Advice on race/class combo
Lazius
Member Posts: 3
I never played Baldur's Gate games or dnd before, and in preparation for BG3, I want to play the previous 2.
My main focus is to get to know the returning party members, so my idea is to use the same party of 6 across BG1 and 2: my protagonist and five more, Minsc, Jaheira, Edwin, Imoen and Viconia. I can be flexible on the last 3 if that composition is weak, but I really wish to bring Minsc and Jaheira with me all the time.
With this party in mind, what would be a good race and class for me?
My main focus is to get to know the returning party members, so my idea is to use the same party of 6 across BG1 and 2: my protagonist and five more, Minsc, Jaheira, Edwin, Imoen and Viconia. I can be flexible on the last 3 if that composition is weak, but I really wish to bring Minsc and Jaheira with me all the time.
With this party in mind, what would be a good race and class for me?
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- The most natural path through the early game will see you pick up Imoen right after you leave the tutorial zone. She starts out as a single-class thief, and is able to dual-class into mage if you want her to.
- After that, you're out in the wide-open world ... but your character's mentor told you to go meet some old friends of his, Khalid and Jaheira. They're at a nearby inn, and join together if you ask them to. And for the remainder of the game, they stay together; if you dismiss one from the party, the other leaves as well.
- Khalid is a single-class fighter, while Jaheira is a multiclass fighter/druid. Both are on the neutral/good side of things, and will leave forever if you commit too much evil (as measured by your "reputation" score dropping to 1 or 2).
- Talking to Khalid and Jaheira introduces the next main quest - there's trouble down in the town of Nashkel, and they'd like to investigate. When you go there, you'll meet Minsc and/or Edwin. Both are willing to join, and both have quests for you: Minsc wants to head west and rescue his "witch" Dynaheir, while Edwin wants to head west and kill Dynaheir. Needless to say, the two don't get along.
- If you rescue Dynaheir, she'll pair with Minsc much like Khalid and Jaheira pair up. Minsc is a ranger, and Dynaheir is a mage (invoker). Both are good, and will leave forever if your reputation drops to 1 or 2.
- Edwin is a mage (conjurer), and he's evil. He'll leave forever if your reputation rises to 19 or 20.
- Viconia is a cleric, found off the beaten path east of the inn that Khalid and Jaheira were at. She's evil, and will leave forever if your reputation rises to 19 or 20. Moreover, her drow nature makes you look bad, lowering your reputation by 2 when she joins and increasing it by 2 when she leaves.
Maintaining a party with both good/neutral and evil companions in it isn't easy; you have to avoid letting your reputation get either too high or too low. It's much easier to go with the flow and commit to all good companions (with a consistently good reputation) or all evil companions (with a consistently bad reputation). I'd recommend instead going with the "canon" party for BG1: protagonist, Imoen, Khalid, Jaheira, Minsc, Dynaheir. No matter what class you pick for the protagonist, you have all of the key roles of the standard party covered.
At the beginning of Baldur's Gate 2, you meet Minsc and Jaheira in the starting dungeon - and you find out that Dynaheir and Khalid are dead. The sequel game doesn't have any paired companions as the first did, so you're free to mix and match ... subject to personal conflicts. Notably for your choices, Edwin and Minsc will come to blows; Edwin can't resist picking at the trauma of Dynaheir's death, and that sets Minsc off to attack him. Don't pair those two up, in either game.
Alright, thank you for the info.
I checked the fandom page again and there are 3 returning companions that I missed. Are Neera and Rasaad any good?
They suck, Neera has annoying voice and rasaad is also bland, all EE characters suck honestly.
Why dont you try the race gnome ? They have good saves and are funny.
They're written more like BG2 companions than BG1 companions, in both games; while the companions in BG1 have very little personal content or special dialogue, these EE companions will have significant conversations with you and full quests; the quests for Rasaad and Neera even include new areas. As such, they stand out as significantly different to the old material in BGEE.
Neera is a wild mage (CN) - much like a specialist, except that she has the drawback of 5% of her spells being affected by random wild surges instead of being unable to use a school of magic. She can be found in Beregost, and her quest in BGEE is about seeking a way to control her wild magic.
Rasaad is a sun soul monk (LG) - a monk kit with fire-themed abilities in place of the standard stunning blow and later quivering palm attacks. He can be found in Nashkel, and his quest is about investigating the sinister Dark Moon cult.
Dorn is a blackguard (NE) - an evil version of the paladin. His quest in BGEE is about getting revenge on his former companions. He can be found at the Friendly Arm Inn, but he won't join right away; you have to first talk to him, and then meet him in a random encounter while traveling, before he'll consider joining you.
Ehh I don't really like playing those small races, but I could leave my comfort zone.
Ultimately, you can make things work with a wide range of characters. But you probably don’t want to mix alignments too much. Good and Evil characters will often clash.
Just play what you like. Feeling invested in your character(s) is the best way to keep up interest so you actually finish the campaign.
Anyway, these games are based on 2nd edition (A)D&D, which is pretty old by now. Some general system knowledge, some on the computer games and some on the rules they use:
- There are two ways to combine two classes in a single character - in parallel with multi-classing or in sequence with dual-classing. In either case, THAC0 and base save stats are whichever is better between your classes and you gain all abilities of both classes. More details below:
- Non-humans can multiclass; this is chosen at character creation. Half of the experience they earn is assigned to progress one class, and the other half to progress the other class.
