Necessity of a Divine Spellcaster?

dac0152

I’m planning a trilogy run with a Halfling F/T, however when it comes to SoA, I have the following party:

CHARNAME F/T
Imoen/Yoshimo
Korgan
Mazzy (Archer)
Minsc
Neera

Which leaves me without a Divine caster, save for Minsc.

I’d like to keep Minsc and Imoen since they’ll be with me since the beginning. Without Neera I wouldn’t have a mage until after Spellhold, and she seems like the only NPC who would realistically romance a Halfling. Korgan and Mazzy for shorty support, and they’re hilarious together.

Am I going to be in for a rough time with no Cleric? If so, who should I sub out?

Neverused

I personally think divine casters are pretty necessary in BG2: Death Ward and Chaotic Commands are pretty impactful buffs that last all day.
If I had to choose, Aerie instead of Neera would work decently. Imoen comes back around when 6 and 7th mage slots come available, so Aerie’s stunted mage growth shouldn’t be too detrimental.

mashedtaters

It’s challenging to do a run without a divine spellcaster. I personally can’t imagine the game being not frustrating enough to be enjoyable. There are probably some veteran players here that could do it without a hitch, but it will be a lot of walking back and forth in dungeons to get back to a priest, especially if you’re relatively new.

Anomen is a pretty good cleric and fighter. A lot of people find him annoying, but I find him hilarious and well written. He’s obviously intentionally written to be a jackass and the effect is fun for me.

You can swap out Minsc. He’s a generic ranger so won’t quite be as powerful as Mazzy or Korgan, but of course he is a ton of fun.

You’re pretty fighter heavy and as Anomen also makes a good fighter, you could swap out either Mazzy or Korgan. Mazzy kind of has some divine abilities to make here like a paladin without completely being a paladin and Korgan is an actual paladin.

ThacoBell

No single class is NECESSARY to win. However, lacking a divine caster will certainly make it more difficult. A challenge run could be fun, you will need to make good use of potions to make up for the lack of heals and buffs.

Borek

IMO Divine Magic is significantly less useful than Arcane Magic, you only need to be healed if you take damage and with the right spell selection for Neera and Imoen you can probably avoid that for the most part. Mind effecting spells not a problem for an angry Korgan.

Grond0

mashedtaters said:

Korgan is an actual paladin.

@mashedtaters are you thinking of Keldorn?

mashedtaters

@Grond0

Yeah, sorry. I had read accidentally read Keldorn and even wrote Korgan, but I had been thinking of Keldorn.

The logic still applies, though, as you play Korgan and Keldorn basically the same: monster tanks.

mashedtaters

@Neverused is right. I would swap out Neera for Aerie with your lineup.

Neverused

I will note I forgot the conflict between Korgan and Aerie, so the advice I gave doesn’t actually work.

Skatan

I often play without clerics as I find them lackluster, though I tend to use druids instead (mostly Cernd, but sometimes also jaheira). The cleric offers tons of buffs that will enhance your team with better damage, THAC0, Strenght, resistances, AC etc etc, but most of it is gravy. Korgan doesn't need anything really since as a berzerker the only buff he needs is his own Rage. Minsc has his merits but will sometimes get confused or horrored (yeah, I made that word up). As with all warrior classes in BG, with a fullplate and some supporting jewelry, you need very little more in terms of spells to be pretty much inkillable in vanilla. Mazzy can swap for shield and sword if you get swarmed and is a great complimentary tank, same as your F/T charname who you can tailor to each battle, either more thiefy or more fightery depending on what you need then.

So, you'll be fine. Try it out. You might want to swap out certain members at times anyways to trigger companion quests for the extra EXP they offer. Example, swap Minsc (no personal quest) for Anomen until you followed through his questline, then swap again for Keldorn and do his quests, then someone else etc. Though you liked Minsc you said, so you could instead swap Korgan. Some quests with Korgan you shouldn't really use Mazzy since she cannot abide to certain situations and have to sit a quest out here and there, those times are perfect opportunities to add in someone else to get their timer to start tick (many quests are triggered after an NPC been in the party for a while etc).

And yeah, if you wanna trigger NPC quests, don't be afraid to find a quiet spot and leave the comp on while you go eat. The game time will continue triggering personal quests so that you can quickly run through long quest lines. If you're lucky, after a dinner break there can be three dialogues ready to trigger as soon as you come back and you have loads of new, juicy EXP to harvest.

Sorry if this all sounds very powergamey. You can re-read my text and replace all sentences containing EXP hunting galore with "experiencing more content" instead and they are still valid, hehe (joke)

ThacoBell

Neverused said:

I will note I forgot the conflict between Korgan and Aerie, so the advice I gave doesn’t actually work.

Not necessarily, that conflict dialogue is random, so the op may never see it. And if Korgan and Aerie are kept far enough away from each other in the formation, its less likely to trigger.

UnderstandMouseMagic

No divine spellcaster..............no skeleton warriors.
"Cheapest" summons and the most useful when it comes to magic users.
OK, mage can get the spell, but not as early and not as many.

Once you have avoided the "death spells" that casters use first, you have a long term magic resistant summons that deals plenty of damage.

Also "truesight", though it maybe only SCS where that almost becomes vital right from the start. Currently I'm on non SCS early game and it's amazing, I can actually see what keeps on trying to kill me.