Who Was Your First Character?

semiticgoddess

What was the first character you ever took through BG or IWD?

For me, I started playing Baldur's Gate 2 when I was around 11. My first character was a Cavalier with Anomen's portrait and my name, romancing Aerie. I always gave him the best equipment and set him up with the Red Dragon Scale, Dragonscale Shield, Dragon Helm, and Celestial Fury because I thought a warrior with all-red armor and a gold sword looked cool. He had really min-maxed stats and used Intelligence as a dump stat, so I died lots of times in the mind flayer city. Our party always included Minsc, Jaheira, Aerie, and Nalia; I ran with a consistently good-aligned party. Anomen joined the group as well, but failed his test because I encouraged him to kill Saerk.

abacus

First rolled was a Human Ranger called Aragorn... not terribly original.

First to finish BG2/ToB was an Undead Hunter named Carthius, using Keldorn's pic.

ThacoBell

My first BG2 character? Sword and board Cavalier named Alarion. Romanced Aerie and also had Jaheira, Minsc, Imoen, and Nalia in the party.

Enuhal

I played BG2 before playing BG1 - though, to be fair, I mostly watched my older brother play the game (he picked up BG2 when it first came out, as a friend had recommended it to him). I was very young and wasn't allowed a lot of time at the computer. I remember that my brother played a swashbuckler/mage through SoA and ToB (after trying out a lot of classes and restarting again). When I first started playing myself, I actually started right in ToB, because I liked the epicness of the last part of the Bhaalspawn Saga at the time. I played as a druid (unkitted, I think, but I could be wrong). Eventually, I started "for real", playing BG2 as an elven archer (and my next couple of runs would be mostly archers and druids).

I don't even remember what my first BG1 playthrough was. Might have been a bard. I didn't like BG1 too much when I played it first, but I learned to love it, and now, it's my favorite part to play in no-reload runs.

I remember only very few things about this very first druid in ToB - his name was "Master of Stonehenge" (I was very young, okay?), and he used only spears and quarterstaffs (the two +6 weapons appealed to me - remember, I already knew the game from watching my brother play - and I also used a guide from a german videogame magazine called "GameStar").

It is kind of a shame that I never really got to experience the story of the games blind as a player. Still, following my brother along was always very exciting, and I constantly pushed him to play BG2 (not that he needed much convincing).

Abi_Dalzim

The name escapes me, but I first used a plain old fighter 7 dual classed to mage, because all the Gamefaqs guides I'd read recommended that. I think I romanced Viconia, or tried to, since I finished up the plot long before I got through all the conversations. Those were the days - I actually thought that since the Equalizer required you to go through the hellish difficulty of the Beholder and Mind Flayer cities to assemble it, that meant it must be worth it. I was such a naive fool back then.

PaulGreystoke

My first character was in BG1, a (vanilla) Paladin named ... Paul Greystoke - a p&p character of mine from 1st Edition. When BG2 came out, I completed BG1 with the Bard Celerius (because conventional wisdom said the Bard was the weakest class - LOL) for import into BG2. I can't recall whether I completed SoA with Paul or Celerius first. I recall restarting multiple times, as I learned more about the game & kept wanting to get things I missed each time.

When the EEs came out, my first BG1EE character was the Monk Gengetsu, quickly followed by a Sorceror, as I wanted to try classes that had not been possible in the original game. Gengetsu has completed SoA in EE, but I restarted him after SoD came out, so that I could run him through SoD & seed BG2 with the SoD items that transfer to BG2. I still haven't completed that run, as restartitis has reared its ugly head again & again.

deltago

Sahil - an elven cleric using Full Plate, small shield +1, Ashideena (War hammer +2) and Kagain's Golden Helmet. The aesthetics of the golden accessories were more important than power.

She traveled with Imoen, Garrick, Xan, Ajantis and Kivan. Besides that, I don't remember much about the playthrough except Ajantis getting chunked at the final battle.

When I loaded her into BG2, she had a party of Minsc, Anomen, Jaheira, Valygar and Yoshimo. I did the Planar Sphere quest first and soon regretted it as I got my ass handed to me and I couldn't figure out how to defeat a demon with my party so I restarted with a Skald named Dualm.

Dualm's party was Yoshimo, Aerie, Minsc, Anomen and Haer'Dalis (who was dead half the time). Minsc was chunked by Bodhi and had to be replaced by Keldorn. He used a halberd (Wave blade) but mostly stood around singing or using melf's minute meteors.

