in praise of evil
FredN
Member Posts: 787
Anyone notice that evil parties are more powerful ... and fun ... than good? I had Korgan, Edwin, Voconia, Hexxat and Dorn, and we kicked ass. Then for no good reason I decided to do a good/neutral run. I have Keldorn, Anomen, Jaheira, Aerie and Neera. Now, we are doing OK, but we aren't curbstomping everybody the way the first party was. We have to obey ... rules??
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.....And if you want a berserker fighter, Korgan is your man. The banter between Dorn and Korgan is great, Two total psychopaths reveling in killing.
And you want Edwin and Dorn for your friends? No thanks. I'll hang with Keldorn and Aerie and Imoen any day. I *like* my team.
What this is really about is that you think the special perks the evil NPCs get - Dorn's race/class combo, Edwin's extra spells, Hexxat's racial abilities, Viconia's magic resistance - make them the best.
No. They don't. What those perks are is a sign that single-class characters in BG2 are weak compared to multiclass and dual-class combinations. They're an attempt to catch up to the power of multiclass characters. And they're not enough. You can certainly win the game with characters like that, but they're just not the way to do the really powerful things this game allows.
To me, the ultimate thing is the *role* play of it. I like reshaping the world so that my characters would want to live in it. That seems more important to me than any issues of pure power.
Eh, I know perfectly well different players come at things very differently. I like razzing FredN, we come at things so differently.
,,,,Are you serious? Dual class is fine if you have a specific purpose in mind, but multi-class advance more slowly and in general can't reach the level a single class character can. And you don't really need more than one of any particuar profession. OK, depending on the party composition, maybe you might want several front-line tanks, but thats all I can think of.
....Also note that the pool of NPCs is pretty limited. If you don't take Hexxat as your thief, who are you going to use? Nalia is totally incompetent, Imoen is barely adequate ... and unavailable for the first half of the game ... which leaves you with a choice between Jan and Yoshimo. Oh wait, Yoshimo isn't available for the latter half of BG 2. So you are stuck with Jan and his techno-punk gear.
....Now, in my current game I solved this by being a swashbuckler and pumping up all my thief skills, but that's a different story. If you aren't playing a thief vatiant yourself, you are seriously limited. The same is true of almost every profession. You want a paladin type? it's either Keldorn or Dorn. Cleric? Anomen or Viconia. Bard? There's only one. Mage has the most options, with five available, and often you will want two mages in your crew for extra firepower.
And if you care, there are literally hundreds of NPC mods that either alter exisiting characters or add many others. Personally I don't really care, I like the range of characters already in the game. Skie in BG2 is the only one I ever use, she actually defaults to being a Neutral Thief! Although I always switch her to a single class fighter. That works better for me.
There's also some decent three-way companion banter from the EE's too, with multiple evil folks in the party. I do also like that it ends up a very single-class type experience, the companions all have clearly defined roles. Protagonist bard, sorcerer, or shaman does well with the all-evil crew. Or, if you truly want an overpowered group imo, a gnome fighter/illusionist.
I think there's a fun challenge to an evil play. You have to accept that you will sacrifice a decent number of side quests and reputation. However, having to manage the reputation so you don't go full murder hobo is a fun, advanced kind of challenge mode, I have found. You have to play your evil party as if you are infiltrating society, not just a sea of bloodshed. Fun to also see many of the larger quests' content when solved as evil. Again, I always recommend long-time players give it a shot if you've never done it, especially if you enjoy challenging yourself a bit.
All this being said, it's hard to say Keldorn isn't a super powerful companion, heh.
Most of the time, I kept my reputation in a middling range. But, both in BGEE and BG2EE, I did have points where my reputation collapsed and I had to fight the law.
In the BG1 campaign, that's basically all bad. Killing law enforcement further lowers your reputation so you hit 1 very quickly, and they're not carrying massively valuable stuff for you to sell. Then it costs a lot to buy indulgences and get out of that state - 2700 to go from rep 1 to 3 and deactivate the "just walking around" Flaming Fist triggers.
In the SoA campaign, fighting the law is dangerous, but if you can handle them it's profitable - the warriors have full plate which sells for a lot. And it doesn't further lower your reputation. Amusingly, if your reputation ever goes low enough for Athkatla to send soldiers after you, the Cowled Wizards no longer come after you for casting spells. Permanently.
Though, even if you can win those fights easily, it gets tiresome fast. I killed a few rounds of soldiers and their Cowled Enforcer support, plus the one-time* named Radiant Heart party, and then raised my reputation back up to stop that.
* If you kill some of them, the survivors resurrect the others and they try again after a while. If you kill them all, they don't ever come back.