Available Tanks and Clerics in SoD?
BelgarathMTH
Member Posts: 5,653
Hi, it's been a long time since I tried SoD, and I'm thinking of doing a new run as a mage character and including SoD.
First, let me say, I prefer a party with the classic four classes (no fancy-schmancy duals and multis) covered plus one or two support classes or backups to the main four.
So, the plan is to have Charname-mage, Ajantis, Branwen, Imoen for the main four in BG1.
For BG2, it would be Charname-mage, Keldorn, Anomen, Yoshimo-Imoen for the main four.
For SoD, I'm at a loss for where to get my tank. I can't use Minsc, because I don't want a second mage in the form of Dynaheir.
Safana will be fine as a thief. I can use Glint for my cleric, although I don't like having him duplicating Safana's thief skills at the expense of his cleric spells. I might try substituting M'khin for Glint as the party healer.
But where in the world can I get a good tank in SoD without using Minsc? I don't consider Rasaad to be a suitable substitute, and he doesn't join until later anyway.
I'd be happy to use Jaheira and Khalid, but they abandon the party early in the game and don't come back until much later, after many difficult battles where I would be tankless without Minsc.
Any ideas? Also, isn't SoD kind of weak in choice of melee fighters at the start of the game? It seems like they just assumed you'd use Minsc and Dynaheir automatically. I guess maybe I'd have to use them and carry Dynaheir until I could get to Jaheira and Khalid again.
First, let me say, I prefer a party with the classic four classes (no fancy-schmancy duals and multis) covered plus one or two support classes or backups to the main four.
So, the plan is to have Charname-mage, Ajantis, Branwen, Imoen for the main four in BG1.
For BG2, it would be Charname-mage, Keldorn, Anomen, Yoshimo-Imoen for the main four.
For SoD, I'm at a loss for where to get my tank. I can't use Minsc, because I don't want a second mage in the form of Dynaheir.
Safana will be fine as a thief. I can use Glint for my cleric, although I don't like having him duplicating Safana's thief skills at the expense of his cleric spells. I might try substituting M'khin for Glint as the party healer.
But where in the world can I get a good tank in SoD without using Minsc? I don't consider Rasaad to be a suitable substitute, and he doesn't join until later anyway.
I'd be happy to use Jaheira and Khalid, but they abandon the party early in the game and don't come back until much later, after many difficult battles where I would be tankless without Minsc.
Any ideas? Also, isn't SoD kind of weak in choice of melee fighters at the start of the game? It seems like they just assumed you'd use Minsc and Dynaheir automatically. I guess maybe I'd have to use them and carry Dynaheir until I could get to Jaheira and Khalid again.
1
Comments
Outside of that alignment range we have Shar-teel and Verr'zsa now as well.
There's also a decent choice of NPCs, so why not take advantage of that and try using them in slightly different ways? For instance arcane users are better tanks than fighters against most enemies, although they do need to be more closely monitored in fights (and need more regular rests to be effective). You can also use summons in that role while your party provides support.
It's questionable though whether you should be aiming for a tank in the sense used in BG1/BG2 anyway. The AI is far more developed in SoD than the other games (assuming you haven't modded with something like SCS anyway) and it's much more difficult to get all attackers to focus on a single target. That's actually the thing that I think makes SoD stand out most from the other games. Issues like railroading, poor dialogue and range of NPCs are regularly talked about as major drawbacks to the game, but if anything I'd say SoD stands up better than the earlier games in all those aspects. Where there is a big difference is in the AI. Depending on your point of view I can certainly understand someone saying that's a bad thing, as it forces you to play in a different way to be successful.
Edit: while the OP doesn't want to use Minsc, at least he's an option. Evil parties have it a lot tougher.
My problem with doing this in the past has been that custom parties tend to steamroll the BG games. Maybe I could solve that by deliberately avoiding min-maxing stats.
My question would be, can I do the custom party thing using multiplayer mode like in BG1? Can I still move that multiplayer save to a single player file in the EE's? (The whole process of using multiplayer mode in original BG was a bit easier, I think.) What problems would you foresee with my doing that?
Other points: When I say "tank", for purposes of BG, I mean melee fighter classes who can march straight into enemies and start swinging, at the least distracting them from the squishy classes who need to stand back and try to cast spells. The traditions of fighter-cleric frontline and ranged thief and mage on backline work very well in BG 1 and 2, and should work in SoD.