Chronicler

First character I beat BG1 with was a bard. I'd done the cheat where you give him max stats, and then gotten all the tomes. He was a powerhouse.

Neverused

First character I think I had by myself (I had shared a... sorcerer, I think, with a friend?) was a Wizard Slayer who, apparently with everyone else, romanced Aerie. That had Grand Mastery in Katanas and I didn't know about Celestial Fury. I don't recall anything else about that run except reloading a couple dozen times trying to figure out how in Bhaal's name you were supposed to kill Melissan.

CamDawg

Not for BG/BG2, but the first pen & paper character I had... my dad, from the other room, called out a name suggestion when he heard my choice of character class.

My first ever character was a thief named Nixon.

ThacoBell

My first BG character was a, uh, sword and board paladin named Alarion. He ran with the canon party, and somehow, I kept his file until BG2 came out and he was my first complete BG2 run.

OrlonKronsteen

My first BG1 play through was with a chaotic evil necromancer named Alhazred (I remember sitting there for about 20 minutes trying to think up a cool name but I was just too excited to think clearly so I ripped off that name from Lovecraft). Oh what fun that play through was - and I had no idea what I was doing. I picked up Monty and Xzar right away - and then Jaheira and Khalid at the Friendly Arm. Thus my hatred for Khalid was born. I remember how cool it was when the two pairs started fighting to the death in the Nashkel Mines. I jumped in (with Imoen) to help Monty and Xzar and had to finish the mines with no healing. God, I was so bad at the game that looking back it's hard to believe I'd actually played pen and paper years before. I also felt rushed by the main plot (I didn't know you could take your time) so I went to the bandit camp too soon and had a miserable time. I must have reloaded the tent fight 1000 times. Went through Cloakwood too soon, through Baldur's Gate too soon. Those skeleton warriors in the maze were hell, worse than Sarevok even.

My first BG2 run was with a neutral evil hafling assassin named Lander Buckleberry. I sucked pretty badly at the sequel, too, I must admit. Even the mephits in chateau Irenicus seemed scary. I was so bad I had no clue about what spells to use or anything and I was too lazy to use the manual. Yet I still beat the game somehow. My greatest memory is Firkraag. After 1000 reloads and getting my entire party barbecued, I finally beat him by having my tiny halfling run around with the boots of speed and the gesen bow, pot shotting him for about an hour in real time until he ran out of stoneskins (though at the time I probably didn't even know that's what he was using) and finally took enough damage to drop. SMH and laughing at the memory of it. But man was that fun.

Gusinda

My first BG1 character was also my first ADnD PnP character. Gusinda (wait, where have I heard that before), a Neutral Good Elven Mage/Thief. Over the years he has had slight personality changes but always uses the same weapons (a blade and bow of sorts) and classes, although at times he has also included fighter in his skillset.

My first PnP for DnD Basic Red Book was Dwight. A Dwarven Fighter, which from memory was all you could be as a Dwarf, and he was my second play though for BG1.

Both still live today as my goto characters for any of the games I just want to play without much thought. The time spent developing these characters...


Gus

Humanoid_Taifun

He was called Tor von Kerzenburg (Tor of Candlekeep), an NG dwarf fighter starting with the stats 18.86, 17, 19, 9, 3, 16 and ending on 19, 18, 19, 9, 4, 17. Once I had all the tomes together I quickly abused them to create an all25s abomination, only to abandon the game shortly after. The non-doped Tor saw a very short revival in Baldur's Gate II but he never even reached chapter 3.
Most characters are removed after I finish the game nowadays, but I still keep Tor's files around. He's 18 years old now. But he's been drinking since the day he was conceived, so I guess that doesn't mean anything to him.

semiticgoddess

@Humanoid_Taifun: Hey! A Trigun reference! All right!

That was one of my favorite animes growing up. I love Vash.

Nimran

Lol the first character I made I don’t remember, since I was seven at the time. Pretty sure they died to Tarnesh.

