How many tanks?

Baptor

When playing BG2, how many front-liners/tanks/melee characters do you suggest?

Traditionally I've always run with three melee, three ranged characters, but I always felt that with three melee they kept running into each other. I've thought of paring it down to two, but I heard of one guy who uses only one tank.

What do you think? How many melee characters do you run?

ameliaboggins

normally one brickwall, one dps and one mixed class.

eg, dwarf defender, swashbuckler, thief/mage or similar

xzar_monty

One and a half. To explain: My current CHARNAME is a berserker / cleric who either is in the front line or isn't, depending. Generally, my front line consists of dual-wielding Valygar on Improved Haste.

Three sounds excessive, you don't need that many. Of course if you want to play that way, it's fine. But you don't have to.

Raduziel

In my current run I have only one tank (Jaheira).

-12 AC, plus Iron Skin, plus Ring of Gaxx works wonders.

Iglosnof

I tend to run control heavy parties so one front liner is enough for me. Jaheira, Haer'Dalis and Korgan are the best tanks in my opinion and I don't think you need more than one.

Aethernaut

My most recent run through the saga, the set up was:

My character - shadowdancer.
Jaheira - tertiary tank, secondary healer.
Sarevok - primary tank (two handed sword)
Minsc - secondary tank, dps (dual wielding)
Viconia - primary healer
Imoen - mage

So I think 2-3 fighter types are sufficient.

unavailable

I've not played this particular group yet, but I'm sure it will do well. has very little multi-classing (multis progress very slowly and rely more dispelable protections and buffs) levels easy enough, and is low maintenance.

You can make these classes yourself, or you can download eekeeper and customize your favorite NPC characters.

sorcerer - primary caster

nothing else I can go with it but cast, really...



bard: blade - tank/party buffer/secondary fighter/trapper

bard magic is the least likely to be dispelled, he's there for the magic that scales well with level like haste and dispel.



berserker 13/cleric dual

I like a healer that can hit things


fighter/druid multi

because I can't wait for half of SoA before my berserker dual classes to cleric, and f/d multi is good at tanking the fighters, disrupting casters and all around killing everyone. will be getting a few whirlwinds and resist magic HLAs for ToB.



wizard slayer 9/thief dual class (protagonist)

thac0 is a bit garbage. best I can give it is -5 with the upgraded carsomyr, a giant potion, and another -2 from gear. He has great magic resist, and causes spell failure though. I feel it may be better to dual the berserker/cleric at 9 and this guy at 13 for a thac0 of -10 which shouldn't miss ever unless it rolls a 1/20.



sixth slot is open for NPCs and their quests. I'll eventually have to fill it permanently in ToB, and I think I'll give the spot to rasaad. Monks are very good after level 18. Good AC, great damage, resistances, etc.

sarevok57

every time I play, I always have 3 melee guys and 3 ranged guys, I will have my warrior type characters up front, and my cleric type, thief type, and mage type characters will always go ranged

DJKajuru

For me it depends on the characters I want to have in the party, but I also keep in mind that having only one tank requires more tactics .

gorgonzola

I usually go with

3-5 tanks
3-5 mlee DPS dealers
3-5 ranged DPS dealers
3-5 arcane casters
1 divine caster
1 thief

or

2-4 tanks
2-4 mlee DPS dealers
2-4 ranged DPS dealers
3-5 arcane casters
1 divine caster
1 thief
1 sorcerer

my party is usually a 3-5 men party.

Believe me, is effective, versatile and let you fight the same battle in so many different ways. I often save before a big battle then I fight it in many different ways, like only ranged, only mlee, only casting, with no magic and then sending each toon solo while the others wait behind a corner.
I use the full potential of my parties only in the hardest battles, mainly with the Tactics Mod and other selected ones, and when I do it my goal is to win without loosing a single HP.
In the Eclipse battle, the last one of the Soulafein mod, I reached the goal on the 3rd try, I doubt that with an other party composition a thing like that is possible (there the enemies have a whole party free 1 round TS each other round and the 3 mlee fighters have OP weapons that blind on hit, 2 tough divine casters and a sorc that drops dragon breaths like crazy, their only weakness is that if you are fast to kill the sorc they have no way to dispel invisiblility).