Party/Parties for BGEE/SoD/BG2EE

masteraleph

By way of introduction: I'm a longtime BG2 player, who has completed BG once or twice but never found it all that compelling. But I've gotten the urge to play again, so I wanted to try and figure out ahead of time what party I was interested in. I generally play front line characters (Monk once or twice, Paladins, and Fighters and Fighter multi and dual classes with other things.), though I've also played as a Sorcerer. No real interest in being a pure Wizard, Bard, Cleric, or Druid.

I haven't played through with EE, so I don't have any experience with any of the new characters, though if they're fun, I'd definitely give them a shot- particularly if that fun carries over to BG2. When playing BG2 historically, I've really liked the following in my party, obviously not all at once:

Minsc
Keldorn
Imoen
Anomen (LG version)
Nalia (would love to play through w/jcompton's Romance mod, but won't due to lack of ToB version)

and less often, but still enjoying:
Viconia
Mazzy
Jan

I'd say that most parties ended up with Nalia and/or Imoen, and pretty much always had Anomen if PC wasn't a Cleric. Overall, my preference tends towards characters that are Good or outright ridiculous, with a soft spot for poor Viconia.

On the other hand, I tend to avoid the following:
Haer'Daelis
Aerie
Edwin
Jaheira (have played through a romance with her, but dislike the character overall).

And I'm generally agnostic about Korgan and Valygar.

In terms of mods, my favorites were Kelsey and Keto.

My goal is to have a party in BG that has some continuity with BG2, while hopefully also getting something new. I'll presumably run with BG1NPC, as well as any other recommended NPC mods.

What do people think would be good in terms of interesting, but possibly different parties?

megamike15

are you going to play sod as well?

ok so of the non mod characters that show up in all 4 games: Jaheira, Minsc, viconia imoen, edwin and all the ee npcs [ dorn rassad and neera.]

I only used neera and i liked her but people have issue with the new npcs so you may want to not use them.

in terms of modded npcs.: i really like isra, she is in both bg1 and bg2 and her romance is preety good.

alot of people like xan's mod. he has a romace with npc project that you can continues into bg2 with his npc mod.

kivan, Branwen, ajantis, and tiax also have bg2 mods so if you want to keep continuity and use any of these guys in bg1 you can in bg2.

masteraleph

I was planning to give SoD a shot as well, yes.

Neera sounds interesting, and after reading up on her, so does Isra. I'm a little nervous, when it comes to Neera, about the Wild Mage bit.

megamike15

another small thing i should bring up is. none of the ee chracters have batter with the bg1 characters even if you have bg1 project installed. neera has a mod that gives her some with a select few and isra does have banters with neera but besides that they will be mostly slient.

i'd recommand if you are uneasy not to use the ee npcs until a later runthrough.

this mod also moves some npcs that npc project does not like viconia, and safana. and makes neera's bg1 and bg2 cutscene not fire unless you speak with her so it's not forced on you. does the same for rassad in bg2.

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/58941/mod-bgeenpc-tweaks-for-bgee-sod-bg2ee-eet#latest


of the new sod characters. i only really used glint and corwin and i liked them well enough.