Nostalgia full run+ 1st time SoD: help me creating my party

B4nJ0

So, has been a long time since I landed on BG, and I never tried the Beam expansion.

I used to be a very experienced player (full modded) used to cheese all the contest to min/max, like reward exp from quests stacked before dual classing and all the kind of stuff that you can think about in a modded game.

Now, I would like to take the things a bit easier and dont meta basically at all. I noticed that is now possible to create a full party without going into multiplayer mode (kinda nice if u ask me, playing with NPC after so many years it's kinda boring for me).

A couple of questions:

a) I'm gonna run the whole BG1 for new exp cap + Tome. Can u import also the other created chars into BG2 for better exp or not? Guess not, but u are never sure

b) my party for BG2 (yeah, only 1 mage )

Main: Kensai 9 / thief: so much nostalgia, 19/19/19/16/10/10 with tomes, guess I could have maxed int for mindflayers but honestly who cares. Scimitars since I love them and then will see. A strong option that I'm considering is to not level up a single thief level before 10 to not waste any pips till I regain fighter levels (ok this is cheesy, but let me do things in style)

Berserker 7/ cleric: not required, but still lovely char if u ask me. Not gonna dual at 9 to not bumb the party too much (I will NOT cheese exp for dual classes in anyway, like I said, so I will run with gimpsed chars for a bit)

Fighter/illusionist: for the LUL, 2 dual classes chars seems already op enough in an unmodded hard game, and who needs necromancery anyway?

Archer: it's problably the most damaging class mid BG2, I never really play it since it's not that needed and single dimensional, but for once I want to run with one of those.


How does this looks like? I will consider adding a 5th char (thief) to not metagame too much while gaining those 10 levels of exp with my main. Or, if this slow my exp too much, I can level up to Thief 3 with my main to have some thief skills and just stay at 4 man party, even if in this case I'm gonna waste some pips on him I guess.

No matter what last slot will be for quest NPC. I dont like bg1 that much but I will most likely complete the whole bg2 run.


Any suggestion on this particular party composition? Wasting one of the +1AP off hands seems disturbing, but I guess some merchant will gain a lot by reselling one of those ;P

OrlonKronsteen

You can import your own created characters into BG2 along with charname, so no worries. As for your party, you are missing some roles for parts of the game. For instance, you'll have no thief and no cleric until those characters dual over, which will be pretty deep into the game. If this doesn't bother you, then great. I mention it because it would drive me bonkers. Also, and again this is just me, but you have no pure class mage, and I assume the mage you do have will be a combat one. Not a problem for BG1, really, but it could present challenges in BG2. Enjoy your return to Baldur's Gate!

B4nJ0

Thx! I'm pretty used to dual anyway, since my most common party for modded games has been for a life 3x kensai/mages. Cleric and thief are not really needed in bg2 anyway and I think I have never runned with a pure mage since, let's be honest, they are just much, much worst then dual 9fighter/mages.

I guess that the fact that I will run with only one mage (and multi class gnome indeed) will hold my mage skills back for a long time given the horrible exp split of multi classes. But oh well, we are gonna see how it goes. Will be a run only at hard and no modded at all, so regaining those dual levels without cheese will be the most fun part of the game IMO.

Borek

Could swap the Fighter/Illusionist for a Rogue(swashbuckler) > Mage dual, you've already got 2 Fighter duals, plus the archer wrecking stuff from range, this way you get a Thief for the early game before you switch your Kensai main to rogue, go swashbuckler and you can specialise in weapons and get a few +hit/dam/AC bonuses from the kit.

UnderstandMouseMagic

Not trying to be awkward here.
But wouldn't a "nolstalgia run" without using meta knowledge entail using the NPC provided?

You're not going to get any dialogs, not going to have to adapt to NPC ect. and you are going to have much more optimised NPC.
Is that how you first ever played BG?
Which from the OP is kind of what you seem to be looking to recreate, especially since you mention playing through SOD for the first time.

B4nJ0

UnderstandMouseMagic said:

Not trying to be awkward here.
But wouldn't a "nolstalgia run" without using meta knowledge entail using the NPC provided?

You're not going to get any dialogs, not going to have to adapt to NPC ect. and you are going to have much more optimised NPC.
Is that how you first ever played BG?
Which from the OP is kind of what you seem to be looking to recreate, especially since you mention playing through SOD for the first time.

True that, but to understand me I think you have to take a more "hybrid" approach.

I'm a min/maxer, I always do run games at maxed difficulties (and nowadays I do mostly play multiplayer competitive games, mainly HS and dota2 ranked), and for me the nostalgia thing was the idea to run an "easy" version of BG to try some weird things and finish the whole contest fast while smashing faces.

BG was my 1st big game (with Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I guess) and I really now everything inside/out and I don't enjoy romance or NPC anymore since I did so many runs in the old time before modding the game.

So I would still like to min/max, but not so hard to have a party that is required to win the game vs oscene modded difficulties (like the 3x kensai/mage group). I just want to smash the game with a powerfull party to do an EZ run and have EZ fun

It got me a couple of tries in BG1 (which I think I will completely finish, since I don't remember it so well like bg2 so, surprise surprise, has been kinda fun since the start) but I think I have found a nice configuration to run with.

Main char: BLADE

Yeah, bard sucks. If I have to list props/slops of them:

props

faster levelling aka skull grasp and friends are more deadly then a mage with the same exp
Bard strongold
HLA bard song

slops (too many to be listed, but let's try to list the main killers)

18 str, fixed with +1 tome
atk/round: they require 2x +1apr weapon (so u are bound to +2 weapons and u only have 1 leftover +1atk/round weap for the party)
6th level spells

Still, I love bards that much and I want to make them work, so main bard it is.

After all the tomes she will have 19str/16con/19dex/19int/10wis/19 cha


In bg2 I will run with 5swash/fighter (tensen and throwing weaps), 7ber/cleric (flail of ages and crom faeyr), 9kensai/mage(still thinking about main weapon plus the last +1atk off hand) to make use of all the +1atk off hand weapons without any overlapsing. It will be easy and enjoyable, wich is what I'm looking for

Bard forever! At least in not modded games I'm almost done with vanilla bg1ee ( chosed grp for bg1 in the end is the following 3 man: blade main, fighter/cleric with maces, fighter/thief with bows) and the fun has been great, lovingit so far