SoD - we need another front line fighter? (spoilers)

jde33

Here is a list of the NPC's you can take with you. (far as I'm aware)

Glint
Corwin
Voghlin
M'Khiin
Dorn
Rasaad
Neera
Baeloth
Khalid
Jaheira
Minsc
Dynaheir
Viconia
Safana
Edwin


There is a lot of backline power here but of this group the strongest front liners are
Dorn & Khalid and maybe Minsc, Jaheira & Viconia with the right gear.

The problem is 3 of those have a second companion. Khalid & Jaheira and Minsc & Dynaheir and you may not always want to take both members. That leaves 2 independent front line fighters for and Evil party and none for a good party. If you play a good aligned cleric or mage you may be stuck with BOTH Khalid & Jaheira and Minsc & Dynaheir.. and even that leaves you with only one real front liner and two passable ones. It means that you can only take one other character with you and you need a thief so Safana or Glint.. this kind of limits the options to explore new, good aligned characters (and most of them are good aligned)

Inclusion of Ajantis, Kivan or Yeslick or another (preferably neutral) aligned fighter could fix this.

(Arkanis maybe or Patrick, Mazzy's companion, could be interesting options.. as I believe this is how Imoen got added to the first game as there was a lack of a good aligned thief and look how she turned out.)

Edit: Mods, This is spoiler? It's on the SoD webpage. K well.. whatever.

Spungi

Could not agree more!!! I love "brute" teams with lot of punching power... But I've never been a fan of Khalid, so I have my PC (Fighter / Cleric) and Minsc ... At the moment I'm running with Jaheira, haven't ran into Khalid yet... But I imagine I will be replacing her then
Might have to grab Rasaad...

DetectiveMittens

Voghiln is a bit of a beef-cake and is a skald, and is certainly capable of front-lining. I agree another dedicated "fighter" roll may be necessary. You can split apart K&J and M&D if you want either of them without their companions.

JuliusBorisov

I've edited the OP to include "spoilers" into the title and added spoiler tags to the post. Everyone don't forget to use spoiler tags, please.

simples

i agree, i feel like if you're playing a good party, you almost need to be a fighter type yourself

Diogenes42

Hello friends. Something to consider: perhaps a new character, a fighter/cleric maybe. There's someone in the expansion who might be an interesting choice to fill this role.

jde33

Part of the reason is the kinds of fights you run into also. I guess I gotta spoiler tag that.. tho.

SoD throws tons of enemies at you in large groups, you could imagine poor Minsc standing there trying to tank 20 guys, while 10 arches rape Dynaheir in the back line. It's kinda tricky to manage with the characters the game provides. Minsc isn't even a super alpha front liner with 15 dex/con. He shines better when someone else is holding hate and he has a 2h sword. That kinda means you need Khalid also, (until he takes a hit and runs off into the bushes) ..and so your down 4 party slots just trying not to die to hobgoblins. Someone mentioned Rasaad yeeah.. I don't know if he comes into his own yet on this game but I think his stats are too low for any kind of real tank duty, he's better off like Minsc where he can be just behind the front line and even then he's going to suck up every defensive/stat boosting item you have.

There are lots of potential characters that could fill this role it depends how Beemdog feels about trying to add a character and voice acting at this stage of the game or scrounge one up with existing stuff they have aka Original Imoen, and if they would feel that is complete or not. I'd like to see a Dwarf myself but that's just me.

jimw884

Pretty sure the "pair dynamic" doesn't exist in SoD, at least for some characters. I was able to take jaheira without khalid and vice versa. I've heard that coran is also a recruitable character but have seen no evidence of this.

jde33

Really? I couldn't imagine Minsc being willing to travel without Dynaheir. Hmm. Good to know if true. Saves sending one of them off the pier.

Diogenes42

The pair dynamic still exists my friends.

Demonocrat

I have found Rasaad with a Ghost Armor spell cast on him to be an excellent frontliner/ tank. I do agree, though, that there seems to be missing a character or two in the Kagain/Ajantis/Korgan department, especially if your main character is a weakling. Khalid just doesn't fit all teams (RP wise) and Minsc and Voghiln are somewhat average frontliners.

GrimLefourbe

I found Jaheira to be an excellent front liner. I had Jaheira and Khalid as my front liners and Jaheira ended up doing better due to her high dexterity.

They both lack damage so pairing them with

Corwin

is imo a very powerful combo.

ShaunIOW

SOD does seem skewed towards an evil party as you can have a decent fighter with Dorn, decent Cleric with Viconia and decent Mage with Baeloth, which is a disapointment as I tend to play as a good party and none of the characters I completed BG:EE with (Ajantis, Kiven, Yeslick, Branwen, Imoen) are available in SOD.

jde33

Yeah, I'm not saying you can't make things work with what we have, you can.. the right gear and proficiency points in the right things and you can make it work but Korgan as mentioned above is probably the best tank in the series and what we have is a pretty far cry from him.

It just seems to me like they kind of left something out when trying to build balanced parties, you know? I mean there is SO much power in the back line it's disgusting.. you can't roll characters as powerful as some of those but for front line, specially good/neutral aligned front line seems lacking. Your left with a lot of options that aren't fantastic.. and if Rasaad was supposed to fill the gap.. I'm sorry.. they may have made a mistake not to give him at least one ability score higher than 16 on a class that is all about ability scores because they don't use gear.

