways to be successful at this game - even an unbalanced, dysfunctional party can make it, and you don't have to be a genius with a spell sequencer - but luck helps!
(As a matter of interest, by the end of SoA each party member had 3million+ XP despite not being able to do either the stronghold quest or the undersea city)
A while ago, when I first got my copy of BGEE, I formed a party purely to try out the new npcs and a new (to me) charname race and class (in this case a half-orc berserker).
This party was never meant to be a roleplaying exercise or even an epic tale, I put no imagination or creativity into it, it was simply a technical experiment - which got completely out of control and took on a life of it's own.
So, this run started life in Candlekeep with the aforementioned chaotic neutral charname called (and this shows how little effort I put into it) 'Orca'. With complete disregard for the storyline he ditched Imoen and went off to recruit first Viconia (just, because) and then Safana (no new thieves in EE1), swiftly followed by Neera and Dorn. Much later I picked up Baeloth and my BG1EE party was complete.
With two blood splatterers up-front nothing much slowed the party down and I was in my element as I've always been a 'blood on the walls' type of D&D player, relying more on Might than Magic. However I was starting to worry about BG2: Neera had proved to be unreliable in a crisis and I knew that Baeloth wouldn't be available - oh well, I'd just have to burn that bridge when I got to it.
The run through BG1 was, to put it bluntly, disorganised mayhem but I finished it quite easily (albeit with my reputation in tatters). Then I installed Dungeon-Be-Gone, fired up BG2EE and started a new game with Orca on his own trying to put his old party back together again - which is when the wheels fell off......
All I knew about BG2EE at this stage was who the new npcs were, nothing about where they were or what their quests involved, so I decided to just wander around until I found them and go with the flow. So I went to the Copper Coronet to stock up, and recruited Hexxat by default (my aim was still to try new EE npcs, and I needed a thief). She immediately wanted to do the whole Tomb Raider thing but I was short of both personnel and XP, so a quick trawl of the suburbs turned up Viconia and Dorn (who of course was on his own mission). I now had a party of four (2 fighters, a cleric and a thief) and a rapidly growing 'to do' list. Being in desperate need of a magic-user at this stage I picked up Jan to help initially but dropped him as soon as I came across Neera.
It was at this stage that I started thinking of the party as 'The Expendables' because a) I'd never swapped out party members before, b) Orca, Dorn and Viconia had reverted to their old bad habits and the streets were already running with blood and c) the movie of that name had just been on TV.
Still with a spare slot in the party Orca, Dorn and Viconia decided it would be a good idea to invite Korgan along (again, I'd never used him before), so I now had three demented fighters, a cleric with a bad attitude, a vampiric thief and a completely unreliable mage - what could possibly go wrong?
Well for starters we accidentally killed Nalia in the Copper Coronet before we could get the d'Arnise Keep Stronghold quest (that was a fight that started in the Slaver ship, ran of control and ended up in the bar with AoE spells being flung around all over the place).
Somehow the party eventually made it to Brynnlaw despite conflicting quests causing whatever plan of action I once had to be thrown out of the window. At this point morale was quite low as we hadn't managed to kill any dragons and had been totally thwarted by the Chromatic Demon in Watcher's Keep. Anyway, we made it through the Asylum only to fall foul of the Simon Havaerian/Genia bug - so we'd now missed out on not just the Stronghold quest but also the Sahaugin City (and a whole shedload of XP) and morale dropped another notch.
At this point I had pretty much given up on the party, believing that the lack of reliable magical support (and my lack of magical knowledge) had doomed it to oblivion, and only went back to it intermittently to defeat Bodhi and tie up a few loose ends. Until yesterday....
.......when I decided to end it once and for all - in style. First I dealt with Kangaxx (tricky, but I got there in the end). Then I literally stormed the Twisted Rune, threw everything including the kitchen sink at it and won at the first attempt with no reloads (now I'm starting to think something's wrong somewhere). Just out of interest I went back to Watcher's Keep and, to my surprise, walked through the Chromatic Demon like it wasn't there (and left the rest of the Keep for later). Still in shock I then went off and trashed both Firkrag and the Shadow Dragon - and all of this without using any buffs except Haste (I still can't bring myself to rely on Neera for anything but the simplest of spells and I keep on thinking of Viconia as a tank who just happens to be able to heal people).
Greatly cheered, I duly returned the Rhynn Lanthorn and hacked and slashed my way through Suldenessalar and the Tree of Life until I suddenly found myself in Hell, about to face down Irenicus. I was so surprised at having got to this point so (comparatively) quickly that I even forgot to cast Haste when Irenicus appeared and just attacked without thinking. My unhasted, unbuffed party waded in and apart from chugging a few healing potions the battle was all over without a spell being cast by anyone in my party - and all without reloads.
Obviously, somewhere along the line my fighter-heavy party had got itself into shape both tactically (they fought in pairs) and equipment-wise (not just weapons but choosing the right bling as well - generally things that work just by being equipped rather than having to be activated).
Next stop, ToB.
So it just goes to show that there are indeed many ways to be successful at this game - even an unbalanced, dysfunctional party can make it, and you don't have to be a genius with a spell sequencer - but luck helps!
(As a matter of interest, by the end of SoA each party member had 3million+ XP despite not being able to do either the stronghold quest or the undersea city)
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Comments
The only time I've ever finished the trilogy was by doing pretty much this, except that I had Imoen on spell duty.
Her opening spells landed on corpses (or bits of meat) more often than not.
I also approve of passive-ability bling. Definitely my favourite.
Good times.