- Humans can dual-class; this is chosen later on during gameplay, through a button on the "character record" screen. When you do so, your old class is locked at its level permanently, and all new experience goes to progressing your new class. Until you reach a level in the new class greater than your level in your old class, all abilities from your old class are locked away; you're basically just a higher-HP version of the new class during that downtime. Dual-classing requires that you reach at least level 2 in your original class, that you have at least 15 in your original class's key attribute, and that you have at least 17 in your new class's key attribute. Temporary bonuses such as potions or equipped items do not count toward these attribute minima.
- Different classes gain levels at different speeds; the tables controlling this are reproduced in the manual PDFs that come with the EEs.
- When party members die, they remain in the party with greyed-out portraits, unless certain conditions such as overkill with elemental attacks cause them to be "chunked". You can revive those characters by targeting their portraits with resurrection spells such as Raise Dead. If you don't have access to those spells yet - as will be the case during the BG1 campaign - you can instead raise them at a temple. Go to the "healing" tab in the shop interface, select the dead character's portrait, and pay for the appropriate spell to be cast.
- If a character is "chunked", they're permanently dead and removed from the party. Either reload or find someone new to take their place.
- When your protagonist dies, that's Game Over; no resurrection for them. Loading a save is your only recourse at that point.
If you've stuck with this. I would suggest flipping through party members in BG1. Except I would recommend against Neera and Rasaad. Both, imo, are not newbie friendly NPC's. As @jmerry said, the canon party is good. But I think you can experiment with other good or neutral NPC's that you meet. You can almost always tell from the dialogue what they'll be.
If you ask a current party member to leave, almost all of them will stick in the spot you left them. You can scope the new option, then easily flip back to your previous NPC if you want. Avoid evil companions and and evil playthrough your first time. Maybe even your second time, it's basically a difficulty increase.
Assuming you don't dual Imeon, I'd go with a fighter/mage main character to have more arcane power in the party. (Sorcerer would be good too but not recommended on your first run because you presumably won't know what spells to pick for him or her.) You could go with a gnome fighter/illusionist (a personal favorite of mine), or an elf fighter/mage. The f/i loses necromancy school of spells, which hurts a bit, but you get an extra spell per level compared to the vanilla mage, shorty saves (you can resist enemy spells better) and extra strong illusion spells like Blindness and Spook. The elf f/m can learn all spells (apart from wild mage specific ones which illusionists can't learn either), gets a bonus to short and long swords and short- and longbows, but gets less spells overall.
If you do dual Imeon, then between her and Edwin, you'll have enough arcane power, and the only thing you are really missing would be a good backstabber, so I'd go for a dwarf fighter/thief. Imeon can take care of opening locks and disarming traps, while you do the scouting and backstab mages. Or better yet, do the locks and traps yourself, drop Imeon completely, and instead take Baeloth for the arcane power. The reason for the dwarf recommendation is that they get shorty saves (good resistances).
In terms of running a mixed party, it's no big deal, just keep rep at 18 or below, or 15 or less when temporarily dismissing evil companions to do someone else's side quest - in fact, just keep at 15 max at all times so that you don't accidentally go over 18. Also, if you want Minsc without Dynaheir and in the same party as Edwin, then I think you should first do Edwin's quest and kill Dynaheir, then try to recruit Minsc. I think he'll agree to join, but not sure, and he might clash with Edwin at some point, but maybe not as long as Dyna is already out of the picture. Or you can just take Dorn or Khalid instead of him.
As for breaking up Khalid and Jaheira, you can just recruit them both, then tell Jaheira to kill him in cold blood. If you want to be more humane, then strip him of his gear, put him in some house you never plan to visit again, leave him there, close the door, and move the rest of the party away to the edge of the map. Then boot his ass out of the party and he won't be able to initiate his exit dialog and take Jaheira with him. Just remember to never go close to that house again or he might run out and start said dialog.
Note: Imeon can still backstab, but she's not great at it unless you buff her with a bunch of potions and spells. In particular, you can give her the violet potion (the one that gets her strength to 25, con and dex to 3), then potions of agility and fortitude to get her con and dex to 18, then potions of heroism and power to boost her thac0 further, then give her the +2 short sword and gauntlets of weapon expertise, make sure she's wearing the non-detection cloak in case the target casts Detect Invis, I also like to use Haste on her or a speed potion, then cast the cleric buffs (Bless and Aid at least, but anything that can boost her damage or thac0), then last cast invisibility on her and send her out for the big backstab. This is how you can take out Davaeorn easily (a tough mage mini-boss enemy; just make sure to disarm the five traps leading to him first), although there's always the chance of rolling a critical miss on the backstab, so be sure to have a plan B too.
They suck in BG1, but it's still worth taking them into the party temporarily (at different times) to do their quests. Neera's quest can give you a Stoneskin scroll (there are only two in BG1, the other one is on Ice Island) - just make sure to kill the mage who has it before he uses it. Rasaad's quest gives you the Big-Fisted Belt, which sets str to 19 (int to 6). It's good for any fighter type so Khalid for example, or even Jaheira although she'll lose the ability to use wands, but imo still worth it.