Best and worst pc class
Cvijeta
Member Posts: 417
Would you rank classes based on difficulty? Solo or with party (specify).
From 1- best/easier to 13- hardest/worst
From 1- best/easier to 13- hardest/worst
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All following advice is mostly based on party play: from a soloing standpoint, if you want powerful / easy, it's really just the Sorcerer and then everyone else fighting it out for second.
I'd say the most powerful character in the game is either Sorcerer or Dragon Disciple. Dealer's choice: Sorcerer is better offensively, Dragon Disciple trades a bit of offensive power for 20 extra HP, a bit of extra AC, fire immunity, and the ability to achieve innate regeneration. I prefer the Sorcerer because that extra spell per day when you first unlock a new level of spells is so useful. The only potential hiccup is making sure you get a good spell list, but if you do that, you're golden; they're powerful and flexible enough to deal with any situation in the game either alone or in a group.
Paladins are also pretty user-friendly; they're not the most powerful classes, but Inquisitors and Cavaliers are solid, easy-to-play PCs with some built-in goodies to handle some of the more annoying stuff. Cavaliers are immune to fear and poison and get a nice bonus against some of the toughest enemies in BG2 (demons and dragons). Inquisitors are top-notch mage-killers, and their superpowered dispel is useful for bailing out your own party members when things go bad, too.
Archer is probably the "easiest" character just in terms of the ratio between power and decisions. Load them up with your best bow and arrows and they'll completely trivialize BG1 and most of Shadows of Amn. They fade a little bit late, but your other NPCs should be coming into their own, and Archers remain strong contributors through to the very end.
Fighter/Thief is a very basic multiclass with very high power potential. Early on, they fight like a pure fighter while also covering your lockpicking and trap disarming needs. Later on, they get Use Any Item and Spike Traps in addition to Fighter HLAs, becoming sick death-dealing machines. And since it's a basic multiclass, there's no real fiddling required to get them to work, no downtime to slog through, nothing. You just roll it and it's good to go from day one.
Dwarven Defender is top-tier, as well. Being locked out of Grandmastery doesn't even matter until BG2, anyway, so they're essentially just fighters with extra HP and an awesome on-demand defensive buff. By the time you hit BG2 they start to lose a little bit offensively, but Defensive Stance + Defender of Easthaven + your own innate resistances is over the top, making you 90% immune to physical damage for a turn at a time. Plus, as a dwarf, you're guaranteed the +5 to your saving throws, (assuming you max your constitution, which... do).
Fighter dual-classes are considered power-classes for a reason. Berserker>Mage, Berserker>Cleric, Kensai>Mage, Kensai>Thief, and Wizard Slayer>Thief are going to be your big five. You have to deal with all of the hassles of the dual-class, and to be honest, I don't think they're actually any better than some of the classes I've already mentioned.
Comparing a Kensai>Thief to a Fighter/Thief, for instance, the Fighter/Thief gets shorty saves, Fighter HLAs, better THACO progression, (enough to beat out the Kensai's +4 bonus if you dual at level 13), and the ability to use everything it needs from day one instead of having to wait until HLAs. In exchange, the Kensai>Thief gets an extra half attack (assuming you dual at 13, because otherwise he doesn't even get that), a +4 damage bonus, and Kai. Meh.
In terms of "worst" classes, (or, more accurately, "most difficult"): I'd agree that single-class thieves are a major pain, with the possible exception of the Bounty Hunter if you're really going to go nuts trapping. I'd put Assassin or Vanilla Thief as a tougher play than Beastmaster. The Beastmaster is at least getting extra attacks and bigger shields.
Shapeshifter has its fans, but my opinion is that it's really well-balanced and powerful until you reach level 13 at 750,000 XP, at which point it... just stops improving. It eventually winds up as nothing more than a gimped druid, and since druids already kind of have it rough, it's not a very powerful class.
Pure-class Clerics are kind of the same way. They're phenomenal through BG1 and the early stages of BG2, but they get their most powerful spells at level 14, (1.35m XP), and they start fading quickly from there. Fighter>Cleric duals are basically the same thing with extra attacks per round. Fighter/Cleric Multis are even better still, since you get Shorty Saves *and* Fighter HLAs. As much as I love Boon of Lathander, the plain old Cleric and kits doesn't really have a ton going on for him.
