Too much divine power?

DeeKayNL

Hello I'm thinking about a new run. Kinda different this time. A want to go more dual class characters. But I have 3 divine casters in my planning, is it too much?

Pc, beserker dualled to druid or ranger/cleric
Jaheira
Anomen
Try Tyris Flare mod
Nalia replace with imoen
6th spot free... Not yet decided who to place here.

What do you think?

Chronicler

I mean, all your divine casters seem to also have levels in fighter, so they'll be able to pull their weight even if you decide their spells are a bit redundant. I say it's not an issue.

Borek

i wouldn't sweat it, Divine spells are only slightly less potent than Arcane and you still have an Arcane caster with Nalia/Imoen. Pretty much means you can use shorter duration buffing spells in every fight and you'll never have any issues with Party buffing with Chaotic Commands, which will make otherwise challenging encounters such as Mind Flayers super easy. Also as mentioned your divine casters are mixed with another class, so you have versatility.

DeeKayNL

Thanks!! Now for the big question... Should I run ranger/cleric multi or dual or beserker druid dual??

Borek

DeeKayNL said:

Thanks!! Now for the big question... Should I run ranger/cleric multi or dual or beserker druid dual??

Well, that may depend on when you plan to dual class the various party members, it can be problematic if you have them all low level at the same time in the 2nd class. If you want to make a bunch of them dual at similar levels then perhaps multi-class r/c is better just so you always have 1 strong main character to carry the duallers. You can easily avoid most of this by dualling relatively early and/or saving up quests for handing in after you dual.

Quickblade

DeeKayNL said:

Thanks!! Now for the big question... Should I run ranger/cleric multi or dual or beserker druid dual??

Personally, I'm a fan of anything that has a Hide/Sneak button to scout out the map before clearing it, so I favor rangers, thieves, and multi classes of both.

I would think that the R/C is a little more potent than the Berserker>Druid, especially if you don't mind reactivating the engine oversight that lets R/C have both druid and Cleric spells from 1 to 7, rather than 1 to 3, allowing the R/C to get ALL the Divine spells. That could mean getting Ironskins and insect plagues while getting all the fun Cleric buffage.

The Berserker will hit a little harder and be a little tougher when you use the Rage special ability, and can get higher than specialized with melee weapons.

The R/C as I said, gets stealth and possibly ALL the Divine spells. Also fighter HLA the Berserker dual won't. But won't be as quite effective at dealing melee damage without going all Cleric buffage. But will be superior when going all out Cleric pwnage.

Edit-I meant to say I favor multis of ranger/thief, not duals.

borntodie

Both options are valid, of course. A berserker/druid is my favourite combination, it gives you an extremely resilient and robust character, a great tank. Really good for a no-reload challenge. Berserk rage protects you from so many bad things and can't be dispelled. Basically, the only thing it does not protect you from is physical damage. Iron skins does just that, and does it amazingly well. Having both iron skins and berserk rage is almost unfair to the monsters.

And if you dual at level 9, the druid xp curve means you have almost no down time at all.

DeeKayNL

Thank you for your answers,

Im leaning towards a Ranger/Cleric. My reasons are the option for Full Plate Mail and a little bit more weapon options. As I want Jaheira to Dual wield scimitars in the end. That leaves only clubs and staves.

My only fear is that a Ranger/Cleric multi wont level up fast enough. Faster than Jaheira but that means I have 2 multi's in my party. Isnt that too much?

Skatan

Depends on what you defines as "fast enough". I know, it's a boring reply, but really only you can define yourself if a MC feels sloggish and slow in leveling compared to SC.

I'd advice to think a little bit about party roles. Jaheira, Anomen and CHARNAME will all have very similar roles. Is it too much with three divine casters? Well no, there's seldom such a thing as "too much" when it comes to BG. There is, however, strength in diversity. So thinking on item overlapping etc and since you state that you want to make Jah dual-weild (though that takes a looong time IMHO), perhaps you could consider making your charname a paladin? You would still be divine, but with emphasis on more battle and a little less magic (well, more than just a little less, but anyways). You would be eligible for some great paladin specific gear as well.

In the end though, party composition doesn't matter that much (unless you have punishing mods installed) as long as you use all your chosen party members strengths and try to mitigate their weaknesses. So ultimately, choose the character you want to play!