I consider Rasaad pretty close to worthless in a traditional melee fighter role, because in part, his AC will never be up to snuff, but moreso, because of his critical hit vulnerability. To me, his class is support DPS only.
Also, I almost am tempted to create a topic in general discussion about D&D four-role tradition vs. WoW three-role tradition. I think tank-healer-dps still applies pretty well to D&D, which is a variation on the theme, in my opinion. There's a bigger crowd control issue in D&D, for both the player and the enemies, where lots of "save-counterspell-or-dies" are going to be constantly flying back and forth, and that leads to the "mage and cleric chess" element that you wouldn't see in a mmorpg three-role system.
EDIT: Okay, I created a "Might and Magic 8" party consisting of me as a human illusionist, Arius as a half-orc berserker, Rohani as an elven thief-fighter, and Frederick as a dwarven fighter-cleric. I successfully moved the save file to my single player saves. I'm pretty sure this party is going to make mincemeat of BG1, but it will start to face a challenge in SoD if I go that far, mostly because of the advanced AI. (That's assuming SoD doesn't do something to screw up custom parties.) It might be fun to also do this party in IWD.
And the true definition of will power is rolling a custom party without giving them all munchkin stats.
EDIT to the EDITS: I meant to say Rohani is a thief-fighter, not a cleric-fighter. D'oh!
Oh, one thing: IIRC if you're importing from original BG 1 (with the blue stone colour) into SOD you will lose any containers you had, like gem bags, etc. It's a bummer. I would recommend playing BG1 within the SOD interface if that's important to you.
EDIT to your edits to your edits: LOL! Okay, I see you have your thieving covered.
Thanks, man, you just gave BG new possibilities for me.
I just started SOD and am eagerly awaiting the opportunity to run a train of HobGoblins over Khalid to silence the stuttering fool.
It's nice atm since I have Dorn ... but from what I have read .... he'll be gone soon from my party and then I'll only be able to pick him up once 60% of the game is complete.
One way I dealt with some annoying characters in BG1 was to drop the (annoying) optimal NPC (i.e. Kagain as tank) and just play at a lower difficulty.
I find that the banter and NPC stories are more important to my enjoyment of the game than having the highest DPS / HP characters etc ...
Not sure how well this approach will work in SOD but that's my current plan.
Anyone else know this mod and perhaps have used it on a full run-through of SOD ?
i use it because it moves alot of the characters to more convenient places like viconia.
it also changes it so neera's cutscene won't play unless you talk to her.
I wonder what will be the party of my Neutral Necromancer (at the moment in bladur's Gate, I plan to do the trilogy with him). I chose thei alignment because I wanted to play with evil orientated NPCs if I wanted. For the moment, I have Viconia Shar Teel Kagain Imoen and Baeloth. That's perfect.
I wonder how I will manage in SoD, particularly at the start
You should be fine. I've done SOD in a solo run with a gnome illusionist/thief. Yes I admit that for the Coldheart cave I did use the Protection from Undead scroll (I had 4 left over from BG1). But if I had the patience, I think probably could have done it by setting a bunch of traps, running away, resting, etc. but was too lazy. The last fight I did rely on Caelar to help kill Belhifet because I as too impatient/lazy to do the hit and run with tactic.
For SOD, I don't think a true tank is necessary. It's nice to have of course, but in my other SOD runs (I've done one with a kensai/thief and another with a kensai/mage, both really functioned as the tank although they technically aren't tanks in the traditional sense and it was fine. Both of those runs, I also had Corwin who is a killing beast with those arrows. So lots of kiting and hit and run and the 2 of them got the job done.
Go in with your Necro + Edwin + Baeloth and UNLEASH HELL ONTO THEM
There are some options though, as others have said, you need to be a little more creative. You can temporarily stick with Viconia. Her HP pool is weak, but you can stack AC on her. A second option would be to try Minsc with a mace and shield. An atypical way to play him, but one that would work just fine. Recruiting Jaheira happens relatively early too, and she works as a tank at any point in the saga.
Case in point, my BG1 party just tackled the Durlag's Tower. One of my two primary tanks (Sirene) was getting awfully banged up, so Jaheira took up her position while Sirene downed some potions. Jaheira didn't do much actual damage, but she did keep the bad guy off of my tank long enough for her to get back into the battle.
I find this to be generally true of Jaheira throughout the saga - she can step up when needed, but her talents are clearly better elsewhere.