A cleric for a canon party
Kneller
Member Posts: 438
I'm playing BG classic with Tutu. the core party is Jah, Khalid, Minsc, Dynaheir, Imoen for BG1 and Jah, Misc, Yoshi/Imoen, Sarevok for BG2. I'll take other NPCs for their quests, but that's it. I definitely want to do some kind of cleric blend. I'm not necessarily looking for the most power, but simply a good synergy with the team. There are some classes where you can leave the party behind and just plow through everything, but I want to actually use everyone. I also like having as much versatility as possible with charname. The more micro I have, the more connected I feel to the character, and the less likely I am to dump the run before finishing.
I'll be dualing Imoen at level 7, and the downtime will kinda suck for BG1, but if I beeline for cloakwood, then explore the world from there, following up with BG city, I should get her thief skills back in time to do DT and WW Isle before the return to Candlekeep. I'm considering waiting until after Cloakwood to pick up Minsc and Dyn, just to give Imoen more exp, then again, that's probably not worth it.
My top choices (though I'm open to alternatives with good explanations) are are:
Cleric/Ranger - FWIW, it's classic BG, so I get the druid spells. Great character, incredibly strong front liner, maybe too strong. The downside is that I have a party of frontliners already. Jah and Minsc will always be able to hold the line and Sarevok is just gravy. Is it even a frontline anymore if there really isn't a back line? Are we all just going to protect Imoen? Seems a little unbalanced.
Cleric/Wild Mage (with shadowkeeper) - If I'm going to play a mage, I want wild surges. However, this leaves me a little mage heavy for BG1 (Dyn, and Imoen when I dual her). Sure, I can cover the mage bases until we rescue Imoen in BG2, but I don't lean too heavy on the arcane (I don't like BG2's implementation of magic nearly as much as IWD, so much is broken here). Imoen could probably cover the job once we get her back.
This is what I have so far, but open to feedback, thanks!
I'll be dualing Imoen at level 7, and the downtime will kinda suck for BG1, but if I beeline for cloakwood, then explore the world from there, following up with BG city, I should get her thief skills back in time to do DT and WW Isle before the return to Candlekeep. I'm considering waiting until after Cloakwood to pick up Minsc and Dyn, just to give Imoen more exp, then again, that's probably not worth it.
My top choices (though I'm open to alternatives with good explanations) are are:
Cleric/Ranger - FWIW, it's classic BG, so I get the druid spells. Great character, incredibly strong front liner, maybe too strong. The downside is that I have a party of frontliners already. Jah and Minsc will always be able to hold the line and Sarevok is just gravy. Is it even a frontline anymore if there really isn't a back line? Are we all just going to protect Imoen? Seems a little unbalanced.
Cleric/Wild Mage (with shadowkeeper) - If I'm going to play a mage, I want wild surges. However, this leaves me a little mage heavy for BG1 (Dyn, and Imoen when I dual her). Sure, I can cover the mage bases until we rescue Imoen in BG2, but I don't lean too heavy on the arcane (I don't like BG2's implementation of magic nearly as much as IWD, so much is broken here). Imoen could probably cover the job once we get her back.
This is what I have so far, but open to feedback, thanks!
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Comments
for me personally i like have 3 characters in melee, so in bg1 you could have your guy, khalid and minsc in melee with the rest being in the back
also for bg1, it's actually better to dual imoen at level 6 because you still get enough points to for open lock and disarm traps to unlock any lock or disarm any trap ( except for 2 ) in the game and you will be able to have 1 level 5 spell as well ( since dynaheir can't learn any of the really good level 5 spells ) unless of coarse you are just doing it for canon purposes then you can keep her till level 7, but for maximum useful purpose in bg1, level 6 is good enough with 90 OP and 95 DT ( the only 2 traps that 95 DT can't disarm is the altar that has the tome of wisdom - which i dont think you can disarm anyway - and the statue that holds the level 2 wardstone which just requires 100 which you can just give imoen kiel's buckler to raise her DEX to 19 so then it will be 100 for that moment )
then for SoA you can still go jaheira, minsc and your guy up front and have everyone else in the back, and then when ToB comes along you can either put your guy in the back or jaheira to keep it at 3 ( i had jaheira as a back row healer with firetooth before and it was quite effective )
Thief-to-cleric dual - You currently lack a character who can reliably dispel/turn which would be a key role for this party member. This would also give you some thief-point versatility since you could allocate pickpocketing duties to yourself and traps/locks to Imoen/Yoshimo (or the other way around). I'd personally go swashbuckler but you could optionally EEKeeper PoL as your kit.