Several single classes have similar benefits.
The complicated nature of the game makes it difficult to pin down just what the best and worst PC classes are unless you add a few more parameters to what you're looking for, like worst PC class "for solo" or any without reloads/metagaming/item use/spells/etc.
If you had to force me to make a choice though, then I'd say the Wild Mage is potentially both the strongest and weakest class. Because no other class can potentially spam so many high level mage spells AND has a built-in (granted, risk-based) self-defeating mechanic.
For class there is no weakest class, there are harder to use, more work to do the same goal as "stronger" classes. For egs. the beastmaster is not weak because it is a fighter class, it has strong hla selection, good weapons, potions, amulets etc. its just not optimal as berserker, not as fast to run through the game. A vannilla thief can solo the game if you want to, but takes more time and more thinking, but as easy as other classes if you got the tactic for it.
I like easy classes, like barbarian, paladin kits, archer etc. but if want to something entertaining i usually use some bard kit or swashbuckler, maybe a druid.
What i never liked the multiclasses, i really dont like the idea of it.
barbarian
fighter (berserker)
paladin (cavalier)
fighter/cleric
ranger (archer & stalker)
fighter/thief
fighter/mage
bard (blade)
thief (swashbuckler)
cleric (lathander kit)
mage/cleric (illusionist/cleric)
mage (conjurer)
druid (totemic & avenger)
shaman
thief (other kits)
sorcerer *not recommended for beginners without meta*
monk
bard (other kits)
solo (beginners):
fighter/mage/thief
fighter/mage
...
(everything else is not recommended for beginners i think)
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here's also a "fun for beginners" ranking (to some extent regardless of difficulty)
1. fighter/cleric (the fun of pumping up stats by the way of insane buffs)
2. fighter/mage (feeling safe when you get those protections)
3. fighter/thief (EZ miss-free backstabbing)
4. stalker (the same as above plus a massively cool sounding kit)
5. blade (also cool sounding and you get those stupid spins)
6. barbarian (dumb fun. berserker on the other hand, however easy, makes for a less jolly experience because of the winded status and more pip dilemas)
7. avenger (never run out of offensive spells /however meh they be but you don't know that as a noob/ + insect plague - yuge comfort for beginners ...+ cool sounding!)
8. paladin (be a noble knight)
9. necromancer (be an evil wizard)
10. assassin (i hear assassins are big in pop culture nowadays)
i hear werewolves are popular too, but don't play a shapeshifter as a beginner. pro tip.
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OVERALL the best class for beginners (weighed easiest + most fun): fighter/cleric. hands down.
Rogues are kind of a difficult class to assign a power level to. They have this single crazy-broken mechanic, (traps), that if you're willing to really abuse it can totally trivialize most of the game. (They actually have a second crazy-broken mechanic if you count the steal / resell exploit to get infinite money immediately after leaving Chateau Irenicus, allowing you to gear up with Robe of Vecna and Vhailor's Helm and a Girdle of Giant Strength and Bracers of AC 3 and Full Plate and Shield of the Balduran and Everard's Sling and Defender of Easthaven and Amulet of Power and a Ring of Protection +2 and on and on and on without fighting a single enemy.)
But if you're not actively abusing either of those things, (if you're either not using them at all, or you're using them sensibly and sparingly in a non-immersion-breaking manner), then thieves really aren't contributing a ton to the party beyond basic quality-of-life stuff (trap detecting, lock picking, pickpocketing to potentially get good scrolls in chapter 2 instead of chapter 5 if you get lucky). You're probably going to rank dead last in terms of contributions during combat, which is the most deadly part of the game.
If you were to create a party from scratch, how often would it have two Fighters or Fighter-subtypes (Paladins, Rangers, Barbarians)? Pretty much all the time, right? How about two Arcane casters? Again, for most that's going to be pretty much 100% of the time. Two clerics? That'll happen sometimes, though not as often as with fighters and mages.
But if creating an entire party from scratch, how often are people going to make two thieves outside of some specific theme party? I think it's going to be pretty rare, especially relative to the other classes, which I think speaks to the overall power level of the individual thief once you get beyond that necessity of opening locks and disarming traps.
You don't have to exploit stealing to get rich with a thief, you can just steal back items you sell and repeat the process over at the next merchant. Athkatla is the city of coin, after all, and the area has lots of merchants.
