Most underwhelming party member (BG2)
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Note this is purely about effectiveness in terms of game mechanics.
As there are limited number of slots for the poll, I have not listed characters that I find are highly effective, but feel free to contradict me and choose other
As there are limited number of slots for the poll, I have not listed characters that I find are highly effective, but feel free to contradict me and choose other
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- Most underwhelming party member (BG2)121 votes
- Mazzy  5.79%
- Yoshimo  3.31%
- Nalia11.57%
- Hexxat15.70%
- Viconia  3.31%
- Aerie  2.48%
- Minsc  3.31%
- Cernd44.63%
- Other (please state who)  9.92%
1
Comments
Starting with grandmastery in shortbow is simply an awful choice. Only the archer kit can be effective as a dedicated archer in BG2, given how heavily archery was nerfed. It also forces her to leave her offhand free, so you might assume that her melee weapon would be a two hander, but no, not only is it a one hander, but it is one of the worst one handers in the game, the shortsword.
And Mazzy is supposed to be an exceptionally powerful character, based presumably on the fact that she has a handful of special abilities. Her strength ability is nice to tide her over until she gets a strength item, which she really needs because her base strength gives no combat bonuses at all. And the heal is moderately helpful. Remove fear and haste are abilities that every single party has ready access to an area effect version of, so are basically pointless.
None of these abilities come even close to Korgan's enrage ability, and the supposed penalty of that kit is no penalty at all given that he can do far more damage with the dwarven thrower than any weapon which uses a ranged proficiency, and still hold a shield whilst doing so. The dwarven thrower, which can easily be acquired early on, does 2d4+3 damage, adds the characters strength bonus, and counts as a +3 weapon. It also shares the same proficiency as the Crom faeyr.
Unless you beeline it to Spellhold, she's woefully under-leveled for the rest of the game, which is part of why I never bring her along.
Not sure if this belongs here or not, I tend to lump in the words underwhelming and disappointing together.
Edit: I just realized the OP said this is strictly about game mechanics so I am going to put my non-mechanic based opinion in spoiler quotes. Thanks guys.
Also, I understand that women do not have many romance options, but if there are no strictly gay male NPC's, then why was there the need to have a strictly gay female NPC?
At the end of the day, I would really be frustrated if I was a regular hetero-sexual woman and my only choices in the game were Anomen or to go down the bi-curious path with Hexxat. Then again, I just remembered Dorn is Bi. I guess that makes it a little bit better.
I just don't think it is fair that there are no strictly gay male NPC's for a gay male charname to play with, but lesbians now have that option.
Overall, I am not gay, but I still believe if they are going to go down the gay route, they need to have one each for men and women. That is just my opinion, I apologize to those who do not agree.
Once he gets to level 14 the single casting of Nature's Beauty he gets is very useful against enemies. He can cast it without breaking invisibility, making dealing with enemies like Beholders to be really easy (since it is permanent blindness).
In any case, Aerie should not ever be on that list. The power of dual magic access is insane, and cleric spells are much more worthwhile when sped up by a robe of vecna and an arcane Sequencer.
You arent, for example, backstabbing with a specialisation bonus and then holding your own in meele as a fighter thief, where a pure thief would simply blow his load with one weaker backstab and be near useless for the rest of the fight.
You arent wading into meele as a fighter mage, buffed up to make you far more durable than any pure warrior could be, and able to complement your meele abilities with damage spells and crowd control.
You are either casting a mage spell to the exclusion of casting a cleric spell, or vice versa. There are few real advantages to having one character be able to cast both. A cleric admittedly gains a number of useful defensive mage buffs that are caster only, but has to sacrifice decent health and armour to do so, but a mage gets virtually nothing that couldnt simply be cast by a different member of the party who was a pure cleric. The caster only buffs of clerics are far inferior to those of a mage, and I cant think of many cleric spells I would rather have in my sequencers and contingencies over mage spells.
By the time Aerie gets 6th level spells, Edwin is spamming fingers of death and dropping 3 skull trap sequencers. When Aerie eventually gets a single 7th level spell slot, Edwin has 4 9th level spell slots. The fact that she can also cast greater restoration once per day (though not at the same time as she is casting any mage spell) is hardly adequate compensation, when Anomen at the same experience level gets 3 7th level spell slots and I think 6 6th level spell slots (vs Aerie's 2). He can also buff up with DUHM and wade into meele with grandmastery in his weapon of choice.
Aerie is not substitute for a pure mage. And whilst she is passable as your main healer, the other two clerics do the job a lot better, and Anomen is a decent tank and meele damage dealer too.
As for the robe of Vecna, I cant really see myself giving this to Aerie with her handful of high level spells over Neera or Edwin who can dump a huge arsenal of offensive spells inside one casting of improved alacrity.
Add to that a selection of almost every spell in the game and you have a pretty powerful character. Shame she is so annoying.
As for access to every spell in the game, whilst having access to both arcane divine spells is obviously very useful, I just dont see why it is particularly useful to have access to both sets of spells on a single character. On the contrary, as you can only cast one spell per round, it is better to spread out your access to spells more evenly. That way you can cast both a divine and an arcane spell in a single round, not one or the other, and more of the spells you will cast will be of a high level.
Plus, with so few high level spell slots, Aerie has plenty of known spells, but not that many memorised, which in practice makes her somewhat less versatile. With Edwin, I can afford to memorise somewhat situational spells, because I still have plenty of available spell slots for the frequently used spells. With Aerie, I have to devote my spell slots exclusively to the frequently cast spells, and eschew the situational ones. I would never have Aerie memorise 3 lower resists for example, but I frequently do with Edwin.
