Best kickass party

velorien

Hi all I wanna know which is your strongest party, creating all 6 characters on your own.

For me is:


1) Warrior Berserker Gnome true neutral, starting with katana (celestial fury) and shield, then later in the game crom fayer or dark blade (which is awesome)

Why gnome? High spell saving throws

Why berserker? Fu*k demiliches and mind controllers

Why true neutral? No way to be lawful in order to be berserker and no way to be good in order to use dark blade. Plus in the end I always choose the evil path for a warrior (str and cons bonus)

2) Paladin inquisitor, human, lawful good, with 2h sword (Carsomyr)

Why inquisitor? Immune to hold and charm, fast and powerful dispel magic, true seeing and can equip carsomyr!

3)Half-elf Ranger-cleric multiclass, neutral good, with flail of ages and shield

Why? Can cast both cleric and druid spells. Cleric spell are the best but druid insect swarm is the casters' death!
Do you see lots of mages? INSECT SWARM = all dead

4) Thief Swashbuckler, half-orc, true neutral, dual wield, with long sword (in main hand) and kundane (or belm) in offhand. Later put points in katanas.

Why swashbuckler? No Backstab? Who cares? Try to kill a dragon with backstab=> immune
Why halforc? high strenght and constitution

If you give Crom fayer to Berserker, you can give celestial fury of dark blade to swashbuckler.
I also heard that "the equalizer" held in off hand will give hit bonuses also to main hand attacks.

So: celestial fury+kundane(belm) in order to have high stun chance
dark blade+equalizer in order to sure hitting and getting strenght draininig from enemies.


5) kensai warrior till level 9 then dual to mage, lawful good, staff of ogre magi

Why kensai? high hp and ac bonus
Why staff of ogre magi? another dipelling weapon! Nobody cares about damage! Irenicus will cry!
And Invisibility at will!!!

6) 6th character: whatever you want!

- another berserker to crush enemies
- a bard skald who can buff your party
- an elven archer (i'm not sure about this cause some enemies are immune to missile weapons)

velorien

Why berserker instead of barbarian? Berserker can use fullplate armor and can get 5 points in weapon specializations. Then remeber that a main tank doesn't really exist! Instead of dragon age tanks, in bg2 there is no taunting auras, so enemies attack whatever they want or better who causes the highest damages. So a good tank must also hit hard in order to generate threat. Warrior>barbarian

Mungri

Berzerkers have a lot more immunities than barbarians.

Id recommend changing the Ranger / Cleric multiclass to a 9 ranger / cleric dual class so the cleric levels will progress faster and further. Drop the swashbuckler entirely and add an archer, or sorcerer to backup your kensai / mage, which you can then dual at 13 instead. In the last slot take a Cleric / Thief multi for handling traps and healing while your ranger / cleric is still dual classing.

Oxford_Guy

If starting a game in BG1, that party would not be great to play, though...

Pantalion

Ugh, never a fan of the idea of dualling a Ranger, you don't actually gain much from the extra Cleric levels and as a tank you'd probably benefit more from the 2 lower THAC0, better overall saves and extra 1/2 attack per round from Ranger being a decent level. I'm not even sure that they would get Fighter HLAs either.
Plus, no "awkward teen" period, it's pretty much always great.

Speaking of;

Half Elven Ranger/Cleric - Forget shields after BG1, Crom Faeyr that offhand and let your Iron Skins make AC irrelevant.
Human Kensai 13 > Mage dual
Human Swashbuckler 10 > Mage dual
Elven Wildmage - Best spellcaster, if you don't mind the occasional hiccup. Well worth it for the ability to cast Wish as soon as you find and scribe the scroll in my opinion.
Gnome Cleric/Thief - Because +5 to all saves with 18 Con > minor increase in damage output.
Elven Fighter/Mage/Thief

Early game, you have three pure classes, Mage, Fighter and Thief, two multiclass Clerics, and a multiclass mage, as well as two multiclass Fighter types and two extra multi-thieves, giving a wide spread of melee, magical, clerical and thieving capacity whilst allowing the thieves to specialise (making it easier to cover every thief trait you need).

The pure classes really help the early game (even the Kensai can arguably rock out with throwing axes for the heavy ranged combat that's likely to be happening), where the multiclasses have teething troubles, and a Ranger/Cleric multi is pretty tough right off the bat. F/M/T is essentially a tertiary combatant, mage supporter and generalist early on. With four spellcasters available from level 1, low level buffs can be applied fairly liberally for combat.

Tomes are spent boosting:
Your F/M/T's strength up to 19.
Wild Mage's wisdom up to 18 if necessary (R/C's Wisdom for any extra beyond that, they benefit the most from Wisdom's bonus cleric spells).
R/C's Con, bumped up to 19 for the extra +1 HP/level,
R/C's Cha for boosting their already high, potentially even 18 already, score - this depends on rolls, if the F/M/T or Wildmage lucked out with points in decent Charisma themselves, then their score can get a boostin' instead for Friends use, but better to have a good Charisma handy without needing spell slots.
F/M/T's Dex boosted to 20.
Int freely allocated with any of the mages, probably the Wild Mage, basically for scribing purposes.

