Best Party for LE Blackguard?

ZaramMaldovar

I'm not nearly finished with my CG Dwarven Defender run, but I would like people's opinion on the best party for my LE Blackguard. I've already thought of a few party members, but it never hurts to ask.

ThacoBell

Hmm, I would say (in terms of RP and not powergame) Dorn, Hexxat, Korgan, Edwin, and Viconia.

ZaramMaldovar

@ThacoBell
I can't take Hexatt until they fix all her bugs. Also you misunderstand, I'm doing a run of the whole series and not just BG2. I've pretty much already figured out what party I'm going to take, but I wanted other opinions, thank you for yours.

ThacoBell

ZaramMaldovar said:

@ThacoBell
I can't take Hexatt until they fix all her bugs. Also you misunderstand, I'm doing a run of the whole series and not just BG2. I've pretty much already figured out what party I'm going to take, but I wanted other opinions, thank you for yours.

Really? I don't recall anything gamebreaking for her? Sadly, I'm not as familiar with BG1 evil NPCs.

ZaramMaldovar

@ThacoBell
When I first took Hexatt along she trapped me in an infinite loop of Minsc dialogue and then her end quest turned out to be incompletable due to an infinite loop in her conversation. A new patch hasn't been released since then. Hexatt is a great NPC, but if she isn't going to work I'm not taking any risks. I see no reason why my LE Blackguard can't take Imoen along since they did grow up together and he has a soft spot for her. Only a CE Dwarf Fighter I played once named Rath had no soft spot for Imoen, he even killed her.

ThacoBell

@ZaramMaldovar That's weird, I have had no outstanding bugs with her, then again, I played BGEE at release and had no major bugs. So apparently I am blessed in this regard.

DreadKhan

Kagain is great, Edwin is great, Dorn is great, Viconia is great. For Thief, consider Safana if you want a pure thief, or either dualled Shar-teel or Montaron if you really want the firepower. This is a pretty easy party to win with actually. You can sub-out Edwin for Xzar if you don't mind a chaotic. He's pretty good, and can actually be dualled to cleric. Baeloth is a beast too obviously.

Imho, Tiax and Eldoth are hard to fit in, combining late with slightly weaker capabilities.

ZaramMaldovar

@DreadKhan
I don't think there is any way someone outside of TN or CN would have any patience for Tiax.

Lawful characters would either see to it that Tiax be put in prison or kill him and CG would also likely kill him.

CE has an extremely good chance of killing him too.

I edit my statement: TN characters or CN or CE characters with a sense of humor will take Tiax, anyone else would either ignore Tiax, throw Tiax in jail or kill Tiax depending on their alignment or temperament.

Also lucky for me, I can add Tiax early if I like (I wont but I can) because of the BG1 NPC Mod allowing me to move him to the Feldepost's Inn

DreadKhan

If you add them early, using Eldoth as party wizard would be a potentially fun nerf, until you've got 100k to drop on wands to break the game, then he's not much of a weakness.

I could see a LE strangling Skie with her own innards though!

ThacoBell

Montaron and Xzar are easily my favorite Evil NPCs for BG1.

lroumen

I always like a party with opposite alignments and role play the dislike or listen to the bickering and nagging. Sometimes it makes a nice pair, like alora and edwin.

I would go
Eldoth, Skie, Quayle, Branwen, Ajantis. Take imoen until you can replace her with skie, and xzar and montaron until you get to eldoth.

How do you feel about party conflicts?

Artona

I'd go with Xzar and Montaron, Viconia, Dorn, Kagain/Edwin - depending on your preference if you prefer heavier melee or spellcasting power.

ZaramMaldovar

@DreadKhan
Strangling Skie with her own innards huh? As fun as that sounds, that seems like more CE behavior.

@Iroumen

I have no problem with party conflicts, but I'm RPing this out so my party is most likely going to be:
1. Imoen
2. Kagain or Dorn
3. Edwin
4. Viconia
5. Xzar then Baeloth (I'll leave Montaron for the crows)

And BG2 is a little easier

DreadKhan

LE can be very impatient, brutal and violent. I'd consider Vlad Tepes to be LE if he were a game character, and he liked impaling things. Very order-minded evil is still evil, and Skie is designed to be kinda to very annoying.

ZaramMaldovar

@DreadKhan
I prefer to see LE as cold, calculating, patient, bound by a code of honor but driven by power and greed. They won't do literally anything to achieve their goals like NE or go on killing sprees for no good reason like CE, but yes they can still enjoy killing. I'm just not sure if gutting someone simply for being annoying is LE behavior. Those of LE or NE alignments chose their enemies more carefully and have more tempered reasoning behind murder (or even slaughter if necessary) than their far more passionate CE counterparts.

DreadKhan

ZaramMaldovar said:

@DreadKhan
I prefer to see LE as cold, calculating, patient, bound by a code of honor but driven by power and greed. They won't do literally anything to achieve their goals like NE or go on killing sprees for no good reason like CE, but yes they can still enjoy killing. I'm just not sure if gutting someone simply for being annoying is LE behavior. Those of LE or NE alignments chose their enemies more carefully and have more tempered reasoning behind murder (or even slaughter if necessary) than their far more passionate CE counterparts.

LE isn't any more good than CE remember, and can be capable of great cruelty, if not greater with their tendency to plan to the best of their abilities. I wouldn't expect a low level LE to murder randomly, but someone annoying and that soft would be offensive in the extreme to an evil dominated LE, and might be killed if only as an example that such behavior is not to be tolerated.

ZaramMaldovar

@DreadKhan
Perhaps. Though I still think I would need a reason other than annoyance such as "She got in the way" or "She crossed me". In any case, I'm not going to run into Skie because my LE Blackguard has no reason to barge into the Silvershield Estate and start robbing and killing people.

Edit: I almost forgot about SOD, but in SOD my character has many reasons NOT to kill Skie, as much as he might want to.

lroumen

Eldoth poses an evil scheme. You can promise to take him along and live by that promise to get skie. You do not need to kill anyone in the estate to get her, just go invisible in and out.
On the other hand, I can understand that it seems non-lawful to blackmail.

ZaramMaldovar

@lroumen
On the contrary my good man, blackmail is very LE behavior. I'm just not sure yet if my character would have the patience for Eldoth or not, I'm still fleshing him out.