Matthieu

I agree we need a frontliner. Since there is yet no barbarian NPC it would be a good opportunity to add one, even as a DLC

Granas3

They added a bunch of monk and bard exclusive items that might make things more tolerable for volghin and rassad. CHARNAME could be a decent frontline fighter for all anyone knows too . I can't really think of any good/neutral frontline guys from the original game who aren't in this tbh (Coran is much better as an archer, and corwin is a decent substitute). Area of effect spells are also much more useful in SoD IMO, since there's more large groups of enemies in open spaces (Though i'm still not risking a lightning bolt)

jde33

Granas3 said:

They added a bunch of monk and bard exclusive items that might make things more tolerable for volghin and rassad. CHARNAME could be a decent frontline fighter for all anyone knows too . I can't really think of any good/neutral frontline guys from the original game who aren't in this tbh (Coran is much better as an archer, and corwin is a decent substitute). Area of effect spells are also much more useful in SoD IMO, since there's more large groups of enemies in open spaces (Though i'm still not risking a lightning bolt)

There is a bunch, some are quite strong.

Good/Netural tanks not in SoD:
Ajantis - low dex but he gets a bonus to hp, give him brawling hands and your set.
Branwen - she gets a small bonus to ac and a bonus to hp, not strong but plausible.
Coran - big ac bonus from his (illegal) dex, but like you said a better archer.
Faldorn - well.. possible I guess. If you put up with her long enough to get iron skin she may be fine.
Kivan - gets str and dex bonus, his con is one point away from doing anything useful but he's good.
Yeslick - with his hp bonus and brawling hands he would do fine. gets a bonus to saves too.

GrimLefourbe said:

I found Jaheira to be an excellent front liner. I had Jaheira and Khalid as my front liners and Jaheira ended up doing better due to her high dexterity.

14 dex does not grant any bonus to ac. She does get a hp bonus tho.

elminster

Well Im not a designer but for the last several months I've been working on some NPC mods for dragonspear in particular. These will each be optional components in my Eve of War mod.

This includes.

Shar-Teel
Tiax
Daran Highhammer (dwarf neutral good fighter/thief)
Jenora (lawful neutral half elf fighter/mage/cleric)

Moradin

What we're really missing is a neutral or good-aligned dwarf (preferably a dwarven defender), ideal for whomever wants to play back-line powerhouse, but still needs a tank to take the blows.

shawne

@elminster: Shar-Teel would solve a lot of problems for a Team Evil line-up - would her NPC mod be available separately or packaged with Eve of War?

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

shawne

typo_tilly said:

Shar-Teel travelling with the Flaming Fist? That's gotta be fun!

I've been idly playing mix-and-match trying to figure out party rosters for my two main characters - the all-female Good/Neutral group's stuck without a thief, because Safana (Swashbuckler mod) is filling the melee slot with Dorn over at Team Evil. Having an actual Evil Fighter would definitely kill two birds with one stone.

Insultion

Diogenes42 said:

The pair dynamic still exists my friends.

Am I the only person that took Khalid without needing Jaheira, then?

GrimLefourbe

jde33 said:

GrimLefourbe said:

I found Jaheira to be an excellent front liner. I had Jaheira and Khalid as my front liners and Jaheira ended up doing better due to her high dexterity.

14 dex does not grant any bonus to ac. She does get a hp bonus tho.

Are you sure? I thought they changer her stats to the BG2 ones as they did with Viconia. I remember her having dexterity AC but I might be mistaken.

Edit : I confirm she's got her BG2 stats and her 17 dexterity in SOD.

KhalDrogo

That's why I chose a Female Paladin with Cleric power after I finished The Black Pits (Thanks to EEkeeper I used. My Paladin can use every good cleric power to level 1 to 7 with 10 each.) Like that I have a frontline fighter whom can become a backline to care of the injured if need be.

GrimLefourbe

A fighter/cleric can do that too.

elminster

shawne said:

@elminster: Shar-Teel would solve a lot of problems for a Team Evil line-up - would her NPC mod be available separately or packaged with Eve of War?

I can make it a seperate download as well. At the moment it's a seperate install within the mod (so you don't need to have anything else installed to get it). But it would save people from having to download the other 70mb of the mod.

Mortianna

I seem to be doing fine with my low-HP party on Insane difficulty (no extra damage option) with Dorn and Viconia as my front-liners, and Corwin, Safana, and Edwin in the back. I'll occasionally send in my low-CON Cleric/Mage PC, but only after she's heavily buffed.

I usually have a high-CON tank like Kagain or Korgan in BG/BG2, so the added challenge is a nice change. I always make sure to have several Raise Dead scrolls in my pack now. ^.^

jde33

GrimLefourbe said:

jde33 said:

GrimLefourbe said:

I found Jaheira to be an excellent front liner. I had Jaheira and Khalid as my front liners and Jaheira ended up doing better due to her high dexterity.

14 dex does not grant any bonus to ac. She does get a hp bonus tho.

Are you sure? I thought they changer her stats to the BG2 ones as they did with Viconia. I remember her having dexterity AC but I might be mistaken.

Edit : I confirm she's got her BG2 stats and her 17 dexterity in SOD.

That's interesting.. They should standardize them. (and lower the 20 stats to legal 19's) It makes no sense to have 2 separate values since the games are all back to back now.

And yes of course you can fix this with mods or characters you run yourself but... shouldn't it exist in the game itself? Should we have to mod it to make it balanced?

cloudkillbeatsall

If you have both Khalid and Jaheira in the party and you try to kick one the other will follow. But I had Jaheira in the party and didn't have to add Khalid when I caught up with him. I don't think Jaheira even said anything to Khalid.

Jaheira's a very good tank, by the way. Just add Iron Skins, which she will get pretty early due to the druid's anomalous levelling. Fun fact: Jaheira is able to cast Level 6 spells in SoD and Viconia isn't, despite Viconia being a single class priest and Jaheira being multi-class.

Aedan

We should change the title of this thread with...

WE NEED SHAR-TEEL IN SOD!