Starting with your own party?

BW022

I remember in the original you could set it up for multi-player and end up playing the single person game with multiple characters (i.e. your own starting party).

With BG:EE permit people to start with their own party?

The new adventure discusses this, but it sounds like it is only for the one adventure.

Shin

Essentially yes, you can create your own party for the main game as well if you'd want to.

Lemernis

You can, but you'll miss out on dialogues for NPCs.

Wolk

You can, but might get bored having no dialogue with NPCs which is a fun part of an 80 hours playthrough, however you can also customize your whole party of six in the black pits not missing out on any NPC dialogue being no NPC so you can focus on tactics and monster munching as you like!

Pegio

Has there been any word from the devs about whether this will still work on the iPad version as well? I seem to remember the trick was to create a multiplayer game and then drag the save file into the single player folder, though I can't remember if that was actually necessary or just a convenience to avoid connection menus every time you load the game.

bigdogchris

They confirmed a few months ago that you can start a multiplayer game and create your own party, then play by yourself. There were no platform restrictions mentioned.

Mungri

Wolk said:

You can, but might get bored having no dialogue with NPCs which is a fun part of an 80 hours playthrough, however you can also customize your whole party of six in the black pits not missing out on any NPC dialogue being no NPC so you can focus on tactics and monster munching as you like!

I never knew the black pits was anything like that, it sounds awesome. So basically its an arena with endlessly spawning monsters?

RavenX

After my first play-through making only the main protagonist I ended up replaying using a party where I made 2 or 3 of the characters and then used some of the other ones in game as well like Imoen. Also, you can always meet new people, have them join your party, do their quests, then drop them off at Candlekeep and pick your self made characters back up. That way you get the best of both worlds. Back in the day I even went as fas as to record my own voice for the character voice overs (grunts and hit noises and battlecries and such).

Abel

I guess you can also mod the NPCs to your liking if you want to get the best of both worlds.

Mungri

Or add NPC scripts to your own characters.

HaHaCharade

I'm starting my own party.







Wait for it....











IN MY PANTS!

Mungri

Awww, did you find some nekkid pictures of me on the interwebs? *Blush*

Wolk

@Mungri from what i read, the black pits were going to be a stand alone adventure ( no NPCs or links to the main plot) taking place in the Underdarks. You could customise your whole party of six. It is an arena like dungeon where you need to fight about 15 waves of monsters. It wont have a storyline like the main adventure, but will still have one one quite awesome if trent oster is right.

So no, you wont have infinite spawning monsters, but you will have the oppurtunity to make a full party of six

i made a thread about the black pits if you want

http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/6526/the-black-pits/p1

Abel

A good opportunity to test out some class/party combinations.

nemesis

I think ill be starting a multi so I can take a bard with me. Ive heard the ones in the game arent to good

Anduine

As I have done with over 90% of my previous playthroughs, I will be starting my own party. Not only do I prefer this for playing style, but the dialogues and banter are actually incentives for me to NOT use NPC's. Thankfully BG1 has considerably less banter than BG2.

Eiler

I did this once and it got boring after a while. Never did it again.

BelgarathMTH

I tried a custom made party once, and, it wasn't the lack of dialogue that killed it for me, but rather that I had created six characters with maxed out stats. They were steamrolling the game. It got boring for lack of challenge. Turns out, it actually makes a huge difference in challenge level when every fighter has 18/** strength with 18 dex and 18 con, every cleric has 18 wisdom/18 str/18 dex/16 con, etc.

Moral of the story: Don't munchkin your BG characters if you want a challenging game.

Now, Icewind Dale, on the other hand, was written and balanced for a party of six min-maxed characters. It winds up still being pretty challenging with its custom party, but I don't think a custom party works for BG, unless you want an easy game.

Lemernis

But Belgy, as you yourself noted it behooves the player to create the characters accordingly for a decent challenge! Avoid munchkinism when creating the party and all will be well (although min-maxing is perhaps a temptation too great for many players to resist, I grant you).

Playing with SCS/SCSII which increases difficulty in the enemies fight a lot smarter than one is accustomed to in a vanilla game. That can go far to balance out a... highly proficient... custom party.

Truth be told, in BG1 there really isn't all that much dialogue between NPCs to begin with...

Anyway, I've had a grand time playing some custom parties according to a concept (specialist mages, etc.). Honestly, they were much more memorable and enjoyable over the long haul than the countless standard games I've played with NPCs. Well, at least when the concept works out, that is.

But anyhoo, your point is well taken! Min-max all your characters and you risk a boringly easy game!

Anduine

belgarathmth said:

I tried a custom made party once, and, it wasn't the lack of dialogue that killed it for me, but rather that I had created six characters with maxed out stats. They were steamrolling the game. It got boring for lack of challenge. Turns out, it actually makes a huge difference in challenge level when every fighter has 18/** strength with 18 dex and 18 con, every cleric has 18 wisdom/18 str/18 dex/16 con, etc.

Moral of the story: Don't munchkin your BG characters if you want a challenging game.

Now, Icewind Dale, on the other hand, was written and balanced for a party of six min-maxed characters. It winds up still being pretty challenging with its custom party, but I don't think a custom party works for BG, unless you want an easy game.

I play games to relax, so the concept of willfully making a game more difficult without increasing the entertainment value, and decreasing my immersion of the game due to having a party of mixed rabble instead of a disciplined fighting force is not something I care for. However, I do tend to make my own challenges, such as:

A death of any party member at any time is an unacceptable failure. Reload last save and do it over, even if it takes 500 times. Exception: Clerics have Raise Dead memorized and available in the current battle, in addition to sufficient healing spells.

The critical wounding of any party member that could have been reasonably foreseen is unacceptable. Reload last save.

There are a few others, but the above two adds some challenge to the game without decreasing the relaxation or entertainment for me. (And I do this even as I have 2 clerics in the party.)