Need help with party setup in BG 2+ Tob please

cartesii

Hello there!

I played BG 1 EE some years ago and now i want to +finally+ finish BG 2+ Addon for the 1. time ever.

But i have some problems finding my favourite party combination.

Furthermore i alrdy started 2 playthroughs. The 1. i made a normal bard as MC but was rly quickly bored with him, so i rerolled still in the irenicus dungeon to a dwarf Barbarian. The Barbarian was quite ok with prof. in warhammers+flails (got flail of ages and a nice +2 electro warhammer). Rest of the party was Minsc (dw with longswords+bastard swords)first then switched to Keldorn, Yoshimo (stayed at his kit), Aerie (her original kit), Jaheira (normal kit) and a Sorcerer i made at the start.

Those combination was ok at the start, but felt also boring and kinda squishy after some time, so i want to make another and final restart. I think i prefere 5 npc companions due to the talk and so on.

I just want to have fun and not play the +best/awesome+ setup. Otherwise i would just pick a F/M or so.

---

I thought about the final group combination, so far:

For MC i thought about a) An Archer with GM in Shortbows, and later in Crossbows (Tuigan SB early, Gesen later and with Tob the Fire Xbow). Melee weaponskills into blunt stuff (hammers and maces).

Archenemy: Demons or Dragons.

or b) a Monk (with the Mod Overhaul (better magic fists earlier and better/changed highlvl abilities)

or c) i thought bout a Sorcerer.

For the party slots im sure of:

2. Keldorn stays as Inquisitor. Early will get a shield+1hand and will be tanky and dispels those nasty invisibility spells. Later he will use 2hand. Not much to say here.

3. Jaheira Fighter/Druid (will get a shield and kinda tanky, annoying for spellcasters with the insect swarms, buffing, healing+rezzing e.g.).

4. Imoen will be changed with EE-Keeper to Assasin. I love that kit still good enough with lock picking and finding traps e.g. with the right weapons, the backstab will be nice later! (Mod Rogue Rebalancing is installed! Can someone recommend some good weapon prof. with the kit? Maybe staffs are not so OP anymore bec. the buffed dw prof and death attack?!)

For the last 2 slots im not sure:

Maybe Anomen stays Fighter+Cleric, also tanky, good heals, buffs, rezzes e.g.

or Mezzy as a Fighter (Range Prof. or DW )

or Aerie as normal kit cleric/mage or made to be a Sorcerer

or Rasaad mod to normal Monk.

Rly depends what my MC will be thou

And ofc i want to play with a good party. No evil chars!


Would be rly thankful if someone would write his/her thoughts bout my party combination. Pls be polite, no flaming e.g. and pls don t try to change my +set in stone+ companions Keldorn, Jaheira and Imoen

Thanks in advance

Carte

Khyron

Keldorn, Jaheira and Imoen are solid companions. Keldorn is one of my all time favorite npc's across any game.. a properly written Paladin is such a rare thing.

Your thoughts for the trio is also good, you have already gotten down most of their strengths like Keldorns dispells, the paladin twohander and jaheira on anti-caster duty.

You might want to consider getting a Sling for Jaheira and make her ranged instead, as the sling does decent damage and gets dmg bonus from strength.
Keldorn won't be great as a tank in SoA without the Dexterity gloves from.. well.. the quest area he leads you to. With that, he is solid but can't equip mastery gloves. I'd keep Dex gloves on him until he has several Hardiness High Level Ability uses.

To compliment this party, i think Aerie is a great choice. You don't really need pure class clerics as they peak quite early but the combination of spells Aerie gets is awesome. Also.. donning the robe of vecna on a cleric is just nonsense level of epic, since you get instant Heal spells.

Anomen is a great choice too. Excellent tank and can soak huge damage in SoA too, combining Armor of Faith and Defender of Easthaven.. soak the damage that goes past his AC. Not to mention the cleric buff spells. (Minsc can also do this, but his Armor of Faith lags 8 levels behind Anomens in terms of when next tier of damage reduction kicks in.. and Minsc really has great banter with Aerie. Anomen has decent banter with Keldorn)
Consider swapping him out for a new NPC in ToB, or just keep the slot open to maximize XP for the rest of the party.



