Help with an Evil party
trh5001
Member Posts: 5
Hello, while I have played and beaten this game numerous times it has always been with a good aligned party. I am now looking to do an evil party but am not sure as to what npcs are available on the evil side of things in terms of quality. I am trying to pick a player character that will fill in these missing npc gaps and was wondering if anyone had any preferred npcs or must have payer classes to make up for something that is lacking on the npc side. The only thing I am sure of is I will be taking Dorn as on my first play through with the enhanced edition I couldn't reasonably find a way to work him into my paladins party for role play purposes. Thank you for any advice you may be able to give and sorry if this question has been asked before. I look forward to your invaluable input.
Post edited by trh5001 on
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For fighters you have:
Clerics, you have
Mages
For Charname, playing a multiclass or dualed thief is an option especially if you are not going to take your childhood friend along with you.
Except Garrick.
Also, whats a "Garrick"?
Dorn - Blackguard
Dorn has a 19 Strength and 16 Dexterity. This means he hits really freakin' hard (+3 THAC0 +7 Damage with melee), but doesn't get hit all the time (8 base AC). He gets a small ranged bonus (+1 THAC0) for his Dexterity. On top of that, he has Blackguard abilities. Very solid choice of a front-line fighter, he is excellent.
Kagain - Fighter
Kagain has a 16 Strength and 20 Constitution. Give him the Gauntlets of Dexterity and he is the best Tank in the game, as he will be evasive on top of having that ridiculous Constitution. 20 Constitution means +5 HP/level, +5 bonus to his saving throws vs. death, wand, and spells, and he will actually regenerate very slowly. About once a minute you will notice he gains a hit point. Not huge, but it means that you can sleep or travel to different areas and he will have regenerated a large amount of his HP, if not all of his HP. On top of that, 16 Strength means you can give him all the equipment you need whilst without weight concerns, and he will get a small (+1 Damage) melee bonus.
For those of you who say Kagain is lame because of the Rest Until Healed option: Rest Until Healed is the most gamebreaking, stupid, terrible feature ever and if you use it, you should feel bad. Thank you.
Shar-Teel - Fighter
Shar-Teel has a 18/52 Strength and 17 Dexterity. This leaves her with a great melee bonus (+2 THAC0, +3 Damage) and makes her evasive and decent with ranged weapons (7 base AC, +2 ranged THAC0) if you decide to progress her that way. Her proficiencies are laid out very wonky in BG:EE (** Two Weapon Style, * Dagger wth?! * Long Swords), but you can progress her to being pretty beast even with that wasted prof in daggers. On top of that, you can dual-class her to Thief. Most people do this at level 6 (to hit Level 9 Thief, just one level short of single-class Thief cap, so you get 4x backstab damage) or level 7 (extra 1/2 APR for being a Fighter, you just barely hit Thief 8 before capping out on EXP). I would argue with her newfound dual-wield approach that the extra 1/2 APR and extra huge pain in the ass to get her fighter levels back is not worth it and as such I would suggest Fighter 6/Thief 9. ...And again, you can make her a good ranged fighter if you want. If you dual-class her, you certainly have enough proficiency points to go around ...
Tiax - Cleric/Thief
This guy is wacky, because Cleric/Thieves can be awesome but you have to really know what you're doing. On the plus side, his proficiency points are laid out beautifully (* Staves, * Slings, * Two-Handed Weapon Style). As Cleric/Thieves can only backstab with Clubs or Staves, you are sticking to a Staff with this guy. Little known fact: Staves are incredibly powerful for backstabbing. Two-Handed Weapons are powerful in general, and although they are only 1d6, there are loads of powerful staves in the game. There's a Staff +3, Staff Spear +2, Staff Mace +2 (this is awesome because you can still equip him with a shield, I would suggest Kiel's Buckler!), and the fabled Staff of Striking. There are only a couple of Staves of Striking in the game, which leaves you with 40 hits with that beautiful thing. My hint: Save it for insanely brutal backstabs and never use it in normal combat. 1d6+10 damage? Yes please. So basically, people use Tiax to deliver extremely painful staff backstabs, and for beast trap finding. Why beast trap finding? Sanctuary + Detect Traps is legit. You can run around finding and disabling traps without worrying about the potential dangers. You could also stack it with the Priest spell Find Traps if you wanted to.