There are other thief-specific tactics you can use. Scouting, backstabs, hiding in the shadows and then standing near that lich and calling down Daystar's Sunray, dispelling illusions...
Having someone hidden/undetectable to show you where to throw your spells is already an "I win" button for a significant chunk of the game.
Combat is important, but how well you do in combat is dependent on a lot of factors that a thief can influence. I've already pointed out XP, for example, and you brought up the potential impact of gear.
There's always a magic number for how many of a certain class you want, but it's really got more to do with efficiency and what you're trying to accomplish rathern than raw power. Mages may be one the strongest classes in the game, for example, but micromanaging six of them? Nooooo.
that's half the reason certain characters like Alora and Sky got listed years back as the least used characters in BG1 along with the fact that they were so far away from your start point and you had to make long trips early on if you wanted to get them(Or rush the storyline since Cloakwood is now trigger locked). some mods actually tried to fix this by changing where some of these characters were located to make them more accessable and an easier choice to make.
if it wasn't somewhat of a necessity at times to have the double "meat shield" unless your going to complicate your tactics. Having two thieves. specially early on could be quite helpful. Have one for stealth and enemy scouting and another for lockpicking and traps and pickpocketing.
For Insane difficulty with SCS I would say FMT.
Solo I am not sure but probably FMT. I don't play solo very much. Sorcerer is good and I have not played as a FMC yet but I have a feeling that one would be pretty good for a solo game. I played solo with a FM and did ok but the lack of thieving abilities can get annoying when you are solo. You only have so many slots for knock and traps are a pain. FMT would probably be the best solo for that reason alone. One of the biggest draw backs for a triple class is the slower character progression but when you are solo it pretty much works around that problem.
I have heard that the beast master is the worst class but I have not played as one so I wouldn't know. I think the least powerful class I have played would be a normal thief. However, I have many classes that I have not tried yet.
I don't mean to get into a discussion of semantics and definitely don't want to get into a judgment of how people play, but I consider stealing/selling the same piece of loot multiple times kind of exploit-y even if you use different merchants. Maybe it's not pure cheese, but it's definitely cheese-adjacent. I mean, the entire point of Chapter 2 is supposed to be money management, so having a class that can completely invalidate money for the rest of the game messes up that balance. That's really a design choice that's on the developers, though, and it's not really the player's job to fix it if they don't want to.
(Again, I'm not judging, I do the same thing all the time. I just did it in my most recent run because I was going to rush Spellhold and wanted to make sure my party had decent gear to tackle the underdark without having to do any major quests first. Just saying it's kind of binary, and if you're willing to do it Thieves are substantially more powerful than if you're not. Though if you don't have a problem with stacking potions of Master Thievery it's kind of a moot point, as even Nalia is enough of a thief to pull it off. As can any Bard.)
Dispelling Illusions makes Thieves even more mandatory in SCS, but plenty of other classes can scout and use Daystar, (Rangers and Monks, or any sort of Bard, F/M, or M/T with Invisibility and Spell Immunity: Divination if necessary). Most liches see through invisibility, anyway. (The one in City Gates doesn't, but all the liches in the Kangaxx questline do.)
I'm 100% with you on the nuisance of micromanagement, which is partly why I love party of 2/3/4 runs so much. Six members can just feel like so much work sometimes. It's also why I've become a big fan of Skalds over the years, as they're contributing just as much power as most other classes but with a lot less work required.
Any paladin that can combo Carsomyr +5/6 with GWWs, Hardiness with Armor of Faith, and all of that with 25 in all physical stats (DUHM) is going to be appealing, even the vanilla version, come to that. Inquisitors pay a very steep price for their abilities, not to mention their Dispels can be devastating to allied fighter/mage-type characters, even without SCS. It's really depends on what you need more.
Even just dropping in to grab Mazzy and then leaving again will lock the spawns at their lower-level version, So if you're a level-8 Mazzy addict like I am, there's no risk of finding him.
But yeah, the first time I stumbled across him was... a surprise.
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-Aren't there two Liches in the Shadow Dungeon (for, as you say, higher level parties), one by the lava pool and one in the room just by the letter puzzle? That's what I have gotten accustomed to (I do the dragons after the Underdark, i.e. Chapter 6).
Relatedly, I'd forgotten how nasty the undead room in Windspear can get if you put it off, too.