Charname: Archer (For ease of use, i would drop shortbows and go straight for xbow. You can buy it early in SoA.. I know that Tuigan shortbow is "better" and Gesen is great too, but running out of arrows, having to keep stock, not high enough enhancement etc.. I just can't be bothered with it, and usually just grab xbow and keep Tuigan shortbow for specialty arrows that i only use in specific times of need.)
Keldorn: Tank/Striker/Dispeller/True Sight
Anomen/Minsc: Tank/Striker (Swap for another NPC that becomes available in ToB, will fill same role.. more or less)
Imoen: Thief/Crowd controll/Arcane nuker
Jaheira: Anti-caster, ranged damage support, healer
Aerie: Arcane support/Divine support/Healer (By support i mean Buffs/Debuffs that don't get higher numbers by level of caster, just longer duration.. which is usually not an issue at all. Such as Haste, Slow, Bless, Chant, Chaotic Commands, Protection from negative energy/Negative Plane Protection, death ward etc etc - some of these don't even get longer durations but stay the same for all intents and purposes.)

cartesii

Hello @Khyron thanks for your time and your kind/helpful words

I decided to play an archer as my MC!
The dungeon where Irenicus held us victim is now done and it was a super breeze! My elfen archer just did so much dmg it was rly nice

For party comb i decided that i will go with the following beside my MC Archer named Caraii:
Keldorn, Jaheira (i like her as tank ), Imoen will be Assasin, Aerie will be pure Sorc or stays as her base kit (will decide later) and finally Anomen also tanky and will stay at his base kit.
Due to +lower+ stats thats np, i use the EE-Keeper and push the stats like i could with my MC too. So thats np ^^ (will not overdue it thou).

Khyron wrote: »

Charname: Archer (For ease of use, i would drop shortbows and go straight for xbow. You can buy it early in SoA.. I know that Tuigan shortbow is "better" and Gesen is great too, but running out of arrows, having to keep stock, not high enough enhancement etc.. I just can't be bothered with it, and usually just grab xbow and keep Tuigan shortbow for specialty arrows that i only use in specific times of need.)

Im a bit confused here.
As far as i know rly early in the game =chapter 2 or so, we can travel to Trademeet and there we can buy the Tansheron's Bow which creates +3 arrows unlimited. Its kinda a weaker Gesen Shortbow and rly rly nice.
I have no clue bout which crossbow you are talking? Maybe you can explain that?:)
Again thank you!

cartesii

I think i need a single pure mage for spell and xp progression. And with a fighter/cleric and a fighter/druid i have enough divine casters.

So i guess i will pick Neera for the 1. time and let Aerie sit in the circus or let her romance the bard for fun later x)

gorgonzola

You can buy the best Xbow of the game early SoA, if you have enough money from the merchant

on the top of Watcher Keep

You can access the area early and you don't even have to go inside the dungeon, that you can explore later.

A single mage is a viable option, I would prefer to go with all mages (pure, dual class or multi), but is my style, but I would never go with Neera as the only party's mage as I don't reload on bad surges, doing it completely ruins the concept of Wild Mage making it only a super OP regular mage with 1 spell/level more and the dwehomers. Again it is my style, do what brings you fun.

As you plan to use Jaheria she can DW a +3 club and a +2 scimitar that give her +1 apr, so she will have 4 apr, at lev 13 4.5, if you need to do damage fast consider that option. What weapons a character use is not written in stone, she is able to tank with a good shield, and later iron skins, she can DW for high APR and damage and she can use a sling (damage bonus from STR, bullet and launcher enchantmnt stack together). She needs a STR enhancing item and you can use the best of those 3 configurations according to the needs of the particular battle.

An Archer is very strong at the beginning of SoA, his power fades the more you progress in the game, be prepared to it, he will still be good at the end of ToB, but ranged weapons that rule in BG1 are not so powerful in BG2. As your main purpose is having fun and you plan a good party this is not a problem, but it is better to know it now then discover it after many hours of playing if you absolutely want a super powerful MC.

If you plan to turn Aerie into a Sorcerer that is a class that is super strong, both solo and with party, but if you come from BG1 and you lack of experience with the BG2 and later epic levels spells I would not suggest you to go with a Sorc as he can learn few spells, more then enough if you know how to do, maybe not if you are still learning, better to go with a mage that lets you experiment with all the available spells.

jmerry

gorgonzola wrote: »

A single mage is a viable option, I would prefer to go with all mages (pure, dual class or multi), but is my style...

I tend toward the lower end in mage count; my last three major runs were one mage (evil party led by Dorn), two mages (fire theme, Dragon Disciple protagonist), and no mages (no-spellcasting challenge).