Once you hit BG2, your Kensai and Swashbuckler Dual, at a point in the game where your multiclasses have come into their own and are well suited to babysit them, and by the time they regain their abilities in early/mid BG2 the party will be sitting on four mages, three thieves, two clerics, a druid, and three characters solidly capable of handling the frontline (and the cleric/thief is pretty decent there too in a pinch).

Watcher's Keep boosts, snagged as early as possible:

Push the R/C's Con to 20 for regeneration.
The F/M/T's Strength to 20 (for even better backstabs), and Dex up to 21 for both ranged abuse and yet another point in A/C.
The R/C's Wisdom even higher - up to 22 or so if the Mage didn't need any tomes (if the R/C is the Bhaalspawn then the Wisdom bonus would be ideal, and they can afford the lost Str with Crom Faeyr, but game over on the Tank dying is a little annoying)
The party face's Charisma up to 20 raw (not mandatory, charisma sucks etc).
Wild Mage's Intelligence up to 20.

Gear attempts to avoid cross contamination where possible:

R/C wields the FlailoA and Crom Faeyr, along with Full Plate +X.
Kensai>Mage wields, presumably, Katanas, and the Robe of Vecna.
F/M/T wields 2-handed swords (this assumes that the elf bonus remains with them), and ends up wielding Carsomyr for Timestop 2h Backstab Whirlwinds, along with the Elven chain.
C/T with slings and full plate, with a Hammer and Shield for back-up tanking as necessary.
Swash>Mage can focus primarily on ranged attacks, SWFing a Longsword or something for the bonus AC (forget Dual Wielding).
Wild Mage can already instant cast like a boss, but will probably sport the Staff of the Magi for invisibility and spell absorption, at least when the R/C isn't borrowing it to cast Nature's Beauty whilst invisible...

Edit: As a very viable alternative to the Swash > Mage is the Skald for another kind of applied buff. You lose a full mage with good AC and ranged perks, but gain a great buffer and a third character who can get Thief HLAs.

cbarchuk

Ahhh, this is why I don't enjoy BG2 and ToB as much. It's all about playing casters. Magic becomes over powered while non-magic classes become less and less useful. It's a bottleneck. I hate that. Don't get me wrong. I love mages and such. But I don't want to be forced into using them in order to have a powerful party. This goes double for all those strategy mods. Basically use a ton of casters or go home.

Aegir_Fellwood

cbarchuk said:

Ahhh, this is why I don't enjoy BG2 and ToB as much. It's all about playing casters. Magic becomes over powered while non-magic classes become less and less useful. It's a bottleneck. I hate that. Don't get me wrong. I love mages and such. But I don't want to be forced into using them in order to have a powerful party. This goes double for all those strategy mods. Basically use a ton of casters or go home.

I see your point, and I agree to some extent, but it can be done without a lot of spells. I've completed BG2 with only a stalker, a bounty hunter, and an avenger, and It was obviously not easy, but on the other hand it was a very interesting playthrough, as I had to think a lot more about every decision I made.

Perhaps if you tried it without a lot of spells (and characters) at your disposal, you would enjoy it more - perhaps...

gokke

tbh all u need is an inquisitor to dispel with carsomyr then u can just have 5 other chars with scraps and still beat at least the NON modded version pretty easily

Isair

I plan to play through twice with PCs + recruited parties, then twice with parties of my own creation. One Evil/Netural party & one Good/Netural.

Evil party.

Blackguard: Two handed sword/Halberd/Crossbow
Fighter/Cleric (Dwarf): Flail/shield, throwing hammer/shield
Fighter/Thief (Halfling): TWF Will likely use Belm in his offhand - alot of mainhand choices, Shortbow - Tuigan Bow (see K/M note)
Avenger (Half-Elf): Throwing dagger - Melee weapon irrelevant
Kensai/Mage (dualed at 13): Throwing axe (if they've changed weapon the setups so they're the same as IWD2 melee weapons will be TWF Axe/Hammer). + Staff of the Magi
Blade (Half-Elf): Longbow/TWF (if aforementioned weapon setup is true) Scarlet Ninja-To/Kundane.

Good party.

Inquisitor: Two handed sword/Crossbow
Berserker/Druid (dualed at 13): TWF Belm in offhand, Throwing dagger
Monk: Scarlet (Defender in BG1) + SWS &/or fist.
Archer (Elf): Probably Longbow (I prefer Crossbow)
Cleric/Illusionist (Gnome): Sling/Shield
Swashbuckler/Mage (dualed at 10): Shortbow, Staff of the Magi

Mungri

But where's your thief while the swashbuckler duals?

Isair

Knock & find traps haha. Yeah...