Siege of Dragonspear - Truly evil party troubles (spoilers)
Mambus
Member Posts: 3
Hey guys,
I usually play the good characters, but since I wanted to freshen up my replay of original Baldur's Gate I went with the really evil fighter/mage/thief (think reputation 1-3). Without much trouble I made in into SoD. Then, things started to go downhill.
After the training dungeon, I found out that the only character that would stay in my party was Viconia as every other character was good aligned and even Safana did not want to stay (even neutrals leave at 1, but no big loss with Safana). After essentially soloing the first chapter, the situation improved with Edwin and Baeloth coming on board, but there was serious lack of muscle and tanks (apart from summons). Later I got Dorn which improved things, but I never really found the sixth evil member to my group. (it doesn't help that all of the new companions happen to be good aligned).
Fast forward to the end game, I hit another serious roadblock with the final fight as the boss and Caelar were highly resistant to magic and my mages and cleric generally were pretty much being stuck at hitting the boss with slings (there are only a few +3 bullets for them, so this did not work too great either). Main char and Dorn could get lucky in melee, but could not tank consistently due to relatively high AC and incoming backstabs from Caelar. In the end, I was able to beat the fight, but it was not fun at all.
I understand that evil playthroughs are generally harder than good ones in the BG series, but this was a bit too much. At least give me a sixth semi-useful party member here. I admit I not a particularly good player, so I might have missed something obvious here, but I don't quite understand how evil parties should be played here. God forbid if I wanted to play pure caster as main char, that would pretty much force me out of truly evil and into reputation middle ground due to unplayability otherwise.
Has anyone played through with evil party? What were your impressions of SoD?
I usually play the good characters, but since I wanted to freshen up my replay of original Baldur's Gate I went with the really evil fighter/mage/thief (think reputation 1-3). Without much trouble I made in into SoD. Then, things started to go downhill.
After the training dungeon, I found out that the only character that would stay in my party was Viconia as every other character was good aligned and even Safana did not want to stay (even neutrals leave at 1, but no big loss with Safana). After essentially soloing the first chapter, the situation improved with Edwin and Baeloth coming on board, but there was serious lack of muscle and tanks (apart from summons). Later I got Dorn which improved things, but I never really found the sixth evil member to my group. (it doesn't help that all of the new companions happen to be good aligned).
Fast forward to the end game, I hit another serious roadblock with the final fight as the boss and Caelar were highly resistant to magic and my mages and cleric generally were pretty much being stuck at hitting the boss with slings (there are only a few +3 bullets for them, so this did not work too great either). Main char and Dorn could get lucky in melee, but could not tank consistently due to relatively high AC and incoming backstabs from Caelar. In the end, I was able to beat the fight, but it was not fun at all.
I understand that evil playthroughs are generally harder than good ones in the BG series, but this was a bit too much. At least give me a sixth semi-useful party member here. I admit I not a particularly good player, so I might have missed something obvious here, but I don't quite understand how evil parties should be played here. God forbid if I wanted to play pure caster as main char, that would pretty much force me out of truly evil and into reputation middle ground due to unplayability otherwise.
Has anyone played through with evil party? What were your impressions of SoD?
5
Comments
As of chapter 10, most battles have been heavy on the artillery and light on the infantry. I usually send in Viconia (currently with 97% MR, -11 AC, and the Dread Hammer), and try to have the rest stay in the background and use ranged weapons and cast disabling, damage, or summoning spells at enemies. It's a bit tedious constantly managing spells with all of my "squishy" party members, but I'm also having a lot of fun since it's the opposite of hack-n-slash. I like the variety of having every type of spellcaster in my party.
As for the reputation issue, Safana and M'Khiin were constantly complaining after I hit 3 early on in the game (even though it was because of M'Khiin that my reputation dropped). I'm currently at 5 after a couple of unintentional reputation rewards and, thankfully, they've been pretty quiet so far. As long as I'm somewhere between 2 and 8, I can live with it.
I'm curious to find out how the final fight will go, since I don't have a conventional fighter type in my party. My plan is to load up on Lower Resistance spells and hope I can take everyone down before I run out and their durations expire. Otherwise, it'll be a chunkfest.
(pretty please, with a cherry on top?)
Evil also needs some kind of thief (Safana really doesn't fit 'evil'). Since neutrals will stick around no matter how high your rep, but leave if it's low, it's particularly important that evil NPC's can cover all bases. A fighter/thief can wear heavy armour if you need it more for tanking.