The first character I finished BG2 with was not even mine. I just took my dad’s old character Percival and finished his playthrough after he stopped playing.

sarevok57

ah, my first character, all the way back in 1999 or so, i remember the first time BG was ever introduced to me ( i had absolutely ZERO dnd experience of any kind )

so when my neighbor was showing me the game, i was so fascinated on what dnd was, i thought this would be great

so my first character was a fighter, he had 18/91+ strength ( perhaps even 18/00 even ) and the rest of his stats were like 13 or 14 ( i had no idea what constitution, dexterity or charisma was ) and i though; well having a little bit of intelligence and wisdom should be helpful ( LOLOLOLOLOL ) ah being so gimped was great, a disgusting 10 starting AC and 10 starting HP for a fighter, love it

and then my weapon of choice: two handed sword, i loved that sword, i wanted to be this huge warrior wielding this awesome big sword, so that is what i went with

and not knowing ANYTHING about AC or THAC0 or just mechanics all together ( all i really knew was; low AC is good, and higher HP is better ) so when it came to buying items, i just bought the items that were more expensive and hoping that they were better than the ones i was wearing previously

and the gameplay, i was so awe inspired for how the game looked, for back in 1998 i thought the graphics looked amazing and i was just blown away with the presentation

and dying, i did a lot of dying, ( because my neighbor had it set to max difficulty and i didnt even know there was a difficulty setting ) but anyways, i was having a blast, i remember getting the platemail armor for the first time, holy crap did that take forever ( i think i was around level 5 before i could finally afford it ) and the large shield +1 , i remember grinding countless gibberlings grabbing 2d6-1 GP per gibberling just so i could finally buy the large shield +1

and then the fateful day finally came and i had the platemail armor AND the large shield +1 AND a long sword +1, and i was like; hell yeah! khalid is invincible now, he will never die again now that his AC is actually in the negatives ( when i first played the game i thought that if your AC was in the negatives, that is how much less damage you took )

and yet there was many more deaths, but such good memories on how absolutely terrible i was at that game, and NEVER having any money because i was spending all my money at temples raising my characters back from the dead and using the temple to heal them HAHAHA

and then my first PnP character, is was when 3rd edition first came out, i made a barbarian named Dracke and he had bhaal's blood in him, which made him a large half-orc, he was my only character that made it to epic levels out of all the years and characters our friends have made/played, Dracke was the only one that reached that epic status of level 25

unfortunately i dont have my original Dracke character anymore ( since his character sheet was SO destroyed from constantly erasing stuff, i had his original character sheet from level 1 all the way to level 25, it was a complete disaster that sheet )

but some of the cool things i had with Dracke was my colossal wagon that was completely made out of adamantine and it held a bunch of fancy foods and wines and silk clothes and a whole bunch of noble type stuff ( i remember having a roll of cheese that weighed around 700 lbs ) and the creature that i used to haul this thing around? a colossal hydra with 12 heads, who could apparently fly,

that was my favourite "companion" ever, i find it kind of funny, because since my DM at the time was still kind of new to the game, he didnt really know what a hydra was, and he thought it was something else ( hence the reason why this thing could fly ) but the best part was on how i got it:

so there was supposed to be this big battle and after i finished the last boss per se there was going to be this huge pile of gold and magic items and treasure and all that jazz, and i was like; nah, i just want the hydra instead

so i do the adventure take down the big boss dude and my DM says; you have defeated *whoever it was* and you see his massive treasure trove of..... one scroll

and that was the scroll i used to get my awesome colossal hydra, good times

oh plus, two of the most memorable fights i had with dracke was when he was epic, he battled a pheonix creature that had like 15000+ or so HP, holy CRAP did that take forever, i think that was like a 3 or 4 hour battle in real life, i had to use a whole bunch of charges from my staff of frost and potions of heal and the such

and then the 2nd big battle i had was with an efreeti god that had 30000 HP and after the 2 or 3 hour mark my DM got tired and just gave me the efreeti stats and said: here you can battle this guy on your own, im going to bed. Even after that it still took me a good hour or so to finish that guy off as well, ah the good times of high school

and then the final story of Dracke, Dracke's last adventure was a place called Dracke's Keep ( a knock off of Watcher's keep in ToB, since that game was still incredibly new at the time, and that is the idea that my DM had for him, and Tob was also epic as well, so it fit the bill ) i remember doing the keep, having a blastio and i remember finding suit of breastplate +10 off of some half-orc boss

but shortly after that, we never played with Dracke ever again, because we met a whole bunch of new friends that became interesting in DnD so we played with them instead and made new characters, and would hit the high teens and then start off with new characters again

so now Dracke forever sits in limbo in his keep, never to adventure again sadly, every once in awhile i like to remake him from scratch and then level him up to level 25 just for the nostalgic lulz, ah good stuff

Skatan

The first time I played BG1 was at a friends place. I didn't have a computer back then and the only PC games I played was on my older brothers comp. I created an elf thief, spent time picking the colors (black/yellow IIRC) went on out into Candlekeep, bought a bow and arrows, stole some shit, angered some guards and was subsequently beaten to death within 10 minutes of gameplay. I played "with" him, meaning I watched him play, quite a lot but never really did a playthrough of my own until years later.