If you want to do really powerful things in the late game, mages and multiclass or dual-class characters are best at that. If you just want to win, you have tons of flexibility. Not filling a role makes for a significant challenge, but only having one party member in that role is just fine. That stock evil party (Dorn, Korgan, Viconia, Hexxat, Edwin) of all single-class characters with basically no redundancy still works just fine.

Really, the challenge you face here is what killed your last two runs - boredom. You already understand the mechanical side of how to build a party just fine. What you really need is role playing - building a character or party concept that will keep you interested.

Khyron

3 melee characters is crowded imo

There are many maps where you might struggle with 3 melee characters because of narrow passages etc.
You can partially remedy this by having Keldorn behind the two others as greatswords have longer reach than 1 handed weapons.
Basically he can stand with 1 friendly between himself and enemy.. this also allows his AC to drop, so you can use fancier bracers on him and forget about his Dex already in SoA.

However, i prefer to have 2 melee and if i want more fodder i just use summons.

If you haven't picked up Cernd before, he's kind of fun to goof around with and he's quite good in SoA. Sadly, the greater wolfwere shapeshift starts falling behind in ToB and eventually it goes from pretty decent to almost a liability, but for SoA he offers something very different to other npc's.. this is what gives him a lease on life in SoA for me, and i swap him out for the ToB NPC at the start of ToB.

cartesii

Thanks for your answers dear people!

I was not prepared for Keldorns Quest. Now i dunno if i can let him stay, he is so unlucky with the wife/children situation :<

But if i let him go i have no paladin anymore. Maybe i can recruit Mazzy then, never had her in my party or Minsc or the Monk ^^

My older runs were always with only 1 mage and maybe Imoen back then with some more spells or Aerie.
The Archer is RLY strong atm even vs Demi-Liches and i love the fire xbow! Thanks for the advise here @Khyron and @gorgonzola .
I did the 1. level of the watcher keep quite early. It was super hard bec. Keldorn got - level and i could not cure it with only Jaheira in party at that time!

Anomen is quite the strange char atm, dunno if i should him+Keldorn stay. So many choices! I love it

And bout the Flail of Ages i prefere to let someone use it who do melee all the time. My Archer only does melee if he is attacked directly =quite rare.

gorgonzola

The Flail of Ages is one of the better weapons in the game not because of the fact that you can get it early, you can later upgrade it, has different elemental damages to disrupt and is a crushing weapon, with the crushing resistant enemies being very rare. The real reason why it is great is the slowing effect without save that has a chance to deal, slowing the enemy speed, but also the number of attacks and the casting time. Hit an enemy often enough and he will become very slow in everything he does.
For that very reason it is wise to give it to who is often in mlee and has many attacks/round, if I am not wrong the slowing chance is like 30%, a warrior with lev 13 and 2 pips in flail DW it and a speed weapon in the OH gets 3.5 apr with the main hand, so it is likely that in the first round the enemy is slowed, if the warrior is improved hasted is likely that he is slowed twice (the effect stacks with itself), so that hasted Dragon that chases your toons now moves very slow and needs a lot of time to cast his spells.
In the hands of an Archer FoA is completely wasted.

Always keep at least a restoration scroll, priests in the temples can cast it for you, but it is not always an option if you don't have a cleric or druid that can cast it from his spellbook. In that particular situation you could exit the first level of WK, go to a temple and have Keldorn level restored, time consuming, but possible, but in other parts of the game it is indeed impossible to find a temple.

You can give to Keldorn a day off to spend it with his family and get him back after 24 hours (in game time) recruiting him again, he will be at his home waiting for you. This is probably the last adventure for the paladin that is close to the age of retiring, before he was passing most of his time doing nothing at the order head quarters, now he has realized how is was wrong and unfair towards his family, let him live that last adventure, try to keep him alive trough it, and then he will spend the rest of his life with the family.
This is enough to RP a good party, his wife knew that she had married a pally and if is wrong that the pally spends his time chatting with the other pallies at the order she knew that he had some duties an priorities, now there is Imoen to save and later

a whole city and even later maybe the whole material plane

Mechanically Mazzy is not a good substitute for him, she is not a pally, even if is the closest NPC to what the spirit of a pally is, she is a ranged Fighter deadly with the short bow that can also go mlee and in a party with an Archer Charname they will overlap unless you plan tactics where a really high ranged output is needed.