In terms of his Clerical side, he's not all that impressive. You're going to want either another Cleric or a Druid, most likely. He only gets one bonus first level spell. People like to yell "WELL ALL DA CLERICS IN BG1 HAVE NO HIGHER THAN 16 WISDOM, DEY DON'T GET ANY BONUS 3RD OR 4TH LEVEL SPELLS" but there's this craaaazy thing called giving NPCs some tomes, and since there are 3 Wisdom tomes in the game *it's not very difficult to spare one or two!*
Tiax has the lowest Dexterity of any thief in the game, 16. I would not run around with him as your only thief, especially since he is found so late-game, of course. His Constitution is 16, which is awesome. His Strength is very sad, so I would suggest equipping him with the Gauntlets of Ogre Power if you can spare them ... at the very least, hand him one of the Gauntlets of Weapon Expertise.
Oh yeah, and he can summon a Ghast once per day as an Innate Ability. Kinda badass.
Montaron - Fighter/Thief
This guy is a great Fighter/Thief. Halflings get nice bonuses to their thieving abilities, and on top of that he has a 17 Dexterity. 16 Strength, 15 Consitution. This guy's physical stats are in NO way lacking for a BG1 NPC, it's really that simple. Fighter/Thief is a great multi-class, you can't really go wrong there. This guy is pretty great at delivering painful backstabs, and even better with the right equipment. He's a great option, although I would personally never mix him and Tiax in a party, because they kind of fulfill similar roles and in the end one of them will seem like they are the weaker link, y'know?
Viconia - Cleric
I'm of the personal opinion that in BG1, Viconia is pretty overrated. Single-class Clerics in BG1 don't offer much over their multi-class counterparts due to wonky experience caps. (They achieve level 8 instead of level 7, which doesn't even offer any better saving throws, weapon profs, spell levels, THAC0, anything ... just a couple more spells, that is all) Despite this, she definitely has some pretty huge perks. 50% Magic Resistance is just awesome ... you can throw her at mages with some form of confidence, which is kind of crazy. If you hand her the Cloak of Balduran she'll be at 75%, which is scary. Furthermore, a Cleric with a 15 Wisdom isn't too bad. +2 level 1 spells and +1 level 2. If you hand her the 3 Tomes she'll be at 18 Wisdom, +2 level 1 +2 level 2 +1 level 3 +1 level 4, which is certainly respectable. Her physical stats are really lacking except for her Dexterity which is a 19!! This means a 6 base AC and +3 ranged THAC0 ... hand her a sling and watch her do work!
Xzar - Necromancer
I'm a huge fan of Xzar. Lots of naysayers go "well edwin is soopar powerfaul, so liek, xzar suxxor!!11lolz" aaaand yeah that's dumb. Xzar is a complicated guy. 14 Strength means good carrying weight (120 lbs), 16 Dexterity means 8 base AC and +1 ranged THAC0, his Constitution is sadface, his Intelligence is 17 (which is normal for a mage in this game), his Wisdom is 16!!, and his Charisma is meh whatever. Okay, so as a pure-class Mage, he does pretty decently. He's not bad throwing daggers/slinging/throwing darts on the side, and he's far more evasive than Edwin and Dynaheir. Necromancy is a decent school, you miss out on protective spells but thankfully you're probably not throwing him into melee combat. He throws out damage and crowd control just fine, which is far more important for a mage.
