Help Me Pick My BG2 Party
rapsam2003
Member Posts: 1,636
I'm playing a Lawful Evil CHARNAME in BGEE right now, who doesn't mind being popular. His name is Mordai, a tiefling. He doesn't like being viewed as "Heroic", because...then people tend to tie that to "being good". So, with that in mind, Mordai tends to choose party members based on "usefulness".
So, while I may swap out a few party members here and there for the sake of doing NPC quests, in general my party is going to be:
PC: Fighter/Mage*
Korgan/Valygar
Jaheira/Viconia
Hexxat
Nalia/Haer'Dalis
Edwin/Neera
*Technically using the Warlock kit by @kjeron ( https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/38113/class-kit-attempt-warlock/p1 ). It's very strong if you use Eldritch Weapon, have 14+ Str, and get decent armor. Eldritch Blast is also very strong.
That's my initial thoughts. Anyone mind pointing out some pros/cons here?
So, while I may swap out a few party members here and there for the sake of doing NPC quests, in general my party is going to be:
PC: Fighter/Mage*
Korgan/Valygar
Jaheira/Viconia
Hexxat
Nalia/Haer'Dalis
Edwin/Neera
*Technically using the Warlock kit by @kjeron ( https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/38113/class-kit-attempt-warlock/p1 ). It's very strong if you use Eldritch Weapon, have 14+ Str, and get decent armor. Eldritch Blast is also very strong.
That's my initial thoughts. Anyone mind pointing out some pros/cons here?
Post edited by rapsam2003 on
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Comments
Hexxat fills the thief role and viconia and edwin have the spell casters nailed down. I'd add Korgan just because he is a tank and uses axes well. If you want to replace edwin for more melee Haer'Dalis would be good and he can still cast spells.
Korgan and Dorn are the best fighters in soa. In ToB you know who is good, too.
Jan is VERY useful, much much more useful and versatile than Hexxat who is a hassle with her ugly cloak and weird resurrection cooldowns. But her quests are interesting and rewarding while Jan's quest is an abomination to every other quest in the game, it is so bad IMHO.
Viconia is the best cleric and can be handy with a high level turn undead to pit those vamps against each other, and her magic resistance is more valuable than what Anomen can offer.
Although Anomen is not half-bad, he still does not impress me.
Jaheira is a great tank and druid spells are very powerful:insect plague is I win button for mages and fire elementals are just brutally strong.
Cernd also can bring those, but he can not both be a caster and tank at the same time like Jaheira doess, which limits his usefulness and makes using him a hassle because of the need to change forms to perform each function. He can not melee without shapechange and he can not cast spells while shapechanged.
Nalia and Haerdalis are second rate characters, they are semi-capable and will do if you have nobody else, but require much aid/work and can still come short in the areas they need to excell. (Nalia's low thief skills, Haer's abysmal hp and thac0, etc.) Definitely take Nalia to do her quest because she gives 10 k more gold that way, then ditch her.
I know you can fix their issues with traps/locks rings for Nalia, giant str belts/health belt and tensers trans for Haer, however other npcs already excel without those stuff.
Edwin is the best mage, hands down, but Neera's quests are so interesting (except the cat herding one that one can drive people crazy like a wild mage) and rewarding. Same dilemma with Jan and Hexxat, made even worse as you can not have both Edwin and Neera in the party. It seems EE npcs are lucky to have so great areas/quests dedicated to them while vanilla npcs have short-side quests that are like an after thought.
Rasaad can be a very good fighter at high levels, monks are ridiculously good after lvls 14+ but are rather awkvard like a duckling till then. Questwise I think he has the most useful items, like the true seeing gem, so I think he deserves a spot, even momentarily.
If you want a ranged fighter Mazzy is your go-to girl, she has excellent armor options, health, and great saving throws against spells for being short (disintegrate rays just miss her flying over her head or something) and with her special abilities, she can heal herself and remove fear from everybody, and can even haste herself. Definitely useful. Team her with Korgan and they work very well, and get along well, too! She will hate and murder Hexxat, though.
Keldorn is a better wizard slayer than wizardslayers with his abilities and Carsomyr. He needs gauntlets of dex and a str belt, though.
Minsc and Valygar are not exceedingly impressive or strong like Korgan or Dorn. However they are versatile. Minsc can sneak and use longbows, two handed swords (Lilarcor is made for him!) or if you need defense, strap on plate mail and go mace of disruption with a heavy shield or if you need the extra power, go mace of disruption with something else in the left hand, like arbane's sword for hold immunity or another nice mace like the skullcrusher.
Valygar has a good niche with backstabs with katanas, can use Celestial fury better than Yoshimo, however defensively he is weak and as a ranged fighter nowhere as good as Mazzy is.
Korgan (replace with "secret companion" in ToB)
Viconia
Hexxat
Edwin
Dorn
Jaheira Uses:
- Access to the ultimate mage-killing spell, Insect Plague, as well as Harper's call and other druidic spells.
- Unlike with other druids, she can tank with decent armor and with fighter HLAs, fight really well too.
- She gives access to 2 exclusive items from her quests, Reaching Ring and Harper's Pin.
- So long as your rep doesn't hit 1-2, she won't leave you. Also she is a romance option.
I would nearly go as far as saying that she is staple to parties who aren't planning on dipping deep into the 1-2 rep area. She provides so much as fighter, healer AND crowd-controller not to mention her quest items helping her/other team-mates.
Plus, as despicable as it is, the "wedding murder scene" I have heard about may appeal to my lawful evil CHARNAME. Jan (and gnomes in general in the BG/IWD games) annoys me. I never even bother with Jan. I like his versatility, but I HATE his character. He reminds me of a bad clown. Yup, I always liked Viccy. Her romance is cool, but I won't be romancing her this playthrough. I really only take Anomen for his quests. Once his quests are done, it’s a snoozefest. Yeah, I tend to pick Jaheira a lot. I won’t be romancing her on this playthrough either, although that’s a very deep romance. (I was so elated when I managed to lock her romance in several years ago.) Her strengths are just so evident. I was never enthused by Cernd. I’m going to be romancing Nalia (De’Arnise Romance mod). I agree about her thief skills, which is why I’m not considering her a decent thief. To me, she’s more of a mage who just happens to be able to use thief weapons.
I really like Haer’Dalis actually. He’s not half-bad if you give him Armor, in my experience. Is he optimal? No. But I like him. Haer’Dalis is the only bard in the whole BG series I actually enjoy.
In all honesty, I’m just picking both because I need a 6th person. I actually use @kjeron ‘s Warlock mod for my PC, which adds Warlocks as a Shaman kit. My PC tends to be more of a “Pact of the Blade” Warlock (see here for the 5E description and scroll down to look at "Pact of the Blade": Warlock ), in that he uses spells to augment himself in melee. Role-wise, he fits into the "Fighter/Mage" role. No, I know. Well…this is disappointing. I’d guess they end up fighting eventually in BG2EE.
Maybe that's just me preferring how paladins are in 5E D&D. There's Paladins Oaths in 5E (Ancients, Vengeance, Devotion), and 2 of the Oaths could be viewed as not strictly "lawful good". A bit more flexibility there, whereas 2E paladins are rather inflexible. I never really used Valygar before for the reasons you listed. But I think I’ll swap him out for Dorn. If I NEED a paladin for a bit, I’ll pick up Keldorn. Exactly. I tend to swap between her and Viccy, depending on whether I need another tank/”mage swasher”. I always considered Druids to be just as good as clerics for filling that niche, so it just depended on what I needed at that time.