It took a couple of years until my next try, once I had finally given up on being cool and spend all of my petty cash on cigarettes and beer and just bought that comp I had dreamed about for such a long time. Once you go nerd, you never go back.

So my first actual playthrough was in BG2 since my best friend back then loved that game much more than BG1. So we actually played together. I had one playthrough myself and one with him, both roughly equal in pace. My guy was a dwarf berserker, pretty much a replica of Korgan but unintentionally so, and my friend played an elf sorcerer.. or was it mage? I don't remember. This was actually after NVN had been released, so these were the same characters we've had MP'd with through all of NVN, SoU and HotU. In 3E my guy was a plain dwarf fighter though. So this must have been in.. early 2004 perhaps?

So as you can see, I have both early but mostly quite late experience with the game. I know of it for a looooong time and played it some before I actually become obsessed myself. I thank Beamdog for that since I could just never get fully into the old games, mostly because by the time I wanted to play them (around 2002 when I bought my own comp) there were so many other cool games to play that made them look old. Gawd, how could I've been so stupid?

SirBatince

regular human fighter that only uses warhammers.

Had to use shields back then in the realm of 640x420 though, but he's dual wielder now.

still use him to this day.

hmm, this thread makes me wanna do a montage.



I'll do SoD once 2.5 comes out, promise!

really wanna do IWD2 too but i'm allergic to non-EE now...

JoenSo

I first tried BG1 at a friend's place just when it came out. Since I was a huge fan of The Hobbit I made a halfling thief whose name I can't remember, just to test out the game. He was killed by that piece of bantha poodoo Tarnesh. My next character was when I actually got the game myself. He was a half-elven fighter called Migido, using Canderous portrait.

When BG2 came out the new kits were all the rage. So a plain fighter just wasn't enough for me. So Migido had to make way for an elven archer.

BelgarathMTH

In BG1 I played a half-elf cleric-mage, because that's what I had played during my tabletop D&D days with my old high school and college friends. I was terrible at it, and couldn't beat the original Sarevok. Somehow I had managed to get that far, though. Might and Magic 6 was also out, so after I got to the end of BG, I started playing that more.

In BG2, I played a female sorceress named Leona, after my astrological sign. I chose female because I had heard there were romances, and I wanted to romance a male. I remember screwing up with Anomen's quest several times and having to reload. For example, we attacked Saerk's estate, and he wound up leaving me when I gave him some wrong answers. I fixed that through reloading, and then, after the whole Bodhi scenario, I couldn't get him raised at the Umar Hills altar. I think I had forgotten to pick up the black heart or something. I'm not sure why I couldn't get it to work at the time, but I was pretty angry and disappointed, since I was really into Anomen.

For Leona's portrait, I made a custom portrait of young Kirsty Alley, before she gained all the weight, in a sheer orange dress. I thought it was a perfect sorceress picture.

Despite not being able to complete the Anomen romance, I fought on to the end of SoA with Leona, and was very surprised how easily she was able to beat vanilla Irenicus.

When ToB came out, I don't remember what I played. By then, restartitis had set in, and I tried a whole bunch of characters and never finished it before I wanted to play something else.

When IWD came out, I had gotten into the first season of Big Brother, and I made a whole team using portraits of those people. I especially liked Josh and Eddie.

I got obsessed with starting IWD over and over with different theme teams. I tried a Star Wars team, a team made up of versions of real life friends, and several superhero teams. I don't think I ever finished that, either, when it first came out. I've only ever gone all the way to the end of IWD one time in all the years, and I don't remember when that was. It's always been about the journey, not the destination, for me.

I also got obsessed with creating various theme teams in the Might and Magic games around the same time.

This thread is making me nostalgic, because I also associate these games with various things that were going on in my real life at those times, and people I used to know.

