All this talk about supposedly "useless" companions...
lemarin83
Member Posts: 9
... annoys me. Have you read Haeravons walkthrough? I found it very useful in terms of tactics and secrets, but boy does he like to ramble on about how useless several companions are. I really can't understand this, and here's why:
When ee came out, I finished the whole saga (except sod) for the first time in many years. I wanted to play a party using several of the less popular characters. If I remember correctly, the party was like that:
Bg 1:
Charname dual-sword wielding cavalier
Faldorn
Garrick
Xan
Safana
Can't remember the sixth member... Kivan maybe
Bg 2:
Anomen
Cernd
Haer dalis
Nalia
Valygar
And guess what? In both games, the party turned out to be incredibly powerful in the end.
A few thoughts on the party members:
- I was especially impressed with faldorn. Good dex, ankheg armor, iron skin and other buffs made her surprisingly tanky. She used her sling and, with a buff, her club well. Her spells start underwhelming, but boy does that change late game... insect plague almost trivialized late game.
- I found garrick incredibly useful as well. Not a powerhouse by any means, just damn useful. He sang his songs, he used his fast level progression to torment our enemies with high level magic missiles and dispel magic, he bombarded anything in sight with his many wands of fireball, he looked at all the blue-colored stuff we found and told us that it was a halberd+2, and when he had nothing better to do, he peppered enemies with his army scythe, loaded with nasty bolts of biting. It was awesome.
- Xan was adorable, and very powerful. His debuffs were tge bane of many of our strongest enemies. And what a great sight it was when Xan, looking not really happy about it, wrecked havoc on our sleeping/confused/held enemies with his moonblade.
- Safana rambled a lot of nonsense but did everything a thief has to do well. I enjoyed using darts and ninja tos for a change with her.
Same procedure in bg2.
- Anomen just became incredibly powerful with 5 pips in flails and his high level spells. He was a great caster and a great fighter and basically ready to handle anything the game threw at him. My female paladin was so impressed by this that she even tried out his magic flail when they were camping out in the wilderness! Ahem.
- Valygar was not as tanky as ano, but man did he become deadly. He dual wielded many, many weapons with great skill, he went in for deadly backstabs, and his magical abilities were pretty useful.
- Haer dalis: similar to garrick, but more battle oriented. He developed surprisingly deadly melee prowess over the game, combined with the lore, the magic, the song, he was a damn valuable party member. Plus, he gave anomen one of the meanest insults I have ever seen in the saga! He became a little underwhelming in Tob though, needed some micro to stay alive... might have to try a few new end game tactics with him.
- Nalia was just another, slightly weaker imoen. Which means that she competently handled all our magic needs, had fun with gesens bow and liked to sip thief potions when fumbling around chests.
- Ahhhh, Cernd... Now he is the real deal. Weird stats, weird personality, unpopular kit. But still, he was awesome. But he required work. The werewolf thing was useful in the first half of soa, later not do much. What did continue to be great were his 18 wisdom and his spells. Late game his stats and inability to wear armor weren't an issue any more with all the powerful items at his disposal, he used several powerful quarter staves to dish out damage from behind if need be, and he was a great help for the party. A caster powerhouse, but not a beginners character.
So there you have it. I believe that EVERY npc can be very, very good if used correctly...with the exception of bg 1 rasaad.
Do you agree? What are your experiences with less popular npcs?
When ee came out, I finished the whole saga (except sod) for the first time in many years. I wanted to play a party using several of the less popular characters. If I remember correctly, the party was like that:
Bg 1:
Charname dual-sword wielding cavalier
Faldorn
Garrick
Xan
Safana
Can't remember the sixth member... Kivan maybe
Bg 2:
Anomen
Cernd
Haer dalis
Nalia
Valygar
And guess what? In both games, the party turned out to be incredibly powerful in the end.
A few thoughts on the party members:
- I was especially impressed with faldorn. Good dex, ankheg armor, iron skin and other buffs made her surprisingly tanky. She used her sling and, with a buff, her club well. Her spells start underwhelming, but boy does that change late game... insect plague almost trivialized late game.
- I found garrick incredibly useful as well. Not a powerhouse by any means, just damn useful. He sang his songs, he used his fast level progression to torment our enemies with high level magic missiles and dispel magic, he bombarded anything in sight with his many wands of fireball, he looked at all the blue-colored stuff we found and told us that it was a halberd+2, and when he had nothing better to do, he peppered enemies with his army scythe, loaded with nasty bolts of biting. It was awesome.
- Xan was adorable, and very powerful. His debuffs were tge bane of many of our strongest enemies. And what a great sight it was when Xan, looking not really happy about it, wrecked havoc on our sleeping/confused/held enemies with his moonblade.
- Safana rambled a lot of nonsense but did everything a thief has to do well. I enjoyed using darts and ninja tos for a change with her.
Same procedure in bg2.
- Anomen just became incredibly powerful with 5 pips in flails and his high level spells. He was a great caster and a great fighter and basically ready to handle anything the game threw at him. My female paladin was so impressed by this that she even tried out his magic flail when they were camping out in the wilderness! Ahem.
- Valygar was not as tanky as ano, but man did he become deadly. He dual wielded many, many weapons with great skill, he went in for deadly backstabs, and his magical abilities were pretty useful.