Contingency: Heal is also nice.
As for contingency heal, mislead and protection from magic weapons will generally be better when taking heavy damage than a full heal, given how small a pure caster's health pool is.
And the number of spells she can cast is almost unparallelled as well. She gets wizard spell progression AND Cleric spell progression. In later game play she will (numerically) out cast anyone else, even being a lower level, by a significant margin.
Plus, there are ways to make her so that she can take a hit (Stoneskin, mirror image, etc... not to mention the belt of Constitution). She just doesn't make a good front liner or tank, but then neither does Edwin.
Not trying to convince you that she is 'All that', merely that there are benefits to the combination.
With Spell Sequencer you could do a triple casting of Holy Smite. If nothing else its likely a lot more party friendly than doing the same with Skull Trap. Its also good if you need to throw down party buffs (Protection From Evil 10'Radius, Defensive Harmony, Haste, etc) on the fly in the event that they are dispelled.
I'd go with Hexxat either way though. Somehow Yoshimo manages to seem more effective than her despite her numerous abilities and ridiculous ability scores (not that Yoshimo's stats are bad by any stretch of the imagination). Maybe I'm crazy, I don't know. It's probably because Yoshi starts with a very sexy 1d10+1 weapon whereas if I recall Hexxat's starting proficiency points do not give her access to a katana or long sword.
I do like that she has a Domination ability. Neato. Random summon, umm OK neat but why. Oh cool, a random free bag of holding with a strange name. It's like they piled on a bunch of random abilities in the hopes that she would be interesting. I think it is entirely possible for a pure thief to be fun, but a lot of people disagree with that, so I think Overhaul was attempting to cater to such players by giving her extra capabilities ... that don't scale well. With Hexxat they tried to make a character that appealed to everyone so that everyone could have a pure thief, but not only did they fail in that endeavor mechanically, they also messed up in terms of character. How is a Neutral Evil vampire supposed to be a thief for everyone? What were they thinking? If they had realized that she was destined to not be a thief for everyone, Overhaul might have done better with her. Also, this. "Let's throw in a bunch of random characteristics onto a character and hope it makes her interesting; instead of coming up with an interesting character and then applying such stats and details as seems suitable!" They basically approached characterization the opposite way of how any writer should. That's why Hexxat is a crappy character.
People dislike pure thieves for powergaming, I get that, but 20 str and 20 dex can make for some good backstabs, plus the HLA's....not that bad.
The problem to me sounds like it comes from trying to use Aerie as your only mage or priest: DON'T! By all that is overpowered, do not, unless you're doing a 3 or 4 man party. Simply put, Aerie is an extra source of endless magic. To compare her to Edwin isn't very fair since comparing even Charname is ludicrous.
Aerie is your backup artillery and backup bandage, and at that role, she does great.
Saying that she can only cast 1 spell at a time... I don't understand the complaint. The same can be said for any spellcaster.
A Cleric/Fighter cannot swing his blunt weapon (or sling) while casting his spells, nor can a F/M get his Tenser's/Imp Haste/etc up while cutting through enemies.
Sure, at level 14th Edwin will be casting fingers of death and skull traps , but Aerie at level 10/11 will have 32 wizard spells and at least 35 priest spells f. She can heal, summon elementals, cast buffers, disabling and protection spells of all kinds. As a backup character, she can have an essential role.
Yoshimo is a great character, both for SoA and (download this to keep him until the end of the game) ToB, even more if he is dual-classed to Fighter at level 19 (or 21, which is also a pretty good build) after Spellhold (I'm assuming the player is using the Keeping Yoshimo mod and that the player has around 4 millions XP per character by that point), make him dual-wield Katanas (or maybe scimitars, or even short swords) with Grand-mastery (and I still haven't started talking about _backstabbing_ with them) and Improved Haste plus some others fine buffs, and he'll be the best melee NPC in the game, since he is also able to backstab and set Special Traps, which are also pretty deadly (if you prefer damaging traps instead of disabling traps dual-class him at level 15, trust me, that will do good to).
Mazzy is basically the best vanilla Fighter (after Sarevok, but you get him pretty late in the game), she's beast with Shortbows, and dual-wielding Shortswords isn't something to be left unconsidered (even if piercing damage sucks), she can deal pretty good damage, and she has good natural DEX, which gives her a pretty good base AC. She isn't as good as Yoshimo in power gaming terms, but she's probably the second best Fighter (after Anomen) in terms of defense.
Nalia is a mage that is able to use Shortbows and Elven Chain Mail, she's actually a pretty good Party-Mage, even better than Imoen since you can have her for the whole game.
I'd say the worst character, in power gaming means is Imoen, but since she's a Thief->Mage, which is a very good class, she actually is pretty good, but comparing to other characters, without taking classes into account, she's the worst of all (plus I never liked her character concept and she's a walking plothole so...).
But using DUHM for shapeshifts is one I handnt thought of, but I do remember polymorphy self and using DUHM Bhaalspawn power being very effective for some shapes, like flind and sword spider.
Dont get me wrong, Aerie is by no means the least effective character in combat. But I dont think cleric/mage is a combination which compliments each other nearly as well as other multi classes (and certainly cant hold a candle to some dual classes), nor do I think Aerie compares favourably to Anomen, who is a much better cleric and fighter. And even as Cleric/Mages go, she isnt that good, an illusionist/cleric gnome with decent stats could have far more health, better saves and more mage spell slots.
oops?
*runs away*