I think it should be new NPC since of the old ones, Shar-Teel isn't so tanky, and has an awful personality (and if she was changed to remove the sexism she might as well be a new one anyway). And Montaron would bring Xzar, and if there's one thing evil doesn't need it's a mediocre single-classed wizard. A helm of opposite alignment is a good alternative. Allows an evil party to poach a good npc of their choice. Maybe they could make it available early in SoD too, so that isn't limited to imported parties (and those that cleared Durlag's tower at that).
How could Beamdog forget to give you one of the most important items of the enitre game oO
But yeah, having the helm would allow for some nice excuse to use character of evil alignment, but
I'm not sure a lawful good character should condone mind control ^^'
Still I didn't and wouldn't use it on Corwin or any other npc without the game acknowledging it in some way through dialogue or whatever. And the character would still have the same party banter and interjections through the rest of the game.. Which is downright silly in itself.
It's a potentially fun item, but there isn't really a use for it...From my point of view.
A possible solution might be to make Tiax a playable NPC as he appears in the early chapters with lines anyway? He could become mutually exclusive with Glint....C/T's are generally very useful in these games as they have all the crucial skills in one character
Just an idea, and maybe they could extend this to Garrick as an alternative to Vog...not sure about Coran as (at the moment) he and Safana really don't get on.
Look. I understand the mob mentality of shutting down criticism en masse because of what happened at launch. I get that tensions are still high here, and the temptation is to dismiss any negative viewpoints on what SoD does or doesn't do (I'm certainly not in a position to speak to its actual qualities one way or the other).
However, it might behoove everyone to remember that the whole reason Dorn and Hexxat exist in the first place was that Beamdog recognized Evil characters couldn't have a full balanced party in BG2, and decided to fix that. One of the first things anybody knew about Hexxat was that she was meant for Evil parties - it was the first selling point Trent and Nathan discussed in the earliest BG2:EE AMAs. She's an Evil thief, because Evil parties didn't have thieves.
If SoD puts the only combat-viable Evil NPC halfway through the campaign, and doesn't let you backtrack to solve previous challenges? That is a step backwards. You can rationalize it, you can justify it, you can say it's not a problem for you, that's all well and good. That doesn't change the net outcome of this particular design decision.
There'll be mods to balance some of this out, sure - @elminster is working on Shar-Teel (which will solve two problems at once if you dual her to thief), and I'm sure someone's going to make Pfaug recruitable sooner rather than later. But that's a lot of time and effort being allocated to solving a problem the game didn't have to have. You'd think after sixteen years of people complaining about Alora, Tiax, Quayle and Skie that there'd be a valuable lesson learned in knowing when and where to place potential party members.
There is an underlying assumption of symmetry: a good team can inculde a couple of neutrals, so evil should be able to the same.
The problem stems from reputation NOT being symmetrical: neutrals will leave a very low rep team in a way that they never will for a very high rep team.
They added Hexxaat because players had been crying out for an evil thief, but they never really took on board why it mattered so much.
The bias of neutral characters towards good over evil kind of makes sense though...from recent P&P versions, true neutral is no longer complete balance, rather typical humanity, which will tend to favour preserving life and positive structures over damaging/excessively exploiting them. That's what I think...maybe they could refine how neutrals behave though as it's perhaps a bit too basic (and it was changed in the EEs I think...?)
But how do you address the fact (or perhaps opinion, if you prefer) that rep 1 or 2 shouldn't be easy (i.e. should be actively punished in the game) - what with everyone trying to get at you because you're acting like a raving psycho (i.e. it's not really a viable lifestyle option)? You might not be able to find like-minded folk to join your party because they are similarly being hunted for their behaviour....and most monsters you meet wouldn't want to join you anyway. This limitation is one way of doing it?
Minsc is descent as a tank, Jaheira better (but she arrives late) but Dorn is glass cannon.
But I agree that playing Evil almost forces you to play a tanky character, or your party will be pretty lacking.
If you take on the two drow, the half orc and the goblin, and do no evil deed, one of them will leave.
It might not be pretty or fair, but the general human populace of Faerun are quite keen on this sort of approach.
In summary, evil charaters need to do good to keep a party, good characters not only have no rep increase for aquiring new characters, but no penalty for neutral characters once you get there.
I can understand the view that evil playthrough should not be reccomended, but Beamdog should include that warning at character creation if that is their view as well. I myself do not agree with that view.