Questions about party managment

Cvijeta

Idea - Anomen, Aerie, Haer-Dalis, Keldorn - Jaheira or Jan Jensen - and my CHARNAME

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Question 1: Jaheira or Jan Jensen - which to keep, which to ditch...
Question 2: Which class my main charname should be... I would prefer some kind fighter class

I may ditch anyone but Haer-Dalis - I need his high lore - no evil character suggestions

Wrathofrecca

Ideal parties involve hitter/hitter/hitter/mage/healer/thief

Two favorite fighter classes of mine are ranger/cleric, and Berserker/Kensai/Wizard Slayer into mage. Most people hate Wizard Slayers and wrote them off ages ago but I feel LoB brings back a niche for them. Now that casters, Dragons and Liches last longer, that cumulative spell failure looks better and better. Match that with a ranged weapon and critical strike for guaranteed hits in the first round and you can stack up 100% spell failure in one round on any caster.

You can flex in healer or thief with other roles. Nalia and Jan are great flex thieves, although Nalia is probably slightly stronger, I'm experimenting with Jan atm (Nalia also requires more knock spells and thief potions to disarm traps, unless you want to just hit them and hope).

This answers your first question, Jaheira should go, keep Jan. Now it also helps to know what Charname is, and also worth noting that pure thieves are super weak. You also can't stack healers like you can stack mages. Parties can handle 2-3 mages and make due on lower difficulties (not LoB where health is higher). You also can't use druids as substitute mages on higher difficulties because they're dead weight on key fights that are crazy difficult like Demogorgen.

Now, Jaheira and Anomen are unique exceptions, and possibly Cernd. I've never used Cernd on a LoB play through but it's on my to do list because I love the shapeshifter kit but if greater werewolf thaco comes up short, and don't forget he won't get improved whirlwind, you might be screwed. Anyhow, Jaheira and Anomen have solid kits, that take awhile to come on-line, but they eventually hold their own once their str is 19 or higher. You can bring them on-line sooner if your thief steals all the str potions/thaco potions in game and you chug those like crazy.

That said, you do best being a minimalist on healers and maximize your hitters. BG2 is very similar to raiding in an MMO where DPS and DPS checks matter and make or break fights so gear often goes to DPS first. Same is true in this game and if you can maximize your DPS output fights just become easier.

I personally don't like Aerie, I find her weak, and I invest very little into using her for play throughts. Her weak HP and spell casting hold me back. Don't get me wrong she gets tons of spells but they're not terribly strong spells and even in the late game she won't have the depth of important spells a higher lvl caster has. Druids on the other hand are a huge favorite of mine because they have some of the strongest niche spells in the game and I usually take a druid over a cleric in most runs. Yeah I miss out on turn undead but I don't need to chuck vampire and liches to get by and I rather have stronger summons and insect spells.

sarevok57

the way on how I set up parties is basically what Wrathofrecca said:

3 chums in melee ( preferably fighter types )
1 divine caster of some sort
1 thief of some sort
1 arcane caster of some sort

as for a melee type, my personal favourite is the berserker ( can use all the armors and weapons, get grand mastery, and their berserk ability is so damn good )

also worse case scenario you don't need haer'dalis for lore because you can just buy the goggles of identification from the storekeep above the shadow thief dude who you get introduced to in chapter 2

Cvijeta

OK, I think I will go with berseker or pure fighter.

sarevok57

Cvijeta said:

OK, I think I will go with berseker or pure fighter.

unless you are thinking about going pass specialization in missile weapons I would suggest doing a berserker over a regular fighter, the ONLY disadvantage a berserker has is the fact they can only specialize in missile weapons ( 2 proficiency points)

so if your character is going to be meleeing and not much else, berserker is the way to go, plus you will thank yourself later because that berserk ability is SO good

Cvijeta

I will definitely go with pure fighter

maybe with keldorn, aerie, jaheira, yoshimo - imoen, and haer-dalis. No romance here...

Wrathofrecca

I personally would never use a bow unless short, in which case you can always use Mazzy for good and neutral play through. And if you're using a bow, you might want to try an archer kit. Otherwise for ranged warriors, I prefer return weapons such as daggers, axes (azure edge for good align) and war hammer for dwarves. You might also want to consider a dwarf or gnome for any pure warrior, as their saving throws are crazy, just make sure you max con and I believe wis. You'll be a spell resisting machine.

Berkserk is really strong and return weapons let you go 5 star in a "ranged" weapon.