Cool friends for Valygar, Aerie and Nalia
Darkspell
Member Posts: 18
I have finished a good number of good party and evil party runs but these three characters on title are the ones i negelcted the most and i'd like some suggestions on a character's class and two npc companions to combo with these three, power-gamey-wise and banter-funwise. No Jan, no Cernd, and no Haer'Dalis please.
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So, what do you need? That's plenty of arcane spell power. I'd add another priest there. There's only one warrior, so you probably want at least two more. Also, you need a thief; Nalia just doesn't have enough skill points to keep up with your needs without constantly using consumables.
Thievery is the toughest hole to fill here - you've said no Jan, Imoen's too similar to Nalia, and Hexxat doesn't play well with good parties. That leaves you with a thief PC. What kind of thief? I don't like to run two backstabbers in a party (too much micromanagement), so it'll have to be a thief that doesn't focus on backstabs. All right, how about a swashbuckler?
For priests and warriors, you have choices. Anomen and Jaheira both fit well with a good party, and even fill both priest and warrior roles. For warriors, there are lots of choices - Keldorn, Mazzy, Minsc, Rasaad.
Korgan is incompatible with Aerie in SoA, he taunts her and finally she forces you to choose between the two. In ToB Aerie toughens up and can resist Korgan's taunts.
Anomen is also incompatible with Aerie if he fails his test and turns chaotic neutral.
Keldorn does well with the three you mention.
Mazzy is fun with Valygar, she treats him as her squire, definitely recommended.
Enhanced edition npcs are always good to have, they have nice quests and new areas.
For pc, you have good mage power so a non-magey pc is recommended. A fighter/thief variant either multi or dual can do well, Nalia's thieving skills is a bit lacking. Aerie has all the nice cleric spells you need, so a cleric pc is not really necessary either.
Edit: If you go with a fighter/thief you can focus on 2-handed weapons and wield either Carsomyr or the Staff of the Magi (after Use Any Item) if that appeals to you...
Dwarf fighter/thief for x-bows. Just for the nice shorty saves. Halfling f/t gets lots of thief ability bonuses, 19 dexterity and the -1 strength doesn't hurt x-bow damage, so that's not a bad option either (shorty saves aren't quite as good though).
Unless you really like one of the fighter kits, I wouldn't dual class.
Fighter -> Thief lets you run a thief with weapon mastery bonuses and extra warrior attacks. It synergizes particularly well with backstabbing; the extra damage from proficiency bonuses gets multiplied in a backstab. Also, note that the disadvantages of the Kensai and Wizard Slayer kits are eliminated by the thief's "Use Any Item" high level ability. The sweet spot for dual-classing is either nine or thirteen levels of fighter; nine for immediate grandmastery in a weapon and getting it over with quickly, or thirteen for better THAC0, saves, and the last bonus attack while still being able to reach thief level 39 at the experience cap.
Fighter/Thief is the only option that lets you pick and choose from both rogue and warrior high-level ability lists, and it lets you use any of the various non-human races. Those races get bonuses to thief skills; a total of +15 for elves and half-elves, or +40 for dwarves, gnomes, and halflings. Even with the Dex penalty, a dwarf gets better thieving skills than a human or half-orc (assuming they start with the maximum Dex score).
Which one should you choose? That comes down to personal preference - what style of play do you like?
She's also a pure class fighter, so despite her initial points into shortbows, if you pick her up early enough you will get enough proficiency points to grandmaster any weapon you want and she will destroy everything.
Valygar with Nalia and/or Aerie can be quite interesting too...he’s suspicious of mages but gradually gets on with both of these once he sees their value.
i had many runs with Nalia as party thief and as long as the items that boost the thieving abilities are collected she seems to me perfectly up to the task of finding traps and disabilng them and poening doors and containers. if you don't mind the micro management of swapping different rings depending on the task of the moment. keeping a knock spell memorized and having a cleric with the spell that find the traps helps for the few containers hard to open and traps hard to find.
and there are plenty of consumables.