Fighter/mage/cleric multi - Your desired party has a lot of front-liners you currently lack any melee characters who can cast mirror image and stoneskin/PFMW for survivability. FMC gives you that survivability along with clerical strength buffs and the restoration spell for utility.
and deal damage at all times. A dwarf fighter cleric gets great saving throw bonuses but this restricts your romance options (to the EE added NPCs and mod npcs). There are great weapon choices for both options throughout the series and you can become very powerful in combat with buffs (armor of faith, draw on holy night etc). The ranger or fighter multi gives you bonus attacks per round.
Cleric/mage become very powerful in BG2 and have nice utility in BG. By the end of the series, they are extremely powerful with all the spell options and buffs.They work better in small parties where they don’t have to share xp with many others and level faster.
Single class cleric will level fast and have very good turn undead and good spells that benefit from being high level eg dispel magic but the power tapers off late in BG2/ToB as you don’t get multiple attacks per round, the benefits of arcane magic eg sequencer and buffs, thief HLAs or the other things a multi would give you. Viconia is one of the weakest ToB npcs for this reason but she doesn’t start that way.
Another great thing about being a cleric yourself is that you get the only good cleric very late in BG, although he’s great, it sounds like you won’t use him, and I find the clerics choices available in the unmodded BG2 to be pretty annoying from an RP perspective.
Consider using Khalid as a dedicated archer, he can excel in that role, with you, Jaheira and Minsc upfront (with Jaheira having the dexterity gauntlets). Minsc can attack from behind you and Jaheira with a reach weapon like a two handed sword to offset his lower AC. Khalid can use the bracers of archery and put his proficiencies in longbow.
On the other hand, F/C is probably one of the best tanks in the whole game with DUHM and RM.
I'm actually planning a cleric/thief for this reason. I tend to be a completionist, so my parties almost inevitably end up overpowered. Having a couple of dual-class characters should slow that down a touch.
I would also like to try C/T sometimes, as bizzare as that combo is to me, but Glint ruined them for me forever.
Whenever I take Khalid, I make him an archer, every time. He's actually really good at it and racks up a higher percentage of kills than anyone else. He also hits level 7 in BG1, and can hit 3 APR. And he's a machine gun with 6APR if you use an oil of speed. That's pretty boss for BG1.
The C/T was considered. It does have a lot of things going for it. The canon party does not have a leveling thief or cleric, so this covers both. It definitely covers Imoen's dual gap and you don't even need Yoshi (though I'd still take him for the story). However, I decided against it because they strike me as a little bland in combat. You might get that first backstab in to start things off, but from there you're either going to run out of sight, re-hide, run back in for another BS (how many rounds is that?), or maybe fall back to the back line to, I dunno, cast bless? It could easily be that I don't know how to cleric/thief, but it strikes me as a class that takes all the crap jobs and freeing up the NPCs to be awesome. If charname isn't awesome, I tend to get bored with the run and drop it.
So, I'm playing classic (shadowkeeper). I did try something like this once. I tried to kit Imoen to a wild mage, so I can have wild surges with her. However, I think it's an engine limitation, it would only let me kit the first class on a dual.
I run two arcane casters and at least one cleric (CLERIC, not druid) at a minimum in any party. I feel naked without plenty of magic to use.
You seem to be heavier on frontliners (if you were to be one yourself for PC) than magic, with picks like Minsc + Khalid + jaheira and Minsc + Sarevok (assuming someone like Korgan before) + jaheira.
Not that it hurts to be heavy on beef but beyond 2 frontliners to tank, maybe one of them for melee damage, they don;t add much as you continue to add them. Adding more casters definitely adds strength through redundancy and less load on each spellbook. This is more and more apparent in later parts of the game or if going through tougher areas (Durlag's/WK) at early levels, where warrior start to get stomped on pretty hard.
Anyway, i'd say either dump jaheira if you plan on going C/R yourself, or go C/M or C/illusionist if you wish to keep her.