Party Makeup
Lelo
Member Posts: 60
Okay, it's been a while since I played BG so I'm really foggy on some things. I've been playing EQ2 but I've been soloing so I haven't been in a group doing any raiding. Can anyone tell me what classes should be in a group? Cleric, mage, fighter......?
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If you need healing spells, you'll have to include at least one divine caster since they are the only ones who have them. So that's one (possibly multiclassed, of course) cleric/druid who would be mandatory.
You don't really NEED a rogue in your party but not having one will leave relying entirely on spells and brute force for chest opening and on cannon fodder for trap disarming, which could become irritating at times. So that'd be another guaranteed slot, for a thief (which can be multiclassed too).
Some feel that arcane casters are mandatory because they have access to a wide range of ways to make (multiple) people suffer from afar, be it via direct damage spells or enchantments which will render them defenseless. Another spot for a Bard/Sorcerer (these cannot be multiclassed) or a mage (these can). Or not, because regular mundane hurting of people works fine too, especially in the first game.
Because your party members will take hits from time to time and mages aren't very good at this, you'll probably have a front-laner which you will send a bit ahead (or really just make him walk in the front, that's almost always good enough). This one could be a warrior, ranger, paladin, barbarian, cleric, druid...and once again even multiclassed it'd work fine. Even a monk could be made to work I guess but wearing armor is pretty damn convenient so I wouldn't advise it.
These four are in my opinion the hardest to forego, although it is very possible with some determination and just a pinch of masochism.
I personally like to include at least on pure healer or two multiclassed ones, more than one single arcane caster (say, a mage and a bard) and to have at least two meatshields, if not three, but those are all just my choices and you can and probably will complete the game with a very different party.
3 melee'ers:
whether they are fighters/paladins/rangers, doesn't matter, I just like having 3 guys up front ( or even fighter multi classes up front could work as well)
1 cleric of some kind ( or possibly druid):
whether that be a pure cleric or multi class cleric, and bg1 multiclass clerics are better in my opinion (especially if they are multi with a fighter) but then again cant go wrong with a pure cleric as well, but for slot for I like having a divine caster, and again if you substitute a cleric for a druid instead, then you should be okay, especially the level 4 druid spell call woodland beings, just simply an AWESOME spell for bg1, but clerics get animate dead which summons a pretty nice skeleton warrior especially at level 7, so either one is good, and for weapon choice I go with sling, divine classes have pretty crap to hit, so I stick with sling, keeps them out of harms way and all is good
1 thief of some sort:
having a thief is very VERY useful, especially if you are a little rusty on your bg skills, you will want to crap the find traps to 100, and open locks to 90 if you want to disarm and unlock every trap/ lock in the game, and then the rest is completely up to personal preference on how you like playing your thief ( if you like backstabbing crank up the stealth skills a bit and make sure to get the shadow armor from the blacksmith in beregost and the boots of stealth in the area below beregost to help bump up the stealth scores a bit, of if you want to pick pocket, put some points in that, usually 50 or 60 is enough to get the goodies but make sure to save before a pick pocket attempt or else bad things might start happening to good people, or if you like the element of surprise and ambushing your enemies a bit, put some skill in trap setting, scout out ahead to see whats coming, lay some traps by your party and then lure the baddies in and cripple them up a bit before you go in for the kill) but usually when I play a thief I just go for bow, their to hit is kind of okay with a bow ( if they have high DEX) so bow using is usually a pretty safe choice
1 arcane caster of some sort:
now granted that you are a fighter/mage I don't know if you want to be on the front line or back line, my suggestion would be maybe put your character on the front line ( which means you will definitely want spells like: armor, shield, mirror image, ghost armor, stoneskin and such to make it harder for baddies to hit you) then you can have a secondary mage taking care of the buffing of the party ( with haste since a single class mage will be a higher level than your multi so it will be a longer duration) and also crowd control type stuff like sleep, glitter dust, fireball, emotion hopelessness, hold monster, skull trap and things like that, and again I would give the back row arcane caster a sling, you definitely don't want your buffing/ crowd control mage going into melee, so keep him/her out of there
so with that being said, this is quite the diverse party that should be able to get you through all of what bg has to handle, and once you finish bg, then you will know what party composition you like better so when you get into bg2, you will be ready to go
For picking locks I just use brute force or the knock spell and it hasn't been much of an issue really. That said I don't use level 2 mage spells all that much unless it's a fighter mage so take that for what it's worth. Usually having 2 knock spells memorized gets the job done.
Also worth noting I like to take 1 and 1/2 Divine casters, 1 and 1/2 mages and 3 fighters in each party so there's that loooooool.
Helpful hint B: Nalia's trap and disarm skills can be buffed up with the two rings that are found in the Planar Sphere and the Shadow Thief guildhall. This makes her almost as good as Imoen; you may even want to keep her in preference to Imoen, since she has the potential to get to a higher level as a mage.