Astafas

Elven Ranger, inspired by the books about Drizzt, using Kivan's portrait. Of course, I didn't know it was Kivan's portrait at that time. This was back in 1998. IIRC, he and his little party was wiped out by some kind of wolves when looking for Bassilus at the wrong area. My gaming has improved since then. :-D

Jaheiras_Witness

First PC in BG1 was a human mage. He died just outside Candlekeep. So I started again (no reload from the start...masochism). Died again to a wolf or bandit. Probably took 5 or 6 attempts just to get to Friendly Arm Inn. Bhaal only knows how many died to Tarnesh.

First real breakthrough moment came by accident. I was playing a rebellious character (can’t remember class, just remember it was an elf). So instead of following Gorion’s instructions to go to FAI, I went to Beregost instead. Ran into Kagain...suddenly the game became a lot easier. Picked up Kivan as well and made more progress in that game than all previous efforts combined. Even got past Nashkel mines for first time (before that, Nashkel was like an impossible nirvana target). The learnings from that game were hugely important.

First BG2 game was a human fighter, the first character I had succesfully got through BG1 without reloading. For context, this was 3-4 years after I started playing BG1! I remember this run clearly. The BG1 party I had used became my headcanon - PC, Kagain, Kivan, Imoen, Viconia and Shar-Teel. After so many years playing BG1 (with Tutu mod), BG2 wasn’t so difficult. I remember silly things, like being mega-annoyed I no longer had Varscona and wondering if I would find a better weapon (lol). My BG2 party in that run after Imoen was taken was PC, Nalia, Jaheira, Minsc, Korgan and Viconia. I was flying through the game even though it was my first time playing. I remember clearing Umar Hills and then going to Windspear.

So, a dragon! I had skipped fighting the Shadow Dragon so did I want to skip this too? I mean how difficult could it be? My fighters had over 100HPs, I had lots of spells, I had just got the Dragonslayer sword for my PC and this game really wasn’t that difficult, even though it was my first run. It’ll be fine.

Firkraag didn’t kill my PC. But after Korgan and Viconia were incinerated + chunked in the first few seconds, followed shortly by Jaheira and Nalia dying (but not chunked), I realised I was in over my head and game would be over shortly. I quit and ended the run. But it was the start of years playing BG2 .

UnderstandMouseMagic

This maybe something that happened in another game that I have falsely attributed to BG.

I made a female fighter, did all the attributes ect. then got to appearance.
The little "paper doll" looked like a weight lifter, bulging muscles and a bit squat if you ask me. The colloquial term would be, "looked like a brick sh*t house".

No way I could run with that, changed to ranger half elf and knocked down strength (how was I meant to know that would preclude longbows?).

So am I remembering something wrong?
I do know the first character was half elven rather than human and a ranger rather than fighter, both quite rare for me for a first time on any game.

Humanoid_Taifun

@UnderstandMouseMagic You remind me of this old comic.

ThacoBell

*That* is supposed to be really fat?

UnderstandMouseMagic

ThacoBell said:

*That* is supposed to be really fat?

Well she definitely wouldn't be described as "svelt".

"Big boned" maybe the polite phrase for somebody in their early twenties built as such.

ThacoBell

UnderstandMouseMagic said:

ThacoBell said:

*That* is supposed to be really fat?

Well she definitely wouldn't be described as "svelt".

"Big boned" maybe the polite phrase for somebody in their early twenties built as such.

Like, is my perception screwed because I'm American? She looks healthy to me.

Humanoid_Taifun

@ThacoBell I am pretty sure the comic was drawn by somebody who is more used to JRPGs than to western RPGs.

ThacoBell

@Humanoid_Taifun That would do it. Try comparing ANY jrpg character to a relatively realistic person.

UnderstandMouseMagic

ThacoBell said:

UnderstandMouseMagic said:

ThacoBell said:

*That* is supposed to be really fat?

Well she definitely wouldn't be described as "svelt".

"Big boned" maybe the polite phrase for somebody in their early twenties built as such.

Like, is my perception screwed because I'm American? She looks healthy to me.

Charname is twenty at the start of game and I presume she hasn't had any children (thicker waist).
So yeah, that's pretty overweight IMO.

Not so much about being healthy, but put it this way. If your joints/spine have to always carry around an extra stone or so, how well are they going to hold up long term?
It's worrying seeing so many young women, in particular, carrying so much weight around nowadays.