Just as an FYI, there's some really good non-metal armors, ie dragon armors etc. Their AC will be a bit behind fullplate, but not that much.

DeeKayNL

Thanks for your help. I wouldn't mind slower progression with a multiclass as long as it doesn't severely punishes me.

How does this sound?

Pc ranger/cleric Warhammer and maces
Jaheira first club and shield building or staves?? towards dual scimitar in tob.
Anomen flails
Tyris longswords
Nalia/Imoen bow/crossbow
6th place still open. Maybe a pure mage?

I run the most basic scs settings. Only smarter IA and call for help. Thinking about enabling smarter mage and smarter clerics.

My pc would focus on offensive buffing, jaheira anti mage and summons and anomen defensive and antimage and undead.

Fiddler

DeeKayNL said:

Thanks for your help. I wouldn't mind slower progression with a multiclass as long as it doesn't severely punishes me.

I'm addicted to being a F/M/T as my protagonist. I just finished a run with that build. Now, yes, he never was able to cast level 9 spells, but so what? You get other NPC's in your party to do the high level stuff. The fact that your character can do multiple things in a multi-class outweighs the slower level progression. Your character will have Iron Skins, which outweighs being a pure Cleric or pure Ranger in my opinion.

I can't see myself ever playing a single classed protagonist anymore. So, I wouldn't sweat the slower progression.

Shashakiro

It’s not too many IMO for this reason: the Druid spell list is really pretty different from the Cleric spell list. Having two Sunray casters is very nice against Liches, for example.

My current party has Jaheira, Anomen, and Aerie, and none seem redundant.

Skatan

DeeKayNL said:

Thanks for your help. I wouldn't mind slower progression with a multiclass as long as it doesn't severely punishes me.

How does this sound?

Pc ranger/cleric Warhammer and maces
Jaheira first club and shield building or staves?? towards dual scimitar in tob.
Anomen flails
Tyris longswords
Nalia/Imoen bow/crossbow
6th place still open. Maybe a pure mage?

I run the most basic scs settings. Only smarter IA and call for help. Thinking about enabling smarter mage and smarter clerics.

My pc would focus on offensive buffing, jaheira anti mage and summons and anomen defensive and antimage and undead.

Sounds good, though if I were you I would probably use flails on CHARNAME instead and go for the early and classic combo of FoA and DoE and then Crom perhaps later. Anomen could go for maces instead.

For Jaheira I like to purchase the staffmace +2 at the get-go and pair her up with the belt of STR19, the tower shield or reflection shield until she has the pips where I want them. Then when I get Belm she get that if noone else need it more and keep a sling of choice on switch. Same for Anomen, sling as optional but to be frank, having 4 melee fighters is too much for me so he often end up slinging more than meleeing. I prefer 2, maybe 3, melee-ers (hmm.. that's not a word, right?) but no more. It get's crowded in the front otherwise, but YMMW.

Both Nalia and Imoen are SC mages, so I would perhaps rather go with something else, maybe a ranged expert like Mazzy or perhaps Valy as a joker doing little of both (BS, melee, ranged). Haer'dalis could be a good option as well just for fun and because there isn't too much item overlap either (kundane, elven chainmail etc). Or you just switch in NPCs for personal quests, the EE ones (except Dorn if not evil). Keldorn is always cool but require some item investment to become really good (STR belt, DEX gloves). Jan Jensen is my personal favorite and I can't remember a BG2 run where I haven't used him. He's just the ultimate NPC in BG2. Having a backup Arcane caster is good and also if you have two thieves, one can focus on Detect Illusion and use that to break down illusion spells on mages. Also traps, two thieves enables one to focus more on trap setting while the other takes locks and disarm traps.

A lot of rambling 'advice' there, hehe.. maybe you get something out of it.

DeeKayNL

I like your idea of switching to flails on my pc. I will do that.

Regarding the npc's, keldorn will be taking too much aids and I always let him leave my party for his family. The dexterity gloves will go to Anomen. Strength is needed on Jaheira and maybe on my pc because rolling stats on my pc will be diffult I think. Needing high wis, dex and con. Jan is a nice npc but I took him on multiple playthroughs already.

I like the thief option but got no options left. Maybe make Valygar a thief of sorts??

Edit:On second thought Valygar seems kin of dull. Character wise. Jan would be the 3rd multiclass in my party. Difficult. I want a fun npc with some banter and possibly a nice side quest.