Helpful hint C: Some classes that can only wear leather armor [Archer, for example] can actually wear Ankheg plate, since this is NOT made of metal. Sweet.
Helpful hint D : Want a cleric with decent melee? Try the clerserker. In SoA I created a human berserker with Wisdom 18, and took 4 pips in flails. Upon awakening in the initial dungeon, I immediately dualed to a cleric and took another pip in flails. At low levels, clerics rise fast; rather soon I hit 8th level. At that point the berserker skills kicked in and I had a cleric with GM [5 pips total] in flails, who had 5/2 attacks and could berserk twice a day. I immediately did Nalia's quest to grab the Flail of Ages, then bought the girdle of hill giant strength to increase THACO further. That Flail will be my weapon until end game; remember, eventually it can be upgraded to a +5 weapon. Anomen, eat your heart out!
Helpful hint D.1: You can even do this in BG 1, if you want to do a complete play through. If you do that, you can reach level 8 as a berserker, then dual over to cleric in SoA with even more HP. It will, of course, take you until level 9 cleric before getting the berserker abilities back. Oh, as a side benefit, I also got Nalia's Keep as a stronghold, being a fighter/cleric hybrid.
The one cleric point in flails will get lost during the transition, so its better to spent it on weapon styles or any unskilled weapon ( mace! )
When the berserker becomes active again and you earn some new prof. points you can spent it for grand masteries though.
In order to give a dualclassed character pips in a weapon category she developed while being a fighter, you have to wait till your fighter levels come back.
Also, if you indeed don't dualclass a fighter at level 7 (when she gets +0.5 APR), then the general advice is to wait till level 9, when she'll get another proficiency. Dualling at level 8 is not recommended (the only difference between levels 7 and 8 is -1 THAC0).
If you advice to dualclass in the end of BG1, then you have to note that the player won't be able to use abilities and skills of the previous class for end battles in BG1 and will have only a lvl 1 or 2 character with more HPs.
Personally, I wouldn't recommend to dualclass to a player who hasn't played BG for a while and now going through it like for the first time.
bengoshi said: "If you put 4 pips in flails as a berserker and then put 1 pip in flails again as a cleric, you should have lost your 4 pips from the berserker for good."
Clearly I didn't lose the flail proficiency I took as a berserker, despite taking one pip as a cleric. I have no idea what to what game mechanic you refer that might prevent this. I'd want a pip in flails even if I was going to remain a cleric till level 1O, to be able to use the Flail of Ages decently. I can't think of any better weapon for a cleric to use at that point in the game. The fact that the one pip does get lost in transition is almost immaterial; I wasn't that concerned about training in warhammers or quarterstaves at that point. And I immediately got another proficiency slot, to achieve GM.
No, DON'T dual class until SoA; Sarevok will eat you up. My first run through BG was with a berserker; the immunities made things like the sirens a joke. Unfortunately, it was a half orc, so couldn't dual class when transported over to SoA. The early part of SoA has reasonably easy encounters, especially if you choose your companions wisely, so your fledgling cleric will thrive quite well.
OK, perhaps a newcomer should go for a straight run as something easy, like a F/M. But there are some experienced folks reading this folder as well, so I wanted to toss this out as a possibility.
F/Ms get more HP and better weapon proficiencies than pure mages, as well as various buffs like stoneskin and improved haste, combined with HLAs like GWW making them much better melee fighters than pure mages even if they use Tenser's. While you can't change armors in the middle of combat, you do also have the option of casting spell buffs pre combat and then donning some heavy armor before charging into melee. No more spell casting till combat is over, of course. Unless you do indeed have some elven chain.
Note that there is nothing preventing a FM wearing armor from using something like a mage wand or other items while wearing armor.
Armor and Shield, both grade 1 spells, are pretty decent. Plate armor AC and 7-8hours duration makes the first spell great in general. And shield is shorter but is pretty handy against missiles (magic ones too)
And it will only get better from here on.
Grade2 mirror images
Grade3&4, ghost and spirit armor, STONESKIN
...
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But there are mods that let you wear armor, in trade of spell failure chance. Those might be worth a try too
"More like from level 1 on.
Armor and Shield, both grade 1 spells, are pretty decent."
But level 1 or so pure mages are rather fragile. One or two hits from a kobold with a bow, or a bite from a wolf can take you out. Stoneskin is great, but it's a level 4 spell, so if you start as a mage in BG, it will be a while before you can cast this. F/Ms are more durable. A level 2-3 F/M won't have much in the way of combat spells anyway, so they can wear heavy armor and snipe away at things with a bow or pull out a shield and pummel foes with a weapon, and not really lose out in offensive ability by not being able to cast their one crummy Magic Missile spell.
Having more options is good, hence the popularity of the F/M. The trade off is the slower rate of advancement for Multis.