- Haer dalis: similar to garrick, but more battle oriented. He developed surprisingly deadly melee prowess over the game, combined with the lore, the magic, the song, he was a damn valuable party member. Plus, he gave anomen one of the meanest insults I have ever seen in the saga! He became a little underwhelming in Tob though, needed some micro to stay alive... might have to try a few new end game tactics with him.
- Nalia was just another, slightly weaker imoen. Which means that she competently handled all our magic needs, had fun with gesens bow and liked to sip thief potions when fumbling around chests.
- Ahhhh, Cernd... Now he is the real deal. Weird stats, weird personality, unpopular kit. But still, he was awesome. But he required work. The werewolf thing was useful in the first half of soa, later not do much. What did continue to be great were his 18 wisdom and his spells. Late game his stats and inability to wear armor weren't an issue any more with all the powerful items at his disposal, he used several powerful quarter staves to dish out damage from behind if need be, and he was a great help for the party. A caster powerhouse, but not a beginners character.
So there you have it. I believe that EVERY npc can be very, very good if used correctly...with the exception of bg 1 rasaad.
Do you agree? What are your experiences with less popular npcs?
12
Comments
Faldorn is very powerful when she gets level 5 spells. Her stats make her look bad but she is decent.
Garrick is much better than some would have you believe, I can just never seem to make room for him and so keep him as my resident loremaster in Beregost.
I’d say Xan is actually pretty popular and well used.
Anomen is pretty powerful, nice buffing, good stats and extra APR, he is just annoying and needs the dex gauntlets but he can have them in that group.
Nakia and Valygar are pretty powerful, I think most agree that single class mages are the bomb and Valygar is a stealthy backstabbing mage killer with nice stats, with limited armour choices which aren’t actually very problematic (good starting armour, shadow dragon armour, white dragon armour etc).
Cernd gets a bad rep because his stats and kit are somewhat crummy but he can do well. He is very bland though and for that reason I rarely add him.
In all the BG games any party can do well. Rasaad can use the BG1 Wolf cloak to some effect and use a sling ok. I have seen people rubbish Alora but her rabbit foot is very powerful and she can do really well.
Power ranknings aren't really all that useful for the average gamer, the games themselves are usually designed to be beatable in a lot of different ways, especially RPGs.
Xan too, imo, is also solid. Missing out on web is huge, but fireball isn't all that strong in reality. And his specialization helps a lot in terms of getting better rolls on Sleep, Charm, Emotion, all of which are, in a way, much stronger than fireball. Dagger is the best Wiz proficiency too, giving you melee and ranged without penalty. His weapon too helps prevent deaths from fireballs.
As for BG2, I think it's quite common to think Haer Dalis is overpowered actually. His ability to be tanky, his ability to get lots of attacks well before whirlwind. I also find Valygar immensely useful, easy stealth scouting, especially if you rig him to backstab with quarterstaff and then switch to dual wield. Valygar is super important, imo, on no reload/limited reload runs. I think Valygar is preferable to Minsc, from a power gaming standpoint.
However, I would add two thoughts. First, even a companion who "can be very good if used correctly" may not turn out to be best-in-slot for anything. People don't always clearly distinguish between those concepts and my sense is that perfectly serviceable companions like Faldorn and Valygar sometimes get labeled useless because better options are available.
The other thing I'd mention is that, for the most part, the joinable NPCs in BG1/BG2 are quite a bit weaker than what you'd get rolling a party from scratch. Nearly every NPC in the game would be better if they had a different multi/dual class mix and some super-strong combinations like FM/FI/FMT go entirely unrepresented. My guess is that too causes people to label companions "useless" even though their only crime is to be not-quite-strong-enough.
Sounds like you're having a great time with your "unusual" party composition and I wish you all the best with that.
I wasn't under the impression that any of your companions (except maybe Garrick) was unpopular.
To me, the problem with NPCs in BG1 is that some of them become available too late (Alora, Quayle, Tiax, Skie, arguably also Coran, Eldoth, Faldorn, Yeslick), by that time your party is already set and probably has got quite some XP under their belt, and there would be too much of a gap to take the new companions.
Plus, they would probably never get to the XP cap, unless you rushed the main storyline to get to them before exploring the wilderness.
And the upside to adding him just isn't strong. He's not a great ranged fighter. He doesn't have access to many spell-like abilities as he will in BG2. His strongest aspect, is arguably in the role of a two-hander damage dealer. His fists seem to have the same range as two handers and he can hit hard. But he's still outclassed in this by a number of other NPCs, even from the same area such as Minsc and Dorn. Some people argue he's a great mage-killer or whatever, and maybe that's true on SCS. But in the base game, I find any mildly skilled archer to be much better at this.
I suppose he could work with something like a barbarian or some other speed boosted protagonist, who is tanky. But, as it is, Rasaad is one of the few BG1 NPC's I actively avoid including specifically for combat related reasons.
I will admit that you can only make so effective though. Monk is THE Magikarp class, and the range of BG1 is not kind for him. When I take him in BG1, its because I love his character and writing,
Rasaad is terrible in BG1 because he never achieves a sufficiently high enough level to pull off those power moves. In BG2, he is finally starting to get close, but even then, he doesn't hold his own until well into the game.
Mages at least get MM, making them useful while they are building up. Monks only get their fists, staves, and harsh language.
I really like his character and quest in BG, sadly I feel his quest jumps the shark in BG2 just when powerwise he is coming into his own