EE npcs don't do it for me. I just don't like them as the old ones.

DeeKayNL

I think I will go for Mazzy and use her as an ranged npc. And shorts words when someone gets in het melee range.

Skatan

DeeKayNL said:

I think I will go for Mazzy and use her as an ranged npc. And shorts words when someone gets in het melee range.

Mazzy is epic! She will never let you down Grab the tuigan shortbow and she will mow down most enemies before your 'melee-ers' reach them :P

As for second thief, I feel you when it comes to using Jan, if you used him several times already it can be cool to try something new. Yoshi is a great thief. His starting points is a bit oddly scattered, but his traps are great and thieves level pretty quickly early on. He can use a bow from a far to keep him out of harms way. But between the two, Mazzy is superior IMHO. At least because I am quite lazy and prefer to have only 1 or 2 characters that need some micro, the rest just autoattack and sling some spells every now and then.

Have fun!

DeeKayNL

Well i gave it another thought. Wont be using an extra thief. I will only use Nalia for my thieving needs. Only never tried her with stealing in shops. There are some things i'd like to steal and pickpocket. Especially from Ribald if i remember correctly. I hope potions are enough to help her.

Borek

There's so many potions that you can easily make Nalia work as a pickpocket, just have to time it so she hits up multiple shopkeepers during the 3 hr window. Remember there's the gloves in the copper coronet that give you 20% bonus, so 5 potions + gloves and she'll be 250+, there's also perception potions that give half the bonus but last a bit longer. There's in the region of 15 potions available in Athkatla (plus probably 10 or so perception ones), so you're looking at at least 4 seperate full pickpocket missions just based on that.

Just remember to save enough for when you hit Underdark, there's a lot to steal there hehe.

DeeKayNL

Do you mean only in ust natha or also with the Svirfneblin?

I saw in a YouTube play through that the list of items is different depending on the fact if you go to do Svirfneblin in your normal form or drow form.

Trying to find the item lists of this two situations but I can't find it online.

Borek

There's the Dwarf merchant (he has 2 different inventories, 1 for non-drow form, 1 for drow form), the deep gnome village has a guy plus there's the 3 Drow merchants.

DeeKayNL

OK thank you. So I probably can do 2 steal runs in athkatla, 1 in trademeet and 1 in the underdark.

Borek

DeeKayNL said:

OK thank you. So I probably can do 2 steal runs in athkatla, 1 in trademeet and 1 in the underdark.

Yeah, and that's just based on the potions you find in Athkatla, there are more available elsewhere. You shouldn't have any issues as long as you make a point of hitting multiple targets.

DeeKayNL

Thank you!!

I just made a new game, got a 92 on my stats! I already did the slaverquests. Both.
Did some quests in the graveyard. Went to the potion sales guy for some master thievery potions. On my way I got Ted owned by a rashaka?. Never had any trouble. Now I got owned. Probably the smart mage scs setting. Gonna try again later. Went on a stealing spree and pickpocketed for the ring of regeneration. I stole mostly scrolls and potions. Only gear I got was the blade of roses and mauler.

But I think I need to do Darnise keep because Nalia already gave me a reminder.

BTW my current party

Pc ranger/cleric
Jaheira
Anomen
Nalia

jsaving

Ranger/cleric multi is the right way to go for a divine-caster CHARNAME. Ranger/cleric dual or fighter/druid dual would mean losing fighter HLAs, which are among the strongest in the game. Moreover clerics reach their highest-level spells fairly quickly so "slow leveling" isn't too much of a concern with ranger/clerics.

Nalia can definitely handle your party's thieving needs provided you have enough potions. On the other hand, it's useful toward the end of the game to have an actual thief because their super-strong trap HLAs turn even the toughest battles into auto-wins. Jan would probably make the most sense given the party composition you've laid out, unless you find his personality grating (which some do).

DeeKayNL

You are making it difficult for me lol. I indeed would like thief with hla in my party but Jan is the only one who can do that. On the other hand, I would like to force myself not to use traps on difficult enemies and really make a strategy. Then again I never was able to beat Demogorgon without traps.

DeeKayNL

I did the darnise keep. I went on my way to pick up tyris.. Got only invalid dialog options. Seems I got to reinstall the game

DeeKayNL

Problem solved. Reinstalled the game and installed the mods in the right order.