Help, Baldur's gate noob

DGDKami

So i bought BG I & II EE, and i have a few doubts regarding party members.

So i'm playing a Paladin, and right now i have 6 party members Imoen, Montaron, Xzar, Jaheira and Khalid, Montaron and Xzar are evil so i'm guessing im gonna have to ditch them at some point, what happens to the characters when you do? Also is there a "canon" party? if i wanna have a good aligned party who are the best members? thanks in advance.

Candy_clown2

If you keep the party reputation between 6 and 15 you can have both good and evil characters in the party. 16,17 and 18 will make evil characters react seriously and they may not be available or found later if you dismiss them from the party at that point. Evil characters quit and leave the party with 19 or 20 reputation. Same thing for good characters, they get serious at 5,4 and 3 reputation and may not be available if you dismiss them from the party. They quit and leave at 2 or 1 reputation.

DGDKami

Ok thanks

Permidion_Stark

The canon party is Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc and Dyanheir and that makes for a pretty effective good-aligned party. Since you are a paladin it will mean your party has got a lot of fighters and will be focused on melee rather than magic but that won't be a problem in BG1.

sarevok57

also you need to watch out;

at some point xzar and montaron are going to fight jaheira and khalid to the death and there is basically nothing you can do about it

as permidion_stark said, you group is pretty much canon as it is,

so what i would suggest as soon as you make it to naskiel and talk to the mayor so jaheira and khalid dont drop out of the party then drop xzar and montaron ( if they are still around )

pick up minsc ( he is in nashkiel by the barracks )

and then go to the gnoll strong hold right away to pick up his witch dynaheir

then after that you can take your time and travel the country side and explore a bit if you wish

Selerel

Yes, good-aligned members will leave on their own if a party's reputation gets too low, and vice versa for evil companions. However, even if they don't leave on their own, if the reputation is too far in one direction, they won't leave on good terms and you may never be able to get them back. However, if they leave on good terms, they will either stay where you left them, or return to some designed point like the Friendly Arm Inn. Sometimes I think you even get the choice? I believe each companion is slightly different as to what they do but that is generally it. The first table here is helpful:

https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Reputation

As far party members, you can definitely take the 6-party canon team, however with siege of dragonspear, the "canon" team is re-formed immediately before the moment it originally BECAME canon, so there's no real story need at all to use those 5 members. Makes sense to have some passing acquaintance with them, but again you can do that in SoD.

Take it with a grain of salt, but I always recommend just exploring and making random encounters with NPCs and making decisions who's in my party based on that. If you keep like 4ish party members (1 party member at least who's a fighter, healer, mage, and thief) you can always have an open slot or two to have people join temporarily or easily swap. It may seem like a disadvantage (and maybe not best for your first time playing), but a smaller group will actually get experience and level faster, and members will become more powerful individually.

I mean, seeing Xzar/Montaron vs. Jaheira/Khalid start fighting each other and not being able to control them...may be inconvenient when it happens, but man it is actually a sweet thing to witness and super memorable thing from the game that you only get to see in a tiny percentage of playthroughs. So I would just embrace it. You're not going to lose the loot they're wearing, and then you can just roll with the winners...

jmerry

Party members that leave because reputation goes to the breaking point are generally gone forever. Party members that leave on good terms generally just stay where you left them - the exceptions are the EE companions, which have a spot they go back to. (There are mods that change this)
This changes in BG2 - in that game, everyone has a spot they go back to.

Keeping any evil party members long-term in a good party is troublesome - reputation naturally rises pretty quickly, and you would have to deliberately do evil things like kill innocents or get caught stealing. I've done it before, but it's a lot easier to just roll with a party full of good and neutral characters.

For the "canon" party, the easiest thing to do with Montaron and Xzar is to drop them off when you meet Minsc in Nashkel. They only really wanted to go to Nashkel, after all.

DinoDin

If it's your first playthrough I recommend following jmerry's advice and not reading much about companions online. Let yourself be surprised. There are plenty of companions to choose from. That being said, as merry said, alignment is important in the BG series. It's very rare that you can keep different aligned characters together, and, for newer players, it's just suboptimal.

You can keep neutral characters in a good aligned party without problems. But, as I said, it's better to let yourself try out the various NPC's you run into. There is alot of NPC's to recruit in the game, so there's really no lack of options. Paladin is a good choice for a protagonist and will work with a wide variety of NPC combinations.