Valygar can cover the scouting and stabbing task, you loose setting traps (that can be a difficult ad very fun art to master or a bad tasting cheese depending on how is done) and dispel illusions, but are useful tools that a party can perfectly live without.
in my experience even if nalia and imoen can use short bows they are much more effective with a sling. why?
as long as a sling user gets some str dmg bonus is added, and items and a cheap and long lasting mage spell gives 10.50 str, with bows the str bonus is not applied. also with sling both the launcher and the bullet enchantment add damage, with bow the ammo adds only thac0.
i keep my nalia stong and use enchanted bullets, the low apr helps in not wasting them too soon, and i can pull out more damage from a single sling shot then from her using a short bow. and it also gives bertter thaco and leaves her more time in the round to cast/relocate/whatever. and the damage is doubled when the party is hasted, to double the dmg of a 1 base apr bow user improved haste is needed.
with the sling of everard and +2 bullet i get 9-12 dmg/hit with the 18.50 str from the spell and 13-16 dmg with the 19 str belt. with he party hasted 26-32 dmg ranged from a toon that has almost all the round to cast spells is something i notice, and the thac0 is good enough to actually hit often, with the bow i get less at the price of less time to cast. I still use bows, but only to disrupt mages with elemental ammo, for my Nalia/Imoen are situational weapons to use only for that purpose, not the normal way to go.
with a fighter with GM the thing is completely different, mazzy is very strong with short bows as some damage is added to every attack due to GM and with tugian she has 2 attacks more compared to a sling, and she has the thac0 to hit often.
nalia is a good primary mage that can deal with traps and locks (if you agree with my previous post)
aerie at the beginning has a lot of spells, as she uses 2 pools, as the game progresses she can also mix the 2 pools in sequencers and on self buffs and tank doing a lot of damage mlee, is much more then a healer and secondary mage. and with holy power (fighter like thac0) and MMM she is a fantastic ranged fighter hitting the foe an other mage would have frequently missed.
see https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/47354/superaerie-power-tactics-for-the-c-m-spoilers for more information on her true potential.
i would go for mazzy, working her way towards GM in short bow and short sword, as has been told she has also good banters with valygar.
the fifth depends on charname's class, with a charname cleric of lathander or RC i would probably go for keldorn (true sight and dispel magic), the monk (interesting class to play super powerful in end game) or jaheira (insect spells and very good apr dw with belm, she can tank and do less damage with a shield in OH instead when needed).
but probably the best PG choice is anomen (strong divine caster, trivializes the battles against undeads and buffed is an impressive frontliner even in late TOB) as 5fth and charname multi FM (fighter apr, thac0 and hla and enough arcane power to let him tank everything and throw in also some damaging spell).
@gorgonzola It's crazy to me how many people actually agree with you on this (I've seen similar sentiments in many other threads throughout the years). Thieves are awesome, fun, and full of utility outside of opening locks and finding traps. In my opinion, the game is a lot less fun without an active thief! Can you get by with Nalia? Absolutely. But who would want to just get by?
You can manage without any class. Nalia can cover the absolute essentials of thieving and is much better than no thief.
The lack of a good aligned single or multi class thief in the base game often means I use her. I find her much less irritating as a character than Jan (some seem to find him hilarious but constant turnip references aren’t my thing).
That there is why I use EE Keeper to turn Imoen back into a single-class Thief in my playthroughs.
what i mean is only that with a little item swapping and few potion use she is prefectly capable to deal with locks and traps for the party, that her having a slightly lower tief level then imoen in my experience is not a problem. i told it answering to @jmerry 's "Nalia just doesn't have enough skill points to keep up with your needs without constantly using consumables".
but i agree that playing a real thief, that is also able to set traps, stab and detect illusions is a lot of fun and if well done also quite powerful.
actually thieves are my preferred class to play and i rarely run parties without a real thief, whether it is a charname, single, dual or triple class, or jan, as i can not stand the evilness of the vampire one.
not as powerful as the arcane casters, that are my second preferred class, but preferred because they are the most fun to play for me.
i use them to clear whole dungeons with backstabs, to move the enemies where i want them to be according to the tactic i intend to use, to waste the enemy true sight spells while protected by the cloak of not detection, and if needed their whole spell books (appearing at the edge of their sight range and hiding after a step back as the mage is casting to have the spell wasted), to lay trap carpets where to lure the enemies and on and over.
and having a real thief is the reason why my party can buy early useful items like the str belt from ribald and the RoV or sling of everard, and begin chap 2 with a complete set of fully charged wands, even if i never sell a stolen item to the same fence more then once and never stack thieving potions of the same kind.
note also that in my proposed party there is a stalker that can cover some of the thieving tasks that nalia and imoen can not cover, so (if a player does not mind to stack potions in few instances) only setting traps and detecting illusions are really lost.