Here's where things get interesting ... he can dual-class into a Thief or a Cleric if you throw a tome his way. You can spare him the Dexterity tome and dual-class him, and he makes a pretty smexy Necromancer 7/Thief 8. Not many people do this though, they instead opt to give him a Wisdom tome and dual-class him to Cleric so that he is a Necromancer 6/Cleric 8. Doing this, you basically have a perfectly good Cleric (single-class Clerics can only get to Cleric 8 as well), and then 3 levels of mage spells on top of that ... there is literally no disadvantage he has vs. a pure-class Cleric. Needless to say, he'll be throwing out TONS of spells. Xzar is a very fun, dynamic character, and on top of that he is absolutely hilarious. My vote is pick this guy up he adds some great humor to your party of badasses.
P.S. also he has a pretty good Lore 'cause he's a 17 Int/16 Wis mage. Just sayin'.
Edwin - Conjurer
Edwin is very simple to understand. When mage unlock a new level of spells ...
Generalist Mage - 1 Spell
Specialist mage - 2 Spells
Thayvian Wizards (so, Edwin and no one else in this game) - 3 Spells
... And that's the simple facts. So he gets a crap-ton of spells, and on top of that he's a Conjurer ... this means he only misses out on Divination, which is not a terribly useful school in the first place. Clerics can certainly make up for the detection spells you miss out on, the only thing you really lose with Edwin in play is Identify. OH NO, like you can't have shops do that anyway ... or a bard ... or ... you get the point. Oh, and his Constitution is 16 (woot!) and his Intelligence 18. His Dexterity is the worst in the game but you probably aren't throwing him into melee combat soooo who cares.
Eldoth - Bard
This guy is a bit odd. 16 Strength and 15 Consitution is very nice, but his Dexterity leaves him with zero bonus ... and yet he's advertised as bowman. He can make 5 Poison Arrows once per day that only he can use, and they stay in your pack, they don't disappear. But again, no Dexterity bonus. You can throw him the Gauntlets of Dexterity and he'll be a whole lot better, but in that sense you still can't hand him something else on top of it, like the Gauntlets of Weapon Skill or Expertise ... So his ranged THAC0 will never be anywhere near where you want it to be. Anyway, as a bard he makes for a great 6th player to fill in any gaps you might be missing in your party.
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People who get brought in Evil parties for valid reasons:
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Skie - Thief
Because she is part of Eldoth's quest. She is actually quite good (13 Strength, 18 Dexterity, 15 Constitution) but is overshadowed by Imoen, because Imoen was added into BG1 at the last second thus throwing off a whole ton of NPC game balance. Anyway, treat her as you would a single-class Imoen. She is certainly capable. Enjoy putting up with her whining. You can always get her killed and leave yourself with just Eldoth.
Faldorn - Druid
Because she is a Shadow Druid. They're basically more militant druids, aka violent environmentalists. She fits in just fine with an Evil party as a result. Faldorn is a very fun NPC actually, because while her stats suck, she is the most capable Divine spellcasting NPC in the game. Druids can reach Level 10, which means a whole mess of spells ... they get Level 5 Spells whereas Clerics don't. Lots of people make Faldorn a beast (pun intended) summoner, stacking up loads of Animal Summoning I and II on top of her Innate Ability to summon a Dread Wolf once per day. As far as her stats go, you will only be seeing a tiny bonus for a 15 Dexterity (9 base AC), and a sexy 16 Wisdom. Anyway, she is capable of throwing around a whole lot of Divine spells, which makes her pretty awesome.
Safana - Thief
Because she is Chaotic Neutral and sticks to that card very well. Her personality fits an Evil party just fine. She is a decent Thief with her 17 Dexterity, can actually carry some amount of weight unlike Imoen, and her 17 Charisma is very nice indeed. Throw her a Nymph cloak, for sure. She makes a great store face, and your Charisma monkey in general for getting favorable dialog results. She has an Innate Charm Person ability once per day, which is pretty helpful at times. You can actually throw her an Intelligence tome to dual-class her to Mage if you want, just as you would cheater mccheater-face Imoen.
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Hope that helps, @trh5001 !